Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

“We’ve arrived,” the spryte panted, collapsing against the handlebars. “The Goblin Market.”

Mr. Jelliby pulled back the rickshaw’s curtain and stepped out, staring. Bartholomew followed cautiously.

They stood at the end of the stone road, hundreds of feet up, and faeries swarmed everywhere. More faeries than he had ever seen in his life. Faeries of all shapes and sizes, some small and pale like Mrs. Buddelbinster, some brown and knobby like Mary Cloud, some enormously tall. There were leaf-green ones and silvery ones, ones that looked like they were made entirely of mist, and graceful nut-colored ones with dragonfly wings sprouting from their backs. They moved in a constant stream along the walkways, spinning and turning upward and downward. And yet the whole enormous space was eerily quiet. There was a sound in the air, but it was not the cacophony of shouts and clattering machines that filled the alleyways of Old Bath below. It was a steady, unbroken whisper, like a thousand dead leaves all rustling at once.

Mr. Jelliby tossed the rickshaw driver a coin, and he and Bartholomew moved into the market. Dozens of black eyes turned to watch them as they passed. Voices, sharp and suspicious, poked at their backs. Bartholomew kept close behind Mr. Jelliby, head lowered, wishing his cloak was made of stone and brambles, wishing he could retreat into it as far as he liked. But the faeries weren’t even glancing at him. He realized it with a start. The faeries were staring at the gentleman.

They pushed down the walkways for several minutes, and Bartholomew could tell by the way the man stuck out his chin and looked straight ahead that he was becoming nervous. Bartholomew felt an angry little glow in his chest. That’s what it’s like, he thought. Now you know, too. It was as if they had switched places going up the road in the rickshaw. Bartholomew almost belonged here in this strange place. He could do the same things everyone else did, and no one would drag him off for it. No one would even notice him. For once in his life it wasn’t he who was peculiar.

Pushing back his hood, he peered in wonder at the shops surrounding him. One sold beautiful black bottles with labels like SORROW WINE or OCTOPUS INK or DISTILLATION OF HATE. Another sold coins, towers and heaps of them, but when Bartholomew passed close by and really looked at them, he saw only leaves and dirt. Another shop had row upon row of fat, bloodred flies stuck to a board with sewing pins.

He spotted a stand laid out with an array of smooth gray humps and approached it curiously. An ancient crone sat behind the wares, dozing under a crimson hood. Bartholomew took a cautious breath. He reached out and touched one. It was so soft, a lovely roll of perfect, silky fur. He wanted to bury his whole hand in it and-

“Scrumptious-looking mouseys, aren’t they,” the crone said suddenly. She hadn’t been dozing. She had been watching him, eyes fixed on him from inside the darkness of her hood.

Bartholomew jerked his hand away and backed into a troll. It grunted angrily. Then the gentleman was at his side, pulling him along.

“Come on! No dilly-dallying. We don’t want to spend any more time here than we absolutely must.”

They crossed a rope bridge, went along another walkway, climbed a knotted ladder, and then Mr. Jelliby scrunched his eyes closed and in a very strained voice told Bartholomew to be so kind and ask for directions. Bartholomew’s insides squirmed at that. The gentleman ought to do it himself. It wasn’t as if the faeries didn’t speak English. But Bartholomew didn’t want the man to think him a coward, either, so he went up to a lithe, scaly creature with webbed hands and glassy eyes and asked very quietly where he might buy a brace of pistols.

The creature’s diaphanous eyelids slid once across its gaze as it took in Bartholomew’s small cloaked figure. Then it answered in the deepest, roughest English, “Right that way, past the fingernail seller and on seventy foot or so toward the Heartgivers’ booths. Turn left at Nell Curlicue’s candy shop. You’d ’ave to be blind to miss it.”

Bartholomew nodded to the water faery and hurried after Mr. Jelliby, who had started walking at the words “fingernail seller.” At a candy shop with flavors of “starlight” and “hemlock” and “icicles,” they turned and eventually came to a garish little establishment with the word BAZAAR in colorfully painted letters above the door. Bartholomew waited until Mr. Jelliby had ducked in and then followed.

The shop called BAZAAR was far larger inside than it looked from the walkway. It seemed to sell everything that ever existed. The front part of the shop had regular things like barrels of crackers and pickles, but the farther back one went the more mysterious the objects for sale became. While Mr. Jelliby haggled awkwardly over the price of a compass, Bartholomew wandered down the aisles, trying to look at everything at once. There were puppets in red-and-black patchwork that blinked at him as he passed, seeds purported to grow into massive beanstalks, and intricate rings and brooches that scuttled on insect legs under bell jars. At the end of one particularly long aisle, he came upon a wire cage that held what looked like a black parrot, wrapped in its wings. The wings were powerful, dark oily feathers sprouting from thick bone. They rose to a point over the creature’s head.

Penumbral Sylph , read a messy sign under the cage. Semi-elemental. Rare amp; e xtremely magical. Even a single specimen is a much-desired treasure, can be used for near-instant errands + message deliveries, etc. Price: English: 40? / Faery: no less than the equivalent of one arm and one leg.

Bartholomew edged up to the cage. It was iron. He could feel it even without touching it, an elusive ache at the back of his head. The creature inside seemed to sense it was being watched. The wings folded back and a delicate white face looked out at Bartholomew. Its mouth was wide and blue-lipped.

They peered at each other in silence for a moment. The wings opened yet farther. Bartholomew saw the sylph’s body, disproportionally small compared to its wings, twig-thin arms and legs almost lost among the feathers. Then the sylph’s lips curled back over its teeth and it let out a hiss.

“Changeling,” it said quietly.

Bartholomew jerked his head back from the cage.

“Changeling,” it said again, louder this time.

“Be quiet,” Bartholomew whispered.

“Changeling, changeling, changeling.” The sylph was pacing now, circling the cage, eyes locked on Bartholomew. Then it let out a shriek and threw itself against the wires, leaving sear marks on its flesh.

“Changeling!”

Bartholomew backed away, knocking a tray labeled LIES off a shelf. They fell to the floor and began to expand, blue and emerald bulbs growing bigger and bigger until they exploded in a shower of stinking gas. He turned to run, but a gnome was already bearing down on him from the other end of the aisle. Before Bartholomew had taken two steps, cold fingers took hold of him, digging at the strips of cloth that covered his face. The cloth unwound. The gnome leaped back as if he’d been bitten.

“Out,” he said, and his voice was just a squeak. “Get out before the customers see you. Take your horridness away from here!”

Bartholomew ran, past the bean seeds and the puppets, holding his disguise around his face with his hands. He passed the gentleman at the door. The man’s arms were full of pistols, a new hat, a compass, and a very large map. He started to say something, but Bartholomew didn’t wait to hear it. He pushed past him, out of the bazaar, onto the swaying walkway. A troupe of dwarfish faeries in red pointed hats was coming up it. Behind him, Bartholomew heard wings skittering, the titter of voices. He spotted a dark gap between two shop tents and threw himself into it. There he collapsed and wrapped himself into a ball.