Peaces, Helen Oyeyemi [best life changing books TXT] 📗

sang to itself as she let water fall from the golden jug she held. She varied the force of each pour. A caress here; an injury there. When the spokes of the wheel idled to a sulky click click click, the girl poured steadily from two jugs at once and sang a round robin with the wheel, putting words to its glad tintinnabulations.

“Hello,” the girl said, when she noticed me.

“Hello. I’m Otto.”

We shook hands. The girl said her name was Paz. And she asked me if I wanted to buy the water wheel. “You’re one of the non-honeymoon honeymooners, no? Don’t you think it would make a romantic gift? It is very simple to operate and to sing with, as you have seen.”

The presentation of the wheel told you all you needed to know. It was the kind of item that could only be purchased with doubloons pulled from a treasure chest you’d wrenched out of the keeping of a deep-sea skeleton.

“Er … I’m actually not carrying any cash, but maybe Xavier—”

“Don’t you want to know how much it costs?”

“Go on, then. Tell me.”

She whispered the price in my ear, paused, then whispered an adjusted price that factored in a seven-year installment payment plan. I looked at the water wheel again.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to take this wheel off your hands, Paz,” I said.

“What a pity,” she said happily. She dipped her two gold jugs into the water at the base of the wheel and waved me onward, adding over her shoulder: “We accept cheques.”

Moving from stall to stall I sipped tea, watched a snail race, became referee of the snail race and arbitrated a doping scandal, sipped vodka, sipped tea laced with vodka, kept forgetting I don’t have a chequebook. I haggled half-heartedly over a pinhole camera I thought Spera might like, and almost bought moonstone and labradorite scrying balls for my mothers. Not because my mothers are especially into scrying or meditation, but because Dean, the holder of that stall, had gone to great lengths to source some of the pieces he’d laid out on display. Allegra had written to him months ago asking him to put together a scrying edit for Ava. Now that Ava was seemingly no longer bothered about looking into the future, I still thought Dean should have something to show for the time and care he’d put into gathering this row of globes. Each one was the flawed vessel of a perfect storm. But Dean said not to worry about it. He’d been fending off buyers for months. He wanted to give me a tip, though, for when I was doing my Christmas shopping and what not: “Bringing a scrying ball into a home that ain’t in touch with its own clairvoyance? That’s just asking for trouble. Just think about it, mate. You know it makes sense.”

“Non-honeymoon honeymooner!” Paz the Golden pounced before I could move on to the next stall. “You still haven’t bought anything,” she said, and showed me a handful of cut emeralds. “What about these?”

Emeralds …

She swirled the stones, and their colour crackled. I’d pictured stones like those the first time I’d heard a friend call an aubergine “garden egg.” Green shells that hatch long vines.

I recoiled without quite knowing why and asked sharply, too sharply, where she’d got them. Looking crestfallen, Paz lifted a dazzling arm and pointed to a stall near the end of the carriage. The stallholder was only dimly visible through a wall of cages. They were wearing a lot of costume jewellery.

“What’s in those cages, Paz? I can’t see from here.”

“Taxidermized animals,” Paz said. “They’re his speciality.”

“This guy sells emeralds and taxidermized animals?”

“That’s right. There’s this gigantic parrot that looks like it’s having a nightmare forever and ever.” She reflected a moment. “I really don’t like the parrot. But maybe you would? Since you don’t like the emeralds, and I do?”

“It’s worth a try,” I said. “Introduce us, please, Paz?”

“That’s the spirit! Be friendly to me, honeymooner. He’ll give you a good discount if he thinks we’re friends.”

I should have been looking ahead as Paz the Golden took my hand and led me past the other stalls, but we kept passing people and situations I couldn’t let go without one more glance. I had to turn and berate the stallholder who’d popped an unwanted Pallas Athena style helmet on my head. I had to turn and thank the person who removed the helmet and daubed my wrist with jasmine oil. I had to turn and ask for more information on the crunchy, spicy, and/or worryingly mushy tidbits that had just been popped into my mouth by one stallholder after another. The onboard train bazaar was in overdrive for its lone shopper. And then, just like that, we were at the counter of the emerald and taxidermized animal stall, Paz was pouring her handful of emeralds into the velvet pouch that had been left beside the sign, and I was standing nose to nose with a stuffed mongoose in a cage. Two mongooses, actually. They’d been sawn in half and sewn together.

This cannot, this cannot, cannot be.

Nose to nose, eye to eye. Chela I may not know so well; the feel of her paw in my hand, that’s already faded. But I know Árpád Montague XXX, from the downy tips of his ears to his graceful flanks to his balletic toes. It was him. It was them.

I didn’t speak for what felt like a few minutes but was probably only seconds.

Once I was absolutely sure I wasn’t going to throw up, I said: “Why are they in these cages.”

Paz jabbed a finger at the 15 MINUTES BREAK sign on the counter and said of the man who’d left it there: “According to him, they move sometimes. Bite, even!”

I put my fingers through the bars of the cage, to try to stroke the fur. Paz went quiet, but her sigh showed she now understood she probably wouldn’t be making a sale here.

My fingers and thumb