The Night Market Read Online Free Page A

get
back,” the cat explained with sparkling eyes. “Or am I wrong?”
    Yael had no answer. It was a relief to put the gas
mask back on. She had the disquieting feeling that the cat was reading her
facial expressions with frightening ease. Behind the polarized lenses and
sticker-covered plastic, her secrets felt a bit more intact.
    “Where are you taking me, then?”
    “To the Night Market, in the Nameless City that lies
beyond the Dreamlands of men, beside the sea the gods sleep beneath. The way is
both long and treacherous and I cannot tell you what you might find if you
should survive. The Market offers different things to each customer, but it
will endeavor to offer you the desire of your heart, at a cost. If the way
seems too risky, or the destination too uncertain, then turning back is still
an option. We could find the Rat and he could help you find your way home...”
    Yael shook her head, shoving her sleeping bag into her
duffel.
    “I’m not going back.”
    “Very well,” the cat said, tail waving gently as he
set off toward the locked door. “Then we should begin. It is a long walk and we
must pass through some places that are better traveled during the day, even in
these tunnels.”
    Yael hoisted her bag on to her shoulder and nodded at
the cat, following him across the rickety metal catwalk.
    A cat on a catwalk. Yael giggled to herself.
    “What is it?” The cat looked back at her from in front
of the rusted door, tail wavering uncertainly. “What is so funny?”
    “Nothing,” Yael assured the cat, glad the mask hid her
face. “Where does the door go, anyway?”
    “To the Underworld,” the cat responded archly, pushing
the ancient metal door open with a nudge of his head.
    “I thought that was where I was already.”
    “No, child. You are underground. The Underworld is an
entirely different matter, I’m afraid.”
     
    ***
     
    “Safe as she can be.”
    There was a fire in the fireplace. Yael was eight years
old and playing with a kitten and a length of string that she would wind around
it, laughing at the kitten’s attempts to simultaneously free itself and pounce.
    Through the window she watched the sky change colors,
and this frightened her.
    At school, listening to the other girls whisper mean
things, things they meant for her to hear, but not so loud that the teacher
would notice. They loved her brother, she knew. Which for some reason meant that
they hated her.
    Watching ripples in a cup of tea during the departure
of one the ships from the harbor, the foundations of their ancient home shaking
as though from an earthquake.
    “And the cat?”
     
    ***
     
    Violet moss covered the walls and the ceiling like luminescent carpet. Prefabricated
concrete gave way to rough hewn rock, nothing like the sandstone hills that
surrounded the harbor near her home. The deep grey stone was speckled with
vivid green occlusions which reflected her flashlight like water, abrasive and damp
with condensation. They walked along metal-wrapped bundles of utility cables
between the sulfur puddles cast by an occasional flickering light bulb.
    Yael wasn’t certain when the air grew frigid. It
probably happened by degrees while the tunnel transformed into something more
like a cave. She didn’t notice until she was shivering as she walked. The wind
picked up, gusts of frigid air tearing through the tunnel with the sound of a
jet-engine, deafening her and whipping her jacket and hair about wildly. Yael
couldn’t hear anything besides the wind and the ghosts of the ancient voices it
carried; nonetheless, she couldn’t shake the impression that there was a haunting
melody embedded in the sound, emerging from unfathomable depths. She felt a self-destructive
urge to run ahead blindly, as if she could somehow escape the wind. Yael was
reminded of how she felt standing at the edge of a tall building or looking
over the side of a bridge, the perverse impulse to jump. She knew if she lost
her guide, if she let the