Free Legend of the Three Moons by Patricia Bernard

that many of the boats had fishermen living on board.
    Chad gestured to a man mending a fishing-net. `Will I ask him about renting or buying a boat?'
    When Lyla nodded, he asked `Excuse me, Master fisherman. Do you know anyone who rents out boats? Just a small boat. To rent or even sell.'
    The man grunted a reply. `We don't rent nor sell our boats. We use them.'
    `Aren't there any old fishermen who no longer fish?' asked Lyla as politely as she could considering the man had spoken so rudely to Chad.
    The fisherman closed one eye and examined her with the other. `Their sons use their boats. And how would an honest fisherman know if his boat wasn't being stolen by someone claiming to rent it? Stealing a boat is a crime worthy of being cut up and fed to the fish. So be off with you and take your dog with you. Dogs are bad luck around boats.'
    `Finding a boat might be harder than we thought,' muttered Chad, as they left the fifth wharf having received similar answers from every fisherman they'd approached.
    `Perhaps someone in the market will know of a boat,' suggested Lyla, stepping aside for a rickshaw that had jostled her off the road.
    The men pulling the rickshaw wore pink knee-length tunics and leather eye-blinkers, while a third, similarly dressed, held a pink umbrella over the heads of two pink-clad women sitting inside.
    `Pink!' mouthed Lyla to Chad while rolling her eyes to the sky. Pink was her least favourite colour and the idea of being clad completely in it made her almost forget her headache.
    They followed the rickshaw all the way to the market where they lost it amongst the many stalls selling fresh, fried, boiled or pickled fish, spun toffee animals on sticks, freshly baked cinnamon cakes, fortune-telling birds and `cure-all' medicines.
    Beside the stalls, with their wares displayed on mats, were travellers selling dancing toads, singing beetles and all manner of musical instruments. Others invited the crowd to partake in various sorts of gambling games, such as: throw the ring around the cat's neck; catch the flying fish; and guess which of the three mugs has the pea.
    `The middle one,' hissed Chad, after they'd watched a mug-shuffler shuffling his mugs so fast that his hands were a blur.
    `Don't point or you'll have to bet on it,' warned a voice from over their heads.
    They turned and looked up to see a girl on stilts smiling down at them.
    `I'm Clarissa,' she said, swishing back and forth her long red-satin dress with its many frilly petticoats decorated with ribbons. Then with a twinkle in her pansy-brown eyes, and to the jingling of her ankle and wrist-bell bracelets and with a clash of her tambourine, she danced away as nimbly as if she were balanced on her toes.
    Chad dragged his eyes away from her in time to see a sly-looking Belemite place a bag of wheat in front of the middle mug. Up came the mug with no pea under it. The mug-shuffler snatched away the wheat and Lyla and Chad moved on.
    They followed the crowd and soon discovered a roped-off area surrounded by enthusiastic gamblers watching six pairs of wrestlers. To the shouts and yells of the audience the six winners then wrestled each other until only two bare-chested men remained, one much larger than the other. Suddenly the smaller wrestler threw the larger wrestler and the contest was over.
    Those who'd bet their money on the larger wrestler surged forward to argue with those who'd won. Shoulders were prodded and noses punched and in the melee Chad and Nutty were separated from Lyla.
    As he searched for her amongst the heaving bodies, twisted red faces and raised fists, Chad was jolted against a stage containing five jugglers balanced on each other's shoulders. The jugglers, and what they juggled, crashed to the floor and for some reason the sour smell of Goch became so strong that Chad and Nutty ducked under the stage to escape from it.
    All Chad could see were the feet of the brawlers but he felt safer until someone else hiding under the stage