Oddly Enough, page 29
The bell above the door tinkled, a dry little sound that rattled around the tiny, crowded store, and Howard straightened up behind the counter, tucking his World’s Best Pet Sitter mug out of sight (it was slightly scorched where the pet in question had expressed its own opinions about his pet-sitting abilities). He couldn’t see his customer immediately, not with the tall banks of shelves in the centre of the shop, all packed with softly humming crystals, and bundles of dried, sweet-smelling herbs, and floating things in jars and bottles that gave off a whiff of intent. But a moment later a woman in worn-down boots and travel-stained trousers emerged, trailing one hand along the books crammed into the shelves on the wall to the Howard’s left. Her eyes were mostly on the counter beneath the books, though, which held an assortment of charms worked in twisted wire. Howard was quite proud of them – protection and fashion statement, all in one.
The woman looked up finally, fixing him with a glare that was probably meant to be friendly but had seen too many people say things like, “What’s a pretty girl like you doing on a battlefield like this?” Probably immediately before being run through with one of the two long knives strapped to her back.
“Welcome to Howard’s—” he started, and she cut him off with a wave of her hand as she dropped a gold coin on the counter.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m in a hurry.”
“Chosen one, perilous quest, or star-crossed lovers? Or we have a special on mistaken identity—”
The look was definitely a glare now. “Do I look like I’m in the market for star-crossed lovers?”
Howard shrugged. “Everyone needs a change now and then. Might be fun.”
“Might be that someone loses their head.”
“That’s often a risk with star-crossed lovers anyway, I believe. It’s the star-crossed bit, see.”
She shook her head. “Give me a perilous quest. I don’t trust mistaken identity not to end up with me having to fight in heels, and once was enough on that.”
“No chosen one?”
“Ugh, they’re such a pain. The last one was adorably clumsy as well as being able to save the world as soon as they learned to believe in themselves. I mean, the angst for a start …” She grimaced. “But do you know how problematic adorably clumsy is when they drop your last waterskin down a fiery warthog hole in the desert? Or when they trip and fall into a pine dragon nest and break three eggs?”
“Ouch,” Howard said sympathetically.
“Ouch is right. My hair’s still growing back.”
“Perilous quest it is, then,” he said, and came out from behind the counter, trotting to the front of the shop to lock the door. The woman eyed his robes as he came back, her eyebrows raised slightly, but she didn’t say anything about the pleats.
Howard returned to the counter and faced the machine that took up the entire back wall of the shop. It was all gleaming copper pipes and dark metal surfaces, dials and valves and vents and the rich scent of oil and steam and other worlds. He flexed his fingers, then grabbed a big, circular brass valve in both hands, turning it exactly one and three-quarter turns anticlockwise. He moved to the valve next to it and turned that one four and one-third times in the opposite direction. He tapped a couple of pressure dials, then examined a bank of enormous breakers and forced three to the right with grunts of effort. That left one sticking straight out in the centre, and he jammed the final one to the opposite side, then watched a series of bulbs light up in a warm gold glow. He nodded in satisfaction, grasped a handle that looked like it had come off a hand-powered sewing machine (it had – the original, beautifully carved wooden one had come to an unfortunate end in a separate pet-sitting incident) and churned it wildly.
A whine started, growing in volume and intensity as he kept winding the handle, then the machine leaped into life with a roar that shook the wall. Howard let go of the handle and stepped back as dust sifted from the old beams above them. He covered his tea with one hand and looked at the woman, who was staring at the machine with undisguised admiration.
“Never gets old,” he shouted over the clamour.
She blinked at him. “Well, you’re going pretty grey, actually.”
Howard opened his mouth to clarify, then gave up, adjusting his robes. Some people just aren’t good at small talk.
The machine whined and groaned and thudded hard enough that Howard could feel it in his chest, the lights flaring in urgent sequence and gears churning deep within the wall. He finished his tea. The woman examined some throwing knives and a jar of skin-clearing lotion. They waited. And, eventually, the machine wound down to silence. They both looked at it expectantly. The lights went off, all except one which flashed thoughtfully as the quiet settled over them, ringing in their ears after the cacophony of a moment before. Howard could hear the tavern across the road getting started – someone was singing rather beautifully, and the stomp of booted feet drifted through the windows.
Then the machine ding-ed and spat a small strip of paper out of a slot in the middle of the wall. The light went out.
Howard tore off the strip of paper without looking at it (but not without wondering, as he did every time, how it never ran out of paper, and how the paper itself was so smooth and shiny, and not at all like the paper he was used to) and tucked it into an envelope made of heavy parchment. He reached for his wax seal, and the woman gestured at him impatiently.
“Let me see.”
“You can’t,” he said. “You only get to ask for the adventure you want. After that it’s up to the machine.”
“It’s my perilous quest.”
“You know it doesn’t work that way.” He heated the seal and dipped it in the wax, then pressed it to the back of the envelope, sealing it shut.
“I should be able to know,” she insisted. “What if it goes wrong? I started off with a decent quest last time, couple of rivals, tavern brawls, treasure to be had – good times, you know? Then next thing you know I’m wearing sexy armour and lopping the heads off orcs for no good reason. I like orcs. They make great ice cream.”
“Sexy armour?” Howard asked doubtfully.
“Yes! It chafed.”
He sighed, and put the envelope on the counter between them, keeping his fingertips on it. “I’m sorry. That does sound most unpleasant. But you know how it works. You ask for the general adventure, the machine does the rest. None of us get to know the details, otherwise …” He hesitated. “Otherwise, we don’t know. Maybe the door won’t open. Maybe it’ll open on something more terrible than we can imagine. Maybe it’ll never work again.” He shook his head. “But we can never know the shape of things until we’re in the midst of them. Adventures may start one way but take an entirely different turn as we go along. There are no guarantees.”
She scowled at him. “Sexy. Armour.”
They looked at each other, and eventually he turned and took a jar from the corner of the counter, holding it out to her. “For the chafing,” he said.
For a moment he thought she was going to start lopping off heads again, but instead she said something about what he could do with his sexy armour, snatched the jar and strode to the wall to Howard’s right. Half of it was taken up by a heavy tapestry that looked like it should’ve hidden the stairs to the private rooms above the shop (it didn’t – he had to go out the back door to go upstairs, which was inconvenient in the winter). The tapestry itself was hardly the best example of the art form, although its colours were rich and deep. A black and red border twisted around it, and sometimes it looked like words that were just a little too far out of focus to make out, and other times like nothing more than blips and blobs of spilled mud on a clean floor, a random almost-code. In the centre, surrounded by something that might’ve been a starry night sky, or a stormy one, depending on what angle one viewed it at, was a door. Or a door of sorts, as stitched by someone who really hadn’t got the hang of this whole tapestry-making thing just yet. Or doors, for that matter.
The door was ajar, and there was a glimpse of a room behind it, although Howard was never sure, when the stitching was so rough, how it conveyed the idea of the room so clearly. Sometimes he thought he could see a chair and a desk, as in a wizard’s study (or an accountant’s, one being much the same as the other, in his view), and other times he thought there was the suggestion of a wild sea, or a torn, blasted heath, or a forest glade. It was all suggestion, though, he suspected. Shapes in the clouds, meaning given to nothing.
“Come on, then,” the woman said, and gestured at the tapestry. “Let’s see what you’ve landed me in this time.”
“I do apologise if there are armour issues,” Howard said, joining her and tugging the drawstrings to pull the tapestry aside. “I really have no control over such things. I just run the machine. I hope it won’t stop you returning to Howard’s Emporium of Adventure for future excursions.”
“Sure,” she said, but Howard didn’t think she was really listening. She was staring at the heavy wooden door revealed behind the tapestry. It was unassuming, maybe marginally bigger than an interior door should be, but no bigger than an average exterior one. The wood was smooth, unpainted and unstained, and there was a single stone step leading up to it. A brass knocker hung in the middle, simple and un-ornate, and above that was a slim metal slot with a flap over it.
Howard handed the envelope to the woman. “Put it through the slot. Make sure it goes all the way through, but don’t look in. Knock four times and wait. You must walk through immediately when the door opens. If you delay, the adventure may move on, or not be as requested. Once the envelope is posted, the contract is in place. You cannot choose not to go, even if you delay and miss your adventure. If you try to refuse to go through, there will be undefined consequences. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, yeah.” She waved the envelope at him. “Step back, old man. I’m not looking after your sorry self as well as dealing with whatever else waits in there.”
“Good luck,” Howard said, and retreated to the safety of the counter.
The woman squared her shoulders, checked her knives, then stepped forward and slipped the envelope into the slot in the door. She grasped the knocker, giving a little, alarmed shudder as she did so. They all did that. Howard didn’t know if the handle was hot, or greasy, or if the power of it shook through their bones like the echo of a lightning strike. He’d never dared touch it himself to find out. The machine was enough for him.
The woman knocked four times and stepped back.
They waited.
Sometimes the door opened immediately, other times it took a while. Once he’d had six dwarves, a goblin wedding party, and one highly inebriated faun camped out in his shop for three days before the door finally let them through. It always seemed to take longer for groups than it did for individuals, though, as if it needed time to find places for them all. But it did always open.
Howard was just considering another cup of tea, and the woman was sitting cross-legged on the floor, painting her fingernails a vibrant purple, when a high, keening note started to float around the shop. It wasn’t unpleasant so much as quickening, setting the heart thumping a little faster and the hair rising on the back of the neck. A sense of something drawing close, unseen worlds and undreamed riches, wild chases on impossible plains, roaring fights through inexplicable cities, crashing seas and roaring storms, magic and glory and pain and love and a thousand, thousand possibilities spinning past the door, crying out a siren song of what if? It made even Howard’s old hands twitch.
He stood up from his chair behind the counter as the woman scrambled to her feet, a grin blossoming across her face. The noise built and built, filling the store and stealing his breath, and he pressed both hands to the counter as much to stop himself running to join her as to stop the pages of his ledger book being ripped away in the sudden wind that was funnelling its way out of the gaps around the door. It smelled of salt and night jasmine and open fires, of rocky shores and sweat and desert blooms.
There was a clunk that echoed in the heart, and the door popped open, resting on its latch. The woman stepped forward, smiling as if she were meeting an old friend, and pulled the door wide. It opened away from Howard, so he couldn’t see beyond it as the woman crossed the threshold without looking back. The door shut immediately behind her, with a final, heavy clunk, and the shop was suddenly still, and darker than it had been, although a whiff of something wild and floral remained. Howard sighed. There was always that slight loss, a bereftness about being the one left behind, alone with the machine and the tapestry. But it was as it should be. Someone had to mind the door. And he was no adventurer. Besides – sexy armour?
He shook his head and went to pull the tapestry back into place, straightening a few things on the cluttered shelves as he went. Then he went to the front door and unlocked it, peering across the road at the tavern. It sounded like things were well under way over there, even if it was only mid-afternoon. Which would likely mean good business for him later. Nothing motivates a certain portion of the population to seek adventure like an excess of home-brewed beer and liquor of dubious origin. By the time they sobered up they were either already through the door or the envelope had been posted and the whole thing was underway. There was no going back then. The door had ways of ensuring that, although it did mean he occasionally had to barricade himself behind the counter with a few defensive spells to stop any reluctant adventurers enraged with regret and hangovers from skewering him.
A squeak at knee-level drew his attention, and he looked down to see four rats staring up at him. Two were dragging a gold coin between them, and one had lost half its tail.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “How may I help you?”
The one with the stubby tail sat back on her hindquarters and squeaked at him, gesturing at one of the rats dragging the coin.
“Star-crossed lovers. Excellent choice. There isn’t enough rat representation in such things, if you ask me.” He stepped back to let them into the shop, then locked the door again and followed the rats to the counter, where they’d already dragged the coin up to sit on his ledger book. He picked up the coin up and examined it, although he didn’t bite it. Not because they were rats, but because it was a coin, and with all the pockets, hands, paws, and taverns it had no doubt travelled through, he had no intention of getting it anywhere near his mouth.
“Do you know how it works?” he asked, and the stub-tailed rat nodded. “You need to understand that while you can request star-crossed lovers, adventures always have a life of their own. How they start is not necessarily how they go on. Once you’re through the door, everything may change.”
Squeak.
“Well, then. Just checking. Let’s get you started.” He turned to the machine, then looked back at them. “Also, I’ve recently learned there may be a risk of sexy armour.”
The rats looked at each other, then at him, and the stub-tailed rat shrugged.
“Alright.” He started to adjust the valves, and an uncertain little squeak stopped him. He turned to look at the smallest of the rats, who was sitting up on his hind legs, front paws pressed together earnestly and bright eyes fixed on the machine.
“It’s called the Story-O-Matic,” he said. “No one knows where it came from, or the others like it. They’ve just always been here, as long back as anyone can say. So have the doors, and the keepers.”
Squeak.
“Oh, there are plenty of theories. Parallel worlds, different dimensions, time travel, other planets.” He shrugged. “There’s even a school of thought that says we’re all just figments of someone’s imagination, but I don’t buy it. Too far-fetched, if you ask me.”
The little rat nodded and dusted his paws off, and Howard turned back to the machine, adjusting the valves and resetting the breakers, then grasped the handle to power up the Story-O-Matic. It shuddered into thundering life, sifting through worlds and dimensions and possibilities, shaking the walls as it pulled the threads of story together. And in the end it didn’t matter where they came from, although they did come from somewhere. Nothing comes from nothing.
It only really mattered that they were.
And that the armour wasn’t sexy.
Read On, Lovely People
This was meant to be an easy job.
Tears in reality. Kraken in the sink. Irate sorcerers. Dentists.
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Thank You
Lovely people, thank you so much for picking up this book. I know you could as easily have just read some of the stories online, or skipped them completely, as short stories are not everyone’s catnip. So thank you trusting me enough to step into this strange and slightly murky world. I hope that you enjoyed the ride.
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