Tom, Josh and Ash stood there looking at themselves. "This is so freaky," Ash said. "I'm, like, a guy."
"Yeah," said Josh, "and we're even younger."
"There has to be something to age us back," Tom said, then pointed to the carousel. "Maybe that. Look, they're letting little kids on."
Ash shrugged. "Worth a try, I guess."
The went over to the carousel, which was a beautiful old-fashioned number, with wooden animals: horses, goats, fish, cats, swans, and even pigs. The attendant smiled at them. "If you grab the brass ring and throw it through the clown's mouth, you get a special prize."
There was a ring dispenser, as promised, and a wall with a clown's face with a round open mouth.
"What sort of prize?" asked Tom.
"You get a token for the Mammy Fortuna machine," the attendant said, pointing to an old fortunetelling machine in the corner. "She'll tell your fortune, and maybe grant you a wish."
"I saw BIG," Josh whispered to his friends. "If we win with the brassring, we can wish to be older again."
"Hell," Ash said, "I'd just wish to be a girl. This is freaky."
They got astride their animals, ones on the outer ring with a good reach for the ring toss. Tom took a fish, Josh took a goat, while Ash took a white mare, checking between the animal's legs, guessing that there might be some clue as to gender there.
The music began to play as the animals went up and down, the calliope playing the Radetsky March, each child grabbing a ring as they whirled round, tossing it at the clown's face. All of them went wide, except Josh realized that if you grabbed a ring, by the time you threw, your aim would be wide. Instead, he grabbed a ring on one pass, then waiting until they went full circle around. Then he threw his ring straight through the clown's mouth.
The eyes lit up and the bell flashed and the attendant cried, "We have a winner!" as he handed Josh a brass token.
Josh jumped down from his goat, clattering across the floor to the old fortunetelling machine. He slammed his token into the slot, saying to the mannequin of the old black woman inside, "I want to be BIG!"
Mammy Fortuna nodded, passing her hands over the cards, and then a new card popped out of the slot below. It read:
Now at your age you are much smaller.
When you grow up, you'll be much taller!
Josh then saw his perspective rising, as he grew taller, growing up to look Mammy Fortuna in the eyes, then continuing upward as he continued getting taller till he was looking down at the lid of the fortunetelling machine while his shoulders swelled out and his muscles grew and his chest hair sprouted...and the tiny nubby fawn horns on his head grew into the majestic goat horns of an adult satyr, and his crotch swelled massively as well.
He swayed on his hooves, taking stock of his new mass and his shaggy goat shanks, suddenly realizing that the merry-go-round goat had turned him into a fawn, while his wish to Mammy Fortuna had turned him not only into an adult Satyr, but an enormous giant one.
Ashley cantered up, female again, with her cute braids, but still a child--but from the waist down, she was the white mare of the merry-go-round. "Josh, you've got to help," said Ashley the centaur. "Tom's a merman!"
Josh looked and saw that yes indeed, there was a child-size merman flopping around on the floor next to the wooden fish.