Chapter 5

As night approached, people filled the main street, literally to overflowing, and no one knew how in the world the town could accommodate them. Instruments played in cacophony, and decorative lights with practically no sense of unity painted a scene of festive excitement that spread throughout. Night shops selling toys and junk food lined the streets; passersby were called with shouts to see the shows at booths; cheers and jeers were given to roadside magicians and fire-ring jugglers; musical troupes paraded by as each member played his own melody on his instrument — it was as if someone had turned a toy box upside down and then jumbled everything up even more. Seeing it, Kieli forgot the exhaustion of the day and spent a while staring in amazement. As expected, Harvey’s definition of “not that far” was completely unreliable, and they had walked at least half the day since the train accident that morning. They finally arrived at the station close to evening. They checked when the next train would be leaving. Harvey and Kieli went into town a little before sunset. It was a run-down country town; the cold wind from Easterbury’s eastern wilderness blew through the litter-strewn streets. They walked for a while along the quiet main street and found a cheap hotel. The unfriendly man at the front desk took his time checking them in, and they had to wait thirty minutes before he produced a key from behind the reception desk. By the time they made it into their room, night had fallen completely. Kieli slowly dragged her leaden feet onto her bed, but just as she figured the town seemed pretty boring and she might as well go to sleep, the streets under her window appeared to hold a different world than they did half an hour ago. Apparently, during the Colonization Days holidays, lots of peddlers and entertainment troupes gathered in this town to hold a carnival every night. Kieli sat on her pillow with her chin on one knee, looking out her window at the streets below. “Let’s go take a little look. Since we’re staying here tonight anyway,” she said, looking back at the room. Because of the accident, the train that was supposed to be leaving that night wouldn’t be running, and the trains weren’t going to start up again until the next morning. Even the passengers who had taken the emergency cars and arrived in town one step ahead of them were stuck there until the next day. But, in contrast to Kieli’s high spirits, a weary voice leaked out of the radio sitting on the side table: “Give me a break. I’ll pass. There are too many loud, showy thoughts in this town. It makes my eyes spin.” “Old men don’t do so well in showy places,” Harvey added, lying on the bed on the other side of the table. He pulled a box of cigarettes out of his pocket, caring neither about the radio’s retort of “You’re one to talk about people’s ages,” nor the rusty plate on the side table that read “no smoking in bed” and looked like it had already been burned. Before Kieli could even ask, “You’re going, aren’t you, Harvey?” he shot her down with “I’m passing, too. It’s too much trouble, and I don’t care.” Kieli felt like the only one rising above the room’s weary atmosphere, and after a few moments of silence, she muttered, “Fine. Then I’ll go by myself.” She sat on the edge of her bed and began to put her shoes back on. They were black leather boots that matched her uniform, and while she took time to tie up the laces, Harvey, who had gotten into bed with his shoes still on, breathed a sigh and got up. Kieli looked blankly up at him, still bent over. “I’ll go with you as far as the front door. I’m out of cigarettes,” Harvey said, throwing his empty, crumpled cigarette box into the wastebasket and reaching for his coat. Kieli hurried as fast as she could to tie her shoes. When they set foot outside of the hotel entrance, they were smack in the middle of the festivities on the main street. The temperature had gone down with the sun, but once Kieli entered the crowds, the cold no longer bothered her, and wrapped in the heat from those around her, she was actually quite warm. A mass of people had formed on the shoulder of the road right next to her. A gentlemanly looking peddler wearing a tall chapeau and bowtie was standing in the center of the ring of people, selling something. Kieli’s interest was piqued; she poked her head between the tall adults and peeked in at his booth. The man in the chapeau was selling something that appeared to be a small, cubic box. There was a peephole in one side, and as people held the boxes and looked inside, they sighed in admiration, laughed, and sometimes screamed. She watched for a while, wondering what it was, and eventually the peddler noticed her, beckoned her over, and offered her a box. Tilting her head in curiosity, Kieli followed the example of the others and put one eye up to the peephole. “Wow…” She let out a noise in spite of herself. The box held a world inside it. Every time she changed the angle, the images through the peephole changed one after another, projecting all kinds of scenes. Each one was a world from somewhere on the planet that Kieli had only seen in books. The mechanized Church Capital, the ruins said to have once been a spaceship, a ship that crosses the Sand Ocean.…Surprising her even further, the images inside the box moved, and a sandworm, like a giant snake monster, dug a tunnel, following after the ship as it ran across the sand at full speed. The sandworm suddenly turned around to face her, and, opening its empty, elliptical mouth wide, it came flying at the peephole, as if to swallow Kieli’s eyeball. “Eeeeek!” Kieli flung the box away in surprise. “Oof.” If Harvey hadn’t caught her from behind, Kieli would have landed on her rear in the crowd. The man in the chapeau caught the box, smiling in satisfaction. Apparently he enjoyed seeing people’s startled reactions. His poor taste annoyed Kieli, but she soon let out a small laugh. The peddler’s boxes pleased the customers, and the customers’ reactions pleased the peddler. At this carnival, ordinary people, peddlers, and entertainers alike all made up the audience, and all played the clown. Still, she didn’t have to let it scare her so much that she fell over. She snickered, half shocked at herself, and a cool voice fell from above her head: “Was it that much fun?” “Why don’t you try it, Harvey? It’s really fun,” Kieli suggested, looking up at Harvey and feeling a bit mischievous at the thought of how nice it would be if the box surprised Harvey. “He’s just fooling bumpkins. In Westerbury, 3-D projections aren’t anything special,” Harvey uttered with every bit of disinterest, as he opened his new box of cigarettes. It seemed Harvey had no intention of being an audience member or a clown. “You’re no fun. So you knew?” Kieli pouted, discouraged. “So you’ve been to Westerbury, Harvey?” “…I’ve stayed in Westerbury,” he said with a subtle correction.