by Sarah Diemer
Mad House, behind us, is perhaps the least dilapidated house on the street, though that says little: none of the windows in Mad House, I see now, has unbroken glass, and, tilting my head back, I notice a great gouge out of the roof, as if something large and heavy crashed against it.
Something large and heavy…
Charlie breathes out, begins to walk down the street quickly. “Come on. Time’s kind of funny here. We need to get to the Wanting Market and the Need Shop and back home before darkness falls.”
“The Need Shop, Charlie?” asks Violet, scampering after her.
I try to keep pace with them but don’t quite manage it, settling for a jerky stride that makes my boots clomp loudly against the uneven stone beneath my feet.
“I want to take her to see Edgar,” says Charlie, glancing over her shoulder at me. She lowers her voice: “I didn’t find her at midnight at a crossroads, Violet, and…that’s obviously unusual. I want to find out if he’s Fetched anyone like her recently, anyone during the daylight, or in a strange place.”
“I know, and I’d like to see Edgar, but it’s just…the Need Shop.” Violet’s tone is nervous. She throws a glance back toward Mad House and then steps forward, hooks a hand on Charlie’s arm. “What if she finds out?”
Charlie shakes her head. “She won’t. Don’t worry, Vi, seriously. We need to figure out if the new Sleeper patterns are shifting, and that’s much more important than whether Abigail disapproves or not.”
“Still, she’s a terrifying woman,” Violet mutters. Then she grins at me, but it’s half-meant, the curve of her lips quivering. “I mean, she can be terrifying. She’s…mighty, is all.”
Charlie laughs a little, mouth in a wry twist. “Aren’t we all at Mad House?”
“I like to think so,” Violet ventures, raising her chin in mock haughtiness before giggling behind her hand.
We reach a crossroads in the street. Until this moment, we’ve seen few other people, save for the old man and the skulking children, who follow after us, scampering in and out of buildings and alleyways, as if trying to stay out of sight. The slide of rock against rock is sudden in the stillness as it shifts out from beneath one of their feet, but when the stones clink together with finality, another sound overtakes them.
Voices.
Charlie jerks her chin ahead. “The Wanting Market,” she says, and we move out from a narrow road between two buildings into a large city square.
It takes me a heartbeat to realize that it is a city square, for it’s filled with little shacks and tents, colorless pieces of cloth propped up on sticks and metal rods, and piles of garbage that stretch away to the buildings on the far side of the square. There are people here, people in the tents and people outside of them, digging through the piles of trash, climbing over garbage on hands and knees.
The pack of children trailing us wanders toward the outside edge of the square, drawn to the mounds of stone rubble as if they are their natural habitat. Only adults, I notice, move amongst the tents.
A woman is striding slowly between two mountains of ruined things, a stuffed animal under one arm, her robe trailing behind her, falling off of one bare shoulder. A few grubby young people—around Charlie's and Violet's ages, I think, and…maybe mine?—sit together on a sloping hill of dirty clothes, bending their faces toward one another, and I can’t tell if they’re boys or girls or both. Every person here is so filthy, their hair short or matted, their faces smeared with grime. And their clothing is worn, though, I must admit, more intact than the black strips of lace dangling from my waist in a poor imitation of a skirt.
“Come on,” says Charlie with an indulgent smile, as I turn and gawk at the scenes surrounding us. She hooks her arm through mine, tugging me along a row of towering scraps. “Let’s get you some clothes.”
The closest mound of junk is heaped up under a drooping awning made out of hole-ridden cloth. A young woman peers up at Charlie, narrowing her eyes shrewdly beneath her greasy hair as we duck under and into her tent of grubby wares.
“Charlie, darlin’, good to see ya,” says the woman, pointing toward a heap beneath the awning. “Some new stuff there. Anything in particular you're lookin’ for?”
“A dress or pants and sweater or something for our new friend here, Sandy.” Charlie drops to her knees and begins shoving junk aside: rusted bits of metal, chunks of stone, eyeless stuffed animals… Finally, she begins to pull out tangled bundles that resemble clothing.
“Your new young friend got a name?” asks the woman, Sandy, watching me with one wickedly blue eye, while her other eye squints tightly. She rubs her dirt-stained hands on the sides of her blue jeans before chewing at a ragged nail.
I stand very still before I shake my head, angle my chin up.
“No,” says Charlie distractedly, tugging at something under a corroded sheet of metal. “Not yet.”
“You ain’t got a name, you got nothin’ around here,” says Sandy, winking at me. “But you sure got a lovely head of hair, darlin’—”
“Leave it, Sandy,’ Charlie snarls, standing abruptly. In her arms, she cradles a bundle of cloth, and after staring Sandy down, making the other woman shrug and look away, she turns to me, sizing me up. "All right, let's see what we have…" She shakes out the twisted fabric in her hands. It’s a dress. Perhaps it was once cream colored, but it's now rusty and brown. Still, it isn't tattered; there are only two holes in the bottom of the skirt, small and sad, like frowning mouths or half moons.
“I think it’ll fit you, if you like it,” says Charlie, holding it out to me. “Or I could try to find you pants or—”
“This’ll do,” I say quickly.
Sandy is standing too close to me, fingering my knotted black curls in her dirty, long-nailed hand.
“Sandy, leave her alone.” Charlie steps between us, breathing hard through her nose. "Back off."
Sandy smirks but shrinks away, still staring at me. No, not at me. At my hair…
“You gotta pay for that,” she says, scowling and rocking back on her heels. “Ha! I’ll take a curl from that pretty head of hair. I haven’t had a curl in ages!”
“No," Charlie says. "I’m paying.” She tugs out a thin, grubby chain from beneath her shirt, drawing up a tiny pair of scissors. They’re smaller than the ones Florence threatened me with last night, but I take an involuntary step backwards as Charlie brings the shears up to her own head of hair. A single snip, and a curving lock of blonde falls into her outstretched palm.
“Take it, Sandy. The dress isn’t even worth this.”
Sandy harrumphs but snatches the strands out of Charlie’s hand.
I clutch the dress against me, wondering what sort of place this is, where people buy old, dirty clothes with cut-off hair.
“Let’s go,” says Charlie, steering Violet and me away from the tent.
“Well, come back soon, Charlie!” Sandy laughs. I watch over my shoulder as she pushes the lock of hair into a leather purse at her belt.
“She’s despicable. She’d sell her best friend's scalp for Nox,” Violet mutters, her hands drawn into fists at her sides.
Charlie glances at her with a weak smile, her hand poised lightly at the small of my back.
“Here, who wouldn’t, Vi?” she whispers. “We’re no better, and you know it.”
“I wasn’t…” Violet colors, and then her fists tighten. “Actually, yes, we are better. You know it.”
“We aren’t,” says Charlie with finality. "We're all Sleepers. We're all in this—whatever it is—together. None better, none worse."
She pauses in an alley, glancing back and forth. No one stands nearby. The narrow space is dark, angled away from the Wanting Market.
“You can try the dress on here, if you'd like,” Charlie says, turning her back on me. Violet turns away, too, still huffing, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You can’t let Abigail’s stupidity get to you. You can’t,” mutters Charlie tiredly, rubbing at her face as I stare
at her back, Violet's back, for a moment, holding out the stiff dress before me.
"I'm not. It's just…Nox, Charlie. It isn't—"
"Not now, Vi."
Gingerly, awkwardly, I peel off my tattered dress, tearing the thin fabric at the shoulders, and let it settle into a pile of gauzy black at my feet. It takes my warmth along with it, so I shiver and quickly pull the new dress over my head. It slides over my skin easily, the fabric soft and cool. Reaching behind me, I zip up the back and tug the sleeves down to cover the chilled skin of my arms. The dress is long and whole, but I’m shaking from the cold now.
I clear my throat, and Charlie and Violet glance over their shoulders, then turn around.
“Good. Better,” Violet nods, and without a second glance, she begins walking back down the alley, toward the Wanting Market. But Charlie watches me for a long moment, arms folded, her brown eyes dark.
“Is it…is it all right?” I ask her, tugging at the sleeves again. I have no idea how I look, and Charlie's stare is unreadable, shadowed.
But she nods—once, twice—glances at my face again, right corner of her mouth angling up.
“Very pretty,” she says, her voice light and low.
I laugh a little. I’m wearing a dirty dress Charlie found in a garbage pile. Pretty? But I feel soft, somehow, as her words sink deeper into me, filling me with warmth.
Pretty.
I blink at her in the dark alleyway, wondering what she sees, truly, when she looks at me.
She waits for me to move past her, then slips her arm through mine again. I thought she was staying close by before because of my stiffness, my uncooperative joints, and…I think she was. But I’m not stiff anymore, not hobbling at all. I’m moving just as well as Charlie and Violet, as anyone. And still she holds my arm.
In all this strangeness, it’s comforting to feel her beside me.
“Why…why did you give that woman a piece of your hair?” I ask, when we’re back amongst the noise and bustle of the Wanting Market. "Why did she want it?"
I watch a woman curl her dirty hand toward a man wearing a bright yellow raincoat. He draws out a small pair of scissors on a chain from beneath his slicker and raggedly hacks off a bit of hair from his scrappy beard. He drops the wiry lock into her palm, and she grins toothily.
Charlie pats her own chest, fingers moving against the blades beneath her shirt.
“Hair is currency here," she says simply. "Hair buys you what you need. But you don't need much. So, mostly, hair buys you Nox.” She glances sidelong at me. “That’s why Florence came after you last night.” Her brown eyes fall, and she clears her throat. “I’m very sorry about that.”
“Nox…” I prompt, shying closer to Charlie as a fierce-looking man watches me from beneath his tent flap. His eyes flash wide under his black baseball cap: he's staring at my hair, like Sandy was, with starvation in his eyes.
“For many Sleepers, Nox is the most important part of Twixt.” Charlie closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “If you take Nox, it makes you Mem. When you’re Memming, you get a memory, something you've forgotten. From your waking life.”
Memming.
A memory…
Violet pauses ahead of us, turning back and watching me closely.
I have no memories. None. I’m hollow, full of nothing, of emptiness. I tried so hard all night long to remember, but my earliest memory is of Charlie finding me at the edge of the stream, of red blood upon the ice, of the Snatchers’ claws gleaming in the darkness, of the golden light bobbing in Abigail’s lantern.
Before that, there’s only a dark wall, impossible to climb over or break down.
There is such a hunger in me, then, such a burning need, that I’m struck breathless by its ferocity.
I break away from Charlie, stumble a little, turn around to look at both Charlie and Violet with my hands curled into fists.
“I could… I could remember something?” I whisper, unable to contain my excitement, but Violet folds her arms, her gaze hard, and Charlie…
Charlie won’t look at me.
“Well…yeah." She sighs. "But there's a cost to everything.” Another sigh, and then her gaze lifts, intense, and claims my eyes. “Nox isn’t as lovely as it sounds. Think of Florence.”
Despite myself, I shudder.
“Nox is addictive. Highly addictive. You trade bits of yourself away for a handful of memories, and then, when you’ve sold all of your hair, you become…" She bites her lip. "You become nothing. You Fade.”
“Fade,” I repeat, voice dropped down to a whisper.
Charlie nods, watching me. “You Fade away when you’ve sold all of your hair for Nox. You…go. Vanish." Her shoulders rise and fall with a heavy breath. "You become nothing,” she says again.
“But you can’t become nothing—”
“You can,” Violet says urgently, her eyes full of fear, stepping forward to place her hand on my arm. “It’s happened so many times that…that some people, like Charlie and me and Abigail, started to think that maybe you shouldn't take Nox. Maybe Nox is…bad."
Charlie moves toward us, resting a hand on Violet's shoulder. "But there weren't many people who thought that way," she says, "because nearly everyone was addicted. So Mad House, our house, was formed by the people who took a stand against Nox."
Violet shakes her head and laughs. "The reason it’s called Mad House is a joke, you know? People say we’re mad for refusing Nox. But we think they're the mad ones—"
"Violet," Charlie sighs.
"Well, I think they're mad. Anyway, Nox isn’t allowed past Abigail's doors.”
Charlie breathes out. “So that’s the thing," she says, turning to face me and again pin me beneath her deep, soft gaze. "If you decide that you want to stay with us at Mad House, you can’t take Nox, not while you’re there.”
I blink, uncertain as to how I should respond. We hold our silence for a long moment, and I feel Charlie's eyes on me, even as I stare down at my boots.
A memory… I could have a memory…
Finally, Charlie clears her throat and slides her arm gently through mine. “But you don’t have to make any of those decisions right now. I know it’s a lot to take in. And a lot to give up. The need for memories, for something to hold onto here… It's powerful. Believe me, I understand that.”
“I just… I don’t know who I am…” I begin, but Charlie smiles at me, and my words fall away.
“None of us knows who we are,” she whispers, voice soft. “And that’s the hardest part of everything here, I think. Beyond the Snatchers, beyond the fear of night. Beyond the Sixers, even.”
My lips part, and I stand very still. The ground seems to stretch away from me, elongating, as the word—that word—cuts against my insides, rends apart my thoughts, like shears snipping recklessly inside of head.
Slowly, slowly, everything in me breaks apart into tiny, frozen shards, even as, outwardly, I remain motionless. My heart pounds against the cage of my ribs.
The ground seems to move beneath me, then, or bend, or rock, because I trip on nothing at all. Charlie catches me neatly, steadying me with her strong hands, but I struggle away from her, lower myself to the ground and kneel there, panting, because I know my legs can no longer hold me up.
“What’s the matter? What is it?” asks Violet, dropping to her knees beside me. “Are you okay?”
“My head…” I whisper, brushing fingers over my pulsing temples.
Charlie squats at my side, her forehead creased.
“What…what is that?” I ask her, grabbing at her shirt, knuckles white.
Startled, she places her hands over mine and whispers, "What is—"
“Sixers.” The word slices my mouth as it razors past my lips. I drag cold air into my lungs to chase the dizziness away. “What," I breathe, "is that?”
“Oh." Charlie smoothes her fingers over the backs of my hands. "The Sixers… They’re in charge here,” she offers quietly, glancing to Violet, who nod
s, urging her on. Charlie's voice drops to a whisper: “They control…everything in Twixt. Nox is Snatcher feathers, and only the Sixers are strong enough, brave enough to pluck Snatcher feathers. So they control Nox, and because of that—and maybe other reasons—they control Abeo City. That's how it's always been. The Sixers rule us all.”
When she says the word again, Sixers, my chest heaves. I’m so sick, so cold, but my skin is slick with sweat. I rock back and forth, feel the grit of broken stone beneath my knees. But it's good, this pain. It brings me back to myself, makes this moment feel real, or at least more real than everything else about Twixt.
“I don’t like that word,” I hiss through clenched teeth.
Violet frowns, her eyebrows drawn low. "Most people don’t,” she murmurs soothingly. "It's okay."
Charlie helps me to my feet, holding me up when my legs wobble beneath me. No one here in the Wanting Market seems to have noticed my collapse, or maybe no one cared. But I’m still self-conscious as I brush the dirt from the seat of my dress and tremble in Charlie's arms.
“The Need Shop is owned by the Sixers,” says Charlie softly, leaning close.
I shudder as the word incises my ear, but my knees remain locked; I don't want to fall again.
“All right?" Charlie asks, her eyes dark with worry.
"Yes. Sorry. I don't know why…" Why I'm falling apart at the seams. "I'm fine, just… Everything's so strange."
Violet rests a cool hand against my cheek. "We all go through it," she smiles. "The strangeness wears away, in time. For the most part." Her eyes glaze over as she stares past me, toward the people shuffling all around.
The three of us begin to move through the market, Charlie guiding me along with her arm around my waist.
"Edgar works at the Need Shop during the day," she tells me. "Fetchers—like Edgar and me—are usually the ones who sell Nox to the Sleepers in the Safe Houses, and we get the Nox from the Need Shop. Because Mad House doesn’t allow Nox, I don’t have that duty, so I don’t have to deal with the Six—um, them on a regular basis.”