The Bazaar (fantasy short, worldbuilding. concrit needed.)

"Are the stars out tonight, I dunno if it's cloudy or bright, 'cause I only have eyes-"

Sarah's watery whisper of the song her mother sang descended into a richer- but still quiet- hum. She didn't want the older kids hearing. It was late but she was still jolted awake by their muffled snatches of laughter. These always managed to break free from the background hum of barking dogs, shouting neighbors, the TV in the room beyond, and distant sirens. They made her angry and she didn't know why.

The baby's congested breaths became slower. He was falling asleep again. Eyes shut, he rubbed his little red fist against his little red nose, scattering some of the white crust that ringed his nostrils. She worried about having wiped his nose too much. The toilet paper here was thin and grainy and after a few times he cried when she tried to use it on him, so she stopped.

One of the older kids (probably John) turned on some boom-boom music as loud as they dared. The old woman would be asleep outside in her green armchair, the reflection of an infomercial shining on her glasses. Her hearing aid was off but she sometimes woke if she could feel the beat vibrating through the floor. Sarah knew that they also stuffed a manky old towel into the crack under the door to keep the smell from escaping and the old woman from yelling and flushing things down the toilet. But Sarah could still smell it, on account of her window being right next to theirs.

Sarah's leg was getting tired from rocking the baby. She was sprawled atop the old mattress covered in a mist of sweat, the wooden slat on the crib searing into the arch of her foot. The cramped half-house that Sarah and the nameless baby shared with the old woman didn't have air conditioning. The ceiling fan just stirred the air far above her head, shifting dust and lapping at the peeled flaps of tape atop the tall, uneven stacks of unopened QVC boxes.

No breezes wafted through the yellow-grimed window because the next house was about a foot away. If you were standing up or even sitting all you could see was a stretch of chipped vinyl siding, pale blue. You could touch it if you reached out the window. But from the mattress on the floor where she slept you could see a sliver of sky, two telephone wires, and, at night, the orange glow of the street lamp. Its shape was marred by towers of boxes.

The strip of orange light fell across her collar bone. Some nights she made her fingers dance across it and used the jagged shadow as a little staircase that went up and down and nowhere.

But not tonight.

The unbearable heat made Sarah fitful and stupid. She descended into trances. Her unfocused eyes made monsters out of the looming, haphazard stacks of boxes but she was too hot to be afraid of them. She would snap to attention when the baby cried because her rocking had stopped, or because it had become too fast. It felt easier to go faster, oddly enough. The soothing pace made her thigh burn with strain.

Sarah's eyes drifted shut and she gurgled a few notes as her throat slackened, and then blackness. She stayed in this inbetween place for what seemed like hours, vaguely aware of the world beyond but unmoving, in stasis. She seemed to disengage her senses slowly, one by one, until even the heat faded.

In the void behind her eyes something flickered dully in the distance. Something orange and too far away to make out. At the slight shift of focus her body jerked and she felt like she was tripping. This jolted her awake, heart pounding in her throat. The orange place was lost.

Time became listless, the haze fluttered down like a blanket again and again, and then she saw the orange place once more. She had stopped rocking the crib and had the cool side of the pillow against the nape of her neck. This time, when she walked toward it, she didn't fall.

At first the black was all around her and walking felt like running on air, but slower. As the place up ahead drew nearer she felt herself become separate from the void. When she finally realized that she was looking at a desert, her balance shifted. Up became up and down became down, and now when she walked she could feel her feet touch the ground and hear her own steps. Her focus never wavered from the orange place.

She felt her mind buzz and didn't shift her eyes or blink, and so became aware of her head. When she could see the dunes and the ripples of sand and distinguish the landscape from the darkening purple-red sky, she began to feel sand beneath her feet. A little at first, like a scattered trail of breadcrumbs growing in size, until there was nothing but sand. The yellow sun shone on her face and dazzled her for a moment. She had the sudden sensation of snapping awake. All at once she felt her own weight, feet firmly planted in the sand, and she felt the dry heat.

For a moment she just stood there and let the slight wind tickle her ankles with grains of sand. The desert was a vast and empty sea of dunes. As soon as the thought occured to her she looked at her hands, but this seemed to be a mistake. She felt herself slipping away until a call of, "Hey! Hey, you!" anchored her.

She whipped her head around. A fair distance away she could make out the dark shape of a stilted hut and the glint of bracelets as a brown arm emerged from the darkness of the porch. Sarah froze, uneasy.

"Hey!" the woman shouted again, "Hey! You come around! Don' be shy at me! I don' bite!" Then she let out a rich, open-mouthed laugh that showed a flash of white teeth. The laugh had Sarah running to the hut, slipping in the sand ("Carful, now! Yeh don' wanna fall!"). She couldn't place the accent as anything but friendly. By the time the sun was halfway behind the horizon her feet had found a smooth cobblestone path. The stones were red and brown and still piping hot and made her wish for more than the enormous old t-shirt she was wearing.

And so Sarah arrived.

The dark brown hut was stilted to about waist high and was topped with dark red tile. It sat amid a roomy porch that wrapped around the circumference and was shaded generously by the overhanging roof. All manner of glittery things and bizarre dried foods were hung on hooks and dangled over the porch, which was crowded with verdant plants, chipped statues, and mismatched chairs. It was lit from within by colorful paper lamps that cast their jewel-toned shadows over everything. Fat, extravagant birds that had the manner of chickens were pecking around the wide plank of wood that served as a ramp. A dusty pitbull slept underneath. One side of the dog's face was a tangle of old scars.

"Come! Come. You covered in sweat, little garl! Come up, the plank won' break," and then, "Oop! Watch your head!" and another good-natured laugh. As soon as she walked under the rim of the roof her skin flooded with goosebumps. At first it seemed deliciously cold, but in a moment the temperature settled pleasantly.

"Come, lemme look at you, little garl."

As her eyes adjusted to the dark she studied the woman and was studied in return. Her skin was the color of dark mahogany, her black hair in dreadlocks, big ones, and held back with a magnificent purple scarf. There were colored beads that glinted like jewels in her hair and some that were gold and round as marbles. She had a sari wrapped around her waist and a worn pink t-shirt that read Rose Hall Resort & Spa. The shirt was almost translucent with age and had a hole that revealed one smooth, thin shoulder and a frayed bra strap.

Her big brown eyes were rimmed thickly with kohl and the whites of them shone. A thin cigar hung from the corner of her full lips. When she laid the cigar aside and smiled, her smile was big and dazzling white, and one of her front teeth slightly overlapped the other. Sarah gleaned all this in the seconds before the smiling woman descended upon her, rolling back Sarah's sleeves to pinch her arms with clever, gentle fingers, twirling her around like a ballerina, exclaiming over her in delight.

"You're nuttin' more than skin and bones! What nice hair ya have, so dark. Ah! You came all dis way barefoot? Not a ting on you but that shirt. How old are you?"

"Nine," Sarah lied. She was eight and a half. The woman ushered her over to the chairs.

"Pick one," she said. When Sarah made to plop into the nearest seat she added, "-and take yer time, choose wisely."

The woman dissapeared through a thatched bamboo door and didn't bother to close it behind her. It was dark inside with more paper lamps and seemed like a crowded, fascinating combination between a tea parlor, a museum, and an antique shop. She heard a pot boiling and whatever was inside of it smelled delicious.

Turning her attention back to the chairs, Sarah took stock of them. There was an indigo corduroy recliner, another that was tall and rigid with a thin leather seat, a metal bar stool covered in stickers for bands she didn't know, a couple of nondescript dining-room-table chairs... and then she saw it.

Hers was a white rocking chair with paint so old that it flaked off in thin strips to reveal the greying wood beneath. There was no cushion. She settled comfortably and was rocking at an even pace when the woman returned with a steaming bowl and a glass of what looked like lemonade. Sarah stopped rocking and sat Indian-style, suddenly ravenous.

"Careful now," the woman cautioned as she handed her the large bowl, and Sarah placed a nubbly cushion in her lap before accepting it. She let the bowl sink into the circle of her legs and made sure it was stable before accepting the glass and gulping from it greedily. She had been right, it was lemonade. The good kind, not the sickly-sweet kind served in the waxy cartons at school.

"Thanks," she gasped when she was done. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set her glass on the floor beside her chair, making sure it was in a spot where she wouldn't knock it over.

"Better?" the woman asked, and handed her a very large and primitive-looking wooden spoon. It reminded Sarah of the porcelain one in the kitchen that the old lady rested her wooden spoons on while she was cooking. Sarah had to grasp the handle in her fist to hold it.

"Yes, thank you," Sarah replied, suddenly shy and aware of her manners. The woman was examining her choice of chair.

"Hmm," was all she said before a gentle smile. The woman lowered herself into a chair of her own. It was a huge and wicker with a cushion on the bottom. The armrests were wide enough to accomodate her ashtray and her own glass of lemonade.

Sarah turned her attention to the bowl. It was a thick green soup and she could recognize cabbage, scallions, and dumplings. The other bits, she guessed, were probably celery. The first eager spoonful scalded her tongue.

"Ah!" she cried, and then pressed her tongue against her cold, sweating glass.

"I tink it's too late to tell you, 'be careful, it's hot'," the woman chuckled. She made a practiced reach over the back of her chair and soon the porch was flooded with a brassy big-band tune, fuzzy and crackled in the way of old recordings. Sarah allowed the music to settle happily in the background as she worked on dipping her spoon around the repulsive bits she had mistaken for celery. The dumplings and the pork were her favorite, but so as not to offend the woman, she allowed bits of cabbage and scallion to make their way onto her spoon as well.

One tune faded into another, but this time when the lady in the recording started to sing Sarah snapped to attention.


"I know this song!" Sarah cried, excited. She had never heard a recording of it before, only her mother singing at the stove.

The woman grinned. "Then sing."

"But I can't see a thing in the sky," she began, a little unsure because the singer in the recording was both very good and strayed sometimes from the basic tune, but her voice grew more confident at "but I only have eyes for youuuu! I dunno if it's in a garden, or on a cloudy afternoon-"

The woman laughed in delight as she rolled herself a cigar and her rich, deep voice, pleasantly off key, joined Sarah's.

"You are here, so am I. Maybe millions of people go by, but dey all disappear from viewwww-"

"And I only have eeyyyesss for youuu!" Sarah finished as the verse gave way to brassy instrumentals. The pair of them laughed in delight. Suddenly an ache shot through her. She wanted to stay here with this woman forever. She never wanted to go back-

"Careful, now!"

- and she was jerked back into her seat. For a moment, when she had thought of the little half-house in Jersey, her mind had fuzzed and reeled backwards and she had felt uncomfortably hot. But now, focusing on the woman's face, she felt sure it wouldn't happen again.

"You got to be careful, garl!" the woman admonished without sounding angry at all. "Ye might go and wake yerself up if you don' pay attention, you bein' so young. How long you been Wanderin'?"

"What?"

The woman did a double take and quickly exhaled her smoke.

"You mean dis is your first time?" The whites showed all the way around her eyes.

"Uh, yes, I think it is. I never been to a place like this before."

Sarah wondered if she said the wrong thing because the woman continued to stare for a second, but she was immediately relieved when she gave a quick, whooping laugh.

"Yer first time! Irie!" She shifted her cigar to her left hand and held out her right to shake Sarah's pale little paw. "Welcome, welcome. I'm honored."

"What's your name?" Sarah blurted out, surprised that she didn't think to ask until now. The woman looked surprised and then reassuring.

"Sarry child, but I can't say. We don' ask that here."

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to-"

"No, no," she soothed, pausing to take a drag. "It's your first time. You did not know, no harm. But names is powerful tings. You don't go hand it out to just anybody."

"Then what are you s'posed to call people? Do you have to make up a nickname?" This was exciting. Sarah had always thought her own name was boring. But the woman was shaking her head.

"You meet somebody new, dey give you a name. Dat's just how it is. You name yourself anyting and soon enough it sticks, and then they got you."

She didn't dare ask who "they" were. A couple of spoonfulls later she gathered enough courage.

"So, what's my name?"

"Ooh, I love dis part," the woman grinned. Sarah tucked her hair behind her ears under the woman's bright-eyed scrutiny. After a few more drags from her dwindling cigar she cried, "Aha!" and stubbed it out in the ashtray with a triumphant smile.

"Gansey. Your name be Gansey." She leaned back in her chair and looked thoroughly pleased with herself. Sarah felt a twinge of dissapointment that it wasn't a pretty-sounding name, not exactly, but it was foreign-sounding enough to garner her instant approval.

"Because of dis," the woman explained, leaning across to pinch the front of Sarah's enormous t-shirt. "Back where I come from dat's what we say it to mean."

They laughed together. After a few moments of silence during which Sarah realized that the dregs of her soup had gone cold she said, "So... Do I get to give you a name?"

"Go right ahead," she gestured widely with her hand.

"Mama," Sarah blurted out. Mortified, she felt heat rush to her face. "No! I'm sorry! I d-didn't-" She clamped her mouth shut and ducked her head when she realized, with mounting horror, that her eyes were starting to burn. She hid behind her hair so the woman wouldn't see that her face was twisted up to keep the tears in and tried her best not to shake. The involuntary noise that escaped from the back of her throat stung her with a fresh wave of shame.

In moments her face was pressed against the soft pink shirt and arms were around her, and Sarah took a deep, shuddering gulp of cigar-smell and, for the first time since she was a baby, cried loud with her mouth open. The drawn-out wails sounded almost animal, and even as she heard them they seemed to be coming from somebody else.

Paying no mind to the snot, spit, and tears now soaking the hollow between her shoulder and her bosom, the woman drew Sarah into her lap and petted her hair, rocking her.

"You don' cry now, Gansey, it's all right, it's all right now, you go ahead and call me Mama if you like. Shhhh, don' cry baby girl. Don' cry."

Sarah's cries grew softer as she sank into the sensation of just being held. They soon gave way to jerking sniffles and hiccoughs, and then to uneven little gasps, and then her breathing slowed. After a few moments Mama slackened her hold and Sarah twitched. Mama tightened her hold again and continued to rock her. In the silence that ensued Sarah became aware of her head softly throbbing and her nose having clogged up completely. She still didn't move.

"Dat's the way it is for all of us, those that go Wanderin'," Mama said into her hair with the ghost of a sad story in her voice. "We ain't got nothing to tie us down where we is supposed to be."

At this, Mama gently disentangled herself from Sarah to offer her the last of her own lemonade from the armrest. After draining the glass Sarah felt a bone-deep exhaustion. Mama took her face into her hands and said, "Stay with me, garl. You want to come back some time?"

Sarah nodded, not wanting to hear her own voice just yet.

"You pay good attention, hear? Don' go back just yet. I got some homework for ya."

Sarah struggled to keep from zoning out, turning her attention to various knicknacks on the porch in turn while Mama scribbled something down on a scrap of paper. She had studied an obling mask with a sad face, an intricate golden bird cage filled with letters, and a rather decrepit-looking music box before Mama said, "There, all done!" and slipped something around her neck.

"It's a list," Mama explained. "You go out and find those tings and you bring them back, you hear? You put dem in a pack and you wear it to bed so you can bring it wit you next time you come."

Sarah, too tired now to even make a show of reading the list, nodded as best she could but her chin ended up lolling on her chest. The sticky heat surrounded her once more and before she fell into a dreamless sleep she heard Mama say, "And next time wear some shoes, you hear?"

The next morning when the old lady knocked on the door to wake Sarah up, her hand immediately flew to her chest and crinkled the scrap of paper that hung there from a necklace of twine.







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Okay, so you guys have to help me out here. This is just the first installment and I'll be continuing it. Tell me everything! What kind of person do you think Sarah is? What did you gather about her life and personality? Could you describe or even MS Paint draw what you picture Sarah's room or Mama's hut looking like? Any parts where Mama's accent gets obnoxious? What did you gather about the old woman? Was there any description that confused you to the point where you had no idea what the fuck I was talking about? Go crazy, I want good, useful feedback. Thank you all for reading!

Good:

- Solid even flow. Story pacing is good without becoming plodding or disjointed.

- Characters are well-developed. I can close my eyes and picture them clearly in both shape and personality.

- Solid conclusion, with a hook for the next chapter.

Bad:

- Opening feels a little forced to me. It isn't necessarily bad, just feels out-of-place in some spots and over-detailed with respect to things that could be left more vague.

Quote :

It was late but she was still jolted awake by their muffled snatches of laughter.

It was the queef-alarm!

Quote :

It felt easier to go
faster, oddly enough. The soothing pace made her thigh burn with strain.

Sarah's eyes drifted shut and she gurgled a few notes as her throat slackened, and then blackness.

Maybe my mind's in the gutter more than normal today. Maybe.

But aside from that, I really enjoyed it. There are some places where the sentence style seems to drag, if you want sometime I could do it in chat with you because WGW just ate my post.

Went back over and nitpicked a little, just tried to smooth out some of the more awkward phrases, get rid of repetetive words, etc. I know that as I keep coming back I'll pick away at my over-describing, but for now I just need to stop looking at it and give myself some space from it. Thanks for reading!

I'm really liking the story and premise so far, but...

Ok, this is Stereotypically Me ^TM, but the Black Mama character is incredibly cleche. When I read it I'm completely distracted by how many other times I've seen this character before, and am wondering why she couldn't be just a little different; Slavic, perhaps? I mean, it's funny that it was poked at intentionally a little, but the character archetype has been done to death.

Granted, she was wearing a sari around her waist, so she may not be black and I could be jumping to conclusions, but the accent and Sarah's intense embarrassment at calling her "mama" lead me to believe she is.

Mama is from Jamaica, where it's a cultural norm to be extremely friendly and hospitable. The t-shirt she is wearing is from an real resort there. The sari isn't culturally indicative of anything. People in this world collect and barter for things all the time. She simply liked it. I also wanted to pick a culture where it would be believable for the character to speak and understand English very well, and they do speak English in Jamaica.

Sarah's embarassment at calling her Mama stemmed from her humiliation at revealing that she is desperate for a maternal figure and misses her own mother fiercly. Sarah, as a character, is used to indifference or benign neglect from adults in general. She had to grow up very fast and was often the one nurturing her own mother, who is, in time, revealed to be a very codependant woman whose alcoholism cost her custody of her daughter. Much of the time Sarah had to "be the adult" and is extremely unused to being mothered, but craves it.

So, in short, I wanted to be able to present a character whose immediate warmth and capability to speak English is actually plausible. All types of people Wander and it probably would have put a crimp in things if there was a language barrier right away, and Sarah might not have even approached the hut at all unless the person seemed genuinely warm and friendly, and she certainly wouldn't have wanted to come back unless they made an overwhelmingly positive impression. This kid doesn't need another area to feel out-of-place in.

Also: I didn't want to have a British Granny, another American, or a character whose English-speaking skills are really suspicious. Why would a random lady from the Ukraine know English well enough to converse with Sarah? They are, in general, very hospitable people, but they're not known for being overly friendly with strangers. It would take a very extroverted, friendly person to immediately gain a world-weary eight-year-old's trust. And it would have to be a woman. There isn't an intelligent eight-year-old girl in modern America who would approach a man alone these days.

Do you have any suggestions as to how I can portray this to people who might get offended right off the bat? I dunno, this kind of makes me feel that invisible fantasy rule of Don't Write About Black People, Ever. Because no matter what you write, people tend to assume that your portrayal of a singular black character reflects your opinion on all black people, which is kind of totally retarded. I understand why people assume this, but how do you work around it?


EDIT: Worked this out in the chat. Bam's going to send me a list of personality-based questions about Mama, such as 'When was the last time she cried? And over what?' and 'What does she have in her pockets right now?', stuff like that, so that I can flesh Mama out more as a character and hopefully avoid a stereotype through editing. I'll post the exercise here once I'm done.

While I liked the bit I´ve read - I like how down-to-earth the fantasy is - my hackles were raised over the Tolkien-quote as an epitaph. Never mind the utter cliché that the phrase is becoming, consider: how important is this particular insight for this particular chapter? Does the reader get something more from the chapter that they normally wouldn't have gotten? I get that you want to shout-out to Tolkien, especially since this is a work of fantasy, but there are subtler ways of doing that. If you absolutely need the epitaph (for some yet-to-be-revealed reason), keep it in, by all means, but to me, it seems somewhat forced and unnecessary.

That quote pretty much sums up the entire story and is relevant in a myriad of ways, I promise. You'll see. I don't just use things for no reason, pinky swear.

So far, so good. The pacing is slow and steady without becoming tedious, and I'm already getting a good feel for their characters' personalities. There's a great attention to detail that's just enough for me to infer details about Sarah's life without outright telling it: that she lives in a cramped apartment in the city, that the old lady is... a foster mother, I think?

After rereading the chapter a few times, I did find some nits in a few places that I felt like picking:

Quote :

Sarah knew a twinge of dissapointment that it wasn't a pretty-sounding name, not exactly, but it was foreign-sounding enough to garner her instant approval.

Wouldn't "felt" be a better word?

Quote :

Paying no mind to the snot, saliva, and tears

This is probably a really, really a minor thing, but the word "saliva" feels kind of out of place when it's right next to a word like "snot". That and I personally think the phrase "snot, spit, and tears" has a nicer rhythm to it and would flow better in that sentence.

And about the naming: If Mama has been to the Bazaar before, has she had other names given to her by the different people she's met?

I'm excited to finally see this chapter written down after hearing everything you've told me about the plot and characters you had laid out. The premise has great potential, and I'm looking forward to seeing the direction you take in this particular story.

I'm also really, really sorry if this post comes off as a compliment sandwich in any way.

Kate, that is so creepy, because in both of those nitpick incidents I actually went back and forth over those EXACT WORDS, in BOTH CASES. I kept switching them out and you're right, I decided on the wrong ones.

As for how names work, I think you'll be happy come next installment. It's info-dumping, but I'm trying my hardest not to make it feel like info-dumping. Next chapter we meet one of Mama's friends, and she's someone I already told you about being introduced early! Sarah learns how to determine the Worth of things, the etiquette of naming, and for those of you that are good at paying attention, a lot of Mama's past.