Chapter Nine
Dershire
AFTER THREE EVENTLESS DAYS on the same jaded gray road they left the hilly farmland and began to see signs of people. On the fourth morning they were on the outskirts of a town. There was a flour mill and a waterwheel and a shack coated in peeling green paint. Soon Alix could also see a smokehouse, a livestock pen, and a tannery that smelled like rotten meat, potent medicine, and rusty, wet metal.
By the afternoon they came to the town. There stood a sun bleached sign with faded red letters on a dirty white board that read: “This is Dershire, home of the best pigs in the West Hills.”
“Pigs?” Alix asked, smirking.
“Where do you think your father gets his fat pork?” Johann asked with a dry smile. “Come now, remember your place, you are a common girl with some education, your father was a jeweler in Amsly but you are now an orphan. Pigs are wealth, Violet Nomansson, and you have no pigs.”
“I know, I know.” Alix said, exasperated. He had told her all of this before. She was terrible at lying, but her memory was fine. But she supposed he was taking no chances with her atrocious acting. “Are we staying here long?”
“No, not very long,” he said. “But there is a place we must visit.”
Joringel knocked on the sign as they rode by. “Aren’t our horses going to be suspicious in this poor town?”
“They’ll be staying with a friend,” Johann assured him. They had barely ridden past the welcome sign when Johann turned to follow a smaller road, though still gray rock, to a ramshackle shop.
Its moldy walls had once been white, but now they exhibited a sloppy gray. The roof sagged and leaked, the windows slumped, and the gutter dripped, clogged with rotting leaves and mud. Vines grew on the bottom of the walls, their spidery heads had been crudely hacked off at an arm’s length from the ground.
The fence in front, however, shone brilliantly white in the rainwashed sunshine. An imposing black and white paper pegged to the fence read: GET OFF THE FENCE! WET PAINT! The irony of the fresh white fence against the wrecked building was comical.
The building bore a sign with its name, so faded and dirty and infested by nests and hives that it was barely readable: ELWORTH’S BOOTS.
“Boots?” Alix asked with a grin.
“Good boots,” Johann said, nodding at his own booted feet.
“I’m sure,” Joringel said, staring pointedly at the decrepit building.
“Impressions are deceiving,” Johann said as he dismounted. The other two followed. “Or at least easily misunderstood. This building reveals the man, not the boots.”
“I see,” Joringel said.
“He must be a very interesting man,” Alix observed.
“He is,” Johann said.
A man, presumably Mr. Elworth, suddenly burst from the sagging doors and raced towards them before stopping a full yard away. He wore a gray, ripped top hat, a black, bedraggled suit coat over a coarse, tea colored tunic, and brown, skin tight trousers with a rip in the knee.
“Good to see you, good to see you,” he repeated nervously, taking off his hat and dragging his fingers through his muddled hair. “I, ah, see you’re looking very well. Yes, indeed. Very good to see you.” He didn’t acknowledge the presence of Alix or Joringel, only looked at Johann with a drilling stare combining terror and shock that made the invisible hairs on Alix’s neck prickle.
“I was hoping you could keep these horses for me while I go to town,” Johann said, undisturbed. Alix was using every scrap of her ladylike training to keep her face decently between interested and ordinary. Joringel looked politely engaged, but there was a trace of surprised amusement around his mouth.
“Ah…” The man looked like he’d rather paint his fence again.
“Henry,” Johann said quietly.
“Of course!” The man said as he leaped up and took Jak’s reigns, then lunged and grabbed Sus’s and Gallant’s reins from Alix and Joringel’s hands without a word to them, and dragged the horses hastily behind the building. They walked away.
“I’m not sure what I think of your friend, Elder Johann,” Joringel said. “Will our horses be safe with him?”
“The horses will be quite safe,” Johann said. “It’s him I am concerned about.”
“He desperately needs a wife,” Alix said. “Doesn’t he scare away his customers?”
“Are you volunteering?” Joringel asked.
Alix choked. “Never!”
“Then why would another girl have him?” Johann asked with a dry smile. “Come, both of you, stop your abuse.”
They grinned.
Alix saw no people on the road although she felt the prickling sensation that unseen eyes scrutinized her. Twice she saw faces peering curiously from a window but both ducked behind their dirty curtains when she turned her head.
“This is a very strange town, Johann,” she said after they had been walking for a quarter hour. Her legs felt sore and cramped after three days and a morning of riding.
“It is,” Johann said. “Prepare yourself, for we are going to the strangest place in this strange town.”
“Why?” Alix asked, feeling a unsettling mixture of apprehension and curiosity.
“It is an experience that no one should miss,” Johann said with a chuckle. “And I need something from there.”
“Is it another store like our dear Mr. Elworth’s?” Joringel asked skeptically.
“It cannot be compared to any other place in the Empire or in other lands.”
“Why keep us in suspense?” Alix demanded. “Couldn’t you tell us what it is?”
“I cannot give details of this place,” Johann chuckled. “For it is different for each person. Violet, would I lead you into danger without warning you?”
“No,” Alix said glumly.
“Trust me. Even an Elder has no words for a place like this! It is called ‘The Shottery’. It has everything you could possibly need and everything you never would.”
“I see,” Alix said, but she didn’t.
“So it is a store,” Joringel said.
“Yes,” Johann said. “But not like Elworth’s Boots.”
Soon they were on a main street. Many rundown buildings leaned heavily each other in a row of messy shops. All of them were closed.
“How does a shop stay running if it is closed in the middle of the day?” Alix asked, wondering.
“They do not like visitors,” Johann said gravely.
“So I see,” Joringel said. “I agree with A…Violet. This is a very strange town.”
Alix expected the Shottery to be a colossal building, perhaps the only decently kept building in Dershire, sitting elegantly – or at least cleanly – on the edge of town. But after a moment Johann turned at one of the shops, different only in that it was not closed, and knocked on the door.
Alix blinked. “Is this the right location?” She looked up and saw the store’s sign: The Shottery.
“Expectations are dangerous things,” Johann chuckled.
“Did you knock?” Joringel asked, confused.
“I did,” Johann said. “One must always have proper respect for living things.”
“Living – ?” Alix began.
The door opened. Johann stepped in confidently and Alix followed.
Alix was in a fine room with a chestnut wood floor, a few neat shelves of small products, and clean walls. She walked over to the shelves, marveling at the little wonders there. A precious music box drew her interest. She turned its mechanics and it sang a tender lullaby that she felt as if she knew. It made her want to laugh and clap her hands like a toddler listening to her mother sing her to sleep.
It unnerved her and she turned to a black frame that held a painting of the ocean. The painting looked so authentic that she thought she felt the soft, salty breeze on her face and tasted the sandy, warm air in her mouth. Alix touched it, enchanted, and gasped as her finger slipped past the canvas and touched hot sand. She jerked back, shocked, and fell against something.
It was a sign, just a simple board nailed to a wood stick but with the startling words: Welcome to the Shottery, Lady Alixandría printed neatly on its face. Alix withdrew and stared, afraid. She reached forward and gingerly touched the words to see if the ink was still wet. It was perfectly dry. What was this place? She looked urgently for Johann but couldn’t see him or Joringel. Had they gone into different rooms? Where was she?
Alix looked at the sign again. It now read: Everything you could possibly need and everything you never would. She stared at it harder. Suddenly she realized that there was another sign beside it reading: Shoes >. Alix looked down at her trussed feet, deciding to brave the strangeness and follow the sign.
It pointed her down a hall clad in infatuating, though oddly matched, artwork. The left wall was decorated with three pictures in black frames – pictures she knew better than to touch. The first was of a fire swallowing a boiling bay depicted in such blazing heat that she flinched when she imagined reaching into the picture to feel the stinging air. The next was a vintage butchery lined with many sharp, though crude, knives. She could easily slice her finger off touching into that world. The last picture was of a desperate, howling pack of wolves. Their eyes were so mournful, so hungry, that she felt an overwhelming desire to give them food. But their teeth reminded her of their vicious nature and of the fact that she was their food. She quickly looked away.
The right side wore a wide, hypnotic vision that covered the entire wall. It scared her, its yawing expanse could easily swallow her whole. What would happen if she crawled through the frame and into its bewildering, twisted world of abstract confusion? Alix stared, both revolted and drawn by the strange art, a wild collage of eyes and hands and legs and mouths and color. Then the terrifying thought struck her, were the people in the picture those who had done exactly that, crawled – or fallen – inside? She looked closer, but the contorted figures did not seem panicked or afraid. She looked away.
At the end of the hall was a room full of every exotic and ordinary shoe she had ever seen or imagined or ever would have imagined. There were too many choices to ever decide on even a single style. She stood there, wondering how she could ever possibly pick just one pair.
Shocked, Alix realized that the crowded room had clarified into a practical selection of stylish though sensible shoes. She bit her lip in surprise, paralyzed for a moment before she remembered her purpose and stepped forward to examine the shoes.
She felt nervous to touch anything, but she stroked a soft, thick soled moccasin despite herself. It felt like the sweetest velvet. She picked it up, it felt light in her hand. She took down its mate and tore off her party shoes.
Alix melted into the gentle shoes. They felt delicious, heavenly, incredible on her tired feet. They fit perfectly. She stepped toward a slim mirror, modeling them for herself.
Her curling black hair had been unbraided during their journey, it hung loosely to her hips. She dragged her fingers through it, unknotting the tangles. Her inquisitive black-brown eyes stared curiously back at her as she fingered the aggravating pimples that fringed the crown of her forehead. At least they were small. She rebraided her hair for practicality’s sake, even though she liked the feel of it cascading when she moved.
Alix rolled her eyes at her silliness as she posed for herself as vainly as her giddy maids. How glad she was to be free of them! It would be the worst sort of irony if she morphed into one of them as soon as she had escaped their clutches. Alix looked back at the new shoes.
She hated to take them off, but it felt like stealing to walk around the store in them, so she slipped them off and went barefoot, leaving her miserable shoes to be swallowed by the Shottery.
Alix peered back into the hall to reassure herself that it was still there. It wasn’t. It had been replaced by a hall of mirrors. Everything within the hall was made of mirrors: the floor, the walls, the ceiling. It looked like polished ice, seamless and everywhere. She stepped back, afraid that she’d crack the surface. She looked back at the room of shoes, and was shocked to discover that it had become a wall. Alix was no longer standing at a doorframe, she was standing with her back to a mirroring wall.
She crossed her arms tightly, wrapping her body to herself. The mirror beneath her did not crack, but she continued to step tentatively and hesitantly.
Then there was a girl standing behind the skin of the mirror in front of her. She was perfect, with a serene smile on her lips, wavy dark hair that tumbled to her ankles like a black waterfall, and molded with curves fitting every part of herself. Her face was shaped with pronounced cheekbones and a fine nose, pleasantly curved lips, and a mischievous smile that made Alix feel an irrefutable kinship with her. She was somehow fiercely familiar.
But it was her eyes that scared her. They were intensely dark, but they burned like fire. They upstaged her appearance with incandescent personality, playful but wise, laughing but listening. The mischief about her made Alix feel like she was a friend, but the loving wisdom filled her with a sudden thirst.
Then Alix noticed that she could not see her own reflection. Confused, she waved her hand. The girl waved back with a quizzical expression teasing her features. Alix looked quickly downwards, to see if the floor was reflecting her… and was shocked to see the girl looking questioningly back at her.
But the girl wasn’t her, she was sure of that, she had just looked at herself in the mirror and she had looked nothing like the fascinating girl before her. And yet, she seemed so familiar…so deeply, personally familiar…
Alix decided to ignore the mysterious reflection that was not hers before it drove her mad. She discarded it as best she could as just another bizarre complication of shopping at the Shottery. Now she understood why Johann could not give her details of this place, but he could have prepared me better than he did, she thought.
As Alix walked down the hall, catching alluring glimpses of the girl, she saw many rooms. The first room she saw was full of hats, ridiculous, practical, extravagant, and solemn, more than any one person could wear even if they changed hats every hour from the hour they were born. The second was stuffed with scarves. A villain could use them to gag, bind, and hobble every store owner in the Empire and still have enough left over for a glamorous wardrobe. The third was entirely stocked with stockings. She laughed at that, it was somehow hilarious to see so many splashy variations of socks.
The next rooms were like the first three, categorized by kind. They weren’t only clothing, some of them contained earrings or paper or ink or sand… she wasn’t sure what the point of the last room was. Another was filled with hundreds of clocks all working at the exact same rate and therefore uttering a horrendous tick! or tock! in unison each second. She was glad she was not in need of a clock, trying to search for one there would bring a headache, and she would have cringed every second for some time afterwards.
Although the kaleidoscope of the superfluous collections was entrancing, it was starting to make her tipsy. Alix shut her eyes, stroking her temples. When she opened them again, she found that the hall was no longer heading straight forward, but took a sharp corner to the left. She turned before she crashed into the reflection of the girl.
There were still mirrors, but the radiant girl had been replaced by a wounded child. She was small and skinny, and her eyes were big and tender and hurt. She had such a pathetic look to her that anyone else would want to cradle her in her arms and nurse her back to health. But in Alix, it made her heart throb and she only wanted to get away from her. She made her feel exposed and terrified. She headed quickly straight ahead.
Soon she stopped. There was a sign in front of her that read: sword >. Alix looked in the direction of the sign and saw what appeared to be an empty room. She stepped inside, bewildered. There, in the center of the room, was a single sword. It’s handle was ornate but practical, twisted in a single curl of hard metal. It’s blade was embossed with white gold veins with little white leaves. She stepped towards it with hushed breath, stroked its handle. It looked too good for her to touch, but she couldn’t help herself.
She took the handle and her reflexes spun it to life, sparring across the room against an invisible opponent. It was lighter than her practice blades had been, but heavy enough to be wielded with power. It felt natural in her hand, as if she had handled it since she had turned five and begun fencing lessons. She laughed, flying across the room in a skillful dance, enraptured. It was beautiful, she loved it. It had to be hers.
“I christen you…” Alix searched for a name. Great blades were traditionally named in the Illuminated Tongue and she felt as if anything less would be insulting to the gleaming weapon in her hand. But how was she to properly name a sword in a language she did not know? Irritated with herself, she looked around the room. There, she almost expected it for she was becoming familiar with the compliance of the Shottery, was a manuscript in the Illuminated Tongue. She searched the rough parchment for the perfect word, ridiculously expecting that the perfect word would seize her even though she could not know what it meant. It didn’t.
She read the silvery words aloud, painstakingly faltering through the pronunciations. If an elf heard me butchering his language I’d be buried within the hour, she thought dolefully. She finally chose elanume for the lackluster reason that it was the last word in the manuscript, sparing her from the decision. “I dub thee Elanume,” she said with theatric inflection, hoping desperately that her inferior pronunciation was at least marginally correct. Then she took the belt from the stand and strapped it to her side, sliding Elanume into the sheath and beaming childishly. She felt she could vanquish a thousand armies single-handedly and almost wished for the opportunity.
Confident of herself now, she strode back into the mirrored hall to face the wounded child, but the mirrors were gone. Instead there was a blank room with one red door and one white sign reading: exit >. Ecstatic to leave her dizzying surroundings, she followed the sign through the red door and into what looked like a shockingly commonplace general store.
There was a counter across the room and a few shelves lined with normal miscellaneous shop items: a few clocks, a scarf or two, several hats, a picture of a nice sunset that did not look particularly real, peppermint sticks, licorice, and other ordinary shop items in their ordinary quantity. It struck her in a strange way. Half of her wasn’t sure if she liked the dry normal better than the bewildering extraordinary after all. The other half was incredibly relieved and felt welcomed home.
The only traces of the bizarre experience was Elanume at her side and the moccasins in her hand. An ordinary mirror alerted her of her frazzled appearance. She looked stunned.
Joringel wandered in, looking speechless. She waved dazedly, feeling a sudden affinity with him. He was strapped to a sword she hadn’t seen on him before and was holding something small in his hand that she couldn’t see. He waved back just as dazed. They stared at each other for a minute while trying to think of what could possibly be said.
“That was… interesting,” Joringel said finally.
“Very,” Alix replied. She realized that her arms were still crossed tightly over her chest and that she was glaring suspiciously at her surroundings. She commanded her arms to hang back at her sides and tried to look less shocked out of her skin.
Johann walked in with a very satisfied look on his face but with nothing in his hands to show.
“Did you enjoy the Shottery?” Johann asked with amusement.
“I’m not sure enjoy is quite the word,” Alix said after a moment. “But it was a very enlightening experience.”
“I agree with Alixandría,” Joringel said. “It was…unexpected.”
“An unexpected place full of unexpected things,” Johann said, chuckling. “A place with everything you could possibly need and everything you never would.”
“You could have prepared us much more than you did,” Alix accused him.
Johann chuckled. “Could I? And deprive you from learning the greatest expectation lesson that exists?” Alix grinned.
“I think I could have lived with the deprivation,” Joringel said.
“Undoubtedly you could have,” Johann said. “But I could I live knowing I had deprived you? But we should go, it is already night.”
“Night?” Alix exclaimed.
“Time goes on fleet feet, especially when the mind is confused,” Johann said with a smile.
“How do we pay?” Joringel asked suddenly.
“I’ve already made the arrangements,” Johann said. “Come, we leave now, the door is over here.” They walked together to the door. Joringel opened it, holding it for Alix and Johann. Alix blinked as they walked outside into the brilliantly normal moonlight. She looked back, and there was the entrance to the Shottery, old, ramshackle, seemingly no different from the rest of the row of closed shops.
To Dance With Danger : Updated
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