At the hour when most of London slept fitfully — tangled in sheets and half-forgotten dreams — another London stirred awake.
It was a city beneath the city, a shifting bazaar of secrets and forbidden bargains: the Whisper Markets.
Chamcha heard about it from a cabbie whose accent stitched together four continents, who grinned with missing teeth and said, "You want to change your life? Find the right stall. But mind you, mister — some prices don't get paid in pounds."
Driven by the hollow ringing of that cursed mirror still echoing in his mind, Chamcha went looking.
He found an entrance through a cracked service door behind a Pakistani bakery on Brick Lane. A narrow staircase led him down, down, deeper than seemed possible — past dripping pipes and graffiti layered so thick it looked alive.
And then suddenly — a cavernous hall, pulsing with a strange, rhythmic hum.
Stalls fashioned from broken prams and oil barrels spilled their wares into the smoky air: bottled memories, stolen voices, maps to cities that no longer existed.
Vendors called out in tongues that twisted around each other like serpents.
Paper-thin women with jackal eyes peddled promises.
Old men in suits stitched from newspapers sold futures sealed in glass.
Chamcha walked past a boy offering secondhand prayers, a woman with a hundred different faces laughing behind a veil of smoke.
"Choose wisely," a hunched vendor croaked as he pushed a tray of talismans under Chamcha's nose.
"Wrong charm, wrong fate."
Chamcha moved on, heart hammering.
Toward the center of the market stood a mirror taller than a man, cracked clean through but still standing. Beneath it, an inscription scrawled in a child's looping hand:
"Who dares remake the remade?"
Chamcha approached — drawn against his will.
The mirror rippled.
In its surface he did not see his reflection, but a thousand versions of himself: darker-skinned, lighter-skinned; rich, poor; hated, loved; horned, haloed.
Each version locked eyes with him, daring him to choose.
"Choose," the mirror whispered.
"Choose what?" Chamcha whispered back.
No answer.
Only the endless faces, some screaming, some laughing, all waiting.
He turned away, stumbling through the press of bodies, suddenly desperate to breathe air untainted by dreams-for-sale.
He emerged into the night, the heavy air of London once again wrapping itself around him like a damp shroud.
Above him, the moon sagged low and red, as if exhausted by watching humanity barter away its souls.
---
Elsewhere, Gibreel Farishta stood atop Primrose Hill, his coat whipped around him like the wings of some fallen archangel.
He watched the city stretch beneath him: a sea of glittering wounds stitched together by traffic and sorrow.
Mariam's words had chased him here.
"You carry truths your tongue has not yet tasted."
He wanted to laugh at the absurdity.
He was a man broken by his own ambitions, a parody of the god-touched.
And yet.
In the hush between gusts of wind, he thought he could hear it — a murmuring from the streets below. A low chant rising from the stones and gutters and hearts of a million unseen pilgrims.
"You are not finished."
Gibreel clenched his fists.
Finished?
He had been finished ten times over: when the airplane cracked open, when he lay feverish and delirious on a hospital cot, when his reflection refused to recognize him.
But London — merciless, ancient London — seemed to disagree.
He closed his eyes.
And when he opened them, he saw — far in the distance, at the hem of the city — a strange sight:
A procession of figures moving slowly through the streets, carrying torches that flickered green instead of gold.
Dreamers.
Outcasts.
Prophets and liars alike.
They moved without sound, as if mourning something too sacred to name.
Without understanding why, Gibreel began to walk — down the hill, into the city, toward whatever madness awaited him.
Above him, clouds like bruises gathered, and thunder grumbled like an old man remembering past sins.