“Have you already forgotten?”

She laughs, exposing teeth far too big for her mouth. It is a terrifying laugh, cold and cruel and coming from a child’s lips it is _wrong. _

_“In one tent you may view an execution, in the next a resurrection.”_ She blinks at me. “Remember that?_ You may be asked to dance with the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen, on a stage designed to steal your life force. You may be chased through a shadowed maze by one who showed you marvels, their welcoming smile terrifying when their teeth lengthen into deadly fangs. Always there are wonders, but always there is a price to pay._ You were warned. Don’t forget again, or you might end up like her,” she gestures to the curtain, and smiles again. I look toward the crack between the curtain and the wall, crimson light spilling forth, and almost miss her last words. Again, quoting the warning at the gates. _“We shall see.”_ When I glance back, the child in her bloodstained white dress is nowhere to be found. Not even footsteps in the sawdust.

Her words echo in my head as I gaze with no small amount of apprehension at the curtain. _Don’t forget again, or you might end up like her . . . Might end up like her . . . Like her . . . Like her . . . _

I pull back the curtain and look in on a fantasy scene from a nightmare. The walls, a vivid crimson, seem undecided on whether they’re tent fabric or wallpaper, but the rest is very clear, drenched in bloody light from the red chandelier, scarlet flames dancing within crystal tears. The only furniture in the room is a bed, ornate frame and rich coverings. And resting on it, facedown, surrounded by and partially covered with dissected roses in every shade of red, pink, and white, is a body. Obviously female, clothed in a simple white shift, blood dripping over her shoulder from a wound I can smell but can’t see, don’t want to see, because the positioning is perfect, and I can envision it easily, horribly—

Heart in my throat, I creep closer, footsteps muffled by the sawdust that is thicker in here than anywhere else I’ve been tonight. I can’t see her face, but I have a horrible feeling that I know her.

As I near the bed the coppery smell gets stronger, until, leaning over her, I’m almost choking on it. The air has a weight to it, a thickness that sticks to the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat.

_I have to know. _

Before I can lose my courage, I reach out with a hand that’s shaking now and grab her shoulder, pulling her onto her back.

Her head lolls, empty eyes staring up at the ceiling, and her front is drenched in iron-scented crimson but the wound I had feared is nowhere to be seen. Or any other wound, for that matter. Her shoulder-length hair is crusted with blood, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her. Other than the fact that she’s dead.

And her hair is different, her curves more pronounced (almost inhumanly), her face overdone with makeup but subtly different under it as well, but I still recognize her.

“Aven?”

I am not prepared for what comes next.

I am prepared for nothing to happen. I already know it’s her, the horror already starting to sink in, making my vision blur.

I am not prepared for her eyes to open.

I am not prepared for her to gasp, reaching for her throat, then letting her hand drop as her icy blue eyes lock onto me. They were never blue before. I remember a thousand moments of hazel eyes, light brown hair, sunburned skin from forgetting sunscreen for the hundredth time, between the ages of eight and sixteen.

I don’t remember icy blue eyes slightly too large in a face that’s slightly past impossibly beautiful, trending toward alien. I don’t remember platinum blond hair, a French braid coming out on one side, or the proportions that look even more unnatural as she pushes herself into a sitting position, hips too wide, waist and shoulders too narrow, legs too long and tapered. I don’t remember flawless porcelain skin, so pale, so perfect, so unsettling.

And the way she moves isn’t quite right either. How she tilts her head, looking up at me, how she slides her feet off the side of the bed. When she speaks, her voice is too sweet, too fairytale, the juxtaposition of it against the words coming out of her mouth exactly what I’m learning to expect from this place. _“In one tent you may view an execution, in the next a resurrection. Or at least, that’s what the whispers say. And everyone knows whispers lie. But is a lie not often a mask for a hidden truth?”_

And the words could mean a million things here, rose petals and bloody light and blood on her dress and in her hair, but even that’s starting to fade now, as she’s clearly unharmed. What was the lie, I wonder, the blood, or her flawless appearance? Both? Or neither?

As Aven finishes the message, I sense that something has changed, and it’s the circus speaking through her when she says, _“We shall see.”_

I don’t know if it means I get to go home.

I think it means I’ve just earned a second chance at something.