Chapter 2 #

Luna Young is twenty-one years old, a little shorter than average, with a slight build that makes her look younger than she is. Her hair is naturally blonde, though the lower half has been dyed in shades of turquoise, blue, and purple. She wears it in a loose braid. Around one wrist is a handmade friendship bracelet in exactly the same colours. If you look closely, you can see where the pattern breaks because she knotted the wrong threads together. No one notices, except Luna.

She’s walking through Wonderworld, a small theme park full of manufactured magic and sticky-fingered toddlers. Litter picker in hand, she works her way methodically through the borders and flower beds. Dummy. Crisp packet. Ice lolly stick. Each one drops neatly into her rubbish bag. On her green tabard is the park logo: WONDERWORLD, with a cheerful elf for a mascot.

She reaches for a half-eaten doughnut glistening in the grass: a banquet for the ants, already marching busily across it. She clamps the end of the picker around the doughnut and lifts it away. Sorry, guys.

Something tugs at her shirt.

Luna turns, her face already arranging itself into a friendly question. A boy is standing there, no more than five years old, with neatly combed blond hair and a pale blue polo shirt tucked into his shorts. Tears shine in the corners of his eyes, not quite falling yet but perilously close. Half a second removed from a meltdown.

Behind him stands a man. His father, I assume. Arms folded, shoulders saying I don’t have time for this, mouth drawn a little too tight. The posture of a parent who checked out hours ago.

Luna crouches at once, bringing herself level with the boy. “Hey,” she says, her voice soft and sweet as soft-serve. “What’s wrong? Can I help?”

The boy bursts into tears. His face crumples, his mouth opens into a perfect O, and the sound that comes out of him is astonishingly loud for such a small body.

The father sighs. “He dropped his soft toy in the wishing well. Can you fish it out?”

I feel relief rush through Luna. This is something she can fix.

“Of course!” she says, giving the boy and his father a warm smile. “No problem at all. Happens more often than you’d think.”

It does, too. So much ends up in that wishing well that has no business being there— toys, phones, sunglasses, key rings, once even a set of dentures—that Luna sometimes wonders whether the well has some kind of pull. Butterflies often circle above it, and birds land on the rim as if drawn by crumbs. Just last week, she had to fish out a pigeon with her bare hands before the park opened. The bird thrashed and flapped in a panic while Luna reached in up to her elbows in the cold water. She saved it from drowning just in time.

Luna straightens, grips her picker as if it were a magic wand, and heads for the wishing well.

The wishing well is exactly what you’d expect. Rough stones stacked in a circle, covered in artificial moss that looks as if it has been there for centuries, until you get close enough to see the lines of glue. On the rim sits a golden frog with bulging eyes, spitting a thin stream of water into the well from its gaping mouth. Coins shimmer at the bottom. They lie there like faded wishes, some still bright and new, others already turning green.

Luna leans over the edge and peers through the clear water to the bottom. There lies the victim: a small rabbit, once white. Luna lowers her picker, takes aim, and… got it! Water drips from the soaked toy as she lifts it out.

She’s about to turn away when the well changes. The surface darkens, as if a cloud has slid across the sun. The bottom seems to vanish, and the well is suddenly much deeper, as if you could drop a stone into it and never hear it land. Luna blinks, and it’s gone. The coins lie where they were, and the golden frog spits its little stream as though nothing happened. She stares at the bottom for another half second, then shakes her head. Too long in the sun, I hear her think. Or not enough water.

Maybe.

Luna turns back to the boy and his father, the dripping rabbit in her free hand.

“Here you go,” she says softly, holding the rabbit out to the boy. “You know what? He’s even more special now. He’s been in the magic wishing well. Maybe he has superpowers.”

Oh, Luna. You meant so well.

The boy’s face crumples. His mouth opens, and he starts crying even harder than before. “Nooo!” he wails, his voice shrill enough to make even the hairs on my arms stand on end. “I don’t want him! I want my old Bunny back!”

Luna freezes, the wet rabbit still held out in her hand. The father’s eyes flash. “Well, thanks a lot!” he snaps. “You shouldn’t fill children’s heads with that kind of nonsense. It scares them. Do you have any idea how long it takes to calm him down?”

The rabbit drips onto the pavement. Luna’s cheeks begin to burn.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. She presses the wet toy into the boy’s hand, and he immediately holds it at arm’s length as though it might be contagious. The father grabs his son by the shoulder and steers him away. They head towards the exit, the rabbit dangling at arm’s length, dripping.

Luna takes a deep breath, her shoulders curved slightly forwards, as if she’s made herself smaller without realising it. Then she resumes her route.

The sun sinks behind the fairy-tale castle, and the clock on the tower strikes the hour. Everywhere, lights begin to flicker on: in the trees, along the paths, across the façades of the cottages. Fountains gleam in the soft evening light. From hidden speakers, classical music plays, quieter now than it was during the day, almost dreamlike. The last visitors drift towards the exit, tired and full of sugar. A father with a sleeping child on his shoulder, the little head bobbing with each step. Two teenagers bent over a phone, laughing so hard they can barely walk. A grandmother huffing along behind two running grandchildren, one shoe untied.

And then, slowly, the park goes quiet.

This is when the park’s at its most beautiful, Luna thinks, when the crowds thin and the evening sun turns everything golden.

The talking face in the story tree finally falls silent. The empty seats of the carousel still rock gently. From the witch’s cottage, a thin wisp of smoke curls above the cauldron.

Children don’t see where the cables run, or how the jerky movements give away that none of it is real. Or maybe they do see it, and choose to believe anyway.

Luna doesn’t believe in magic. Luna believes in the people who make the magic. Someone dreamed up the stories for the tree and designed the face in its trunk. Someone built the witch’s cottage. Someone had an idea and a can of paint. To make something out of nothing, purely from your imagination and with your own two hands—that is real magic.

She lets her gaze travel along the path ahead: the foam toadstools, the painted wooden signs with curly letters pointing towards the Troll Bridge and the Mirror Pond.

How cool would it be, she thinks. And then, half a second later, as if slapping herself on the wrist: Dream on.

Beside a bench near the slide, a paper cup lies on its side. A film of lemonade has left a sticky stain on the stone. Luna spears the cup and tosses it into her bag. In the silence, the sound of it hitting the other rubbish is almost loud.

She walks on. The path curves left, past a row of lampposts that have just flickered to life, and opens onto the traffic garden. She stops short. Slowly, her hand drops until the picker hangs limp at her side.

The traffic garden is a small course with white stripes on the asphalt and a few miniature zebra crossings. A child-height traffic light that blinks red-amber-green during the day but sits dark now. A handful of pedal karts parked in a neat row along the fence. A sparrow pecks at something on the ground, then flits away.

It’s empty. It’s quiet. And it’s the ugliest part of all of Wonderworld. This is where the park’s magic stops dead, as if someone cut a piece out of the outside world and pasted it onto the grass. Asphalt and traffic rules and staying neatly inside the lines.

Luna stands there staring at it. What would I build here?

The thought arrives uninvited and refuses to leave. Her eyes move across the asphalt, the zebra crossings, the row of pedal karts, and somewhere behind those blue eyes, something begins to take shape.

I watch it happen. It starts at the edges. The straight lines of the fence blur. The asphalt softens and becomes forest floor. Wood chips. Moss. Tree roots pushing up through the earth like the fingers of something alive underground.

Luna no longer sees it. The traffic garden, I mean. She’s somewhere else.

Bamboo hedges rise from the ground and climb higher and higher, until their tops tower above her and shut out the world beyond. Green is everywhere, in every shade you can imagine: emerald and olive and the dark, wet green of leaves after rain.

It’s a jungle.

This is a place without a map. You have to find your own way along winding paths that split and merge and sometimes end at a fallen tree you can climb over. There are no signs saying KEEP OUT. You can go anywhere you want. You can climb and crawl and wander. You have to wander, because that’s the whole point: getting lost isn’t a mistake here. It’s where the adventure begins.

You follow the sound of water along a narrow trail that winds upward between the ferns. Then the path opens, and there it is: a wide, thundering waterfall plunging from an artificial rock ledge into a pool below. Mist hangs in the air and breaks the sunlight into tiny rainbows. And if you look carefully, you can see a ledge running behind the falling water. Just wide enough for one person. You can walk behind it, if you dare, and see the world through a curtain of water without anyone seeing you.

Another path winds down between the roots of an enormous tree and leads to a hidden cave. The entrance is half-hidden behind ivy; you have to drop to your knees and crawl through. But once you’re inside, once you step into the darkness and your eyes slowly adjust, you find yourself in a cool, silent space. And there, all the way at the back, on a stone pedestal: something gleaming. A treasure. It doesn’t matter what kind. What matters is that it’s there, and that you’re the one who found it.

Luna’s lips are slightly parted. Her eyes move across her imaginary landscape, and for a moment she isn’t a girl with a picker and a tabard. She’s a designer. A builder of worlds.

She sees every stone, every leaf, every hidden discovery. She can feel the texture of the moss beneath her fingers, the cool air inside the cave, the mist of the waterfall on her face. And in her mind, it’s perfect.

Luna blinks, and the jungle vanishes. There she stands again, in the traffic garden of Wonderworld, with a picker in her hand and a tabard with a grinning elf on her chest. Zebra crossings. Traffic lights. Pedal karts and scooters lined up in a row. Easy and cheap to maintain, and very educational too.

She breathes in. She breathes out. Her fingers tighten around the handle of the picker. Then someone clears his throat behind her.

“Young lady.”

Luna startles. She turns around too quickly, almost guiltily, as if she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

Ah. Our boss.

Vince Davies is twenty-five, average height and thin, with short hair that looks as if it’s been combed into place with a ruler. He wears neat grey trousers, a white shirt, and black leather shoes that despise gravel. In his left hand, he holds his tablet, pressed lightly against his hip. His brow is permanently furrowed, as though he’s chronically disappointed in the world around him, and in the staff in particular.

“What are you doing, standing there dawdling? We don’t pay you to admire the view.”

You barely pay me at all. But she doesn’t say that out loud. Instead, she mumbles, “Sorry.”

He doesn’t look at Luna. He looks past her shoulder, as if he’s already thinking about the next problem before the one in front of him has been dealt with. Then he starts tapping the screen of his tablet.

Luna takes a deep breath and pulls her shoulders back by the smallest amount. “Um… Vince?”

He doesn’t look up from his tablet. “Mm?”

“I actually wanted to ask you something.”

“Mm.”

“I was wondering if there might be, um, if there might be an opening. In the workshop.”

His thumb stops scrolling. “As a set builder, you mean?”

“Yes. I think it would be… I thought, maybe I could…”

She stops. Vince finally looks up from his tablet. So she starts over.

“I don’t have any formal training or anything, I know that, but I’m really creative, and I like working with my hands, and I—” The words come out faster than she meant them to, as if she’s afraid Vince will cut her off before they’ve all escaped. “I mean, I can learn. I’m a fast learner. I’d really, really like to.”

He looks at her. More or less. His gaze slides over her tabard, the picker, her turquoise-and-purple locks. I can feel him reducing her to a checklist: No training. No experience. Wrong CV. Wrong hair. Wrong girl.

And then he smiles. “Lina—”

“Luna.”

“—Luna, listen.” He lowers his tablet, as if he’s giving her his full attention now. “It’s great that you’re interested. But set design is specialised work. We need people with training and experience for that. And besides, between you and me,” he leans in slightly, “we’re moving towards a different model anyway. We’re going to have everything manufactured overseas. Saves a huge amount on costs. Craftwork just isn’t profitable anymore.”

He says it as if he’s doing her a favour. As though he’s letting her peek behind the curtain and she should be grateful for his honesty.

“So I wouldn’t recommend it. You just keep doing what you’re good at.” He nods towards her picker. “The park needs to stay tidy. It’s important work.”

Luna nods. The door falls shut before she has even dared to open it properly.

“Speaking of which,” he says, “the ice cream parlour is a mess. Someone knocked over a whole stack of cups, and they’re blowing everywhere. Go clean that up, will you?”

It’s not a question.

“Okay,” Luna says, and nods.

Vince has already disappeared into his tablet. He walks away with tense shoulders and a hurried stride, as though he has the most important job in the world.

“Weird girl,” he mutters to himself. Not loudly, but not quietly enough either.

Luna hears it.

I hear it.

Luna watches him go and lets out a quiet sigh. She turns towards the ice cream parlour. Her braid flips back over her shoulder. The picker settles into her hand again.

Then something interesting happens. Her step becomes a little lighter. There’s something there she’s looking forward to; I can feel it. Or someone…

We’ll see.

Thanks for reading! #

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