Chapter 9: The Fair That Wasn’t

The fair arrived on a Monday.

Which was suspicious in itself.

Fairs never arrived on Mondays. Mondays were for existential dread and leftover soup. Not vibrant banners, dancing colors, and a very enthusiastic brass band made entirely of sentient tubas.

Dee Megus watched the festivities from a hilltop, one eyebrow raised and a sliver of golden thread wound loosely around his finger.

"Did we plan for a fair?" he asked.

"Nope," Hiro answered, already halfway through a fried pastry shaped like a phoenix. "But it has funnel cakes. So I vote we adopt it."

Vampher Darquez adjusted his scarf and stared down at the twinkling lights and curious crowds. "That banner says it's The Weavewide Wonderfaire."

Dee squinted.

The font wiggled.

It was, indeed, weaving itself into new letters every time someone looked away.

"I hate that I kind of admire the typography," Dee muttered.

"Same," Vampher said.

They descended into the town square—if you could call it that. It wasn't theirs, exactly. But the fair had spilled into the very reality around them like it belonged there. Stalls stood where yesterday there had been rivers. Lanterns hung from trees that hadn't existed an hour ago. A juggler balanced flaming serpents atop a stage built from memory itself.

And no one else seemed to notice.

That was the real trick.

Only the three of them could see that something wasn't right.

Which meant, of course, Hiro was delighted.

"Oh! Look! Magical fishing! Threadline catch-and-release!"

"Popcorn that grants temporary enlightenment!" Dee noted, nose wrinkling.

"I just saw a child barter three giggles for a dream," Vampher muttered. "I need to sit down."

Dee grabbed his sleeve before he could sulk further. "No sulking. Sulking makes them stronger."

"Them?"

But Dee was already walking toward a peculiar tent that hadn't been there two seconds ago.

The tent shimmered in three colors: memory, possibility, and lemon.

Its sign read:

"The Loom of Fortunes — See the Pattern of Your Destiny!"

Hiro lit up. "We have to go in."

"Absolutely not," Dee and Vampher said in perfect unison.

Hiro went in anyway.

Inside, the tent stretched impossibly wide. Spools of thread floated in the air, winding and unwinding in infinite combinations. A figure sat behind a loom so vast it touched the sky.

She had no face.

Only a blank mask stitched with endless questions.

"Welcome," the Weaver said. "Would you like to see your pattern?"

Hiro grinned. "Do I have to take off my shoes?"

"Only if your soles carry regrets."

"Oh," Hiro said, slipping his boots off with no hesitation. "I mostly carry snacks."

The Weaver gestured, and a tapestry wove itself in real-time.

Hiro's life unfolded in brilliant threads: his farm village, the Nightmare Devil, his countless wanderings, each kindness, each near-disaster, the way his soul tangled with Dee's and Vampher's, then looped again and again in spirals of rebirth.

The tapestry glowed.

"Whoa," Hiro breathed. "That's... beautiful."

The Weaver tilted her head.

"You are a pivot point," she said.

"A what?"

"A hinge in the weave."

Hiro blinked. "Is that a good thing?"

"It is what it is," she replied. "You fall. You rise. You forget. You remember."

Hiro hesitated. "Do I ever get to... stop?"

The Weaver said nothing.

And Hiro understood.

Dee entered next. Thread already wound tight around his wrist.

The Weaver did not speak.

She did not have to.

She knew better.

He stepped up to the loom, and his pattern appeared—a spiral without center, a line split in three, threads that ran backward into silence and forward into inevitability.

Dee looked at it and nodded.

Of course.

He'd seen this before.

He was this before.

But even he hesitated when he saw the glimmer of laughter hidden between the strands.

"Who added that?" he asked aloud.

The Weaver did not answer.

Outside, Vampher sat on a bench beside a mime.

The mime offered him cotton candy shaped like a bat.

He declined.

The mime mimed a sigh.

It started raining small confessions—just for a moment. Not many noticed. Just enough to remember something they almost forgot.

Dee exited the tent with a troubled frown.

"Something's off," he said.

"Because you saw your future?"

"No. Because I didn't."

"What?"

"I didn't see anything that surprised me. That's the problem. Reality doesn't cooperate like that."

Vampher frowned. "You're saying it's... too real?"

"I'm saying," Dee said slowly, "this whole fair might be woven wrong."

He lifted a strand of thread from the air.

It trembled.

Not in fear.

In... delight.

Dee scowled. "It's watching us back."

Suddenly, the tent collapsed inward, folding like a dream that had overstayed its welcome. All the fair lights dimmed at once. The tubas screamed.

A wave of distortion rippled through the fairgrounds, and for a moment—

Just a moment—

They saw what lay underneath.

Broken stitches.

Ghosts of ruined realities.

A scar.

A realm-that-should-not-be.

Dee reached out instinctively and rewove the air around them.

The fair snapped back into place.

Crowds cheered.

Banners flew.

The smell of sweetbread returned.

Only the three of them knew what had happened.

Only the three of them remembered.

Hiro blinked.

"Okay," he said slowly, "that wasn't just me, right?"

"No," Vampher muttered. "We saw beneath."

"To what?" Hiro asked.

"The fair that wasn't," Dee said softly.

They walked out of the square. Past the funnel cake stalls and giggling shadows. Past booths that offered wishes for pennies and truth for riddles. Past the mirror maze that now refused to reflect them.

When they reached the edge of the fairgrounds, Dee paused.

Behind them, a sign appeared.

It hadn't been there before.

"Thanks for Visiting the Weavewide Wonderfaire!

Come Again Next Cycle!"

Beneath it, smaller text shimmered faintly:

"The Observer is pleased."

Dee's eyes narrowed.

"So it was him."

"I thought he was a myth," Vampher muttered.

"No," Dee said. "He's a prank."

"I like him," Hiro added, chewing his third enchanted pancake on a stick.

Dee groaned.

"We'll need to trace the threads," he said. "Track what part of the weave he's nudging. This fair wasn't just whimsy. It was a test."

"What kind?"

Dee didn't answer.

Because the answer was:

A thread-pull.

Just enough to see if they'd notice.

They had.

And the weave had laughed.

Far away, curled inside the gap between stories, the Observer sipped tea made of untold stories and smiled to himself.

He hadn't created the fair.

But he had left the door open.

Just enough.

The rest had come through on its own.

Which meant it was time to start watching more closely.

Especially Dee.

He was starting to remember things he hadn't learned yet.

That wouldn't do at all.