Datura Carnival

A description of one of the first scenes in the story.

The Datura Carnival is a mystery. No one knows where it comes from, or how it moves. It's there one day and gone the next, no messy putting up or taking down, no bent grass or mud where the wagons carved a path to the fairground. Just, there, and then gone. Like faery circles after a rain. And the people in the Carnival, well. They're the sort you'd expect at a carnival, only... a little off. A little blurry around the edges. Like if you looked just out of the corner of your eye there'd be something other standing there, grinning at you.

It shows up every Midsummer, everywhere. At least, that's what everyone says. Maybe there's a thousand Datura Carnivals, all showing up to different towns all on the same day and pretending to be the same thing. Maybe they're all one huge family, with enough twins and look-alikes for people not to notice that there's someone different selling the luck charms this year. Or maybe they're astonishingly good at disguises, and the government's spies should take lessons from them. Every Midsummer, they come on the shortest night, out in the fields, and they sell good luck charms, love charms, the loveliest ribbons and flowers you've ever seen, and by morning they've gone again. Back to whatever moonlit isle or lonely barrow they spring from, to return next year, the same as ever.

To go on about the setting up and taking down - no one's ever caught them in the act. Regular carnivals, you see them coming a mile away, you can watch them as the tents go up and the animals are led in (and that's another funny thing about this one, there's no animals, only people dressed as animals and for some reason they seem more animal-like than any of the real live animals you've ever seen) and then at the end you can see as the people take off their costumes and pack up the tents and trudge off to the next town, leaving wheel-marks in the grass and bits of frayed ribbon, and paper that wraps itself around rocks until the ink wears off a month later. The Datura Carnival...doesn't. When it leaves there is never anything to mark its passing, or that it was ever real, save the quickly fading charms tucked in the pocket of the shirt you wore that night.

(Later, when you go to wash the shirt, you'll reach into the pocket and find nothing there at all except a leaf or some string. You'll toss it away, wondering what would ever possess you to put such a useless item in your pocket, you're not a kid anymore, really.)

It truly is magnificent, seeing the carnival for the first time. Suddenly, where there used to be a black, empty space at night, something to glance at and immediately glance away from, there's lights, there's color, there's a gigantic archway with the lightest gauze you've ever seen taking the place of a gate. And at the top of this portal (because it is a portal, a door into Faeryland, how could it be anything else), there is a person. This person is wearing the leotard of every trapeze artist you've ever seen, but this person is also wearing a mask, a blank face the color of whitest marble, and they're bedecked with the trailing vines of the flower that lends its name to the Carnival, and this person beckons with such a lighthearted and trustworthy gesture that you can almost ignore how unsettled the mask makes you and you heed the person's demands to "Part the veil! Join us! Let go of everyone and everything that concerns you and give yourself over to the music and the atmosphere and dance!"

Author's Note

This is a first draft, and mainly meant as a piece for me to remember the feel of the story, but any critiques or comments are welcome.