by Kiernan Kelly

 

 

It sits at the back of a high shelf, covered with years' worth of dust, unnoticed by a long succession of customers. Only the shopkeeper knows of its existence, but he never takes it down and wipes it clean, never draws attention to it, or presents it as a possible purchase to the many clients who enter his store.

 

The shopkeeper waits, patiently watching, one year after another. As winter melts into spring, spring blooms into summer, summer waxes and wanes into fall, and fall drifts into winter again, he is always mindful of the item's presence, wondering if perhaps the next person to walk through the door will be one of the fortunate ones. It is a very special item, unique, one-of-a-kind, and he understands that very, very few are worthy of it.

 

The shopkeeper can hear it humming quietly in the background, like a beehive under a blanket of cotton batting. When the right person comes into his shop, the bees change into angry wasps; the hum grows into a roar only he can hear.

 

His is a heavy responsibility; one he both prides himself in and curses on a regular basis. When he was a child, his dreams of being an astronaut, or a firefighter, or a circus clown were quickly squelched by his parents. His destiny was to sit behind a glass counter selling discarded bits and pieces of other people's lives…and protecting, at all costs, that one special item.

 

It could be no other way; the power of the item seeped into his family's blood, curdling it, twisting the double helix of their DNA until none was capable of considering walking a different path. Each generation was blessed with only one child; each child burdened with the responsibility of keeping the item safe. Every one of them hoped their turn at the counter would the last.

 

Ownership of the shop has been in his family from a time when magic and sorcery were the blood that pulsed through the veins of the earth. The shop's location changed over the centuries, from nomadic tents and wagons, to daub-and-wattle huts, to small storefronts, from continent to continent, across seas, and over mountains. The shop's inventory changed as often as its location, except for the one very special item.

 

Perhaps it's intuition that prickles the back of his neck and makes him sit up taller on his stool behind the counter, or the collective experience of the generations of the shopkeepers before him ingrained into his very cells. Someone's coming. He hears the bees stirring on the shelf above his head, the hum growing louder.

 

When the small bell over the front door tinkles and a cold draft sweeps dust particles along the floor of the shop, the shopkeeper feels a burst of excitement sweep through him. He doesn't greet the customer; instead he hops off his stool and heads into the back room to fetch the ladder he'll need to reach the lonely, dusty top shelf.

 

It doesn't matter what the customer thinks he wants, anyway. Let him