by Tavaan
When I came to the Nightfaire, I found myself unsettled. Was it that the faire had set itself up on the Aranorian battlegrounds, and I felt the spirits of the recently dead? Or was it the high, clothen wall, black and painted with eerie designs that almost seemed to luminesce? Or was it only a memory, of when I was a young boy in Liramelle, and my father took me to the Nightfaire there, in the distant fog of childhood? What was it I remembered from that time?
The gates were all tangled with twisted old vines, and a large man, heavy set and dark of beard, let me in.
"Five silver, my friend," he said. I gave over the coins and stepped inside.
Ah, now a bit of the memory came back. A labyrinth of booths and footpaths, tightly-built so that one is always close-pressed with others, navigating through a sea of smoky scents, dangling goods, offers and protestations. People.
I thought I could distinguish as I walked, those who lived at the faire, and those who visited. All of the faire folk wore dark and fae-type clothing- the women enhanced with seductive cosmetics, the men peering out from rakish-cut garb. And yet, each was different, each unique. Over there, a thinnish man, smoking a pipe, a large claw around his neck. The man next to him tall and broad, of Northern descent, with a thick traveling cloak, hood raised. A scream from my left, and a man dressed as a tyver, all in leaves in and wearing stag’s horns, darts toward a girl.
Some incense, pungent and thick, cloying.
"Over here," says a girl. She’s pretty, blonde curls and innocent eyes, but her lips are thick with honey, glistening and red. She looks young.
"From the fens," she says. "Here, have a see at this."
I walk over, bend over the blanket upon which she sits.
"These are natural," she whispers,
gesturing me closer. There’s an odd, sweet scent coming from her. "From
the swamps, all of them. This is juice of Kava. It will grant you immortality.
And look at this. Extract of Burgenvine. It will make your woman
beautiful."
A whole array of small vials sits before her. One of them glows.
I smile, give her a few words, and walk away.
There. A good smell. Roasting meat, and I purchase a stick with marinated, glazed rabbit bits.
A huge snapping turtle hisses at someone from the entrance to a tent. It’s chained by its leg to a pole. Only darkness inside.
Still, the memory tugs. Something I saw. Something I’d never forget, but couldn’t seem to remember. What was it?
Around the turn, and there are the cages
The cages! I remember them! Is that the memory that has been haunting me?
I see a breathtaking woman, huddled in the corner against her bars. Her face is too clear, too graceful, though it is streaked with tears. She is wearing very little.
"Fen nymph," says a man, coming up beside me. "Beautiful, isn’t she?"
I nod.
"She’d kill you if she had the chance," he laughs.
No. It wasn’t the cages. What then?
It’s difficult to place what is most disturbing about the Nightfaire. Perhaps it’s the labyrinthine passages between tents, so cloistered that you quickly lose all orientation and become very, very lost. Perhaps it’s the haunted look in some of the eyes. Or the thick smell of opium. I know that the rest of the cages will lurk in my dreams, filled, as they were, with creatures too human to be caged. Goblins, a black-skinned merman with glistening teeth, a woman whose legs were replaced with the tail of a serpent.
Aranor was gone. Carador was gone. I was alone, in a crowded street of another world, overwhelmed with too many sights, too many sounds, too many scents. All blending together into a shapeless mass. Thick, grilled mushrooms passed my lips, a taste of wine from a pretty older woman, the choking scent of decay from within a closed basket. Dragging me under, transporting me . . .
And then, all was sharp. Clear. Vivid. My eyes went wide, and the memory came flooding back. A face, a girl’s face, no more than six years old, the prettiest face I had ever seen. I was four, then. She had bent over me, her black curls tickling my cheeks, and gave me a candied violet. I ate it slowly, and watched her as she stepped away.
And there she was again, in the room before me. I tried to wet my lips, but my tongue was dry. There she was, standing near a cage, offering the creature within a bit of cheese. The black curls, the sweet, porcelain features, the small, curved lips.
She had aged not a day.
Trembling, I turned and stumbled away, intent only on finding my way out, back to the open air, back to the night. Back to Aranor.
I, for one, will not go back to the Nightfaire. Some, I have heard, love the excitement and the wierd thrill of it. But I’ve never heard of someone leaving the Nightfaire without at least one experience they shall never forget. I’ve had mine. Twice. And the dark summons of that place shall never draw me again.