Sugar Coated Transitions

Patrons open the flap of the tent curtain and are overwhelmed by the smell. They notice it before the notice the tent is long, like a hallway, the walls and floor and cieling such a blinding white it seems they are walking into a void, yet bare black trees line the wall. The tent smells of sugar, of all things sweet. It smells of toffee and caramel, honey and cocoa, vanilla and coconut. The path, the patrons discover as they slowly make their way down the long tree-lined passage, is bordered by heaps of what appears at first to be snow but discover are billows of spun sugar, fluttering in the shifted air brought by footsteps. Spun sugar dusts the branches of the trees too, glittering on their long dark limbs. Long silver strings hand from low branches, wrapped around small packages of black and dark blue paper. Each package has a different picture on it, renderings of snowflakes or orange blossoms or cherries or nuts. Upon opening them, patrons discover with delighted surprise small wrapped up sweets, dark chocolates, buttercreams and pralines, hazelnuts dipped covered in swirling white and brown chocolate loops, sticky taffee and bitter coffee beans. They laugh with caramel-covered lips, insisting they cannot manage more or they will spoil their appetite, yet they always somehow manage. The more packages are unwrapped the more the tent is filled with the aroma of cherry lollipops, iced cinnamon pastries, black cherries dusted in sugar and nutmeg, honey, lemon drops and peppermints. 

Some of the sweet trees have knots in them, small holes where adventurous patrons find slightly larger packages of brittle honeycomb or dried apricots in coconut sugar, white as fresh cream. 

Children make games of tossing candies back and forth, trading sweet wafers for candied fruit, sugar-spun roses for marzipan, tiny red currant tea cakes with buttercream icing for crystallized meringue.

The trees are never bare, no matter how many sweets are pulled from their silver strings. the strings hang like nooses, new confections materializing multiple times in one night. 

On All Hallow's Eve this tent is particularly popular, some children wish to spend the entire night there but are eventually whisked away to other wonders, feeling cheated when they return later and cannot find the tent. On this night the light of the passage fades, beginning in white and changing subtly to darkness where white trees shine as those packed with stars. Shadows flit between trees, tossing comfits and sugared almonds at patrons in their mischief, smiling from faces behind dark leafy masks, their chests bare, heads topped with curling silver horns and backsides adorned with, some say, tails. They dance to and fro, dissappearing behind trees, pursued by bold young girls and boys or sometimes by older patrons feeling adventurous. Fauns and fairy folk like Samhain, some speculate, that is why they make an appearance on this mysterious night.

Still, on any night, the tent is a sparkling delight.

Patrons leave the tent with renewed energy, pockets full of empty wrappers with miniscule landscapes and still lives, sometimes with small butterscotches for later. They will still visit the vendors close to the gate later for more food, as they often find themselves hungry a short while later and, no matter how hard each patron may try or how precisely one follows one's footsteps, they cannot find the tent again.

Art by Delicious Reads Bookclub

Text by Lucie MacAulay