Pastel alien head in a diamond frame

Old Mr Abernethy had worked the Lantern Show for forty-one summers, and he could hold a field of children still with nothing but a cough and a tin whistle. Tonight the caravans sat in a ring on the wet grass at Hadleigh Common, the candyfloss machine ticking as it cooled, and the painted sky over the booth had gone the colour of sherbet.

"Now, the Ferris wheel man swore to me the lights over Ipswich were only Christmas lamps. Christmas, in October. He's a liar, and I'll say it to his face. What came down that year was a small green saucer, no bigger than a tea tray, and it hovered over the sugar stall, wobbling like a jelly. Out of it stepped a fellow the colour of a pigeon's egg, with two great almond eyes and hardly a mouth to speak of. He'd come a long way, and he was lonely, the way anyone gets after staring at the same planet for a thousand years."

A girl with plaits asked if he had a name. Abernethy scratched his beard. "He had one, a long one, all whistles. The Hadleigh children called him Dot, on account of the little moon he kept in his pocket, the one with craters like peppercorns. He gave it to the youngest boy, Terence, in thanks for a toffee apple. Terence kept it under his pillow until he was grown, and it's still there, I'm told, though nobody's allowed to look."

He lifted his chin at the sky. "And the saucer? It went home, of course. Took the rainbow with it, the bit that hangs over the dodgems after rain. That's why the sky goes pink on a fair night. It's only the leftover. Now look up, if you dare. See the twinkle by the moon? That's Dot, waving at Terence, and he never once forgot the toffee apple.