Antiquities and Tangibles

by Tim Pratt

  “Thank you, Mr. Grinde.” She was solemn, but also hopeful, and he was hopeful, too.

  * * *

  The bell rang and she returned with leaves in her hair, smears of dirt on her face, dressed in what appeared to be leaves and vines cunningly interwoven into a dress that was, he noticed with a hint of regret, quite modest. “Here, this is all that’s left.” Opening her palm, she dumped a handful of soil on the counter. Mr. Grinde sorted through it until he found a single seed. She’d returned the item, or its equivalent, which meant she was eligible for an exchange. That gave him an unexpected flutter of lightness in his chest—the thought of having to send her away disappointed would have been intolerable to him, but rules are rules.

  She leaned heavily on the counter. “I’ll say this for the tree of Arcadia. When I chopped it down and the forest receded, I was standing right where I wanted to go.”

  “You chopped it down?”

  “I had to make an axe out of a branch, vines, and a sharpened rock—actually five axes, they all broke eventually.”

  “But why do such a thing at all?”

  “I’ll tell you,” she said.

  * * *

  Being alone in the woods drove her insane with loneliness.

  That was the short form. In the long form, which he insisted she tell, she took the seed to her favorite little park, a tiny place that had once been an empty lot, bought by the city decades before, filled with grasses and trees and a couple of concrete benches and a little bubbling fountain, all ringed in a wrought-iron fence. She scooped out a shallow depression in the soil, planted the seed, covered it, carried handfuls of water from the fountain to sprinkle the soil, and sat on the bench to wait. She’d expected something dramatic, a beanstalk rocketing into the sky to open passage to a cloud kingdom, but nothing much happened, and she read a magazine she’d brought, and eventually dozed on the bench.

  When she woke, the bench was wrapped altogether in ivy, and a great tree rose before her. Her knowledge of trees was fairly limited—she knew Christmas trees, and lemon trees, and beyond that, trees were all mysterious. This one had pale white bark and leaves of shimmering silver, and in growing, it had somehow brought a whole vast forest with it, because the city was nowhere to be seen.

  The sun was still up, though it was shady under the canopy, and she went exploring, wishing she’d thought to bring a bottle of water or a sack lunch. But as Mr. Grinde had suggested, the streams ran clear and delicious, and delicious fruit—some she recognized, some she did not—hung from branches all around her. The ground somehow sloped so that she was always moving either level or gently downhill, even when she doubled back. There were animals, but nothing ominous—rabbits, squirrels, flittering birds. The woods weren’t silent, as she’d expected, but full of rustlings and bubblings and the song of wind over branches. When the sun went down and she grew tired, she stopped at the base of a tree and settled down on a mound of fallen leaves that proved surprisingly comfortable. It’s like a fairy tale wood, she thought, only not scary at all.

  Over the next days and weeks she explored, and the woods had no edge. There were clear deep pools for swimming, trees she could climb, branches wide enough to sleep on, waterfalls of towering magnificence, bird trills more enchanting than any pop song, sunsets so dazzling they made her eyes water, flowers with scents to rival all man-made perfumes.

  What there wasn’t was anything to do, besides admiring the admittedly glorious glories of nature. She read the magazine she’d brought to tatters, even though it was just a dumb fashion thing. Pissing and crapping in the woods didn’t appeal to her, either, and even though it only rained in late afternoon, and gently at that, she resented the lack of real permanent shelter, and also profoundly lamented the lack of pedicures, blueberry scones, episodic television, library books, cheeseburgers, high-speed internet, espresso, and vibrators, among other things. How had she been unhappy back in civilization, with access to all those hundreds, thousands, millions of small pleasures? What the hell had she been thinking? Coming to the Arcadian wood had been good in one respect—it gave her the realization that, crappy as her life might have been before, it was a lot better than living in the woods and wearing leaves because her real clothes got shredded by time and weather.

  Worst of all, there was no one to complain to, no other human voices at all, and so she made her way back to the original Arcadian tree, crafted a number of axes by trial and error, and started trying chop the tree down. She wasn’t sure she’d ever manage it, but at least attacking the tree gave her something to do besides going crazy with loneliness.

  * * *

  “And I mean crazy, Mr. Grinde. I was telling rabbits about my childhood. I was talking to the moon. The creepiest thing was, I could sense intelligences there, sometimes I thought things were listening, but I knew they weren’t human. I don’t know if they were tree spirits or water spirits or animal gods or what, but they didn’t have any more in common with me than I have in common with a rolling pin, so I’m glad they never spoke up, really. I’m so happy to be out of there—yes, happy, I said it, though I know it’ll pass. The Arcadian wood is perfect for a weekend, lovely for a week, endurable for a month, but after that, knowing you can’t leave, at least not easily, that it’s a walled garden…no good. Not for me. I’m an introvert, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need any people. I just need the right ones, in small doses, at appropriate intervals. Nobody at all is worse than too many people.”

  He passed her a damp rag, and she began washing the dirt from her face, and it was, really, a face he’d grown rather fond of.

  “All right,” he said finally. “Why don’t you sit and have a drink and talk with me for a while?”

  * * *

  “As much as we’ve learned about happiness, you’d think we’d do better at finding it,” he said. They sat in a pair of rocking chairs, side by side, with a round table between them holding a sweating pitcher of iced tea and a pair of glasses; the ice came from the moon, which for him was closer than any grocery or liquor store, but it was quite pure. Mr. Grinde, who’d seldom seen the same person more than once—and never before more than twice—in all the many years since he took over the shop, was pleased beyond measure to have something resembling a friend, or at least a regular visitor. It helped that she was someone he could admire: a woman who’d devoted herself wholeheartedly to a probably hopeless quest—not unlike his own hopeless attempt to inventory the shop’s contents—and who’d given his own life a bit more purpose by enlisting his help in that quest.

  “I don’t know.” She swirled the ice in her drink. “Philip Brickman, the scientist who discovered winning the lottery doesn’t make you happy? He committed suicide. Dedicating yourself to the study of happiness doesn’t mean you’ll find it.”

  “Mmm. I hope the pursuit didn’t itself hasten his despair.”

  “I’m not despairing yet,” she said, but she didn’t look at him when she spoke.

  “Good. We haven’t even come close to the end of my list.”

  “You’ve got more ideas?”

  “Of course. There’s an equation I found that some experts use to calculate happiness. H = S + C + V. That means, basically, happiness equals your genetic set point, plus your circumstances, plus what you voluntarily change. Genetics are beyond us—at least, changing them is dangerous—but we can certainly continue to alter your circumstances and your voluntary behaviors. Eventually we’ll hit upon a combination that has the desired effect.”

  She took a sip. “There’s refined sugar in this tea, isn’t there? Forget everything else—refined sugar is happiness.”

  “Oh, good,” he said, deadpan. “Then my work here is done. I’ve got a five-pound bag of the stuff you can take home with you.”

  “Ha. Seriously, though, if you’ve got more ideas, I’m willing to try. I’ve spent this long and done this much, it seems silly to give up now.”

  “Good. I’ve got a little notebook where I’ve been writing possibilities
as they occur to me…”

  Over the next few years they tried many things. They tried world travel—a compass that could take her anywhere, instantly—which just led to unhappiness and disorientation in assorted faraway locales. They tried fame and art—with a violin once won from the Devil in a fiddling contest—that propelled her to the heights of musical stardom, but the sycophants and hangers-on and embezzling accountants and obsessed fans destroyed her enjoyment of the music, and was troubled by the fact that her abilities were magical, and not the result of personal accomplishment. They tried meditation—a prayer wheel that offered insights into the structure of the universe whenever it was set spinning—but she did not find the realization of her own fundamental insignificance in the incomprehensible vastness of creation to be particularly pleasant. They tried revenges, none lethal but all unpleasant, against everyone who’d ever wronged her—an opportunity for him to get rid of various cursed objects, though she brought them all back, of course—but she didn’t have the right temperament to take real and lasting pleasure in the suffering of others.

  Eventually they just started trying things at random: a ring that made her invisible, a cloak that let her transform into a bat, a whistle that let her summon winds, a seashell necklace that enabled her to swim to any depth in the sea, with no need for air or worry about pressure. That one almost worked. She stayed gone for nearly two years, but when she returned, she said the sea was full of wonders, but it was cold and dark and there was no one to talk to, essentially the Arcadian wood all over again, only with squid instead of squirrels.

  There were moments of happiness, even whole intervals of happiness, but eventually the engines of her joy brought with them darker consequences that tainted even the memory of the pleasures that had gone before.

  “You know,” she said, leaning over, elbows on the counter, chin in her hands, “it’s gotten so I enjoy the day before I come here more than I enjoy what comes after. Each time, you see, I think, ‘Maybe this time we’ll get it right.’”

  “Ah yes. The pleasure of anticipation. Alas, I don’t know of anyone who’s figured out a way to bottle that.”

  “It gets a little less potent, though, every time we fail.” She stared into her glass of tea and sighed. “I think we’re getting to the end of the line for me. It’s been years, you know. I know there are more things we can try—I got a glimpse of your storage room once, I know it goes back, all the way back, full of treasures—but I just don’t have the strength for many more disappointments. I’m beginning to think I can never be satisfied. I’ve also been feeling way too obsessive and self-centered in recent years—who am I to privilege my own happiness above all else, even if Aristotle does say it’s the only real goal? What if it’s a fundamentally delusional goal—if trying to capture perfect happiness is like trying to catch the moon in a butterfly net? Maybe I’m just aiming too high. Freud said his objective was to transform hysterical misery into common unhappiness. My unhappiness is probably pretty garden variety. I should be content with that.”

  “I wouldn’t give up yet. There’s one thing we haven’t tried.” He leaned over the counter, putting his face closer to hers. He’d been thinking about this. It seemed so simple—could it possibly be the answer? Perhaps the right answers were always the simple ones.

  “What’s that?” She was looking into his eyes. This was the moment, if ever there was a moment.

  “True love,” he said, and leaned forward, and touched his lips to hers.

  They kissed for a moment, then each pulled back, more or less simultaneously; he was, perhaps, a hair faster. They regarded one another for a long moment.

  “Well. That wasn’t any good, was it?” he said.

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, but he wasn’t offended. “No. Whatever the opposite of chemistry is, that’s what we’ve got, Mr. Grinde.”

  “A shame. It would have been a pretty ending, I thought.”

  “I don’t know. True love cures all? It’s a little too pat and tied-up-with-a-bow for my tastes, really. But then—” she gave a modest laugh, a sound that reminded him why he’d mistakenly thought he must be in love with her—“we’ve already established that I’m difficult to please.”

  “Right,” he said briskly. “Then there’s only one thing for it.” He took a deep breath. This was plan B, but in a way, it was even simpler than his true love gambit. “I’d like to announce my resignation.”

  She looked startled—finally, a new expression, looking out-of-place on a face that generally seemed to expect the worst or hope for the best and nothing much in between. “You’re giving up the shop?”

  “I’m giving you the shop. No, listen: you like to help people. The keeper of this shop does little else. You are bored easily and require new and interesting things to engage your interest—this shop has wonders so vast even I’ve never been able to uncover them, antiquities from every age of legend, and tangibles that will someday be the center of new mythologies. It’s impossible to be bored here. Boil all the details away and I think happiness, for you at least, is having your basic needs met, plus useful work that engages the body and mind, plus the occasional fine wine, orgasm, or fudge brownie. Don’t you see? Giving you the shop—it’s perfect.”

  She shook her head. “I’d feel guilty if you left, just to make me happy. That would spoil it all.”

  “Nonsense. I never much considered my own happiness, or even the concept of happiness, before I met you. My life was the shop; the shop was my life. But hearing of your exploits, even when they disappointed you, made me want to go out and experience the world, to have adventures, even if they are, as you say, periods of discomfort and inconvenience punctuated by too-few-and-far-between moments of joy. I’ll leave gladly. Is that your only objection?”

  “Almost. But you forget—I’m a social creature, too. Too much time alone and I vanish into my own head. The shop is a wonderful place, but spending all my time behind the counter, by myself… I’d be miserable.”

  “Hmm,” he said, thinking, I know you so well, pleased with how she’d led him exactly where he wanted to go. “There’s another possibility. There are, after all, other sorts of partnerships, besides the romantic.”

  She cocked her head. “You mean…”

  “Go into business with me. The shop is big enough that we wouldn’t get under one another’s feet, but small enough that we could always find each other if we wanted company. With two of us here, we could even take turns going out into the world from time to time, to bring back new acquisitions, or just to…I don’t know…see films. Ride ferris wheels. What have you.”

  Ms. Stuart ran her finger in little swirling designs on the surface of the display case, brow knit up fiercely. “It’s…an appealing idea. Truly. But what if it doesn’t work? What if it doesn’t make us happy?”

  “Eunie,” he said. “If there’s one thing you’ve learned by now, I’m sure, it’s that if one approach fails, you can always try another.”

  “It would be sort of ironic if the only way I could successfully buy happiness…”

  “Was by selling it to others?” Martin smiled. “Indeed. Do you accept, then? A partnership?”

  She took a breath, stepped back, walked around to the far end of the counter, and stepped behind it with him. Together, side by side, they gazed toward the front door of Antiquities and Tangibles, where the delicate bell over the door just waited for someone to come along and make it sing out. “We’ll give it a try,” she said.

  He linked his arm with hers. “I think this might be the happiest day of my life. How about you?”

  “Time will tell,” she said.

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  Document creation date: 29 September 2011

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