Vexbridge celebrated its twentieth annual balloon bonanza with painted banners, food carts, and speeches no one intended to remember.
Balloons bobbed between the buildings.
Children tried to catch their strings.
The mayor stood beneath a sign reading FLOAT ABOVE THE LAW and told a reporter that ten years of uneventful festivities proved his administration’s commitment to public safety.
In the street, a man in a battered green hat watched a balloon drift the wrong way against the breeze.
“Something’s interfering with the helium field,” Lincoln muttered.
“What the fluff does that mean?” asked a nearby festival worker.
Lincoln was about to answer when a shadow passed over the square.
The red-haired witch descended on a balloon animal, arms spread wide.
“Guess who’s here to pop your party?”
Her dark-haired companion sailed beside her.
“Let’s defy gravity.
And sanity.”
Someone applauded, thinking it was part of the program.
Someone else dropped a tray of pastries.
The redhead tapped a balloon with one finger and spoke a blessing over the snack stalls: “May your snacks be light as air!”
The balloon burst into a golden duck.
The duck grew, honked, and shot through the avenue.
Every loose object followed it upward.
Plates rose from tables.
Hats fled their owners.
A man caught his lunch just before it escaped into a cloud.
“My ankles!” the mayor shouted as his feet left the pavement.
“They’ve betrayed me!”
“Let’s make the mayor’s office bounce,” the redhead said.
The building gave an enormous, rubbery shiver.
Windows wobbled.
A balloon dog sprang from a kiosk and chased the mayor around the square while he remained a few feet in the air.
His demand for balloon safety reform came out much louder than his earlier speech.
The crowd began to laugh.
Then the laughter spread into something harder to control.
Streets rippled.
Parade balloons became creatures with shining eyes and impossible mouths.
A ribbon of colors twined around the clock tower.
The spell was no longer waiting for the witches to direct it.
“Remember our training,” the dark-haired witch said, skimming past a pair of city guards.
“Whee!” the redhead answered from the back of a balloon rabbit.
“Not like this,” one of the guards said.
At the edge of the festival grounds, a cloud of living helium rose out of the fountain.
Lincoln pushed through the crowd, furious enough to forget being small.
“Vexbridge didn’t fall,” he said, looking up at the buildings.
“That’s worse.”
The city was climbing.