Lanternblade

 Parias leaned against the windowsill, one arm flush to the decrepit wood while his chin cradled in his other hand.  

Three stories down below, city lights twinkled, the dim orange glow of lamps illuminating main thoroughfares in small circles, while others flickered in the dimmer sections, their light unreliable.  

He watched as movement shuffled in small glowing lines, thickening and thinning like ribbons as it weaved through the streets. On ground level, it would be easily ignored but this high up, Parias could see the trail shimmer and pulse towards a singular goal - the far end of the slums. Even directly below him, a few Jack-os bounced eagerly along, their carved smiles following an unheard siren’s song.

Behind Parias, footsteps stopped, the older wood creaking softly. The other male held his hands tucked behind his back, white gloves encased fingers, a black tailcoat draped to the back of the knees, equally dark hair draped over one eye, hiding one of a mismatched set.

“Thandon.” A simple statement. Parias didn’t even glance up as his eyes continued to follow the trails of Jack-os. “Something calls the very heart of my people. Did you know? Yet, this force goes unknown to me.” He turned his head finally, brown locks straight and out of place, strands falling to his chin as he looked at his Head Valet. 

For a week now, he’d watched as the Jack-os had bounced along, summoning themselves to different parts of town - hollowed squares that used to be populated or had become dilapidated. Three times thus far they bumbled in trails and groups as if going to a town meeting no one but them knew about. But Jack-os don’t meet; don’t have a leader. Except him. Solitary creatures without voices. So who, or what, were they gathering for?

Sighing with mild exasperation that would otherwise be hidden before others, Thandon lifted a mask hollowed in the shape of a sizable pumpkin, the face carved with a maniacal grin similar to those of the Jack-os below, his hand balanced underneath as he held it aloft to his charge and master. “You’re going out again then.”  

It wasn’t a question. Parias and Thandon shared a lifetime together, namely Patrias’ with barely a decade splitting them in Thandon’s favor. Trust wasn’t just established, it was born between them as surely as the blood in their veins.

Parias stepped from the window, towards the mask that let him out into the city, the one that hid the real reason the jack-os obeyed him. Taking it in hand, he stared into the hollow sockets. Any other would be considered mad, but not me. Not as long as no one really knows.  

The pumpkin-head fit over his own, snug but wide, fastening it to his chin with an interior buckle and leather strap. Hidden within the wood-carved facade, the Pumpkin King would find out who else the Jack-os, a wild animal in its own right, was following beside him and rein them back into line. 

It’d taken him over half an hour to find the pulsing trail of the jack-os on foot. They weaved, only a few stragglers bouncing lightly along, the glow of their brethren leading them.

Parias stepped around a corner and, at last, heard a feminine voice with a soft lilting accent. At first, he’d quickly tucked himself into the shadowed corner of a nearby building, but as the song became quieter and quieter, he straightened and closed the last distance. The final string of Jack-os crowding into the dismal square where a rundown, decrepit fountain laid dried up, devoid of life, greyed with age and darkened with disuse.

Bright apple-red hair spilled over the lip of the fountain. Dark feathered wings the color of soot draped down to the ground. A heart-shaped face just barely coming out of youth and into the first springs of maturity.

She’s beautiful.

His mind pictured a thousand images at once. Anything and everything that would keep such a creature at his side.

She had her eyes closed, her voice a serenade as it rose again. He walked out into the open, closer and closer still until he had to nudge a Jack-o aside with his foot to stand over her. He breathed in deep and let out a sigh, the grinning, carved pumpkin mask he wore muffling any sound.  

He’d been roaming the streets since he was fourteen and he had never seen this girl. A wanderer? Perhaps. But the Jack-os responded. They drew to her. Animals to a well. A power clearly burning inside the small frame. She looked young still. As young as he had when he’d first began dipping out of the manor he called home and into the streets of Adistone. In the slums his would-be ivory towers overlooked from the distant hills.

His head tilted as he considered how to capture the budding enchantress. Sedative? No. Candy? He’d never kidnapped before. Was that really what this was - a kidnapping? No. He wasn’t like that. Wasn’t like the abductors that captured and enslaved. He just wanted - needed - her voice all to himself. He would protect her calling. She’d be safer with him than on the streets, surely.  

At his feet, Jack-os began to howl. Quiet and windswept, the sound began to resonate around him, vibrating in the darkness, and as the volume rose, her eyes opened. Gray eyes, silver eyes, bright yet stormy, stared up at him. She blinked once but did not move, did not scream at him, the stranger with a head shaped just like the Jack-os at her feet.  

Soft pink rose-petal lips parted and a flicker of tongue wetted the surface before whispering, “Pumpkin King.” 

His own face would be invisible in the darkness inside the mask and he could only stare down at her. She knew his calling; the name villagers called him when he walked the night streets and the jack-os trailed behind him, his presence a pied piper to their lantern grins.  

He waited as she shifted on the fountain edge, her chimney-swept wings lifting up behind her and opening ever so slowly as if to make her bigger than she actually was. A natural threat against a potential predator?

He willed his aura to echo the words that would sound false even as his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. I won’t hurt you. I can protect you.  What he couldn’t say, wouldn’t say - I need to own you, body and soul.

Parias felt the magic he used to call the Jack-os to his side, stir and wrap around the girl. A spell his body created without focused intent. He crooked a finger, Jack-os humming once again, as her moonlight orbs turned glassy before him before slipping closed entirely. Wings shrank back down and tucked themselves against her spine.  

He glanced at the Jack-os, who moved to follow them, as he turned to lead her back to his outpost - the simple room three floors up. A place kept respectable only because Thandon was terribly meticulous.  

Parias leaned down, careful not to bump her with his oversized mask, and lifted her, one hand to her back and another under her knees. The plain green tunic over dark leather pants she wore gathered in his arms, her shoulders bare against his jacket where her head lolled. Skin a sun-kissed hue, he wondered how she would have been born so much darker than every other in the area. Foreign for sure at the sight of her, now his mind began to list all the outer regions she could have wandered in from. Does it matter? She’ll be yours now.

What if she had a family that would come looking for her? He shook his head at himself. No. Orphans wandered streets. Those with homes, went home. She had been calling the Jack-os much too often to be wandering in and returning to a remote home each time.

As Parias turned to take her, the Jack-os stopped immediately, a glow moving like a wave over them, dimming and lighting, as if they somehow spoke to each other without sound. Parias stopped and looked down at them, another glowing wave responding to his silent commands. A moment later, the Jack-os turned and, in new trailing lines, spread off back into the city. They bounced silently onto porches and stayed, even as Parias and their young siren passed by.