The Tower of the Forgotten Read Free Page A

voice
seemed to come from nowhere, but as Portia squinted, she could see a stooped
figure in the shadows behind the still-open tent flap. "Surprised that you’re still here, girl.
Thought you’d have long ago flown the coop."
    She
did not sense any menace from the individual, only a certain wry amusement. She
cautiously came to toward the bars, but remained out of arm’s reach. "Who are you?"
    "Me?
I’m nobody." Coming forward, the
speaker coughed with a wracking, rattling wetness. "Just an old woman come to look upon things no mortal should
ever have caged."
    In
the dim light, Portia could see her better. Dressed in brightly patched rags,
she wore a purple paisley headscarf with long fringes that trailed into her
pale eyes. One was the faintest blue and the other a milky white. She titled
her head to one side, then alternated, closing each eye, looking at Portia
through each of them several times.
    Nodding,
she hobbled closer to the bars, gripping them with gnarled, long-fingered hands
that looked surprisingly strong.
    "You are far too trusting."
    "Madame, please…"
    "And
obviously trusting of the wrong sort! What do you see when you look at me,
girl?"
    Portia
opened her mouth to object, but the movement behind the crone caught her
attention. As if through a sheer curtain, she could see them: four wraiths
hovering at the woman’s shoulders. If she
focused on them, they became clearer. Two men of middling age, one dressed in a
soldier’s uniform, the other in a suit many
decades out of date. A child stood at the second man’s side, a boy, she thought, but could not be certain, as the
child wore a full skirt and had brown ringlets yet wore a sailor cap. The last
was a woman, standing apart from the others, her red dress hanging
provocatively off one shoulder but in a way that made Portia think it had been
torn and fallen there, rather than worn that way to entice.
    "Who
are they?"
    "My
guides. Can’t run a fortune-telling
operation without them, at least, not an honest one, in my opinion."
    "What
do you want from me?"
    She
laughed, bringing on another fit of coughing. "Want?
Me? God, darling, I don’t want to offend, but
there isn’t anything you could offer me that I’d want. Well, nothing that I’d
be willing to pay for, anyway."
    "So,
why are you here?"
    "Wanted
to see for m’self. And really see.
Because I couldn’t believe what the
little Bat-Boy was telling me, even though the Bearded Lady backed him up on
it."
    Portia
shook her head, not understanding.
    "You aren’t all there. Or at least
all here ."
    "What?"
    "Come
over here and I’ll show you."
    Portia
glanced around the cage for the gate and turned toward it.
    "Not
that way, you foolish girl. Just come here."
    "Listen,
grandmother, you’re beginning to—"
    " Get over here !"
    The air between them rippled, subtly and
momentarily. This woman had power and had long ago learned how to wield it
well. While it did not command Portia, it impressed her.
    And
she saw what the woman was trying to show her.
    When
she concentrated on the tent and the cage in the same way that she had focused
on the woman’s ghost companions, her
surroundings changed. The bars looked flimsy, flickering almost, as if they
were made of water, not iron. The woman smiled and took her hands off the cage
and passed her fingers through the bars.
    "So,
grandmother, you aren’t all here, either."
    "You
may, in fact, turn out to be smarter than you look." She chuckled.
    Portia
stepped down onto the floor of the tent, wishing she had known about this trick
yesterday. She would have hugged Imogen with all her might, which was
considerable.
    "Peace,
peace," the fortune-teller patted Portia’s arm. "You’re far too hard on yourself. Things like these, they don’t come with instructions. And not all of us are lucky enough
to have experienced friends." She winked at her
guides, who remained still and silent behind her.
    "And
how did you come to this, grandmother?"
    "Straddling
worlds? A