Salina didn’t remember how she got where she was and she certainly didn’t recognize the place. It smelled rank. In a weird muffled sense of hearing as her ears got back to working normally, she heard a shrill voice saying something she could barely understand. She focused on the sound, keeping her eyes closed for the moment in case whoever it was expected her to be asleep.
“A bargain,” it was saying, bordering on laughter with its giddiness, “Look here! A perfect human! Not a scratch on it and it’s such a pretty blue!”
The voice made Salina feel sick. She swallowed and her throat felt scalded. Her tongue was dry. She had to force herself not to be too noisy about clearing her throat. She wouldn’t open her eyes yet, but she could still try and figure out where she was based on touch. She was sitting, that she knew, in a substance that felt very much like the dirt back home. But she remembered enough to know she wasn’t there, not unless this was all a dream.
Well, her mind had played plenty of similar tricks before. Perhaps it was her imagination running wild. But the stench… when Salina dreamed, she never smelled anything, only felt and saw and heard. It couldn’t be a dream. It was too real, real as the panic swelling in her heart.
Where was Albert? And the others? Where was she?
There was nothing supporting her back and the only reason she had remained upright seemed to be because she had been positioned so that her bones fully supported her while she was limp. Her spine ached something awful now, having been slumped over for a time, and her limbs felt weak and shaky. It wasn’t long before that prickling feeling came, that feeling when appendages once asleep wake for the first time in hours and everything is electric needles against your skin.
“One of you wants to buy it,” said the shrill chilly voice.
“How old is this one?” Whoever that was, they sounded monstrous and deep, like a hollow in the earth, like a cavern that bellowed in the wind.
“It’s new! I picked it up in Fowlina’s Forest near a new hole to Otherworld. You want? I know you want.” The impish voice laughed then, and the fact that it was obviously trying to be charming sent a shiver right down Salina’s aching spine.
She could wait no longer. She had to open her eyes. Slowly, tentatively, afraid of what she might see given the sounds and smells around her, she pried her eyes open. They stuck closed for a moment and she feared that maybe she couldn’t, that perhaps whatever had brought her to this place also sealed them shut with some type of forgotten magic. But then she realized it was only her fear and this kind of fear would do no good if she were to escape. She needed the running fear, not the petrifying type. So she steeled herself and snapped her eyes open.
And she screamed and backed away from the thing in front of her. It was a boy, except the boy was rotted and dead and attached by a curving appendage to a giant fish, a fish with teeth like daggers and tattered fins whose breath smelled of decay and rain and the distinct scent of smoothed river rocks. It dripped with water, floating in the air as if it were swimming, yet the land Salina sat upon, scurrying back now, was dry as a bone and thickly caked around her ankles. The land is shackling me, Salina thought; it wants this thing to eat me right up. I’m going to die. But it was only her clothing twisting about, clinging to her nervous sweat.
With her eyes fixed on the giant fish before her, a fish that lacked any sort of face except its mouth and the half-rotted child’s at its protruding appendage, she barely noticed the little green man who looked upon it fearlessly as if it were a comrade. As if the little green man were a merchant selling something to the fish, and then Salina realized that she was the good. She was food to both of them and it terrified her.
To her credit, her scream was silent, but that was probably only because she was too frightened to take a full breath in the first place.
“It is feisty,” said the fish. Its breath swept over Salina, smelling of seawater, blood and grime.
“Yes-yes,” said the little green man, hopping in front of her to spread his arms wide in presentation, “It would make a good, squirmy lure! No creature could resist! You would feast well for ages! Now what will you offer Frock? What will Frock get for it?”
The fish made a thoughtful noise that sounded like something being chopped and then ground into powder.
“A tooth,” Frock offered, “Give frock a tooth and it’s yours!”
“I have a better wager.”
Salina turned wide-eyed towards the one who had spoken. Then for the first time she saw that the giant fish wasn’t the only monster around her. From the man in casual clothes whose flesh peeled away as if it were dead to the ants three times Salina’s size that scurried through the crowds to the mass of long, stringy grasses that lumbered on six legs through the place—it seemed they all were. She was surrounded by beasts, beasts who were bargaining over who would get to eat her, and all she could do was tremble.
Get a hold of yourself, Salina. Get up and shove past them all and run!
“Say your offer,” Frock was telling the man with black eyes and shark’s teeth who had interrupted the giant fish, “What will you give Frock for the human?”
The man ran a hand through his burgundy hair, slicking it back so it stuck out at the ends but was flat on the top like tiny sickles. “Fairies,” said the man smoothly, “I got black and purple, blue and grey, white and red and mulberry brown. A wide assortment of rarities to be sure.” And then with those black eyes of his he faced Salina and smirked and winked. If he were human and not surely intent on eating her the moment she was handed over, the gesture would have been suave.
“Frock doesn’t need fairies,” said Frock. “Go away. Someone else! Someone else say what they’d give for this human here! Come, come! Tell Frock your offers!”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The man with black eyes scoffed, crossed his arms. But he stayed there waiting, as if wagering what else he might have to give. Go on, said his eyes, said his teeth, go on and run. Look around, nobody will save you. I’d be doing you a favor, sinking my teeth in your neck. I’ll find an object Frock can’t resist.
That was it. Salina moved. She kicked Frock right to the ground and hurled herself in a random direction, rushing and rushing and feeling the heat in her legs and her stomach. She knew how to run. If nothing else, for at least ten seconds, she knew escape. But a burly hand with only three fingers caught her torso and plopped her right back where she stared. A creature nearing the size of a small dragon that stood upright on two legs and had skin the color of bedrock crossed its arms at Salina. Its face was scrunched like a pig’s nose and it was hairless, fleshy and wrinkled. It scrutinized Salina, sniffed her. She didn’t try to run again. All the monsters had formed a circle around her, closing in as Frock kept bargaining.
“I’ll give you two sirena serpents for it,” said one.
“A bottle of tanuki wine,” said another.
Salina didn’t know half of the things that were offered and she didn’t particularly want to find out. She needed a different means of escape. She couldn’t break free of the crowd now. She would have to wait until someone bought her, travel with them for a while (provided they didn’t eat her on the spot or subject her to some other horrid fate) and then make a break for it when she was clear enough to see the forest. In the forest were her friends. In the forest she could hide.
She waited.
A unicorn stepped forward, black with a golden horn. When its offer was denied, it scoffed and pranced into the crowd. Salina couldn’t see where it went after that, but she had been hoping Frock would take its offer. Maybe it would come back. She didn’t want to go with the man with black eyes. He was still there, arms crossed, making a face like he was calculating, waiting for the right moment to offer something else, something more valuable.
“One of my goats,” said a woman with fire for hair who dragged three goats on a chain behind her.
“Embra!” Frock said gleefully, “A generous offer but Frock has already gotten past one goat’s value. Give Frock two and the human is yours.”
“You are a fool, Frock,” said the woman. She jangled the goats’ chain, “One goat or no sale.”
“Give it up,” said the man with black eyes, “Frock never lowers. You know that.”
Salina could swear she saw the woman’s—Embra’s—hair burn a little brighter. Embra shrugged, circled back into the crowd. Salina gulped, inching back when a long anteater snout pressed towards her. Frock got in the way.
“No touch until sale! No touch until sale! Not unless it runs again!”
The snout, which was so long Salina couldn’t see the face it belonged to, receded.
A horned serpent said, “A pouch of my dried, powdered blood.” Frock’s eyes went wide and eager. He was about to agree and Salina had to do something.
“I’m worth more than that,” she said, standing tall on her feet. “I was bewitched once. Residual magic still flows in me! I am no ordinary human!”
That changed everything, but for better or worse Salina didn’t know. All she knew was the horned serpent hissed and slithered off, no longer looming over her and Frock.
Clever, mouthed the black-eyed man, I like clever.
Salina went on. “I am a princess from another world! I have ridden clouds, slayed wizards! I am worth more than anything you have offered so far!”
“You think we aren’t from other worlds,” said a flat monster with fish fins and gills. It was a rhetorical question. “Your skills mean nothing to us, only the taste of your meat. Be silent and let us deliberate.”
“I will not!” Salina thought: I just got this voice back. I will not be silent, not again.
“Rip out her tongue,” cried a tiny creature from far back in the crowd.
“Control your goods, Frock,” said another in a chastising tone. “And you call yourself a Gatherer.”
Frock took offense to this, which was apparent by his skin turning hot and reddish, by his eyes turning narrow.
“Enough,” Frock cried, “Back to pricing! Back to offers! And you, human, stay put and be quiet.”
“I have an offer,” said Enkaiein. The crowd spread like water to let him through. All were silent then, even Salina, and all out of respect for him. Jasmine rode on his shoulders, Prince Albert right behind her, and the red knight farther back, one hand gripping an inky feather of Enkaiein’s wing to stay steady. Albert looked airsick but relieved. Salina locked eyes with him and they didn’t let go of each other’s gaze.
“Enkaiein,” said Frock nervously even though he was half-laughing, “What a pleasure to meet you here, in Creature’s Court, at Frock’s humble auction.”
“Indeed.” Salina had never heard Enkaiein speak so curtly.
“Enkaiein has an offer for Frock for this human?”
“I offer a hoof of my ink.” The crowd gasped all together, as if nothing that valuable had ever been offered before. The man with black eyes even let his face go a little slack. Frock was jittery with excitement. Enkaiein also said, “And the promise not to reveal to Fowlina where you got this human you’re selling.”
“Sold,” Frock said quickly, shoving Salina towards Enkaiein. “Sold, sold, sold! Now my payment, now my payment!”
Albert jumped off of Enkaiein’s back and embraced Salina, who hugged him tightly in return. Jasmine watched with curiosity as Enkaiein’s front left hoof slipped right off of his body and into Frock’s hands. It was heavy and large enough to make Frock sink under its weight. And Enkaiein shrunk, ever so slightly, just enough so that only Jasmine and the red knight could feel it because they were atop him, and another hoof grew to replace the one he had given Frock. The crowds disbanded, going every which way, now that the auction was over.
“I thought I’d lost you again,” said Albert.
“You found me,” said Salina, “Just in time.”
Jasmine smirked down at them, sliding down Enkaiein’s wing to the ground. Kurventhor’s pendant slipped out from her shirt collar but she tucked it back in as soon as she could. Still, that didn’t prevent a few wandering eyes in the Court from falling upon it, by accident or otherwise, one pair being black and scheming. Nobody paid the black-eyed man any mind as he left, going about his business like all the others.
“Thank you, Enkaiein,” Salina said, bowing deeply.
“We look after each other or none of us will survive,” said Enkaiein, “Especially in this place.”
“But you seem to be a celebrity here,” said the red knight, still atop his back, “Or a nobleman, if those exist in such a world.”
“Nothing of the sort,” said Enkaiein, “I was only the eldest in the crowd at the time.”
“In any case, we got Salina back so now we should figure out what to do about Kurventhor. This place seems like a good spot to gather resources, don’t you think?”
“Yes, Jasmine, and that is why we must be cautious. From this point forward, everyone rides on my back, at least until we are out of the Court.” Enkaiein dropped his wing lower, letting everyone climb back on. They weren’t as clumsy now, used to mounting him so often, and their handholds felt smoother against his inky feathers.
Salina leaned into Albert when he took his place behind her and closed her eyes for a moment, thanking the gods—or whatever existed here that would constitute as such—for letting him get to her fast enough. He, in turn, wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin atop her head, seeming in relief to let out all the breath he had been holding at once. Jasmine thought it was adorable, which made her want to tease them about it, but she figured they’d had enough to deal with for one day, or night, as it was. Besides, she was relieved herself. When Salina went missing, there had been a moment when Jasmine thought they wouldn’t find her, even if she had made a point to tell Albert otherwise at the time.
“Don’t go running off again in the middle of the night,” said Jasmine, remembering what her mom used to tell her as a child, “Wouldn’t want you getting eaten by boogeymen.”
“What are boogeymen?” Salina asked.
Jasmine thought a moment. “Honestly,” she said, “Probably half the things that live here.”