She gave a hint of a grin before turning around, and walked purposefully into the crowd. What a little… I was taken aback by her speed and ran after her. Damnit, she was fast despite her short legs; I struggled to keep pace, unintentionally bumping into angry villagers.

“Right. So… Excuse-me sir… Oops, sorry Ma’m… so where are your parents?”

She did not even deign to look at me, her stride unaltered. But she answered nonetheless.

“Under the purple tent, on the other side of the field. Mom is telling fortunes tonight, and she doesn’t want me sticking around and scaring clients away. She says I talk too much. But I think it’s not true. If she’d only let me perform my tricks, we would have tons of people coming in, of course. But I’m not going to wait around until she makes up her mind. It would be much more fun to go on the ride, wouldn’t it? It’s so easy to get free tickets. I say that my parents work here and I look all sad and lost, and in most cases I’ll win a ride and a lollipop. My favorite flavor is raspberry. The problem is that they don’t let people under eighteen go on the carrousel on their own and they are all working. I needed you to come with me. You are old, right? Careful, there is ice-cream on your jacket.”

Overwhelmed and awe-struck by the flow of words coming from such a small person, I had not noticed that a toddler had taken advantage of his caretaker’s inattention to reach out from his stroller and apply a generous coating of melted vanilla ice-cream on my left sleeve. With a sigh I wiped it off; when I looked up again, she had disappeared.

“If you keep being so slow I will have to ask someone else.”

I jumped in fright. She was standing right beside me with the sole purpose of scaring me off, obviously. Very happy with herself for startling me, she did not wait for an answer to set off again. I mumbled some things that should probably not be said near a thirteen year-old girl, or boy for that matter, and resumed following her.

I found her strapped into an open carriage mimicking a section of a gigantic fire-breathing purple snake, furiously waving at me so that I would sit next to her. We were the last car that made up this fantastic animal, and I noticed the staff member looking in our direction to check, so it seemed, that she was indeed escorted by an adult.

On the big TV screen on the wall, a forty-something blond woman wearing a purple lizard costume mechanically delivered a speech about security aboard the ride that no one really seemed to care about, her included. The girl next to me was growing restless, fighting against the straps to turn and look around expectantly.

“Hey, by the way, I’m Salim. What’s your…”

“Mathilda. Why aren’t we starting? We’ve been waiting for hours already!”

And suddenly we felt the carriage move off. Mathilda had immediately stopped making a fuss and sat there, her eyes like saucers as if she were in shock. Then, slowly, as we picked up more and more speed, a fantastic smile bloomed on her face. The extraordinary creature began twirling around at high speed, following an intricate system of rails that seemed way too delicate for that kind of heavy work, and I felt the pressure of the centrifugal force on my whole body. The increasing speed blurred my vision, and all I could see now were swirling sporadic lights passing me by, and in shadows the back the person sitting on the carriage in front of me. Rushing on the tracks, all I could hear at first were the clunks of metal and the wind in my ears, but in this noise chaos another sound stood out, a laugh so bold and unashamed, freed from anything but the thrill of the moment, rising above the earthly turmoils of the Carnival and lifting me up with it: Mathilda.