Carnival Magic Read online

  ALSO BY AMY EPHRON

  The Castle in the Mist

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  Text copyright © 2018 by Amy Ephron.

  Illustration copyright © 2018 by Vartan Ter-Avanesyan.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Philomel Books is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ephron, Amy, author.

  Title: Carnival magic / Amy Ephron.

  Description: New York, NY : Philomel Books, [2018] | Companion to: Castle in the mist. | Summary: While visiting Aunt Evie in Devon-by-the-Sea, England, Tess and Max are whisked away by a magical carnival in need of rescue. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017050515 | ISBN 9781524740214 (hardback) | ISBN 9781524740221 (e-book) | Subjects: | CYAC: Carnivals—Fiction. | Wishes—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | England—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Siblings. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.E62 Caq 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050515

  Ebook ISBN 978152740221

  Edited by Jill Santopolo.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Maia, Anna & Ethan,

  whose love and imagination inspire me every day

  CONTENTS

  ONE:THE COTTAGE AT DEVON-BY-THE-SEA

  TWO: A PLANE, A TRAIN, A CAR RIDE, AND A TRIP TO THE ZOO

  THREE: WAKING UP IN DEVON

  FOUR: SHOPPING FOR SUMMER

  FIVE: A PERFECT DAY TO GO TO THE CARNIVAL

  SIX: AT THE TOP OF THE FERRIS WHEEL

  SEVEN: ALMOST BACK ON SOLID GROUND

  EIGHT: TESS GETS HYPNOTIZED

  NINE: STRANGE NAVIGATION

  TEN: THE RUNAWAY CARNIVAL

  ELEVEN: IN WHICH THEY WONDER IF THEY’RE LOST

  TWELVE: INSIDE THE BLUE TENT

  THIRTEEN: A DANCE IN THE SKY

  FOURTEEN: AFTER THE SHOW

  FIFTEEN: AN ENCOUNTER WITH LORENZO

  SIXTEEN: WELCOME TO THE CARNIVAL

  SEVENTEEN: THEY START TO UNDERSTAND THERE MIGHT NOT REALLY BE A WAY TO GET AWAY

  EIGHTEEN: THE FIRST SLEEPOVER AT THE RUNAWAY CARNIVAL

  NINETEEN: BREAKFAST, CARNIVAL-STYLE

  TWENTY: THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS

  TWENTY-ONE: SKY DANCING

  TWENTY-TWO: INSIDE THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS

  TWENTY-THREE: THE OTHER SIDE

  TWENTY-FOUR: A VERY DRAMATIC LANDING

  TWENTY-FIVE: THE AUTOGRAPH

  TWENTY-SIX: A VERY VALUABLE SIGNATURE

  TWENTY-SEVEN: THE TRAVELLER’S WAGON

  TWENTY-EIGHT: THE STORY ACCORDING TO TESS AND MAX, OR AT LEAST WHAT THEY TOLD TO JULIAN AND ANNA

  TWENTY-NINE: THE SEVEN ESTRY

  THIRTY: THE FIRST FAREWELL

  THIRTY-ONE: WAITING FOR HIGH TIDE

  THIRTY-TWO: THE ALTERNATE HOUSE OF MIRRORS

  THIRTY-THREE: BACK TO WHERE THEY STARTED?

  THIRTY-FOUR: THE BRONTOSAURUS AT ONE THIRTY

  THIRTY-FIVE: ALMOST SHOW TIME

  THIRTY-SIX: THE BREATHTAKING BARANOVAS TOUCH THE SKY

  THIRTY-SEVEN: THE SOUND OF A VIOLIN

  ~ CHAPTER ONE ~

  the cottage at devon-by-the-sea

  I’ll take the attic,” said Tess, tearing up the third flight of stairs before Max even had a chance to fully understand the question.

  “It’s a three-bedroom house,” Aunt Evie had said when they walked in the door, “four, if you count the attic. So, since your parents are coming in a few days, one of us has to take the attic . . . and I don’t think it’s going to be me.”

  “It’s mine,” said Tess emphatically. She thought an attic bedroom was possibly a charming idea, a little scary but in a good way. It also occurred to her that her brother, Max, might be a little scared if he slept up there—even though he wouldn’t want to admit it—so she instantly claimed it.

  Tess hesitated on the landing at the top of the stairs. She held her breath as she popped the door open, frightened it might be dusty, musty, or dotted with spiders, but the room was flooded with sunlight from a triangular window that looked out on to the sea. It was a small room—well, tiny, but blue-and-white striped wallpaper lined two of the walls, and the wall with the window was painted white so that it was almost cheerful.

  There was a double bed covered with a down quilt and big white pillows. The ceiling sloped down a bit like a triangle toward the window, so she figured she had to be careful getting out of bed on the right side.

  Note to self: remember to always get up on the left side of the bed so as not to bump your head.

  Tess could hear the sound of the ocean lapping softly against the shore. And even inside the air was fresh, a tiny bit salty and moist from the sea. It occurred to Tess that she was really going to like Devon-by-the-Sea on top of that strange thing that had already happened that she didn’t think she could tell Aunt Evie about.

  ~ CHAPTER TWO ~

  a plane, a train, a car ride, and a trip to the zoo

  here’s what had already happened

  Their mom, Abby, had taken them to the international terminal at JFK Airport. They checked in with the help of a very nice porter who told them, after he helped carry their bags to the counter, that he hoped they had an excellent adventure.

  Tess hoped they had an excellent adventure, too.

  Their mother then escorted them as far as she could, to the security line.

  Tess dropped her backpack. She hugged her mother and gave her a kiss on both cheeks since, after all, they were going to Europe, and kissing people on both cheeks was the custom there. Max just nodded when his mom smooshed his hair on the top of his head, which was a funny way she had sometimes of sending him off to school in the morning. But then he dropped his backpack, too, and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Then Tess and Max were on their own.

  They waited patiently in line for their turn to go through the metal detector. Max went first. Then Tess.

  For reasons Tess couldn’t understand, when she walked through the metal detector, there was suddenly a very large noise as the alarm went off. She turned around. She was certain she couldn’t have done that. But everyone at the checkpoint was looking at her. The TSA officer, who wasn’t nearly as nice as the porter, directed her, as if it was a command, to walk back through the machine.

  “It must be my cap,” said Tess instantly, realizing she’d forgotten to take her olive-green baseball cap off. It didn’t have any lettering on it at all, no advertising; it didn’t draw any attention to itself, just kept the sun off, which is what Tess thought was the perfect thing for a cap. She gently placed it on the conveyer belt.

  “Are you wearing a belt?” the TSA officer asked her.

  “Nope.” Sh
e shook her head. Then wondered if nope was the right thing to say to a TSA officer.

  “Is your cell phone in your pocket?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “Do you have any keys?” he asked her.

  “Oh,” she said. She was frightened he was going to take it away from her.

  She pulled an old-fashioned skeleton key out of her front jeans pocket. “Of course! It’s—the key to my aunt’s house in London,” she said.

  This was the first lie Tess had told in a long time, but she knew she couldn’t tell him what it was really. She was frightened he might ask to see it. It was the key to the gate at the castle next door to her aunt’s house in Hampshire, the key to her friend William’s garden, but that seemed way too hard to explain . . .

  When Tess was packing, she’d heard William’s voice so clearly, as clearly as if he was standing next to her, saying the last thing he’d said to her last summer. “Keep the key,” he’d said, “you never know when you might need it.”

  Tess thought it was opportune of her to take the skeleton key with her to England—that was a word their Dad used, “opportune,” it implied it might be useful later—and Tess thought that might actually be the case because, in her experience, you never knew what could happen in England.

  “We need it,” she said to the TSA officer, her voice pitching up a little bit when she said it.

  Her brother, Max, chimed in from the other side of the checkpoint, “We do. Aunt Evie said we should bring it.” Max was lying, too.

  The TSA officer hesitated for a moment. It felt like a long moment to Tess. “All right, then,” he said, finally, without asking to see it.

  She’d been so frightened he would ask to see it. She never was quite sure what the key was going to do if she handed it to someone else. She remembered what had happened when Max had found it by mistake last summer and it had turned bright red and burned his hand . . .

  “Is this your backpack?” he asked. The TSA officer pointed to a kid-size version of a military-green backpack sitting alone at the end of the conveyor belt that in fact belonged to Tess. “Do you think you could put that key in your luggage, where it belongs?”

  “Yes, Sir,” she said. He handed it back, around the X-ray machine, and watched while she unzipped the side pocket, carefully dropped the key in, and zipped the pocket back up. She realized she’d been holding her breath. She had been so frightened that he might confiscate it, another one of those grown-up words that meant “take it away.” She set the backpack on the conveyer belt and watched it slide again into the metal tunnel, where a picture could be viewed. Then she stepped back through the metal detector, and thankfully neither she or the backpack set off any further alarms.

  Almost the second the plane leveled out at flying altitude, Max fell asleep.

  Tess wrote a story in her notebook about a little girl who falls asleep on a train and misses her stop, rides past it, and ends up in another town—that was as far as she got and then she fell asleep, too.

  Tess and Max woke up almost at the same moment, somewhere over the Atlantic.

  Their mom’s best friend, Franny, had packed them sandwiches from the fancy delicatessen so that they wouldn’t have to eat the food on the plane, which she said was full of preservatives. Their mom had slipped in some chocolate chip cookies after Franny left. They were from the bakery on the corner but they weren’t sure Franny believed in sugar, either.

  Tess and Max were both surprised how quickly the pilot announced that they were about to land at Heathrow Airport.

  They put their seatbacks up and Max raised the window shade, which was especially startling as the sun was just beginning to rise. The clouds were stunningly tinged with gold, blue, red, and purple rays, like a painting, and the outline of London looked like a toy city with its pitched roofs, cobblestone streets, and church steeples covered in a cloud of mist.

  * * *

  • • •

  Aunt Evie was waiting for them at the airport. Tess heard her voice before she saw her.

  “Yoo-hoo,” her voice rang out clearly through the crowd.

  Aunt Evie had lightened her hair. She also had a new haircut. The front was layered a bit and fell beautifully around her face and down her shoulders, and she was wearing a bit of makeup and what looked to Tess like a new summer dress. Tess didn’t know if her aunt was feeling “chipper,” an English word for “cheerful,” or if it was just the way Aunt Evie dressed to go to London, but either way Tess thought her mom would think it was a good sign: that maybe Aunt Evie was cheering up, coming out of her shell a bit. Aunt Evie had understandably been sad since her husband, their uncle John, had died so unexpectedly in a skiing accident three winters before. She had moved to their country house in Hampshire and practically holed herself up alone for a year and a half except for the month last summer when Tess and Max visited her. Aunt Evie was only thirty-nine, which their mom said was very young to be a widow. Aunt Evie was wearing a yellow sleeveless summer dress and high-heeled sandals.

  Max made her smile when he said instantly, “You look awfully pretty, Aunt Evie.” It was the first they’d seen her in almost a year.

  Tess and Max had spent the school year in New York City with their mom. Their dad, Martin Barnes, a well-known newscaster and sometimes war reporter, had left in February.

  He’d been made the head of the news desk in Berlin, which didn’t really mean he was in Berlin. Berlin was mostly used as a jumping-off spot to parts of Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, so they were never quite certain where he was and if they were supposed to be worried about him . . .

  Their mom, Abby Barnes, had stayed in New York with them so that they could finish out the school year, Max, fourth grade, and Tess, fifth. Also, their mom was a writer and she had a book due.

  Their mom and dad hadn’t seen each other for three months, so they were going on a grown-up mini vacation, a long weekend, to Barcelona, Spain. Their mom’s plane was leaving a few hours after theirs and the plan was, their mom and dad were going to join Tess, Max, and Aunt Evie in Devon-by-the-Sea. And maybe even take a trip to Scotland.

  Aunt Evie had rented out her house in Hampshire for the summer and had rented a charming beach cottage in Devon, or as she called it, “Devon-by-the-Sea,” which was really just a geographical designation, but when Evie said it, it sounded as if it was a magical name.

  Aunt Evie had planned and researched everything in the neighborhood. There was wi-fi in the cottage and also a big, high-definition flat-screen TV on a wall in the living room. The cottage was “turn-key furnished,” which means it came with practically everything: tables, chairs, couches, sheets, towels, pots, and pans.

  There was a miniature golf course nearby, a cherry festival coming up, and a world-famous zoo that was also an animal refuge, not to mention the actual beach and the sea itself and lots of other children potentially around.

  Aunt Evie really wanted Tess and Max to be happy and occupied this summer. She’d even bought an iPhone herself, so that they would always be able to reach her, and she’d set up an Instagram account, even though she wasn’t exactly up-to-speed on how to post on it. Her Instagram handle was @YrAuntEvie. The first photo she posted was a view out the living room window of the beach cottage in Devon-by-the-Sea, the day she rented it. The wood window frame was almost like a frame to the view in the picture. The sky was gray, the ocean was a little gray, too, with tiny white tops to the waves, and white sand, like a washed-out watercolor.

  She added a caption.

  Guess where I am?

  Answer: Devon-by-the-Sea

  Max figured it out instantly, though the location was obvious because she said that right in the caption. “Do you think she’s rented a beach house?” he asked his mom, showing her the picture. Her mother knew the answer as Aunt Evie had called her to discuss the plan. “Yes, Max,” she answered, “I think she has.
Although she called it a turn-key cottage.”

  Max asked Tess if she thought there were any ghosts in the cottage. Their mom overheard and answered instantly, “I’m not sure that’s what turn-key means.” But Tess and Max, who’d been on a trip to England before and had a very curious experience with a key, weren’t sure that they agreed.

  * * *

  • • •

  From Heathrow, they took a taxi to Paddington Station in London. In the back of the cab, Tess unzipped her backpack and put the skeleton key safely in her back pocket.

  They boarded a train to Exeter, approximate train travel time three and a half hours, according to Max, who looked it up on his iPhone. They arrived three minutes early.

  Aunt Evie had parked her blue Bentley at the train station earlier that day. It was comforting to see it there (and a little bit exciting), like running into an old friend. Tess sat in the back seat, as usual, so Max could sit in the front seat as he sometimes got carsick. Aunt Evie put the top down and tied her hair up in a ponytail.

  Tess looked out the window as they drove. The landscape was so green, what their mom would call “pastoral,” high grass dotted with wildflowers. They headed south on the windy highway, which curved left, then right along the countryside. Tess saw a young woman with long brown hair tied back loosely under a riding cap, riding on a spectacularly beautiful chestnut-colored horse, pedigree, for sure. The woman was wearing a fancy jacket and breeches, English riding pants, and boots that looked like they could walk on their own. But what struck Tess most was the single fluidity with which she rode, as if she really was one with the horse.

  Tess had a sudden idea. She thought it would be amazing to ride a horse on the beach at night. She was careful not to wish for it. She knew from last summer that it was best to save your wishes for things that might be really important. But she thought she might tell her aunt about it later, just in case there might be a stable in the neighborhood where you could rent a horse for an afternoon or an evening.