The Nowhere Emporium

by Ross Mackenzie

  Daniel left it at that, knowing Ellie was too excited about her birthday ball to think about anything else.

  ***

  That evening, twilight came and went, but Mr Silver did not open the Emporium.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Daniel. “Are we having a night off?”

  Silver looked hollowed and worn. He did not answer, but slipped on his coat.

  “Going out?” said Daniel.

  Silver gave a nod. “Come if you like.”

  Eager to explore Manhattan, Daniel was across the room in a few bounds, pulling on his coat and gloves and scarf. Together they set off into the night.

  As it turned out, sightseeing was not on the agenda; it soon became clear that Mr Silver was on the hunt again for his elusive treasure. He limped a couple of steps ahead of Daniel, barely speaking as they charged along streets carved like canyons through the enormous buildings.

  Central Park. Among all the suffocating concrete and glass and fog, it seemed like the last green place on earth. Mr Silver pointed out the famous Plaza Hotel, an enormous building that looked like a grand castle. Eight blocks later, they swung into an alley where the steam from restaurant kitchens glowed in the light of the moon. They walked until they reached a plain brown door. At first glance it seemed to be the back entrance to a store or café or hotel. But then Daniel spotted something: two words carved into the doorframe above the door, the sort of thing that would only be noticed by those searching for it.

  Bizarre’s Bazaar

  Silver leaned in and opened the door.

  The shop beyond was a dark and dingy cave, half-lit by the soft, flickering glow of hundreds of dribbling candles. The air was soup-thick.

  Mr Silver had packed the Nowhere Emporium with many trinkets and objects picked up on his travels – “props”, he called them – that would never be sold, but created the illusion of a regular store. You could spend hours looking and always spot something you’d never seen. But Bizarre’s Bazaar must have contained a hundred times the amount of treasures. Coats of armour glistened. Swords and shields hung on great racks. There were jars of pickled animals, powders, lotions, potions, cages containing ravens and snakes and spiders the size of Daniel’s fist.

  At the far end of the store stood a counter, and behind the counter sat a middle-aged man with greasy, receding hair and a long, waxy face. His eyes seemed too large for his head, and one of them pointed inwards while the other fixed on his customers.

  “You lookin’ for somethin’ in particular?” he said in a voice rough as dead tree bark.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Mr Silver… He leaned in and whispered something in the man’s ear. At first the shopkeeper did not respond. He sat back in his chair and reached under his desk, and when he brought his hand back up it held a large onion. He raised the onion to his mouth and took a bite, skin and all, as if it were a juicy apple.

  “You’re in luck, friend,” the shopkeeper said, onion juice dripping from his yellow teeth.

  Silver took a sharp intake of breath. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened his eyes there was a spark in them that Daniel had never seen before.

  “Show me.”

  The shopkeeper’s yellowing eyes lingered on Silver’s dusty old suit.

  “You realise,” he said, “that the item in question will not be cheap?”

  “Show me!” roared Silver, and he brought his fist down on the counter with such force that Daniel actually jumped.

  The shopkeeper nodded and cowered and turned away, disappearing down a set of stairs somewhere behind the desk. There was much banging and clattering from an unseen room, and after several minutes he reappeared, carrying a thin wooden box decorated with intricate carvings. Mr Silver took it in his hands, and turned his back to both Daniel and the shopkeeper.

  A pause.

  Daniel heard the box snap shut, and Silver spun around. His face was blank, but there was a light dancing somewhere deep in his eyes.

  “I’ll take it,” he said, and he reached into his coat and pulled out a huge wad of hundred dollar bills, held together with a golden clip. He tossed the money onto the desk. It was more money than Daniel had ever seen, or imagined, and he watched the shopkeeper’s eyes widen and his face become a mask of avarice and hunger. He dropped his raw onion to the floor and wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth, scooping up the money and cradling it in his hands like a baby.

  “Do we have a deal or don’t we?” Silver asked impatiently.

  “Oh yes,” said the shopkeeper, and he held out a long hand that was both the colour and texture of blue-veined cheese. “We have a deal all right. We have a deal.”

  CHAPTER 16

  INVITATIONS

  “So what was it?” asked Ellie, leading Daniel into a golden elevator in the Nowhere Hotel. “What did he buy?”

  “I couldn’t tell,” said Daniel. “He rushed straight back to the Emporium and locked himself away.” He shook his head. “Something’s not right, Ellie. I mean, you should have seen the way he acted in that shop, all aggressive and … and desperate.”

  The elevator opened and they walked along a plush hotel hallway and knocked on the door to room 108.

  “Yes, yes, coming, coming,” said a voice from inside.

  “Why do we need Caleb and Anja to help us with a few invitations?” asked Daniel.

  Ellie smirked. “You’ll see.”

  The door opened, and the doorway was completely filled by the huge body of Caleb the fire-breather. He smiled down at Ellie. “That time of year already, eh?” He stepped aside, allowing Anja the snake-charmer out of his room. She was holding a set of playing cards, and she waved them in front of Caleb’s face as she passed.

  “Seems I’m on a roll,” she said. “Remind me, Caleb, what was the final score?”

  Caleb muttered something under his breath, then shut the door with a bang and said, “Let’s go before Anja’s head becomes too big to fit through the lobby, hmmm?”

  They made their way from the opulence of the Nowhere Hotel to the cold, sparkling emptiness of the Emporium’s corridors. In the great hallway of staircases, they climbed up and up, flights of stairs moving and grumbling around them, until they arrived in what seemed to be a huge stockroom. On one side, the high walls were stacked with rack upon rack of glittering clothes in shades of orange and gold and black. On the other, a great variety of black iron birdcages sat on wooden shelves. All were empty. There was a table, where Mr Silver’s magpies sat preening their glistening wings. Beside them was a high pile of black envelopes.

  “Aren’t these the invitations Mr Silver was writing yesterday?” Daniel asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You want me to take them to the post office?”

  Ellie gave a laugh. “No, that’s fine,” she said. “We’ll send them the usual way.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll see. Take a seat at the desk and yell out the name written on the first envelope, will you?”

  Daniel held the invitation in his hands, and he watched Ellie stroll over to the high racks of clothes, followed closely by Caleb and Anja and the magpies. There were ladders on rails attached to the racks, so that you could climb up and move freely along the rows.

  “This one says Mr Radcliff Bone,” he yelled.

  Ellie gave a nod, and began to climb the ladder, moving back and forth along the rows of clothes with the magpies flapping around her head. “This will do,” she said, reaching up for a glistening black suit studded with glowing orange stones. She held the suit out for the magpies, and the birds swooped down and snatched it from her hands, dropping it onto the counter in front of Daniel.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Lay the clothes out on the table and put the invitation on top.”

  Daniel laid the suit out as best he could. He placed the envelope on top. No sooner had the paper touched the material than the suit began to move, arranging itself one fold at a time into a tightly packed shap
e. When the final fold was complete, the suit was no longer just a suit. It was a bird. The material had arranged itself into the form of a huge raven, with wings of shining black silk and a beak studded with amber stones. Its eyes were two large orange buttons.

  “Um … Ellie. Is the suit supposed to turn into a bird?”

  “Of course!” Ellie’s reply was casual, as though this was perfectly ordinary. “Grab it and put it in one of the cages before it tries to fly off!”

  The crow was already spreading its huge wings. Daniel snuck towards it. It stared at him with button eyes. He made a leap towards the bird and wrapped his arms around it. Then he carried it, flapping and thrashing, to one of the cages stacked nearby. When the cage was locked, he wiped the sweat from his brow and gazed up at Ellie, who was clearly having a great time watching him struggle.

  “Good job, Daniel,” said Caleb, who was climbing a rack of his own. “Now back to work – we’ve only got another 150 to go!”

  ***

  That night, as the clock ticked towards midnight, Daniel, Ellie, Caleb and Anja carried 151 cages to the front of shop. Caleb and Anja, of course, could not pass through the red curtain. Several times Daniel saw Caleb eagerly snatching a glimpse through the curtain towards the window to the real world. When all of the cages had been brought, Caleb and Anja headed off back towards the Nowhere Hotel.

  “You want to play some more cards?” Anja said as they walked away.

  “No. No way.” Caleb waved his hands in front of him. “I have already been humiliated enough.”

  “Well … we could play something more suited to your small brain,” said Anja. “Snap, perhaps?”

  Daniel chuckled to himself as they disappeared from sight.

  “Hey. A little help here?” Through the curtain to the shop, Ellie was arranging the cages. They didn’t only contain birds; the costumes had also folded into shimmering black cats and huge golden rats, silken foxes and velvet bats, each fashioned from glistening materials in the colours of All Hallows’ Eve.

  Mr Silver was absent, as Daniel had come to expect, but Ellie assured him her father had given his word he would be attending the ball.

  “We’re cutting it close,” said Daniel, noting that the many Emporium clocks pointed to five minutes to midnight. And then it struck him that the shop, usually alive with the whirring and ticking of clockwork, had become silent. Every clock had stopped.

  Ellie carried the first cage to the Emporium entrance and opened the door to the freezing New York night. She unlocked the cage. An orange velvet cockatiel with sparkling diamond eyes launched into the dark, its wings silent against the midnight air. Cage by cage, Daniel and Ellie released the animals. Each headed towards the address scrawled upon the invitation at its heart.

  Every invitation arrived at its destination. From modest apartments to grand townhouses and hotels, they squeezed through letterboxes, or down chimneys, or through open windows. They snuck to the bedrooms of the invited guests and unfolded at the foot of their beds.

  The invited guests did not know what had awakened them from their dreams, or even if they were really awake at all. They discovered mysterious envelopes that contained small black cards promising the chance of a lifetime – the opportunity to attend an enchanted ball.

  And they found clothes. Ball gowns of deepest black velvet and burning orange silk; crystal tiaras decorated with flourishes of gold; diamond rings and golden necklaces; tuxedos and top hats and tails. Each item fitting perfectly, as if made to measure.

  When they were dressed, the guests made their way through the streets, drawn towards the Emporium like sleepwalkers through enchanted dreams.

  They approached the shop, and came together, standing silently in neat rows, neither asleep nor awake.

  None of them noticed when Vindictus Sharpe slipped from the shadows and joined the gathering crowd. He was not attired in Halloween shades like everyone else. He wore a finely tailored suit the colour of charcoal, and carried a silver-topped cane. His silver hair and moustache were neat, and his eyes were an unnatural, electric blue.

  Strolling through the queue, Sharpe selected one of the guests, reaching over an elderly man’s shoulder, plucking the invite from his hands. Then he whispered something in the old man’s ear, and at once the old man turned and began to walk dreamily away from the Emporium, heading for home.

  When every guest was present, the frozen clocks kicked back to life, filling the night with their ticking. The Emporium’s delicate golden gate turned to dust and scattered in the crisp New York breeze. The queue began to filter in.

  Sharpe moved up the line in silence.

  Guests were disappearing behind a heavy red velvet curtain, awakening as they crossed the threshold. There were two doormen on the other side, collecting tickets and directing wonderstruck guests towards the ballroom.

  Sharpe handed over his stolen ticket and walked past them.

  He was in.

  CHAPTER 17

  GHOSTS

  “Ellie! This is your fault.”

  Daniel stormed down a passageway of shimmering black brick, trailing Ellie behind.

  “Sorry,” she said, trying not to laugh. “You look great. Really.”

  “This,” said Daniel, grabbing a handful of the black lace ruffles spilling from his orange suit, “does not look great! How could it possibly look great?” He turned and strode off with as much dignity as he could.

  “How many times do you want me to apologise?” asked Ellie, catching him up. “Papa asked me what I thought you might like to wear. I couldn’t resist. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same to me, because I know you would!”

  “I’ll get you back for this.”

  They reached a grand set of arched black doors. A single word had been painted on its nameplate in flowery letters:

  Ballroom

  Daniel pulled on the golden door handles, and the doors swung open.

  A huge, circular Wonder opened up before him, with a marble floor and a high domed ceiling of deepest black, finished with scattered golden stars. The wall of the ballroom was made entirely of glass, circular and continuous, looking out towards the illusion of a clear night sky and an impossibly large full moon.

  The floor was crowded with guests in orange, black and gold. Many had been cornered by members of the Emporium staff, who were excited by the rare opportunity to speak freely with those from beyond the shop’s walls. Ghostly waiters walked among the guests. They carried golden trays neatly stacked with goblets of orange liquid, piles of chocolate bats and liquorice spiders, apples coated in rich caramel and chocolate, all filling the room with delicious sweet scents.

  A hush began to fall over the crowd. Heads turned towards a raised circular platform in the centre of the floor, where a ghostly brass band had assembled.

  And then the band began to play.

  Waves of music swept the ballroom, enveloping guests and staff alike, carrying them off into waltzes and spins and toe-tapping, high-kicking barn dances.

  Daniel could not resist the urge to dance. He felt a hand on his arm, found himself on the floor with Anja, the snake-charmer. They danced until Daniel could dance no more, and he went to the edge of the room to catch his breath. Ellie showed no signs of stopping; she hadn’t left the dance floor all evening, and it seemed to Daniel that this was the happiest he’d seen her look.

  A waiter passed by, offering him a goblet.

  “What is it?” he asked, trying not to be too distracted by the fact he could see through the waiter.

  “Pumpkin mead.”

  Daniel took a goblet and sipped the liquid. It warmed his insides, like drinking the memory of an autumn night sat by the bonfire. He had drained the last drop from the glass when he turned and clipped the arm of an extremely tall man in a charcoal suit, dropping his goblet with a clatter.

  “I’m sorry,” said Daniel, but when he straightened up, the man was already gone.

  ***

  Mr Silver walked t
he far side of the ballroom, sips of pumpkin mead warming him as he watched his daughter watching everyone else. He cut through circles of chattering guests, dodging waltzing couples, catching snippets of stolen conversation.

  He smiled as he passed Caleb, who had cornered several guests from the outside world: “Tell me: is it true that the moon out there is made from cheese? And if so, what sort of cheese? Nothing too crumbly or runny, I’ll bet…”

  Silver stopped and finished his mead, glancing up at the chandelier high above.

  Something in the corner of his eye bothered him.

  He turned his head.

  Everything – the music and the chatter, the graceful movement of the dancing guests, the waiters and the gleaming chandelier – seemed to stop.

  Mr Silver’s grey eyes fixed upon the blue eyes of the man striding through the crowd towards him. He recognised him at once.

  As Vindictus Sharpe approached, he removed his bowler hat, stopping so close to Silver that their chests almost touched. The air crackled and sparked around them.

  Mr Silver’s face was as colourless as one of his ghostly waiters. His mouth was shut tight, his expression frozen, unreadable.

  “You are a difficult man to find, Lucien,” said Sharpe.

  “I do my best,” Mr Silver whispered.

  Sharpe’s mouth curled into something that might have been a smile, and might have been a sneer. He leaned in slowly, deliberately, and whispered something in Mr Silver’s ear. Then he straightened up once more. He waited.

  At first, Mr Silver did nothing but look at the floor. When he raised his head at last, his face was heavy with sadness.

  He managed a slow nod.

  Sharpe offered a handshake.

  When their hands touched, lights around the hall began to flicker. A few bulbs blew out, spitting shards of glass among the feet of the guests, who gasped and shrieked and laughed, believing it to be part of the entertainment.

  A flash of white teeth from Sharpe, and he turned and began to walk away through the crowd.

  Mr Silver watched him as he left the ballroom, standing frozen among the sea of sparkling dancers.