The woman approached the pavilion anxiously. “Hello?” she called.
A moment later a young woman in a white gown came out of the pavilion. Her feet were bare and her pale blonde hair was thrown carelessly over one shoulder. She was smiling and carrying a wooden tray. “Hungry?” she asked in a friendly voice.
“Yes,” said the woman.
“My name is Maryam. I’ve been waiting for you. I’m sorry, all I’ve got is bread and fresh milk.” She poured from a silver pitcher into a silver goblet.
“Thanks.” The woman ate and drank greedily.
Maryam shaded her eyes with one hand. “Are you going to the fair?”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t know about any fair.”
Maryam laughed. “Everybody goes to the fair. Come on, I’ll take you.”
The woman waited while Maryam disappeared into the pavilion again with the breakfast things. She came back out a moment later. “We’re all set now,” she said gaily. “We can get to know each other while we walk.”
They continued around the lake until the woman saw a scattering of large, peaked tents of striped canvas, all with colorful pennants snapping in the breeze. She heard many people laughing and shouting; and the sound of axes biting wood, and metal ringing on metal. She could smell bread baking, and cinnamon buns, and lamb roasting on spits turning slowly over glowing coals. Her mouth began to water and she felt her excitement growing despite herself.
“I don’t have any money to spend,” she said.
“Money?” Maryam asked, laughing. “What is money?”
The woman spent the afternoon going from tent to tent, seeing the strange exhibits and miraculous entertainments. She sampled exotic foods and drank concoctions of unknown liquors. Now and then she remembered to be afraid. She looked over her shoulder, wondering when the pleasant face of this fantasy would fall away. “Marîd,” she called, “what are you doing?”
“Who are you calling?” asked Maryam.
“I’m not sure,” said the woman.
Maryam laughed, “hook over here,” she said, pulling on the woman’s sleeve, showing her a booth where a heavily muscled woman was shaping a disturbing collage from the claws, teeth, and eyes of lizards.
They listened to children playing strange music on instruments made from the carcasses of small animals, and then they watched several old women spin their own white hair into thread, and then weave it into napkins and scarves.
One of the toothless hags leered at Maryam and the woman. “Take,” she said in a gravelly voice.
“Thank you, grandmother,” said Maryam. She selected a pair of human-hair handkerchiefs.
The hours wore on, and at last the sun began to set. The moon rose as full as yestereve. “Is this going to go on all night?” the woman asked.
“All night and all day tomorrow,” said Maryam. “Forever.”
The woman shuddered.
From that moment she couldn’t shake a growing dread, a sense that she’d been lured to this place and abandoned. She remembered nothing of who she’d been before she’d awakened beside the lake, but she felt she’d been horribly tricked. She prayed to someone called Marîd. She wondered if that was God.
“Marîd,” she murmured fearfully, “I wish you’d just end this already.”
But Audran was not ready to end it. He watched as the woman and Maryam grew sleepy and found a large tent filled with comfortable cushions and sheets of satin and fine linen. They laid themselves down and slept.
In the morning the woman arose, dismayed to be still trapped at the eternal fair. Maryam found them a good breakfast of sausage, fried bread, broiled tomatoes, and hot tea. Maryam’s enthusiasm was undiminished, and she led the woman toward still more disquieting entertainments. The woman, however, felt only a crazily mounting dread.
“You’ve had me here for two days, Marîd,” she pleaded. “Please kill me and let me go.” Audran gave her no sign, no answer.
They passed the third day examining one dismaying thing after another: teenage girls who seemed to have living roses in place of breasts; a candle maker whose wares would not provide light in the presence of an infidel; staged combat between a blind man and two maddened dragons; a family hammering together a scale model of the fair out of iron, a project that had occupied them for generations and that might never be completed; a cage of crickets that had been taught to chirp the Shahada, the Islamic testament of faith.
The afternoon passed, and once again night began to fall. All through the fair, men jammed blazing torches into iron sconces on tall poles. Still Maryam led the woman from tent to tent, but the woman no longer enjoyed the spectacles. She was filled with a sense of impending catastrophe. She felt an urgent need to escape, but she knew she couldn’t even find her way out of the infinite fairgrounds.
And then a shrill, buzzing alarm sounded. “What’s that?” she asked, startled. All around her, people had begun to flee.
“Yallahl” cried Maryam, her face stricken with horror. “Run! Run and save your life!”
“What is it?” the woman shouted. “Tell me what it is!”
Maryam had collapsed to the ground, weeping and moaning. “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful,” she muttered over and over again. The woman could get nothing more sensible from her.
The woman left her there and followed the stream of terrified people as they ran among the tents. And then the woman saw them: Two immense giants, impossibly huge, hundreds of feet tall, crushing the landscape as they came nearer. They waded among the distant mountains, and then the shocks from their jolting footsteps began to chum the water in the lake. The ground heaved as they came nearer. The woman raised a hand to her breast, then staggered backward a few steps.
One of the giants turned his head slowly and looked straight at her. He was horribly ugly, with a great scar across one empty eye socket and a mouthful of rotten, snaggled fangs. He lifted an arm and pointed to her.
“No,” she said, her voice hoarse with fear, “not me!” She wanted to run but she couldn’t move. The giant stooped toward her, fierce and glowering. He bent to capture her in his enormous hand.
“Marîd!” the woman screamed. “Please!” Nothing happened. The giant’s fist began to close around her.
The woman tried to reach up and unplug the moddy link, but her arms were frozen. She wouldn’t escape that easily. The woman shrieked as she realized she couldn’t even jack out.
The disfigured giant lifted her off the ground and drew her close to his single eye. His horrid grin spread and he laughed at her terror. His stinking breath sickened the woman. She struggled again to lift her hands, to pull the moddy link free. Her arms were held fast. She screamed and screamed, and then at last she fainted.
My eyes were bleary for a moment, and I could hear Chiri panting for breath beside me. I didn’t think she’d be so upset. After all, it was only a Transpex game, and it wasn’t the first time she’d ever played. She knew what to expect.