Below us, less than a mile ahead, on the opposite side of the foothill from where we came from, hundreds—maybe thousands—lamps shone brightly as if the stars were spilled from the sky and piled up over there. At a normal state, I would be nonplussed at the fact that deep in the forest, there was something like this. But every event that had happened to me earlier caused me to feel almost lukewarm toward it.
The descent was way easier than I imagined. When we reached the gate of the market, I could not help to be amazed by the sight: hundreds of wooden stalls lined up in an organized way, a variety of mouth-watering foods and beverages served on most of the stalls; looked inviting under the dull yellow light of the petromaks, other stalls showcased items (furnitures, utensils, accessories) that looked like the ones that were sold in Pasar Asemka—but far more exotic. Amazement then turned into puzzlement after I noticed something that was out of the ordinary.
"Hey, there is no one here," I said.
I received no response from Kiona, who was supposedly walking beside me. When I turned to her, she had vanished. I looked around to see whether she had already gone to one of the stalls, but I could not find her. Before I started to panic, I heard a sound of a cat. In the spot where Kiona, I perceived, should be standing, emerged a black tabby. It meowed twice and started to move forward into the market. Perplexed, I just stood with brow furrowed staring at it; but then I followed the tabby after it turned back and made another sound which was felt as a command.
For a moment, I tried to get a grasp on reality. Just hours ago, I recalled, I was at an air-conditioned office building, spewing lines of Python scripts on my laptop; now I was walking in a ghost market—trailing behind a cat which materialized out of thin air. What a consequence dozing off in the Commuter Line had. My line of thinking was broken when the black tabby made a turn and arrived at one of the stalls. It jumped into the top of the table—right beside the stack of neatly arranged, various kinds of snacks: milk-coloured cakes bathed in black syrup and wrapped in banana leaves, golden-brown puffs with a generous amount of yellow-coloured cream fillings, sticky rice topped with green paste sliced in rectangular shapes. My stomach rumbled at the sight of them—which made me remembered that the last time I ate was yesterday afternoon.
The black tabby made a sound, which was then responded with a squeak that I thought came from another animal. For the last couple hours, I had been on full alert mode, therefore I was not shocked when all of a sudden, a dark, small figure had already appeared on the other end of the stall. Upon a more thorough inspection, I found out that it was a monkey, though I could tell it was not a typical one judging from the distinctive exotic features: bluish-grey fur (except for the top of its head which is black), exceptionally long forelimbs, and nonexistence of tail. Its dark animated eyes stared straight at me, made me somehow uncomfortable. Then, for several moments, the two mammals engaged on what seemed like a conversation (meows and squeaks and screeches).
After the exchange of animal voices died down, the black tabby approached me and tapped the left pocket of my hoodie with its paw. It did the same thing several times until I understood the message it tried to convey. I slid my hand to the pocket and feel rounded, cold, metallic things inside it. Coins, I thought, how did these get into my pocket? I held them in my palm; they were ancient-looking coins with rough edges and no inscription or images engraved. The tabby then tapped the stall several times, which I translated as a command to put the coins down. So, I did it, one by one (there were at least a dozen of coins in my palm). Every time I put down the coin, the tabby meowed as if to say, "More!", until I put the sixth coin down: the grey monkey made a move; it collected the coins, put in somewhere I could not see, picked up some of the snacks, gathered them up into a banana leaf container, and then handed them to me. Out of habit, I thanked the grey monkey.