Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 8 of 22

The carousel turned, and Daisy sold her sweet buns until the crowd thinned. She had honeybuns, sun bread, salty-sweet twists—all of them sweet. A woman tried a bun, smiled, then wandered off. A man waited in line, then left before he reached the cart. Daisy watched them drift toward the ringed tree and the light-eating bush. They wanted something new. She had nothing else to give. Harriet Notch found her frowning at cold glaze. The world greeter waved first, the way she always did, so her mouth full of teeth wouldn't startle anyone. "They keep leaving," Daisy said. "Sweet, sweet, always sweet. They get bored." Harriet studied the crowd. "Then stop selling sweet," she said. "You bind flavors to things the waking world remembers. Not just cravings." She nodded at the drifters. "Find what they can't stop chewing on. Bind that." A figure stood apart from the carousel line. He had a black hole where his head should be, dark and starry, and copper gears turned in his chest instead of a heartbeat. Daisy had seen him before, always circling, never buying. Danny I. He was staring at nothing, one gloved hand opening and closing. Daisy walked over. "You never eat," she said. "Why do you stay?" Danny's gears clicked. "Habit," he said. Then, shorter: "Not hungry." But he did not leave. She watched his hand grip the air, the way someone grips a thing that isn't there. "You lost something," she said. His head-hole seemed to darken. "A clock. My father built it. Left it unwound." He stopped. "That's all." Daisy understood then. Sweet was not what the crowd wanted. They wanted the thing they couldn't get back. She thanked Danny and hurried to the cart. She lit the rose lamp and worked fast. She took the tooth-shaped cookie recipe, the one bound to old debts, and bound a new one instead—to the taste of something left unfinished. Bitter licorice at the edge. A curl of dark syrup, like an old tree bleeding sweetness. The frosting on top, smooth and white, hid the bitter under it. She held one out to Danny first. He had no mouth, but he leaned close. The gears in his chest slowed. "That," he said. "That's the table. The clock." He went quiet. Daisy stacked the cookies beside the honeybuns and called out. "For the ones you didn't finish," she said. A drifter turned back. She bit the cookie, went still, and started to cry into her sleeve. Then she bought three more. The man who had left came back. So did the woman. The line grew, longer than before, and it did not thin. By dusk the tin was heavy with coins. Daisy had cracked it—variety, bound to memory, not just sugar. But the crying troubled her. Every buyer left different, quieter, carrying something the cookie had opened. She had given them a taste of what they'd lost. She did not yet know what that would cost them, or her.