never to take it. I realized too late that he was not my ally…he was my foe. He is trying to starve me to death, Cora. I gave him everything to be happy. I chose Amanda for him, thinking a companion might cheer him up and change his mind. But it didn’t.” He sighed.
“What do you mean, he’s trying to starve you to death?”
“He wants us all to end. He wants me to end.”
“Why?”
He looked at her coldly. “Man-eating murder-circus.”
Snickering, she scratched the back of her neck. “Right. Yeah. Okay. Sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s true. I am what I am. I pull the seity from the living and use it to survive. I’d hardly call that benign. But I don’t want to destroy the world. I don’t want to cause people to suffer. I don’t eat people whole unless I need to, to survive. They don’t even remember the part of themselves they’ve lost. They don’t miss it when it’s gone. But it’s how I live.”
She nodded. “How is he starving you?”
“In many ways. First, I don’t want to stay at this lake any longer. I enjoyed it for a time. But I am meant to move. I want to see the world. It has changed so much since I’ve been here. I do not want to Invert and retreat to this nether-realm of mine, but I’m forced to do it to survive. I don’t like the void any more than you do. Who would pick that, over this?” He gestured out at the lake in front of him. “It’s beautiful. The world is beautiful. And people can be horrible, terrible, monstrous things…but it all makes up the whole wonderful picture. We cannot have beauty without ugliness. We cannot have life without death. I take from others to survive, but I try to give it back to those who live within me. I really…really do want you all to be happy, Cora.”
The man-eating murder-circus was making a lot of sense. And that was problematic on a whole lot of levels. “What else is he doing?”
“You are all supposed to be allowed to leave my boundaries. To hunt, to bring in others or just…to explore. Being trapped in a cage is less terrible if the door is unlocked.”
“So, you’re supposed to be a kennel, not a cage.” She chuckled. “Great.”
He shook his head. “Everything is a cage. Every life is a trap. Your life before was one that was too small, too painful, and too boring for you. You didn’t belong in that life. I took you away from it before it destroyed you.”
“I know. And part of me understands that. But the other part of me hasn’t accepted it yet.” She shut her eyes. “Those things you said—about me and Simon. Were they true?”
“Does it matter? If you believe they could be true, that means they are.” He sighed. “I take those whose lives do not fit them, if I believe I could give them something more. It may not be perfect, and it may not be what you would want, but it is better.”
“And you get to be the judge of this, why?”
He smiled at her thinly. “I am an eldritch creature from the dawn of time, Cora. What’s the phrase Bruce the Firebreather uses all the time? Ah. Yes.” He grinned. “I’ve seen some shit.”
Laughing hard, she shook her head. She wasn’t sure what to expect from talking to some elder-creature that was as old as humanity itself, if not older. Maybe some big, tentacled sea monster looming in the darkness, spouting about how “to look into it is to stare into the maw of madness.” Not some dorky creature wearing Clown’s persona, cracking jokes with her. She wasn’t afraid. She was certain that was very much the point of the whole conversation.
“It’d be nice to go outside the Faire once in a while. I assume we can’t stay out for long.”
“No, you weaken and die. A few in the past have chosen that as a way to end themselves. I don’t want to keep people who do not want to stay. Without your happiness, this is what happens to me. I wither and die. But that is not all Ringmaster has done. He is the one responsible for building the Dark Path. I used to feed—just a little—from everyone who stepped within me. A penny from all who walked inside. But he wanted to give people a choice. He wanted to tell them what they would be losing.”