Carnival Magic

by Amy Ephron

  If they followed the road, would they find them? Followed the road back to The Ghost Carnival. That’s what Tess was calling it now in her mind. The Ghost Carnival.

  “Don’t drink too much,” she said to Max as she handed him the canteen and put her foot in the stirrup again to take her mount. Max took a sip and handed it back to Tess, successfully seated in front of him now. She took a sip, and Max put the canteen back in the saddlebag.

  “Just a little further now,” Tess whispered again to Coco as she lightly gave the horse a tap with both of her heels, holding the reins back as she did it. “Slowly. We have to go very slowly now. Slow and steady. So that nobody will hear us.”

  They travelled back through the path that led to where they were the day before, the airfield, the olive grove. In the distance, they could see the biplanes were ready on the runway. But no sign of any of the other aviators. Were they already in the planes? A crowd of onlookers had started to gather. Were they already too late? Tess was certain they wouldn’t be able to hide in plain sight as they’d done the day before. Alberto would certainly recognize them.

  And just as she was about to give up hope, she saw them from the back, walking just ahead. Anna already in her pilot’s uniform, Julian at her side.

  Tess jumped off the horse and instructed Max to do the same, and they ran together, Tess holding Coco’s reins so that she followed just behind them.

  “We couldn’t leave without you,” said Tess, the moment they were next to Anna.

  “I didn’t think you could do,” said Julian, sounding peculiarly British again and as if he’d predicted it all along.

  ~ CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO ~

  the alternate house of mirrors

  Yes, there is,” said Julian. “If you and Max can remember how to find it.”

  The decision had been made in an instant. Tess and Max and Anna and Julian would try (try being the operative word) to get back through The House of Mirrors. All they had to do was find that pane. How hard could that be?

  “It isn’t here,” said Tess, staring off into the distance and not seeing anything at all.

  “It has to still be there,” Max insisted. But he couldn’t help thinking, Unless the carnival had moved again.

  He turned and looked carefully behind him at the olive grove they’d first seen when they entered. He traced the skyline with his eye to remember the flight of the planes and where they were when he first saw Anna wing walking. He stepped backward eight paces, counting as he did so and . . . ran directly into it, even though there didn’t appear to be anything there. It was as if he’d backed into an invisible wall . . . He turned around and lightly kicked it with his foot. And his foot hit a surface, but there didn’t seem to be anything there.

  It wasn’t quite invisible, as when they all stared at it intently, he and Tess and Anna and Julian could each see their images faintly, very faintly, reflected against the cool, smooth, oddly almost invisible surface.

  Was anyone after them? It was hard to tell. The propellers of the biplanes were spinning, warming up, almost ready for their take-off. It would only be a few moments, if it hadn’t happened already, that Alberto would discover, or someone would discover and tell Alberto that Anna was a “no-show.”

  Would they search the trailer first, or would all the carnival workers take off like individual groups of search parties in all different directions?

  Max did the calculation in his mind. He grabbed Anna’s hand and started to guide her into the invisible wall. Max hit his nose and almost fell backward, but Anna, who was standing right next to him, slipped right in. Max was just an inch away, and he pushed Julian in behind Anna.

  Tess grabbed Max’s finger in a congratulatory pinkie swear and walked with him into what they expected to be the other carnival . . . And instead found themselves in a House of Mirrors at The Ghost Carnival, an alternate House of Mirrors, if you will.

  They hadn’t been counting on that.

  Tess realized they’d left Coco behind. Julian, as if sensing her thought, said, “Don’t worry about her. She has her ways. Coco’s very good on the moors. She’s very good at finding her way.” And then he added curiously, “The trick is not to say good-bye. That way you might have a chance of seeing each other again.” Tess realized he was as sad about it as she was.

  Tess and Julian both looked over and got a glimpse of Coco starting to gallop away from them as the invisible wall became dark and murky, and then, there was no way to see through it, at all.

  It had not occurred to them, though, that they were going to enter an alternate House of Mirrors. Somehow they thought they’d be able to go straight through the glass back to where they’d started. Well, sort of where they started. Back at least to the carnival where they’d last seen Alexei and Tatiana.

  Max worried that maybe it was one of those funny one-way doors. Like you could see in but you couldn’t see out. Like a police interrogation glass. But in this case, a one-way door, that you could go out but you couldn’t get back in. He voiced this to Tess and reminded her the mirror had closed up behind them. Tess didn’t want to think about that. And neither did Max, really.

  Maybe they weren’t in the exact spot, the exact pane of glass where the image of the other carnival had appeared on the other side and frightened the carnival-goers.

  Max reasoned that that was what it was: they had to find the inverse spot, the other side of the glass, so to speak, of exactly the place where people screamed when they thought they saw the ghost images. Then, maybe they could get back in. The place Lorenzo had directed Max to where people screamed.

  The alternate House of Mirrors was strange, almost cave-like, if a cave can be geometrical. It had sharp edges, jagged triangular ceilings, corridors that seemed to unexpectedly transition from wide to skinny as you walked them. The only thing straight was the floor, except that it had fissures of steam shooting up from it, creating a virtual haze. The mirrors weren’t exact. They, too, were sort of hazed, and distorted their images frighteningly. Julian cautioned them not to look at their own images, not to be frightened by what they saw. “Keep your eyes directly in front of you,” he said, which was pretty good advice except that the corridors in the alternate House of Mirrors twisted and turned and stopped abruptly. And Max wondered how he could be expected to find the right pane of glass, the one that led back to the other carnival, if he didn’t scan the mirrors. Well, they weren’t even quite mirrors, the images in them were almost three-dimensional. Max was even frightened they might start to emote on their own. That he’d just be standing there and his image in the glass would smile at him or worse.

  Max took the lead.

  Big mistake. He ran them right into a dead end in the alternate House of Mirrors.

  Things in the mirror were reversed, right? Was he going the wrong way? The mirrors themselves were also murky—the reflections weren’t that crisp, but they still bounced off one another, creating a ghostly spectre of reflections, multiples of all of them, scary, ominous, as if they were in a haunted house.

  Anna took the lead. “I think I know the way,” she said, “now that we’re in.” She made a right turn and walked them down a long corridor edged with glass on all sides, and then a left, and guided them into another dead-end.

  Not a good sign, thought Tess, when you can see a distorted version of your own reflection about to run into you. A head-on collision with a version of yourself.

  “Don’t think we want to be playing chicken,” said Julian, kind of stating the obvious as they could hear footsteps running after them, multiples of footsteps, and a voice that sounded like Alberto calling, “Anna-a. Anna-a. I know you’re in there.”

  “It’s only me they want,” said Anna. “You go ahead,” she said to Tess and Max. “Julian, you’ll say that you were chasing me. That you saw me try to run away and then you ran after me. They’ll believe me. They’ll believe you, if you lie
.”

  “I’ve never been that big on lying,” Julian said. “It doesn’t suit me somehow.”

  “Well, then you’ll just be silent,” said Anna, “you’re awfully good at that. I didn’t mean that,” said Anna. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, at all.”

  Julian didn’t seem to react except to get quieter.

  The footsteps, though, were getting closer, louder.

  Then Tess saw something in the shadows. Well, not really in the shadows. She saw the image of a baby tiger walking on the other side of the glass. As if it was at the real carnival, at the real House of Mirrors, on the other side of the glass. What Tess thought of as the right side. Or at least the side where they belonged. She saw a baby tiger walking. She was sure of it. Tess saw the baby tiger put a paw up. And bow her head down as if beckoning Tess to follow her.

  “I know the way,” Tess said to the others. “I’m certain of it.”

  Max looked in the glass and saw it, too. He ran to keep up with Tess, who was racing along with the tiger.

  Anna ran after her, and Julian had no choice except to start to sprint after them, as he hadn’t quite started walking when they did and was following a bit behind.

  The glass was still murky. Almost playing tricks on Tess. One moment, she saw what looked like a baby tiger, or certainly a cat running along on the other side of the glass, and then the density was so great and so distorted, she couldn’t see anything, at all. Then the tiger disappeared . . . or did it? It showed back up again. And showed her it was making a right turn. Tess turned with it. She and the baby tiger were walking in step even though they were on opposite sides of the glass.

  Max was counting then, each step. And when the tiger stopped, Max said, “Scream, Tess. Scream as loud as you can,” said Max. “And Anna, you scream, too. Scream high, in the highest soprano pitch you can.”

  The two of them screamed. And the stopwatch started ticking. They could all hear it, underneath the screams, like a metronome keeping beat, urging them to come home.

  The baby tiger held her paw up. Tess remembered the needle in her pocket. As Tess touched the needle, all of them were bathed in ribbons of lights. She pulled the needle out from her pocket and held it up against the glass, and it was as if rays of light cascaded down, red, blue, yellow, green, white, silver, gold, like the sun beaming light through a prism.

  The footsteps were louder now, closer, but they kept screaming.

  Julian pulled his violin from his shoulder case and began to play just one note, the bow artfully placed on one string as the purest sound, the highest note imaginable, rang through the air, the simple tone of it seeming to almost break the glass alone. Like shards of colored glass shattering around them.

  And then it was ice-cold, as the glass turned a deep silver color like mercury, if mercury could shatter.

  But curiously it was only the one pane that shattered, and it morphed, as it had before, into a kaleidoscope of images, turning to triangles of multicolored glass again, and a tiny hole appeared, almost the size of a pin or a needle.

  Anna stepped up and did that same thing Alexei did. With her index finger poised and aimed, she darted her finger, unmindful of the shattered glass, right into the hole, forming a bigger hole as she pressed her finger farther through and then her hand, and the hole widened even more.

  They helped Julian through first. Then Max. Then Tess. Then Anna stepped through, and they were back to where they’d started, in the original House of Mirrors. Almost home again, well, not really, but almost a sigh of relief. But then a barrage of footsteps were heard coming towards them. The footsteps got closer, and Lorenzo loomed threateningly, his face in multiples reflected in the glass, as if there was no way to escape Lorenzo head-on, threatening to push them back through the glass and into The Ghost Carnival.

  “No one told you. No one told you you could come back here,” he screamed threateningly, as he raised his hands to push them and they realized he was also holding a large cane as if he meant to snare them in its curve and push them back through the glass. One at a time if he had to.

  A cry was heard. Like a roar in the jungle that reverberated against the glass. The baby tiger growled ferociously, jaws open, sharp nails straight out, poised to attack, and the baby tiger jumped and forcefully pushed Lorenzo with the strength of one paw, and threw Lorenzo through the glass into The Ghost Carnival, leaving behind a sparkling blast of color like a fireworks display on ice, splattered across the shattered glass pane.

  Tess, Max, Anna, and Julian stood absolutely still and watched as the brightly colored strips of glass turned like a kaleidoscope again, reshaped, floral shapes you could get lost in, and reformed, into triangles that were only silver and realigned into a single pane of glass. And once again, The House of Mirrors was intact, as if the pane of glass had never shattered, at all. And the clock stopped ticking. And they were safe and back on the other side.

  Tess looked down, but the baby tiger had curiously disappeared. If the baby tiger had ever been there at all.

  Lorenzo was gone. For a moment they saw a ghostly spectre of him, pale, his face frozen in a shock of anger, on the other side of the glass, where it looked like he belonged. The dark white clown standing beside him, smiling. And then the image faded. And the mirror seemed to close up, solidify, as if it was just a simple mirror now, and all they could see was their own reflections in the glass.

  They heard a strange thud and then a grating noise as if The House of Mirrors had moved somehow and settled on the ground.

  There was a couple standing next to Tess holding a baby, showing the baby its reflection in the glass, quite oblivious to the fact that anything peculiar had happened. Tess was already relieved to see that the baby’s mother was eating a pink candyfloss.

  Max started to confidently lead them out of The House of Mirrors. Max in front, then Julian and Anna, and Tess following behind. Max was leading them back to the entrance where they’d started.

  They ran into another kid who was marveling at his own multiple reflections and eating a large lollipop as he admired himself. He shook his head at them. “You’re going the wrong way,” said the kid. Tess was quite relieved he had a British accent.

  “That all depends on your point of view,” said Tess, finding her attitude again. “We were lost, and we’ve always been taught it’s a good idea to get back to where you started if you can.”

  ~ CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE ~

  back to where they started?

  They were safe. They were back at the fair. Really back at the Fun Fair. The original one. Or at least it seemed that way. They could see the brontosaurus looming large in the distance. “Max, look,” said Tess.

  “I see it.” He linked his pinkie to hers, not quite certain that they were safe. But he could smell the salt in the air, as if they were near a seashore. And the pine trees were gone. Or at least there were none in sight.

  The concrete stools in the shape of mushrooms were there. And there was a sign on the food stand that said GRILLED SAUSAGES. It wasn’t advertising MEAT PIES. That was very reassuring.

  Still, they walked cautiously, not quite certain that they were safe. Anna led them now, ballerina-like, almost noiselessly, through the very crowded carnival to the back of the blue tent. Anna stopped and held her finger up.

  “No. This one’s mine,” said Tess. Tess pulled the needle out from her pocket. She held it up, and it sparkled, as it always did in the sun, and with the sharp point executed her own version of what Alexei and Anna had done with their index fingers, a direct poke in with the sharp point of the needle, then straight down, splitting the tent and holding it open like a curtain. She let Anna through first and then Julian, then Max, then she followed in behind them. Anna smiled once they were inside, and with her own version of magic, using just her index finger, Anna zipped the tent up closed behind them.

  There were screams of delight
, pure joy, and happiness from Tatiana and Alexei, and a three-way hug that seemed as if it might never end. “Look at the two of you,” said Anna, remarking how amazing Tatiana and Alexei looked. “I was so worried about you.”

  “We were a little worried about you, too,” said Tatiana. And she hugged her sister again with a smile on her face and tears that were from joy.

  “Thank you!” Tatiana said to Tess.

  “Don’t I get a thank you, too?” said Max, showing he had a little bit of attitude, too, and pride.

  “Of course you do,” said Tatiana, and she threw her arms around him, embarrassing him all the more.

  Julian just stood there with his arms folded. He was staring at Tara, who was quietly standing behind Alexei and Tatiana. Tess saw them staring at each other with a look that was almost more powerful than any of the hugs and shrieks and screams of delight. It reminded her of what her mother called “unconditional love,” a look she sometimes saw her parents exchange, the look in their dad’s eyes as he smiled when he first saw her or Max after he’d been away or even sometimes just because they’d walked into the room, a look of pure love. It made Tess wonder what the connection was between Tara and Julian.

  But then Tara looked at Tess and said, “I wasn’t sure I was ever going to see you again.”

  “Really?” said Tess. “I thought you could see the future.”

  “Not always,” said Tara, “but I knew that I was right to take a chance on you.” Her voice got softer. “I had a feeling from the moment I first saw you,” said Tara, “that you could touch the sky.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without Max,” said Tess. “He’s the one who always helped me find the way.” Tess didn’t mention the needle or the baby tiger.