Chapter 23: A rather strange shop

"You'll need to go down Church Street. It's on your right if you take a left leaving the palace," lectured James, apparently anxious for Kira to get back in a timely manner, "Here're your funds and your bag – you'll find a nice little shop selling this sort of thing owned by a lovely woman called Gretyl."

"Thanks," returned Kira, silencing James early and shouldering the rucksack before leaving the office, whilst ignoring the requests of the scribes as they all were being made in jest – get us a monkey will you, Kira? It could probably do a better job than you. - was one of the kinder ones.

Leaving the palace, busy memorizing the new day's password, he headed back out into the crowds of people, thanking his own luck that he now wouldn't have to spend a whole day locked up in a small room writing out nonsense. Pushing his way through them, he made his way over to the right side of the road and walked along it, looking for Church Street that ought to be turning off from his right. The further he went and the more sales pitches that he had to endure from the merchants lining the road, eager to sell just about anything to the people moving by, the more he became concerned that he had missed the street altogether.

Then, just as he was considering turning around or asking someone for directions, he saw a small signpost leading him to his destination. As it turned out, the church that he had passed the previous day was the namesake of this particular street, and he passed it again looking for Gretyl's shop.

He had left pre-emptively without getting its name, but even if he had had it he would have struggled to find it because it was set back from the street and hidden in between two larger buildings that leaned over it and seemed to encase it in an unnatural cave. Above its door, the words Gretyl's Groceries were engraved in bold letters, apparently hacked into the wood that made up the shop's structure. If anything else, the shop more closely resembled a garden shed than a reputable business with the path leading to it overgrown with weeds and it being only a single story high with a white coat of paint covering it.

Pushing open the door, which caught on the floor and moaned in protest as it opened, he was not impressed by what he saw inside. The first thing that hit him was a flood of smells, none of them good, and he would have sworn that mixed in with the rest, there was the musty smell of the mushrooms so popular on the backstreets of the city. Despite how bright the day was, the shop was dark, and when he pulled the door shut behind him, his eyes had to take a moment to adjust to the gloom. Perhaps this had been a good thing because it lengthened the time that he had to come to terms with exactly what it was that he was seeing.

The whole establishment was set out like a maze with tables everywhere and tall bookshelves apparently placed randomly, obscuring any straight paths through the building. The cluttered feel was not helped by the darkness or the fact that it extended far further back than expected, and he couldn't help but feel that it was even more claustrophobic than the scribes' office back in the palace. It was no wonder that James had pushed the job of coming here onto him, thought Kira.

All the shelves and tables were stacked high with things that could only be described as things because Kira struggled to recognize most of them. All were labelled with prices ranging from ridiculously low to agonizingly high with no apparent rhyme or reason to their values. He even passed two jars containing what appeared to be the exact same green substance that were both marked with the same product name, but one was worth several bronze coins whilst the other was worth a whole two gold coins.

It was ridiculous. At least he now knew where the smells were coming from as he was forced to step back in disgust and wrinkled his nose, having sniffed at one open container. The only theme that he could make out for these products was that almost all of them were liquids and that they most certainly, most definitely, and in no way in the abyss were groceries. A person could probably die from merely sipping the products here.

Strangely, no matter how far through the shop he went, it never seemed to end. Confused by the lack of apparent progress he was making, Kira stopped to pick up a small jar containing a red substance. He watched how the liquid moved around, like honey, as he turned the jar to be on its side and read its label saying miracle cure – only seven gold pieces and whoever had written this had drawn a little smiley face to go with the price.

At his wit's end, and feeling embarrassed to admit that he was lost in such an apparently small shop, and wondering how a small jar could be worth almost as much as he was at auction, when he put it back onto its shelf, he let go of it a little too early. Comically slowly, it fell from its perch, right past his face, and onto the ground at his feet, where the jar smashed with a crack that resounded around the room, splattering the floor with the red substance that bubbled emitting a puff of white smoke.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," shouted a woman's voice, "No need to break things, you can just ask for attention you know!"

Internally, Kira moaned, wondering if he would be held accountable for breaking something with such a ludicrous price, but the voice hadn't sounded angry, and he kept his hopes up as the pattering sound of feet grew closer.

A moment later, a short but cheery-looking woman appeared from around a corner with an apron that was smeared with hundreds of overlapping stains, "Might want to step away from there." Gretyl commented, causing Kira to glance at his feet where the red, bubbling liquid was now beginning to approach him – seemingly with some sort of malicious intent – and he stepped away from it towards the woman. "Shooh, shooh!" she said, gesturing at the substance that backed away again, gradually rebuilding the jar seamlessly around it.

Kira opened his mouth to speak but, before he could form the words to question what he had just seen Gretyl, interrupted his train of thought, "There, no harm done, you're from the palace I assume. Tea?"

"Yeah, I'm…."

"Ok. Yes to both, I'll assume," said Gretyl disappearing and then reappearing a moment later with two cups filled with a brown liquid, "Drink up."

"How did you make that so fast?" questioned Kira, as she couldn't have been out of his view for more than a second.

"What do you think I was doing while you were fumbling around in here breaking things? I don't get a lot of visitors, you know – come on." and she walked away, obviously expecting him to follow.

The cup that he had been given had no handle and was hot enough to burn his hands, but he endured holding it to keep up with her, "I came to get some ink…" he told her pathetically, to her back, as she led the way through the shop.

Stopping abruptly at a cross-section between various passageways between the tables and shelves - how big even is this shop wondered Kira - she told him, "Be back in a moment!" cackling manically and adding, "Errand boy."

"I'm Kira," he called after her.

Hearing his voice, she stopped suddenly and turned back to face him with manic eyes, "Yes, yes, I know who you are." in a way that made him wonder how much she knew of his past even though he had never seen her before this day.

For the second time, she appeared a mere moment after leaving his view and was carrying a large sack in front of her. She then bundled it past him and heaved it up to land on top of a nearby table, scattering everything on it to the floor around them, where it promptly disappeared.

Enough was enough, "You're a manipulator!" he accused her, "This had to do with your ability, right?"

But she didn't reply and instead produced many jars containing a black liquid from the sack. "Here's what you're after, errand boy, and you better appreciate this because it's my best batch yet."

Eying it nervously, Kira was suspicious of her assertion because it seemed to be slightly bluer than the ink he had been using before. He couldn't explain what was wrong with it, but he was almost certain that something was, indeed, wrong with it.

However, before he could get a word in, seeing his brow-furrowed look of concern, Gretyl shouted, "WATCH!" much too close to his ears and grabbed up one of the bottles. She yanked off the lid, not bothering to unscrew it, and produced a quill from thin air before dipping it inside. She then triumphantly wrote her own name onto a nearby piece of parchment, puffed up her cheeks, and exaggeratedly blew on the ink. Wiping her hand against what she had written, it did not smudge, and she looked over at Kira with a grin on her face, "My best batch yet," she explained, "Oh, and you'll still be paying in full for the open - slightly broken - bottle."

"You're a manipulator," repeated Kira ignoring her.

"You're an errand boy; what difference does it make…."

"So you admit it," interjected Kira, not letting her continue this time.

"Oh come on, you are too." she said, "You looked at some of my glasses funny."

Kira knew that he had used his aura to look at some of the liquids more closely by concentrating it before his eyes, but he hadn't found anything when he had done so, and he was certain that she hadn't been around to notice him doing it. But, cowed into silence, he simply handed over the required sums – that conveniently turned out to be all of the money he had with him and again, he wondered how she knew how much he had – and started loading the ink bottles into his bag. He stacked them carefully, under Gretyl's watchful eyes, to ensure that none would break on his way back.

Unsure what to do, he bid her farewell, and she replied with, "Good luck, errand boy! Someone's waiting for you." again cackling as he desperately tried retracing his steps out of the shop. The exit found him as much as he found it as it seemed to just appear, all of a sudden, around one corner when he simply hadn't been expecting it and the area around it looked different from when he had gone in. Stepping outside, he retreated to sit on a step leading up to the church, facing the shop's entrance.

Wanting to make one last attempt at understanding what had just happened, he again concentrated his aura before his eyes and looked at the building. From where he was, it seemed to be completely normal, and as he now just wanted to go back to the palace, having had enough of an adventure for one day, he headed back. Maybe, if he truly did become the errand boy for the scribes, he could return some other time to try and make sense of what really was going on there. This made living in Ostermark more of an exciting prospect, and he added a spring to his steps as he made his way back towards the main road with his loaded rucksack chinking behind him as the jars of ink jostled one another.