The Graveyard Festival

Chapter 6 - Colorless

Thana and Jonathan walked through the Festival in silence. She was rather sure it was already past midnight, although Six's broken clock hadn't made a sound in the last hour.

Jonathan, who hadn't made a sound either since they left Madame Damara's tent, walked beside her with a peculiar look on his face. "You're looking rather grumpy," Thana said, speeding up a bit and turning so that she walked backwards, her eyes trained on Jonathan. She peered closer at him. "Are you angry about something?"

"Not really," he replied, the right side of his lips curving into a half-hearted smile. "Just thinking."

"About...?"

"About—no, wait, watch out!"

Jonathan lunged forward, wrenching her towards him just before she backed straight into a small iron gate that seemed to guard...well, nothing.

Feeling a little breathless, Thana squirmed free of Jonathan's grip and turned to investigate the curious little gate that hardly reached her waist. It was as simple at the Raven gate was elaborate, parts of the iron already yellowed with age and rust, blooming like sickening, withered flowers over the dark metal.

Thana became acutely aware of the grim silence where they stood. The Festival here was oddly quiet, void of the life that shifted through the mist and rode high into the heavens on the Ferris wheel. How very strange, she mused.

"What's this?" Thana asked, mildly interested. The winds whispered indecipherable words into her ears, and the little gate creaked lightly in response, an eerie, broken melody. "Can I open it?"

She reached out a hand. Jonathan grabbed it. The skull on his face looked strangely feral with the fierce look on his face. "No, you can't open it, and don't you ever dare to open it."

"Why not? It's just a gate."

But before Jonathan could reply, another voice bled through the darkness, coming from above and below and the dark, lifeless tents that surrounded them where they stood. "Ladies and gentlemen," breathed the voice, a soft baritone that filled the spaces between the sighing winds and groaning gate. It made her cold the same way it enthralled her—it was something worldly and otherworldly all at once. "We bring you a tale...of a world without colors."

Jonathan swore loudly. "The performance—I've forgotten about it—come on!"

He sprinted off in the direction of the Festival's largest tent. Thana lingered behind for a second, her misty gaze trained on the little gate that guarded nothing. It creaked again, like it was beckoning her forward.

For one fleeting moment, she stood still.

And then, with a shrug of her shoulders, she skipped off after her guide.

***

Thana peeked from behind black velvet curtains at the chattering audience, their mouths full of cinnamon apples and kettle corn, their faces flushed with excitement. She had given up on watching from one of those dark seats (she deemed it ridiculous to squeeze to the opposite side of the tent just to get a seat) that circled the equally dark interior of the Festival's largest tent, which, as she had learned, was called the Charnel House.

It felt like the ceiling had opened up into the night sky—Thana couldn't see the top of the House from where she stood, though she distinctly remembered it looking much shorter from the outside. Rows upon rows of black seats, illuminated only faintly by tiny skulls lining the aisles, stretched far all around her; Thana couldn't remember if there were this many people living in Six.