Cyan said, ‘This is weird. In dreams you’re not normally able to choose what you say.’ She crawled to her feet and wandered off between the stalls.

The Vermiform heaved limply. ‘Come back!’

Cyan was looking at the gley men browsing in the aisles. Gley men are completely blind, just a plate of smooth bone where their eyes should be. They feel their way with very long, thin fingers like antennae, touching, touching, searching. They are naked and hairless with milky, translucent, waterproof skin; but underneath it is another skin covered with thick fur, to keep them warm in the deep abyss. You can see through their upper skin to the fur layer pressing and wiping against it.

Cyan didn’t seem as repelled by them as I was. She seemed entranced. One of them, by a refreshment stand, was picking cave ferns off the wall and putting them in sandwiches. He had beer bottles, brown and frothy, labelled ‘sump water’. He sold white mousse made from the twiggy foam that clings to the roofs of flooded passages. He had boxes of immature stalagmite bumps that looked like fried eggs, breccia cake, talus cones, and crunchy tufa toffee.

Cyan paused at a jewellery stall and examined the cave pearls for sale. She put on a necklace made from broken straw stalactites and looked at her reflection in the mirror-polished shell of a moleusk-one of the metre-long shellfish that burrow far underground.

She didn’t know that, as a visitor to the Shift, she could project herself as any image she wanted, so she appeared the way she imagined herself. Like most female Shift tourists Cyan’s self-image was nothing like her real body. She was a bit taller, more muscular and plumper, and she wore casual clothes. She looked like a young, unattached fyrd recruit spending her day off in any Hacilith bar. She was slightly less pretty here than in the Fourlands; I suppose that meant she lacked confidence in her looks.

For once, I couldn’t alter my appearance. I was here in the body and I planned to take it home intact.

Some stalls sold stencils and crayons for cave paintings. Some displayed everyday objects that ‘petrifying water’ had turned into stone. Mice with three legs (called trice) ran under the rows and cats very good at catching trice (called trousers) ran after them.

Neon Bugs illuminated beautiful constructions of silk. Replete Spiders hung from the ceiling on spindly, hairless legs, their huge, round abdomens full of treacly slime. It dripped, now and then, on the awnings of the stalls and the tops of our heads. The noisome things lived suspended all the time, and other bugs and centipedes as long as my arm swarmed over the cave walls to bring them morsels and feed them in return for the taste of the sweet gunge they exuded.

The smell of wet pebbles rose from the cavern floor, which descended in a series of dented ripplestone steps to a pool so neatly circular it looked like a hand basin. A waterfall cascaded down a slippery chute, gushing into it. Its roar echoed to us across the immense chamber as a quiet susurration.

Naked gley children were sliding down the chute and splashing into the water where Living Fossil fish swam; the play of their luminous eyes lit up the pool. It was screened by thick, lumpy tallow-yellow stalactites so long they reached the ground and were creeping out over it like wax over a candleholder. Between them chambers and passages led off, descending in different directions into the depths. Most were natural but some were like mine shafts, with timber props and iron rails.

Tortuoise with huge shells crawled frustratingly slowly up and down between the stalls, towing baskets on wheels. There were Silvans, child-shaped shadows who live only in the shade of cave mouths and tree-throws in the forest. At the furthest end of the cavern, where the subterranean denizens who prefer to stay away from the light shop and sell their wares, hibernating Cave Elephants had worn hollows in the velvet sediment.

‘Call her back!’ the Vermiform chorused. ‘The Gabbleratchet could be here any second!’

I glanced at the cave mouth.

The Vermiform said, ‘It doesn’t need an entrance. It can go anywhere! It can go places you can’t, where the atmosphere is poisonous: hydrogen, phosphorus, baked beans. You saw that solid rock is nothing to it. It can run straight through a planet without noticing.’

A big, lumpen Vadose was standing by a stall. Cyan realised that the man was made of clay. She sank her fingers into his thigh, pulled out a handful and started moulding it into a ball. The Vadose turned round. ‘Excuse me, would you return that, please?’

‘It’s my dream and I can do what I want!’

‘Dream?’ articulated the Vadose. ‘I assure you, poppet, this is no oneiric episode.’

The ball of clay in Cyan’s hands puffed up into a tiny version of the Vadose-it tittered and waved at her. She yelped and dropped it. It ran on little feet to one of the Vadose’s thick legs and merged smoothly with it. Cyan slapped his round belly, leaving a palm imprint.

He cried out bashfully and caught the attention of a Doggerel guard stalking past. It was a big bloodhound, bipedal on its hock-kneed back legs, wearing a constable’s coat and the helmet of a market guard, black with a gold spike on top. The chin strap was lost in its drooping jowls. It rhymed:

‘Shall I remove this silly lass

Who seems to be doing no sort of good?

In fact, you seem in some impasse.’

The Vadose said, ‘Yes, if you would.’

It placed its paw on Cyan’s shoulder but she wasn’t perturbed. She gave it a kick. Its hackles raised; it picked her up, tucked her under one arm and carried her to us. It set Cyan down in front of me:

‘Here is your rowdy friend,

Please keep her close.

Otherwise she may offend

One more dangerous than Vadose.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Talk in rhyme

All the time,’ insisted the Doggerel.

‘First we are chased, then we are irritated,’ the Vermiform complained.

‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘I can do it…Thanks for being so lenient

For my friend is no deviant

She’s a tourist here for the first time

From now on she’ll behave just fine.’

The Doggerel sniggered. ‘Only a tourist and she looks so boring?

I’ll leave in case she has me snoring.’ It strode away with dignity, sturdy tail waving.

Cyan said, ‘If this is a jook dream I’m going to do it all the time.’ She set off towards the pool but the Vermiform snared her round the waist. She beat her fists at the worms reeling her in. ‘Hey! Get off me!’

A small black puppy was trailing her. When she stopped, it sat down on its haunches and looked at her intently. It had pointed ears and alert, intelligent eyes. ‘It’s following me,’ she said. ‘It’s cute. Makes a change from everything else in here.’

‘It’s just a Yirn Hound,’ the Vermiform said dismissively and pushed it out of the way. It took a couple of steps to the side, resumed staring at Cyan.

‘Can I pick it up?’ she asked, and as she was speaking another dog padded towards her from under the nearest stall. It sat down and regarded her. She looked puzzled. Another two followed it, clustered close and stared up plaintively. Three more materialised from behind the corner of the next row and joined them.

The Vermiform’s surface rippled in a sigh. ‘They’re desire made manifest. For every want or desire that a young woman has, a Yirn Hound pops into existence. If you stay in this world you won’t be able to get rid of them. They will follow you around forever, watching you. Most girls grow accustomed to them, but otherwise Yirn Hounds drive them mad, because until you grow old they’ll do nothing but stare at you. You could kill them, but more will appear to fill the space.’

At least twenty little terriers had arrived while the Vermiform was talking. They sat in a rough circle around Cyan’s feet and continued to regard her.