Blow by Daniel Nayeri Read Free Book Online Page A

their heads. But now the fear of night obscured even the flowers’ scent. And the glass baubles that hung between each flower curtain, what good were they, people whispered, if they weren’t lamps or candelabras?
    A worried murmur began to rise among the row of blacksmiths, big dudes who were getting skittish. They grumbled that they never would have put out their smelting fires if they’d known it’d be pitch-black. A few of them scuttled over to the lady who made night-lights out of glow-in-the-dark seashells.
    Personally, I like the dark. But then, I guess deep down you guys aren’t really afraid of the dark, so much as meeting me somewhere in it. Thanks for that, by the way. Real good for my ego.
    I said that to a guy I knew once, and he goes, “I’m not afraid of meeting you in the dark. I am afraid of being left alive after getting mutilated by a bear.” That was nice of him to say.
    So the last sliver of sunlight faded out in the fairground. The blacksmiths made a collective whimpering sound. It was so dark, you could only make out the eyes of a thousand different were-creatures, watching from the surrounding edge of the Black Forest.
    When some poor girl in a corner booth got her ankle nipped by a were-mole, her scream sent fear through the crowd. If you ever want to see true chaos, get a bunch of artists in an enclosed space and threaten their work. It gets ugly. They’re like monkeys in a fire.
    In that second before someone screamed bloody artwork, a dozen drums pounded a single beat, and the stage at the head of the fairground suddenly lit up with a single flash. Then the darkness descended again, but everyone turned toward the stage. Another drumbeat, another flash.
    A few people thought they could make out the outline of an extremely hot guy. The drums thumped a third time. The light flashed again. By this time everyone could see one very stylish person, obviously Prince Kaiser Dimple Pimple, standing in the middle of the stage. It was obvious because a huge backdrop behind him said his name in shiny ten-foot sequined letters that lit up with every flash.
    The prince was standing with his hands crossed in front of his crotch and his head down. The light and the drums slowly sped up the beat.
    As their eyes got used to the bursts of light, the audience recognized the source. Every land pirate in Bavaria stood around the stage and held an outrageously long fishing pole. At the end of the fishing lines dangled paper stars. Candles flickered inside the spiky white lanterns, and when all the pirates strained to cantilever the long poles out over the stage at the same time, it made a sudden synchronous flare. The bulbs of celebrity. The light of awesome.
    It must have taken weeks to choreograph the land pirates. In perfect unison, they bowed the stars before Prince Kaiser and lifted them to create a strobe effect.
    The drums and stars pulsed, and every heartbeat ramped up, until suddenly, with a surge of radiant sex appeal, the prince looked up. The stars flew up and away. The drums abruptly halted in the dark.
    A beat.
    The crowd vibrated and possibly wet its pants.
    With a blast of starlight, a thunder of drums, the prince is back. He looks left. The dimple is honestly stunning. Another blast, and he looks right. The other dimple is, impossibly, even better. His cheeks must have been worked on. They’re just too perfect. A final blast, and he does a little chin flick and walks toward the crowd. They’re freaking out, screaming like banshees on vacation. A few jewelers have already gasped and given up consciousness.
    The land pirates stake the fishing poles into the ground, creating ambient starlight for the stage. The drummers go silent.
    Prince Kaiser sashays his pretty self to center stage and says, “—.”
    It doesn’t really matter what he said. The guy talked too much. He welcomed a few dignitaries from a craft factory in Manchester and some muckety-mucks who appeared onstage for a few seconds