The Conjurer's Riddle

by Andrea Cremer

  Rapid and heavy footfalls at her back startled Charlotte from her speculations. She pivoted, bracing herself for a possible attack, but it was Scoff who ran toward her.

  “Charlotte!” He gasped, winded and red-faced.

  She felt a sudden, bone-deep cold. “Where’s Pip?”

  Scoff’s bleak face confirmed her fear. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure she’s in the carnival, but I lost her. She was with me when I fell into conversation with a purveyor of rare herbs and minerals, but she must have wandered off at some point because the next time I looked she was gone.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Charlotte said, but she worried for Pip. Alone in a strange place as the night wore on, Pip would make a likely target for cutpurses or worse.

  “I did try to find her.” His words rattled out. “But there were so many people. I thought . . . maybe I should have kept looking . . . I just . . .”

  Charlotte took his arm and set a swift pace back to the carnival. “You were right to come find me. Two of us will find her more easily and more quickly than one.”

  “I hope so. Hephaestus’s hammer—I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to her. Never.”

  “It will only do harm to think that way,” Charlotte said. “Keep your mind on finding her and nothing else.”

  When they’d passed under the banner, Charlotte had to confront the nightmare it would be to search for a girl amid the chaos of the carnival. People swarmed around them, visitors and performers, barkers and observers. The crowd was both blinding and ever-changing. It was difficult not to be overwhelmed.

  Trying to focus on reasonable methods for solving this problem, Charlotte asked Scoff, “Where was this apothecary you met?”

  “This way.” Scoff pulled Charlotte into the flow of bodies that was sometimes progressing but also revealed a penchant for stopping abruptly without warning or surging forward as if toward an unseen prize.

  Their effort to reach the apothecary’s stall involved so many stops and starts that when Scoff drew Charlotte to the side of the path through the carnival, she wasn’t sure how far they’d gone.

  The stall’s owner wore a long black robe and a leather sash, from which hung a dozen or more stoppered glass vials. Liquids of various shades sloshed within a few of them, bits of flora could be found in others, and two seemed to have living occupants of the insect variety.

  “The gentleman returns.” The apothecary steepled his fingers at his chest and bowed to Scoff. “What will it be? You seemed quite intent on the dried eel bladder. Or perhaps your choice has since shifted to gravestone moss? Or powdered amethyst?”

  “I’m afraid I’m still looking for the girl who was with me,” Scoff told him. “You haven’t seen her, by chance?”

  Disappointment flashed across the man’s face at the absence of a sale. “No green-haired girls have visited the stall since we last spoke. Green-eyed, yes, but not green haired.”

  Rueful, Scoff looked to Charlotte. “What should we do?”

  Charlotte’s gaze swept over the throng of people moving past them. “The path through the carnival is always curving. I think it must be a circle.”

  Turning her attention to the apothecary, she asked, “Does the path form a circle that rings the carnival?”

  “More or less.” The man’s disappointment had become irritation. “If you aren’t serious alchemists in need of reagents, then please stop blocking access to my wares.”

  Charlotte ignored his scowl, but said to Scoff, “Go back the way we came, but continue. Follow the path until you end up back here again. I’ll do the same from the opposite direction. It may take a few rounds, but eventually we’ll spot Pip.”

  “Move along!” The apothecary’s eyes had gone beady.

  Charlotte clasped Scoff’s hand, squeezing his fingers. “Good luck.”

  Scoff nodded and moved off in the direction of the carnival entrance. Charlotte set out to follow the counterclockwise route, happy to leave the muttering apothecary behind.

  While it did have a few similarities to the Tinkers’ Faire of the Floating City, the River Carnival bore obvious markers of its itinerant existence. Once-bright pennants had faded into lackluster hues, sorrowful with memories of glorious days past. Peeling and chipped paint made many signs illegible. Booths draped with heavy cloth showed crooked stitching of hasty repair, if not slashes and gaps that begged for attention but suffered only neglect. Yet the grittier aspects of the River Carnival couldn’t smother its allure. Where the Tinkers’ Faire seduced New York’s elite from their gilded lofts to partake in scandalous entertainments sought by the lower classes, this caravan of attractions strived to amaze its visitors rather than pander to them. The carnival grounds were charged with excitement as children shrieked and dashed between attractions. Sweethearts strolled among the booths, whispering to each other, taking little note of the activity around them while simultaneously twinning their own burgeoning passion with the evocative setting.

  Had Charlotte sought distraction, the flash and sparkle of lights joined with the clashing tunes of so many singers and players offered an endless supply. But for seeking out a lost lamb, the River Carnival presented only obstacles. Flames leapt into the air to her right as a woman spat a fiery plume from her mouth. Jugglers appeared at every turn, tossing rings, daggers, torches. A pair of contortionists blocked Charlotte’s path, stopping her hunt altogether when they trapped her in a cage built from their own twisting bodies. Only when a gathered crowd began to cheer and toss coins was she able to escape.

  Her ears rang with the tinkling bells that hung from the silken garb of women who danced while live snakes twisted up their ankles and wrists. A chorus of pan flutes enveloped her as a dozen “fauns” traipsed past, followed by a giggling chorus of winged fairies. On the heels of the fairies came a herd of bleating goats that could have belonged to the strange parade, or might simply have gotten away from their herder.

  As Charlotte drew deeper into the carnival, far from the glare of its sparking entryway, its attractions took on a more sinister cast. A small train of wagons advertised as “Forbidden Fruit” allowed entry only to men and promised “delights so strange and tantalizing you risk madness.” A booth whose occupant’s face was hidden by a cowled robe claimed to offer “exotic herbs and rare artifacts needed for dark magicks.”

  Passing too close, Charlotte gasped when the merchant seized her arm.

  “A virgin’s tooth and the wings of a queen bee steeped in rosewater will keep your lover faithful, pretty girl,” his voice rasped. “Lucky for you, I have all three.”

  Charlotte wrenched free and bolted away. She heard the man’s croaking laughter chase after her. It was so close, Charlotte looked over her shoulder to be certain he wasn’t actually running her down. She saw only other spectators and no sign of the dark magician.

  Though her steps slowed, Charlotte’s pulse insisted on galloping through her veins. She weaved through laughing and gasping spectators, searching for any sign of Pip. It was hard to believe her efforts were anything other than futile. Between the low light, the crowds, and the erratic demands on her senses, Charlotte didn’t know how she’d find any green-haired girl in this place, let alone the one she sought.

  She’d reached a grand pavilion that she decided must mark the far boundary of the carnival grounds. A sign outside the massive tent, swathed in emerald green, proclaimed that it housed the “Garden of Mirrors” that was the River Carnival’s only “permanent” and “ever popular” attraction.

  “Care to have a look about, my dear?” The woman querying Charlotte was leaning on a staff of twisted wood. Her silver hair gleamed like moonbeams and her pupils were so large and dark that the entirety of her eyes appeared black.

  Fighting off a shiver that she attributed to ragged nerves rather than reason, Charlotte said, “I’m afraid I’m looking for someone.”

&nb
sp; “Are you, now?” The woman regarded Charlotte with curiosity. She jabbed the end of her staff at the pavilion. “Could be that someone is inside.”

  Charlotte ground her teeth. She didn’t want to be swindled, but there was the chance that Pip had gotten into the pavilion and couldn’t find her way out. Even the idea of the Garden of Mirrors made her a bit dizzy.

  “She’s in her thirteenth year and she has green hair,” Charlotte told the woman. “Have you seen her?”

  “Green hair, eh?” She closed her eyes, ruminating on the statement. When she opened them, they seemed to be even blacker than before. “I did see a green-haired girl. She went in. I don’t know if she came out. I went for a cup of tea about an hour ago. Might be she came out while I was off.”

  “Can I ask whoever watched the entrance when you were gone?” Charlotte said, her hope flaring.

  The woman shook her head. The long earrings that dangled from her lobes rattled, drawing Charlotte’s notice. They were made of shell or bone. Charlotte wanted to shiver again.

  “That boy’s away for the night,” the woman said, in answer to Charlotte’s request. “You can wait here as long as you like to see if she comes out, or you can go in to look for her.”

  Charlotte didn’t like either option, but she fished a coin from her pocket. Searching for Pip was preferable to standing around and hoping she’d turn up.

  “Many blessings on you, dearie,” the woman said as she accepted the coin. “Hope you find your green-haired girl.”

  With a nod, Charlotte left the woman and ducked into the pavilion. Though she hadn’t expected otherwise, Charlotte was nonetheless disheartened by the dim light within. Negotiating twisting rows of endless, ever-changing reflections would not be easy even in well-lit environs. More disconcerting still, the low light was in constant motion. Tall brass candelabras boasted long branches that rose and fell, all the while spinning very slowly like a wheel on its axis.

  The candle-bearing trees weren’t the only nod to the attraction’s billing as a garden. The entrance to what Charlotte felt certain would be a maze of mirrors was marked by a wrought-iron arbor covered with slender vines of silver. Delicate crystal flowers bloomed along the vines, casting tiny rainbows on the ground whenever the moving candlelight struck their petals.

  Under different circumstances, Charlotte might have found the effect whimsical and evocative, but at this late hour, bound by the tension of her search, the dance of light seemed sinister, taunting her as she passed beneath the arch. Beyond the arbor, spinning candelabras continued to light the way. At its outset, the garden was composed of tall mirrors etched with roses and lilies, ferns, and songbirds in flight. Adding to the effect were verdant, living vines of ivy climbing along the glass, interweaving with its twin of wrought iron—though the iron vines bore sharp thorns. At Charlotte’s feet, spring moss of deep jade lined the path.

  Charlotte wondered about the sign’s claim that this garden was “ever popular,” given that she seemed to be the only fairgoer within the pavilion. So quiet was the garden of glass and iron that Charlotte could hear candle flames sipping at the air, sometimes choking and sputtering as their short lives burned away. Her own steps seemed obscenely loud as she moved past mirror after mirror.

  Then, suddenly, there was no going forward. Directly ahead of Charlotte was a mirror, its surface obscured by green and black vines, blocking her way. She turned to her right and her left, each time confronting her own puzzled face as it gazed back at her. She looked back and could still see, barely, the arbor that marked the beginning of the garden. Placing her hands on the mirrors, Charlotte walked to each corner of the dead end, thinking there must be some way out that had been hidden by the mirrors’ tricks. But both sides of the path proved solid, impassable.

  Biting back her frustration, Charlotte again looked at the mirror that blocked her path. Halfway down the right side of the glass, an iron leaf protruded that was much larger than its peers. Charlotte assessed the mirror once more and noticed that unlike the other mirrors, the thorned, iron vines framed this one entirely. She grasped the protruding leaf and turned her wrist. There was a loud click and the mirror swung back, revealing its true identity—a door.

  Clever, Charlotte thought with a grimace. She didn’t want to pass the rest of the night discovering all the “clever” features of this garden.

  She left the door open and proceeded along the path. Only a short distance ahead the path split. To Charlotte’s right, the path curved and the mirrors on either side continued to mimic the flora of a garden. On her left side the path was straight but the mirrors had changed. No longer ornamented by leaves, real or artificial, the glass stood unobscured. But the shape of the mirrors varied. Some were wide, some narrow. Others bulged or followed bizarre angles.

  Abandoning the trail of vines, Charlotte went to her left. Pip, she thought, would be excited by the different rather than comforted by the familiar.

  The odd mirrors swapped Charlotte’s identical reflections for absurd renderings of her form. She witnessed her body stretched, squashed, broken into pieces, blurred. The transformations became so alarming that Charlotte stumbled, falling forward into a mirror as the path took a hard right turn. Staring back at her was a grotesque caricature of her visage. Eyes bulging, mouth widened to the point that it might have gobbled up a pumpkin without bother. Charlotte pushed back from the mirror with a yelp, embarrassed by the fearful hammering of her heart.

  “Hello?” a small voice called. “Is someone there?”

  “Hello?” Charlotte stood very still. “Who’s that?”

  A sniffle, and then, “I’m lost.”

  “Pip?” Charlotte took a few steps. “Pip, is that you?”

  “Charlotte?” Pip sounded near, but Charlotte knew that the girl could be only a few feet away and yet impossible to reach except by the correct path through the maze.

  Charlotte’s heart was racing now with hope instead of fright. “It is me, Pip. Keep talking. I’ll try to find you, but I need you to lead me with your voice.”

  “I didn’t mean to get lost.” Pip’s voice hiccuped, she was still crying. “It’s just . . . oh, it’s so stupid now that I think back on it . . . but Charlotte . . .”

  “Just tell me, dear one,” Charlotte soothed. “I’ll be with you very soon.”

  “I thought I saw . . .” Pip sniffled. “I saw Rufus. I mean, I know it couldn’t have been Rufus, but it looked so much like him and before I even considered what I was doing I was following him. He went into this place and I thought I’d just peek in, try to catch him, and then run right back to Scoff. I knew where he was; I didn’t think I’d be more than a minute.”

  “That’s all right, Pip.” Charlotte listened, Pip’s mention of Rufus making her stomach twist with grief.

  “It was so pretty inside,” Pip continued, a bit of wonder creeping into her tone. “And then so strange. And I never found the boy. I know it wasn’t Rufus. I know it, but I . . .”

  Pip’s words drowned in a pitiful sob.

  Good, Charlotte thought, she did take the left path. With luck she’d soon reach the girl.

  “When I realized how silly I was being, I turned around. I didn’t think I’d gone so far as to forget the way back,” Pip said. “But when I tried to get out, I kept running into mirrors that blocked my way. I don’t know where I went wrong.”

  The path was making constant turns now, right, left, left, then right again. Charlotte wanted to hurry, but she feared that if rushed she might miss an obscured pathway. The path split again; three forks this time.

  “Pip, call out again.”

  “I’m here.” Pip’s voice now seemed to be behind her. “Charlotte, I’m so sorry. You must be so angry with me.”

  Careful to hide her disappointment at not having found the girl yet, Charlotte said, “I’m not angry, Pip. I need you to keep talking to me. Was there a
nything else at the carnival that you liked? What did you and Scoff see?”

  “Well . . . there was a snake that I think could have eaten me if it wanted. It was gigantic!”

  “What else?” Charlotte asked. The path to her right seemed to lead in the direction of Pip’s voice.

  “I found a tinker’s booth,” Pip said. “He had a rabbit that could wiggle its nose and do flips. It was funny but not nearly as clever as what Birch builds. A flipping rabbit doesn’t have much use, does it.”

  “No, I wouldn’t think it does.”

  Charlotte followed the path as it turned left. She stopped when there was no longer a path in front of her, but a large square space—a room of mirrors. There were openings in the other three walls of the room. Four paths in the maze ended here. Charlotte wondered if she might be at the very center of the garden.

  Above her, the pavilion’s fabric was gone, and in its place was a ceiling of mirrors. The myriad reflections overhead had a dizzying effect. Charlotte quickly pulled her gaze away, and even so, she swayed on her feet.

  “Charlotte!” In a corner to Charlotte’s right side, Pip hopped up and rushed to her.

  She wrapped Pip up in a hug. “Thank Athene.”

  “Do you know the way out?” Pip asked.

  “I can help you find the way out.” From the pathway on the right side of the room, a man appeared. He tipped his round, narrow-brimmed hat at them. “Always an honor to assist pretty ladies.”

  Whether it was the man’s tone, his slouching steps, or his sudden arrival, something about him made Charlotte’s nerves go taut with apprehension.

  “We’ll be fine on our own, thank you,” Charlotte told him. She put her arm around Pip’s shoulders and steered her around to return upon the path from which Charlotte had come.

  “A lady shouldn’t be without some protection,” a man said—a different man. “A lot of strange folk at the river crossing. Drifters. Unreliable types.”

  Charlotte looked over her shoulder. Two more men had joined the first.