THEY REAPPEARED IN dark shadows between two long metal boxes. The earth felt hard as stone beneath their feet and was dyed the color of pitch. Flashes of colorful lights blinked up in the night sky, and the sound of screams and laughter filtered out from the other side of the boxes. The screams and laughter were accompanied by music and the roar of metal against metal. The sun had just begun to set over the horizon and blanket the area in night. The last tendril of sunlight glimmered through the trees opposite of the flashing lights.
The air was warm, like where they’d been on the First moments before, but thick with humidity. It was too hot for the leather armor they wore, but they wouldn’t be here long enough to justify shucking it.
Keleir took Saran’s sword and sheath and tucked it under one of the metal boxes before following suit with his own. “Let’s not get arrested again,” he muttered before taking her hand and leading her out from behind the boxes and into the warm lamplight.
Except, they weren’t lamps … that’s not what they called them here. They called them streetlights, and they were electric. Everything here was electric.
Saran’s eyes lifted to the sky and the colorful glittering lights of a giant spinning wheel slowly. The wheel had compartments with people waving down from them. Beyond the wheel were tents and caravans. There were other contraptions that went high into the air and spun around, blinking wild colorful lights and music. Each contraption had a group of people in them that were either laughing hysterically or screaming in utter terror. Hundreds of people moved back and forth down wide paths that led through the area, hopping into lines that wove toward the metal contraptions.
As they walked the path, Saran spotted one line going into a tall, thin metal house with a wolf man painted on the front of it. Words were written in bright yellow lettering near his sharp fangs. Inside the dimly lit house, she could just make out people feeling their way through a maze of mirrors and glass into a dark corridor. The ones who survived exited down a metal slide.
Keleir’s large, excited smile lifted Saran’s apprehension over visiting the Second. It was the happiest she’d seen him in days, and with how much his control over the Oruke had been slipping as of late, she would indulge his need for fun.
He hurriedly led her through the crowd toward one of the contraptions in the shape of a giant spinning top decorated with large, colorful flashing lights. Along the way she caught the name of their location on a banner dangling over the path.
Welcome to the Greater Gulf State Fair.
A fair. Fairs on the Second were far busier than those on the First. But then again, Saran had never really seen a fair in person. She’d read about them, heard stories told by older Adridians. A fair hadn’t come to the capital since her father took the throne. A fair in Adrid would also have never possessed metal machines or lights and music as brilliant or overwhelming.
Keleir rushed them into a long line waiting to enter the giant metal top. She curled her arm in his, drawing closer to him. The people moved around them like a sea of water, pressed in close. Too close. The thickness of the crowd and the wild noise made her uneasy. The world felt too loud to enjoy, but Keleir’s calm presence kept her planted firmly in place.
She rested her head to his shoulder, peeking out from behind her curly hair.
When the eyes around them noticed Keleir’s peculiar hair and eyes, they simply glanced away as if it were nothing at all. No one looked at him with fear or hatred here. She suspected that’s why he liked it so much. Despite their technology, despite the inevitably dying world that he despised, he found peace amongst the nonconformists on the Second.
Keleir taught Saran and Rowe how to visit this world. Visiting the Second used to be a skill and luxury prevalent among Mages of the First, but as the last of the old wise ones died off and Yarin refused to continue the practice of passing knowledge down to the new generation, those with the ability to use Windows to move from one world to another were few and far between. Yarin didn’t want to risk the people under his thumb seeing a way to evade him, and Saran couldn’t deny that she had thought of escaping to the Second herself many times. Something always held her back.
Keleir knew how to travel between worlds because the Oruke had taught him as a child. He never spoke about the things the Oruke had shown him on those trips to the Second. But when his mind had finally become his own and he had full control over his body, Keleir had taken to journeying to the Second for fun. Then he taught Saran and Rowe the rules of traveling, and the three had, at one time, spent endless nights exploring with gleeful joy.
That was, until Saran noticed that the longer they spent in a place with a failing Core and dying magic, the harder it was for Keleir to maintain control over the Oruke … or rather, the harder it was for her to maintain the spell she’d woven around his soul.
“We don’t have much time,” Saran whispered. “If we miss our Window and don’t return, I’ll be locked in the dungeons.”
“One ride,” he replied, smiling at her. “I just want to show you one ride, and then we’ll be gone before the Window closes.”
Saran turned an uneasy gaze to the spinning metal top.
“Cool costume, dude!” shouted a teen in oversized clothes as he ran up to Keleir with a raised hand. Saran drew her arms away and prepared for the attack, but Keleir simply lifted his arm and smacked his palm flat against the other’s hand.
The teen passed them by without so much as a second glance.
But Saran’s nerves were lit with tension.
Before they reached the guardian of the spinning top, who seemed to be collecting small pieces of paper from each person who wished to enter, a group of young girls bounded up to them. Saran nearly thrashed them all, but Keleir pulled her arms tight to her sides in a tense hug.
“Can we get a picture with you guys? You look amazing!” shouted one.
“So cool. Who are you supposed to be?” asked the other.
Keleir nodded to them. He spoke to them kindly in their language—English—but never really offered them any answers. The girls gathered in a tight cluster that sent Saran’s panic wild. Keleir squeezed her tight, and they all faced a woman Saran assumed to be the mother of the girls. The woman held a thin rectangle up before her face.
A flash of light blinded Saran, and the girls ran off with a giggle, disappearing as fast as they’d arrived.
“Thank you!” the mother called as she hurried after them.
By this time, they were next in line. The ride’s guardian flexed his hands for them to come forward, and Saran stepped dizzily along with Keleir, blinking the blinding colors from her eyes. The Fire Mage fished a small gold piece out of the pouch at his waist. “I don’t have a ticket,” he murmured, “but this is real gold.”
“Sure it is,” the man muttered.
“It is,” Keleir insisted, his native Adridian accent thick in the air. “I promise.”
“Need a ticket each,” the ticket man replied. “No ticket, no ride.”
Saran squeezed Keleir’s arm and noted the disappointment in his eyes. Her eyes lit white. The entire fair went silent around them. The brightly lit wheel, with its dangling baubles filled with people, stopped spinning. The metal contraptions that flung and whizzed about froze midswing or flip in the air. The patrons stopped walking midstep, and the ticket man paused as he tried to pass the gold piece back to Keleir.
Saran looked at her lover with blinding white eyes and a clever smile. She reached into the man’s pouch and drew two slivers of paper.
The world restarted with a loud roar of music, screams, and laughter. As the man passed the gold piece to Keleir, Saran held out the slivers of paper. “Here. Tickets. He likes to stay in character,” she said, the English words falling unpracticed from her tongue.
The Core’s gift of magic allowed them many things. One happened to be the ability to pick up on foreign languages quickly—where magic was available. As they were born of the Core, the life of the planet, and all languages derived from life, the Core allowed them the ability to learn those languages as easily as a sponge absorbing water.
But Saran had never practiced it as much as Keleir. So while she knew the words, Keleir spoke them with far more skill.
“Whatever,” the man muttered and took the tickets from her. He motioned for them to enter the ride.
Keleir took her hand and guided her in. It was dark inside, save for a bright purple light in the ceiling that caused all white fabric to glow. Keleir’s hair shone like a bright purple beacon that made Saran laugh and reach up to touch it. He laughed too when her teeth glowed purple, and he drew her to a place on the wall where two empty plush mats were available for them to lean against.
“What is this?” she asked him, flattening out against the mat.
“It’s what flying feels like,” Keleir replied. “What I imagine flying feels like.”
He reached out and grasped her fingers, curling his around hers.
The round room filled with people. They all pressed against the mats on the walls, and the door closed. Saran felt nervous being locked in such a dark space with otherworld strangers, but Keleir wasn’t afraid.
So she wouldn’t be either.
The top began to move, slowly at first and then faster. The faster it moved, the more the air felt like a physical force pressing against her. Saran clutched Keleir’s hand tighter. The force pinned them to the walls as the whole contraption changed angles, tilting from one end to the other.
An excited laugh escaped Saran’s lips when the wall slid upward and then down. She tried to lift her head off the mat and couldn’t. She tried to reach her hand toward the purple light in the ceiling but could barely get her fingers off the mat.
Saran turned her head to Keleir, feeling the force press her cheek into the mat. He was already looking at her, a big, wide grin on his face. His teeth glowed purple.
Saran laughed. She laughed so hard that her eyes watered with tears. Keleir laughed with her, and the two of them, hands clasped, learned what it felt like to fly.
Eventually the spinning slowed, the tilting stopped, and the pressure against them ebbed until they could lift their heads from the mat. Saran’s belly felt queasy, and she didn’t want to rise off the mat until she knew she wouldn’t vomit.
Keleir slid close to her, pressing his lips to her cheek. He pulled her with him from the ride and out into the droves of people exploring the fair.
“That was the first ride I ever went on when I came here the first time. I stumbled upon the fair while blindly porting as far as my eyes could see on one of my first trips to the Second without the Oruke in control. The fair only comes here in the fall, I think. When I came other times, it wasn’t here.”
Saran wondered why Keleir had never taken them here. Rowe would have loved everything about it, right down to the screaming metal and blaring music. Both of them could handle the busyness of the Second far better than she could.
“We need to go,” Keleir said, tugging her back toward the darkness where they arrived.
Saran wanted to go on another ride.
She wanted to know more about the big wheel with the flashing lights. She wanted to know how high she could go in it. Saran wanted to eat the ugly cake coated in sugar she kept seeing people snack on. She didn’t want to go back home. She didn’t want to be a princess. She didn’t want to be punished for saving people who would never see her as anything but an enemy.
But Saran nodded and followed along. They could not stay. Keleir, especially, could not stay. Even if she had the ability to hold back time, she couldn’t do it forever. She could move it forward, backward, and freeze it, but only temporarily. There were some things not even she could stop time from eroding, no matter how hard she tried.