“Are you done talking?” Yael asked, her hands tight around the objects she clenched behind her back. “Because I am certainly finished listening.”
“We will return you to the Black Train, Yael Kaufman,” Mr. Sothoth said, with false reluctance. “If it must come to persuasion...”
Mr. Sothoth leveled his staff at her and Yael scrambled to avoid whatever was going to come out of the business end of the device. She needn’t have worried, however, as the rod proved to be little more than a temporary perch for a wounded Tobi to rest on before he leapt for Mr. Sothoth’s veiled face.
“Yael!” Tobi, Yael noticed with horror, left bloody paw prints on all that he touched. “Now!”
She didn’t wait. Yael ran, swerving in an effort to stay out of the way of the staff while Mr. Sothoth howled with rage and pain. As she crossed the distance between them, Mr. Sothoth used the rod as a bludgeon against his own face where Tobi had latched stubbornly with all four paws. The lawyer bashed himself in the face with the stick once; twice; then the cat fell, his body broken and limp before it hit the ground.
There was no question that he might still be alive. Tobi wasn’t even in the same shape any longer.
Yael did not hear herself scream as she drove the last of her titanium spikes through the rear of Mr. Sothoth’s ankle, where she hoped the thing kept its Achilles tendon. She did not let herself look at poor Tobi, staining the old stone red, or wait to see what happened with the wicked old lawyer.
If she had, Yael was afraid that she might have killed him.
Mr. Yog waited for her, his arms spread as if he expected her to leap into them.
Yael did just that.
It was like jumping into the grips of a surprised great ape, except she was fairly sure that apes didn’t smell of drain-cleaner and rotting fruit. Mr. Yog was startled, shifting his arms to cradle her close to his chest, holding her claustrophobically tight to his prodigious robes as if she might be foolish enough to struggle.
The embrace was almost too much for Yael, her knees crushed to her chin and her arms squeezed to her chest. She spent a long moment working a hand free from the sickly flesh crawling beneath the acrid fabric of Mr. Yog’s robes, pulsing in time to an internal current.
Yael jabbed him with an syringe of AHS-125. She drove her hand through the voluminous cloth until she felt repulsive flesh at her fingertips.
Whatever Mr. Yog was made out of, it wasn’t enough to stop the needle. Yael pressed down on the dropper until it wouldn’t go any further and then let it drop to the ground below. She wasn’t sure if the lawyer had felt the prick or not, but he continued crushing her against him, squeezing the air from her chest until black spots danced across her field of vision and the sounds of the battle behind her grew impossibly distant.
Then, abruptly and without warning, Mr. Yog let her slip from his arms, and then fell to the cobblestones with an economy of motion that Yael was forced to admire. In the time it took for Yael to gather herself sufficiently to get back to her feet, she saw bubbles of saliva bleeding through his veil, the shape of his body fluctuating by the moment.
“Yael Kaufman,” Mr. Yog said softly as she walked by him, afraid to look back, because what remained of Tobi was there. “What shall I tell Nyarlathotep?”
Yael paused to consider.
“Tell him that I will find him myself, at a time and place of my choosing. And when I do that,” Yael said, her voice shaking, “Nyarlathotep will answer for all of this.”
She walked resolutely on.
“He will be glad,” Mr. Yog croaked, “to see you.”
***
Yael walked those final blocks by herself, but there was no danger of her losing her way. Though she had never been to Kadath before, it felt like home – the cold absence of life, broken windows jaggedly reflecting the sickly moonlight, weeds slowly fracturing the sidewalk. She recognized the echo of her own footsteps down an empty street and took small comfort from the sound.
Her heart ached with guilt and grief. The loss of her truest friend left Yael feeling brittle and hollow. If there had been wind, it might have simply blown her over, sent her tumbling down the street with the fallen leaves. But there was no wind.
And the Night Market was hardly difficult to find.
There were only two buildings with lighted windows in the empty district. One was an ornate and dilapidated apartment building that she was certain she remembered from a dream – intriguing, surely, and strangely familiar, but not her present destination. Instead, Yael turned her attention to the illuminated pavilion in the center of the wooded area adjoining the trickle of a river, filled with canvas tents and candle light and the general clamor of distant commerce. She walked briskly, and did her best not to think about anything that might start her crying.
The streets of Kadath were a gothic maze, an elaborate affront to the very idea of urban planning, turning in on themselves and winding down the side of the hill toward the river, but Yael navigated them with the confidence of a frequent visitor, the map her brother had implanted in her mind burning brightly.
Eventually, the bizarre and domineering architecture receded to a heavily treed area far too wild to be called a park. Yael was surprised as the rather mundane mixture of elms and oaks gave way to luminous Moon Trees – something she hadn’t seen since Roanoke. Yael felt a profound wave of nostalgia.
The further she went into the woods, the more frequent the Moon Trees became, until Yael could navigate by their gentle blue light. When she stumbled into the relative brilliance of the Night Market’s suspended gas lamps, Yael’s eyes were briefly dazzled.
“You finally made it,” a lovely woman in a rather inappropriate dress cried out, clasping her fingers in front of her formidable bosom. “I was starting to worry. Why are you wearing a mask?”
“I’m sorry... Do I know you?”
“My name is Holly Diem,” the woman said cheerfully, flashing a smile that would have been the pride of any dentist. “Welcome to the Night Market, Yael Kaufman. I have been expecting you.”
Yael peeled off her mask, which had become hot and confining.
She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she found herself lying on her back on the grass beneath a Moon Tree, her head resting on her duffel bag while Holly Diem sat beside her. A black cat curled on top of Yael’s legs, gentle yellow eyes watching her with placid consistency, purring softly. Yael reached to scratch him behind the ears before she attempted to speak.
“Ah. What just happened?”
“You fell down,” Holly explained gently, brushing Yael’s hair away from her eyes. “You seem very tired, Miss Kaufman.”
“Yael. Please.”
Holly’s smiled perked up again.
“Alright. You can call me Holly. Do you want some water?”
Yael shook her head though her mouth was bone dry. She was afraid her stomach would rebel if she were to put anything in it. She was trying very hard not to think about Tobi, forcing her thoughts away from the image of his broken body on the cobblestones as it reoccurred to her in an endless cycle. Her whole body shook with tiny tremors and her skin was hot and tingling.
“No, thank you. I am fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Holly said softly. “You look tired, Yael.”
“I am alright,” Yael insisted, her voice louder than she had intended it to be.
The concern in Holly’s eyes was obvious, even if her motivations were hard for Yael to puzzle out. Then again, thinking coherently was growing difficult. On some level, Yael knew what was happening – she had taught herself to avoid unhappiness the same way her brother had – by sleeping through it. Yael didn’t want to face her grief at her friend’s sacrifice, or her own sudden doubts about whether or not her own quest was worth something as precious as a cat.
“Yael, you seem exhausted. Why don’t you take a little nap?” Holly suggested, mopping Yael’s brow with a cool, wet cloth. “The Night Market has only just begun. We have hours yet befor
e dawn.”
She wanted to object. She felt the ghosts of worry, a nagging fear that she would oversleep and miss what she had traveled so far to see. But Yael’s eyes had already made their own decision.
***
“Thirty-six secret kings and queens of the world.”
A cold morning, frost on the stained glass diffusing the light. She is lying on the carpet in her father’s library, watching her brother play the piano. He plays lightly, with a halting cadence, his fingers slowly remembering how to work the keys. Later that night, for the first time in years, she will sing along with him while he plays sad songs from a book of Virginian folk music.
In the mirror. Someone else’s face. Her fingers dig into skin and it comes away like wax paper.
She hangs on the fence briefly, testing it, waiting to see if it can take her full weight. It shudders and rattles, but the chain-link doesn’t tumble. Yael nods to Elian, who makes a basket of his hands, giving her a first foothold. She knots her fingers in the chain-link and wedges her sneaker just above a hinge in the gate. Elian pats her rear-end affectionately as she starts to climb. He claims it’s for good luck.
“Nothing is real.”
From the vantage point of her bedroom window, Yael watches a hawk take a field mouse from the main lawn, tiny pink legs wriggling in panic as it disappears into the sky.
At the dinner table, Yael can find nothing but desserts, meats in rich sauces, mashed potatoes swimming in melted butter, toasted sourdough with melted white cheese. She is on a diet; then again, she always is. Forbidden to consume anything besides lemon water and spinach until the next morning, Yael searches the table for something she can eat and tries to pretend that her mouth doesn’t water.
Her brother is asleep in a strawberry field. Yael is running behind a Labrador that belongs to a neighbor. Eating a peach the color of a sunset, she is disgusted by the way the fuzz on the skin of the fruit feels inside her mouth.
Elian has his hands beneath her shirt, fumbling with her bra until she takes pity on him and undoes it. His touch is rough, almost painful, but Yael is fascinated by the awe she can see in his eyes.
Yael has lost an Algebra book, and she needs to reference a table inside of it for a test. Yael turns to borrow her neighbor’s text, but finds herself alone in the classroom.
Eleven years old, playing marbles with the kids on Drough Street, the children of the squatters that live in the more intact buildings of the old factory district. Yael shoots rapidly, not even bothering to aim, but every attempt ends with a satisfying click as opposing marbles are knocked from the chalk circle.
“Everything is permitted.”
Fitting herself through the window into the basement is a multistep process. Her legs go in first, then she puts her weight on her hands and turns so that her hips fit through diagonally, in order to make the most of the limited space between the bars. To manage the angle, Yael contorts herself further, moving slowly and grateful for her stepmother’s insistence on yoga classes, to fit her shoulders through the same space. All the while, as she makes her way carefully inside, she is aware of the darkness around her, the unique vulnerabilities of her position. Yael is more than nervous – she is genuinely frightened – but she forces herself to move slowly and carefully, determined not to pull a muscle or tear her clothes.
At a convenience store, Yael spends fifteen minutes staring at ice cream before settling on a bruised apple and sugar-free iced tea.
Her brother is trying to tell her something, but the language he is speaking is unfamiliar. Yael tries to tell him, but when she speaks only nonsense comes out.
“Everything is permitted.”
13. The Restoration of Yael Kaufman
Scents of candle wax and frankincense, the round perfection of a pomegranate seed, a mouthful of bitter herbs. Fasting from sundown to sundown. A secret benchmark, an obscure and critical standard. A mitzvah, a freewill offering on behalf of the world.
Holly Diem poured tea carefully from a metal thermos into cups, then broth from a smaller container into a low dish. Yael accepted a teacup while the black cat lazed over to the dish with understated desire.
“Thanks, and sorry about that.”
“Please don’t worry yourself,” Holly said, blowing on her tea. “Snowball is a very close friend of mine. He warned me that you were coming. We heard about the battle.”
“Tell me,” Yael said excited, starting forward and almost upsetting her tea cup. “The cats...”
“There were some casualties,” Holly said quietly. “Though many toads won’t be returning to their awful moon. I am afraid that your friend Tobi was among the lost. I am so very sorry.”
Yael shook her head, not certain what she had to deny.
Holly let her sip tea in silence until her thoughts cleared.
“How long do I have?”
“I am sure this night will last as you require to conduct your business, Yael. Are you feeling better? Would you like me to guide you through the Market?”
Yael nodded, putting her empty cup down and hoisting her duffel bag, her mask looped around the shoulder strap.
“Yes, please.”
Holly laughed and took Yael’s hand, leading her into the fragrant air beneath the Moon Trees, the soft light of candles, the general murmur of commerce. The Night Market opened before Yael like a pop-up book.
“We may as well start at the beginning. Do you know how the Market works?”
Yael shook her head, mesmerized by the multicolored fabric of the stalls, intricate patterns woven into designs that crawled beneath the flickering light of the lamps. The soft breeze carried the gentle musk of the Moon Tree blossoms. The people walking down the packed earth promenades which separated the stalls appeared furtive and serious, haggling in low voices or gazing critically at the wares arranged on the tables in front of them.
“Well, the Night Market isn’t exactly a typical retail destination. People don’t come to buy, they come to sell,” Holly explained, leading Yael toward the center of the market, past shadowy booths and the plaintive calls of barkers. “The market is organized by the various kinds of buyers. While they all may buy the same thing, each of them offers different goods or services in exchange. Anything that can be dreamt can also be found in the Night Market – assuming you are willing to part with those dreams to acquire it. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I think so. Please continue.”
“Aren’t you polite?” Holly said, with a friendly giggle. “How unusual. Do you know what you have to sell, Yael?”
Yael nodded seriously.
“Only as much as is necessary.”
“Then you already know what you are doing in that regard. Do you know what you want in exchange?”
Yael nodded again, but she kept her full answer to herself. She had, after all, made it this far without sharing. Regardless of whatever innate confidence Holly Diem inspired, Yael didn’t trust her any further than the situation demanded. The pain of losing Tobi was too fierce to allow her to feel much faith in anything at the moment.
At the thought of the brave, aloof cat, Yael’s eyes watered and it was all she could do to keep from sniffling. It was too bad that she couldn’t wear her mask to do business, Yael thought longingly, fingering the rubber head strap.
“Very well. Let’s start here and then work our way around,” Holly said, gesturing vaguely at the tents of the vendors around them, wizened faces beckoning from the shadows of their stalls, staring at her with uniformly vivid yellow irises. “As I said, the market is organized by the type of buyer. This area, my dear, is the place to make the most traditional sort of bargain – your soul, for just about anything you can imagine.”
“I’m not sure that I believe in souls...”
“Well, I wouldn’t try selling one until you are certain they exist,” Holly said glibly, leading her on by the hand around the circuitous dirt paths that wound their way through the forested market. From every alcove and shadowy booth, figur
es made beckoning gestures, whispered offers of things she had only experienced in dreams, things that made her blush or disgusted her. “Let’s try down here, shall we? This might be a little more in your comfort zone, Yael, from what I’ve been led to believe. This is where you sell your dreams.”
Yael knew it with a certainty that only came from having dreamed something before it happened, more profound than déjà vu, like living in the moment of an echo. The trees were heavy with violet blossoms, waxy flowers reminiscent of a magnolia, faintly luminous in the moonlight Yael had come to hate. The vendors here were a motley group: men and women, old and young, dressed in drab suits or conservatively shapeless dresses. Their stalls displayed a dizzying array of cages, wrought crudely from pig iron or finely crafted from precious metals, equipped with barbs and manacles, collars and bits. Some were large enough to walk inside, while others would have suffocated a bird in their gilded confines.
The sellers didn’t whisper seductively here. Instead, each time she glanced at a booth, her attention caught by the beauty and inhumanity of the restraints on display, the placid shopkeepers would offer advice in stilted language.
“An office job,” a plain-faced woman urged. “It’s safe and the skills you will learn ensure a lifetime of employment anywhere.”
“Dreams will fail you,” a balding man advised, adjusting the angle of his thin tie. “They are fragile and uncertain. You can teach – society always needs teachers. Stick with it and there is a pension and tenure. The first things you should look for in a career are safety and stability.”
“You should get married,” a dowdy woman in a china-print dress suggested forcefully. “Have children. Children give meaning to life.”
Yael shook her head firmly, tugging on Holly’s hand to move her along.
“This isn’t it, either.”
Holly’s laugh dispelled the bland misery that hung in the air around them like sun burning through morning fog.
“I thought as much,” she said, tugging Yael along cheerfully. “Let’s try another area, shall we?”
The Night Market Page 18