That night I had no nightmares and heard no strange sounds, thankfully. I listened to the laughter of young men and women ringing through the fields at dawn. It was such a pure, joyous sound that I couldn’t help but relish it, even with my eyes still closed. There was a chill in the bedroom, but it wasn’t completely silent. Again, I heard the familiar calm breathing of my sister beside me. Low murmurs echoed from behind the door. Drowsily, I turned and stared at the wooden door in anticipation.

  Eventually, it did burst open, and in came Zack with loud cheers and summons. A laugh fell off my lips when Zoya covered us both with the blankets and groaned to be left alone. But Zack climbed onto the bed and made her scream as he scooped us both into a tight hug, blanket and all. Get up, he laughed, the King’s tents are already here.

  That would explain the laughter and commotion I heard from outside. While I hugged a jovial Zack and an annoyed Zoya, and heard the excited muttering of my parents next door, I thought this place had turned oddly crowded overnight. Not necessarily a bad thing. Who the hell were all these people, though?

  There was no time to question any of it: they threw me into chores and preparations, most of them involving manual work. The unnatural part of it was that I was supposed to perform it with unbridled joy. I was the most scared of what would befall me if someone caught me not smiling while carrying heavy baskets and setting candles in order, so I was grinning as hard as I could. Just like everyone else in this happy household.

  Daylight diminishes rapidly when you turn into a labor donkey. Just when I was finally finished with everything, my father announced I was to carry two of the heaviest and largest turnip lanterns we had prepared as gifts. Nothing to be done about it, I thought as I shared a hearty laugh with him. Nevermind that my soul was bleeding from all this work.

  Despite my mother’s thorough insistence that I wear a mask of tassels, trims, and feathers like the rest of my family, I adamantly declined. My decline was only half-respected as she eventually sewed in a color-threaded ruffle to both my sleeves and collar to add at least some festivity to my plain gray-blue dress. This soured my mood significantly. If I had looked like a dowdy old maid in that dress before, now I looked like a disheveled chicken.

  Keep smiling, I thought as I grabbed my overly large carved turnips and marched on into the sunset with my siblings. Fortunately, the event was on the outskirts of the village nearby and I was glad I wouldn’t have to carry my heavy load for ages. One thing made me slightly uneasy, though. Those fields were in bothersome closeness to the shadow-filled woods. They were about a hundred yards away from the festivities.

  In any case, even from a distance, the view was spectacular. As the last fiery sunlight was dying in the skies, the villagers fixed pathways and rings of lanterns, both iron-made and of candle-carrying hard vegetables. More light also came from the dozens of blazing bonfires, with long spits for the hog roasts scattered haphazardly along the way.

  Men and women, looped hand in hand and wearing a variety of peculiar costumes and masks, danced with abandon already. Musicians strung high-thrumming dance tunes with flutes and drums at every small gathering and every bonfire, and the melodies only grew louder and cheerier the further we strode into the fair. Mother and father separated from us, expressing their desire to greet a family friend in another part of the fair altogether.

  “Come on, let’s go present our gifts,” Zoya prompted me. I hadn’t realized my pace had slowed down to take in my surroundings. They were out of a child’s dream.

  Zoya’s basket was full of our finest and tiniest munchkins, ambercups, and blue prince squash, which together with the giant turnip and pumpkin lanterns my brother and I carried made up our gifts for the King. His tents—all of them the color of diluted wine—towered with pointed dark silhouettes in the twilight, and the flickering lanterns sent metallic glints over tall fully armored figures around each: his heavily armed guards, I assumed.

  A loud group of adolescent boys and girls, as well as younger children, had gathered on the eastern side of the field toward the village, where I glimpsed displays of falconry and fire acrobatics. And further on, young men queued for a yet-to-start archery competition.

  The largest crowd was up ahead. Soon another line emerged: to present gifts to the Carnival King. There was a wooden structure, a wide square dais lit up by four high, flaring torches at each corner, where people climbed on and handed over their gifts to the King’s servants to take away.

  The King was sitting at a somewhat simple wooden chair, though at a second glance I found it was embellished and relieved with autumnal imagery.

  His appearance was quite simple too, if not funny. He wore warm orange-tinted breeches and a bronze-buttoned vest over a white shirt. Over his shoulders was an extremely light cloak of the same earthly color, with the unexpected addition of a reddish frill at the collar. His face was bare of any mask; however, a ridiculous hat sat on top of his head. Somehow, I had expected a king would have a crown, not a hat. Not a hat like that one. It was in the shape of a squashed cone, embarrassingly orange, and with a tiny, distasteful decoration of autumn leaves at the front.

  “That’s the King?” I snorted into a laugh once we lined up behind the other gift-bearing villagers. “The silly dunce with the ugly hat over there?”

  Several women from the near crowd turned to find the source of these words and scowled aggressively. Both my siblings blinked at me: Zoya paled and Zack blushed.

  “This is… a bit rude,” my sister chuckled awkwardly. “Don’t you think?”

  “Not rude,” I scoffed. “Just the truth. Everyone here is a coward for not admitting it.”

  That hat was just not it.

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  Zack squinted at me, “What is up with you? The ever gracious and benevolent patron of our Carnival deserves none of that.”

  I didn’t know what was up with me, I thought as I grinned and shrugged at my brother. I hadn’t the slightest idea. All I knew was that my back hurt from toting those turnips from the cottage to here, and that something bothered me viscerally when I laid eyes on that person.

  There was nothing in his youngish, forgettable, plain face or stupid choice of clothes to rouse any particular feeling in me, yet I couldn’t bottle it up. Bitterness coiled in my heart and spite rose to my tongue just at the mere sight of him from a distance.

  A villager must have said something as the crowd grew quieter with uncertainty and the late afternoon silence broke with the bright, rippling laughter of the Carnival King. My attention snapped back to him, eyeing him carefully from the precipices between the shoulders and heads of the people. He gestured energetically to the people as if assuring them they needn’t feel bad for something, and then nodded with deep gratitude.

  By the time our turn came, I decided that keeping my mouth shut and avoiding a collision would do me good during this trial. And I was right. Once I put down the turnip lanterns on the dais, I withdrew into the crowd and let my brother talk and present the gifts, while Zoya handed them over one by one and bowed in respect. With how they reacted to my words before, I felt I saved them a lot of trouble by not tagging along.

  The King’s eyes flickered to me only once as my siblings gave their offerings and received words from him. Blessings, likely. I couldn’t hear from that distance, standing at the foot of the dais’ stairs and waiting for them to rejoin me.

  The presentation prolonged; I heaved a sigh, folding hands over my chest. Curtly, I moved to the side of the dais, away from the throng, and waited. The manservant who carried off the gifts could barely lift one of the turnip-lanterns on his own. I gritted my teeth when my brother offered help.

  This was taking too long. I laid eyes on the ruffles that my mother sewed to my sleeves. In a fit of frustration, I ripped them off and then yanked the one at my collar too, and tossed them on the ground. After another glance, I saw Zack and Zoya retreat to the other side of the dais, helping the servant carry off the gifts to the gift pile. As I waited impatiently, a little boy approached me and tugged at my sleeve.

  “What do you want?” I asked with unfeigned annoyance.

  “The King wants to know why you’re not joining the festivities,” the boy told me. I blinked at him. Why would the King assume I was not joining the festivities? I had just arrived. Apart from my thunderous expression, ripping up elements from my costume, and sitting apart from everyone like a pouting child, I never indicated my opinion on those festivities.

  The boy pointed at the dais. The King was looking our way with ponderous expectation. Assuming he had watched my angry gesticulations just now, I frowned.

  Half-shoving my way through the crowd, I marched up the stairs, pulling my skirts up so as not to trip, and neared the King with my chin up high. “The boy told me you wish to know why I’m not enjoying myself,” I said, and he nodded in his turn. “Can I be blunt?”

  The curious flicker in his eyes flared. It animated his face and gave life to his bland features. Something glimmered underneath his shirt when he straightened up a bit.

  “Please.”

  This voice… for a moment I went still, staring at him. Then I shook off the strange sensation that laved over me. “It bothers me deeply that I should celebrate for no reason at all, my king. If there was any, I beg of you to disclose it. Only madmen make merry over nothing.”

  “Why, you’re celebrating me!” he grinned widely. I narrowed eyes at him. Whatever sensation had laved over me before disappeared. What was he so happy for?

  “What is there to celebrate about you?” I put hands on my hips. “And why should I celebrate it every week? Nearly broke my back carrying those fat turnips all the way from home and you never had a second look at them.”

  He laughed a little. “Well, I am pleasing to the eye and the ear. And my presence brings joy everywhere I go.”

  “You killed any joy I had the moment I glimpsed that coned hat.” He was not pleasing to the eye. Not my eye, at least. Or my ear. Neither of my ears. I didn’t know why I had this frustration building inside me. Just looking at him felt like anger. In my periphery, I noticed some entertainers had stopped dancing or conversing and were now focused on the interaction between me and the King. My siblings, too, had joined the crowd: I saw their faces in wide-eyed confusion. That confession had had an openly aggressive edge to it. “And how long am I supposed to celebrate you?”

  He made an open hand gesture. “It’s called the Eternal Carnival, sweetheart.”

  Providence save me and saints keep me. There was a name for an eternity of excessive torture and it wasn’t carnival. It was hell. “And who made you so important, again?” I blurted. “I mean…” Sweetheart? “Apologies, have we met before?”

  “Yes… Sarai,” he said. “We meet every week and I love your fat turnips. You have the loveliest hair, though I find your face somewhat wanting—”

  I pointed at him. “I will take part in the festivities and celebrate you if… you give me whatever hangs on your neck in return.”

  His smile faded a little as he noted the intense looks people gave us, and the sudden quiet that settled in the surrounding open. The crowd had bated its breath to listen. “Are you challenging me, carrier of turnips?”

  “Yes,” I announced, boldly. “I want your necklace and whatever it belongs with. They told me it is your most valuable possession.”

  After a few blinks, he languidly slid the necklace from under his shirt, and the gold of the key between his fingers glinted in the evening's firelight. It looked quite small and ordinary in his hand; like a key for a chest or a door lock. “What kind of idiot would carry his most valuable possession hanging around his neck for all to see?” he asked out loud, laughing nervously, with an expression of panic.

  I gave him a pointed look. “The exact kind as one who wears coned hats, methinks.”

  There was a group-gasp. A man whom I recognized as the village’s blacksmith shouted, “How dare you insult the King of the Carnival?”

  He lifted a hand to stop the commotion before it had gathered force, with a dignified motion. After the thick pause a shadow passed over his features, “If I give you that and you use it, the Carnival will end.”

  I stilled, and so did everyone else. So there was meaning behind it, and an end to it. The blacksmith was right; the key had something crucial to do with the Carnival. Brushing the thought off, I said, “Then you only have to challenge me to something impossible for me to win.”

  “A challenge of riddles,” he suggested, after giving it a thought. “I shall offer you three of mine and you shall give me three in turn. Whoever guesses all successfully is the winner. If we are even, we will keep going until one loses.” The thought ran through my mind before he said it out loud, “And if you lose, you will participate in the Carnival forever.”

  “Fair enough.” My voice was confident, though I still had the knot in my stomach.

  “No one has ever lost against me,” he warned. Then he leaned back in the chair, gesturing at me to begin.