The Night Market

by Rawlins, Zachary

  The faces in the crowds were a dizzying blur of variety, but the desperation, the furtive nature of their movements, lent them all a similarity of nature that vaguely alarmed Yael. The shoppers looked as if they were running away, like there was something just behind their shoulders that would swallow them if they ever looked back, if they slowed their steps or raised their eyes from the ground in front of them.

  One look at a vendor’s table was all she needed to know that this was not the right place. They sold nothing here but escape.

  “Ready to go?”

  “Yes, please,” Yael said dizzily. “This isn’t the right place, either.”

  “Onwards and upwards, then,” Holly cried cheerfully, grabbing her by the hand and leading her along. “Except that, well... you don’t look very well, Yael.”

  “I do feel a bit tired, actually.”

  “That isn’t surprising, considering what you have been through. Would you like to rest for a while?”

  “No, I am alright,” Yael said sincerely. “Though, to be honest, I am a bit confused as to why you are guiding me.”

  “Because of what you did on the Black Train,” Holly said, patting Yael’s hand fondly. “Because you stood against the Outer Dark. And also…”

  Yael’s internal suspicion immediately kicked in and she almost pulled away from Holly, who must have noticed her reaction, because she laughed brightly.

  “Yes?”

  “…your key. It drew me to you, as it drew you to Kadath.”

  “It’s not my key,” Yael blurted out. “It belonged to my brother.”

  “I know,” Holly remarked sadly, looking at Yael with sympathetic eyes. “I was terribly fond of your brother, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  Yael recoiled, pulling her hand free from Holly’s grip and coming to a stop in the middle of the path, forcing the shoppers to angrily work their way around them, muttering and staring rudely.

  “How do you know about my brother?” Yael demanded, with her fists balled at her sides. “Why is it everyone here seems to know more about him than I do?”

  The words hung in the air around them like static electricity, a cloud of potential energy that caused the crowd of shoppers to give them a wide berth. Yael didn’t realize that she was crying until the tears started to tickle her cheeks.

  “We remember him because he was a great sleeper…”

  “…dreamer. You mean dreamer.”

  “Not exactly. You and your brother come from a family of sleepers.”

  “I don’t understand,” Yael said, pinching her lip. “What is the difference?”

  “Every human is a dreamer of one sort or another. Sleepers are unique, because just occasionally, they wake up inside of a dream.”

  Yael shook her head.

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “Have you ever had a dream that you can’t remember waking up from?” Holly asked with her face composed and evidently serious. “Have you ever fallen asleep during a dream?”

  “Everything is permitted,” Yael said hesitantly.

  “Nothing is real,” Holly agreed.

  She puzzled it over while Holly led her through the market, hardly bothering to glance at her surroundings. Out of the corners of her eyes she saw tables laden with luminous glassware, fragrant with drugs and exotic herbs, glittering with opals and blue emeralds. In the tiny alcoves between the tents there was another sort of vendor; pale women perched half-naked with brilliant red hair and yellow cat’s eyes, dark-skinned men wearing cut-off slacks with lean musculature and mischievous smiles, androgynous blondes with skin like the inside of a mollusk, their pupils fashionably dilated. Whenever possible, Yael averted her eyes from such things, but Holly seemed to be on a first name basis with half of them, which made for a number of rather awkward encounters.

  Most of them were too discreet to make overtures. Yael was carefully polite to the rest.

  Yael was startled by a young calico cat that jumped boldly up on the edge of one of the market tables to walk along beside her. The cat dipped his head respectfully when she saw that he had Yael’s attention.

  “Yael Kaufman,” the cat said, in a pleasant, confident voice. “The Lord of Ulthar sends his regards, and hopes that you are well.”

  “That was nice of him. How is Snowball?”

  The cat was visibly taken back at her lack of formality, but Yael was too tired for niceties.

  “He is recuperating in Ulthar. None of his injuries are serious.”

  Yael hesitated before she asked the next question.

  “And... the rest of the cats of Ulthar? Were your losses great?”

  The cat narrowed his eyes.

  “Too many,” the cat said grimly. “But many more toads won’t find their way back to their awful moon tonight. The Outer Dark will be wary when crossing Ulthar in the future.”

  Yael suspected that the cat’s confidence was likely misplaced. Then again, Yael herself had been equally starry-eyed at the beginning of her journey, though that seemed like ages ago. Yael felt like a completely different person, as if the heat and the desolation of the Waste had burned away the trappings of her previous identity, shedding fragments of her former life to wither beneath the sun amongst the ruins.

  “I hope so. What is your name?”

  “Dunwich.”

  Yael stroked the cat affectionately, and he purred and rubbed against her hand unselfconsciously. She smiled to herself, suspecting that it hadn’t been long since Dunwich had lost or run away from a human home.

  “I want you to thank Snowball and the Cats of Ulthar for me. Tell them that if they ever need anything from me, that I will be there. I won’t forget Tobi, or the other cats who fought so that I could complete my journey. I won’t forget my friends.”

  Dunwich detached himself reluctantly from Yael, leaping to the lowest bough of a nearby Moon Tree, claws digging into the velvet surface of the branch.

  “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?”<
br />
  “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.