Magic For Nothing by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2017-03-07T08:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

“They called me the Flower of Arizona. A name like that, it never dies. It just keeps moving forward, into legend. If you’re lucky, it’ll take you along.”

—Frances Brown

The Spenser and Smith Family Carnival midway, the following afternoon

THE SUN WAS WARM on my shoulders as I carried boxes of stuffed animals down the midway, pausing at each open game to check their stock. There were subtle differences in the prizes offered by the various pitches, but most were variations on a theme: brightly colored plush toy, great for your girl, make a memory for your kids. Some rotation was necessary during the week, to make it look like things were being won. The pie-in-the-sky prizes could stay—the giant teddy bears, the crystal unicorns, the things virtually no one ever expected to win—but the little day-to-day things had to move around. Otherwise, someone who came to the show often enough might start to do the math and come up with an answer they didn’t care for.

The pitch men and games operators were strangers. Most of them didn’t take the time to introduce themselves, just rooted through my box of toys, snatched a few they thought might earn a dollar, and tossed in the requisite number of returns to keep the numbers up. About half the midway games were privately owned, rather than part of the carnival proper: their operators were parked on the far side of the bone yard, and while they mingled with the rest of us when necessary, they also kept to themselves a surprising amount, cooking in their own RVs and gossiping with each other, rather than the rest of the show. It made sense. Better not to get attached if you weren’t planning on staying.

After I was done with the games, I made for the supply tent next to the reptile trailer. That was where the pythons that roomed next to me were displayed during the day, for the delight and edification of the masses. Alex would have been in heaven. I didn’t really see the point—you can find a wide assortment of snakes at most pet stores, to say nothing of zoos—but there were kids dragging their parents into the tent whenever the show was open, so it must have held a certain appeal for some people.

A woman sat outside the reptile trailer, a small, spade-nosed snake twined around the fingers of her right hand and a cigarette clamped between the fingers of her left. She was wearing a pink-and-red sari over hot pants and what looked like a sports bra, and her long black hair was a tangled mess containing at least three more snakes, if the variously colored scales peeking through were any indication.

I let myself into the supply tent, dropping my box of plush toys next to the disinterested man whose job it was to check them back in. He grunted acknowledgment. That was all he did: he didn’t even look up from his clipboard as I turned and walked back out again.

The

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