Lyra was wide awake when the knock came at her door. She threw back the covers, pulled on an old cardigan, and crossed the room silently on bare feet. Lydia waited in the shadows of the hallway and pressed a finger to her lips when Lyra emerged. She turned on her heel and led the way down the hall to the back staircase.

Bebinn had never restricted their movements within the carnival nor set hours for when they were allowed to move about, but something about tonight was different. Lyra had never been so conscious of the creaking floorboards under her feet, or the way her breathe echoed in the tight staircase. She was convinced every groan of the old funhouse was Bebinn swooping down on them and she flinched at noises she had long since been conditioned to ignore. The third time she did this, Lydia turned back to ask if she would rather do this a different night. Lyra shook her head and mouthed, "Sorry."

Calm down, she ordered herself. She had disobeyed Bebinn and gone to see Zabaria, this should be easy in comparison. But the knot in her stomach kept twisting tighter the deeper in the funhouse they went.

Down a hallway Lira had never seen before, Lydia took out a small gold key and unlocked a nondescript door. Lyra found herself wishing Owen was with her, and hoped when all this was over, he would forgive her for the way she had treated him recently.

She followed Lydia into the room, treading carefully. She wanted no trace of her presence here, nothing for Bebinn to link back to her. The room was homey, if a little dated. The rug under her bare feet was thick and soft, and the tapestries on the stone walls created a muffled effect on Lira's hearing. There was a small twin bed with a quilt and hand-knit blanket tucked into the corner. In the opposite corner was a massive antique wardrobe. It made Lira think of a book she had loved as a small child, and it took willpower not to go over and throw open the doors to see if maybe it would lead her home.

Between these two standard pieces of furniture stood a huge loom. Lira only recognized the apparatus from a fieldtrip she had taken in elementary school to a staged colonial village. She had been one of the kids the actor had called over to give the old machine a try. The one in front of her looked much older, and the closer she got, the more she could make out the designs carved into its frame. A contained fire in a brazier burned next to the loom.

"Should the fire be that close to the wood?" she asked, not entirely sure why she cared. The loom had the same feeling to it as the carousel; a thing that was older than time, that simply sprang into being with the sky and moon. As if she would feel the gap of its absence in the world if it suddenly disappeared.

"No," answered Lydia. She pointed to a marking in the top right corner; Lyra squinted and saw a carving that looked like a small flame in a circle. "That makes it fire-resistant."

"Right," said Lira as if that was perfectly normal. "So, what's the loom for?"

"It'll be easier to show you," said Lydia.  But instead of going to the loom, the little girl turned to the wardrobe instead. Lira felt an absurd bubble of hope well in her chest, only for it to pop a moment later when Lydia lifted the latch on the door and revealed a nearly-empty interior. Inside hung a single garment that emitted a faint gold pulse like a firefly. Lira moved closer and swore she felt a faint heat emanating from it.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"A soul," replied Lydia.

Deft in her movement, Lydia removed the soul from its hanger and walked it over to the loom where she strung it up. Beckoning Lira over, Lydia took a seat and picked up a white needle. Lira hovered over her shoulder, afraid to get too close, as if breathing on the soul would cause it to fall apart.

Using the tip of the white needle, Lydia pointed to the bottom left-hand corner of the soul. "Do you see that dark spot there?" she asked.

Lira looked where the needle almost touched the fabric, but between the shadows cast by the flickering fire and her own nerves, she didn't see anything different. "No," she said.

"You're not trained to see weaknesses in souls," Lydia acknowledged. "But here, sit on my seat and maybe you can see it. Just don't touch."

The two girls switched places and Lira leaned in close. She thought, maybe, she could see a small dark spot where Lydia had indicated, but she wasn't sure. Bending down so she was eye level, Lira closed her eyes briefly against the warmth of the soul. It washed over her in a gentle heat.

"Do you see it now?" asked Lydia.

Lira opened her eyes, looked again, and shook her head. She couldn't see anything. A thump in the hallway made her jump and she nearly fell off the stool.

"What was that?" she whispered, looking over her shoulder at the door.

Lydia seemed unconcerned. "Probably just the funhouse settling. Are you sure you don't see anything?"

Lira glanced back at the soul, but was too on edge to give it her full focus. Her ears kept straining behind her, convinced something or someone lie in wait in the hallway.

No one's there, she chided herself. This is important. This may be your only chance.

She resettled her balance on the stool, firmly planting both her bare feet on the ground. Leaning into the enticing warmth of the soul once more, she narrowed her eyes and tried to ignore all background noise and the flickering firelight, zeroing in on the place Lydia pointed.

"What is the dark spot anyway?" she asked the little weaver. She titled her head, trying a new angle. "Even if I can't see it, what is it? What do you do with it?"

"That's what makes them sick," explained Lydia. "I fix the dark spot so they get better."

Lyra recalled the night Lydia had first come to her room, with an ice wrap for her burned hands. She remembered Lydia telling her how she and Bebinn made the sick children Lyra brought into the spirit world better, but not explaining what they were sick with or how she healed them. At the time, Lyra couldn't understand what sickness the children had that didn't manifest itself through any symptoms. But now, with this soul stretched out before her, she realized it wasn't a human sickness like the flu or chicken pox that Lydia was referring to. It was a sickness of the soul. Something that no one could see from the outside.

Lyra tried to wrap her head around this new thought and make sense of it, but her mind kept bumping up a wall of a questions. What made a soul sick?

Sick, Lira thought. A vision of Baleros rose in Lira's mind. The darkness in his eyes, the cruelness in the set of his jaw. And another word rose in her thoughts. Twisted.

It wasn't an illness Lydia was talking about. It was a blight on the soul.

"How..." began Lira. She bit her tongue, trying to put her racing and jumbled thoughts into words. "Do all the children come here with this spot?" she asked. Did her music only work on souls with blights?

"No," said Lydia. "Some do, some don't. We need them both. I need clean souls to help heal the ones with spots."

"Why?" asked Lira. "How?" She couldn't seem to articulate anything of sense. Why was Bebinn fixing children's souls? Lira refused to believe it was out of the goodness of her heart. So what was she gaining?

Lydia nudged her gently and Lira understood to stand. The weaver took her seat, and with her white needle, gestured to the lower fourth of the soul. "I can't show you how, because I don't have a clean soul to work with. I have to wait until..." she trailed off and glanced up at Lira. A prickle went down Lira's spine and her fingers twitched. She nodded in understanding and Lydia continued. "But usually I would have both kinds of souls. It's tricky because I can't just use any clean soul. They have to...match."

"Match?" interjected Lira.

"Do you see how this one is gold?" said Lydia. "They're not all this color. They range quite a bit. You've got to find one that's a close enough match. Otherwise, the stitching won't hold."

"I see," murmured Lira, even though her vision had gone blank as her sight turned inward, as though she could read her own scrolling thoughts.

"Young souls are very pliable," continued Lydia. Her voice took on a nearly teacher-like quality. She seemed to be enjoying herself the way a child enjoyed pretending they were a doctor or a scientist or a witch. "Their ends are fluid because they are still growing and...learning. No, that isn't the right word. What did Bebinn call it? Forging? I forget, but you know what I mean. Anyway, the very ends of them are blank.  Bebinn says it doesn't hurt them to take the very end because the soul isn't fully formed. It adjusts. Adapts! That's the word she used.

"So I take a few threads—they're not really threads, but that's the best way to describe them—from the end of the clean soul and, after I cut away the dark spot, I use them to patch the sick soul. It takes a couple days for the soul to accept the mend—it's hard to explain how I know when they are ready. But once they are, Bebinn comes to collect them, and sends them home."

Lydia finished her tutorial and swiveled on her stool to turn her eager smile on Lira. Her gray eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, and her breathe came slightly shallow as though she had been holding the secret of her work tightly in her chest for so long, it was a relief to share it with someone else. The happiness on the little girl's face, the hope in her words, her belief that she was helping the souls of these children, slipped right between Lira's ribs and squeezed her heart.

Lira didn't understand much of what Lydia had revealed to her. In truth, she could barely grasp the edges. They snapped in the wind-torn corners of her mind and each time she thought she had a firm grip on one, it was torn away again. But the one thing Lira did understand was that Bebinn was not helping these children.

She crouched so that she was even with Lydia and she took the little girl's color-swatch hands in her own and held them tightly. The sour sting of tears burned at her eyes, but she blinked them away, and she made sure to keep her voice steady when she told the little girl, "The children are very lucky to have you helping them."

Lydia beamed and squeezed Lira's hands. "Maybe I can teach you," she said. "Or at least show you how I do it sometime. And maybe..." she looked shyly down at her hands. "Maybe you can teach me to play the violin?"

Lira's smile felt like it was splitting her face in two; she felt her dry lips crack at the corners and the sting of the smoke settling in her exposed skin. "I would be glad to teach you," she replied. "But for tonight, I think it's time I get back."

"Yes," said Lydia. "I'll take you back." She began to unstring the soul, taking great care to fold it just so. As she tucked the corners in, there came a grating sound from a corner that Lira had given little regard to upon entering the room. It was the dull screech of metal on metal, the sound of heavy deadbolt sliding out of its home.

Lira spun and saw a third of a metal door showing through a gap between two red curtains. Burnished gold gears set into the center of the door were turning slowly. "What is that?" she whispered to Lydia.

A quick glance backward showed her Lydia's ashen face and she hugged the gold-cast soul to her body, seeming to forget for a moment that it was a child's soul. "That's Bebinn's door," she gasped. "I didn't think she was visiting tonight. She usually tells me. You must leave! Now! She'll be very angry if she finds you here."

Lira didn't need the weaver to tell her how angry Bebinn would be. She turned on her heel and fled.

                                                ###

With her heart lodged in her throat, Lira ran back up the passageway. The rough stone tore at her bare feet, but Lira didn't feel it. All she felt was the icy fear of near capture and the dread of pursuit. She had slipped out of Lydia's room just as the metal door on the other side of the room began to open; she did not know if Bebinn had caught sight of her slipping through the doorway.

Up the hallway she ran, sure Bebinn could hear her ragged breath. The passage dumped her out into the room of funhouse mirrors and in her fright, she couldn't figure out which way to go. From every direction, a grotesque version of her reflection stared back at the, the expression stretched or flattened or contorted but the same at its essence. Fear.

Lira turned and turned again, trying to orient herself. She knew this place like the back of her hand, but suddenly it seemed entirely new. The adrenaline coursing through her body played tricks on her mind. First, she thought she was hearing children crying, children screaming, and then she thought she heard Bebinn's voice from the direction she had just run from. She tried to calm her breath, hoping to distinguish real sounds from those she imagined and finally recognized where in the hall of mirrors she was. She turned to the left and began sprinting towards her room, praying that Zabaria's bird had returned.

Lira banked hard around a corner and crashed headlong into Atlas. The silver tea tray the girl was carrying hit Lira in the stomach, knocking her sideways into the wall with a sharp "ooh" of pain. The clatter of the tray hitting the stone floor and the sharp melody of shattering china in the small hallway made Lira's eardrums throb. She felt a hot warmth spread down her abdomen and she looked down to a dark stain on her tunic from the boiling water. Instinctively, she pulled the fabric away from her body, but her skin already felt tight with the burn.

"What on earth do you think you are doing?" snapped Atlas from her sprawl on the floor. She pushed herself to knees, giving Lira a dark glare. "Why are you sprinting around the hallway in the middle of Ebb?"  The girl began picking up sharps of broken cups and placing them on the tray.

"Sorry," panted Lira. She straightened, trying to ignore the pain in her side.

Atlas glanced up at Lira again and frowned at the expression on Lira's face. "What's the matter with you?" she asked, more gently this time.

Adrenaline still constricted Lira's mind, leaving room for the only two responses her body would allow. Flight or fight.  It had chosen flight when confronted with Bebinn, and the urge to continue her race to her room pounded through her body in time with her heartbeat. She needed to find Zabaria's bird. She needed to tell Zabaria what was happening to the children before Bebinn found her.

            But now, faced with Atlas and her brain still scrambling to come up with an excuse, any excuse, she found herself at another crossroad. Atlas had always said she did not know what happened to the children that Lira summoned, had always diverted questions related to Lydia, had always revered Bebinn and the Spirit World as her family and home. And suddenly, in her panic-stricken mind, Lira was seized by the need to know the truth.

            "I know," Lira blurted out. "I know what happens."

            Atlas gathered the final pieces of broken crockery and rose with the tray in her hands. "Know what?" she asked, her voice genuinely puzzled.

            "I know what happens to the children."

            Atlas's eyes widened at Lira's declaration, but no other expression or movement betrayed her thoughts. Lira searched her friend's face, trying to discern an answer, but the girl's practiced stoic demeanor gave nothing away.

            "Did you know?" Lira asked quietly. She sucked in a breath as pain lanced through her abdomen. "You must have suspected," she continued. Atlas's eyelashes fluttered, but her lips remained pressed together. Her own eyes searched Lira's flushed face for...what? Judgement? Grievance?

            "I had suspicions," replied Atlas. Her voice was just as quiet, if not more so, than Lira's. Their words stayed between them, just as they always had.

            "But you never did anything about them," said Lira. She had always felt smaller than the confident, sure little girl who always had the answered even when she didn't. Now, for the first time, Lira towered over her in both height and knowledge.

            "What was I going to do?" asked Atlas. Even in the midst of confrontation, she was still so sure of herself, her place, her ability—or inability—to do something. "You know Bebinn, you know her power. What was I going to do?"

"You could have told me," said Lira.

            "Telling you would have only added to your burden." Atlas's grip on the tea tray tightened until her knuckles turned white. "What could you have done with my guesses?"

            "I could have told Zabaria," whispered Lira. "She could have done something. She still can."

            Atlas's eyes widened once more, her façade slipping slightly as her mouth opened in a tiny gasp. "You found her?"

            "Yes."

            A door slammed in the distance and Atlas looked down the hallway from where Lira had just come. Her gaze roamed Lira's haggard appearance once more and Lira saw the pieces slide into place for the little girl. "Come with me," she said. "Quickly."  Atlas turned on her heel and strode back up the hall.

            "Where are we going?" said Lira, running a few steps to keep up. The skin on her stomach burned when her tunic rubbed against it.

            "We need to get you someplace safe before Bebinn finds you."

            "I need to get word to Zabaria. Her messenger is waiting for me," panted Lira.

            "She has a messenger here?" asked Atlas. They had arrived at the staircase leading to their quarters on the upper level and here Atlas paused, while Lira placed her foot on the first step.

            "Yes," Lira said again, turning her head upwards.

Atlas followed her gaze and nodded. "Your room is the first place Bebinn will look for you. Let me tell the messenger and if Bebinn comes I'll divert her."

Lira shook her head. "I need to be the one to deliver the message. It has to come from me."

"Then let me bring the messenger to you," said Atlas urgently. "We can't risk Bebinn finding you before you get that chance. If we have a real opportunity to save those children, we can't lose it now."

Resilience mixed with just the hint of fear stared out of Atlas's face. Lira nodded and Atlas set the tea tray down on the stairs and took Lira's hand, as she had done so many times in the past. They continued down the hall, leaving the staircase behind until they came to sitting area in a little used alcove. There was a door on the right side that Lira had never much paid attention to, always assuming it was some sort of closet.

"It's a storage pantry." Atlas answered the unspoken question. "Bebinn would never think to look for you here, not yet." She opened the door and Lira peered in to see a relatively empty room save for a handful of wooden boxes. "I'll be right back, I promise." Atlas gave her hand a squeeze and Lira gave the little girl a small smile.

She stepped inside the cool room, the smell of old wood and dust filling her nose, and the door slammed shut behind her. Lira spun around, blind in the sudden darkness, a tight fist squeezing her heart. There was the sound of an iron key turning in a lock and Lira groped for the door handle, yanking on it with all her strength.

"Atlas!" she yelled. She pounded on the door. "Atlas, what are you doing?"

"Like I said," Atlas replied, her voice cold as steel. "I'll be right back."

___________________________________________________________

No prattle from me this time. Thoughts? Predictions? Reactions?

Let me know! And thank you, as always, for sticking with Lira and me through this story.