“I see ’em,” said Audrey in a disbelieving tone. “What’s got them out under the sun?”
Susan peered through the rain-dappled side window, trying to see what Merlin and Audrey were disturbed about. Everything looked normal to her, a sea of cars and vans and motorbikes on the road, and spilling onto the road from the footpaths, a confusing, multidirectional tide of pedestrians under umbrellas of all shapes, colors, and sizes; those without umbrellas ducking and weaving between those with, trying to move faster to keep out of the rain, or to avoid an umbrella spoke in the face.
“There is no sun,” she said. “And what are you—”
“Figure of speech,” said Merlin. “Urchins don’t usually come out in daylight at all. . . . I’ve counted three, Audrey. . . .”
“Four,” replied their driver. “Five . . . curse this traffic! Six! Seven! Go, no, you idiot!”
They jerked to a complete standstill, thanks to a delivery van reversing ahead, where there was no room for it to do so. The traffic behind closed up immediately, and they were stuck.
“Stay or go?” asked Merlin urgently.
Audrey peered through the windscreen, and then left, right, and behind.
“They’re ringing the cab for a May Dance,” she said grimly. “Cold iron might anchor us. I dunno, this is a new one to me. I’ve never seen so many, and as for ’em trying anything like this in daylight, forget it! We’d better go!”
“Right,” said Merlin. “You break east? We’ll go west?”
“Yeah,” said Audrey.
“You got something suitably ancient to hit them with?”
In answer Audrey pulled a blackthorn stick down from above her head, where it had been clipped above the sun visor. A yard-long length of gnarled, knobby, iron-hard wood, without ferrule or adornment. Two of the natural thorns had not been cut or ground off the stick, forming a kind of hilt. She pushed it through the hatch.
“You take it,” she said quickly. “It must be Susan they’re after.”
“Thanks,” said Merlin.
“If you make it, turn out the guard,” said Audrey.
“You do the same,” said Merlin.
“Ready?” asked Audrey. “Go!”
“What?” asked Susan. She was still looking out the window. Everything appeared to her to be entirely normal. At that moment, a child popped up, close to the glass. An odd, pinch-faced child of five or six, bright-eyed and red-cheeked, wearing an oversized, bright scarlet, badly ripped shirt, like a clown who’d gone through a wind tunnel.
He started to caper up and down, adding to the clown impression, then suddenly grinned widely, showing a blackened, destroyed mouth, save for two very sharp and long incisors of yellow-streaked white.
Susan jumped back. Merlin grabbed her hand and swung open his door, leaping out, as Audrey did the same in front.
A dozen flamboyantly dressed, misshapen children were dancing around the taxi, holding hands, but had not quite closed the ring. Merlin swung the stick left-handed to smash down two reaching arms, made a gap, and dashed through. Susan followed as closely as she could to avoid having her arm pulled out of its socket.
Merlin stayed on the road, running alongside the car ahead, but stopped suddenly as even more of the weird, frightening children poured into the street, gyrating and tumbling and leaping about.
At that moment, Susan realized with horror that all the other pedestrians had vanished, all the colorful umbrellas were gone, the turned-up collars on sensible coats, the fast-moving coatless optimists. There were only dozens and dozens of these children, who were clearly not children, a great crowd of them dancing closer and closer, reaching out to join hands. But their hands had only three fingers, their thumbs were in the wrong place and bent backwards, and their nails were horribly long, all in all more like the taloned foot of a hawk than a human hand.
The dancers had already formed a second, wider handfast ring around the empty cab, Merlin, and Susan, this one made up of forty or fifty dancers, all moving in a counterclockwise direction. They made no noise save the shuffle of their rag-wrapped feet, though their mouths were open to show their fangs and rotten gums, and their breath was fetid. Around and around they went, shuffling and capering, shuffling and capering. . . .
Merlin drew Susan close, his right hand tight on her left, and held the stick down at his side.
“Too late,” he said. “They’ve got us in a May Dance. Don’t let go.”
“Where did everyone . . .” Susan started to say, but she stopped, staring around in bewilderment more than fear. Beyond the circling ring of urchins, not only had all the ordinary people vanished, but now the street and the cars and buildings were fading away as well, replaced by open fields to the north, and close to them, a huddle of tents, shanties, barrows, and stands. Even the clouds and rain had disappeared, the sky was a vivid blue, and it was hot, like a prime August day, though it was—or had been—only the nineteenth of May.
“Don’t accept anything anyone gives you freely,” warned Merlin. “Particularly food or drink.”
“But there’s no one—” Susan started to say, but she stopped as suddenly there were people, a great crowd of them. People dressed in medieval clothes, jerkins and smocks and hose, boots and simple leather shoes. Sound suddenly came back as well, sellers calling out their wares, people talking and laughing, musicians in the distance, pipes warbling above a constant drum. Smells wafted across—sweaty, unwashed people stink and earthy farmyard stench, overlaid with cooking meat and fat, and smoky, burning smells.
The circling dancers stopped, laughed in unison, and suddenly broke apart, individuals racing off in all directions through the crowds, ducking and weaving to disappear among the larger people.
“Where are we?” asked Susan. She blinked several times. There was something wrong with how everything looked, but she couldn’t quite work out what it was. . . .
“The May Fair,” said Merlin shortly. “Or more precisely, a mythic resonance of the fair that was held here for centuries, with the obvious lending of its name to the place later. It’s a trap. The urchins . . . who you might know better as goblins . . . have danced us here. Which is extraordinarily unlike their usual behavior. They’re tricksters, but usually fairly harmless. They never kill, for example, not on purpose—”
“Give us a kiss, darling,” roared a drunken man clad only in a rough smock hitched too far above his knees. He leaned in close to Merlin, who dodged aside and smacked him across the back of the knees with the blackthorn stick, sending him crashing down to the muddy ground. Holding Susan’s hand all the tighter, the bookseller led her away as the man lay in the puddled track that had been Curzon Street, laughing his head off as if he had wanted to land there all along.
“They’re real,” said Susan, aghast, as she was brushed by the corner of a tray of small steaming pies being carried past by a woman whose face was transformed by the most delighted smile. “And all weirdly happy.”
“It’s real for us, for now,” said Merlin. “They’re happy because, like I said, this is an idealized version of the best days of the fair. The urchins have trapped us here. But they have to follow tradition and give us a chance of getting out—”