The Graveyard Festival

Chapter 7 - Patchwork

Few people walked the Graveyard Festival now, with the crowd gathered within the House for the performance. Thana liked it—it felt as though she had the Festival all to herself. A quiet mist wisped around her ankles, curling and coiling as she skipped along the paths, leaving warped patterns behind her. The whimsical lullaby of the Ferris wheel still whispered through the air.

The skeletal-faced Festival workers had vanished, leaving the stalls eerily bright but lifeless. Thana smiled at Nettie the doll as she passed, who was lying limply on the floor against one of trolleys selling baked cinnamon apples. She skipped two steps, paused, and turned around again, gazing at the doll with her brows furrowed. Nettie's white dress was going to get muddy. It really would be such a pity.

Walking over to the doll, Thana bent down, intending to set Nettie someplace nicer, when something paused her hand before it reached the doll.

A tiny, soft giggle, riding on the wind. Thana twisted around, shivering as the first threads of unease laced around her spine.

The silhouette of a man stood against the flickering brightness of the skull lights, ever so still. And then a shudder passed over the figure as it laughed again.

Thana rose slowly. The man ventured forward.

He wore a jacket sewn from different cloths, an unnatural patchwork of red polka dots and green stripes and black skulls and ten other fabrics that matched with his pants, which was equally haphazardly stitched.

As he tottered forward a few more steps, Thana watched his pale skin—whiter than hers, whiter than snow—move into the light, framed by deep, blue curls. One eyes gleamed green, reminding Thana of lush forests and the calming rustling of leaves; the other glowed a fierce, impassioned red. There was something inherently wrong about this man, Thana decided with a faint step backwards, and Thana had felt a lot of wrong things in the dreams she'd crafted, from long-fingered ladies to sweet girls singing strange songs.

But this man...this man felt like lost toys and rogue machines and broken minds.

"Touch her, touch her!" he sang, cocking his head to the side. His red-green eyes met Thana's grey ones, full of a manic laughter. "Nettie doesn't like it when someone touches her." Another mad giggle.

"Hello," Thana ventured politely, although ice froze her veins. "I'm Thana. Who are you?"

The man didn't hear her question, though he did seem to register her name.

"Thana, Thana, Thana," he trilled and laughed, "You have such a pretty name, and such pretty skin too." Suddenly, he was in front of her, so close their noses were almost touching. But Thana didn't move—she didn't feel like shifting at all. In fact, enraptured by the blur of colors the mad man wore all over him, she hardly felt his hand when it trailed along her cheekbones and down to her neck.

"Such pretty skin," he whispered again, almost to himself, as his strange eyes continued to hold Thana captive. "Could use your pretty skin for more dolls. I've run out of pretty skin, pretty skin, pretty skin." He giggled again.

A glint of a silver dagger caught Thana's eye. "Maybe I'll just take some," the man murmured with a frenzied look on upon his face as he pressed the blade to Thana's ashen skin, "just to see if it really is as pretty as it looks."

"Leave her alone," someone growled.

Thana and the man both turned to the newcomer. The girl called Weather stood defiantly some distance from them, her icy gaze narrowed dangerously to slits. Beside her, a jet-black wolf snarled and showed its sharp teeth—one of Jonathan's tattoos. Overhead, dark clouds began to gather, and a rush of cold air stole Thana's breath.