The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(25)

Marketplaces use Thin Magic to hunt and pounce. And a small, hungry Market moved just behind and beyond September and Ell and Saturday’s field of vision, for it had caught a whiff of their Thinness.

You see, a Marketplace is like a lithe, hungry dog. It can sense when you need something and have even the littlest bit of money, just like a dog knows when a plump little rabbit is wriggling her nose in the forest. They can smell it when you have a great deal of money and very little sense, or when you need something very specific, but might be enticed by something enchanting and just beyond your reach. A Market can make itself any sort of shape or size in order to capture its quarry, fill itself with this or that, depending on how it has decided to have you.

No sooner had they passed the rich brown grass of the Samovar’s estate and into a broad obsidian plain than music spun up all around them like sudden smoke and fire. Bright, pale tents unfolded and puffed up, long ebony tables full of glittering things and groaning with food rolled out, and long strands of starry colored lights spooled along tall spires. A little creature toddled from tent to tent, her eyes huge and luminous and moon colored, her ears long and heavy, her skin dark and mossy like a tree’s trunk, her hair decorated with every kind of jewel and feather.

Saturday clapped his hands.

“A Goblin Market! Oh, September, you see, I told you fabulous things were waiting for us just round the bend! They’re just the very best kind!”

The little creature seemed to finally notice them. She bent double and slowly, deliberately somersaulted across the courtyard to September, turning over and over again like a determined boulder. She came up squat and green-black, her skin thorny and smooth in complicated swirling patterns. Agates, bloodstones, and tiger’s eyes stuck all about her hair and face, a dull, glinting mask.

“Come buy, come buy,” she said beguilingly. Her long, pale lips drew up into a smile. She pushed her graceful, many-knuckled fingers into her heavy black waistcoat and came out with a bunch of shockingly bright carrots, shining as though they had been panned from a creek of gold, large and gnarled and pointed as knives. “Come buy, come buy, come hear my cry! Oh, hark, oh, hark, oh, heed and hark, sweet child of sun and fable, come rest your feet, come share your heat, and sup your fill at my table!”

“No, no, none of that,” said A-Through-L as September looked at the vegetables calmly, without once reaching for them. She had learned her lesson with regards to tasting things without examining them thoroughly and asking a goodly number of questions. “You must look out for Goblins especially hard when they rhyme, September. Rhyming means up to no good!” He said the G very hard, so that September would know he knew what he was talking about.

“But then again,” Saturday added thoughtfully, “up to no good may mean up to something interesting! The other Saturday got to ride a velocipede; I should at least get some carrots.”

“Come now,” purred the Goblin girl. “Why do you malign my Goblin’s wares? My silk is fine, come sip my wine, and are not my prices fair?” The Goblin cleared her throat and gave them a bemused look out of the rims of her silvery eyes. “Forgive me, it’s a habit. And I durst say most folk appreciate a bit of effort! Patter isn’t easy, my great brute! It’s a fine bit of Loud Magic, and I learnt it well. Goblin universities are very competitive! Anyhow, if you’ll have it plain, I’m Glasswort Groof, and I’ve got such things, anythings, everythings, allthings, and nothings, whatever you’ve lost at the tiniest cost, just the thing you’re lacking—” Groof laughed at herself again. “Well. Everyone’s lacking. We could smell your lack over the hills and through the hanging stars. And my carrots would bring the flame to her cheeks, no doubt on it—his, too!”

“No doubt,” huffed Ell. “And have her so full and fiery of living she’d dance till her heart burst and thank you for the song! Or forget her own name and lie down in a swoon? Or perhaps turn into a Goblin girl for you to look after.”

The Goblin shrugged silkily. “Mayhap, mayhap! It’s only business, nothing personal. I wouldn’t Goblin her up though, thank you very much. I’ve quite enough on my plate with my Market all out of sorts!”

A brisk wind plumped the iridescent tents and sent shadowy weeds rolling between them. Dresses fluttered, amulets rattled.

“Why is it out of sorts?” asked September, who, while not overly fond of carrots, did feel hungry. Coffee is not much of a lunch. The Goblin did not seem nasty or frightening to them at all—and was she not here to sort out the out of sorts?

Glasswort Groof beamed. Her tiger’s eyes twinkled. “Well, a Goblin Market isn’t like a usual sort of Market, that’s first and firmly. When a Goblin’s born, if she wants proper work and not to just lay in wait under bridges (which is sheer laziness if you ask me), she goes down into the Ten-Cent Forest with treats in her pocket and her best clothes on—and, of course, a Florid Flintlock or five. Those beasts aren’t tame, no, not in nature or name, not in tail or in mane—ahem. Well, your own humble Groof, sixth of that name, went down when she was but a slip of a Goblin maid of two or three hundred, guns in her slingers and coins in her hair. In the tin-bark trees of the Ten-Cent Forest many Markets came sniffing up to me—mostly fruit-selling fairs, that’s to be expected—but I’m no common Goblin, and all my sisters were in the fruit business already. I can’t stand the stuff. Strawberries have no depth, you know? Plums are insipid. But further into the Forest, where the Nickel-Briars wrangle and the Thruppence-Vines tangle, there you can find spice bazaars and tinkers’ carts, fishmongers’ barks and smugglers’ trade-posts, liquor-fountains and leather-and-iron houses just wandering around the wood on their thick owl-legs, pecking at last year’s leaves with the tips of their booths and roofs and counters. They hoot at the moon and gruffle at strangers—poor lambs don’t know how to whisper and wheedle come buy, come buy, they only know how to scrape and creak and buffle, and all but the bravest would run from their thundering displays. I knew a Goblin boy who tried to rope a Market too big for him, a linen-fair all full of damask and satin, and it threw him, just dashed him on the earth like a dog, whipping him with bolts of grosgrain. You have to know which one matches you—and which you’re strong enough to mount. I saw mine out in the Sixpenny Wilds, a fine cheeper with flags aflutter. I plied her with coins and rhyming, I wiled her with new wares and nimble timing, and then I shot her through the money-box and trussed her right there. We’ve been tight as tills ever since—only lately, only lately…” Groof leaned in toward September, avoiding the gazes of Marid and Wyvern. Her Market seemed to lean with her. “Only lately, with the shadows coming down, well, they’ve no money at all, and they need so much. And they just reek magic. They just shed it everywhere they go, and my poor Market gets buffeted in the wake of it. No one needs to buy magical items anymore. They just haul off toward something, and it happens for them. My Market can’t sleep at night; her bones have got brittle and her coat has no suppleness. She’s just falling apart, poor darling.”