The Thief of Mirrors: 4 (Enchanted Emporium)

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  “He doesn’t seem to think so,” I replied, swallowing a handful of cereal.

  * * *

  I hopped off my bike at the last curve before the dam. My legs were screaming in pain, as if I had spent the whole night pedaling instead of sleeping. I walked my bike for a while.

  I only got back on the seat when I heard a car approaching. I didn’t want anyone to see me struggling.

  Of course, it was the red van that belonged to Jules the mailman. He was driving along the hairpin turns — right in the middle of the road.

  When he saw me, Jules slowed to a stop and lowered the window. “Everything okay, McPhee?” He shouted. “Need a lift?”

  “No, thanks,” I answered, giving him an overly enthusiastic thumbs-up sign. “I’m fine. And how are you?”

  Jules laughed and told me he was delivering packages of books to everyone in the whole town. He was getting all the addresses confused. “But you know what they say,” he concluded. “If you don’t have brains, you’d better have brawn.”

  I stared blankly at him.

  “Are you really okay, McPhee?” Jules asked. “You look as yellow as a stale French fry.”

  “I’m doing fine,” I replied.

  He shrugged and sped off. It’s true that men communicate like no other living species. That is to say: badly.

  * * *

  Cataloging rocks was an absurd job. They were simultaneously all the same and all different. There was a little bit of red and a little bit of black in all of them. And a little bit of yellow, too.

  Colored rocks were fine by me, though. I mean, as long as they weren’t a part of a stone giant, I didn’t care what colors or shapes they were.

  I circled the entire basin and marked a great number of X’s in the catalog, wondering who really needed this data. But the more I worked, the less I thought about, which was a good thing.

  About mid-afternoon, I decided I’d finished working in that area. As I crossed the dam, I stopped to look down. The dam was gray and narrow like a long knife. It felt old and lonely, like an old tombstone, its writing eroded by wind and rain.

  “Here lies Finley McPhee,” I said gloomily.

  Something white darted right at my face. I ducked, narrowly avoiding a collision.

  “Stupid seagull!” I yelled. Patches barked at it, too.

  It flew below the dam, completed a large circle, and came back to aim its beady eyes and pointy beak at me. Then it dive-bombed me again. The seagull passed an inch away from my ear. Its claws skimmed my shoulder. Patches was barking fiercely at it now.

  I shook my fist at the pest. “What are you doing?” I yelled.

  Then I noticed that the seagull hadn’t come alone. A whole flock was gliding over the water and shrieking their manic cries. A moment later, they were darting crazily around us.

  I cursed at one, dodged another, and hit a third bird with the back of the rock catalog. Patches yelped and hopped up, trying to bite their wings.

  I had no idea what was going on, but I didn’t have the time to wonder. I ran to my bike with my hands protecting my head. The swirl of seagulls followed me, pinching me with their beaks and tugging on my shirt.

  “Ow! Ow!” I screamed with every step. I was in an absolute panic — and being pecked from all sides.

  While defending myself with the catalog, I tried to remember where I had left the backpack with its tools. I gave up when one of the seagulls pinched my butt.

  The seagulls’ fury died down when I reached my bicycle. Only then did I begin to understand. Most of the seagulls looked alike, but the one that was waiting for me on the handlebars of my bike was the gull from Reginald Bay who guarded the Enchanted Emporium. I recognized him from his wounded leg and held-down wing. Patches growled at him, a ritual of his ever since the first day they’d met.

  The seagull shrieked. I don’t know any other way to describe the harsh, guttural cry it produced. It shrieked again, then pecked at my bike’s handlebars.

  “Hey, sack of feathers, leave it alone!” I said.

  The seagull’s black eyes stared into mine. It puffed up its feathers as if it were trying to intimidate me as the other gulls circled above us like annoying vultures.

  The seagull tilted its head at me. It deflated its feathers and pecked at the frame of my bike again. It seemed to be trying to tell me something.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  Another bird glided in between us, and the old seagull let out a reproachful cry as if to say it didn’t need help.

  I swung my leg over my bicycle and sat on the seat. “You want me to follow you, don’t you?” I asked.

  The seagull dropped off the handlebars and backed away cautiously. Patches growled at it. It beat its wings, rising from the ground for a moment.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” I said. What can I say, I have an instinct for these kinds of things.

  “Did something happen to Aiby?” I asked.

  The old seagull let out a sharp, shrill screech that reminded me of fingernails on a blackboard … or my mom’s voice after I tracked mud all over the living room.

  That’s a yes, I thought. An agitated one.

  The seagull flew into the air and glided away like a paper airplane. I pedaled in a frenzy to keep pace. “I’m coming, Aiby!” I said.

  I pedaled, following the old gull in the lead as the others darted around me. The old gull flew straight while the others constantly swirled and plunged. They shepherded me along, barely brushing the spokes of the bike with the tips of their wings. I sensed urgency and pedaled harder.

  We went back up the last turns in the road and plunged down the other side as the bay and the islands appeared on the horizon. Bike wheels spun furiously as the seagulls flew majestically toward the sea. We turned north along the coastal road, which I knew like the back of my hand. Then we came to the forest where Mr. Lily’s trees had magically grown in a single night. But when we reached the sign with the shifting arrow, I stopped. I’d promised myself I’d never return to the Emporium.

  The seagulls flapped above me, screeching. I watched them coast beyond the line of trees and descend into the valley of white stones that surrounded the Enchanted Emporium. The air quivered with menace. Patches panted at my feet.

  I looked at my dog. His watery eyes seemed incredibly wise. “You’re right,” I said. “I’ll break my promise. Just this once.” He barked in response.

  A moment later, I rounded the bend of the white path at the summit above Reginald Bay. I discovered I wasn’t alone. In front of the Lilys’ red house was a Japanese car with one door open.

  Meb’s already here, I thought. I pedaled faster.

  One after another, the gulls grew quiet and glided above the white stones like sentinels.

  As soon as she heard my bicycle racing across the gravel, Meb came out of the Enchanted Emporium. She was clearly upset. She had dark circles under her bright, pretty eyes and her hair was disheveled.

  I skidded to a stop. “What happened?” I asked her between breaths.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The gulls just led me here.”

  Hanging from a chain outside the door of the Enchanted Emporium was a traditional Shifting Sign, which for other stores only had two sides: Open and Closed. The Emporium’s version, of course, had other possibilities, such as Half-open, Staff at Sea, Knock Very Loudly: Music at High Volume, Push, Pull, Go Away, Please Change Clothes Before Entering, Place Swords in the Appropriate Vase, Please Leash Your Hippogriffs … and so on and so forth.

  In beautiful golden letters, the front of the sign hanging outside the door read: We are in big trouble. I flipped it over. The back read: Please come rescue us.

  Meb pointed at the seagulls. “I think that’s why they called us here,” she whispered.

  I knew that the Reginald Bay gulls wer
e the Lily family’s animal protectors, but I had no idea they could read. “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now I think we should do something,” Meb said, entering the shop.

  I followed her. Without my key, the only way for me to enter was if she invited me in like a regular customer. As I crossed the threshold, goose bumps popped up all over my skin.

  In the first room there was a long, antique wooden counter where hundreds of transactions had taken place. Its surface was worn by years of signatures, scratches, and spills.

  A brass hotel-style bell sat on the counter. A sign next to it read: Ring in case of problems. Will respond as soon as possible. We do not exchange merchandise without a standard certificate of magic. We do not accept checks. - The Enchanted Emporium Staff

  The rest of the place was strangely empty. The items that were usually kept behind the counter had been put away before the Lilys’ departure. The floor had been swept and there was a delicate scent of lavender in the room. After asking a few questions, I realized that Meb had also been kept in the dark about the details of their trip.

  “Locan —” Meb began. “I mean, Mr. Lily just told me they wouldn’t be in Applecross at the end of the week.”

  I nodded. I knew even less than that. “Should I ring the bell?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “Ring it.”

  Ding! The door to the rear area of the store opened.

  We crossed through a curtain of gently swaying glass beads that cast pleasantly flickering patterns into the living room. Aiby and her father spent part of each day reading and studying matters of magic there. It was covered from floor to ceiling with red wooden shelves filled with multicolored books and strange objects. I noted a marching toy soldier, a silver sack with smoke billowing out of it, and a typewriter that tapped keys on its own. Next to the only window was a tiny desk with a heavy, leather-bound book in the center: the Big Book of Magical Objects.

  Meb took a quick look at the book, then faced the center of the room. “Everything seems in place here.”

  Two suitcases sat side by side next to the sofa. Both of them were old and had brass stamps and buckles. The leather was marked up from years of travel. The darker of the two suitcases belonged to Locan Lily. The lighter one was Aiby’s.

  “So they never left,” I muttered.

  “No, I think they did,” Meb replied. “These are Stay-at-Home Suitcases.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “They’re double suitcases,” Meb explained. “You take one with you and leave one at home. If you realize you’ve forgotten something during your trip, you can call home and ask someone to put it in the suitcase.”

  “And you’ll find it in the other one?” I guessed.

  “Exactly.”

  We examined the suitcases and tried to open them, but neither of us could.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I have no idea what to do in this situation.”

  I moved away from the Big Book of Magical Objects in the hopes that she wouldn’t ask me to use it.

  “Could you go and check the BBMO?” Meb asked.

  I sighed and approached the desk with some discomfort. I tried to pick up the BBMO, but Meb reminded me that the book couldn’t be removed from the surface of the desk. I had to read it there.

  Rats, I thought. Another reason to hate this book.

  The BBMO was written entirely in Incantevole, a magic language with letters that danced around the page like tadpoles in a pond. Whoever knew how to read Incantevole saw the letters form simple words and notes. Anyone who didn’t know how to read Incantevole would only see scribbles and scrawls. The book had illustrations as well, but they were useless if you couldn’t read the words next to them.

  “Stay-at-Home Suitcases, right?” I asked, stalling. Meb didn’t know I couldn’t read the language. I mean, a few words were clear to me. I could put together complete sentences here and there, but not enough to really understand anything complicated.

  Meb examined the stickers on the suitcases. “This old tag reads: ‘In case of malfunction, contact Stay-at-Home Inc., In-Room Travel Agency, Vienna.’ There’s also a phone number listed.”

  “Wouldn’t Aiby and her father have a normal phone with them?” I asked.

  “Technology and magic have never gotten along well,” Meb said. “Don’t even try to talk to Locan about computers and televisions because he’ll ask you to leave the room. It’s almost worse than talking to him about religion.”

  It seemed bizarre to me that the Lilys would bicker with the cable guy, Seamus, or Reverend Prospero, but I didn’t ask any more questions.

  I flipped through the pages and found the drawing of the suitcases. There was a piece of paper attached to the description of how they worked. It was fastened with a little droplet of glue — just enough to keep it in place when leafing through the book. The letters in Incantevole danced sluggishly before my eyes.

  “I found something,” I muttered. “This handwritten note reads: ‘Look for my Carbon Copy Diary.’ I think it’s a message from Aiby, but what is a Carbon Copy Diary?”

  I leafed through the BBMO toy the entry. The Carbon Copy Diary was a travel notebook with white pages and a document pocket in the back, held closed by a thick black elastic band. Like the suitcases, the notebooks also worked in pairs. You carried your diary with you while traveling and wrote in it, inserted photos, and created sketches, and then all of it was instantly transferred to the copy that was safe in your room.

  Of course the BBMO gave no indication of where Aiby’s diary could be found. Aiby’s letter from the day before came to mind. I suddenly wished I’d not been too stubborn to read it.

  “If we want to have a chance of finding this Carbon Copy Diary, we should split up,” Meb said.

  The Lilys had a habit of scattering everything important, which tended to create a long, personalized treasure hunt — as if other people had nothing better to do than solve their little puzzles. It was an effective way to thwart thieves of magical objects, sure, but it was a hassle to everyone else.

  So we split up. Meb went to look for Aiby’s Carbon Copy Diary on the main floor while I went upstairs for the first time. I didn’t have the slightest idea of what was up there. The staircase was red like the rest of the house and a multicolored rug was draped across the steps. They creaked as I ascended, making me feel a little like an intruder without the Lilys there. I was more than a little nervous that I might run into an unexpected trap.

  Patches followed me, sniffing each step noisily. A large number of black-and-white photos lined the staircase wall. Most of them were shots of Aiby and her father. One showed Aiby with her dark hair pretending to pout. Another showed Locan Lily sitting in front of a table laden with food. Another pictured Aiby wearing a white shirt, pointing enthusiastically at something outside the picture frame. The last one displayed Mr. Lily leaning over a twisted tree trunk that he seemed to be animating with his hands in the air.

  Like a puppeteer, I thought.

  The highest photos along the staircase were of people I didn’t know. They seemed much older than the others. One showed a man with a strange hat and an ominous look on his face. Another showed a smiling couple wearing ridiculous bathing suits from another time.

  I recognized some photos taken from the opening of the Emporium that summer. I was even in one of them, next to Aiby, but I was looking in the other direction. I touched it lightly with a finger. It seemed so strange to find it there, and I wondered who might have taken it. Then I heard Meb moving the furniture around and opening boxes down below in search of the diary, and I remembered what I was supposed to be doing.

  I climbed the last steps of the steep staircase and reached a landing with four doors. The first door led to a small bathroom that had a large bathtub with lion’s paws. Piles of books and magazines were on the floor. From the
window, you could see the trees at the top of the cliff.

  Patches and I didn’t move past the doorway. The diary was unlikely to be in there.

  The second door was closed. A pensive gargoyle was balanced on the door handle. It held a sign between its paws that read: Don’t even think about it.

  “Whatever you say,” I said, moving on.

  The third door was held open with an Oriental cushion. Aiby’s name was written on the door with letters made of differently colored wood. The sensation of being an intruder increased, so I turned away.

  I examined the final door that was right next to Aiby’s. It was slightly ajar, and it seemed to be guarded by a doorstop in the shape of a little dachshund made of red, white, and gray wool. Patches had already begun to sniff it in curiosity. I, however, had my eyes fixed on the sign hanging from the doorjamb. It read: Hell is other people. Many years later, I would discover it’s a quotation by a French writer named Jean-Paul Sartre.

  Through the crack, I caught a glimpse of a tiny office with two old wooden desks pushed up next to each other. I gently pushed the door open and noticed a bookcase overflowing with notebooks, a deep-sea diving helmet, a lily contained in a crystal ball hanging from the window, and an old globe with a golden base. But what struck me more than anything else there was a computer screen wrapped up with dozens of pieces of scotch-tape and paper like a mummy.

  For a moment, I thought Aiby and her father had finally bought something modern. But when I got closer I saw that the computer was covered in dust and realized it must have been packed up many years earlier.

  On a shelf in the library, I noticed a photo in a silver frame. It showed Aiby and her father with a shorthaired woman wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and a shabby gray dress. She had one hand on Aiby’s shoulder and the other arm around Mr. Lily’s waist, which made me think it had to be Aiby’s mom. Aiby and Mr. Lily barely spoke about her. It was like the circumstances of her death were still painfully present in their memories.

  “Have you found anything?” Meb called from below.