Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Fair Play ❯ Chapter 1

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Every year at the end of October, the fair appeared in the park beneath my window. Bright lights, gaudy tents, and strange music turned the dark fall night into a piece of a foreign land. One year, my friends persuaded me to see it with them. We walked beneath the lights and played games brought from the corners of the world: we fished with nets of paper, threw great logs, and rammed each other in little cars. We won dolls and fish and strange beasts wrought in glass. These we gave to pretty girls, but I kept a cobalt stag for myself.

My friends went off to the rides– carousels and whirligigs and a dragon that flew on tracks of fire– while I tarried among the food vendors, for I had forgotten dinner. There I found sausages, fried cakes, and translucent dumplings with fillings savoury and strange (and best not asked about) served from a bamboo steamer. One man walked past me chewing a grilled squid and another carried a drumstick the length of my arm. At the end of the line of stalls I saw a great tent, the purple and gold pavilion at the center of the fair I saw from my window. A crowd had gathered there, listening to a round man proclaim the wonders of this show from a platform beside the door.

He wore a top hat and purple coat, with a yellow shirt and purple trousers. And he spoke thus: ‘This is the Fair of Wonders, and the greatest wonder is within this tent. The bones and hides of beasts from all lands and times, the meats and wines of foreign peoples, the talking glass parrot: None of them is half so marvelous. For you will be a part of it and know that the old powers still hold sway, if only for a little time. Omnia mutantur.’

A bell tolled across the park; I did not mark the hour. Tent flaps lifted and I was carried along as the crowd surged inwards. A blue-haired woman jostled me from the left, a man in saffron skirts shoved me from the right, and a round figure of unknown gender drove us all ahead.

Two little women stood beside the door, barely taller than my waist, and each the colour of old teak. They chanted something in legalese, of which I caught only fragments above the babble of the crowd, and every man and woman had to press his thumb to a little tablet before crossing the threshold. Benches rose tier on tier within, surrounding a broad ring of earth. Little men scrambled over the earth bearing iron cauldrons and bags marked in foreign letters. I found a seat near the door, halfway between floor and roof.

I heard someone call my name behind me, a voice I had not heard in many years: an old friend in town on business had heard of the fair and come to the show. She had changed little since our days in school, still lean and handsome. Our friends had said we fought like a married couple, though we had never dated, but the years had laid our feud to rest. We chatted of little things, of the passing of years and the partings of friends until a great gong rang. All at once, smoke of many colours rose from the cauldrons in a creeping cloud that mounted the benches row by row. As it passed, I saw one person become a horse, another a bull, and a third a golden ape. I thought of eleven herbs when I smelled the smoke and was glad no one had become a chicken.

The man to my left grew shorter, orange, and large-earred; the woman to my right turned green; I felt nothing. My hands looked finer through the smoke, the fingers longer and slimmer, but that was all. A moment later, I heard a man laugh where my friend was sitting. He was taller now, still lean and beardless. He said, ‘Remember that play we put on at college? What was it– Achilles at Skyros? Ah, if only we had your old costume with us.’ At this I blushed, recalling how short the tunic had been– my costume was the last made and we had run short of cloth. His smile only grew broader..

Below, the smoke had cleared and the round man stood in the center of the ring. He bade us enjoy the fair, but to remain within its bounds until dawn, for otherwise the magic would fail and we would remain in our new forms. The bell tolled again, a quarter hour, and the crowd flowed down to the exit: I saw a noble stag of a dozen points leap four benches while birds of every colour filled the air and I felt a twinge of envy. The little men emptied the cauldrons onto the earth and stamped on the ashes until no more smoke rose. My friend and I waited until the crowd had thinned and the path had cleared before we left the tent.

The change left us hungry, and I suspected a trick to sell more food– but too many had been changed into forms that could not eat the vendors’ wares. Those little dumplings with their strange, savoury fillings; haggis with oatmeal; and ribs of stag and boar: all these we ate, and stranger things were served on plates around us. We drank golden mead in a great horn the dealer swore came from the aurochs, longer than my arm from shoulder to wrist with a mouth that could swallow my head. This we drained twice, but refused a third, as the stars had doubled and the world softened at the edges.

Robed musicians with strange instruments filed onto a low dais and a broad space was cleared by the little men. They played a haunting tune, one I knew in my bones though I had never heard it. I felt tears in my eye and saw them shining all around me. The moon had risen when they began their second song, a low, rhythmic thing that drove the feet. All around us couples were dancing, and it seemed the Moon and stars and the Earth herself was dancing with us. More songs followed, some with notes thick as the feathered snow, others laden with the sadness of vanished races, and yet others that heated the blood like the spring sun. We kissed, man and woman, though it would have seemed doubly weird that morning.

At length we tired of dancing and made our way to the little stalls that sold trinkets and other goods: beasts and flowers wrought of glass; elephants and giraffes no taller than my middle finger; a clockwork man who spoke through words printed with little dots on a ribbon; spices pungent and cloying; jewels of every colour set with cunning skill in rings, brooches, and pendants. Customers in the costumes of all nation dickered with the merchants, who took all currencies but loved most little iron coins with square holes in the center and marked in characters I did not know. These were offered by weight in long strands held together by red string. The little greenback found little favour there, condemned as too fragile and easily eaten by time, but I persuaded one woman to take a few in exchange for a jade phoenix with ruby feathers.

I heard the bell toll again, the long count of midnight. My thoughts turned to my warm bed, high above the fair, but I remembered also the round man’s injunction to remain within the fair’s grounds until dawn. Seeing my confusion, my friend laughed and told me to set my alarm to wake me before the dawn. He, too, was weary, so we left the fair arm in arm.

I set our prizes and purchases on my coffee table and we took a little brandy. Then I went into my room to change. I set the alarm to wake me ere the dawn before remembering I had a guest. He had stretched out on the couch with his long coat as coverlet, but roused at my touch. He followed me to bed willingly enough, but we were both too weary to do aught but sleep, and that was as well, I thought after. Still, as I curled up in his arms with him behind me, I felt warm and secure and wished to remain there always.

I woke groggy and alone with the sun shining through my blinds and the music of the fair drifting through my window. I was dressed for bed, though my clothes hung strangely on me. I remembered the night before dimly, as one does a dream: an impression of strange music and wild dances, a few vivid sights, and a warm bed at the end.

Just as I was about to rise, my old friend walked in with a towel wrapped around her body and immediately began rooting through my dresser. My voice sounded strange to me when I asked why. She left without a word after donning a pair of khakis and a plain t-shirt. It was only when I saw the stag and phoenix on my table that I realized why I felt so strange.

I learned after that my friend had woken early and passed the small hours in my living room, a little closer to the fair than my bed.