The Midnight Carnival (5 page)

‘Doesn’t like ingredients?’

‘Flour and sugar and things. I think they make him angry. Anyway, he pushed them off the counter and made a huge mess. Vera threw him outside and banned all baking in the house. Now we get the frozen stuff.’

Mephistopheles was one of Vera Quinlan’s cats. Adie found him temperamental and obnoxious – he hissed at the girls whenever they were in the house – and it seemed fitting that he was Old Cat Lady’s favourite.

The girls passed by a grey trailer, with its door swinging open in the breeze. There were dozens of ageing postcards pinned to the inside of the door. Delilah suddenly tripped up the wooden steps and pointed to one.

‘Soroca!’ she said, running her fingers over the pencilled image.

It was a drawing of a stone tower, with no windows but one door at the bottom. There was an arched panel above the door and, above that, a dark cross. At the top of the structure
was a stand with a hoop.

‘What a strange building. It looks like a candle,’ said Adie.

‘It’s called the Thanksgiving Candle. It’s in a place called Soroca, in Moldova.’

‘Where you’re from?’

‘My uncle’s farm was further up the river, but we went to Soroca loads of times. It’s pretty, isn’t it?’

‘Verrry prrretty,’ said a deep voice from within.

Delilah leapt off the steps like a scalded cat. A woman now filled the doorway of the trailer. She was so tall she had to duck under the frame, and her sleeveless shift showed off rounded arms with huge biceps. Adie was about to run when she recognised her as the strongwoman from the show the night before.

‘Sorry, we didn’t mean to bother you.’

‘No, no, mein kinder. Es ist okay.’ The woman pointed to the postcard. ‘Soroca. You know?’

‘Yes,’ Delilah replied.

‘Is good, ja? Soroca. Good people, ja?’

‘Yes, it’s a lovely place.’

The woman jabbed her finger into another postcard, and named a place in a language neither of the girls recognised.

‘And dis, ja?’

‘No, I don’t know where that is. Sorry.’

‘Ah, is okay.’ The woman waved her hand, as if she had been silly to ask. She smiled. ‘My name is Agata.’

‘I’m Delilah, and this is Adie.’

Adie waved shyly.

‘And dat boy is Drake.’ Agata pointed behind them at a figure curling onto a tree stump at the very edge of the park. He was just within earshot. ‘Say hallo, Drake!’

The boy raised his hand in a reluctant half-wave, and Adie was shocked to notice the green shade of his skin was not because of the shadow of the trees. There were lines and cracks that made it look like he was covered in scales, and she felt a little queasy. As if he knew what she was thinking, the boy buried his gaze in the backpack on his lap, and said nothing.

‘He is shy today,’ Agata said smiling. ‘Have some tea?’

The boy looked more cross than shy to Adie, but she smiled warmly and accepted Agata’s offer.

4

Tea and Mooning

‘Kohl. Cabbage, ja?’ Agata swirled her fingers in the air as if to suggest something rolled up. ‘And meat inside.’

‘Sarma!’ Delilah said. ‘Minced meat in cabbage leaves.’

The strongwoman nodded, raising her eyes and hands to the sky like the mere thought of the food was divine. Adie thought it sounded gross. She hated cabbage, and she was no fan of minced meat either.

‘Yummy,’ Delilah sighed.

‘Ha!’ Agata slapped her knee, grinning. ‘Yummy! Das ist gut. Yummmmy… I use dis word now.’

Adie sipped politely at her black, unusual-tasting tea, and watched the small girl clapping her hands and exclaiming every time Agata mentioned something that she missed about Moldova. Delilah had never been so boisterous in the
whole time that Adie had known her. She was like a different girl. And the light in her big, brown eyes made Adie feel guilty – by avoiding asking about her past, had the girls kept Delilah quiet and shy? She had certainly never opened up about life with her wicked mother, and Adie was sure she didn’t want to. Meredith Gold had been a blonde beauty, a talented witch, and the most evil person Adie had ever met. She treated Delilah like a slave, and the small girl never showed a moment’s regret when she was banished forever down the demon well.

Still, thought Adie, perhaps the girls should have asked about the rest of her family. Delilah had fondly mentioned a grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins, but Adie and the others still shied away from quizzing her about them. They had asked about her father once, but Delilah didn’t know where he was, and the subject was dropped like a hot potato.

‘Drake, tea!’

Agata yelled with all the strength of her great lungs, though the boy wasn’t that far away, and still he didn’t answer. He remained curled on the tree stump, focussed on whatever was in his backpack.

‘Drake, TEA!’

Adie jumped at the bellow that nearly burst her eardrums, and a little hot tea spilled on her legs.

‘Ah.’ Agata waved her hand and laughed. ‘He is shy.’

Just call a spade a spade
, Adie thought.
He’s rude
.

Something pushed against the back legs of her chair and, when Adie looked down, there was the famed alligator, like a dark brown monster with lifeless eyes, its short snout full of terrible, pointed teeth.

‘Okay, that’s it. I’m going,’ she said.

‘Now?’ Delilah said. ‘But it’s early. We said we’d meet the others for a go on the ferris wheel.’

Adie had no intention of taking another ride on that rusty death trap.

‘Sorry, I promised my dad I’d clean out my wardrobe before school starts and… well, I don’t want to get stuck doing it tomorrow. It’s our last day of holidays.’

‘I could help you do it tomorrow. Or this evening. It wouldn’t take long with the two of us, we–’

‘No, really, that’s okay. Thanks though. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?’

‘Are you sure? Okay. See you tomorrow then.’

‘Gut to meet you, ja.’ The strongwoman beamed over her teacup.

‘Nice to meet you, Agata. Thanks for the tea. Goodbye.’

As Adie stepped delicately out of the alligator’s path, she knew the others were watching her leave. Their conversation only started up again when she was out of sight behind a trailer, and she heard the voice of Delilah squealing with excitement about something. But Delilah never squealed. She was the quiet one.

Not any more
, Adie thought as she picked her way through the muddied grass.
I guess I’m the quiet one now
.

‘Grace! Jenny, over here!’

Grace did a double-take when she saw Delilah on the steps of a grey trailer, waving wildly at them.

‘You have to meet Agata,’ the small girl said breathlessly, smiling. ‘She’s so nice. We’ve been talking about Soroca, and lots of other places the carnival’s been to. They travel all over.’

Delilah pulled a fold-out chair from inside the caravan, and propped it open next to three others on the grass.

‘Agata.’ She called into the trailer like it was her own home.

Grace recognised the large woman that appeared in the doorway with a teapot in hand.

‘New friends. So nice! Tea, ja?’ She leaned past the door-frame and shouted to her right, ‘Drake, dis time you have tea, okay? Meet nice new friends.’

Following her gaze, Grace spotted a boy sitting cross-legged on a tree stump at the edge of the park, and caught her breath. It was the strange-skinned boy she had met the night before. Smiling in recognition, he uncurled himself from the stump and made his way over.

‘You didn’t make it out of town then?’ Grace kept her voice low as he passed.

His smile was weary, but his eyes twinkled.

‘Never do.’

Agata’s English wasn’t great, but she managed to communicate so many funny and wonderful tales of far-off lands while the girls drank tea and laughed. The boy, Drake, parked himself on the steps of the trailer, taking it all in and occasionally interrupting to correct details in Agata’s stories, which would result in the woman flapping her hands and nodding her head earnestly, saying,

‘Ja, ja, ja, dis I know. I forget. Is correct, ja, ja.’

Delilah was more lively than Grace had ever seen her, and was becoming a little reckless with the wood nymph that remained hidden beneath her collar. She pulled at her jumper when he shifted into an awkward position, and one time she even scowled at him, scooping her hair over one shoulder and sharply tapping her back. It wasn’t long before the strongwoman noticed something was amiss. Prodding the bump on the girl’s shoulder, she said,

‘Is moving. Dis? Is moving, see?’

She jammed her finger into the lump, wriggling it roughly, until B-brr’s face burst from Delilah’s neckline and bit down firmly.

‘Aaaaaaaghh!’ The woman leapt from her chair, sending teacups flying, and bounced from foot to foot. ‘Owweeeee! Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!’

Aghast, Delilah cupped the nymph in her hands, but Drake was already in front of her, gently prising her fingers apart.

‘Agata,’ he said, ‘come here, you gotta see this.’

‘Is rat,’ the woman declared. ‘Is nasty rat. It bite.’

‘No, no, it’s not. Look. It’s a little guy. A tiny little guy.’

The woman crept over and her eyes went wide. The girls were too panicked to speak and, in the silence, Agata reached out her finger again. B-brr snapped.

‘No!’ she said. ‘No bite, little man. Is bold.’

She tapped him on the head in punishment, and quickly withdrew the finger before it could be bitten again.

‘Where’d he come from?’ asked Drake.

Delilah seemed to be struck speechless for the moment, so Grace stepped up.

‘We, eh… we found him. Delilah did, anyway, and he kind of… he just kind of latched on and… and now he’s just here permanently, I guess.’

Drake didn’t seem at all satisfied with the answer, but he didn’t push. He just smiled and looked closer at the nymph, laughing out loud when the little brat bent over and mooned Agata. The woman didn’t seem too bothered.

‘Is not polite, dis little man.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Delilah said finally, and blushed bright red.

Strange as it seemed, the tea party went back to normal after that. Grace couldn’t grasp why Drake and Agata weren’t freaking out about the faery hiding in Delilah’s long, black hair. The strongwoman went back to telling her stories, and Drake resumed his seat on the steps.

‘So how much can you actually lift?’ Jenny asked.

‘You want to know?’ Agata winked. ‘You see show.’

‘I saw show. I mean, I went to the show. You threw an anvil right across the tent. Was it fake? Was it made of polystyrene or something?’

‘Ha! Fake? Is no fake. Look at dis.’ The woman curled one arm and the rounded bicep swelled until it was the size of a football.

‘Woah.’ Without asking, Jenny reached out and squeezed the giant muscle. ‘It is real.’

‘Ja, is real. You lift weight?’

She was asking all of them. Grace smiled and shook her head.

‘I’d love to learn, though,’ said Jenny. ‘Could you teach me?’

A wide grin spread across Agata’s face. She went inside the trailer and emerged with a large dumbbell in each hand.

‘Ja!’ she said. ‘You start vit dis.’

She dropped the weights in front of Jenny and they thumped to the ground, denting the grass.

‘Are you serious?’ Grace said to Jenny.

‘I’ve never been more serious in my life.’

The discordant music from all the different stalls was like a cheese grater on Adie’s ears. It must be torture to listen to
that racket all day. She passed under the carnival entrance and relaxed as the noise faded behind her. She thought she might take the long way home since she had time to kill. She didn’t really have to clean out her wardrobe – well, she did, but she had no intention of doing it anytime soon.

The sound of a snapping twig made her spin around. But there was nobody there. Just the carnival in the park and the empty road in front of it. Must have been a cat or something, playing in the trees that lined the street. Adie shivered, and she walked a little faster.

It was never this quiet on the main road – she couldn’t see a single person – and the wind was picking up leaves and swirling them in a way that somehow looked deliberate.

Great
, she thought,
the whole town is catching the creepy vibe from that carnival. Even the weather’s joining in
.

Another snapping twig. But when she turned this time, she saw him.

The brim of his silk hat sagged to one side, and the long, black crosses painted over his eyes made him look forlorn. His suit had sombre stripes of grey and pale purple, and she could see the cracks in his white make-up from where she stood. He was some distance away, but closer to her than he was to the carnival. He leaned out from a tree on one side of the road, tilting his head, his mouth pulled down into an exaggerated frown. Lifting one arm, he opened and closed his hand in a mournful kind of wave.

The fear came like a punch in the stomach. Frozen at first, Adie just stared, until his frown lifted and spread wide in a grin while his curled fingers continued that weird wave.

She took off at a run, not looking back to see if he was following. She didn’t want to know. She’d just keep running until she saw someone else, anyone else. There wasn’t a single soul until she reached her own street. By then her breath felt like knives in her chest, and the tears were streaming down her face. Not wanting to enter the house crying, she slipped through the side-gate into the back garden, headed for the treehouse at the end of the lawn, curled up and buried her face in her hands. It wasn’t until dinnertime that she finally went inside, her face dry and wiped clean with a tissue. She said nothing to anyone about the Melancholy Clown.