TWO HUNDRED SIXTY-TWO: Snow IV

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Alden liked the Christmas market. In most ways, it was exactly what he’d expected it to be—lots of food, lots of people, lots of places to spend his money. There were plenty of magical surprises because this was Anesidora, but nothing truly astonishing. And yet, bit by bit, the atmosphere worked a human kind of spell on him.

Almost everyone they encountered was happy.

Energetic dancers spun each other around in the tent run by a group called Salsa & Swing. There were people wandering the festival in elf costumes, stamping bingo cards for anyone who wished them a Merry Christmas. Lute only needed to find the elf with the silver shoes to finish a line and earn a prize.

Twice now, someone had heard Alden’s accent, asked him if it was his first year as an Avowed, and insisted he pick an item they were selling to have for free. One woman had even invited him to come for Christmas dinner with her family if he didn’t have anywhere else to be. “You won’t be alone with some strange old bird if that worries you,” she’d assured him. “I have a granddaughter your age, and we usually have a few kids from intake, too. You’d fit right in with the bunch.”

He’d been touched by her offer, and he suspected it had primed his emotions for every other nice thing that had happened afterward.

A ceremony took place every fifteen minutes at the base of the park’s satisfyingly enormous tree, in which globies added a traditional ornament or symbol from their homes, and he found it so moving that Lute asked him if he needed to watch it again. Then there was the kid riding on his father’s shoulders, gleefully shouting that he’d spotted the blue-shoed elf. It made Alden think of his own dad and sent him on a quest through the market in search of a tabletop nativity scene. He’d suddenly remembered that setting one up on a shelf had been something the two of them did together at Christmas.

By the time he and Lute made it to a walk-through gingerbread village populated by pastry chefs made of flesh and blood and waist-high people made of cookie, the mere act of a girl running off in search of more vegan options made him feel loving toward, and loved by, his fellow man.

There are some doors I could walk through, he thought as he and Lute left the last gingerbread house behind, that would let me come back to this market again and again. Most likely.

He could sign up to hang an ornament next year. Maybe one day he would leave his job at the hospital and head over here to meet an older Lute. Or a family.

Some people who would be waiting here for me. Who would be mine.

What would that be like?

He remembered Stuart suggesting he think of home as something he could build in the future.

“Still haven’t found anything for him,” he muttered.

“Your foreign friend?” Lute asked.

He was walking along unencumbered by any shopping since Alden was carrying it all, with only the bags preserved, in his left hand. In his right, he held a gingerbread girl. He bit off one of her arms, and the smell of warm spices filled his nose.

One of the must-have items here was a cotton candy balloon. It was sculpted into the shape you requested by one Avowed, then levitated and given instructions to hover a few inches above its owner’s head by another. Alden had bought one in the shape of a pig for Lute, and now whenever he faced his roommate, he was eye-level with its pink candy trotters. It should float for at least another half hour if Lute managed to keep it out of the wind.

“I thought you included him in your custom gingerbread biscuit order,” said Lute. “Isn’t he getting the turtle frog?”

Alden had ordered Stuart a klerm cookie. He was also getting custom made ones for Esh-erdi, Lind-otta, and Porti-loth.

Porti-loth’s gingerbread man would be painted in chocolate “mud potion”. Lind-otta and Esh-erdi would be getting each other in cookie form, complete with knight uniforms. Alden wondered if the shop would have agreed to make gingerbread generals if they’d realized who Alden was and that he’d be giving them to said generals.

“Getting him food is fine,” he said to Lute. “He’ll like it and be glad I included him in the holiday, of course. But I’ve been trying for a while to think of something more high-effort and non-perishable to give him. Something he can keep for a long time.”

Like the learning cushion.

“Buy him a skateboard like you’re getting Haoyu.”

Alden snorted.

“What? It’s non-perishable. Bet he doesn’t have one.”

“Maybe I’ll keep his Christmas present simple and find the right thing later. Does that sign up ahead say ‘Puzzles?’ Under the Wright flag? Kibby would like a puzzle.”

“You’ve got twenty things for her.”

“Five is not twenty,” said Alden.

Kibby was incredibly easy to shop for. Young enough to like actual children’s toys, unusual enough to be excited by lab equipment, curious about everything and unable to go shopping by herself—it would have been harder to find something here she didn’t want.

He hoped she’d use the huge bag of jelly beans to make friends with other kids, but if she preferred to melt them all with her new pen torch or conduct experiments on them, that was fine.

As they approached the booth with the puzzle sign, Alden caught sight of some of the wares, and his interest increased. There were three long tables covered mostly in puzzle boxes, several of which bore a strong resemblance to the door Alden had broken the enchantment on to get into Apogee Artist Spaces. The Wright was a thin, middle-aged man with a few facial piercings. He greeted Alden and Lute as they approached.

Alden said, “Did you happen to make the door at—”

“Just a second, kid,” said the man. He turned away from them and hurried over to the table along the opposite side of his booth to greet a woman who’d just walked up. “Hello! Interested in one of these? These are my Wrightwork.”

She had A-rank Adjuster displayed on her name tag. The man started talking more quietly after his initial greeting, and Alden couldn’t make out everything he was saying, but he didn’t seem to know her.

“Did this guy really just drop us mid-sentence?” Alden said.

Lute picked up a ring-sized box with a heart made of tiny jigsaw puzzle pieces on top. “He did. Isn’t it great? Our masks and our refusal to tag ourselves make us boring teenagers who probably don’t have any real intention of buying his most expensive pieces. The stuff over here on this table isn’t enchanted. But the box he’s showing that Adjuster costs twelve thousand. And he’s telling her that it only opens for the owner. Anyone else who tries to solve it will develop a compulsion to keep solving it…so it’s effectively a trap.”

“Using your super hearing?” asked Alden.

“Eavesdropping can be fun sometimes. At a place like this it’s educational to listen to people buying and selling. The jug of milk costs the same amount for everyone at the grocery store, but here things are less firm. Some of us look like we can’t even afford that man’s time. Others look like they might spend thousands on a stocking stuffer.” Lute sounded chipper.

“You’re so happy to be snubbed.”

“I’ve been on more than one shopping trip at the far other end of things. You know the toy store we went to? When I was little, I thought all families called ahead and booked a time to visit. They would close the whole store to the public for a group of Velra kids and friends of Velra kids to have the place to ourselves. Not everyone caters to wealth and power, but a lot more businesses do than you’d think.”

Alden imagined the Velra kids annoying toy store employees and buying twelve of everything. For some reason, he pictured Aimi right there with them, belly flopping into the stuffed animal pit.

“I picked out a pair of sneakers last year that had a 50% off tag,” he said. “And when I got to the cash register, they wouldn’t give me the discount because they claimed the tag didn’t belong on that shoebox. I had to spend another hour looking for shoes, and it ruined my day.”

He picked up a large puzzle box. It might not have been enchanted, but it probably cost multiple times more than that pair of shoes. It was covered in randomly overlapping metal circles so that it almost looked like it had been rolled in a pile of adhesive coins. Many of the coins could slide around or be pressed like buttons.

“This seems difficult,” he said after fiddling with it for a while. “She’ll like it. Do you think he’s almost done with the Adjuster?”

Alden wouldn’t mind having a quick turn with some of the priciest pieces. He didn’t plan to buy them, but he’d like to take a peek at the enchantments.

Lute put down the ring box. “She’s paying him for it now. She’s asking him to set it aside for her so that she doesn’t have to carry it around the market.”

More than thirty thousand dollars changing hands just like that.

“Hey, what are you getting Emilija?” Lute asked. “Are you getting her something? You haven’t bought anything for her, Hadiza, or Natalie today.”

“I’m getting them sledgehammers.”

Lute burst out laughing.

“I really am,” said Alden. “I already ordered them. They’re getting hot pink sledgehammers and the Ultimate Destruction package at a place called Wrecking Ballroom. They can break all sorts of things, and there’s an archery instructor on site who’ll teach them to shoot flaming arrows if they want. They’ll like it.”

Lute’s laughter stopped. “Wait. That sounds awesome.”

“It is going to be awesome. And even if they get presents from a hundred other people, it won’t be this. This is a gift that tells them that I understand their true natures and respect their urge to violently attack me with weapons. You should have seen the looks on their faces this one time when I preserved an ice cream cone in front of them. They came at me with a meat mallet and knives. ”

“Do you think…maybe they want wordchains to increase their ability to destroy?” Lute asked.

“I will leave that up to you and them. But don’t turn yourself into a slug again.”

It looked like the Wright had finished with his more important customer.

“Finally. Our turn,” said Alden.

The Wright turned toward them. The puzzle box the woman had just purchased was still in his hands. But there was a sudden shift in the atmosphere then. Alden’s senses caught several tiny changes that put him on alert an instant before he had any clue what was going on.

The Wright’s expression twitched. Lute straightened. The crowd at their backs became quieter. The hairs on the nape of Alden’s neck prickled, and he turned around.

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A gaggle of wizards were out and about, enjoying a shopping spree.

They would have looked harmless to Alden except for the sight of Ambassador Bash-nor in the lead. His earthworm-colored hair was braided and coiled on top of his head. Alden’s eyes went immediately to the hand Bash-nor had used to show off that threatening-looking spiked spell the last time they’d met, in the hallway outside Ro-den’s room at Matadero. But the ring the ambassador had used for that was missing. In fact, he was wearing very little jewelry compared to that night, and instead of using his hands for creepy demonstrations, he was gesticulating at different market stalls and smiling—a bit too hard in Alden’s opinion—at another wizard beside him. She was a couple of inches taller than average for her species, with long white hair. She looked appropriately themed for Christmas, wearing red pants and a red coat copiously embroidered in white.

At the back of the group, walking behind a wagon loaded with what must have been everything the wizards had bought so far, was another familiar face.

Zeridee. Shouldn’t she still be recovering?

The ambassadorial assistant wore a soft, warm-looking cap with seeds stitched to it in spirals. It was pretty enough to be mistaken for normal Artonan clothing, but having seen the healing garment covered in pebbles and nuts that Porti-loth had made her wear, Alden was fairly sure it was his work.