The Jack Hansard Series: Season One

Episode 8: Black Market

I was still in the Lake District when I heard that the annual Market was to be held in Hull. I've said before that the Black Market doesn't exist in any one place alone. This is true: it is a concept in aggregate, an abstract collective of mercantile bodies who stake their claim to a particular territory or wander aimlessly across the country. All of them seeking out the next big opportunity.

But every once in a while, the Black Market comes to town, and this is the biggest opportunity of them all. There's a very childish excitement that surrounds the event, as may be expected of a massive underworld party, and of course it's the only chance we get to show off to all our peers. Vendors of otherworldly goods will flock from miles around for the chance to be noticed by new customers – and to one-up their competitors. It's the only time you'll find so many of us in one place, and it only happens once a year.

No one really knows how it happens, either. The word simply spreads among vendors up and down the country that the Market is being held; the time and location will be passed along like a hot but sweet potato.

I don't know who decides on these details. Maybe nobody decides. It has crossed my mind more than once that the Market is so loaded with magic and occult power that maybe, in a disturbing sort of way, it might be alive. Maybe we are all tendrils of this great amorphous beast stretching across the country, like the tentacles of some immense preternatural octopus. And once a year it pulls us all inwards to feed on the things we've gathered. Or maybe it's like a colossal, slow heartbeat, pulsing outwards and inwards to the tune of the seasons.

But that's just my fancy. I have a lot of time to think to myself during those long car journeys.

"Why we gotta go all this way just for a market, gwas?"

Car journeys have been less peaceful of late.

"It's only three hours, Ang. And it's not just any market. It's the market."

The coblyn dropped her greasy pie paper in the footwell, where her dangling feet were just beginning to brush the top of a rising layer of garbage. If she slipped off the seat I was sure she would drown in it.

"Ye should do somethin' about this rubbish," she said, as if reading my thoughts.

"I'm not your housekeeper."

"Tis your car."

"It's your mess."

"Your problem."

I changed gear somewhat roughly, then winced at the resulting crunch. I shouldn't take out my frustration on the old girl. My car that is, not Ang.

"Have you ever considered that you should try to pull your weight around here? This isn't a free ride, you know."

"Nope." She leaned back and tipped her flat cap over her eyes. "I already paid."

We'd had this conversation a dozen times or more, and I already knew how it ended: Ang would berate me for not yet having found any information on her missing coblynau brethren, and then she would helpfully remind me that I had lost most of her prized bluecaps to a thief, and then I would stuff another pasty in her mouth just to shut her up.

But, for once, I had a counter argument.

"Let me tell you why you should be interested in this Market, Ang," I said. There was a disgruntled noise from under the flat cap. "Once a year, for three days, everyone who's anyone attends the Market."

"And you're 'anyone', are ye?"

"Only the finest purveyor of occult goods in all of England!"