The Seven Markets (12 page)

“I should say so. Are you responsible for this girl?”

“My niece. She gets confused from time to time. Again, I apologize.”

Ellie dangled the Prince’s gem directly before the old woman’s nose. “You know what this is, what it means. I
order
you to tell me what you are!”

Before the woman could express her utter outrage at Ellie’s terrible behavior, Rossi had pulled his “niece” away and was leading her through the hotel’s lobby.

“What was that?” he said.

“Don’t be dumb. I think she was the green thing. With all the eyes last night. She changed glamours to hide from me, but come on, look at her: you can see the green peeking out from the edges, can’t you?”

“Ellie, she’s old and possibly unwell. But she’s not an insect.”

“You didn’t see her last night!”

“I didn’t. But even if she was, what then?”

“Then I’d know,” Ellie said. “I’d know what I saw was real. And I’d know my dreams are real.”

Rossi stopped. They were standing just before the hotel’s entrance. He drew her away to an alcove.

“Dreams?”

“Yes. I see my Prince. We are dancing across the deck of a fine, great ship. He spins me and brings me back into his arms. I see his face, his eyes, and I know it’s real. It’s real and if I can prove what I saw last night was real then I’ll know this is real as well.” She realized she was nearly shouting and stopped to get herself under control. “He’s calling me, don’t you see? All of it, it’s him calling me back.”

They walked from the hotel toward the river, Ellie stopping people from time to time to ask after their origins. Sometimes she pulled out the Prince’s gem, other times she didn’t. There was no rhyme or reason to her behavior. She’d stop one person and comment on the weather, the light dusting of snow that had fallen in the night. Another person she’d take by the shoulders and order them to reveal themselves to her.

Rossi did a good amount of apologizing.

It wasn’t their first time in the city—they had traveled so much in the years waiting for her Prince to return—but much had changed since her last visit. New buildings had sprung, seemingly fully formed, right out of the ground. Parks had been replaced by odd, featureless structures looking weathered to have stood a century or longer. It was somehow an old city and a new one, a longtime friend who’d lost his hair, bought new clothes, shaved his beard, and started wearing spectacles.

“We should have brought the dogs,” Ellie said.

“They’d be miserable. You know they hate going to the city.”

“I didn’t mean like that. I’m going to miss them. I hadn’t thought of it before, but the Prince isn’t going to come home with us, is he?”

“I’d doubt it.”

“Then we should have brought them. Will they be all right, do you think?”

“I left instructions for their care.”

She was genuinely pleased by this—at least for a few seconds. Then Ellie frowned. “Do you think they’ll miss me? It’s not the same if Cindy lets them out for a run, is it? Not the same as having me there to throw sticks and shout for them?”

“I suppose not.”

They followed the streets until they came to the river. Rossi brushed off the surface of a bench with a handkerchief and they sat. A cargo ship steamed past and Ellie waved at the sailors. Rossi removed his hat and joined her.

“The Prince’s ship is much larger, in my dream,” she said. “I can only see a small part of it but even that much is enormous. Two hundred people could fit on the deck, but it’s just the two of us dancing in the moonlight. Isn’t that nice?”

“It sounds lovely,” he said.

“It will be. Three days’ warning and then the Market. Today is the third day. Do you think it will have changed much?”

“I doubt it. Nor your Prince neither. Some things in this world are content to remain as they are.”

“Like me,” Ellie said. “And you. Oh, taller than the boy who rode with me and beginning to show some gray. And perhaps not so sprightly in your step, but you wear your years well, don’t you?”

Rossi nodded and did not reply. He might have been caught in a sea of memories. He might have been simply keeping his thoughts to himself.

“I suppose it’s good, though. No telling where we’ll be going. No telling how the Market may have grown. Like this city. Look at the size of it! The new buildings barely fit on the island, and how many sites did we pass where more are being built?”

“I didn’t think to count.”

“I tallied a dozen before stopping. Think of that. The next time we visit, it’ll be fit to burst.”

Ellie turned from the water’s edge. Rossi followed her gaze.

“Look, do you see that?”

She pointed at an advertisement painted on the side of a building. THE MARKET, it read. NEW YORK CITY, MIDWINTER’S DAY. ALL YOU SEEK SHALL BE WITHIN.

“You’d think it was just for me, wouldn’t you? ‘All you seek shall be within.’ All I seek, all I’ve ever sought, is the Prince. And he’ll come and bring the Market with him. It’s been so long since I danced, Rossi, but I’ll dance again when I’m with my Prince.”

Ellie heard a grumble of thunder rolling down the street. Booming thunder, crash of metal and glass, groan of a transmission that wanted nothing in all the world so much as to be taken out behind the woodshed and put out of its misery.

The driver downshifted as he rounded the corner, tailpipe belching out tarry black smoke. Toss in a lick of flame and you’d have something any dragon would be proud of. The smoke hung in the air, thick enough to slice and serve on a plate with a scoop of ice cream. Rossi pulled her away, covering his mouth, indicating for her to do the same. Ellie gagged and fanned the air with her hand, to no avail. She’d have had more luck moving that smoke with a shovel.

As the faded yellow truck ground to a halt, the passenger-side window stuttered down. A pointed hat the color of deep water peered out at them. It swore, ducked down, and seemed to grow the topmost part of a head. A tangle of bushy red hair, lined, squinting eyes, and a rosy, pointed nose looked down from the truck’s cab.

“A horse,” it said. “Ah, what I’d give for a horse.”

They heard sounds of a struggle and then the door opened. Ellie expected to see the owner of the hat fighting for his life against two, three, or even four opponents. What she saw instead was a short man with a rough, but pleasant face, his fingers clutching the door handle as he swung himself down to the street.

“Never heard a horse make noise like that, did you? No, I say. Just one horse, that’s all I ask for. A mule, even. I had
great
mules once upon a time, I did.”

He was short enough that he needed to scuttle around and slide feetfirst from the truck. It wasn’t graceful, but after some struggle he managed to lower himself to the sidewalk, landing in a great cloud of dust. As he straightened himself, Ellie saw that he barely came to her waist. Rossi, who was several inches taller than her, towered over the little man.

“What day is it?” he said, straightening his disheveled clothes.

“Thursday,” Rossi said.

“Not that kind of day; t’other kind. What day is it? Am I late again? Always late. Or early. Sometimes I’m early. Never on time, though. More pity, that.”

Rossi repeated himself, telling the man again that it was Thursday. Before the stranger could counter, however, Ellie broke in. “You’re a day early,” she said. “It’s not until tomorrow.”

“Early? Better than late, innit? Now, let’s see who we got here.”

He circled them where they stood, looking the two of them up and down. Ellie tightened her grip on Rossi’s hand. The little man walked in a wobbling, kneeless fashion, like a penguin with a bushy red beard and a tall garden gnome’s cap.

“Y’ve got something about you, y’do,” he said. “Where are y’from?”

Rossi clapped his mouth shut, but the laugh escaped anyway. It was a rough bark and the short man jumped reflexively back.

“Lord, boy, what’s wrong with you?”

“Please pardon my . . . cousin,” Ellie said. “He gets confused from time to time.”

“Does he now? Family can be a pain, can’t it?”

“I am not confused,” Rossi said.

“See what I mean?”

“Aye. Poor lad.”

“I am not confused,” Rossi said again.

“Then he starts repeating himself.” Ellie shook her head in mock regret. “It happens every time.”

“You’re good to look after him the way you do.” The little man pressed his hands together, palm to palm, as if saying a silent prayer on Rossi’s behalf.

“Family,” she said, giggling.

Rossi rolled his eyes, unsure of how exactly he’d become the odd man out. It was the truck driver who cracked, bending over and wheezing out peals of laughter that sounded like rocky teeth grinding up shards of broken glass. When Ellie joined him, it wasn’t the sweet, proper lady’s laugh he’d grown accustomed to during their years together; she howled and slapped her leg, gasping for breath.

“You’re a good sport, lad,” the truck driver said, offering Rossi his hand.

“Thanks, I suppose.”

“It’s a good man who can be the butt of a joke and a great man who can laugh at himself.” He sized Rossi up again. “I figure you’re decent at best.”

“Oh, he’s a delight,” Ellie said, standing on the tips of her toes to kiss Rossi’s cheek. “Aren’t you, ‘cousin’?”

It was a weary smile Rossi showed them, and very nearly enough to set the pair bawling again if he hadn’t added his own short, low chuckle as punctuation. The truck driver clapped him on the back and offered another sideways compliment.

“There you go, lad.”

The little man’s truck, perhaps jealous of all the attention its master was getting, cut a terrific fart that blotted out much of the early afternoon sunlight. Ellie noticed that the snow by their feet was no longer white, but a sooty, filthy gray like dirty wash water.

“Is this your first Market?” she said, thinking to regale the stranger with tales of her two previous visits. Rossi could describe traveling with his father, perhaps gain a little prestige in the short man’s razor-thin eyes.

“My first?” he said. “Not my first. Nor my second neither. I kept count for a time, yes I did, but some kinds of counting turn around on you if you don’t mind them. Get out of hand, they does. Take a life of their own. Dangerous, that.”

He slapped the side of the truck with his palm; the sound was flat but not hollow and there came a rattling from within as if he’d toppled some precarious tower of small items. Ellie guessed the old, grumbly thing was packed from floor to ceiling.

“Oh, curiosity?” he said, noting her hungry look. “Well, we can see, can’t we? Market a day away, but a customer’s a customer and a deal’s a deal. What are you coming to the Market seeking, dearie?”

“My husband,” Ellie said, answering without thinking.

His eyes shifted over to Rossi then back to Ellie. “Any husband at all or one in particular?”

“My husband,” she said, stressing the
my
. “We became separated some time ago. Rossi—my cousin—has been accompanying me ever since.”

“Your cousin?”

“Yes,” Rossi said. “Or good as, at any rate. You are a nosy one, aren’t you?”

The short man tutted and tapped his chin with the knuckles of his left hand. “Travel long enough and y’get nosy. A good story’s worth its weight in golden eggs. Worth its weight in just about any currency you care to trade. But hold on, you . . .”

He reached to take the shoulders of Ellie’s coat in his hands and pull her down toward him, almost as if he meant to plant a kiss on her nose. But he didn’t touch her, except to lower her down to his height. He only looked, staring into the heart of her, studying her face and hair and lips and eyes.

“We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

“I don’t believe so,” Ellie said. “I would remember.”

He pulled her down farther so that Ellie’s head was touching his chin. He sniffed her hair three times,
sniff sniff sniff,
and let her go. Ellie stood back up again, unsure of what had just happened.

“Different but the same. You’re her, aren’t you? The girl from the road. Lords, your people don’t live this long. Which Market is this?
When
is this? I’ve really hit it wrong this time, haven’t I?”

“What road?” Ellie said.

He boggled, watching her for some sign that the tide had turned. Now it was Ellie and Rossi who’d have a touch of fun at his expense. But neither of them laughed.

“You remember, surely. Ran into you walking by the road, the cat who swallowed one canary, then went back for all his friends and family. You helped me out a spell. Helped me prepare. Lords, girl, how old are you? You don’t show a day!”

“My husband’s doing, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, but I don’t recall meeting you. What road are you speaking of?”

He scratched his head and licked his upper lip with the tip of his tongue. If he’d had a pencil close at hand, he could have chewed on the tip. Instead he smacked his forehead and let out a low whoop of realization.

“Y’helped me,” he said. “Long time ago. Didn’t expect you’d forget—you being so excited and all. Also wouldn’t have expected to find you here today. How’d that come to pass, I wonder?”

“Her husband,” Rossi said.

“Yes yes, of course. Husband. Lots of those around, feral cats out for a prowl. Doesn’t tell me what she’s doing here though, does it? You neither, come to that.”

“Where are
you
from?” Ellie said.

He shook his head. “Nowhere. Not anymore.”

She poked him, prodded his shoulder with her fingers. “Is this what you really look like?”

He gaped at her. “What else should I look like?”

“A bug? A blue giant?”

The short man raised a finger on either side of his head, forming makeshift antennae. He wiggled his fingers and buzzed with his lips. “Like this?”

The wind changed direction and the air coming off the river was bitter cold compared to the air from inland. The fine powder of snow that had drifted companionably about the trio as they became acquainted suddenly and without warning began accumulating in a wet, frigid mass around their feet. Ellie’s ears became numb and her lips, when she examined them in the grime-coated glass of the truck’s window, were turning blue.