by Iva Viddal
Doctor Mapple was hatless. His long stem rose proudly from his head like a flagpole, its leaves wagging in the wind like victory flags.
“October Oscuridad, where is your father?” The Doctor squeezed his large hands into the small pockets of his jacket and squinted down at the boy.
October scowled. “You know where he is.”
“And I see that you know where our Stranger is.” Doctor Mapple smiled at Nerma. His teeth were brown and rotten. “She really requires the best of care.”
“I’m feeding her. And making sure she does not hurt anyone,” October retorted.
Nerma lifted her eyebrows and looked from the older man to the much younger one and back again.
“I’d like to speak to you about that, my boy,” the globular man said, leaning in close enough for the two young people to smell the sharp scent of cinnamon on his breath. “I see you have . . . altered her.” He nodded toward Nerma’s forehead.
“She has a Purpose now, Doctor,” October answered.
The Doctor made a sound. “Purposes come only from the Maker, as I’m sure they’ve taught you over at the schoolhouse. Says so right in the Promethean Primer, Chapter Ten, Instruction One.” The Doctor pursed his lips. “And yet . . .”
Like a globe whose magnetic poles have suddenly shifted, the doctor leaned back and gazed up at the black sky, a furrow of concentration on his face.
After an awkward moment of waiting, October interrupted him. “Doctor Mapple—sir—I’ll make sure Nerma—I mean, the Stranger—doesn’t get into any trouble. And I will feed her and walk her every day. I will take her to meeting, and—”
The doctor held up a silencing hand. “You must take her to Diviner’s Ditch. It may be that there is some sort of . . . weak Purpose unseen to the naked eye.”
October nodded.
The Doctor went on: “The Stranger must be webbed at night, of course.”
A look of uncertainty passed over October’s face.
“It’s either that or the Sanatorium again, boy.”
October closed his eyes and nodded again. “I won’t let you or Small Hours down, sir.” He smoothed his hair.
As Doctor Mapple wobbled away, he glanced back. “We will be watching,” he called, and then he was gone, down one of the many dark alleyways that broke off from the marketplace.
“The more often I see him, the less I like him,” Nerma whispered. “What was that he said about your father?”
October shrugged and let his shoulders fall. He absently picked up a strange-looking device from a nearby stand. It reminded Nerma of an old telephone dial with pinchers attached to it.
“My father got into a terrible accident years ago. Doctor Mapple tried to save his Purpose, but he could not.” He put the device down. “Doctor Mapple and Doctor Leech believed the accident to have been a self-inflicted act.”
“They thought he did it on purpose?” Nerma tried to understand.
October was confused. “On Purpose, on Purpose,” he muttered. “What a strange phrase. I have never heard it before. My father’s Purpose was injured. The Doctors believed that he did it intentionally.”
“But you do not?”
October shrugged again.
Nerma fiddled with the device October had set aside, slowly turning the two levelers on its sides. “So, where is your father?” She hoped she wasn’t prying.
“Out past Diviner’s Ditch in No Man’s Land, where townspeople go when they—” October was cut off by Nerma’s high-pitched yelp.
She held up her right hand. A trickle of blood ran down her index finger. “It—it cut me,” she gasped. Her wide eyes brimmed with tears.
October’s eyes darted from the object in Nerma’s left hand to her injured right hand. He returned the device to the stand, grabbed Nerma by the wrist, and led her quickly across the square to a small doorway. Nerma barely registered the painted green snakes on the doorway or the letters that spelled out “APOTHECARY” before they ducked into a murky little chamber.
“Old Worm! Assistance, please!” October called, and a shrunken woman clambered out from behind a counter stacked high with scrolls and bottles.
From below the brim of an ancient and cobwebbed witch’s hat peered an even more ancient face marred by countless lumps and bulges. Her skin glowed softly in the dim lighting.
“Behold,” the luminescent woman intoned. “The terrible Stranger has come to blight us with its devilish Purposelessness.” She tittered gleefully. “Nonsense! Nonsense, I tell you. Ah, I see you have a dire injury, a slight cut. Let Old Worm have a look-see.”
“She was playing with the Phalangescarp,” October explained.
Old Worm tutted and took Nerma’s wrist from October.
“Just a nick, just a nick!” Her voice tinkled. “At your age and still playing with surgical tools.” She chuckled and led Nerma past a curtain and into a room no larger than a closet, lit by a trio of stubby, dripping candles.
She sat Nerma down in a reclining chair and bustled about, pulling jars and bandages from shelves along the walls. Nerma wiped her eyes with her good hand and braved a glance at the other. Her index finger was red. Tears welled freshly in her eyes and she sniffled violently. “I want to go home,” she whimpered.
“Amen, dear, amen,” Old Worm muttered under her breath as she combined powders and herbs in a small cup, humming under her breath. She poured boiling water from a copper urn over the concoction and handed it to Nerma. “Drink up, dear.” The corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled.
Nerma took a sip of the bitter liquid, but a sudden sob made her choke. “What about my finger?” she sniffled.
“Your finger is still there. It’s the rest of you I am concerned with,” the old woman answered, tipping the cup toward Nerma’s mouth.
Nerma took another sip, and then another, and a wonderful feeling of calm overtook her. She looked again at her finger and saw that the cut was indeed quite small. The bleeding had stopped, and there was only a slight throbbing at the end of her finger.
She sniffled loudly again, but her tears began to dry.
“Now, let me see the finger,” Old Worm commanded.
Gingerly, the old woman applied a salve and wrapped Nerma’s finger in clean gauze.
“Good as new, just like your head,” the woman said. She tipped the warped point of her hat toward Nerma’s spiderweb-wrapped head and winked. “You’ll fit in in no time if you collect any more bandages. Now, October, my young man—I have something for you.”
Nerma sipped her hot drink and peeked from the corner of her eye as October and Old Worm retreated to the curtain divider. There, they conferred in hushed whispers, and Nerma watched as October accepted a small package from the old woman. She heard him promise to deliver it to someone called the Count.
At last, her finger mended and her tea finished, Nerma and October returned to the Midnight Market.
11
The Midnight Masqueraders
The evening had come to life in their absence. Throngs of people meandered about the wide marketplace square, and Nerma watched with wonder as people of all shapes, sizes, and combinations chattered excitedly with old friends and haggled over the cost of goods. Scores of lanterns hung from cords beneath the black sky and transformed the market into a circus of bright colors and strange sights.
Beside a confection stand that sold luminous candies in the shapes of moths and centipedes, a mountainous stack of cages displayed a variety of animals.
“Pets,” October explained.
Skunks, rats, and bats seemed to be the most popular choices, but Nerma saw others: a small owl with yellow-ringed eyes, a lizard with spiny armor that shimmered like a meteorite, a gargantuan spider with a pale body and legs banded in black.
The dark eyes of a red fox followed Nerma as they passed, and a silky little mole scurried forward and stood on its hind legs. With its clawed diggers curled around the cage wires, it poked its pointy little nose out. Nerma wanted to pet it but
worried about the safety of her other fingers.
“Would you like to meet the Count now?” October asked, patting the chest pocket where he had stored the packet from Old Worm.
“I guess so,” Nerma answered, “but after that I need to go back home.” A pang of guilt wormed through her insides. Her parents must be frantic by now, and here Nerma was, looking at cute little moles and foxes. She should be trying to find her way back home. “Do you know the way out of Small Hours?” she asked October.
He nodded. “Sure, that’s where we’re headed, actually.”
Nerma’s guilt subsided. She would be home again before she knew it. It was almost too bad, in a way, because she’d only just arrived.
“This way,” October said, weaving between a sausage stand and another that sold pincushions.
“Curdled and moldy, plenty of veins!” hollered a cheese monger.
“Sleep like the dead!” cried a young man with no eyelids and sunken cheeks. He thrust a tiny bottle in Nerma’s face. On its label she glimpsed a skull-and-crossbones.
Next, Nerma saw the man with the blue-green scales on his face “Fish fins, fish guts, fish bones! Low prices!” he gurgled to passersby.
“Fresh blood berries, ready to burst!” a girl of no more than four called out. Nerma thought it might be the same girl whose nostrils had erupted in flames at the meeting and was satisfied when the girl’s grin disappeared behind a blossom of fire.
Nerma found that she was rather getting used to the people of Small Hours, with their odd faces and misshapen bodies.
At the end of the market square, an eclectic group of performers had lined up upon a small stage, and a woman in a long russet robe called for the crowd’s attention. When she spoke, her mouth stretched into the conical form of a blowhorn.
“Come, Midnight Marketers! Come, friends of Small Hours! Come, and hear a tale like none other! Gather ‘round and see Small Hours’ own Midnight Masqueraders perform a tale of treachery and heroism!”
“Can we listen?” Nerma whispered to October.
He agreed and found some empty crates close to the stage to sit upon.
The actors wore costumes that shimmered in the firelight. Ruby, emerald, gold, white, and royal blue flashed tantalizingly. Around their necks and from their ears hung tiny orbs, lit from within by the wriggling light of nightglows.
Nerma watched with wonder.
A crowd formed around the small stage, and the woman with the blowhorn mouth began to narrate: “It was on a night like tonight, friends, when a Stranger did come to town.” Her voice echoed off the walls of the marketplace. “A Witch it was, for a Witch has no Purpose, no soul. A Witch is no more than an empty vessel, flesh with no cause.”
A shiver rippled through the audience. Nerma shifted in her seat.
“A Witch is a master deceiver. She is worse even than a ghost, for a ghost cannot fool us. A ghost is a lost Purpose, a soul without a body that has been set adrift through no fault of its own. A ghost cannot fool the eyes or ears as a Witch can.” The actor passed her hands over her eyes.
“On a night like this, a night three-hundred years gone, a Witch with the dreadful name of Emily arrived in town. She carried with her an empty sack, a sack as empty as she herself was.”
The actor clothed in blue staggered across the stage. She dragged a large burlap bag by her side.
“The Witch Emily first fooled the skunk farmer at the edge of town. He failed to see her for what she was. Next, she fooled the hatmaker, who made her a fine hat of boiled eel.”
Now the actor in blue paraded across the stage, a cap of twisted vines bouncing with every step she took.
“The Witch Emily next fooled the professors at Corpescule College. One by one, they were charmed by her wit, her knowledge of the stars, and perhaps by the way she swayed when she walked.”
The woman in blue shook her hips exaggeratedly, and the audience laughed.
“But the Witch Emily failed to fool the town Doctors, for the Doctors”— the actors dressed in gold and white now strutted onto the stage— “they saw past Emily’s fair smile and her enticing worldliness. They saw through to her emptiness.”
The two actors grew taller as their legs stretched like springs until they towered over the cowering actor in blue.
“Now, it just so happened that a young child, a girl of no more than one year, had gone missing from her family’s parlor on the day of Emily’s appearance in town. She simply disappeared—poof.” The lead actor threw a handful of powder up into the air and it ignited above her head. The audience oohed. “The next day, a boy’s pet shrew disappeared. Soon, villagers began to lose their Purposes, little by little. A child whose horns were growing in strong and healthy suddenly fell ill and her horns shriveled up. A builder whose drill bits had worked with speed and strength for three decades began to lose power. A woman’s quills began to fall out, one by one.”
The audience gasped. The little flame-girl began to wail, and her mother carried her away.
“The Doctors worked day and night to save and repair the villagers’ Purposes and devise a plan to stop the Witch Emily. After many sleepless days, they at last seized upon a strategy. They knew they could not kill the Witch, for how does one kill a thing with no soul? They had to capture the Witch Emily and lock her away—away from foolish townspeople who failed to see the danger in her emptiness, away from the innocent who might be harmed by catching a glimpse of the emptiness that exists in the world.” The narrator paused, and the villagers scooted to the edges of their seats.
“One night,” she continued, her voice lower, “as Emily was doing her midnight shopping in a marketplace much like this one, the Doctors . . . pounced!”
The actors in gold and white jumped upon the woman in blue, swinging their arms wildly in a mock attack. Nerma flinched, but the other members of the audience—including October, she noticed—clapped and cheered.
The narrator continued. “The Doctors carried the Witch Emily far away, through the village and into the woods, to the top of a hill that was plagued by constant sunshine and the revolting odor of fresh air. There, they built a box of wood and mud and placed Emily inside.”
A box was produced on stage, and the actors in white and gold shoved the woman in blue into it and pretended to nail it shut.
“The Witch Emily”— the narrator lowering her voice again, and the audience leaned forward eagerly— “is still there today, her bones condemned to an eternity of sunny days. But her soul . . . well, she who hath no Purpose hath no soul, as the Promethean Primer tells us. When the Doctors returned to the village, they found that their ailing patients had all recovered. The child’s horns grew back, longer than ever; the man’s drills regained their power; the woman’s quills returned, smooth and strong.
“And, beneath the bed where the Witch Emily had slept, the Doctors found her sack. It was no longer empty but bulged and squirmed when they pulled it from its hiding place.”
On stage, the two remaining actors struggled with the swollen cloth bag, which writhed and bulged.
“The Doctors,” the narrator said, drawing her words out, “carefully—fearfully—undid the knot at the end of the sack, and out flew . . . the missing child and pet snake!”
The bag tore open at its seams and out leapt the actors in red and green, their arms raised high. Small cylinders flew from gaping holes in their wrists and whizzed into the air. A second passed and then, with an enormous BANG-BANG, two white-hot fireworks exploded and sparkled against the night sky.
The audience delighted and called for more.
Nerma watched the glowing dots of lights as they fell to earth and fizzled out. She sat, quiet, and reached up to feel the spoon on her forehead.
She needed to get out of Small Hours.
12
Freak Show
“You guys really hate Strangers here,” Nerma mumbled to October as they squeezed through the crowded marketplace.
October looked at her with a puzzled
expression. “People only worry about being safe,” he responded.
“I’m not going to hurt anybody,” Nerma snapped. “I just want to go home.”
“Home,” October mused. “Where is it that you come from?”
“Well, I used to live across the country, but now I live on Harmony Hill. We just moved there.” Nerma was surprised by the sudden pang of longing she felt for Harmony Hill.
“You said it is not far to Small Hours?” October clarified. He guided Nerma around a group of younger kids who were playing marbles in the dust.
“Not far at all, but I don’t remember how to get back. It’s high up on a hill, so I should be able to see it”— she looked around at the high gray walls of the town— “but we can’t see anything from here, especially at night. I don’t know how to get back to the path I followed into town.”
“I will inquire among friends to see if they have heard of Harmony Hill,” October said. “There is only one way into the village, however, and that is the way to Diviner’s Ditch. I have never left Small Hours, unless one counts Diviner’s Ditch or the land just beyond.”
Surprised, Nerma turned to ask him if he was joking and accidently walked headlong into what felt at first like a human ton of bricks.
She turned to see . . . a human ton of bricks. Before her stood a man so massive that he resembled not a human but a fortress of muscle. Nerma apologized quickly, but it was apparent that the man had barred her way intentionally.
“What is it like,” he rasped, “to be without a Purpose?”
The vast man positively beamed at Nerma, a sloppy smile traversing his flat face.
Nerma was speechless.
“Forgive me, please. I am being rude,” the man admitted. “I have always wanted to see a Stranger, and you are as . . . as plain and as much of a bore as I imagined—no, even more of a bore. There’s nothing to look at.” Indeed, it felt to Nerma as though the man were staring right through her, and she glanced behind herself to make sure he really was speaking to her.
“It’s great being a Stranger, actually,” she said defensively. “It’s not boring at all.” That was, perhaps, something of a lie. She had been bored out of her mind while trying to fit in on Harmony Hill—but that was none of this man’s business.