The oddest sensation gripped me when I visited Blood Moon Market last night. It stole upon me as I paid the entrance fee—both pinkie fingernails and a lock of my thinning gray hair—and settled with cold inevitability into my stomach as I walked past the stall of Forgotten Music.

I was a stranger inhabiting my skin, moving through discrete packets of time, the discordant notes of my existence echoing inside my skull. The stumps of my fingernails bled, but I was removed from the pain; it was not mine. Nor was the hand clutching my precious copy of Markets of the Otherworld. There was, indeed, no me and no mine. I lacked definition.

Was I spelled? It has happened before.

In the Market of Illusions, I writhed on the cobblestoned street that wound between the gilded stalls, gasping for air, convinced I was a goldfish. Someone dragged me to a fountain and pushed me in, breaking the spell and—a minor point, except the water was ice cold—drenching me to the skin.

In the Cat Market, I was pursued by a large white Persian and coerced into signing away a month of my life in return for the privilege of petting her. In my dreams, I still run my fingers through her thick, beautiful fur while she leans against me and hums in pleasure. Worth it, I tell myself, even as I wonder which month of life has been taken from me.

In the Market of Shadows, I lost mine. In the Market of Stolen Things, I found it again, but it has never been the same. Even now, it tends to hesitate, to linger in the pools of darkness cast by broken gas lights, abandoned warehouses, and funeral homes. Our bond has weakened. Perhaps it blames me for the trauma it went through. Or perhaps it never wanted to return to me in the first place.

In the Clock Market, a witch told me exactly how long I had left to live. I spent five years trying to escape that knowledge before selling it for access to the Market of Arcane Secrets.

But I can feel it in my bones. The clock is ticking, and my end approaches. Never in my sixty years of scouring the world’s hidden portals have I felt like this, as if I no longer belong to myself. The I and the myself in that sentence are suspect. I cannot trust who holds this pen, who tells this tale. My shadow lurks by the rain-spattered window of my cut-rate hotel room, as if contemplating escape. Outside, a thick, steady downpour obscures the verdant hills of Garden City. I could be anywhere, anyone.

“Focus,” I scold myself. “Write.” I have a deadline, and my messenger pigeon is getting restless, beating its wings against the cage.

Blood Moon cannot properly be called a market because nothing is for sale. You pay to enter, and you pay to leave, but you take nothing with you except your memories. You are admitted into a large hall with a maze of corridors lined with stalls, lit by floating oil lamps. Overhead, vampire bats roost in the dark and distant ceiling. Periodically, they swoop down to feast on the blood of visitors, sending those bitten into paroxysms of ecstasy. Is this symbiosis or parasitism? I am unable to say, for, despite my best efforts, I was not bitten. I stood underneath the densest colony of bats, flapping my arms, but they ignored me. I cannot help but wonder if this is related to my sensation of not-thereness, not-amness.

Blood Moon Market appears in Garden City two or three times a year during total lunar eclipses. It doesn’t matter if the night sky is clear or cloudy. You don’t have to see the Blood Moon to know it’s there. You do, however, need a guide to navigate the murderous vegetation of Garden City. Ask at the front desk of your hotel; you will be required to submit an application detailing the circumstances of your birth, family, finances, education, and profession. You must give a valid reason for visiting Blood Moon, the more bizarre the better. You must also describe your latest lucid dream. If approved, a guide will be sent to collect you from your hotel. Do not be alarmed by their appearance. They are not always human. And do not, no matter how strong the temptation, attempt to find Blood Moon on your own. Garden City does not take kindly to intruders.

A gust of wind blows the window open, spattering raindrops on my desk and scattering my papers. My shadow scurries under the bed, and I rise, meaning to shut the window and rescue my notes. Instead, I stand suspended for unknown minutes, staring at the darkness outside, letting the rain lash my face. My sense of self unravels. Here, now, in this moment, what am I?

A market fancier nearing the end of her unremarkable life.

A collection of 6.5 octillion atoms under the temporary delusion they belong together.

A function of infinite possibilities collapsed into this timeline because of a book.

I lean against the window and hold my palm out. The rain is a cool, soothing pattern, real in a way that I am not. I want it never to end.

I was ten years old when I took a wrong turn for the public library and ended up in the Market of Dangerous Books instead. The wrong turn; the right turn. Does it matter? I have never found it again. Apparently, it appears only to children of a particular bent of mind. You know the kind I mean: introverted, dreamy, mediocre, misfit. I wandered through narrow corridors lined with towering bookshelves, breathless with excitement, trying to read all the titles, and running my fingers over the embossed spines. I’ve long forgotten the names, but I can still remember how the books felt under my fingertips: smooth, velvety, magical, alive.

The walls were inscribed with verses, the ceiling painted like a picture book. I did not question where I was; at ten, one still expects marvels and miracles at every bend of the road. The humdrum world takes a while to beat that hope into submission. I was luckier than most. And if I hawk that hope to those who never had my luck—do you blame me?

I came to a dead end and turned around, meaning to retrace my steps, and nearly bumped into a thin, old woman with sparse gray hair tightly wrapped in a bun, dark brown eyes blinking owlishly behind a pair of large round spectacles.

Before I could stammer an apology, she pressed a thick, tattered paperback into my hands and asked, in a strained whisper of a voice, what I was willing to pay for it.

I stared at the book. Markets of the Otherworld, it said, and something shifted inside me. I opened a random page, my hands trembling.

The Mermaid Market can be found after the fifth storm of the monsoon on a tiny, jewel-like island in the Andaman Sea. On a smooth white beach lapped by turquoise waves, sharp-toothed beauties perch on obsidian rocks, their fish tails glittering in the sun, their drowned hair draped in seaweed. Should you be fortunate enough to survive the storms and land on this beach, make your way to the oldest mermaid—the one with silver hair, sunken eyes, and wrinkled skin. Tell her a story—the happiest, warmest one you know. If you can make her smile, she will give you a pearl. Swallow the pearl with seawater and you will be transformed into a mermaid yourself. For one day and one night, you can swim with your sisters in the lagoon, cause shipwrecks out in the open ocean, and pose on rocks, singing sailors to their untimely deaths.

The old woman closed the book, forcing me to stop reading. “What will you pay?” she repeated.

Such a longing came over me to read the rest, to find that market and all the others described in those worn pages, that I could hardly breathe. “Everything,” I answered, and the woman gave a tremulous smile.

The right answer, the wrong answer. I have dedicated my whole life to this book: validating, verifying, magnifying its entries. I sell snippets of my experiences to shady magazines and fly-by-night journals to support my travels. Over the years, I have acquired a small, zealous readership. People live vicariously through my stories. A few attempt to follow my footsteps; fewer still make it back alive. Those that succeed are never the same; they spend the rest of their lives in a fevered dream, reliving their visit to the Otherworld. I get letters now and then: pleading, cursing, begging to be taken along. Someone once offered me her firstborn child if I could but take her to Riverboat Fantasies—a floating market on the Mekong River that sells dreams and nightmares during the midsummer moon. I did not respond. I never respond to such missives, or I might have remonstrated. I am not a witch from a fairy tale. I am, at best, a chronicler.

Here is a secret: all books are dangerous. You should know, when pressing a book into a child’s hand, that you are changing a life. If I could meet that elderly woman again, I would ask, why did you choose me? Perhaps, in her answer, I could find the meaning of my life and my imminent end.

I clutched the book to my heart and went home, my head in the clouds. Six months later, I ran away for the first time, hunting for the Perfume Market, which, the book said, could be accessed by inhaling the musky scent of a black rose. My attempt was unsuccessful; I was caught at the railway station and brought back within hours.

I ran away several times over the next few years. At fifteen, I found my first portal to the Otherworld—the Market of Unsaid Things. I love you, whispered a curly-haired girl I vaguely remembered from seventh grade. I hate you, said my mother. I walked dry-eyed past facsimiles of parents, siblings, classmates, and teachers, wishing I could unhear the words. There is no point knowing what people think of you—or how little they think of you. We are each of us separate worlds. Sometimes, we fall into each other’s orbits, but this closeness is temporary. All intimacy is illusion, all relationships ephemeral.

Perhaps I only think like this because of the way my life turned out. What if that girl had spoken those words aloud? What if I had answered? What if that book had never come into my hands? What kind of life might I have lived? Would I still have felt like a stranger to myself, or are such sensations a by-product of a solitary existence? Do we need other people to affirm who we are? And if the answer to that is yes, what is the point of selfhood at all?

When I turned sixteen, my family finally gave up on me. There were other children to rely on—normal ones. When relatives asked, my parents told them I was sick.

There is some truth to those words. Either I am sick, or everyone else is. Which is likelier? I think more about such matters as I grow older, as my back twinges each time I bend, as my sleep grows lighter, my dreams more vivid, more startling in their absurdity.

Here is another secret: no matter which market you find, you can never stay. Your escapes are temporary. A few hours at most, and you must return to the ordinary world. And the more time that passes since your last visit, the dimmer your memory of that market grows.

That is one reason I am so careful about documenting my experiences. I can look at my notes and sketches and revisit the places I have loved, in my mind if not in reality.

The window slams shut, and I jump backward. The lamplight has flickered low, and I am soaked through and shivering. I dry myself and change my robes, and all the time, it feels like I am watching myself do these things. Get a hold of yourself, I think sternly, but yourself eludes me, as evasive as my shadow.

I prop myself up on the bed, place a candelabra on the bedside table, and open my copy of Markets of the Otherworld. My own journal, a thick black diary, rests next to me, solid and reassuring. It is my seventh; the other six are safely stowed in a bag proofed against water, fire, and theft. The only things of value that I possess and no one to pass them on to. If there’s no one to read them, do my words truly exist?

My shadow creeps out from under the bed and slinks up to me. I turn the pages, a familiar rhythm that never fails to soothe us both. There are currently three hundred and sixty-three markets listed in the book. There were over five hundred when it first came into my hands. The numbers change with time, of course. Old markets vanish and new ones appear as the Otherworld shifts, and places that were superimposed on our world are thrown into polarity.

But I haven’t seen a new market in years. And some old favorites—like the Market of Vegan Delights—have disappeared. That is another reason I do my own documentation. I check the book every night, hoping not to find another one gone.

I find the page for Tempting Teas, the letters beginning to fade but still legible, which means the market is accessible—just harder to reach than it used to be. I have been there thrice, and each time, I returned rejuvenated.

Tempting Teas is a collection of elegant tea houses arranged along the banks of a scarlet river filled with white lilies. It is always close to sunset here. The golden rays of the evening sun filter through the stained-glass windows of the tea houses and fall in rainbow patterns on the burnished floors, the wooden tables, the delicate china service, and the lacquered masks of the hostesses, who sway like willows as they bend to serve you. You will never see their faces. But you will imagine their beauty and their ugliness as you accept a cup of fragrant tea from their pale, long-fingered hands.

I read the entries I know by heart, caressing the pages and sighing over the blank ones. I come to the entry for Blood Moon and stop, my heart squeezing.

The words have faded; I can barely read them. By the next lunar eclipse, they’ll be gone.

I scramble out of bed, gather my notes, roll them tightly, and tuck them into a capsule, my hands shaking. Time, if only I had more time. Time to live, time to write, time to explore the hundreds of markets I have yet to find.

The pigeon squawks in excitement as I approach the cage. I open the door, affix the capsule to the pigeon’s scrawny leg, and carry the bird to the window. The storm has abated, the rain reduced to a light drizzle. A hint of rose lights the eastern sky. Dawn is not far. I release the pigeon, and it flaps its wings and soars into the twilight. Going home—a place I have never been able to define for myself. I watch the bird until it is no more than a distant speck, wishing it safe travel. I could have mailed my notes, but Garden City’s postal service is notorious. The pigeon will be faster and much more reliable. In four days, if all goes well, my unfinished article on Blood Moon Market will reach the avaricious editor of Monthly Marvels and Mysteries. Even if Blood Moon vanishes, I won’t be the only human to remember it.

As the sun slides into the sky, I sit by the window, sipping tea. My eyes burn, my head throbs. I should have tried to sleep for a few hours, but I need to figure out where to go next.

I didn’t think about it much when I was younger, when life stretched before me like an endless field of possibilities. I could pick a market at random, no matter how inaccessible it seemed, and spend months or even years chasing after it.

It’s different now. My days are numbered, and I cannot waste them in pursuit of a portal I may never find. I’d like to return to Tempting Teas, but the door—a cracked mirror in the hallway of a derelict mansion in Pink City—is on the other side of the world and often closed. I open one of my older diaries and flip through my notes, fighting the anxiety that clogs my throat. Surely, I still have time for one last, glorious find. I read the words I have written, trying to summon the feelings and memories behind them. But they leave me unmoved; they were written by someone else, someone strong and young I cannot recognize.

And whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that I have changed so much? That I am afraid to take a risk? What is my life worth if I am so craven at the end of it?

I toss the diary and pick up Markets of the Otherworld again, gritting my teeth. I will find another portal if it’s the last thing I do. Pick a page, any page, and make it yours. I shut my eyes and open the book, letting my need seep through my fingers. The pages riffle and whisper, then fall silent.

I open my eyes and stare at the brief entry the book has chosen to show me—a new one that I have never seen before. A laugh bubbles up my chest, catching the sob in my throat. How fitting. Oh, how fitting.

The Death Market appears only near the end of life and only to those few who have dedicated themselves to Otherworldly pursuits. Here you can meet a death of your own choosing, provided you have paid the price. There is no finding this market; it is the market that finds you if you are worthy. Go on a journey, be it by train or horse carriage, tram or palanquin. Open twelve doors. The thirteenth will be the death you have been waiting for.

I wipe my face with a sleeve and memorize the words. Is the Death Market a place or a process? What is the price I must pay? Have I paid it already with the years I devoted to the Otherworld? And what is the death I have apparently already chosen? There is too little information to go on. I should ignore this entry and try to reach one of my old favorites before I draw my last breath. Besides, I don’t want to die, even though I am currently unclear about the “I” in that sentence. This feels like an undue hastening of my end.

I close the book and pack my meager belongings, trying to remember if there’s a train out of Garden City today. Going on a journey doesn’t mean I’m going to find my death. There are other portals out there, less obviously lethal ones.

I heft my bag on my back and head downstairs, fooling no one. The first new entry in years; how can I ignore it?

The front desk and lobby have an abandoned look, but I paid my coins in advance. I plunk my key on the desk and leave, emerging into a warm, sunny morning, taking care to walk on the paved road, and trying not to think too much about what I am doing.

The train is at the station, steam puffing out of its smokestack with an air of imminent departure. I race to the ticket window, panting, and buy a fare to the last station, an oasis on the edge of the Empty Place. It’s a two-day journey—long enough to open thirteen doors or decide not to. I board the train, among the last to do so, and realize, too late, that I have not carried food. Nor have I eaten since yesterday morning. The horn blares, and the train chugs out of the station. I find an empty compartment and collapse on the bench by the window, hoping not to starve. That is not the way I would choose to go.

To my delight, a vendor enters the compartment, laden with sweet buns and samosas. I pay him and fall on the food, washing it down with a cup of water from my bottle. It’s the best snack I’ve ever eaten. Maybe I only feel this way because I am close to finding—or being found by—the Death Market.

The train trundles through green valleys topped with ruined forts, on rusty truss bridges across placid lakes, and up and down impossibly steep hills. I lean against the window, my face in the sunlight, half-asleep, dreaming of the Otherworld. I have earned this rest, brief though it is.

The sun vanishes, and I wake to pitch dark. We’ve entered a tunnel.

I rise, meaning to switch on the gas lamp, and open the door of the carriage instead. It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself as I step into the black corridor. But I have opened the first door.

The train exits the tunnel and bursts once more into bright sunlight. My shadow slinks back to the carriage, and I blink, trying to orient myself. In the warm daylight, it is difficult to believe my death is twelve doors away. I walk to the dining car, opening three doors to get there, and treat myself to an expensive lunch with the last of my coins. It’s hard getting my shadow to join me. It might be the last meal we ever eat, I scold. Try to enjoy it.

It takes five doors to get back to my seat, because I use a washroom on the way. I’d rather not pee when I die, although it is, I realize, a natural result of the body relaxing its muscles. Besides, I won’t be around to be embarrassed about it. Still, I would rather empty my bladder and bowels in a toilet while I can.

“Nine down and four to go,” I say aloud. My shadow sulks in a corner, refusing to look at me. It doesn’t like this whole Death Market business. It has seen things and experienced much, and I feel a stab of remorse. I should have been a better mistress. I shouldn’t have allowed it to be stolen.

I take another nap and use the washroom once again. As I return to my carriage, I realize with a start that this is the thirteenth door. Already. We’re not even halfway to our destination. Of course, my destination is elsewhere. I knew that before I boarded the train, so why hesitate now?

I reach for the door handle and pause, waiting for my life to flash before my eyes.

Nothing happens. The door is just a door, and I am an old, obsessed woman in a train going nowhere. I shiver and clench the door handle. Will I let fear overcome me when I am about to confront the greatest mystery of all?

I slam the door open and stride in before I can lose my courage, my shadow clinging pitifully to me.

The carriage is gone. In its place is a lamplit vestibule, faintly familiar. I whirl around, my heart thudding. The door to the train corridor has vanished, replaced by a stone wall. The only door lies before me—ornately carved and slightly open, as if tempting me in.

Is this the anteroom to the afterlife? Am I dead or alive? Does that door lead to heaven or hell? I am not a religious woman, and I wonder, too late, if I should have learned a few prayers. At least I have suffered no pain—yet.

My shadow detaches itself from me and slips through the two-inch gap between the door and the wall.

Well. That’s a first. Has my cowardly shadow sensed something I have failed to? I walk forward, push the door open, and step into a vast, dim-lit hall.

To my left is a long wooden desk. To my right is a small reading area with cozy chairs, little tables, and a tea service. Far overhead is a painted ceiling. And ahead of me, in row upon delightful row, are towering bookshelves stuffed with books and scrolls. I hurry to the bookshelves, inhaling the musty odor of ancient parchment, lightheaded with relief. The Market of Dangerous Books. If this is my “afterlife,” it is a fine one. I take out my copy of Markets of the Otherworld and flick through the pages, trying to find the entry for this market.

That is when I come upon her. A child in pigtails and a ragged frock, walking slowly ahead of me, her hands trailing the book spines. My heart stutters and nearly stops.

The child turns, and my sense of disassociation is complete.

Such a pinched, hungry face, and such wonder in those wide eyes, that open mouth.

Over sixty years now and I remember her so well—all the ache and desire and curiosity of her ten-year-old heart.

A hot wave of guilt and love washes over me. I blink back tears, my mouth working, wanting to give her wisdom, and coming up short. I have no wisdom. I have only the book.

I press it into her hands and ask, my voice husky, what she is willing to pay for it.

I know, even as she takes the book with trembling hands, what she will say. Everything.

She has given everything.

And she has received everything she ever hoped for.

© 2024 Rati Mehrotra