Every day is market day in the trading city. It has no gates and needs no walls, for no ruler would dare attack the city at the cost of losing its treasures. Visitors, customers, shopkeepers, inhabitants — we all come and go as we please, masked figures seething through its cancerous veins of cobblestone, its rickety skeleton of silk-tarped tents.

The city has many names, none of which need be remembered. Those are just faces to beguile, to distract, to strip you of your tact. What you do need to remember is this: to bring whatever you don’t want, because one man’s shit is another man’s gold; and to bring whatever you do want — currency, precious stones, keepsakes, friends, family — because what you want can be traded for what you need. And what you need is something only the city can provide.

The trading city is where everything can be bought and sold, as long as the price is right.

See the tented stall nested in the crook of that alley, its black awning glimmering beneath noon day sun? The shop owner calls himself the dream keeper. You give him your nightmares and he bottles them in diamond vials, so that you will never have them again. His wife, the dream gifter, flaunts her wares in the stall next to his. She sells dreams — daydreams or dreams of deep sleep — infused in corked bottles of rice wine. Happy dreams, of course. Though she does sell nightmares in mugs of hot chai. Those will cost you ten nights’ worth of sleep to buy, though.

Now look there, see the lady seated at the foot of the fountain? See the black and white carpet spread at her feet? She specializes in preserving memories. Pries them out of your mind, so you forget them. Seals them in silver lockets, so you can always have them, can always re-experience them. Those memories of yours will never fade with time. In becoming dead to you, they grow perfectly preserved, like butterflies trapped in amber.

But even her trade pales in comparison to that of the time dealer. He is an old craggy fellow, arrogant and proud due to his never-ending flow of customers, yet respected for the quality of his work. No one walks away from him unsatisfied.

His stall squats over there, a lopsided amalgamation of red leather roofs and tottering poles, their fabric lurid beneath a glaring sun. See the line of people at his door? They bring their young, their old, their dead, their dying. All of them with too much time, or too little.

Me? I’ve yet to make a purchase from him. Perhaps when I am dying, when there is nothing to be done, I might pawn off my time. I would have too much of it then.

Dusk falls over the trading city, the deals are winding down. We might have insatiable appetites for our wants and hates and needs, but even we bow to the weight of our bodies’ limits. We can only live off traded energy and bartered wakefulness for so long. Even as I speak, you can see the edges of this city dissolving into the night. The dream keeper dismantling his tent, the time dealer pulling down poles while waving away a few desperate stragglers. The lady at the fountain has already stowed her wares into a suitcase. Her lockets and chains chime with each step as she strolls away.

Soon, the city will be but a mass of cobblestone paths webbing over barren earth and grass trampled flat, punctuated here and there with a tiled fountain gurgling beneath the stars, a leaning signpost pointing to places that existed before, that do not exist now, that will exist again by the break of dawn — its shadow stretched taut by a silver coin moon.

How was your visit? Did you gain something, lose anything? Yes, I had quite the steal, too. Traded my waist length hair for a few new faces. A liter of blood for a set of prints. Fingerprints, I mean. My Chinese tongue for a lifelong British accent. My mud eyes for blue.

Now, remember the deal you made me, to bring you here, to show you around? Give me your hand, a few drops of blood will do. They sprout off the needle, pearls of rich red, before flowing into a narrow-necked vial. The skins I bought are but empty sacks, devoid of any features. They need blood to become a new body, to be warm, to be worn. Some identities are easier to dress in than others, and the trading city is where they can be found, bought, sold.

High risk or high reward, as we like to say. Your blood, I smile as you pull your hand back, your face will make mine as good as new.