Fearless The King Series Book One - By Tawdra Kandle Page 0,69

still wasn’t happy about this idea. I was getting frustrated.

“You know, if you don’t want to tell me, I could just listen to you and find out on my own.” I didn’t mean it to be a threat, but it ended up sounding like one.

His eyes widened. “You wouldn’t. I know you. You feel guilty about listening to me even when I ask you to do it. You wouldn’t purposely listen to something that I’m not ready to tell you.”

“Probably not.” I wasn’t ready to abandon this position just yet.

He sighed again, heavily.

“I really don’t get why you’re being so difficult about telling me this. If it’s just rumors and hearsay, couldn’t anyone in town tell me? I could ask Anne.”

“No, you don’t need to ask Anne. And maybe anyone in town could tell you, but they won’t. No one wants to talk about the less savory side of King’s mystical aura.”

I giggled in spite of myself. “That sounded like the opening line of a bad news expose’.”

Michael smiled too. “It did, didn’t it? Well, it’s the truth, however it sounds.” He paused, and I could sense the struggle. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know or what I’ve heard, at least. But promise me you won’t let your mind run wild, all right?”

“I’ll do what I can to rein it in,” I assured him.

“Well… I told you about King and the families who trace their lineage back to the original carnies. Some of them don’t live here anymore, but they tend to be the less flamboyant descendants—you know, like the more mundane acts in the carnival.

“What was unique about King’s Carnival back in the day was that he always claimed to have some kind of corner on the really mystical stuff. He not only had a fortuneteller, he claimed he had a real witch—she would sell charms, potions, whatever. Cast spells, maybe. And he had magicians who he said were the descendants of the original alchemists—they weren’t just doing tricks, they were actually making things appear out of thin air. That kind of thing.

“Well, while that fascinated some folks, others were afraid of it. So they started getting run out of towns, more and more. The women in the towns weren’t happy that their husbands were visiting the witch’s tent at night, getting charms or whatever… I think it was probably the whatever that bothered them more than the charms, but they used their righteous indignation to rally the churches and chase the whole carnival out of their town.

“King was getting older, and he was tired of the life on the road. Plus I’m sure he was beginning to see that the audience for his kind of carnival was drying up, as people were getting more and more caught up in religious fervor. Maybe he was really that much of a visionary, or maybe his fortuneteller clued him in. Who knows? Whatever it was, he decided he wanted to leave that kind of life behind.

“He had heard about the land in the central part of Florida being wide open, warm year around and pretty isolated. He decided to buy a big parcel of that land and start his own town. He invited all the people who worked for him to come down and begin a new life. He promised them the chance to live freely, without fear of persecution or prejudice.

“So they all came down here and started the town. For years it was just them, then as the surrounding area started settling, more people moved in and opened up businesses, started families. And at first, I don’t think they worried about the past or about their reputations as carnies. The people who moved here from other places knew how the town had started and were either okay with that or were willing to overlook it.

“And although I don’t know, I imagine that the real mystical stuff was still going on at that point. I’m not saying that I believe in any of that, because I don’t, but I think that they were still practicing what they saw as their magic. I’m also fairly sure that it was getting passed down to the next generation around that same time.

“When King finally died—he was pretty old, in his nineties—he had it written into his will that the town belonged to the original families that had settled it with him. He wanted it clear that it belong to them not only in the legal, physical sense, but also in the metaphysical