The Ringmaster's Revenge

The Ringmaster's Revenge: Phase Eleven

Phase Eleven

16days: 4hours

Until the Ringmaster’s Revenge

Grift

“Don’t you ever smile,” Grift said to Aviraz.  The long stretches of silence between them felt like heavy wet sacks draped over his shoulders and he was starved for company, if not attention.

“No.”

“Do you ever laugh?”

“No,” lied Aviraz.

Grift stomped his boots as he walked in an attempt to knock some heat into them.  The road was covered in a sheet of brown snow and full of ruts where wagon wheels had pushed through the mud days ago when the world had still been damp.  Now it was simply frozen.  As were Grifter’s feet, nose, and fingers.  The shadow didn’t look much warmer and he knew they’d have to find shelter soon.  “Could you?  Like, if I ordered you to?” he asked.  There was no response so he said, “Do it.  Laugh.”

“Ha,” said the shade, hardly sounding merry.

“Now smile.”

Aviraz turned to his master with curled, slightly-parted lips.  And as Grift stared, wisps of black smoke, like long snakes, wiggled out of the shades mouth to dance in the winter air.

“Stop!  Don’t smile!”

Before Aviraz resumed his look of apathy, an odd noise rumbled deep in his throat so quietly that Grift could scarcely hear it.  The boy decided, it sounded very similar to the purr of several cats playing marbles on a wooden floor.  Layers of growls blanketing a steady, “rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsh.”  It took him a few minutes to realize that Aviraz had been laughing at him in Shadow-man fashion.  Then, as he felt his face go red and hot, he mumbled, “I wasn’t afraid.”

Aviraz’s shoulders were tense and his eyes half-scrunched, as if he were waiting for Grift to hurt him.  When no discipline came the shade muttered, “A slave does not laugh.  A slave does not cry.  A slave should be empty, diligent, and obedient.”

An image of Mahina curled up in the crushed jung plants, came to Grift.  Her face slashed and bruised.  She cried but he could not, as his fists came down over and over while the prince lectured with a velvet voice in the background.  Grift resurfaced from the shade’s memory only when a bit of ice dropped from a branch overhead and slid down his back.  Pretending his sniffle was from the cold, he rubbed his face clean and said, “Well my slave could do those things.  He could smile and cry and laugh.  If he wanted to.”

For forty minutes they walked on while the snowflakes fell.  They were thicker than earlier, falling wetly in his hair and getting stuck in his eyelashes, and there were so many that the night seemed bright even though the moon was covered by miles of bumpy clouds.  “I’m tired,” he said.  It didn’t occur to him to make the shade carry him and Aviraz certainly wasn’t going to mention it.  “And I’m really hungry too.”

Grift stopped and yanked the bag off his shoulders.  He fished around inside, scraping his icy fingers raw, but found nothing to eat.  Not so much as a biscuit remained from the supplies they’d scavenged at the last town.  He thought of sending Aviraz to hunt but then they would have to rest, build a fire, and cook the meat.  And since there seemed to be a storm blowing in, Grift didn’t want to risk stopping.  There had to be shelter somewhere down the road.  Until then…

“Aviraz.  Help me find something to eat.  What do deer eat in the winter?”  The shade shrugged off Grift’s question but the boy continued, “Roots?  Berries?  I bet if we follow some animal tracks we can find out where they’ve been digging and get something too.”