Prompt 53--Ayers Rock

[dedra.livejournal.com]

Title: Connections III
Fandom/Pairing: None-OC
Rating: G
Summary: Control is easy compared to some of the lessons that Sybil must learn. The turning of the road comes closer to her with every day.

A/N: This story has taken on a life of its own and rebelled against any plot that I might have had in mind. Still, I hope that you enjoy.



Connections III

The one thing that I can say about Leanne—she never lied to me or steered me wrong. She taught me a lot about my gifts, more than MarieClaire ever could have; she also taught me how to make money with them, a skill that could definitely be beneficial to me in my oh-so-shaky future.

My mother stopped writing to me after a terse letter that only stated that Hugh had been burned badly when he pulled a pot of boiling water off the stove and onto his body. Although she never said it outright, I knew in my heart that she blamed me. Once again, a time when I should have kept my mouth closed and hidden what I saw from anyone’s sight.

With Leanne’s tutelage, I learned how to give bad news to the ‘marks’ without upsetting them. That’s what they called them in the carnival—marks—I guess because they were marked to lose their money one way or the other. I never could see any other reason for the nickname myself.

For the first few weeks, I watched Leanne as she read palms and tarot cards inside the much-mended tent that they let her set up near the main thoroughfare. The mystery and power hung over the tent like a glamour itself; Leanne never used a barker to draw customers into her tent, they just seemed to flock there, drawn more by the idea of learning the future than the actual promise of a fortune told.

Her ratted and teased hairdo hidden under a tall peaked cap, she would lean forward in the incense haze that filled the room and heightened the senses, peering at the cards laid out on the table with a gimlet eye, then looking skeptically at the person in front of her. Sometimes they came in pairs or groups, set on debunking the theory that someone could actually tell the future; with a few terse words and a thought or two that projected itself so loudly that I could hear it myself, even from my hiding place directly behind her, she frightened their theories right out of them and prepared them for an experience that they never thought they would have.

One night, a couple entered the tent and Leanne grew tense. I could see the taut set of her shoulders and the set of her head that I had learned preceded a bad prediction, although I had never seen her do what she did then. She informed the male of the couple that all readings were private and asked him to wait outside; surprisingly, he did so without argument. When he was gone, she reached behind the curtain and pulled me forward, nodding her head to the lady that sat primly in the chair in front of her. “Sybil, if you would be so kind as to tell the lady’s fortune for her?”

Nodding slowly, I walked around the table and held out my hand, ready for anything. Well, that wasn’t true. Almost anything. What I saw frightened me to the marrow of my bones and chilled my blood.

I could hear my voice taking on an otherworldly tone as I spoke freely, never minding the admonishments from MarieClaire and Leanne to only give them part of the bad news and not all of it. “If you leave with him tonight, he will kill you. He is jealous of your friendship with someone that you will meet up with in the carnival and will fly into a jealous rage, so violent that no words you speak will satisfy the monster already growing inside him. You will die in a pool of your own blood and nobody will find you for weeks. When you meet up with your friends, watch his eyes for the truth of things and leave with them, not with him, or your life will be forfeit.”

She snatched her hand away from me like I had burned her and put it to her chest. “Carl would never hurt me!” she whispered furiously. “He loves me.”

“Ma’am, love can be a monster as well as an angel. If you’re wise, you’ll listen. Just watch his eyes, please.” I didn’t mind begging; I had seen something so horrible that I still cannot describe it to this day. Somehow, my adolescent mind closed itself off to the reality that I was looking at a human body and instead I saw it as pieces of her, meat that had spoiled and lay in the sun for a long time. I still dream about it.

“P-please, can’t you tell me something good? Something else?” she stammered.

I shrugged and took her hand in mine, looking closely at the palm. “There is a man—a true man who loves you deep and pure. If you don’t die tonight, if you leave the man that you are with and listen to my prediction, this man will show himself soon. You may feel like your heart is breaking, but the man that you are with intimidates him and he would only see you happy. His heart will show true within the week.”

She daubed a tear from her eye and shook her head. “I still have a hard time believing that Carl would do anything to hurt me. He’s so sweet and such a gentleman.”

I shrugged my shoulders and turned away, heading back behind my curtain. “I can only tell you what I see in the future, miss. It isn’t written in stone but sand that can be altered and changed at will by the wind, the rain, or the sand itself.”

She stood and paid Leanne the price of her fortune and slipped out the front door of the tent. With a grimace, I took off my hat and robe and slipped out the back door myself.

I watched them together as they wandered through the midway. He showed off his incredible strength and won her a stuffed animal by hitting a lever with a hammer and ringing the bell loudly when it reached the top, nearly knocking it askew when he did. I followed them through the rides and the sideshows, noticing how his eyes wandered to the shows with the scantily clad ladies of the evening without her notice.

It was when they reached the front gate again, so close to our tent that I could have touched it when it happened.

He was hurrying her out of the carnival, intent on getting home for whatever reason, when they bumped into a group of people that were coming through the gate. One of the men reached out to steady her as he nearly knocked her off her feet and she thanked him by name, gracing him with a gentle smile. Carl’s face tightened and his eyes became dark with evil and murder; even without being psychic, I could see that this would end badly.

She didn’t even notice his expression as she spoke with the large group, obviously people that they both knew. He stood there with his fists planted on his hips, watching her with a predatory look. I felt compelled beyond reason to intervene in some way—don’t ask me why, I just did. I began crying loudly, rubbing dirt onto my face to disguise my true identity as I counted on her softheartedness to save her.

True to form, she turned around and noticed me standing there, rubbing my eyes. “Oh, darling, whatever is the matter? Did you lose your family?”

“They’re gone, they’re all gone and I don’t know where to find them. Can you help me, miss? Can you help me find them?” I drew on every skill I had developed to be convincing. I thought of my mother, casting me into this world of the unknown without a backward glance and the tears began anew. “I don’t know what to do now.”

She took me by the hand, turning to Carl. “Carl, I’m going to help this little girl. You go on home—I’ll catch a ride with Julie and Jenny back to town, all right?”

He reached for her arm and she deftly moved aside. “You came with me, Penny. You’ll go home with me.”

She gave him a frosty look and said, “Really, Carl, do you think you own me just because we went out on a few dates? I don’t hardly think so. If I need a ride home, I’ll call my father—I’m sure that he won’t mind.”

Instead of making the scene worse, we watched him stomp off into the darkness to search for his car. When he was gone, she looked down at me and smiled again. “Don’t you need to get back to the fortuneteller’s tent now?”

I gaped up at her. “You knew? You knew it was me?”

She smoothed the dirt off my cheek and patted me on the head. “Let’s just say that I’m not as silly as I pretend to be. I’ve heard some things about Carl at one time or another and I tried not to believe them. When you said that to me tonight, though, it struck a nerve that was too close to what I’d heard and I kept my eye on him the whole night. Thank you for your warning.”

Leanne and I were there long enough to see Carl’s picture on the front of the newspaper with a long article about the beating of a prostitute; we also saw Penny in town, her arm linked with a handsome boy that had her face glowing and laughter back in her eyes. I caught her eye across the street and although she didn’t recognize me, she smiled in my direction. I like to think that it was because she’d found the joy in life again.

We lived life on the road, moving from town to town and state to state. My gifts were honed to sharp perfection, cutting through the bullshit the marks tried to feed us with their questions and baring the meat of the matter to my unfailing inner eye. Leanne smiled more and worked less as I took over her role as fortuneteller, reading palms and tealeaves, then moving on to the tarot and my precious crystal ball that I had taken from MarieClaire’s rotting hovel.

One morning I woke up to find my bunk filled with blood; it stunk to high heaven, the coppery smell thick on my tongue and burning my eyes as I opened my mouth to scream, loud enough to rouse the entire camp. I was their child; I belonged to every one of them in some way or another and to hear my cry was a knife into their hearts.

It was the only time that I ever experienced physical violence. Leanne slapped me smartly across the cheek then calmly sat down to smoke another cigarette. She was rarely without one in her mouth while she was awake and her cough was beginning to grate on my nerves. “It’s really nothing. You’ve just entered your womanhood and started your period so shut the fuck up, will ya? You’ve done terrified everyone in the show with that caterwauling.”

I must have looked confused because she paused. “You don’t know nothing about your times of the month and all, do you?”

I shook my head. “MarieClaire said that I wouldn’t ever need to know.”

Leanne squinted and I felt her eyes up and down as they looked over my skin. It felt like ants crawling over my flesh and bones and I broke out in goosebumps. “No, she was right. You’ll never carry a child so she wouldn’t think to tell you about them.”

She sat me down and told me the facts of life, then turned to her combination desk/dining table, pulled a piece of paper to her and began to write a letter.

She finished with a flourish and closed it up before I could finish washing my sheets and blankets out. I caught a glimpse of the address—whatever state AU was, it wasn’t one that we’d visited.

A few weeks passed and my monthly continued, never waning in its amount of flow. It was always heavy and red with large clots that reminded me of uncooked liver. After the third of these passed, Leanne pressed her lips closed and took me to the town doctor near where we were camped. He gave me some pills that took a few days more to work. When my period stopped, we received a letter.

Leanne went and talked to the boss, a short stringy man that she had kept me away from on purpose. After a long exchange and one lengthy shouting match, he handed her a wad of bills and told Fred and Paul, two of the hands, to take care of Leanne’s trailer while she was away.

We drove to St. Louis, the nearest big city. I had my picture taken for the first time in years, although it was a dull black and white face shot instead of brilliant colors that I expected.

Suitcases were bought and clothes to fill them. When I was roused by a harsh shake early one morning, I looked up to find Leanne with a ticket in her hand and a piece of gum in her mouth instead of her obligatory cigarette. “Get dressed and come out to the car. Bring anything that you want.”

Intuition is a powerful thing. I kept MarieClaire’s crystal ball in my bag and packed my cards and runestones in the suitcase. Leanne just smiled when she saw what I had done and picked up the cases to put them into the trunk of the car. I slid into the passenger seat of the vehicle and we drove a circuitous route to the airport.

She never said a word nor gave an explanation as to why we were there. She marched up to the international flights counter and waved a boarding pass and we were directed to the right gate to wait for the flight.

It was only when we sat down that she turned to me. “I’ve done all that I can with you. I’ve showed you how to use the marks to the best of your ability and now it’s Abigail’s turn. She’s to take you to the end of your journey and your next turn on the path. What happens from there is up to you.”

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“Australia.”

The flight is still dreamlike as I look back on it from now to then. Airplane, airport, change planes, fly—it seems like I spent days and days traveling instead of just hours but they dragged by slowly. My hold on reality was tenuous at best—I had visions of large mountainous rocks and dark faces surrounding me. They didn’t feel dangerous, only curious and I responded the same. It didn’t feel like a dream but an experience I hadn’t had yet; it was the only way that I could explain it to myself and to Abigail later.

I got off the plane in Alice Springs, Australia, overtired and nearly overwrought with anxiety. What was I facing as I entered this newest part of my life? I was sixteen years old now and had spent the biggest part of my childhood with an old woman who taught me how to control my abilities and the days of my youth with a chain-smoking mindreader in a traveling carnival. What was I going to do now?

A wide black face greeted me as I stepped off the plane, her face split in two by the whitest smile I’d ever seen, especially after my years looking at Leanne’s candycorn teeth. “Child, I’ve waited for years and years for you,” she said, enveloping me in a motherly hug.

I didn’t say much; I was too tired to speak, much less think. She took me out to a large four wheel drive vehicle of some type and sat me in the passenger seat on what was the driver’s side of the car for me. We started driving toward her home as the sun slipped across the sky, slick and melting like butter in a hot pan.

It was just twilight when I saw the rock off to our right. It grew in my vision and enveloped me in a sense of peace and tranquility, a sense of rightness that grew even larger than its size as it filled our vision. “What is that?” I asked, finally finding my voice.

“It is Uluru—what the whites call Ayers Rock. We live in its shadow and learn from the dreamlines.”

I nodded. The turn of the road was ahead of me. Now I had to navigate the unknown.