They stopped on a dirt road a few fields away from Cranmore Castle, which was now nothing but a mound, gray in the night but green under a daytime sky, a lump in the ground where people had once lived, and lived no longer.
“I expected something a little more castle-shaped,” said Jamie.
“Nothing lasts forever,” Nick said. “Except demons, of course.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a charming conversationalist?” Jamie asked.
“No,” Nick replied honestly.
“I cannot tell you how much that surprises me,” Jamie told him, and Nick gave him a half smile. Nick’s blood was already racing.
There was always a chance that someone had let slip the location of the Goblin Market. Everyone came to the Market prepared for a fight. Everyone was aware of the possibility that magicians might descend upon them on Market night and try to wipe them all out with one blow.
The air on Market nights was always strung tight with nervous excitement. The Market was always balanced on the edge of destruction.
Nick looked out into the night and let his smile spread. That was why he liked it.
“Where is this Market?” Mae asked.
Alan spoke before Nick could tell her to hush. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got directions. The Market is left of the crooked tree, outside the beaten path, and straight on to the moon.”
Jamie blinked and said, “Thank you for clearing that up, Alan.”
His face was pale in the moonlight as they climbed out into the darkness of a country road, fields and trees massed around them on both sides. Nick had not looked at Jamie particularly, except to note with gratitude that he was not dressed up like Mae, but now that he did look, he was sure the boy was thinner than he had been a couple of weeks ago. He and his sister were both shaking, but Nick thought that with Mae it was excitement. With Jamie, it looked like fear.
Of course, once Alan noticed that, he was drawn to Jamie like a mother hen to the littlest chick in the farmyard.
“I know the way,” he said, and offered up the warm, sweet smile that always made people believe he wasn’t carrying six concealed weapons. “Walk with me.” He paused and added, “I see you’re not dazzling us all like Mae.”
“Well, I thought — I thought that I usually look like what I really am.”
Alan’s smile became less reassuring and more genuine. “I’ve always thought the same.”
Nick was glad that Alan felt no need to complement his shirt and jeans with a little earring, but on the whole he approved of Jamie’s decision to look halfway normal. His approval must have been obvious, because as he followed Alan up the hill, Mae fell into step with him and spoke in a combative tone.
“You’re dressed up,” she said. “You’re all in black and you’re carrying a sword. How is that different?”
“I have a reason to dress this way.”
Mae glanced up at him, instantly curious. “And what is that?”
“Oh,” Nick said, teasing a little, “you’ll see.”
He smiled properly at her, looking down into her upturned face, her mouth curved and eyes dark in the moonlight. Then he remembered that this girl was off-limits. He shook his head impatiently and lengthened his stride so she would have to scurry to keep up.
The tree branches overhead were curled around each other like cats leering down at them from the shadows, and the leaves were thick enough to hide the moon. Alan’s red hair looked as black as Nick’s as Nick drew level with them.
Alan broke off a conversation about the beautiful poetry of Christina Risotto or whoever, of all things, to give Nick a reproachful look. “You left Mae?”
That much was obvious, so Nick didn’t bother to answer him. Alan turned and limped back to Mae. When she drew level with him, he offered her his arm.
Nick, left alone with Jamie, felt it his duty to make things clear.
“I realize the fact that my brother talks about poetry is misleading,” he said. “But he’s not that way, all right?”
Jamie gave him a look, then redirected the look. Nick followed his gaze to Alan stooping over Mae and apparently doing an impression of a lame stork attempting a mating dance.
“Really,” Jamie said dryly. “I would never have guessed.”
Nick scowled.
They walked on until there was no path, only grass stretching out on all sides until it was blotted out by the dark fringe of the woods. Alan took the lead from the point where the path failed, but it was obvious to them all where to go. Someone had arranged to have cars parked at strategic points along the fields. The car roofs caught moonbeams, and every metallic place where the light fell formed a bright stepping-stone for them to follow.
On the far side of the mound of earth that people still called Cranmore Castle were enough trees to be counted as wood. Streaming from the heart of the wood, glowing among the leaves and warm against the tree trunks, they saw light from the lamps of the Goblin Market.
Nick fell into step with Alan, leaving the other two to follow them as they chose. He heard a sharp exclamation behind him as they walked into the wood, but he did not know which of them had made it, or why. People were usually taken like that by the Market at first.
It was impossible to see all of the Goblin Market at once. The stalls were placed in a zigzagging circle around the trees, glinting at intervals like secret treasure. There was one stall, and then another, and before they had taken more than a few steps, there were stalls on all sides. The bright drapes over the stall fronts were like flags being flown to declare war. The lamps, hung in twisting pathways up in the boughs, swung in the wind and cast their light on first one stall and then another.
For a moment the spotlight fell on a stall hung with dream catchers, the real kind, bones and feathers and thread formed in the patterns to silence the voices in your head and keep the demons from your bed. Then it swung to a table laden with words, clay tablets tumbled with calfskin-bound volumes, cheap paperbacks lying with scrolls. One stall made its own illumination, since it was hung about with what the Market people called fairy lamps. There were the glowworm lamps to attract your true love, and the beacon lamps you set in a window to call a wanderer home.
Nick took a moment to scan the swaying lights and the shadows creeping around them, the bright stalls and the dark cleared spaces where the dancers were practicing, and then relaxed. There were no gaps in the lines of the stalls and no familiar faces missing. The Market was just as it had been last month, and with luck it would be just the same next month too.
They all had to keep quiet for fear of discovery, so the drums were muffled and the stall owners’ voices were like the clear, low sound of chimes ringing from all sides.
“Come buy!” sang out clearly from every stall. “Come buy!”
“We can buy things like this with ordinary money?” Mae asked, her voice half-awed and half-dubious. “We’re supposed to buy help?”
“We may be the only defense against magicians and demons that there is,” Nick said. “No reason not to turn a profit.”
Phyllis from the chimes stall noticed them first. The Market was in full swing and people were mostly concentrating on business, haggling and comparison shopping. Light glanced on faces without illuminating them.
“Chimes?” Phyllis asked. “Chimes to call a lover? Chimes with the voice of a bird trapped in them? Chimes that play you whatever song you most desire to hear?”
“No thanks,” said Nick. “We’ve got MTV.”
She peered among the glinting metal and crystal of her wares, and her face cleared. “Oh, Nick, it’s you! Alan, my sweet, come here and kiss an old woman. You get taller every year.”
“You get younger every year,” Alan said, stooping in among the chimes to kiss her.
The stall owners of the Goblin Market had the same indulgent attitude to Alan as all the teachers, landladies, and shopkeepers. Human nature didn’t change, whether you sold love charms or toilet rolls.
