“Everything is permitted,” Yael said, as much to herself as Jenny. “Nothing is real.”
“Looks real enough to me,” Jenny said, sliding down the dusty slope. “Just shitty. C’mon. I want a bath and a drink. And I want to sleep in a bed tonight. I sound like a goddamn cowboy movie, don’t I?”
Yael stumbled along after her, unable to keep up with Jenny in the dizzying crowds that occupied the plaza; drinking and talking loudly in their unfamiliar but appealing language, hurrying from the monstrous temple with glazed brown eyes, or simply watching the sea of humanity with an indifference that bordered on obscene. Yael turned and spun in the foot traffic, feeling a bit like a child who has been separated from her mother. Even though Jenny was the only blonde in the crowd, she was too short to be seen over the heads of the people who surrounded, watching her with an avid and not entirely benign curiosity.
Yael was about to cry out when someone seized her wrist and tugged her sideways, almost sending her tumbling to the pavement. She hardly had time to untangle her legs as Jenny dragged her through the crowd, which parted in a mysteriously universal display of fear or good sense.
“This has got to be better than a campfire and nothing,” Jenny enthused, chewing the last of her gum with an intensity that frightened Yael. “I cannot fu – I cannot wait. See? Did you see what I did there?”
“I heard it. You are practically civilized.”
Jenny glanced back at her with an expression that Yael could not fathom.
“And you aren’t half the brat that I thought.”
The center of the plaza was occupied by a ceremonial structure, a series of arches with a square top, an elevated platform in the center holding a vaguely disquieting copper sculpture. Soldiers in fatigues and ski masks had made barriers of sandbags and mounted machine guns at various points around the square to create a series of ad hoc checkpoints, but they waved Jenny and Yael through with only appreciative glances. Yael kept her head down and her hair in her face out of reflex, because Jenny had made her take her gas mask off to avoid standing out even more than they already did. Probably a good move, but it made her feel exposed, even if the air here wasn’t contaminated with anything worse than carbon monoxide and volatized lead.
The road leading out from the other side of the plaza, out from the shadow of the awful temple, was more bustling and cosmopolitan. If it hadn’t been for the armored vehicles and the riot guns of the masked soldiers at their fortified checkpoints, it would have been interchangeable with any commercial boulevard. The crowd here was a mixture of locals in their woolen pullovers; travelers from a dozen different countries, leading camels or adjusting jeweled turbans; and every sort of sidewalk vendor, entertainer, and con artist imaginable. There were people selling trinkets and drugs in a dozen different languages. The buildings were plastered with hand-painted signs advertising all manner of food, shopping, and sundry other services. These signs were reinforced by barkers who attempted to corral pedestrians to whatever place of business they were hawking. The air was thick with dust and the smells of frying vegetables.
“How come I can read this shit?”
Jenny pointed at a sign advertising the services of a nearby bakery.
“Language.”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“No, I was referring – oh, never mind. It’s the language of Babel, Miss Frost. Everyone can read it. That was the whole problem.”
“Am I supposed to know what you are talking about?”
“It is from a rather famous book, but don’t worry about it. It is the only language that can be read in dreams. I am not certain why.”
“Oh, whatever. I, for one, need a damn bath. I swear to God my hair is starting to crawl...”
Jenny scratched furiously at her head with both hands and Yael sympathized. She had been tormented by fleas herself for the last several days, the only living thing she had regularly encountered in the Waste, and the insides of her arms and thighs were covered in pin-prick welts. Jenny scanned the signs around them, ignoring the foot traffic that seemed to part instinctively to allow her passage, until she found what she was looking for.
“There,” she said, pointing with one chewed fingernail. “Hotel D’Yuggoth. The street looks nice enough. What do you think?”
“I think we should go to the train station first, then worry about...”
“Okay, I don’t care what you think. I’m not going to get on any train stinking like this. You think we can get them to wash our clothes?”
Yael had to hurry after Jenny as she charged down the side street, sending pedestrians scrambling to avoid her. Yael envied their good sense. The side street was narrower, and the buildings that lined it more rundown, but still a huge step up from anything they had seen in the Waste. There were fewer businesses away from the main boulevard, and more of what looked to be large communal residences, with kitchens and bathrooms in shared common areas beneath the apartments.
“I don’t think we will be able to get them to do anything, because we don’t have any money.”
Jenny came to a sudden halt, causing a man bent under a load of canvas sacks of rice to execute a rather acrobatic maneuver to avoid a collision.
“How can you not have money, Princess?” Jenny stared in obvious disbelief. “You said you were rich, right?”
“My parents are well off, it’s true,” Yael said, unpleasantly conscious of the sudden attention from the crowd around them. “And I did bring money. But I don’t think they will take currency from Roanoke here.”
Yael felt a little bit better, since Jenny had made the same oversight she had.
“I guess that makes sense.”
“Shouldn’t we go to the train station, Miss Frost? We still have to negotiate passage, somehow...”
“Tomorrow. Bath, then bed,” Jenny grunted, shaking her head and continuing down the side street, which curved as it neared the edge of the dry lakebed the city was built upon. The nearby hillsides were lush, by Waste standards, and looked to have been irrigated for the purpose of growing the spindly corn stalks that covered them.
“But, how will we...”
“I’ll figure it out,” Jenny said curtly. “Won’t be a problem.”
“You won’t kill anyone, will you?”
“I promised, didn’t I?”
“And you won’t... hurt them either, right?”
Jenny laughed.
“No promises there.”
“Miss Frost! You can’t...”
Jenny turned sharply again, causing another series of near calamities in the traffic around them.
“I can, actually. Now, be a sweetheart and try to stay quiet for five damn minutes so I can think, alright?”
Yael decided the diplomatic thing to do was to reserve her concerns for the future, and just watch the situation play out. After all, she reasoned, there was nothing stopping her from going to the train station in a few hours, after Jenny realized that they had nothing to offer in exchange for a hotel room.
***
“This is a nice room, huh?”
“I have to admit it is rather nice. The decorations seem a bit more appropriate for a brothel, but a tasteful one, I think.”
“And they have this bathhouse. With hot water. You realize how many times I have been forced to bathe in a glorified puddle?”
Yael kept her eyes averted while she soaped her arms, while Jenny splashed around like a child on the other side of the concrete pool. The bathhouse was built over a natural spring, and the steam rising off the water smelled faintly of sulfur.
“Actually, this might take some getting used to. I’m not accustomed to having company.”
There was a roughly circular pool dug out of the floor of the bathhouse, lined crudely with uneven concrete and river-smoothed rock. The spring came trickling out of a copper pipe inset in the base of the tub, so that the water was almost unbearably hot near Yael’s feet but comfortable at neck level.
“Why? Oh, I get
it,” Jenny said, laughing and standing up in the bath, soap bubbles scattered across her torso, between the stars tattooed across her collarbone and the water dripping from the edges of her hair. “Am I making you nervous, Yael?”
“What? No, not at all.”
Jenny sank bank down into the water with a grateful sigh.
“I didn’t think that much of bathing until recently. I took a shower when I needed to, and that was that. Until the Waste. After a week out there I had dust everywhere, you know?”
Yael did know, intimately. She nodded with genuine sympathy.
“That stuff is like chalk. It’s horrible. Friction burns, rash, the whole nine yards. And the things it did to my hair...”
Jenny squeezed the water from her hair and examined it sorrowfully. Yael had to come to much the same conclusion when she had examined her parched hair and split ends, and had allowed the maid who had shown them into the bath to cut her hair with a pair of kitchen shears in a straight line across her neck, level with the base of her ear. She had experienced a moment of doubt when the first of her dry and tarnished locks fell to the ground beside her, doubt and insecurity bubbling up along with unfortunate memories.
That all faded, however, when Yael looked in the mirror – because her stepmother would never have allowed her to wear her hair so short. Her stepmother would have hated it, which was reason enough for Yael to decide that she liked it.
“I could cut your hair short for you...”
Jenny shook her head emphatically, sending drops flying from her sopping wet hair.
“No way. Tried that before. I can’t make it work. I’m not cute like you, Yael. I end up looking like a boy.”
Yael busied herself with a pumice stone, removing grime from beneath her toenails. She clipped them already, but the dust from the Waste, as Jenny mentioned, seemed to get everywhere.
“Hey, are you too hot or something? Because you are kinda red...”
Occupied in working over the callus on her heel, Yael ignored her. Jenny went back to splashing about and generally making a mess of things.
“Jenny, how did you convince the hotel to let us stay? And use their bath and everything? This place is pretty nice...”
“Pretty nice? It’s fu – it’s amazing! The room has electric lights! The bed sheets are clean. This bath is deep enough for me to dunk my head under,” Jenny paused to demonstrate, then came up sputtering with hair in her eyes. “What more could you possibly want?”
“All right, the hotel is very nice. Now will you tell me how you arranged it?”
Jenny pouted, squeezing water from the sponge on the back of her neck.
“You still don’t trust me.”
“Should I?”
“No.”
“Well?”
“Okay. I traded your...”
“Be serious, please.”
“Fine. I had a talk with the guy who runs this place. Turns out he needs a favor. So, I cut a deal. We get to stay here for a couple nights. In return, I gotta take a little walk later, work out a dispute the hotel owner has running with a local merchant. I won’t be long.”
Jenny closed her eyes and sank down until the nape of her neck rested on the mottled lip of the pool. Yael waded closer, moving slowly, as if she feared disturbing the water.
“Jenny?”
Her voice squeaking, little-girly, ridiculous echoes from the arched ceilings of the bath.
“You didn’t promise to do anything bad, did you?”
“It actually ties into some business of my own, so it’s really not a big thing. Don’t worry about it.”
“You are avoiding the question. What did you agree to do?”
Jenny didn’t bother to open her eyes when she answered.
“I didn’t break your rules. I’m sure this can all be worked out with a conversation,” Jenny said crisply. “Nobody gets hurt.”
“Not – not even you, right?”
Jenny cracked an eye. Yael couldn’t be sure through the steam, but she thought Jenny looked surprised.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Yael could feel the weight of the things she wanted to say pressing in on her like a landslide. Her words, however, chose that particular moment to fail her. By the time she found an answer, Jenny was floating on her back with her ears beneath the water, deaf to anything Yael might have wanted to say.
***
“Secrets cannot be kept.”
The ladder is really just a set of metal staples driven into the concrete walls of the air shaft, and the bent steel has rusted and become fragile over the years. The staples are cold, and they stain her hands red with oxidized metal. Yael is careful not to look down as she climbs.
At dinner with her family, Yael is horrified by the food, which appears to be made up of raw organs, still impossibly pulsing with life.
At temple on Friday, she watches the light fade through stained glass windows while the cantor sings Shabbos prayers. The congregation will not stop talking, exchanging business cards and sharing cell phone photos, infuriating Yael. She turns to whisper as much to her brother, but his presence is a blank in her mind.
PE class, sixth grade, playing volleyball. The sound of sneakers on a wooden floor in a vast gymnasium. Her arms are red and stinging from the impact of the ball. She dives for a long serve but her save goes to waste, bouncing on an empty court. She cannot understand where everyone has gone.
Home alone for the first time, torn between fear of whatever is making noise on the second floor and a perverse desire to see, to be frightened.
“Grateful for the morning.”
Yael is tearing through her school bag, trying to find her persistently ringing phone. The teacher is shouting at her, fuming and red-faced, and the other kids in class are laughing and pointing, but no matter how many things she pulls from her bag, she can’t find it.
The sun rising through the window in her brother’s room. He is reading to her from one of his ancient books in his shaky, quiet voice. She holds absolutely still, as any rustling of clothing or clearing of her throat will drown him out. It is the story of a terrible alien color that consumes the minds, and eventually the lives, of everything surrounding it.
Late. She is going to be...
There is a train. She has forgotten the time, she has misplaced her ticket. By the time she arrives at the station the train is already moving, her brother’s face vague behind the train window, sliding smoothly out of sight.
There is a train. A Black Train, iron and menace under a layer of soot. Wherever it has come from, Yael knows that no one comes back. There are only departures from this station, and it is too late for her to change her ticket. There are only departures, and she does not want to go where this train will take her.
A Black Train, but to what destination?
“There is no destination. There is no sanctuary save the heart.”
8. The Cat it Was Who Died
Warm water and lavender-scented bath soap, skin that stubbornly insists on freckling in the summer despite a small fortune invested in cosmetics engineered to prevent exactly that. Walking the hallways of a slumbering house, a deadbolt sliding home with exquisite slowness. Uneven illumination and the smell of the poisoned Atlantic, salt and ozone with an underlying hint of mineral oil.
“Wake up, Yael. We need to get going.”
Tobi, minus his left eye and a chunk of his ear, sat on the pillow next to her head, calmly licking one of his paws clean, full of practiced nonchalance that Yael saw through immediately. Yael transitioned from fast asleep with her arms around a pillow to kneeling on the bed with a startled cat held to her chest in seconds flat.
“Yael! Stop that! Put me down!”
“Oh, thank God, Tobi! I knew you would make it! I knew that you would find me.”
“I am very glad. Now, let’s not ruin the occasion by smothering me, please...”
Yael reluctantly freed the cat, who quickly scampered well out of reach before he resu
med the conversation.
“Yes, well, I am sorry that I took so long. There were unavoidable delays.”
“I would think so,” Yael said, beaming at Tobi. “I assume the delays that you are referring to include the tentacle monster?”
“I’d rather not get into that,” Tobi said, shaking his head as if to dispel a bad memory. “We don’t have time right now. We have to move.”
Yael flicked the switch at the base of the lamp, blinking at the harsh light, then went to the sink in the corner of the room to splash her face with cold water, the only option the corroded tap offered.
“Where are we going?”
“To the station, naturally. We have a train to catch. But you know that already. I could hear your dreams a mile away.”
Yael dried her face with one of the ancient and faded hotel towels, then sorted through the pile of cleaned and folded clothing by her bedside. She was glad that Jenny had thought to ask the staff wash them, because her clothes had turned the color of the Waste. They weren’t exactly sparkling now, but they were an approximation of clean, at the very least. Yael selected what she needed for the day, tucking the remainder into her duffle bag.
“Alright,” Yael said, pulling on her tights. “I need to get dressed and comb my hair, and then we can go find Jenny...”
Tobi froze and his eyes narrowed.
“Please tell me,” Tobi encouraged, claws digging into the bedding, “that you are not referring to Jenny Frost.”
Yael froze in the act of putting a t-shirt on.
“And if I am?”
Tobi sighed. Yael was mildly surprised to learn that cats could sigh.
“I heard rumors when I was tracking you across the Waste. But I had hoped that they were not true.”
“Why is that?”
“Surely you have noticed by now? Jenny Frost isn’t to be trusted. She isn’t even human, in fact.”
Yael had to sit back down on the rumpled bed cover.
“What do you mean?”
Tobi hopped up to the windowsill, glancing outside at the empty street.
The Night Market Page 10
