food choices were rather unusual. First, most of the food was on sticks. Like shish kebab. Or corn dogs. Except that these were no corn dogs.
There were fried silkworm cocoons on a stick.
Fried grasshoppers on a stick.
Fried beetles on a stick.
Seriously, none of these are made up.
Fried sea horse on a stick.
Fried starfish on a stick.
Fried scorpion on a stick.
And fried snake wrapped around a stick.
The philosophy at Donghuamen seemed to be: Is it really gross? OK then, put it on a stick!
The crowd was predominantly Chinese, and mostly they weren’t eating the various stick-based foods. They were eating little buns stuffed with meat and vegetables, or pointing at pieces of fish and having it fried up in blistering-hot woks. Or chewing brightly coloured glazed fruit.
It was the American, British and Australian tourists eating the OMG-on-a-stick food.
“Huh. Those are, like, bugs,” Stefan said. “Bugs on a stick.”
“You’re not scared to try them, are you?” Mack taunted.
Stefan narrowed his eyes, shot a dirty look at Mack, but then noticed Jarrah smiling expectantly at him.
“I will if you will,” Jarrah said. She had a dazzling smile. At least Stefan looked dazzled by it.
“Yeah?”
Mack rolled his eyes. “You guys really don’t have to.”
“Starfish?” Jarrah suggested.
“Why, you scared to eat a fried snake?”
“Oh, I’ll eat a fried snake, mate,” Jarrah shot back. “The question is, are you man enough to eat a fried silkworm cocoon?”
It was a strange sort of courting ritual, Mack decided. Two crazy people sizing each other up.
“Scorpion,” Stefan said.
Jarrah high-fived him. “You’re on.”
They bought two orders of scorpion on a stick. Each stick had three small scorpions.
Stefan said, “OK, at the same—”
Jarrah didn’t wait. She chewed one of the scorpions, and Stefan had to rush to keep up.
“The two of you are mental,” Mack said as Jarrah and Stefan laughed and crunched away with scorpion tails sticking out of their mouths.
“Oh, come on, don’t be a wimp, Mack,” Jarrah teased. “At least try a fried grasshopper. They don’t look so bad.”
Mack made a face and looked dubiously at the plastic tray loaded with fried grasshoppers. “Yeah, I don’t think so. They look a little bit too much like those…”
The words died in his mouth. What the grasshoppers looked like were Skirrit.
One of which, wearing a tan trench coat and a narrow-brimmed fedora that didn’t exactly hide his giant bug head, had just stepped up beside Mack.
He jerked away from the food, away from the Skirrit in the trench coat. But another was right behind him and wrapped its insect stick arms around him. The first pulled a bladed weapon like a short, curved sword from beneath its coat and pointed it at Mack’s chest.
A ripple went through the crowd of tourists as more and more realised that a couple of very big grasshoppers – grasshoppers not unlike the ones some of them were eating – were kidnapping a kid.
People ran. The vendors and cooks working the food stands ran. It took about four seconds for everyone to go from normal to complete panic, and then it was screaming and running and knocking over hot woks, and awning poles broken and ice bins spilled all over the sidewalk, and everywhere food: food flying and food dropping and food slithering because it was still alive.
A giant glass aquarium full of octopi shattered, and hundreds of confused octopi attached their suckers to legs and sandalled feet and bicycle tyres.
That last part was actually kind of funny. If you ever get the chance, attach an octopus to a bicycle tyre and ride around. You’ll see.
Then the first flames appeared as hot wok met spilled oil.
“Back off, bugs!” Stefan roared.
He threw himself, fists pummelling, at the Skirrit that held Mack tight.
“He’s got a…” Mack had wanted to yell, He’s got a knife; but it wasn’t exactly a knife and Mack didn’t know quite what it was, so he ended up just yelling, “He’s got a” followed by an ellipsis.
But Stefan had seen the blade. With sheer, brute force he lifted the Skirrit and Mack together in one armload, spun around, and slammed the first Skirrit straight into the outthrust blade of the second.
“Ayahgaaah!” the stabbed Skirrit cried.
His grip on Mack loosened. And loosened still more when Jarrah snatched up one of the confused octopi and hurled it into the Skirrit’s face.
“Thanks,” Mack gasped.
But thanks were premature. There was still one Skirrit left.
He advanced on Mack with his nameless blade out and ready. “You die,” the Skirrit said. With blinding speed he switched the blade from one hand to the other and lunged. The blade hit – shunk! – a plastic tray held up as a shield by Stefan.
The blade went right through the plastic tray but stuck. Stefan twisted the tray, trying to yank the blade from the bug’s hand.
And… yeah, that didn’t work.
Instead the Skirrit pulled the blade free, took a step back to steady himself, stepped on the ice that had been spilled, did a comic little cartoon wobble, and landed on his face, hard.
Stefan was on him fast. He stomped on the bug’s blade and with his other foot crushed the exoskeletal arm.
“Ayahgaaaaaahh!” the Skirrit cried.
Apparently that is the Skirrit cry of pain.
Stefan picked up the blade, smiled, and began to admire the weapon. Jarrah looked on, admiring both Stefan and the blade.
There came the sound of sirens approaching. At least one of the food stands was burning. Its red-and-white-striped awning sent flames shooting high into the night sky.
The crowd had backed away to a distance and were each and every one fumbling with cell phones to take pictures and video.
“I don’t want to be a YouTube sensation twice in one day,” Mack said. “Let’s get out of here.”
They turned their backs on the chaotic, burning, but still somehow cheerful market, and plunged through the crowds that were now rushing to see what all the yelling was about.
They practically stumbled into a mass of people on bicycles.
Short people on bicycles.
So short, especially in their stumpy legs, that they’d each strapped wooden blocks to their feet so they could reach the pedals.
Mack was just noticing this odd fact when he was smacked on the side of the head by a club shaped a bit like a bowling pin.
Tong Elves, he thought dreamily as his legs turned to jelly and he circled the drain of consciousness.
That’s