Bright lights and garish painted colors on the rides and game booths did their best to distract patrons from the layer of grime coating everything. The metal parts on the rides groaned and squealed; they’d taken punishment for years and had been disassembled and assembled again with a minimum of care—and a minimum of lubricant.
The carnies working the game booths were universally afflicted with rotting teeth and gingivitis, a dire warning of what would happen if one ate the carnival food and failed to find a toothbrush afterward. They made no effort to be charming; sneers and leers were all they could manage for the people they had been trained to see as marks instead of humans. Granuaile wanted to chuck softballs at steel milk bottles.
“You go ahead. I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because the carnie will mock me for not winning his rigged game, and then I’ll be tempted to cheat and unbind the bottles a bit so that they all fall over, which would mean I’d receive something enormous and fluffy.”
“If the game’s rigged, then you’re not cheating. You’re leveling the playing field. And if you decided to reward your apprentice with something enormous and fluffy for all of her hard work, then there’s really no downside.”
<Hey, Atticus, I’m enormous! And if you adopted a poodle bitch, then she would be fluffy. You could make us both happy with a poodle, see?>
“The downside is I’m not on good terms with the elemental here. Using the earth’s magic for something trivial like that would hardly improve matters. Camouflaging Oberon so he can walk around with us is bad enough.”
<I’d be happy to walk around in plain sight, Atticus.>
You might scare the children.
<What? But I’m cuddly! “Single Irish wolfhound likes long walks on the beach and belly rubs.”>
Granuaile went a few rounds with the milk bottles, and the carnie tried to chivy me into “rescuing” her. My apprentice nearly assaulted him for that but showed admirable restraint.
“Whatsa matter, can’t hit the ground if you fell out of a plane?” he called to me.
“Whatsa matter, employers don’t provide a dental plan?” I responded.
He didn’t want to open his mouth after that, and Granuaile finished her game play scowling.
“It’s funny,” she said as we walked away. “People come here to be happy, but I bet they wind up in a fouler mood than when they walked in. Kids want plushies and rides and sugar, and parents want to hang on to their money and their kids. And everybody wants to go away without digestive problems, but that’s not gonna happen.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
“So why do people come here?”
I shrugged. “Because we pursue happiness even when it runs away from us.”
We passed several booths, ignored the pitches of more carnies with alarming hygiene issues, and examined the faces of people walking by. There were no smiles, only stress and anger and frustration.
“See, there’s no happiness here,” Granuaile pointed out.
Distant screams of terror reached us from the rides. “Maybe you would find it amusing to experience the joys of centrifugal force.” I waved toward the flashing lights of the carnival’s midway. “Allow the machinery to jostle the fluid in your inner ear.”
“Oh.” She grinned at me. “Well, if you put it like that, it sounds irresistible.”
“Step right here!” a voice cut into our conversation. “Priceless entertainment for only three dollars! Gape at the Impossibly Whiskered Woman! Thrill at the Three-Armed Man and watch those hands! Chunder with the force of thunder at the Conjoined Quintuplets! Guaranteed to harrow your soul for only three dollars!”
The barker hawking hyperbole was a dwarf on stilts. Dark pinstriped pants and oversize clown shoes masked his wooden limbs and remained very still while his torso gesticulated and waved wee, chubby, white-sleeved arms at potential spectators. A red paisley waistcoat flashed and caught lights from the midway, giving his torso the appearance of flickering flames. His eyes were shadowed by a bowler hat, but his mouth never stopped moving, and it was effective. A line of people queued outside a yellow pavilion tent, drawn there as much by the barker as by curiosity over the stunned people coming out the other side.
“Amazin’,” one mumbled as he staggered past me. His eyes were unfocused and his mouth hung slack in disturbing fashion. He didn’t seem to be addressing anyone in particular. “Incredible. Whadda trip. Sirsley. I mean rilly. Nothin’ like it.”
My first, somewhat cynical thought was that he was a plant by the management. But then I noticed that more and more people kept coming out of the tent with their minds clearly boggled, too many to be in on the shill. The barker kept fishing with his verbal bait and was hooking plenty of people.
“It’s not a House of Horror! It’s a Tent of Terror! Add thrills and add chills and you get adventure! Only three bucks to reap what you sow!”
The last line struck me as a non sequitur, and I looked around to see if anyone else had been bothered by it. It was an odd pitch to make for a carnival amusement, but people were forking over their cash to a muscle-bound hulk at the entrance and walking inside as the barker continued to weave together rhymes and alliterative phrases in a tapestry of bombast.
“Two tumescent tumors on either side of her nose! Face cancer ain’t for the faint of heart! We have the freaks but you can’t get freaky—all you get is a peekie! See the sights that can’t be unseen for only three dollars!”
“Huh,” Granuaile said. “That sounds interesting. What do you think they have in there? A woman who let someone draw on her face with a Sharpie?”
“Only one way to find out.”
<Can I go in too?>
Sure, if you can keep close and sneak past the bouncer.
We joined the queue and observed a profound lack of excitement in our fellow entrants. The mood was one of passive resignation to the coming rip-off, albeit garnished with a wedge of hope, sort of like stinky beer graced with a slice of orange.
Oberon easily slipped through into the tent with us once we paid the mountain of beef manning the door. We were immediately confronted with a slab of painted plywood serving as a wall and a lurid sign that shouted at us: LAST CHANCE: CHOOSE HEAVEN (left) OR HELL (right).
“Is it the same either way?” Granuaile wondered aloud.
“No idea,” I said. There was a bit of a backup going to the hell side, so I suggested we go left.
“Well, in case it’s different, I’d like to see what’s going on in hell,” she said. “Let’s split up and compare notes outside.”
I shrugged. “Okay. See you soon.” Then I asked Oberon, Which way do you want to go, buddy?
<I think I’ll go with Granuaile. Curiosity killed the cat but never hurt a hound, you know.>
All right, keep talking to me and let me know what you see.
<I see a poodle in my future.>
I’m sure you do, I replied, as I turned left and followed a couple of switchbacks.
<She is a black standard poodle and her name is Noche. That’s Spanish for “night.”>
Yeah, I know.
<We chase squirrels in the morning and then we lie down on a bed of sausages.>
I wasn’t soliciting your fantasies, Oberon. I was rather hoping you’d tell me what you see in the present.