I looked up, the midday sun blazing through the light snowfall as it lit the scene ahead.
A row of booths stretched across the walkway. On the asphalt, multicolored painted arrows divided the crowd to funnel it through ticket booths. Each booth had been painted a garish primary color. Now that paint had peeled, leaving tiny speckled buildings, the Plexiglas scratched with hearts and obscenities.
Leering from the top of each booth was what had once been a clown head. But now, between the peeling paint and the vandalism, that row of grinning clowns looked like an army of escapees from a leper colony.
"Oh! It's Funland!" I said. "My dad brought me here once when I was little. It was terrible." I called, "Sorry!" as if to ghosts of employees past. "It was a cute little amusement park, just not really..."
"Your speed?" Gabriel said.
"Exactly."
My Cwn Annwn blood means I have a need for speed. As a child, I'd snuck onto grown-up rides with heeled boots. If I still came up short, most operators ignored it, figuring if I was with my father, it was his call. Dad had indulged me in this, as he indulged all my passions. If roller coasters fed some unfathomable need in my soul, then roller coasters I would have. Funland, though, had been sadly bereft of thrills.
"There's only one coaster," I said. "A wild mouse, with a ridiculous height restriction. But it was-- Oh, there it is! See it?"
We could make out the top of the tracks over the buildings.
"It's abandoned," Gabriel said.
"Hmm?"
"The park. It's abandoned."
"Uh, yeah," I said. "This isn't just its 'closed for the season' look. It's been shut down for, oh, nearly ten years? In high school, my friends and I planned to sneak in on prom night. But it closed the year before we graduated. I tried to get my friends to go anyway--it'd be even cooler to break into an abandoned amusement park. Two of the guys agreed, but only if I picked one of them as my prom date. So...no."
"I mean, it's an abandoned place. Which is significant."
"In light of the fact we've been lured by fae to several abandoned places? Right. Sorry. Frozen brain." I looked up at the park gates. "We weren't actually led here, though. Nothing compelled us to come down the laneway."
"Except that it was the first one we reached, after my car broke down."
True. I looked at Lloergan. She stared intently through the park gates. I took another step. She stayed at my side, making no more effort to hold me back.
If we'd been lured, there was little point in ignoring the summons.
CHAPTER FIVE
A massive padlock chained the gates shut. That would have been far more effective if someone hadn't used wire cutters to slice open the fencing.
Once we were in, I had to stop and stare. The park looked...magnificent. Nightmare and dream colliding in the most wondrous way. Hulking rides, rusted and broken, creeping vines engulfing them. Snow had hidden most of the decay, every surface a pristine white that glittered in the sun.
Then the sun disappeared, as if in a blink, and two young women raced from behind a building. Long hair streamed behind them as they ran, holding hands and giggling. They were barefoot, and light dresses swirled about their legs, their skin glowing in the moonlight.
The girls raced across unbroken concrete toward a moonlit carousel and swung onto freshly painted horses. Then music sounded, sweet and pure and haunting, and the girls clapped and laughed as a young man appeared, clutching a bottle in one hand.
One of the girls swung off the horse, and he called something, teasing, as he waved the bottle. From this distance, I couldn't make out what he was saying, but it sounded like Gaelic.
A memory of fae past, reveling in the park at night, not unlike my own dream of riding the carousel and sneaking through the fun house
and, yes, bringing a bottle of something that would make the adventure even more fun and, perhaps, sharing it with a handsome boy who'd make my night even more fun.
The scene flickered, and it was daytime again, Gabriel's hand still gripping mine, face taut.
"Just a garden-variety vision of fae," I said.
They'd have come late at night to take advantage of the empty amusement park. And then, after it closed permanently, and nature began her reclamation, they'd have come whenever they wanted. That was the allure of abandoned places. They are a reflection of fae themselves, pushed from their land by civilization, and then creeping back after the humans have left, retaking what was theirs. I feel the energy in these places and the wonder, too, the park a hundred times more beautiful in its decay than when I'd seen it as a child, gleaming and whole.
As Gabriel's gaze crossed the ruins, he didn't share my grin of excitement, but he watched--keenly watched--surveying the landscape, wary and intrigued.