Unusual Gift Giving

His presents are not bound in shiny paper or silk bags, except for a deck of tarot cards he receives on his ninth birthday from the fortuneteller, but in canvas tents, labeled with signs instead of cards. Though new tents are constantly appearing, special exhibitions are born each April 13^th, and though patrons do not know of the corrolation between the new tents and his birthday, he has suspected long before learning to read the sparkle in the fortune teller’s eyes. He is given snowflakes and fire, indeed, the Snowglobe is a gift for his fourteenth birthday, after his particular delight with the Bone Forest is taken note of. New confections are introduced in the vendor’s stalls around the Moon Mirror, exotic flavours that become quite popular, though he is always the first to taste them. One birthday results in an underground cavern, filled with mist and tubers, a waterfall that leaves each patron dry, as though they have passed through a curtain of silk instead of water. Another birthday he discovers a tent with a jar, named after Pandora’s Box. The contortionist is chaperoning him this evening and smiles sadly while he reads the sign, perplexed when he encounters the earthenware vessel beyond the curtain. “Your sister would have been thirteen as well, today,” the contortionist, Paikea, says. “This jar, while it held all the evils of the world, including death, which took your sister, also held hope. You will be the first to hope here.”

Text by Lucie MacAulay