“I already know where the markets are. We need to go now though, or we’ll only be able to catch the one tonight.”
Every hopeful, I said, “What about that twixt and twain nonsense? I thought we weren’t going to make our move until noon.”
He nodded solemnly, “For the piper and I yes, but you’re mostly human so you have to travel when the veil’s the thinnest. Now get up. We need to leave in fifteen minutes or we’ll miss our chance.” He got up to leave but some thought must have crossed his mind, because he snapped his fingers in sudden revelation.
“Ah. Make sure you wear something...maidenly.”
I lifted one brow at his word choice, thought about not asking, and then realized I had to.
“Why?”
He bared his teeth in something that I think was supposed to be a smile, but which came off looking too maniacal to be friendly or happy.
“We’re using you as bait. I’ve read up on method acting and they say it helps to dress the part.”
He left and I sat staring intently at my hands in my lap. What confounded me wasn’t my role as bait, but what exactly constituted as maidenly attire. I debated the issue for minutes that I didn’t have and in the end I found myself scrambling into a knee length, white dress with pleats along the skirt and a bow accenting the half moon scoop that made up the back.
It was more wanton than maiden, but to be honest it was the only white thing I had in my closet. I ditched the garter belt and thigh highs that went with it, instead pairing the ensemble with a pair of nondescript sandals. I put my hair up in a high knot, reminiscent of Sam’s previous hairstyle, and deemed myself ready.
I was pretty pleased with the results, but then it occurred to me that unless I wanted to ride with Conric (which I did not), I’d have to get on the back of Sam’s motorcycle in this get-up. As if my thoughts had summoned him, Sam opened the door without so much as a knock to announce his presence and met my eyes expectantly.
I glowered at him and had the pleasure of watching his face twist in exaggerated confusion.
“You have got to get yourself a car.”
“How come?”
“Because, unless you want everyone and their grandmother getting a glimpse of my cookie jar, then I no longer approve of your mode of transportation.”
His eyes narrowed. “If I remember correctly you’ve never approved of it.”
I patted his chest as I slipped past him into the hall, “What can I say? I was blessed with sound judgment.”
He made a low, unhappy, sound in the back of his throat as he followed, and I felt my own spirits lift at his darkening mood.
Childish?
Yes.
But I found that I could live with the moniker.
* * * *
“Isn’t this Flo’s place?”
I wasn’t sure why I was whispering exactly. Maybe because my own vocal cords were unsure of their welcome so early in the morning. I’d never seen what 6:00 am looked like and I’d been tempted to keep my eyes closed the entire time just to make sure that that didn’t change. But because of the dress issue, we’d ended up walking and I needed my eyes in order to make that a successful endeavor.
6:00 am was not at all what I expected.
It was chilly first off, and the birds kept making these obnoxious noises. Also, the grass was wet, the sky was dark, and the streets looked like those of a ghost town. I was severely unimpressed, and made no effort to hide that fact.
“Flo.” Conric considered the name thoughtfully. “Isn’t that the name of Clarabell’s little lackey?”
I shot him a glance filled with disgust and he shrugged. “I’ve never had to deal with the imp. My business has always been with the Madam of the house.”
“Flo isn’t an imp.” I said defensively. “She’s a…a um—”
“A goblin.”
I pointed at Sam triumphantly, “See.”
Conric rolled his eyes, some of the polish that was so much a part of his personality wearing thin. I’d been examining both men closely ever since we’d headed out. Neither looked the worse for wear, though there was a tightness to Conric’s jaw that hadn’t been there before. Whatever their talk had been about last night, they were both keeping mum about it.
Like a shark, my curiosity sensed blood in the water, and I found myself humming the chorus to the song from the Legally Blond musical beneath my breath when otherwise unoccupied.
I made a move to walk beneath the trellis and up the pathway, but Sam grabbed me by the collar of my dress and pulled me back. My brows rose.
“We’re not here to make a social call.” he explained gruffly.
“Then what are we here to do?”
“I was thinking a kidnapping.”
Huh.
“I don’t think Flo would like that.” I warned. “She isn’t a big fan of unnecessary touching.”
My eye began twitching at the very thought and Sam shook his head.
“We’re not going to kidnap Flo. Flo is going to kidnap you.”
“How do you figure that?” I snorted.
He opened his mouth to explain, looked at Conric, and then shook his head.
“Here. It’s easier just to show you.”
Stepping into my personal space, he gripped my shoulders and stared down at me. His hair was in a French braid today, so there was no impromptu Sam cocoon. Even though, the look on his face and the way his thumbs began to slide across my bare flesh provoked an intimacy that we usually both tried to avoid. I felt myself relaxing under his ministrations. His hands were really warm. In fact his entire body radiated heat, and when he took a step closer, his chest brushing my breasts and that heat kissing my nipples, I felt lust blaze its way through my body.
My lips parted, and suddenly he jerked me up, and against him, until I was standing on my tip toes. My breathing came hard and fast and a liquid heat pooled between my legs with an almost painful intensity. His blue eyes were as bright as I’d ever seen them, for once overpowering the dark crystals that swam in their depths. There was a look in those eyes…something indescribable. When he angled his head, brushing his lips across my own, I felt my common sense sort of fly away. My tongue dipped out, my eyes slid closed, and I pressed even closer as soft lips morphed into moist heat and unspoken promises.
The kiss was tentative. Over in a heartbeat, but it left me feeling restless. Unfinished. When he set me back onto my feet and took two giant steps back I had to stop myself from following him and demanding with action rather than words that he finish what he started. My skin felt too tight, and my palms were itching like a gambling addict’s. I cleared my throat to demand what his deal was, when I saw him glance away from me, and indicate Madam Clara’s with a slight inclination of his head.
Flustered, I followed his gaze and lust disappeared beneath the cold wash of fear. There was a creature huddled on the doorstep. From where I stood all I saw was sickly, green, yellow eyes, slitted like a snake’s. It watched me without blinking, though it hummed some wordless tune to itself and rocking from side to side.
My heart lurched painfully in my chest and I looked over at the two men in desperation. But Sam and Conric were otherwise occupied. Sam had Conric backed up against the brick wall of the neighboring building, a Laundromat. He had one hand over Conric’s mouth, but his eyes were steady on my face. At first I was confused, but then I realized that Conric was fighting him. He was struggling to get away, to get me if the flushed, mindless, look of adoration on his face was any sign.
His brown eyes were glazed with madness and his hands kept dancing in the air. I felt sick on the inside when I realized that he was trying to conjure his lute. Which was why Sam was forcing him to stay silent. Had my attraction to Sam caused this? Probably. It turned out the piper wasn’t as immune to my charms as he’d claimed.
The realization made me sad, but it frightened me, too. Conric wasn’t like a human caught in the curse. He had power of his own. Maybe that power made him more susceptible,
maybe it made him less, I just knew that I was grateful for Sam’s intervention because I had no idea what Conric would have done to me had he had his way.
My head jerked around at the sound of squealing tires. What few cars there were on the street were stopping, the men in the driver’s seat glancing hungrily in my direction as they fought to get out of their cars. From across the street I saw a bum stumble forth from the space between two buildings. His eyes were too bright and he wrung his hands in obvious upset as he glanced around looking for me.
This was going to get really bad.
I felt warm breath on the back of my hand and jerked around with a scream. I’d turned away from the house to watch the two men, and therefore had missed seeing the creature from the doorstep cross the intervening distance between us. It now stood beneath the trellis, still watching, still humming, but now there was a sick smile on its face as it reached out hand.
“Come buy.” Flo implored her voice like velvet despite the harsh monstrosity of her face. “Come buy, come buy, little maiden, pretty maiden, with her wishes all in a row. We have something fun for you, oh yes. Something to fill the ache in your belly. Come, come.” her hand beckoned, and my mouth went dry to see the elongated claws.
She was nothing like how I remembered her. Her face was smeared with dirt and her leathery skin looked sticky with juices. Her features were the same but for her eyes, and when she spoke I caught peek-a-boo glimpses of her teeth. They were sharp, like knives, but if my guess was correct, they were also made from stone. She had stone teeth. Teeth that would not only rip through human skin, but cut through bone with similar ease. A carnivore at its best.
She was naked, but for some strange liquid that was smeared across her body. It looked like blood.
“Come buy.” she whimpered, her nails tracing a vein in the back of my hand. I flinched.
“I don’t.” I had to clear my throat because I was so scared I actually wanted to cry. “I don’t have any gold.”
Isn’t that how the poem went?
She tsked and tried to take a step past the trellis, but something invisible held her back. She snarled, and for a moment in time her face wasn’t Flo’s at all. It was a creature who wore human skin like a coat. Its teeth were stone, its eyes burning coals, and upon its head, like a hat or crown, were interwoven hundreds of different types of human hair.
It was just for a moment. But in that moment I saw and my knees went weak.
“You have much gold little maiden, pretty maiden, wishes all in a row. It’s hidden in your skin, it’s swimming in your veins, and it’s living in each breath you take. Come buy our orchard fruits, come buy, come buy.”
I shivered, and looked back over at Sam.
His jaw tightened at the sight of her, but he nodded, his hold on Conric never loosening as the other man continued to fight.
I looked down at Flo—no—the goblin and put my own trembling hand inside her own. She purred like a kitten and seemed to sink into herself. Then we were off. She jerked me away from the house, little legs moving faster than I could see. I heard a curse behind me but I was concentrating too hard on not falling flat on my face to turn around and check it out. I knew that if I fell, she’d simply drag me, so I ran, full out, and still only barely managed to keep up with her.
Everything around us was a blur of color, and the only sound I heard was the goblin’s tuneless humming and the sound of my feet slapping against the pavement. One of my sandals broke and I cried out as the loss of it tripped me up. I went down, but the goblin just kept moving. Her hand tightening around my own with such force that her claws dug into the back of my hand and I felt my bones grind against one another.
It was sheer luck and a good bit of pure stubbornness that got me back on my feet. I didn’t have the chance to look down and investigate but I could feel blood running down my leg from where I’d been dragged across the cement.
My body wanted to limp. Hell, my body wanted to collapse, but I gritted my teeth and pushed. Faster. Harder. I ran, arms and legs pumping, the hand in my own the only real thing there was, until I was no longer lagging behind, but actually pulling out in front of her.
I felt something soft brush my face, like the strands of a spider’s web, and thought the sensation unimportant until the Goblin pulled us both to a halt.
As soon as my legs stopped moving, I went down. You know the way the muscles in your thighs will shake and go weak after a really good orgasm? Well mine were like that except I didn’t remember having a happy time immediately beforehand. All I knew was that I could no longer hold myself up. My lungs were screaming and my heart was crying, and my vision darkened around the edges as I fought not to throw up. Some part of my mind knew we were underground. Knew that I was now surrounded by a bustle of activity. That Flo now danced around my shaking form, her voice echoing through the air in joyous abandon.
For the first time I heard the lyrics that accompanied the song she’d been humming.
“She comes! To market she comes! Come and greet her. Love her, treat her, she comes to buy your goods from you. Goblin pulp and Goblin dew. To market, to market the maiden’s come, show her the wares and fares you’ve won. Show her the figs carved from the ladle, the moonbeams trapped inside the cradle. Shower her with fruits galore, and when she’s spent and fights no more, we’ll feast to our heart’s desire,”
They converged on me, all yellow eyes and stone teeth and I cringed away as Flo lifted a lock of my hair and ran it along her tongue, her smile serene.
“Oh, how I love the taste of a maiden’s fire.” She leaned into me and hissed against the shell of my ear, her rhythmic whimsy from earlier replaced by cold, hard, hunger, “It is perhaps, the tastiest fruit of them all. Welcome to the Goblin Market little maiden, pretty maiden, wishes all in a row. It feels as if we’ve waited a forever for you.”
Welcome to market indeed.
Suddenly, Sam’s suggestion that I play bait didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.
* * * *
The Market was like a dream within a dream, wrapped tightly in a nightmare. There were creatures made of light and dressed in gossamer trapped in cages beneath the ground, so that the entire world was cast in twilight by the soft, pulsing, glow, radiating from beneath.
They were about an inch or so big, and what I’d thought at first to be grass and stones were really their tiny little fingers wrapped around the bars of a cage that never ended. With every step I took I crushed them, ground their bones into dust, and smeared the bottom of my one bare foot with their blood. Even so, they refused to let go of the bars, because beneath them more Goblins roamed, sticky fingers reaching out hungrily.
Their screams sounded like chirping birds and harp music.
I felt something in my mind shift, and finally I had to turn away. It wasn’t blood I felt, but crushed berries, just like it wasn’t flesh and bone beneath me, but grass. I wasn’t crushing the fingers and breaking the arms of millions of pixies. I was simply walking across grass.
It was just grass.
Just grass.
To admit anything else would be to stop moving, to collapse in a ball of screaming madness, and I couldn’t allow myself to do that. Not with the ever-growing crowd of Goblin merchants surrounding me. When I first met Flo I’d known instinctively that it would be bad to show weakness. I was even more aware of that fact now than I had been before.
It seemed as if we walked inside of a giant birdcage. I could see the bars, overly large, and made of tree trunks that soared over head and out of sight. There was a single pathway through the market and each merchant had their stalls set up along either side of it. They were so close to one another that they jostled for space and it was impossible to tell which merchant belonged where.
I had no idea where Flo had gone. She’d disappeared into the throng after throwing me to the wolves. I wasn’t at a loss for company however, everywhere I looked a merchant tried to hawk his wares. They were aggressive, almost animalistic,
and I had to fight not to flinch with every hissed repetition of ‘Come buy, come buy’.
I found that unlike Flo, most goblins looked like a strange mixture between a number of different animals. Some had rat-like faces and tails like foxes; others were built like bears but boasted peacock feathers. It was like a bunch of forest creatures got tossed into a blender, after which they were glued back together by some coked out two-year-old. The only constant was their stone teeth and clawed hands.
Every merchant’s stall was decked out with fruit. I couldn’t really see a difference in the things they sold. It simply looked like continuous, dripping mess, overflowing around the humble wooden stalls that had been built to contain them all; pomegranates, figs, apples, oranges, cherries, and strawberries, ripe cantaloupe, sliced watermelon, blueberries, plums, and kiwi, every piece of fruit I could name and a few of them that I couldn’t, was all laid out and offered to me on platters straining beneath their weight. But they weren’t like regular fruit. They sort of…breathed. They had a life and potency to them that I’d never seen in a grocery store. I felt as if I let my teeth sink through the pliable skin of any those colorful temptations then they would go down my throat screaming as piteously as the pixies beneath my feet.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that resembled a mirror, magic or otherwise, and I felt terror began to rise.
“Come buy, pretty maiden.” they twittered. Their voices were a strange combination of animal calls. Chattering and chirping, barking and growling, they spoke more with magic than through any intelligible language. And the deeper I traveled into the Market, the longer I went without ‘buying’ a single thing, or tasting the fruit they so generously offered, the angrier they became.
They’d been offering me the ripest of their selections in stubby, dirty, hands, dark skin and fur glistening in the weak light with the wasted juices. As their patience thinned however they began pushing the fruit at me, rubbing it against my skin and clothes, pressing it against what they could reach of my face and laughing hysterically when the delicate fruit broke apart to rain down my clothes.
The Dragon King and I Page 11