Are … are they talking about buying him? No, surely not. Even here in the goblin market where all the rules were different, you shouldn’t be able to buy people. Even the awful Northern Kingdom with its awful new king didn’t let you buy people. That was barbarism.
“Ten years,” said the yellow-eyed man.
“Not a chance. He won’t last ten years.”
Marra spoke up. “Is he a hireling?”
The yellow-eyed man rolled his eyes. “Anybody who sleeps in a fairy fort is fair game. What you do with them once you’ve got them is your problem. Eat them, wed them, set them free—it’s all the same. He moves boxes for me.”
The man who had slept in a fairy fort reached a hand up to the silver collar and touched it, as if picking at a scab.
The dust-wife eyed the necklace around the man-seller’s neck and said, “Forget years. I’ll give you a nun’s tooth.”
His yellow eyes narrowed, going sharp as needles. “A nun’s tooth?”
“Pulled, not dropped,” said the dust-wife. “Eh?”
“Reeeeeally…” He glanced at Marra.
Marra had a sudden bad feeling. “Um…”
“Smell the convent on her,” suggested the dust-wife.
“But—”
“Hush,” said the dust-wife. And to the seller, “Go on.”
The seller approached Marra, nose working. Marra’s skin crawled. My tooth? What? Is he going to snatch one out of my head?
“Yessss…” said the seller, his nostrils flared so wide that Marra could see an edge of pink inside them, like seashells. “Yes, yes! I taste it. Faith and straw. A hint of vespers. Yes! I’ll take it. A tooth for him.”
“Wait a minute,” said Marra, starting to realize that this was really happening and they were talking about her actual teeth. “Wait. You can’t—”
The seller turned his head and shouted, “Eh! Toothdancer! Get over here!”
“The moth says we need him,” said the dust-wife. “And one of your teeth has been bothering you, hasn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“I thought so. You wince a little when you chew.”
“Eh! Toothdancer! Stir your stumps!”
“But you’re going to have someone pull my tooth? Right now? Because a bug landed on him?” She flailed her hand at the man who had been moving boxes. He watched her emotionlessly. She wondered if he was under some spell, or if he simply no longer cared. Then she saw the Toothdancer emerge from behind a curtain in back of the stall and stopped worrying about the other man at all.
The Toothdancer looked like a stork or a heron, with a long hard bill and a curved, mobile neck. He wore a tattered black suit, with feathers sticking out of the holes, and his hands were very human. When he turned his head, Marra saw half a man’s face below the beak, as if it were a mask, and yet his eyes were clearly a heron’s, the color of new-minted coins, and set back from the beak like a bird’s.
She gulped.
“This one,” said the seller. The dust-wife took hold of Marra’s elbow.
“Will it hurt?” whispered Marra, suddenly six years old again, with a baby tooth that pained her.
“No,” said the Toothdancer in a kindly voice. He sounded like a friend, not like a monster with a living mask. “I know my work.” He tapped her chin with a blunt finger. “Open, please.”
Marra opened her mouth and closed her eyes. It was all completely ridiculous, and she didn’t want to do it any more than she had when she was six, and yet you had to—that was how life went when a tooth went bad. You opened your mouth …
Something pressed against her lips. She opened her eyes, realized that the Toothdancer’s beak was actually inside her mouth, and hastily squeezed them closed again.
Tap … tap … tap … The beak was tapping against her teeth, surprisingly delicate, the end much smaller than it looked. Oh, sweet gods. Lady of Grackles, let this not be happening!
Tap … tap …
The dust-wife held her elbow steady. She didn’t tell Marra to relax, which was good because she was so far from relaxed that she thought she might scream.
Tap-ta-tap-tap. The Toothdancer had found the bad tooth. Lower molar on the right side. It had been twinging when Marra ate sometimes, and she had taken to chewing on the other side to prevent a bolt of pain from lancing through her jaw.
The beak withdrew. Marra clamped her lips shut, breathing heavily through her nose. She poked frantically with her tongue and found that the offending tooth was still there.