Chapter 10
The figure before me is tall and, although silhouetted against the shelves, clearly reptilian.
A dracone, I think. No surprise; there are a lot in Little Pepperidge.
The figure approaches, and I’m surprised to see that she is young and dressed with rather less flair than draconae usually are.
Indeed, she’s wearing nothing but black. Perhaps she’s in mourning?
She takes me in with big, doubt-filled eyes.
“Hello,” I try.
“So it’s true, then,” she says, dolorously.
I take a breath, then, not sure how to answer her question, exhale.
“Mrs. Gooch, I mean,” she says, mournfully.
Oh, poor girl. She must have been a friend. “I’m afraid so,” I offer, kindly. “Did you know her well?”
The girl sighs. “No,” she says, droopily. “Not at all.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I liked to sit on the third floor and look out the window. Mrs. Gooch always let me.”
“Oh,” I say again, this time surprised. There had been a rather moldy-looking pillow under the dormer window overlooking the street outside, but I had assumed it had simply been abandoned there, as the broken furniture piled in other corners of the same room also seemed to have been.
Apparently not. “Forgive me for asking, but why?”
“I like to read,” she says, sorrowfully, and indicates a book tucked under one arm. “School just let out and I’d rather not go home.” She pauses. “You know. Ever.”
“Ah,” I say, since I don’t know what else to say.
She looks meaningfully at the stairs and then back at me.
“Well, I suppose,” I begin, gesturing toward the stairs in what might read as an invitation.
She sighs heavily and then vanishes up the stairs. The shop goes silent again.
Teenage dracone, reads upstairs on the third floor, I note in my book. Then I add a question mark. In mourning, I add, and then another question mark.
I don’t get another customer for the rest of the afternoon.
And I can’t really call my mournful dracone a customer, either, since she doesn’t buy anything.
At about four, the sky clouds over and a light drizzle begins to fall.
The shop grows quite gloomy, and I practice Honey’s candle-lighting spell a few times and get a few lamps glowing, all hexed not to fall over.
The bluecaps appear from my room and settle on an old chandelier hanging over my desk, and I smile up at them.
All in all, it’s quite peaceful. I slip away to my room, grab Garden Magic, and spend an interesting hour poring over it at the desk up front.
It mostly seems to have to do with the kinds of spells that can be successfully applied to turnips, of all things.
According to this book, one can live quite comfortably off turnips, if one knows the right spells: roast turnip, turnip chops, turnip stew.
Turnip-leaf tea. Aha! I wonder if those neat rows of vegetables in the garden are all turnips.
I hear the telltale rustling of my one noncustomer when the temple bells toll and, soon, the thump of her footsteps on my creaky stairs. She appears, looking no less mournful.
“Did you get much reading done?” I ask, since I’m not sure what else one is meant to do with a morose draconae teenager.
“No,” she says, sadly. “Someone moved everything around.”
“That was me,” I say, cheerily. “I’m trying to take inventory.”
She sighs. “I liked it better before.”
Helpful. “It’s a bit crowded up there right now, and I figure it’ll be easier for customers to find things if, for example, I know where everything is. And what it is.”
“I suppose,” she says. “Though Mrs. G never really had many customers, you know.” She makes no effort to leave. I suppose I’ll have to keep talking.
“Do you come here often?”
“Only every day,” she says, wistfully. “It’s awfully atmospheric. Little P is just so, you know. So cute.” She breathes the word like it’s an imprecation.
It makes sense that a teenage dracone who wears a lot of black would find a moldering bookstore atmospheric, if the rest of the town is pink and yellow.
“I’m Tandy,” I say, reaching across the desk to hold out my hand.
She looks at my hand, and then up at me. “I know who you are,” she says, a little glumly. “My mother’s the Lord Mayor, Princess Tanadelle. I know all about it. I guess I should curtsy or something.”
“Gosh, no,” I say, pulling my hand back.
“As long as I’m here, I’m just Tandy, cursed bookstore owner.
But if you come all the time—I mean, that is, you’re always welcome, if it feels like a safe place for you.
What I suppose I was going to get at…” I pause to see how she’s taking my introduction; she looks a bit taken aback, but she is a teenager.
“What I was getting at,” I continue, “is that if you’re familiar with the store—well, I’m not, and I’d really appreciate some help from someone who knows it well.”
“You mean, like, a job?” She looks astonished at the possibility.
“I’d be happy to offer you a job, if you want it. Or if you’d rather just help me get the lay of the land, that’d be okay, too. It’d be really helpful to have someone around who knows what…what…” I wave a hand at the bookstore. “What it all is, I guess. I mean, everything is all quite new to me.”
The dracone looks down at her book, then around, then back at me. “I don’t know. I have school, and I need time to read, and I’m not very…I mean, I don’t know. Mother might not like it. I don’t know.”
“Even if you just tell me a little about the place, that’d be helpful,” I say. “So far I’ve found a nest of bluecaps and a book about turnips, and everything else seems very”—I choose my word carefully—“chaotic.”
“You’re not going to change things, are you?” she asks, sounding really distressed.
“Oh, no! Absolutely not. I just need to…impose a little order. Maybe make it a little more welcoming. You may have noticed I haven’t had many customers today.”
She snorts. “No one reads here. Not in Little Pepperidge.”
“Maybe I can encourage more people to come inside and give reading a shot if I spruce the place up a bit,” I suggest.
“Why? Aren’t you going to leave once the curse is broken?”
I shrug. “Who knows when that’ll be?”
“Please.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re a royal princess. Like they’d let you rot away in a bookstore in the middle of nowhere forever.”
“Perhaps, but I’m here now, and I can’t sit around and do nothing.”
The dracone huffs a little breath of air, that funny teenage response to adult reason, when they want to be cynical but haven’t really got a leg to stand on. I was a teenager myself not that long ago; I still remember the language.
“Come back tomorrow and give me a tour,” I suggest. “Show me your favorite parts of the place, what you’d want to keep unchanged. I’d really appreciate your help.” I leave the sentence a little open-ended, making it sound a bit like a question.
She huffs again. “I don’t know,” she says, morosely. “Maybe.”
Maybe is a good start.
“Just promise me you won’t ruin everything,” she adds.
“I promise.” I hold out my hand again. “Tandy,” I reiterate.
She looks at my hand like it’s a dead fish, and reluctantly takes it. “Si’masasha,” she says. “Sasha, I suppose. Everyone calls me that.”
“I’ll call you whatever you prefer,” I say, shaking her taloned hand firmly.
“Sasha, then,” she says.
With one last mournful sigh, she turns and leaves, and, once the door is shut firmly behind her, I put my head down on the desk and laugh.