“What if I’m going to die in a week?”
“Doesn’t work like that. It’s off the time you could live. If you get hit by a beer wagon tomorrow, everyone still gets paid.”
Marra felt a shiver crawl down her spine and fought it back. You wouldn’t give up two weeks of your life for your sister? To save her from losing all the weeks of hers? “All right.”
“Half a moment,” said the snake-tongued woman. She pulled out a silver abacus and moved the beads back and forth. “There. Fortnight.” The dust-wife looked over and nodded approval.
The abacus had a little dish at the bottom filled with what looked like plant stems. The woman picked one up and Marra saw that it was a caterpillar. “Hold out your hand.”
Marra held her hand out worriedly. Would it hurt? What did losing two weeks of your life feel like?
The snake-tongued woman dropped the caterpillar into her palm. It unrolled itself and crawled over the side of her hand. Marra noticed, unsurprised, that her hand was trembling.
The caterpillar attached a thread of silk to her thumbnail and let itself down. It curled itself up and began a rapid wiggle, spinning silk across itself. Marra stood frozen, watching it build a cocoon far faster than any normal caterpillar she had ever seen.
In less than a minute, it was wrapped up and had turned a bright shade of green. “Ah … I … What am I supposed to do?” she whispered to the dust-wife.
“Won’t be long,” said the dust-wife, watching the caterpillar. Bonedog realized that Marra wasn’t moving and sat on her foot, pelvis digging into her ankle.
The cocoon split open. A crumple-winged moth emerged, velvety brown in color, stretching wet wings. “There we go,” said the snake-tongued woman. She caught Marra’s wrist and pulled it toward her, plucking both moth and spent cocoon from her hand. The moth went into one of the little wooden boxes, and then she popped the empty cocoon into her mouth. Marra caught a glimpse of the snake tongue opening, and she turned away, feeling vaguely queasy.
“Take your moth,” said the dust-wife, pointing to the white one still in the tray. Marra reached out and fumbled the white moth free. “Now, blow on it and tell it to find you what you need.”
Marra had an increasing sense that she was in a dream, even more so than she had in the blistered lands. Only Bonedog’s solid, uncomfortable weight convinced her that it was all really happening.
She lifted the moth level with her face. It was very fuzzy and had big black eyes. Don’t think of it like an insect. Think of it like a … a mouse. A mouse with feathers for ears.
She blew across the moth’s back. “Please,” she whispered to the moth, “find me what I need to help my sister.”
Its wings shivered. For a moment the black lines seemed to rearrange themselves, forming letters, words, sentences. Then it spread its wings and flew.
The brown hen took a snap as the moth went by but missed as the dust-wife flicked the staff aside. “Shame!” she said to the hen. The hen looked unrepentant.
“Now what?” asked Marra.
“Now follow that moth!”
* * *
They threaded their way through the goblin market, through the strange sea of people. The moth stayed fluttering a little way overhead, swooping to avoid antlers or banners or wings.
They had moved across two aisles and turned down the third when the crowd shifted around them. The people of the goblin market drew back, leaving a long avenue open between them. Conversation hushed, not in awe but in annoyance. Marra was reminded of the way that crowds moved to avoid a leper with a bell.
The woman who came down the center of the aisle moved as stately as a queen. Marra’s impression was that she was very tall, and yet when the woman drew near, Marra could have met her eyes without looking up. Perhaps her apparent height was because of the light.
For she did not glow—not precisely—but she moved through a cloud of light as if it were dust. Her footsteps kicked up motes of brilliance. The light roiled around her feet and trailed behind her, refusing to settle. She carried a severed hand in her right hand. Her left wrist ended in a stump, not bloody, simply there. The motes of light seemed to gather near it, briefly forming fingers, then falling back to the ground again.
“Saint,” muttered someone behind Marra in a tone of disgust.
Perhaps Marra and the dust-wife had not pulled back far enough in the crowd. Perhaps it was simply the brown hen, who refused to be intimidated by anyone, who let out a grumpy errk and fluffed her neck feathers. The saint turned her head.
Her face was as serene as the statues of the convent. She was not Our Lady of Grackles—Marra was almost certain of that—and yet it seemed perhaps the two might know each other. Did saints communicate? Was there some place that they all went and spoke together, putting their feet up and shaking their heads over mortal foibles?
For a moment the eyes of the saint looked into hers, as deep and wise as a good dog’s eyes.
The sisters at the convent had never prepared her for what to do if you met a saint. It was not assumed that the issue would ever come up. Marra sank down to one knee, almost genuflecting, as she looked into the saint’s eyes.
Did the serene lips curve up a little? Marra could not say. It took an effort to drag her gaze away. The world was dark and seemed to throb in the corners of her vision, as if she had been staring into a fire. She blinked away tears.
The dust-wife said something that Marra couldn’t quite make out and pulled her to her feet as the crowd closed up behind the saint. The brown hen errked again.
“Where did the moth go?” asked Marra. She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear the dazzlement from them.
“Not sure … there! End of the aisle.” She plunged ahead. Marra hurried after. The strangeness of the market seemed less somehow after the saint’s passage, or perhaps strangeness did not quite measure up to glory.
The moth circled overhead, spun too close to a light—Marra held her breath—and then dropped down into a stall. Marra inched closer to it and saw velvet cloth laid out with dozens of small white objects. Jewels? Ivory? Shells?
Teeth.
Of course it would be teeth, her mind said, while her skin tried to crawl off her body and run away screaming. It was never not going to be horrible. Teeth. Yes.
The apparent owner of the stall had brilliant yellow eyes like a lizard. He lounged against one of the poles holding up the awning, watching the crowd. Ivory clicked softly on his chest from a necklace made of teeth.
I can’t possibly need a tooth. Where is the moth?
The white moth had landed on the arm of a broad-shouldered man wearing the remains of a coat and tabard. There was a delicate silver collar around his neck, more like lace than metal. He was stacking boxes near the back of the stall, his face expressionless.
Marra didn’t know what to do. Did she just go up to the man and say, “Excuse me, I need you”? That seemed like it could be misinterpreted in a great many ways. She tried to catch his eye, but he did not look in her direction, or at anything but his work.
The dust-wife bent over the teeth, making occasional appreciative noises. Eventually the yellow-eyed man drifted over, keeping a wary eye on the chicken. “You looking to buy, mistress?”
“Maybe. Not quite seeing what I need.”
“What do you need?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll know it when I see it.” She prodded a particularly large molar, the size of a shoe. “Hmm. Maybe.”
“Cyclops. You won’t find another like it.”
“I will if I check in an elephant’s mouth.” She gave him a narrow look. “I wasn’t birthed yesterday, my lad.”
The yellow-eyed man grinned. “Ah, well, can’t blame a man for trying.”
The dust-wife’s expression indicated that she could indeed blame him. She leaned back, eyes sweeping over the stall.
“The big one back there,” she said, sounding bored. “Is he sound?”
“Sound enough. Fool enough to sleep in a fairy fort. I pulled him out before something worse got him.”