The carnival did not sleep.
Hoppy walked through its paths for what felt like hours, and the light never changed. The stars above continued their slow arcs across the dark sky, the strings of bulbs between the buildings flickered in their endless patterns, and the music played on, melodies layering over each other until they became something thick and rich, like syrup poured over warm bread. He passed booths where masked creatures called out to him, offering games he did not understand, rides that spun and rose and fell, food that smelled of sugar and spice and things he had no names for.
He did not stop at any of them. Not because he did not want to, but because his feet kept moving, carrying him forward through the crowd, and he was not sure he could have stopped even if he tried. The Embers in his chest—the one from Cottonia and the one from the Memory Game—were pulsing together now, their rhythms finding a shared beat, and with each pulse he felt more awake, more present, more here than he had felt in years.
The path of light beneath his feet branched and split and rejoined, and he followed it without thinking, letting it take him where it would. He passed a group of creatures sitting in a circle, their masks all different shapes, and they were singing something low and slow, a song that did not match the carnival music but somehow fit anyway. He passed a tower of lights that changed color with each step he took, red to blue to gold to green, and when he looked back, the colors continued to shift in his wake, as if he had left something behind.
He came to a place where the path widened into a square. In the center of the square, there was a fountain, but it did not spray water. It sprayed light, streams of gold and silver that rose into the air and fell back in arcs that never quite touched the ground. Around the fountain, benches had been placed, and on one of them, a figure sat alone.
It was larger than the other carnival creatures Hoppy had seen. Its body was broad and round, covered in fabric that looked like patchwork, hundreds of pieces of cloth sewn together in patterns that might have told a story if he had known how to read them. Its mask was different too. Not a star or a circle or a crescent, but a face, a gentle face with closed eyes and a small smile, painted in soft colors that did not reflect the fountain's light.
Hoppy stopped at the edge of the square. He was not sure why this figure drew his attention. There were others nearby, groups of creatures laughing and playing, but something about the figure on the bench made him pause. It was the stillness, perhaps. In a place of constant motion, this one sat without moving, watching the fountain with eyes that were closed.
The figure spoke without opening its eyes.
"You have come a long way for someone who arrived only a short time ago."
Hoppy looked around. There was no one else near the bench. The figure was speaking to him.
"I did not know I was going anywhere," Hoppy said. "I was just walking."
The figure smiled, the painted smile on the mask shifting slightly as if it was not painted at all. "Walking is going somewhere. Every step is a destination, if you pay attention to it. Most people do not. They walk to get to other places. They forget that the walking itself is a place."
Hoppy considered this. He had walked a great deal in his life, from one section of the station to another, from his room to the workshop and back again. He had never thought of the walking as anything other than the space between where he was and where he needed to be.
"I am Hoppy," he said, because it seemed like the thing to say.
The figure opened its eyes. They were the same color as the fountain's light, gold and silver mixed together, and when they looked at him, Hoppy felt something shift in his chest, as if the Embers were being examined gently, turned over to see what they were made of.
"I am called the Carnival Keeper," the figure said. "Not because I keep the carnival in the sense of owning it. No one owns the carnival. I keep it in the sense of holding it, remembering it, making sure it does not forget itself."
"Does it forget?" Hoppy asked. He sat down on the bench beside the Keeper. The seat was warm, and the fabric of the Keeper's patchwork coat brushed against his arm, soft and worn, like something that had been touched many times.
"Sometimes. When Dreamers come and go, when the lights dim and brighten, when the music changes. A carnival is a living thing. It breathes and moves and changes. And sometimes, in the changing, it forgets what it was. That is where I come in. I remember."
The Keeper reached into the folds of the patchwork coat and pulled out something small. It was a toy, Hoppy realized. A small figure carved from wood, painted in colors that had faded over time. It was a creature of some kind, with wings and a long tail, and though the paint was worn, he could see that it had once been beautiful.
"This was made by a Dreamer, a long time ago," the Keeper said. "She came to the carnival and stayed for many cycles. She played the games, rode the rides, made friends with the creatures. And before she left, she made this. She carved it from wood she found in Jumblewood, she told me. She painted it with light from Siren's Deep. She gave it to me so that I would remember her."
Hoppy looked at the small figure. It was not moving, but it seemed to hold motion inside it, as if at any moment it might spread its wings and fly.
"What was her name?" he asked.
The Keeper smiled. "I do not remember. That is the strange thing. I remember her face. I remember her laugh. I remember the way she played the shell game and won every time, though she always gave her prizes away to the smaller creatures. But her name is gone. The carnival took it, perhaps. Or the Tide. Names are light things. They drift away if you do not hold them tightly."
Hoppy thought about his parents. He remembered their faces, but the names came slowly, as if he had to reach through fog to find them. His mother. His father. The sounds of their names in his mouth, a taste he had not had in years.
"I forgot my parents' names once," he said. "Not completely. They came back. But for a while, they were gone."
The Keeper nodded slowly. "That is the way of forgetting. It is not a door that closes forever. It is a room you have stopped visiting. The things in it are still there, waiting. You only need to open the door again."
The Keeper placed the wooden figure on the edge of the fountain, and for a moment, the light from the fountain caught it, and Hoppy could have sworn he saw it move, its wings spreading, its tail curling. Then the light shifted, and it was still again, just a small carving on the edge of a fountain.
"Why did you tell me about her?" Hoppy asked. "The Dreamer who made the toy."
The Keeper turned to look at him, the gold and silver eyes steady. "Because you are carrying something new. Two Embers, I can see them. One from Cottonia, one from our Memory Game. They are bright, these Embers. Brighter than most who come here for the first time. That means you are open. That means you are ready to receive. But it also means you will carry more than most. And carrying is not always easy."
Hoppy touched his chest. He could feel the warmth there, steady and constant. It did not feel heavy. It felt light, if anything. Lighter than he had felt in years.
"It does not feel hard," he said.
"Not yet. The Embers are new. They are still learning you, and you are still learning them. But as you collect more, they will begin to talk to each other, to combine, to form patterns. Those patterns are called Sigils. They grant abilities, sometimes, or knowledge, or understanding. But they also change you. Not in a bad way. In a way that makes you more yourself, perhaps. Or less what you were before. It is hard to say."
Hoppy did not know what to do with that information. He was not sure he wanted to be changed. He had spent a long time being what he was, and while it was not a happy existence, it was a familiar one. Familiar was safe. Familiar was known.
But he was not on the station anymore. He was sitting on a bench in a carnival made of light and memory, next to a creature who wore a mask that was also a face, and he had two dead stars living in his chest. Familiar was far away now.
"How do I know what the Embers want?" he asked. "Or what they are supposed to do?"
The Keeper laughed. It was a soft sound, not like Jester's bell-laughter, but something deeper, something that came from a place of long patience.
"They do not want anything. They are memories, not creatures. They are not hungry or thirsty or lonely. They simply are. The question is not what they want. The question is what you will do with them. Will you carry them quietly, keeping them safe inside you? Or will you let them out, let them become part of you, let them change the way you see the world?"
Hoppy thought about the Ember from Cottonia. It had shown him people telling stories, keeping the light alive after the star was gone. That was what they had done. They had not kept the light inside. They had shared it. They had passed it from one to another, and in the passing, it had become something new.
"The second one," he said. "I think. I think I am supposed to let them out."
The Keeper smiled, the painted smile on the mask widening. "Then you are already learning, Dreamer. Faster than most. Or perhaps slower than most, and the learning is just coming to you in a different way."
A sound came from across the square, a clatter of something falling, and then a high voice saying something Hoppy could not understand. He looked up and saw a small creature, no taller than his knee, scrambling to pick up a collection of brightly colored balls that had scattered across the ground. Its mask was shaped like a crescent moon, and its patchwork clothes were too large for it, the sleeves dragging on the ground as it moved.
Hoppy stood up without thinking. He walked over to the creature and knelt down, and before he could consider whether this was something he should do, he began picking up the balls. They were light in his hands, made of something that felt like paper but was not, and they glowed faintly with their own colors.
The creature looked up at him. Its mask had no expression, of course, but the way it tilted its head suggested surprise.
"You do not have to do that," the creature said. Its voice was high and quick, the words tumbling over each other. "I can do it myself. I always do it myself. I drop things all the time and I always pick them up myself. It is my job to drop things, I think. Or not my job. My habit. My very persistent habit."
"It is fine," Hoppy said. He handed the creature a handful of the balls, and the creature's too-long sleeves flopped as it reached for them. "I was sitting anyway. It is not hard to pick things up."
The creature stared at him for a moment, then let out a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a sigh. "You are new. I can tell. New Dreamers always help. The old ones help too, sometimes, but the new ones always help. It is because they have not learned that helping takes time, and time is something you can run out of. Or maybe they know that and help anyway. I have never been sure."
Hoppy picked up the last ball and handed it over. The creature clutched the collection to its chest, the balls making soft chiming sounds as they touched each other.
"I am called Tumble," the creature said. "Because I tumble. Things fall around me, and sometimes I fall too. It is not a name I chose. It is a name that happened. But I like it. It is honest."
"I am Hoppy," Hoppy said. "My name happened too. I do not know why. My parents called me that, and I never asked."
Tumble nodded, the crescent mask bobbing. "Parents. That is a word I know. Some creatures here have parents. Most do not. The carnival does not make parents. It makes creatures, and then the creatures make themselves. That is the carnival way. Make yourself. Be yourself. Drop things and pick them up and drop them again."
The creature looked down at the balls in its arms, then at the ground, then at Hoppy.
"I will probably drop these again," Tumble said. "In about three minutes. Maybe four. That is how long I can usually hold things before my sleeves get in the way or my hands forget what they are doing."
"Then I will help you pick them up again," Hoppy said.
He was not sure why he said it. On the station, he would never have offered such a thing. Helping someone meant getting involved, meant becoming responsible, meant being noticed. He had spent years making himself unnoticeable. But here, with the carnival lights and the music and the warmth of the Embers in his chest, it did not seem like such a dangerous thing.
Tumble stared at him for a long moment. Then the creature let out a sound that was definitely a laugh, high and bright, and the balls in its arms began to slip almost immediately. Hoppy caught two of them before they hit the ground, and Tumble caught the rest, and they stood there for a moment, both holding the glowing balls, both laughing.
"You are strange," Tumble said, but it was not an insult. It was a statement of fact, delivered with something that sounded like approval. "Strange Dreamers are the best Dreamers. The normal ones come and go and I do not remember them. The strange ones I remember. I will remember you, Hoppy."
"I will remember you too," Hoppy said. And he meant it.
He helped Tumble carry the balls to a booth on the edge of the square, a small structure made of fabric and light where the balls were supposed to be stacked in patterns that changed each time he looked at them. Tumble arranged them with more care than Hoppy would have expected, the too-long sleeves somehow not getting in the way when it mattered, and when the last ball was in place, the creature stepped back and let out a long breath.
"There," Tumble said. "That will last until the next time I trip over my own feet, which will be soon. But for now, it is perfect."
Hoppy looked at the pattern of glowing balls. They were arranged in a spiral that seemed to turn slowly, though none of them were moving. The colors shifted as he watched, red to orange to gold, and the spiral seemed to pull his eyes inward, toward a center that was not quite there.
"That is beautiful," he said.
Tumble made a sound that might have been embarrassment. "It is just a pattern. Anyone can make a pattern. The hard part is keeping it from falling apart. That is what I am bad at. The keeping. The making I can do. The keeping is harder."
Hoppy understood that. He had made things on the station, repairs and modifications, small improvements that kept the systems running. But he had never kept anything. His parents had died, and he had kept nothing of them except a report in a drawer. His drawings had faded from the walls, and he had not drawn new ones. He had made, but he had not kept.
He touched the Embers in his chest. They pulsed in response, a quiet acknowledgment.
"Maybe keeping is something you learn," he said. "Like making. You practice, and you get better."
Tumble tilted its head again. "That is a kind thing to say. I will try to believe it. But I have been practicing for a very long time, and I still drop things."
"That is all right," Hoppy said. "Dropping things means you get to pick them up. And picking things up means you get to see them up close."
Tumble was quiet for a moment. Then it laughed again, and this time the laugh was softer, more thoughtful.
"You are very strange, Hoppy. I like you. You should come back to my booth when you have more Embers. The patterns look different when you carry more light. They move differently. They change. I would like to see what your light does to them."
"I will," Hoppy said. And he meant that too.
He left Tumble at the booth, the small creature already beginning to fidget with the balls, adjusting them, moving them, probably about to knock them over again. He walked back across the square, and the Carnival Keeper was still sitting on the bench, watching the fountain of light.
The Keeper looked up as Hoppy approached.
"You helped Tumble," the Keeper said. It was not a question.
"He dropped something. I picked it up."
"That is what Tumble does. Drops things. And that is what you did. Picked them up. It is a small thing, but small things are not nothing. They are the opposite of nothing. They are everything, arranged in a certain order."
The Keeper reached into its patchwork coat again and pulled out something else. This time it was not a toy. It was a small piece of light, no larger than Hoppy's thumbnail, and it pulsed with a soft blue glow. It was an Ember, he realized. Smaller than the others he had found, but the same in every other way.
"You helped Tumble," the Keeper said again. "Tumble is part of the carnival. The carnival remembers those who help its parts. This Ember is not a memory of a star. It is a memory of the carnival itself. Of a time when a Dreamer helped another creature, and the act of helping became light. That light has been waiting for someone to carry it. I think that someone is you."
The Keeper held out the Ember, and Hoppy reached for it. It was cool in his hand, unlike the others, but as it touched his skin, it warmed, and he felt it join the others in his chest, a third pulse finding the rhythm of the first two.
This one felt different. The others had been memories of stars, of things vast and distant. This one was small. It was the memory of a kindness, a moment when someone had stopped to help, and that moment had been so bright that it had become something that could be carried, passed on, shared.
Hoppy closed his hand around it and felt it settle inside him, not heavy, not light, but present.
"Thank you," he said.
The Carnival Keeper smiled. "Do not thank me. Thank the Dreamer who made it. But she is gone now, and you are here, and the light is yours. That is how it works. The light passes from one to another, and in the passing, it grows. Or it fades. It depends on the hands that hold it."
Hoppy looked at his hands. They were the same hands that had repaired coolant valves and tightened bolts and picked up glowing balls from the ground. They were mechanic's hands, calloused and scarred, the nails always a little too short. They did not look like hands that could hold light.
But they were holding it. He could feel it.
"What happens now?" he asked. It was the same question he had asked Monna on Cottonia, and it seemed like it would be the question he asked everywhere, at every Gate, at every new beginning.
The Keeper stood up. The patchwork coat rustled, and for a moment, Hoppy could see the stories in the fabric, the images that moved across it like the stars in the sky above. He saw a carnival being built, creatures raising tents and stringing lights. He saw Dreamers arriving, their faces bright with wonder. He saw the star above pulsing, giving light to everything below. He saw it fade, and he saw the carnival continue, the creatures lifting their own lights to fill the darkness.
"Now you explore," the Keeper said. "You have three Embers now. That is enough to begin forming patterns, though you may not see them yet. Walk through the carnival. Let the music guide you. There are games that will show you things about yourself, rides that will take you to places you have never been, creatures who will tell you stories that have been waiting to be told. And when you are ready, there is another Gate."
The Keeper pointed, and Hoppy followed the gesture. Beyond the square, beyond the tents and the towers and the lights, he could see the shimmer again, the same shimmer that had brought him here from Cottonia. Another Gate. Another world.
"But you do not need to go yet," the Keeper said. "The Gate will wait. The carnival will wait. Everything waits, in its own way. What matters is not where you are going. What matters is what you carry with you."
Hoppy touched his chest. The three Embers pulsed together, a steady rhythm that matched the fountain, matched the music, matched something inside him that he was only beginning to understand.
He looked at the Gate in the distance. He looked at the carnival around him, the lights and the music and the creatures moving through their endless celebration. He looked at Tumble's booth, where the small creature was already rearranging the balls again, and at the bench where the Keeper had been sitting, now empty.
He was not ready to leave. Not yet. There was more to see here, more to learn, more lights to carry. The Gate would wait. Everything waited.
He walked back into the carnival, his steps lighter than they had been when he arrived, and the music rose to meet him, and the lights brightened as he passed, and somewhere inside him, three small pulses beat in time with his heart.