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Chapter One: With the Strange Parade <figure> ONE WITH THE STRANGE PARADE
The Festival of Midsommer will forever be the merriest and most magical time of year in Wreathenwold, a time for celebrating the rich and mysterious folklore of our world. Magic forged at Midsommer is the strongest and truest of all magic—both fair and foul.
—The Book of Barely Believable Stories,
Mildred Fogge
THE PARADE CAME the first night of Midsommer, beneath the blossoming bonewoods and a smoky moon.
Claris Songwood sat on the front steps, knees drawn beneath her chin and her face trapped in a scowl. Her older brother was being mean again and she refused to go inside until he was properly punished—ideally shipped off to a boarding school for horrible boys. Even as darkness set in and the day’s >warmth slipped away, Claris could not be coaxed home.
“I’ll just leave this here, then,” said Mum.
She set a mug of hot treacle tea on the stone step beside Claris, where its sweet smoke climbed upward and made Claris’s mouth water. Still, Claris only took her first sip when her mother had gone. The taste flooded her, warm and deliciously sugary.
Claris stared at the sky, studying the moon in its shawl of thin cloud and the scatter of surrounding stars. Wind sighed through the bonewoods, which always erupted into blossom at Midsommer. They swelled with petals of a purple so pale they were almost white. The street was quiet otherwise, nothing moving but the shivering trees.
Feeling lonely, Claris cast her poppet—called Tya—as a tortoiseshell cat. Tya curled in Claris’s lap, purring as Claris scratched the back of her head.
“Horrible boy, isn’t he?” she said.
Tya meowed in agreement.
“We should run away,” said Claris.
Tya was less convinced by this. Getting lost in the great labyrinth of Wreathenwold often meant never finding home again. Claris took another sip of treacle tea—Mum really knew how to hit the spot. She could wander the entire labyrinth and never find anything that tasted so good. Then she heard the drum.
At first, it was a deep, steady beat, like a great heart pulsing from the depths of the earth itself. Then, as it grew louder and clearer, Claris perceived the patter of smaller drums surrounding it. A tingle traveled down her neck. Could it really be...? Claris was nine years old and had never seen the Strange Parade—had never allowed herself to believe it was anything more than legend.
Her eyes fixed on the end of the road, a tight turn of mossy stone beneath an archway. The drumming grew. Claris rose, her heart chattering, while Tya meowed nervously in her arms.
The parade came. First was the drum major. He had long, sinewy limbs and wore a regimental coat and cape, twirling a bonewood baton as he danced at the head of the column. Embers spouted from the baton with every flourish, forming cartwheels of fiery specks. On his head was a tall top hat. A silvery masquerade mask covered the upper half of his face, shimmering like liquid starlight.
Music filled the street as the parade followed, a column of drummers and pipers in regimental coats, their knees rising and falling in perfect rhythm as the horns cried and the drums beat. Surrounding them were dancers, leaping and twisting, ribbons streaming and twirling from their elbows and knees. Some carried batons, splashing fiery embers upon the dark air. All were masked.
It was a spectacle marching straight from a dream. By now, others had joined Claris on the street, whooping children in nightcaps, and grown-ups, baffled and astonished. Poppets cast as stags, their antlers festooned with ribbons, hauled wagons from which masked men released flurries of sugar-flies—plump, fluttering sweets that had to be caught to be enjoyed. This set the children, Claris included, to frenzied, jubilant chasing, using their poppets to catch the delicious treats.
