The Game at Carousel: Book Four Stubs July 17th (Arc II Chapters 1- 85)

The cage was large, clearly meant for multiple people, but there was only one prisoner within it. One intact prisoner, that was. Because while I saw it as some sort of holding cell, the hag saw it as a pantry.

There we were, a collection of ingredients that could be grabbed with a knife or strong pinching hands. There were about four and a quarter people total, including myself. I sat there wide-eyed at first, looking forward to sitting in the theater on the other side of the mountain. All I could hear was a ringing sound in my ears. It was hard to process.

She looked like a human, like an old, withered woman with a hunchback and puffy face. Yet as I watched her, I became convinced that she was no more a woman than I was a caterpillar. Her body was a form, a sculpture of flesh whose true nature could only be revealed if you watched the way she moved.

She walked on all fours when she wanted to, especially when she was turning corners, and she only stood on her hind legs when she wanted to tower over her cauldron and toss ingredients inside or take a peek.

If she needed to look over at me because I was making too much noise or thinking too many thoughts, she didn't turn her head. She just turned her eyes, and while they were in the correct place on her face, they bulged out just enough that she could look all the way toward me and make direct eye contact, something she did often.

When she had picked me up and put me in the cage, there was no fighting it. She was absolute in her strength. There was no give, there was no wavering. Her arms, which looked like a frail woman's arms, only looked that way. There was a soft, mushy exterior, but underneath that, her bones must have been enormous, if they were bones at all.

She was human in form, but not in function. My mind knew to fear her deep down in a dark part of my subconscious.

She hummed like a cheery old lady as she did her work.

All I could do was watch her and watch my friends while I sat on Deathwatch. They were only walking. My Cutaway Death trope had worked as intended. The moment I was dragged underwater, I had the Dead status, and she must have known it on some level, too, because she looked at me so curiously. She poked and prodded and pinched until I moved.

It was as if she were afraid to use me as an ingredient because I was a dead thing that was still alive, and that fascinated her. She was surprisingly easy to read that way. Her movements and facial expressions spoke an ancient language that anyone would understand. She would mutter to herself, but it sounded like a squirrel chittering more than a human talking.

Ol’ Nonnie would roll her lips and her tongue, making high-pitched sounds and a pitter-patter as she poked my ribs right where my heart was, and then she would look up at me, like, how does this dead thing have a beating heart?

She knew about my Dead status, but she didn’t understand it. I got the impression Carousel was trying desperately to keep her from being meta-aware, but she was breaking through.

She grabbed me by the back of my neck and held me up to watch my legs dangle. And then she threw me in the cage and ever since glanced over at me to watch my eyes moving, as if I was the weird one.

She needed to keep an eye on the living dead thing.

She didn't need to speak to tell me her thoughts. I was innately connected to her the moment we made contact. My psychic powers, as minute as they were, were blaring signals to me that I couldn't put into words, but still understood innately.

She was fascinated by me, like she had never seen anything like me before. Had she never been in a storyline before? Was this her first time?

What was left of Camden was over in the corner. It looked like he had bled out before he was harvested, or at least I hoped that was true. Looking around at the other bodies, several of whom were wearing the same exact jumpsuit I was, I wasn't looking forward to when it was time for me to go into the stew.

She was really big on that.

"Clever boys go in the stew," she had said, in a way. She was capable of something beyond words, a form of communication that felt like a spider running down my spine.

So when she told me, "clever boys go in the stew," it was actually my mouth that said it. I wasn't forced to do it. It was a reflex. I immediately understood what she was trying to tell me, and I was so shocked at it that the words just came out.

"Clever boys go in the stew," she had told me with nothing but the stroke of her finger on the side of my neck, and then she closed the cage and went back to work.

Eventually, she got over her hangups about me being dead and alive at the same time.

She was brewing a new potion this time. The one that she had made in order to pull me through the water had gotten poured down a drain. This one was all new. It used human ears as a main ingredient. You could ask me how I knew that, but you would have to speak loudly.

I stared at her tropes again, looking for the information I needed to help the others.