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

The Fragile Tower Chapter 1 - The Midwinter Fair

"We've got to go, Dad! They've got rides and everything!"

"Well, I'm not sure..." Dad made a small effort at resistance, which melted immediately under one of Maggie's wide-eyed gazes. "Just a short trip, then. It's a school-night."

Her father strolled contentedly into the park behind his squealing younger children, and then turned to look at Grace.

"They're the most easily excited children in the country. You don't mind, do you?"

Grace smiled at him. "Not if I can have my fortune told."

She held out her hand, and he sighed as he took off his gloves and worked his wallet out of his pocket.

"Ten dollars do it?"

"Sure."

Grace was quickly lost amongst the stalls without minding too much. She could hear Maggie somewhere off ahead and in a different row, but also Dad's slightly-too-loud recitations of "Now you calm down, Missy," and "One thing at a time, Mags," which were really for everyone else's benefit.

Grace knew she'd be able to find them without much trouble, and ignored a little flicker of guilt when she thought about Ma.

"It's Dad's job to look after them," she muttered to herself, and wandered in search of a fortune-teller's tent.

She knew that Dad would want them home before Ma got back, so her time was limited, but still she found herself lingering amongst the many tents and stalls and displays. A fire-breather was shooting flames from his mouth which changed from yellow to red to purple to green in the air, pausing, and then breathing again, his bare chest and face and hairless head painted gold to match and reflect the colours in the fire. Behind him, an old woman sold toffee-apples from a stall which looked to be made all of red velvet, and beyond it a tiny carousel spun beautifully painted unicorns and dragons and lions around, with three little children clutching tightly on to them.

Moving towards the edge of the fair, where there were fewer people, Grace found a tent selling scarves and cloths of every imaginable colour. She paused to look into a gazebo under which a huge wheel span made up of tiny purple and black segments, on which a gold ball would bounce and eventually come to rest, either winning the visitors money or losing it for them. After that she moved on past a tent full of mirrors and a gold-painted lady juggler with hair almost as red as Maggie's who was spinning glittering beanbags into the air and catching them in her mouth and hands and with her feet.

Grace stopped after a little while to buy a cup of hot chocolate, which was breathtakingly expensive but also, when it came, the most delicious thing she could remember drinking. She stood sipping it, and then, seeing no sign of a fortune-teller, she asked the girl behind the counter whether there was one.

"She's the next row up. Opposite the light fountain," the girl told her, and nodded over to a gap which Grace thought would take her to the central row.

She wandered that way, smiling at a mime dressed in silver who was pretending to be crushed slowly downwards by something huge, and then passing between a sweet-stall and an old-fashioned shooting gallery where elaborate black-and-silver rifles were being fired enthusiastically, and almost soundlessly, at a mechanical flock of wheeling birds.

She couldn't remember seeing a fair this exotic and... well, clean before. But it was more than just clean. It was beautiful, with its lights and its fabric, and each stall seemed to match the next one. There were no thick cables visible, no mud where trailers had driven over the grass, and in fact, no trailers visible at all. Only the patchwork or velvet tents would have given the performers anywhere to live.