Page 5 of Caution to the Wind

The most precious kind was sourced from the heart.

“No,” Madame Cheung agreed. “But there is an imbalance in you. It is stamped into your face. You must not be too hard and unyielding, too focused on death and the dark.”

“Because I’m a girl?” I countered, bristling against the idea that women had to be all yin, all soft and yielding, summer and birth and new beginnings.

“No.” Madame Cheung shoved my face back disdainfully and folded her hands back beneath her silk sleeves before clasping them beneath the fabric. Her eyes were barely visible beneath the folds of her silken skin, but they burned into me like twin suns. “Because there is strength in softness too. There is purity, success, and happiness in finding balance between yinandyang. If you don’t learn this, the tragedies of your life will overtake you.”

I opened my mouth to say something, I don’t remember what, but it was probably to argue because I didn’t believe in soft for myself. Not when I had to protect Cleo’s big heart from bullies.

But a familiar voice cut through the still air in the tent and set it to buzzing.

“Don’t you dare!”

My head swivelled as I sought out Kate through the slightly transparent red walls of the tent. She sounded strange, edgy with panic. I’d always known her to be soft, almost dreamy and a little forgetful. Even when she was having one of her bad days, she was languid and soft-spoken.

“I mean it.” I could only hear her next words because I was straining. “Don’t do this. I’ve done everything I was supposed to. Please, I’m here w-with my daughter.”

A deep voice, the bass of it lost beneath the murmur of crowd noises outside.

“Thank you,” I murmured to Madame Cheung, fishing money out of my jean shorts to hand to her.

She caught my wrist in a punishing hold when I tried to empty the contents into her hand. Her gaze was narrowed and burning when I met it with my own.

“Do not follow trouble,” she warned ominously. “You are a child. Stay one for as long as you are able.”

I ignored her, my stomach clenching around the acid building in my gut.

Something was wrong.

Kate’s voice echoed between my ears. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I shivered in the warm air, chilled deep in my bones as I wrenched away from Madame Cheung and stumbled away from the table.

“I didn’t do anything,” Kate’s voice pierced through the tent again, drifting farther away but growing even more frightful. “I mean, I did, I did do exactly as you asked––” A strangled noise like someone was hurting her.

I turned on my sneakered heel and raced out of the tent.

The air outside was even more humid, sticky and thick. It took effort to run through it, around the crowd of bodies surging through the lanes between carnival games and attractions. She had to be close because I’d heard her as if she was shouting in my ear, but even after I circled the tent twice on a pant-inducing sprint, there was no sign of Kate.

I bent double, hands on my knees as I caught my breath, the taste of stale popcorn on my tongue, and surveyed the scene. It was dark and late, the families mostly gone to give way to couples holding hands, kissing under neon lights, men faking bravado as they won gifts for their girls. A group of teenage boys drank from a communal paper-bag-covered bottle of liquor, shouting and shoving each other as they made bets on a shooting game to my right.

To the left, nearly swallowed in shadows, the massive mouth of a clown yawned open menacingly. It was the entrance to the House of Horrors, the name dripping down the sign over the tunnel like blood from a fresh wound.

I hugged myself, staring into that dark mouth I desperately didnotwant to enter, and I made a choice.

Fear or love?

Cowardice or Kate?

If she needed help, how could I act like a baby and refuse to offer it just because some stupid carnival attraction gave me the heebie-jeebies?

I wished I had the dragon Henning won for me in my care, but he held it along with Cleo’s bounty so we could have fun with our friends.

I wished even more I had Henning there to help Kate with me.

Someone bumped into me, jostling me toward the cavern.

I let the momentum propel me forward.

My first step onto the tongue that rolled out of the mouth like a perverted red carpet prompted a series of mechanical prompts to go off. A tinny maniacal laugh echoed around me and bats attached to clear wires dropped down from the ceiling, one of them falling low enough to brush my hair. I squeaked and dashed forward, racing deeper into the dark heart of the house of terrors like a demon chased back into hell.