He jerked aside to avoid a skipping child—a human one, not one of the pinch-faced, sharp-canined urchins—and Susan had to jump after him to avoid letting go of his hand.
“Like the Shuck, the goblins have to follow the rules of the legend. Apart from the two of us, there’ll be something here that doesn’t fit, that isn’t right. They have to show it to us three times. If we don’t claim it, we’ll be stuck here forever; we’ll forget who we are, become archetypes, caught up in the mythic fair.”
“Something that doesn’t fit?” asked Susan slowly. She was distracted because a bear was ambling towards them along the right-hand alley between the closer tents. A glossy-furred bear on a flimsy chain, dancing as if it was enjoying itself, the bear ward by its side mimicking the bear steps, in a way that made it look as if they were happily dancing together.
“It could be an object, a person, anything that looks wrong, out of place,” said Merlin. He pulled on Susan’s hand, dragging her out of the way of the bear, in front of a sausage table heavily laden with pyramidal piles of different kinds of fat sausages below a cloud of flies. Dozens more were cooking behind on a grill laid over a charcoal firepit.
“Sausages! Best sausages! Fit for a king . . . or for a queen!” roared the vendor. A small woman with a very loud voice, she bowed low before Susan and extended her cooking fork, a section of sausage steaming on the end. “Try a taste, Your Highness!”
The cooking sausages did smell wonderful, overriding any distaste for the unsanitary conditions. Susan’s mouth watered, and she felt extraordinarily tempted. But before she could reach out, Merlin dragged her on, past three jugglers and an eel-diving contest with the contestants leaping into the largest barrel Susan had ever seen, to a narrow space between two wattle-and-daub huts that got them out of the immediate rush of fairgoers.
“Eat nothing, remember!” snapped Merlin. “That would fix you here. I wish Vivien was with us.”
“Who’s Vivien?”
“My sister. Right-handed. Very good at puzzles and so on. Seen anything so far?”
“How would I know what’s out of place?” protested Susan. “I’ve never been to a medieval fair before! Even a modern re-creation of one.”
“We’d better walk around,” said Merlin. “Keep your eyes open, and don’t let go of my hand.”
“The happiness is unsettling, all the smiling and laughing,” muttered Susan as they proceeded along the narrow lane that led to a much broader one, in the heart of the fair. “I mean, it’s kind of more unnerving than if they were scowling.”
“The other side of the fair will be here, too, somewhere, or will come along. The dark doings and despair, the thievery and murder hidden by the glitter and fun. We need to get out before it turns into that fair. But I can’t see anything out of place!”
At the next intersection of alleys, Susan paused to stand on tiptoe and have a good look around. She was taller than almost everyone anyway, which she wasn’t used to, but it helped. A group of dancing musicians was coming towards her: several drummers, two lutenists, a bunch of others playing recorder-like instruments, and one something that looked like an oversized set of bagpipes. But as the two lutenists pirouetted apart, she saw a young girl behind them with a huge basket of flowers, and Susan realized what was out of place, and what had been bothering her all along.
“The flower seller!” she exclaimed, sliding between a group of gawping, sack-clothed country folk, red-faced and doubled up with laughter at the antics of two stilt-walking jesters who were mimicking some sort of failed amorous coupling, possibly of insects. This time, she dragged Merlin after her, instead of the other way around.
“What?”
“Everything’s in brighter color than it should be!” explained Susan, ducking under a tray of pies that might have been swung across to slow her down, Merlin slinkily following. “It all looks like a Super 8 film! Supersaturated, brighter than life. But the flower seller, she’s got a flower that has no color at all. There she is!”
The flower seller was walking away from them, and the crowd between grew thicker. Everyone in the fair had suddenly turned around and was streaming back to the intersection ahead, their intention obvious—to prevent Susan and Merlin from reaching the girl, without actually stopping them—bending the letter of whichever ancient law said they had to be given the opportunity to escape.
Merlin moved in front again, swinging his blackthorn stick. People swerved away from it, as if fearing the touch of the wood, but when he did make contact, they showed no pain, continuing to smile and laugh.
The flower girl turned to go down one of the narrower lanes, and as she did so, Susan saw the flower again, and this time, so did Merlin. A tall rose, a translucent flower that might have been made of glass, save that its stem bent and petals trembled as the flower seller walked.
“Second sighting!” snapped Merlin. “Come on!”
He pushed the stick between the legs of an eel carter, sending the woman and the tub of eels she carried on her head sprawling, the eels sliding every which way, people slipping over them and falling down in a confused mass. All still smiling and laughing, as if it was an experience they’d paid to enjoy.
Merlin and Susan jumped over the writhing trail of eels and ran after the flower seller, who was only a dozen paces ahead, walking briskly down a much narrower alley between the backs of a row of small theaters, two- or even three-story affairs of painted canvas over timber frames.
As they ran, a shadow caught up with them overhead, clouds obscuring the sun and the blue sky, and there was a sudden chill in the air.
“Oh, play fair!” shouted Merlin. He accelerated, and managed to touch his blackthorn stick to the flower seller’s back, the lightest tap. She stopped, and turned to face them. She’d looked like a pretty, smiling girl when Susan had spied her across the crowd, but now her face had narrowed, her skin was lightly scaled, and her mouth was broken-toothed and decayed save for the sharp canines of a goblin, and she had shrunk a foot or more.
“We are not of this time or place, and nor is the rose,” declaimed Merlin. “Deliver it to—”
A growl was the only warning Merlin had of sudden attack. Spinning in place, he rammed his stick across the mouth of an enormous shaggy dog that lunged out of the shadows between the shacks. Its sheer weight drove him back several steps, and since he wouldn’t let go of her hand, Susan was dragged with him, falling sideways into the mud onto her hip. She saved herself from worse by putting her free hand down, but it still hurt. A lot.
“Bad dog!” she shouted, more from instinct than anything. “Bad dog! Drop that at once!”
Much to everyone’s surprise, perhaps not least the beast itself, the dog did drop the stick.
“Sit!” commanded Susan, standing up. She was furious: furious at falling in the mud, furious at being dragged into the mythic shenanigans, plain furious about everything.
The dog sat. Susan looked at the flower seller.
“And you! Urchin, goblin, whatever you are. Hand over the rose.”
The flower seller plucked the colorless rose from amidst the riot of colored posies in the basket, and passed it to Susan, going down on one knee as she did so.
Susan took it.