The Night Market (28 page)

“I wish you the best, Yael Kaufman. Perhaps we will
meet again.”

Yael smiled after the cat, then blushed when she
realized that Holly had witnessed the entire scene with sparkling eyes.

“A friend of yours?” Holly inquired, taking Yael by
the arm and leading her forward.

“You could say that.”

“The Cats of Ulthar are valuable allies. Snowball
chooses his friends very carefully.” Holly glanced over at her mischievously.
“He prefers tuna, by the way.”

“Hmm?”

“Snowball. If you wanted to show your gratitude. He
likes fatty tuna best.”

Yael nodded slowly.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Now, let’s try down here...”

More tents, more vendors who called and beckoned when Yael
met their eyes. Some of the stalls were overflowing with gratuitous riches,
ruddy in the reflection of worked gold, sparkling with emerald and opal and
sapphire. There were crowns heaped into piles, gilded sets of antique armor,
jewelry enough to outfit an army of society ladies. The vendors watched over it
with the same regard that the sellers of evident junk guarded their own wares.

There were whole sections of the market given over to
what scavengers had brought in from the Waste. Rusted metal forms of uncertain
purpose sat beside salvaged machinery, or humming and crackling electronics
littered with broken vacuum tubes. Some of the things for sale were probably
weapons; complicated arrangements of serrated blades and chains and levers for
which Yael could fathom no other purpose, guns which fired harpoons or plastic
wrapped charges, and devices too baroque to define. The vendors hawking these
goods often seemed uncertain as to the utility or providence of their own
wares.

The people behind the tables were skinny and
desperate, and coated in a thick layer of the omnipresent dust from the Waste.
They sold whatever they had found in the sands and the ruins, every carved and
shining thing, in the hopes of finding something of value, something worthy of
desire. Yael felt embarrassed for them, and found herself hurrying through the
section, unable to meet their eyes.

Holly turned corners and shouted cheerful greetings.
The market buzzed and spun around her beneath the unearthly ambience of the Moon
Trees.

Exotic reptiles with iridescent scales moved slowly in
large glass tanks, while tiny yellow birds sang nearby in unsettling and
discordant keys. Across a display of musical instruments that seemed to be
carved from the bones of some great beast, a vendor wrapped from head to toe in
thick animal skins played on a bone flute to the delight of a small crowd of
shoppers. Children crowded three deep around another table where a kindly
dusky-skinned woman distributed jelly beans the color of lead and luminescent
gumballs into filthy outstretched hands, chuckling to herself all the while.

Another sharp turn, faces swimming around Yael in
dizzying blur, and they were underneath a low fabric canopy where a dozen iron
stoves roared and a diverse crowd of people ate on blankets laid across the
soft grass.

“We can stop here for a little while,” Holly said,
gently leading Yael to a blanket occupied only by the elderly black cat who had
greeted her when she entered the Market. “You stay with Lovecraft while I find
us something to eat.”

“Holly, not to be ungrateful, but I don’t eat...”

“...meat. I know. But dairy is okay, right?”

Yael nodded firmly, remembering the year she had been
forced to spend on a gluten-free vegan diet by her stepmother after she gained
four pounds during summer camp.

“Just no animals.”

Holly laughed, an airy, pleasant sound.

“I think I can manage that.”

Yael waited until she was gone, then she lay down on
the plaid blanket beside Lovecraft, the cat obligingly rolling over to
accommodate her. She stroked the cat absentmindedly, pausing occasionally to
stretch a variety of aching muscles in her legs and feet. Her ribs were still
sore from where the toad had squeezed her, but not so tender to the touch that
she feared broken bones.

She suspected the bruise would be rather nasty,
however.

The sounds under the canopy were soothing and familiar
– roaring cooking fires and stoves, the clang of metal utensils, the muddled
cacophony of dozens of conversations held over food. Yael let herself relax for
the first time since the Black Train. It was harder than she expected.

“What do you think, Lovecraft? Can I trust Holly?”

Yael wasn’t certain that she expected an answer. Not
entirely.

“That depends. Trust her to do what?”

The voice was old and rich with humor. Yael glanced
over at the cat in surprise and it cracked one eye lazily to look back at her.

“I don’t know. Not to betray me, I suppose?”

Lovecraft yawned, revealing teeth that were sharp
despite his age.

“You can trust Holly to be herself,” Lovecraft said
tiredly. “That’s as much as you can expect from anyone.”

Yael scratched underneath Lovecraft’s graying chin
while she considered his response.

“I suppose. Can I trust her to help me?”

“You can trust anyone, as long as your intentions
align. You are asking the wrong questions. You should be worried about whether
it is in Holly’s best interests to help you.”

“I see. Do you think it is?”

“I think any number of residents of the Nameless City
have decided it is in their best interest to aid you, Yael Kaufman. I’m afraid
more have come to the opposite conclusion. If it is any consolation, I have
been told that if you aren’t upsetting someone, then you aren’t doing anything
worthwhile.”

Yael thought it over, eyes closed.

“I suppose that is probably true. I’d rather believe
otherwise, though.”

“Then I suggest you do so,” Lovecraft advised. “There
is little to differentiate between belief and reality. Here more than most
places.”

“All your answers are riddles.”

“I have heard it said that the wisest response to a
question is not an answer.”

“Then you must be a very wise cat.”

“If I must.”

Yael rested with Lovecraft until Holly returned, doing
her best to keep her mind pleasantly blank. She was too tired to do any real
thinking anyway, even if she had wanted to. Holly brought her dark noodles in a
miso base, cubes of carrot and tofu floating in the broth. Yael sipped at the
steaming bowl cautiously, while Holly nibbled daintily at a slice of melon, and
Lovecraft eagerly decimated a small dish of liver pate.

“It’s delicious,” Yael confirmed, her mouth filled with
noodles. “Thank you, Holly.”

Holly smiled at her over the melon rind.

“My pleasure. I must say, Yael, your manners are
impeccable. I have sorely missed such civility here in the Nameless City.”

Yael spooned a carrot into her mouth and chewed
thoughtfully.

“You aren’t from the Nameless City, then?”

“Not exactly,” Holly said, dabbing at the side of her
mouth with a handkerchief and looking guardedly sad. “It’s a very long story.
Perhaps one day we could discuss it over tea at the Unknown Kadath Estates, where
I have an apartment...”

“Why is it ‘Unknown’?”

“I don’t know,” Holly said, almost certainly lying.
“That’s just the name of the building. Isn’t that funny?”

Yael nodded. She knew from experience that sometimes
it was better not to try and get an answer to certain questions. They finished
their meal in appreciative silence.

“Are you refreshed?” Holly stood and offered her hand
to Yael. “Ready to continue?”

They plunged back into the genial madness of the
market, the murmur of negotiation and the cries of the hawkers.

The arcade Holly led Yael down reminded her of a
traveling carnival she had visited with her brother as a child, before Public
Security had ruled them a moral hazard. The trappings of the tents were
particularly ornate, gilded and shining with rhinestones. As they walked among
the stalls, arm in arm, the vendors propositioned Holly and Yael in turn.

“A new name!” A man in a top-hat proclaimed, gesturing
with a short cane at an intricate brass machine beside him. “Not from today
forward – nothing so mundane, my friends. This device – my own invention –
offers the chance for a genuine transformation, back to the moment of your
birth. There will be no one to remember your former name – not even your
parents!”

“Would you settle for so little?” A short man in a
tattered brown suited countered slyly from across the arcade. “A name is so
little when there is so much to forget, am I right? Your regrets, lovely ladies
– I would propose to remove them. With this,” he said, indicating a wooden
table overhung by a bladed instrument like a chandelier designed by a sadist,
“I can expunge every regret, every deed, every word misspoken or opportunity
missed. The process is quite painless, I assure you...”

“He says that to all of them,” a beautiful young woman
whose hair was bound with a net of sea-green jewels confided as they past. “But
I hear them scream, dears. The service is genuine, I don’t dispute that. But
you must always consider the cost...”

“Very true,” Holly agreed. “As with any transaction.”

“My services are dear. Have no illusions. But there is
no one else, in this market or any other, who can offer that which I provide.
Within these baths,” the woman said, lifting the curtains of her tent to reveal
a steaming pool lined with worked stone, “you will be reinvigorated. Years will
fall away like leaves from a tree in fall. Your skin will be rejuvenated and
fresh, and your hair will shine like never before. But most importantly, you
will be restored to a state of maidenhood, of untouched purity, back to the
innocence of your youth, no matter how distant, if you take my meaning...”

Yael gasped. Holly drew herself up and glared
fiercely.

“That is really gross,” Yael declared, pulling Holly
along beside her. “Can we try somewhere else?”

“Of course,” Holly said, glaring at the woman over her
shoulder. “Some people. The nerve! Do you think she was trying to imply that...
I’m old?”

“At least that,” Yael affirmed.

“Ah.” Holly said menacingly, sparing the woman one
final glance over her shoulder. “How very... foolish.”

Yael thought it prudent to stay silent.

“Some people simply have no sense. Particularly when
it comes to choosing customers. Or enemies, for that matter.” Holly patted
Yael’s hand affectionately. “Don’t worry. We will find what you are looking
for. Moving right along...”

The further they went, the more obvious it became that
Holly knew all the vendors in the Night Market and seemed determined to
introduce Yael to each of them in turn, regardless of their potential utility.

Yael shook hands with a man with gentle grey eyes and
tiger-striped skin, who tried to buy her two front teeth, then refused an offer
of tea from a weepy old man with a prosthetic arm who made repeated attempts to
purchase the color of her hair. In a moth-eaten tent, a beautiful woman wearing
a black headscarf traced the lines on Yael’s palm with acrylic nails, then
tried to buy her reflection in the mirror, or, failing that, her favorite food.
On a broad promenade overhung with Moon Trees a series of stocky men with
elaborate mustaches took turns shouting out suggestive offers for her
fingerprints, her shadow, the air she exhaled.

They passed a grove of particularly lush and fragrant
Moon Trees, and from the shadows beneath the trees, a grey man with fevered
skin beckoned lazily, the leaves around him barely concealing a collection of
blank-eyed girls clustered around hookahs in a state of half-undress. Music and
hysterical laughter spilled out of the door to a tent serving as a temporary tavern,
complete with a wooden bar and a vast collection of multicolored bottles. Holly
walked by both without a word and Yael hurried after, glad to follow her
example.

A kindly man with an elongated head gave Yael iced
lemonade while he tried to persuade her to part with the final five years of
her life. Holly stopped to pick mushrooms at the base of a great tree strung
with tiny plastic lights in the middle of a square and Yael did her best to
ignore the inquiries as to the market status of her height, waist, and bust –
though Yael was secretly pleased that any were viewed as desirable commodities.