"Taste the Continent!" proclaim the signs plastered all over Eerie. Huge red and white posters depicting cartoonish Frenchmen proffering baskets of bagettes spring up in shop windows, and Marshall had rolled his eyes and grumbled that Europe was a continent, not the continent.
"Why would you call it 'The Continental Market' instead of 'The European Market', anyway?" he complained to Simon. "Continental Market basically just means 'market of stuff from somewhere in the world'. You may as well call it 'the World o' Stuff, except in tents.'"
Mr. Radford placed one Black Cow with a Nip of Java, and one ditto, on the bar infront of them.
"Now, boys," he said cheerily. "The Continental Market is a great Eerie tradition."
"Great," Marshall said. "I just love old Eerie traditions."
Radford pretended he hadn't heard, and went back to stocking Atlantean Algae supplement powder behind the counter. A Continental Market might have all sorts of things from the continent, he thought, but it takes a truly one-stop shop to stock something from a lost kingdom. His business would never be threatened by some fly-by-night vendors peddling bratwust and fried potatoes.
"They have turkish delight," said Simon. "And olives. And churros! Can't we check it out, Mars, just for a little bit? Please?"
"Whatever," said Mars, who was pretty sure that churros were just failed doughnuts, when all was said and done, but who wasn't adverse to fried dough no matter how ridiculous the advertisments for it were.
Outside, it was raining, a light fine rain that seemed to hang in the air, giving the street and everything in it a misty and insubstantial feeling. The day was overcast, the sky a leaden grey, and the row of white tents lining Front Street were decorated with fairy lights that created tiny, blurred halos of gold around the stalls.
The smell of fried onions, sweet pastry and grilling sausages permeated the air. Despite himself, Marshall found his mood lifting. The fairy lights, the food, the Europop blaring tinnily from a stereo behind a stall selling hats, all combined to create the feeling of a holiday.
Never mind that it was raining, that it was a Tuesday afternoon and that he had homework tonight and school tomorrow. Never mind, even, that "Taste the Continent" was the kind of slogan likely to bring the bargain-basement kaiju who lurked behind the Dragon of the Black Pool Cantonease Restaurant out of hiding in order to sample the taste of North American cuisine in the form of the people of Eerie. He had time; for an hour or two, he could wander through the displays, eat a vaugely European hotdog, and try on some novelty hats at the hat stall, because Marshall had a deep and abiding love for trying on novelty hats.
A pungent but not unpleasant smell drew him towards a row of four trestle tables groaning under the weight of several dozen huge wheels of cheese. Already, despite the weather, a small crowd had gathered, enticed by the free samples the vendor was offering. Mars watched Winnifred Swanson walking away with a cheese wheel roughly the size of her daughter, and shuddered to think of the artisnal cheese spending the next five years in a cylindrical ForeverWare tub, being slowly whittled away to nothing before getting stuffed back into its vacuum-sealed darkness.
He was dimly aware that Simon was not at his side, thought that maybe he had seen him over by the man selling Turkish delight and baklava, but right now his only thought was the fate of the cheese wheel, and the love and dedication that went into making that cheese, that delicious, flavoursome cheese, he had to have the cheese, he had to save the other cheese wheels from-