The Fragile Tower - Book 1 of the No.1 magical fantasy series

The Fragile Tower Chapter 2 - The Light Show

Outside in the cold, she breathed a few times, and started to feel more awake. As the tiredness left her, so did some of her worry. She put her coat back on, but hearing applause from somewhere close by, she thought about Maggie and Benjamin again, and made her way past the fountain, stuffing her gloves into her pockets as she went.

The row she found herself on was dazzlingly bright, every stall covered in fairy lights or hung with lanterns. She saw that one of them was selling paper lanterns which had bright bulbs in them, but the others were decorations on tents which were for shows or games or which had signs like "Strange Creatures" and "Lover's Walk." There was a strong smell of cinnamon and a sound to it, too, the unique mix of a grind-organ and a snake-charmer's pipe with the shouts and applause of dozens of people.

There was a crowd here, not just a few scattered groups. Many of them were children, and Grace wondered if she would see some of her class-mates if she looked more closely. She kept her head low as she walked and avoided meeting too many gazes, much as she usually did, but this time because she was still aware of an urgent need to find her family.

As she moved, she became aware that she was entering a thicker press of people, and after a little determination, she broke through a knot of older teenagers and saw a little stage half-covered in smoke. It was lucky that Grace had grown last year and was taller than a lot of the folks watching. She would have hated having to push through and apologise to everyone.

The stage was simple, and open to the air. Aside from the smoke, it had only a large box like a treasure-chest to the left-hand side. It suited the man who stood near it. He was probably a few years younger than Dad, wearing a billowing shirt made up of stripes of dark red and gold. His hair was long and honey-blond and tied back loosely behind his head, giving him the look of a swordsman or maybe a pirate from a bygone age.

As Grace watched, he held up his hand, and into it flew a cluster of purple globes of light, which hovered over each of his fingers and then started to spin around until they blurred together and became a seamless circle. And then he clicked the fingers of his other hand and a sparkling mist of moving orange lights sprang into life.

He moved his hands together until the mist and the spinning disc were touching, and then they flowed over and around each other until he had made a crown of orange flecked with points of purple, which he lifted and then lowered onto his head.

She made a few attempts to scan the crowd for Dad's mop of hair, but found herself watching instead, entranced. She knew there were tricks to all these shows, but she couldn't see what they were here. The lights seemed to dance over his hands, and there was a brilliant pleasure on his face that gave the whole effect even more magic than it might have had.

It was usually frustrating to Grace that she could see through trickery so easily. Her want for things to be true couldn't stop her from understanding the tricks and catches behind everything, whether it was an illusionist or a card-trickster. She was too much her father's daughter, no matter how much she wanted to believe.

But here she couldn't see any catches at all. Her eyes strained to catch sight of lasers used to create those points of light, and she squinted to see whether the smoke went higher up than they were being led to believe and was being used to bounce light off. She had seen magicians use that trick before. But the man himself was hazy only up to his knees, and then showed up sharply in the spotlight which was on him. So there was no smoke there. What, then? What was there to create those lights?

The crown became a sword, and then lightning, and then a dazzling ray of sunlight. Light of every colour and shape was thrown around the stage by the piratical man, and after a few minutes by a little blonde girl of about the twins' age who came to assist him. She made flowers and birds; he made rings of light which looked solid and moved them up and down over and around her, and then flung one out into the front row of the audience to sink over a startled spectator.