An enormous plaster clown stood bowlegged at the entrance of the Travels-No-More Carnival. The colors of it's face and suit were chipped and faded to shades of brown and purple, and the arch of it's legs were gate through which visitors ere compelled to pass. The clown's smile was welcoming, but in a hungry sort of way.
Beyond was the flooded labyrinth of the Travels-No-More. Planks of wood lay over wide pools of muddy water between the remaining attractions - though "attractions" was hardly the word. Great machines that had once swayed and wheeled and swerved now lay rusting, their broken arms sprawled amid collapsed tents and decrepit booths. The place was full of lost things, and Kyle was one of those now.
To those that know him today, the Kyle of the past is a different person. For one thing he is older, and younger in some ways. Physically he is a man in his thirties, less attractive and with a slight paunch. He was wearing a trench coat and boots, and held his open umbrella close to ward off the rain that, for some reason, always seemed to be falling over this part of the Hedge.
He had gone no more than a few steps beyond the gate when the window of a nearby booth shot open. A man with a cigarette clenched in his teeth peered at him through a cloud of yellow smoke. He had a thick white mustache, stringy shoulder-length hair, and he wore an oilskin duster buttoned tight at his throat. From out of the Collar, angular black tattoos like the roots of an overturned tree spread up his leathery neck to his jawline.
"Tickets," he said.
Kyle approached the booth, and the man folded his hands in front of him. The same tattoos extended from under his sleeves and down to his knuckles.
"How much?" Kyle asked him.
"Exactly," he said.
"Exactly what?"
"It'll cost you."
"Yes, but how much?"
"That's right," the man said, disclosing a yellow grin. Instead of teeth, he had row after row of yellow fangs, like a cross between a shark and a snake.
Kyle walked along paths strewn with broken bottles and toys, feathers, illegible playbills. The old fairground pavilions along the midway were constructed to look like the heads of giant animals, their mouths agape to allow access to the exhibits installed in the domes of their skulls. A pig's snout was a tunnel into feted darkness, the eyes of a fish served as bulging windows, a cat's fangs were stalactites.
He passed them and the stalls set up between them, full of huddled goblins making furtive deals in the rain, coming to a causeway of wooden planks set on cinder blocks. Red drops dripped an unmethodical pattern on the wood before being washed away by the rain. Kyle tightened the bandage on his hand. The needle sharp teeth hurt, and he was worried that he was going to get an infection in the rain. His umbrella was gone, traded to a withered old hob with eight spider-like eyes for the clean bandages, and he hunched up his shoulders to try and keep the rain out.
He stepped off the plank and walked along a row of junk stalls and shooting galleries. Mechanical ducks were perched on rusted rails , punched through with holes from real bullets. The rain pattering on abandoned popcorn carts and unmoving carousels made for a melancholy kind of music. He had left the main market and entered the seedier parts of the Carnival. Hobs watched him as he passed, standing in tattered coats beneath the eaves of game booths or skulking in the shadows of of defunct rides, cooking breakfasts over open fires: scowling roustabouts with goat's feet, disgruntled clowns that needed no make up, acrobats that clicked and whirred like clockwork when they moved. They spoke together in whispers and guffaws or paced alone and spit. Kyle could smell the sausage frying, could see the smoke threading the rain.
He followed a path that lead him deeper and deeper into the carnival. The path cost him a great deal to learn, but the rewards were worth the cost.
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