Kessie found the steps leading down into the alley on her seventh try. She finally took a day off of work to do nothing but walk up and down the small, narrow streets of the oldest parts of West Market, searching among the tiny, crowded stalls and tucked-away little shops that gentrification had somehow overlooked, hoping to catch a glimpse of the shadowed archway out of the corner of her eye. She went through the same spots she'd already been through on her lunch break last week and the week before; they always said that if you couldn't find what you needed in West Market, you didn't really need it badly enough, and Kessie was hoping that desperation would make the difference.
Sure enough, when she turned away from trailing her ebony fingers along a section of red brick wall, hoping against hope that somehow she might find a crack between two buildings that wasn't there before, she saw the steps leading down into darkness and knew she'd found what she was seeking. She practically sprinted across the street, not daring to look left or right for traffic or even blink for fear that it might not be there when she looked again, but fate was with her and she reached the narrow alleyway instead of losing her life to an oncoming car. Three steps down, and she was standing on cobblestones that were old when Philadelphia was new. The Other West Market.
It didn't look like she expected it to. She was somehow picturing something out of a Harry Potter novel, with street performers juggling balls of blazing light and stall owners crying out offers for curses and love potions going cheap, but really, Kessie could barely even tell that the alley was too big to fit into the space it inhabited. The dreary shadows covered everything with a pallor of silent gray desolation, and the few shops that possessed windows had no lights burning in them. She peered around corners and saw tiny courtyards, but everything looked abandoned and empty. Kessie hoped it was another test. She didn't know what she'd do if it wasn't.
She began to walk at random, her long slender legs making their own decisions about where to turn left and right and whether to ascend or descend the narrow stone steps that dotted the maze of courtyards and alleyways. Sometimes she glanced to one side or another, her deep brown eyes skimming over tiny doorplates that said things like, 'By Appointment Only', 'No Solicitors', or once simply, 'The Wrong Door'. Kessie rapidly lost track of time as well as space, her mind misting over into a fugue of identical doors and twisting, winding cobblestone paths and only the narrowest strip of slate gray sky overhead. She didn't care. Her need drove her on.
And then, finally, she found herself at a dead end. A single door awaited her, set into the end of the alley as if in opposition to her progress. Kessie approached it slowly and read the nameplate, uncertain whether to hope or despair until she saw the words etched into the dull brass. 'Queen Lullabye. Purveyor of Drowsiness, Dreams, and Somnolescence Since'. The year was scratched over to the point of illegibility. Kessie leaned her forehead against the wooden surface and let out a silent sob of relief.
She reached for the door handle and found herself somehow still shocked when it yielded to her fingers. Turning the knob, she went inside to find a small, cramped room filled with an assortment of bizarre objects and oddities so vast that Kessie's eyes swam trying to take it all in. She saw a porcelain doll with one leg leaning drunkenly on a bronze statue of a penguin that leered at her with a lascivious grin on its beak. She saw an old necklace made out of obsidian that glittered with no obvious source of light, and a brand new bottle cap that still had a few droplets of soda clinging to the inside. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the collection; it simply was. Kessie was so overwhelmed by it all that she almost took the woman sitting in the corner to be just another curiosity at first.
But of course, once Kessie saw her, she couldn't look at anything else. The woman had smooth, marble white skin, every bit as pale as Kessie's was dark, and hair that spread across the floor in long, auburn locks. Her eyes were-her eyes, they-her eyes hurt Kessie's head to look at for long, and she stared down at the woman's tattered gray gown and tawny, furred legs instead. They ended in the daintiest little hooves. Kessie wasn't sure how the woman could possibly walk on them.
The woman let out a tiny harrumph, and Kessie looked back up to the face that perplexed her sense of spatial geometry so badly. "I believe you have a trade to offer?" the stranger said, her voice somehow sounding as though a second person was speaking in unison with her even though no one else was there. She blinked regally, and the eyes within eyes within eyes within eyes that receded bottomlessly into infinity blinked in sequence down the tunnel of regression where a pupil and iris should be. "I am she whom you seek. I can give you what you desire, if you are willing to pay the price."
Kessie froze in momentary panic. Nobody had ever given her a book of etiquette on how to address the purveyors in the secret market. There wasn't a guide to any of this, it wasn't even really talked about except for those late nights when the last of the stew had been scraped out of the pot and the poyo started going to everyone's head and someone finally mentioned that they heard about how Hassan really got Mariatu to marry him. It was the kind of story nobody really believed until they had to, until life became so intolerable that a little magic seemed like the only way to make the world make sense again.
"Um, uh, of course, my, um, my queen," Kessie mumbled, dipping her hips into an embarrassingly confused attempt at a curtsey. "I... I just need to sleep at night," she sighed, desperation leaking through into her voice and ruining her vague attempts at sounding polite and courtly. "It's been... god, it's been almost two months, I, I don't have insurance, I can't see a doctor, I don't know what started it or how to get it to stop, I just... please. Can you please make it stop? Please?" She could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, and she was suddenly terrified that she was going to start bawling in front of a complete stranger. Kessie closed her eyes, trying to keep her composure. There were very few things she hated more than crying in front of people, whether those people were human or not.
The answer changed Kessie's near-tears to tears of relief, but it didn't make it any easier to stop herself from sobbing until snot bubbled out of her nose. "Of course, my child. I am Queen Lullabye, am I not? Sleep is my principality, dreams and nightmares my subjects. Though I am terrible and pitiless in my caprice, yet still I can be bargained with. You wish for sweet and pleasant slumber, and I can offer it to you. Night after night of sleep so deep that you will wake a new woman, rest and succor all your days on this earth. This I promise you, Kessie Tengbeh." The iceberg of dread had almost melted in Kessie's heart until she heard the last few words. "For a price, of course."
Kessie swallowed hard. "I... I'm not a wealthy woman, my queen. I work every day, as many hours as they offer, but... the pay is not good. There are always bills. Rent is expensive here, even for a room as small as mine. I still have relatives back home, and I must save to help them come to join me here. All I can spare will be yours, but I can spare so little." Her shoulders slumped, certain of her dejection even as her mind continued to hope. "What price do you ask of me?"
The Queen smiled broadly, revealing a line of teeth as sharp and as thin as ivory needles. "Oh, my sweet, darling child. The worth of an offering lies not in money, but in meaning. Do you see this?" She plucked a single piece of candy from off the shelf next to her, a small red pellet that looked to Kessie's eyes like an M&M or a Skittle. "A child of four gave me this, her fingers still sticky with its sweetness. It cost her mother only pennies, but she valued it with all the love her tiny heart could hold. Now it is mine, and she will dream of her true self no matter what the world tries to make of her. I want nothing of you that you cannot give. Only that which you esteem most dearly."
