Back to the Dark Ages!

My name is June and I am now 21 although the adventure I’m going to describe happened when I was eleven. But I remember it as if it was yesterday. At that time my best friend was a boy called August who I called Augie and who was the same age as me and in the same class at our local primary school. His birthday was in August and his family originally American and these two reasons, he told me, accounted for his strange name. We were living practically next door to each other and were thrown together because we were the only two children we knew who were both named after months of the year. We had a lot in common, including our love of music and reading. He played the recorder and I sang in a choir and played the piano. We often lent our story books to each other and grew up wanting intensely to have an adventure like those we had read about. But we never dreamed we would actually have one. We lived in a quiet seaside town on the East coast of England and our parents gave us lots of freedom. So in autumn and spring we often used to fly our kites together on the beach while in summer we would go paddling in the sea. Everyone knew us in the town and, as long as we were together, our parents did not mind us going out alone without an adult to accompany us. But of course we had to be home by a particular time. Then, one day in summer, a funfair came to town. Neither of us had ever been to a real funfair. We were used only to the ice cream sellers and donkeys which used to appear, as if by magic, as soon as the weather turned warm. Naturally we were very excited at the prospect of visiting it and keen to see what it had to offer. So one Tuesday afternoon after school we were given some money by our parents and told to be back by suppertime. We rushed together down to the pier where the fair was being held and, as we approached, we were amazed to see all the activity going on in and around it. We had never seen anything so exciting before in our little town. We had decided before we left that we would walk around and see what we wanted to do before spending our precious money. So we went in and were immediately dazed by the din and the lights. The noise seemed to be coming from all sides, from slot machines spitting out sweets to the rides which all had massive loudspeakers attached to them blaring out music or calling the people to try them. Also it was packed. We saw a lot of our school friends running around like maniacs, many of them eating candy floss on big sticks and getting the sweet, sticky sugar all over their faces. We walked around for a while, confused and disoriented, until finally, on the far side of the fair, we saw an unoccupied bench on which to sit. So we sat down and looked around. Then Augie spotted what appeared to be a large carousel tucked away behind the other rides. ‘That looks like fun,’ he said and I agreed. So we walked over in its direction. As we got closer, the din of the funfair seemed to fade away and, when we came right up to it, all the noise had completely disappeared and we seemed to be enclosed in a bubble of pure blessed silence. We could now see that there were some words engraved around the carousel which said, ‘Let the magic carousel take you on the adventure of a lifetime!’ The horses all looked new and almost perfectly real. They were many different shades of black, brown and white while some were piebald and the predominant colours of the carousel itself were red and gold. It looked to our young eyes, well, ‘magical’ is the only word I can think of. It was spinning madly, all its horses going up and down in unison, but there seemed to be nobody on it. This surprised us but pleased us too as we thought we might be able to have the whole thing to ourselves and it looked like the funnest thing in the whole fair. We went up to an old man sitting in a booth who seemed to be operating it and who was wearing a clown costume, and Augie said, ‘Can we have a go?’ ‘By all means, children,’ he replied in an unusually high, squeaky kind of voice. ‘Go around and choose your horses.’ ‘How much is it?’ I asked, fearing that we might not have enough money. But the funny old man simply laughed and said, ‘Pay me when you get off if you think it’s worth it.’ And he pulled a lever. The carousel shuddered to a halt but nobody got off. So we walked around it, inspecting the horses carefully. They all had names attached to their bridles, some of which we recognised: Pegasus, Shadowfax, Whirlwind, Black Beauty, Silver, and many others with strange-sounding names which we couldn’t pronounce. We finally decided on Pegasus for me, a gorgeous white beast with a golden harness (but, unfortunately, I remember thinking, without wings) and Black Beauty for August which was right next to it on the carousel and was indeed a most beautiful animal. ‘Good choices, children,’ the old man called out from his booth. We were, strangely, still alone as we climbed onto our horses. Then he set the carousel in motion and we started spinning around.