The Midway Goes Still

The horse facing the wall.

The keeper came to them in white gloves, carrying a silver flute and the only key to the gate. “Bonsoir, mes petits.” He spoke gently, the way grown-ups do when they have already decided what a child should feel. He told the girl she would be safer on the horse turned toward the wall. He told the boy that she had asked to ride alone.

At first he took almost nothing. A penny. The smell of apples. Which direction the gate had been. Then he took the moment they had made their promise and put a different memory in its place. The girl remembered the boy laughing when she was afraid. The boy remembered her saying she wished he had never come. Neither memory had happened, but each one hurt exactly as though it had.

The girl’s horse faced peeling plaster. Its painted mane was damp beneath her fingers. She drew her blue coat tighter around her, feeling for the little tear at its cuff. Beyond the rails, a pale, riderless horse waited in the mist. From the other side of the wall she heard the boy calling; then his voice said, “I don’t know her.” She knew voices could be made to lie here. It did not stop those words from hurting.

On the next circuit the boy saw her blue coat hanging from an empty saddle. The keeper said she had left. But one turn later he caught sight of her across the boards, still wearing it, frightened and searching for him. When he looked back, the empty coat was there again. He touched his own sleeve to make sure it was real. Then the black horse passed, and his fingers found the knot on its blue rein. He could not recall who tied it. He knew only that someone had meant him to find it.

“Why do I feel sorry for something I can’t remember doing?”

The keeper had not needed to move them apart. He had only shown each child a different version of the other.

A mouth full of borrowed words.

The flute played five notes, paused, and began again. After enough turns, the children could no longer tell where the keeper’s voice ended and their own thoughts began. Above the manège, the lamps drifted loose from their wires like wandering feux follets. On the keeper’s table stood two gilded horses and a bright ribbon—his beautiful imitation of the blue rein. The girl could not say why it looked wrong. The keeper had a photograph tucked inside his coat, worn soft at the corners. Whenever the music neared its end, he touched it as though afraid the picture might disappear.

He placed a ticket in the boy’s palm. The boy tried to say, “Let me out.” His mouth said, “Thank you for having me.” The words arrived in his own voice, smooth and cheerful. He bit the inside of his cheek to stop them. The metallic taste was the first thing he had felt that the Puppeteer had not given him.

The girl was taught to wave to the audience every time she passed. At first her arm rose before she wanted it to. She smiled while tears ran into her collar. Then she held both hands tightly around the brass pole and refused. The organ faltered for a single beat. On the next circuit she found two faint scratches beneath a painted daisy. She could not remember making them, but she knew the shape of each mark: one for herself, one for someone she would not abandon.

She could not remember the boy’s face. He could not remember the sound of her laugh. But whenever the carousel passed the wall, both felt the same sudden grief. He folded the false ticket until the paper split. In its centre, beneath the new words, the old stamp remained: ADMIT TWO.

“If I wanted to stay, why do you keep the key?”

In the spotted mirror, his smile lingered a moment after his mouth had gone still. He lifted the flute before either child could ask what was in the photograph.

The blue rein remembers.

Beyond the painted horses stood the black horse with the blue rein. The girl saw a small knot worked into its leather, the thread she had pulled from her coat before the flute began. Faces, names and promises could be rearranged. The black horse remained black. The rein remained blue. And the knot had not moved. The Puppeteer could change what they remembered, but not what their hands had done.

She caught the blue rein. The boards tilted beneath her, and for a moment she was back at the beginning: two pennies in her palm, a boy who could admit he was frightened only after she had said it first. She remembered choosing the white daisy horse and seeing him climb onto the black one beside it. What came back was not his name or even his face. It was the relief of not being afraid alone.

Across the turning platform, the boy heard her call. The name forming in his mouth felt borrowed, so he swallowed it. She raised one hand, palm open, as she had when she offered to share her pennies. He did not remember those pennies. He remembered instead what it felt like to be less afraid beside her. He reached back, too late, and the carousel carried them apart again.

“Reste avec moi,” he called—the French words he had learned under the fair’s lamps. Stay with me. She answered with the Gaelic her grandmother had spoken in the kitchen: “Fuirich còmhla rium.” Stay with me. They could not reach each other yet. But the two languages crossed the space the Puppeteer had built between them.

“You don’t have to remember my name. Remember that I was here.”

The blue rein loosened. For the first time in all those turns, the keeper played only four notes.

When the midway went still.

The fifth note would not come. The carousel slowed enough for them to hear what lay beyond the music: rain in the grass, an owl beyond the fence, and two frightened breaths.

The boy found the girl at the edge of the platform. He knew he had come a long way to reach her, but her name was gone. She looked at him and felt an ache so fierce she gripped the brass pole to stay standing. She could not remember what he had been to her. She was frightened by how much she wanted him not to leave.

He noticed how she folded the torn cuff of her blue coat into her fist. She noticed he was standing very straight, as if pretending to be braver than he felt. Neither remembered the first day of the fair. Yet both recognized the other’s small way of being afraid.

She opened her palm. Two pennies. From his pocket he unfolded a ticket, ripped down the middle but still stamped ADMIT TWO. She gave him one penny. Their hands touched, and tears came before either understood why.

“What if I was cruel to you?” she whispered. “I can’t remember.” The boy shook his head. “Neither can I. But someone wanted us to believe it.” She put her hand over his. Even if the names never came back, she did not want to lose him twice.

Together they faced the keeper. They named the lies as best they could, even when their voices shook. Beneath the boards, the black water struck the wood. Gold leaf peeled from the horses like dead skin. The gate appeared through the rain, only a few steps away. She was afraid. This time she said so. “Me too,” the boy answered.

The keeper stepped between them and the gate. He did not raise his voice. He looked at them as though their leaving would hurt him more than anything he had done. “I kept the lights on,” he said. “Here, no one has to go away.” He held out the key like a kindness. The girl looked at the lock instead.

“You can’t call it play when I can’t get off. You can’t call it love when you lock the gate.”

The keeper found his fifth note. The gate folded into darkness. Two pennies warmed in the girl’s palm. She was on the white horse with painted daisies again. Beneath one daisy were two faint scratches. She could not remember making them.

Beside her stood the black horse. Its blue rein hung loose, a small knot still tied in the leather. The boy studied it as if it had been waiting a very long time for him. “Is this one taken?” he asked. She did not know why her throat tightened. She held the rein steady while he climbed on.

Far beneath their feet, the water held its breath. The music began again.