The Night Market (24 page)

***

“Yael!”

“Hello, Sleeping Beauty. We wondered when you would
join us.”

Yael briefly thought she was seeing double. But that
didn’t make any sense, because the cats were different colors – the new one
beside Tobi was a shabby white – and she didn’t recognize the voice.

“Terribly sorry,” she said, rubbing her eyes and
sitting up on the wooden bench, one hand pressed against her stiff back. “I’m
afraid I didn’t hear you arrive, sir.”

The white cat laughed, the kind of laugh that belongs
to a big man after a bit too much to drink. It seemed wildly improbable coming
from a good-sized white tomcat, scarred from the secret wars of the feline
race, but Yael was beginning to adjust to that.

“You are right, Tobi. I do like her,” the new cat said
warmly. “She is very polite.”

“Yael,” Tobi said, his voice tight with surprising
urgency, “this is Snowball, the Lord of Ulthar, our sanctuary in the Nameless
City.”

The name was ridiculous, of course, but Yael
immediately understood Tobi’s concern. She had already learned the oddities of
how cats obtained their names, so Yael managed to keep her laughter silent and
her face serene.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” Yael said, bobbing her head.
“Are you a friend of Tobi’s?”

“Indeed. I was – am – a friend of your brother’s.”

Yael froze halfway in the motion of getting her brush
out of her duffel. She turned to the cat, one hand resting against the Key
beneath her shirt.

“Really? I am glad to hear it. May I ask a favor of
you?”

Snowball shook his head sadly.

“You can, of course. But I already know what you would
ask. Your brother is lost, Miss Kaufman, to us as well as yourself. Where he
has gone, even we cannot follow.”

“I had assumed as much,” Yael said gravely. “I wished
only to inquire as to your past with him. My brother spent much of his time
sleeping,” Yael admitted hurriedly, willing herself not to blush. “Of
necessity. It was his occupation, his art and his passion. But it left him with
little time for... for us. His family.”

Snowball licked a paw and used it to clean his nub of
a left ear. Tobi busily groomed the ridge along his back. Yael had spent enough
time amongst cats to know that they were masking their own discomfort with the
emotional nature of the conversation.

“Is that so? I’m afraid that you already know the
answer. When your brother was taken, the majority of our memories of him were
taken as well.”

“O-of course. I should have known.”

Snowball leapt on to one arm of the park bench,
walking across the ornate metal with a stately grace that belied his weathered
appearance.

“Come, Yael,” Snowball said, trotting past her head
and off the bench, toward the park entrance. “Walk with me. You as well, Tobi. She
isn’t at the Night Market yet.”

“Of course.”

“The Night Market,” Yael exclaimed, hurrying after
Snowball, her duffel slung over her back and her mask hanging from one hand.
“Do you know where it is, sir?”

“Snowball, please. And of course I do, child. Where
did you think we were going? The market will be held this evening, in the empty
district, Kadath. We have four hours before sunset and it is a pleasant enough
walk.”

“Thank you,” Yael said, looking first to Snowball and
then to Tobi, who lingered behind and seemed nervous. “But I don’t understand
why you are helping me. I know that Tobi promised to guide me to the Night
Market. Are you guiding me because he is your friend?”

“No. I’m doing it for you.”

“Why? Because of my brother?”

“No,” Snowball repeated firmly. “Because of you.”

“I am nothing special.”

Snowball laughed as he went, leaping from flagstone to
banister, signpost to outcropping, darting across the ground when he was forced
to touch it. Yael was very nearly sprinting in an attempt to keep pace.

“Aren’t you? You stood alone against the Outer Dark,
Yael – you humiliated and even injured an avatar of Chaos, to the extent that it
can be harmed. Do you know how long it has been since that happened?”

Yael tried to remember the stories her brother had
read her from his dusty, ancient books, the stories she had learned in dreams.

“No, I don’t. How long?”

The white cat paused on top of a grotesque marble
gargoyle mounted at one end of a small bridge, the details obscured by weather
and the passage of years. Snowball’s eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Not since Randolph Carter, almost four hundred years
ago.”

“No, that can’t be right,” Yael said, shaking her
head. “My brother knew Mr. Carter. He was one of his teachers. I remember
meeting him once. He was very old, but he certainly wasn’t four hundred years
old.”

“Time is a relative concept,” Snowball warned. “And a
poor basis for reasoning. Recite for me, Yael. Remember your studies. Where are
we?”

Yael caught herself in time to avoid tumbling in the
street. The further in to the hilly neighborhood they went, she noticed, the
larger the buildings became and the fewer people were on the street. Snowball
slowed his frantic pace as if they had crossed an invisible boundary, leaving
behind whatever had motivated his earlier precaution.

“The Nameless City. The place abandoned by God.”

“By the Gods,” Snowball corrected.

“That is a matter of opinion.”

“How would you describe a hundred-foot tall winged
immortal with an octopus face, then?”

“Hideous.”

“Never mind that. Continue. Where are we going?”

“The empty district of Kadath. The hollow heart of the
Nameless City.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Everything is permitted,” Yael recited sing-song.
“Nothing is real.”

“Then you understand?”

“Yes. Of course. Sorry about that. This is all rather
new to me.”

Snowball chuckled, hopping down from a sign post to
walk beside her.

“No one would know,” he reassured her. “You seem very
self-possessed.”

“I’m not, actually,” Yael said, surprised and relieved
by her admission. She hadn’t realized how badly she wanted to admit it to
someone until she had the opportunity, even if that someone was a cat.
Especially
if it was a cat. “I was prepared, that’s all. In my dreams, every night – that
was my education. I have always taken an interest in preparing for what I knew
would be inevitable.”

Snowball eyed her with obvious interest as they
walked.

“You knew that you would come here?”

“No. Nothing that specific. But I always knew that I
would have to go somewhere.”

“Then you didn’t know anything we all don’t know, I’m
afraid.”

“You don’t understand,” Yael objected, a tad
irritably. “My brother taught me...”

“Miss Kaufman, if I may,” Snowball cut in smoothly. “I
do not question the useful nature of the tools that you have been provided. But
I believe that you attribute your success incorrectly.”

“How so?”

“Did your brother, or your own esoteric education,
prepare you to encounter an avatar of Chaos?”

Yael gnawed on her lip, considering.

“Well, I knew
of
such things...”

“That is not the same, as you are well aware,”
Snowball said, amused. “Tell me – how does one prepare for Jenny Frost? That
will be a concern for all of us in the Nameless City, shortly.”

Yael attempted to shake and hang her head at the same
time and managed something moderately contrite.

“I did not mean – that is to say, I had no idea
whatsoever that Miss Frost would be... herself. I knew that
someone
would be in position to offer me assistance, given the right motivation,
but...”

“What about the Night Market? What do you know about
that?”

Yael shot a look back at Tobi hopefully, but he was
too far behind them to hear anything that was being said.

“I am afraid that I only came to know of its existence
recently...”

“And what about Kadath? Or the Silver Key?”

She started doubtfully, faltering under the old cat’s
gaze.

“It was abandoned...”

“Besides that old yarn about deities abandoning it –
they were telling that one when I was a kitten in the street. There was no more
truth to it then than there is now. There were never any gods, singular or plural
– or if there were, then they needed single bedroom apartments in abundance.”

Her grimace was an admission of defeat.

“Don’t worry, Yael. I am not making light of you, or
your education,” Snowball said gently, leading them along a boulevard that grew
steadily narrower, the buildings on either side older and taller than any she
remembered seeing. “I am merely encouraging you to recognize your own capabilities.
You have impressed me, child.”

Yael’s jaw might have, just briefly, hung open.

“That is kind of you to say...”

Snowball snorted contemptuously.

“I have never done a kind thing in my life,” the cat
said firmly, glancing at Yael with narrowed eyes. “Life has never allowed me
the luxury of kindness.”

“Then I am at a loss,” Yael said, glancing at an odd
display of curios behind a dusty shop window – a bronze figurine depicting a
goat-and-squid hybrid, a grotesque wooden mask, a rusted sextant, a collection
of monochrome photographs depicting the New England countryside, a bound volume
of ‘
The Last Testament of William Lee’
with a worn spine. “Why would you
intervene on my behalf?”

“Why indeed?” Snowball chuckled, though Yael failed to
see any humor in the situation. “If my actions are not rooted in altruism –
which, by the way, is not a quality you will find in felines – then what could
my motivation be?”

Yael realized after a moment that he expected an
answer. She considered it while they crossed a cobblestone square, deep in the
shadow of a church tower in which every window was broken. It was elevated above
the sidewalk and surrounded by an imposing iron fence, in much better repair
than the building behind it. Lost in the overgrown weeds that dominated the
former church grounds, Yael could see the gentle sloping curves of marble
headstones peeking out, worn smooth and unreadable by weather. She wondered why
the ancient graveyard and the church, slowly shedding the last of its
whitewash, were abandoned by the bustling neighborhood surrounding.

“Self interest?”

“Self interest indeed,” Snowball said with approval,
taking them across the street to avoid a particularly ancient and ominous old
house that teetered on the corner opposite where they walked, looming over the
street like a toothless crone. “I am not protecting you, Yael Kaufman. I could
not protect you from your enemies, even if I wished to. I do not believe that
you require such protection. I am guiding you and offering what assistance I
may for one simple reason:  you could be a formidable ally, whether you realize
it or no. One does not need to be cat, after all, to see it will be advisable
to have as many friends as possible.”

She pinched her lip between her fingers, worrying it
while she thought it over.

“Because of Nyarla –”

“You forget yourself,” Snowball said angrily. “The
name invites the thing.”

“Of course,” Yael said hurriedly, blushing with
embarrassment. “But I must confess, Snowball, that I do not understand your
reasoning.”

“Tell me, Miss Kaufman. Are you familiar with the bodhisattva
known as the ‘Buddha of Hell’?”

“No, I am afraid we didn’t cover that in Hebrew School.”

“Miss Kaufman may not be aware of it,” Mr. Sothoth hissed,
standing in the center of the low bridge in front of them, flanked by the
hulking form of Mr. Yog. Behind him, there was a veritable legion of the
shuffling toads. “But we are. Perhaps you would allow us to finish the story?”