Chapter 1

"Sahanna the tiger! Come and see Sahanna the tiger!"

"Cotton candy! Blue, pink, white!"

"Are you brave enough to ride the spooky roller coaster?"

"Balloons! Balloons of all colours! Here you are, sweetie."

When the man bent over to take the coin from the five year old blonde girl that was stretching her arm out, on her tiptoes, she started to run in place, impatient, eager to grab the balloon's string.

"The blue one, please!" she exclaimed, overexcited. Her big, fair eyes shone when the man in the funny costume gave it to her. "Thank you!" and she ran away, in her light blue dress, now paired with the flying balloon that she dragged. The man smiled tenderly, thinking that she really was a little spitfire, before going back to his job.

"Balloons! Balloons of all colours!"

"Muuuuum!" running like a train, the little girl was making her way through the crowd to reach the candy cotton stall nearby, where her mum and sister were waiting for her. Or, at least, so she thought.

Among all those people, super tall in her eyes and dark of hair, she couldn't see her mum and sister's blond heads. "Mum…?" she whimpered in a chocked voice, looking around, lost.

She winced and she was about to cry; the more she looked around, the more she felt small and suffocated by all those people that seemed to not even notice her. The lines of lights decorating the tents were blinding, confusing; the music drew out the crowd's chattering all around her.

She hadn't even the time to think that maybe she should have tied the balloon's string to her wrist, that someone ran into her abruptly, making her fall on the ground with her open palm on the bare earth.

She raised her eyes to see the blue balloon fading in the dark sky and flying away forever.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I apologize, I'm sorry!" a kid, the same one that made her fall, was helping her to get back up, but she was already crying, her mouth open, screaming her at the top of her lungs against the sky. First, she'd lost her mum, then the balloon, and also when she fell she'd broken her tights: her knee was bleeding through the hole left by the tear.

"No, don't cry, come on! Hey… Little girl, don't cry!"

She couldn't clearly see through her tears the person who was trying to calm her down, clumsily, but she could glimpse black curls and dark skin.

"Come on, I'll bring you to your mum, come!" he stretched out his hand and she took it, trusting him completely, although she kept howling desperately.

"I… don't know… where she iiiiiis!" she sobbed, squeezing the edge of her dress, not worried at all about having her face completely soaked in tears and a dripping nose.

"Okay, okay, if you stop crying I'll buy you another balloon, all right?"

This seemed to work a little. She rubbed her eyes with the free hand, without leaving the kid's; in this way she was able to see him more clearly. He seemed to have her cousins' age, she thought, so he must have been around ten years old… His brown eyes looked reassuring to her, and in that moment she forgot all the warnings that her mum gave her about not talking with strangers: but what else could she do?

I'll take you to my mum, okay? She'll know what to do to find yours." he said confidently, too much for a boy of his age, but he seemed to know what to do.

She followed him through the crowd, without knowing where they were going. Then, suddenly, a little tent in front of them looked familiar. Yes, the day before, her mother wanted to get in there, but her father had told her that it was rubbish; she didn't understand what they were talking about, she just wanted a candy apple, and in the end they'd gone away.

"Come on, let's go!" the boy encouraged her, dragging her inside. "Mum!" she called, once they got in. The little girl looked around curious and a bit frightened. There was a funny smell there, and she couldn't tell whether it was good or bad. There were many crystals hanging, and wind chimes that in her eyes were just some rounded toys with colourful feathers. A beautiful woman with a long veil and big green eyes stood up from the pillows where she was sitting on, to go meeting her son at the entrance. "Jad, where have you been?" she asked, in a worried tone.

"She's got lost. She can't find her mum." he explained, while the little girl was now trying to hide behind his legs, shyly.

The woman started to stare. When she moved her head, the little stone hanging on her forehead, dangled along with her, and the child was enchanted by it. The woman looked at her for long seconds, then her full lips bowed in a kind smile. She stretched her hand out towards the little girl: her long fingernails painted in red, scared her in the beginning, but then she let her stroke her hair. Jad's mother touched her temple with her thumb, gently moving her hair, and then she smiled even more widely. "By the other cotton candy stall." she sentenced in the end.

"What?" her son asked.

"Her mum and her sister are waiting by the other cotton candy stall, the one next to the popcorn stand."

The little girl looked at her amazed, her mouth open. How did she…? Who'd told her…? But Jad didn't look surprised at all. He grabbed her hand again. "Let's go. I'll buy you another balloon later." and dragged her out again.

The little girl looked behind over and over again, hoping to see that strange lady that must have been a magician or a witch (she was hoping she was a nice one), and when she appeared at the threshold, she did the strangest thing: a bow! A bow, to her, like the one that Alice made to the Queen of Hearts in the cartoon she loved. She opened her mouth and eyes wide, while trying to keep up with Jad's pace; then a familiar voice made her forget about everything that had just happened to her.

"Iris! Iris, where have you been?!"

Porthos appeared to be more thoughtful than ever. For several months now it seemed that a constant thought had obsessed him to the point to turn his eyes red for the lack of sleep and having the first white stripes appear on his head. He could have easily hide them in his bushy, dark hair, if only he'd realised that.

The Captain puffed in a way that sounded like a muffled laughter, one of those that Porthos hadn't heard since when D'Artagnan had died. He saw him shaking his head and glancing at him with complacency.

He put the mug of beer down on the table, abruptly.

"What?" Porthos asked, curtly.

Athos hesitated, as if he thought that he couldn't handle what he was going to say, then he mumbled: "We're old."

The corner of Porthos' mouth raised in a grimace. "Speak for yourself." he burst. Neither had the energy to mess around with the other as they used to do. Most of their conversation was based on provocation that rarely the other sensed like jokes, and in the end they would often find themselves drinking in silence, everyone rapt in their thoughts.

Athos hadn't never been the same after Aramis and D'Artagnan's deaths, but he'd become even more weird after he'd come back from England. Porthos almost beat the truth out of him, until the Captain had shouted at him that she'd died. They'd never talked about it any more, not even by mistake.

The most heartbreaking thing was that he knew the truth. Milady hadn't died. He'd seen her, he'd sent her away and everyday since then he'd been wondering if he'd made the right choice. His friend didn't seem to be better than when he thought she was alive, but at the same time Porthos could recall their encounters as excruciating for Athos: he wouldn't have allowed this to happen again, he hated seeing him that way. And he needed a Captain, the whole Garrison needed one.

Porthos was convinced that it was only a matter of time: sooner or later he would have come round, maybe he would have met another woman and forgot about the one that had torn his heart for all those years.

He looked at him drinking the last sip of wine from the bottle. A musician was playing the violin in a corner of the tavern and Athos was keeping time tapping with his fingers on the counter, following a melody that Porthos didn't know. Gradually, the wrinkles rippled the Captain's face in a nervous grimace, as his tapping on the counter became sharper, until he stood up, sentencing: "I'm off." and walked towards the door, as he couldn't stand to be there one more minute.

"Damned freak..." Porthos hissed, finishing the content of his mug off in a sip.

When a drizzling spring rain shook him in a lasting chill, he heard the musician in the distance closing his song and saying: "And this was Marini's Foscarina!" proudly, thanking the clapping audience.

Athos was now a blurred silhouette far away in the rain's thick fog; he had no intention of getting to him. Sometimes he liked to feel sorry for himself in his melancholy. From an alley came out a shabby guy leaning on a crutch, with a tinkling tin in his hand.

"A coin for an old soldier?" he sputtered towards Porthos.

"Narquois..." he muttered. He knew well what was at the bottom of the street from where the narquois, the fake crippled soldier, had come. But he'd promised himself to not do it again.

He shouldn't. For his own good, he shouldn't torture himself like that.

He fought against his own mind for a few moments, looking at the narquois slowly crossing the street to get to him. Porthos looked at him full of doubts, then he moved his eyes from the alley to Athos' figure vanishing in the rain.

"Hell!" he burst. He walked loping towards the dark alley, but he couldn't make more than five steps. When he passed by the narquois, this one pulled his hand in front of him, handing out a letter and, with a completely rejuvenated voice, he said: "my lady sends her regards to the Musketeers."