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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mr. Jelliby found him ten minutes later. His head was in his arms. He was shivering a little.
“Boy?” Mr. Jelliby asked quietly. “What’s the matter, boy? Why didn’t you wait for me?”
Bartholomew sat up with a start. He wiped his nose on his hand. “Oh,” he said. “Nothing. We should go.”
Mr. Jelliby was looking at him curiously. Bartholomew didn’t want to be looked at. He wanted to be left alone, and if nobody liked him he wished they would keep it to their own stupid selves. He got to his feet and began to walk away.
“I got the pistols!” Mr. Jelliby said, hurrying after him. “And a hat. Are you hungry?”
Bartholomew hadn’t eaten since last night’s supper, but he didn’t say anything. He kept walking, hood pulled low, head down. He had to force himself not to peek over his shoulder to see if the man was following. For a while he simply walked, not really knowing where he was going. Then the gentleman appeared at his side, two crusty pies in his hand. He handed one to Bartholomew.
Bartholomew stared at it.
“Go on,” Mr. Jelliby said. “Eat it!”
The pie was full of gristle, made with some horrid street animal like as not, but Bartholomew gulped it down, bones and all, and licked the grease from his fingers. Mr. Jelliby picked the crust off his and then handed the rest to Bartholomew. He ate that, too. It made him think of the wax-drip soup and Hettie, and that made him want to start running again-anywhere-to find her.
They left the Goblin Market behind them, pressing onto a walkway that wound around the outermost side of the towering city. “The train station,” Mr. Jelliby had said, “is near the ground.” And that was where they were going.
They were still hundreds of feet up; Bartholomew could see for miles, all the way to the farm country beyond the city’s edge. The sky was spread out before him, turning copper as the sun set, clouds rolling low and ominous along the arch of the world.
He paused, staring. There was something in the sky, something besides the endless dusk. A flashing. A burst of black, darker than the clouds, moving at incredible speeds away from the city.
Bartholomew leaned out across the rope railing. “Look,” he called, waving for Mr. Jelliby. “Look over there.”
