Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 7 of 22

The stall came free of debt, but it came in the wrong place. Daisy wheeled the purple food cart to the spot the Void Chef had given her. She lit the rose lamp and opened the shutter. A flat stretch of ground spread out around her, empty. No paths crossed here. No doors let out nearby. She had bread cooling on the counter and no one to buy it. By midday, not one person had walked past. Daisy stacked golden honeybuns in a neat pile and waited. The glaze went cold. She rang the little bell on the cart. Nothing answered but the wind. She had a shop at last, and it sat in a dead patch of the waking world. A place could be a passage or a grave. This one felt like the second. Harriet Notch found her there near dusk. Daisy knew the shape of her from far off, the ringlet braids threaded with flowers, the combat boots. Harriet was the world greeter. She waved before she spoke, the way she always did, so her mouth full of teeth wouldn't scare a newcomer. "You picked a bad spot," she said. "I didn't pick it," Daisy said. "Nobody comes." Harriet looked at the empty ground. "Then you're selling to no one. You need feet." She pointed past the cart. "There's a tree that pulls people. Purple trunk, rings round the top. And a bush that eats light. And an old carousel that starts turning on its own. Newcomers drift to those. Always have." "How do I get them to drift to me?" "You don't move the tree," Harriet said. "You move the cart." Daisy stared at her. It was simple and she had missed it. The Void Chef had given her a stall, not a spot bolted to the dirt. The cart had wheels. She had been waiting for a dead patch to fill instead of rolling to where the living already gathered. She packed the honeybuns and closed the shutter. Harriet walked ahead and led her. They passed the void bush, dark leaves swallowing the last light. They passed the ringed tree. Then Daisy heard music, thin and cracked, and saw the old carousel turning slow, its faded horses rising and falling. People stood around it. Real people, waking-world people, drawn to the strange old thing. Daisy set the cart at the carousel's edge and lit the rose lamp. She warmed the honeybuns until the glaze ran fresh. A child came first, then two more, then a line. She sold six buns before the carousel finished one turn. Coins dropped in her tin. Harriet watched, then gave a short nod. "Better," she said, and meant it. Daisy grinned. Her shop had wheels, and now it could chase a crowd. But as the line grew, she saw the same face twice, then three times, buying and buying. The carousel kept turning, and it would not let that customer step off.