The Lonely Whelk (8 page)

But no matter what she did, it seemed that
one moment she was standing in an empty shop surrounded by a bevy
of clothing and useless knickknacks blaring the letters “LONDON,”
and the next moment everything appeared to say “ANCHORAGE.” This
was, for Hazel, a stunning and rather unbelievable occurrence –
but, following in the footsteps of her father, she carried on,
smile ablaze, and served the next customer that walked in.

This unusual event happened periodically
over the next few years, and by-and-by, she got used to it.

During those quiet days in the shop, while
she drank tea and carefully worked on knitting the world’s longest
scarf, she would sometimes think back to the first time it
happened, with all the confusion, and the ensuing search to find
anything to explain the odd change in the shop: alien technology,
magical symbols, a secret old book. Was it the death of her father?
Was it the changing weather? Had the shop been built on a ley line,
and every time the stars aligned in a particular manner, her shop
got thrown from one side of the earth to the other?

Eventually, she decided that there were
gods, the kind the Romans used to believe in, and they were playing
with her fortune – or rolling the dice, so to speak. She looked for
the bright side: she had the opportunity to visit many different
places, and make money while doing it; she had the opportunity to
meet many people, and make money while doing it; and she felt an
excited giddiness every time she found herself in a new world.
Also, she didn’t have to pay taxes. There were downsides, of
course. She had few friends and no community. She didn’t date or
even have a phone number. And she couldn’t pick where her shop
decided to take her. It seemed random. It seemed strange.

Then one day, everything changed: she
remembered something.

The memory came when a man walked into the
shop wearing a suit. She never learned his name, never spoke to him
except to say, “$12.91 please,” and “Have a nice day.” But
something about him triggered an old, old memory of the man with
the strange tie, the man with the funny accent, the man who gave
her the rubies. It had been six months after her father died, but
before the first time the shop moved.

A strange little smile lit on his lips when
he shook her hand.

“
Hello!” he said. “I’ve
brought you a gift. From your father.”

He reached a hand into a very strange suit
coat. It looked old, a style from Britain in the 1950s, perhaps,
but the fabric was new and almost sparkled – it glistened. He wore
an unusual tie, as well, with oddly-shaped animals which appeared
to be dancing around spikes. His clothes were unlike anything she
had ever seen. From his pocket he drew a small box and set it on
the counter in front of her.

“
How did you know my
father?” she asked.

“
We were old friends. Your
father was an amazing thinker and quite the dreamer!” His eyebrows
jumped up and down on his face as he nodded eagerly at the box.
“Open it!”

As she picked up the box, she thought for a
moment that she saw a glimmer arise from the edge, but when she
opened it, the inside was dark; even the velvet lining was black.
Two red gems rested on the velvet. She gasped.

“
They’re beautiful!” she
exclaimed. “You say they’re from my father?”

“
Yes, ma’am!” the gentleman
replied. “He left them with me and I did not receive word of his
death until recently. I am very sorry for your loss.”

“
It’s been over six months
since he died,” Hazel said, looking up. After a moment’s thought,
she supposed there were plenty of people that might not have heard.
The pain was so real for her, though, it was hard to imagine
everyone else wasn’t feeling it too.

“
Yes, I know. I’ve been...”
He paused, frowned for a moment, and then stated, “...traveling.
Yes, that’s it!”

His hesitation made Hazel think that he
wasn’t being quite truthful with her.

“
So by traveling... you
mean not traveling?” She raised an eyebrow.

“
That is beside the point.”
The man gestured towards the box. “These are special earrings. You
don’t put them on your ears, you put them in your ears. Like, you
know, inside...” he pointed into his ear.

“
Why?” Hazel made a face.
They were pretty and they were rocks – two reasons why she wouldn’t
put them in her ears.

“
Well...” Then the
gentleman began to talk very rapidly:
“They’re-specially-designed-to-help-translate
a-variety-of-other-languages-using-the-science-of-brain-chemistry-and-cognitive-mathematics,
and-I-think-you-should-try-them-next-time-you-move-to-a-new-place.
I have to go now.”

Then, before Hazel could even begin to
process what he had said, he had turned on his heel and bolted from
the store.

She tried them a few weeks later. Spanish to
English. French to English. Dutch to English. It was incredible.
The only problem was that they didn’t translate her words back. But
they still helped.

Today, strange as it was, had started out as
a normal day. She swept the floor and neatened the racks of
sweatshirts, all the while dreaming about the vast expanse of the
universe, and wondering about the myriad of things that might exist
out there: dragons and dwarves, alien races shaped like light
bulbs, planets made of enormous diamonds, civilizations built
entirely on fleets of spaceships… she never got tired of imagining
everything that could be. She wiped down the counter, and even
pulled everything out of the cash drawer to make sure nothing got
stuck or was hiding in the back. Then, her mind full of thoughts
about the wonders of the universe, she headed into the back
room.

When she came back into the shop, everything
was different, and everything said “Whelk.” And for the first time,
she didn’t know what that meant.

Outside the windows, it was dark. She walked
over to get a closer look.

“
There must be a sign,” she
muttered, squinting. “Oh, there’s one!”

It read, “Authorized Personnel Only Beyond
This Point.”

“
Are we in a mall?” she
asked herself. It seemed awfully dark for a mall. And dreary. There
were no lights or emergency lights, no people, no fake trees. Only
the sign.

She opened the door and cautiously stepped
out. It was a long hallway, expanding in both directions.
Everything was grey and metal. It all seemed very industrial. She
glanced again at the sign: this time, where there were letters
before, they were now strange symbols which she couldn’t read or
understand.

Gasping, Hazel took a step back, and then
another and another, until she stumbled back into the shop, still
gasping for breath and crying a little.

“
It doesn’t feel like home,
anymore,” she whispered to herself. “It doesn’t feel like
home.”

Later, when she thought back on this moment,
it seemed odd that the location of her shop was what made it feel
like home, and not the shop itself, but at that moment, she was
overcome with shock, and headed into the back room to have a shot
of wonderful, wonderful whiskey.

The back room had a warm feeling: an orange
rug adorned the floor, strings of beads hung down the walls, and
she had an extraordinary number of hats, each of which she loved
equally. They had a life of their own; each had a name and was
unique in character and appearance. A couch and two chairs sat in
the corners, and a reddish lamp made the room glow crimson. On the
far wall was a large cupboard. Here she kept everything from extra
toothpaste and deodorant, to hooks and nails and other useful
tidbits, to souvenirs that she had purchased all over the world. It
always amused her – a tourist shop owner that collected souvenirs.
But these souvenirs didn’t change when the shop moved; it proved
that she had been to the many places her shop had taken her.

She pulled a large bottle of whiskey from
the cabinet and poured herself a glass.

There were decisions to be made. She could
1) stay here until she grew old and died or someone came to tell
her where she was, 2) explore, or 3) drink herself into oblivion
and deal with the problem later. After another shot, she realized
she could also put more effort into searching for whatever
mechanism it was that caused the shop to move, and then maybe drive
home, but the chances of finding anything seemed rather slim.

Wandering back into the front room, she
peered through the window at the dark hallway. For all she knew,
her shop was some kind of spaceship and she had landed on a planet
very far away. Or maybe it was a time machine and she was seeing
the future. Or, she pondered, maybe she was in an asylum and none
of this was real.

Almost in response to her last thought, she
caught a glimpse of something white out of the corner of her eye,
near the end of the hallway. She moved to the door, opened it, and
peered down the hall.

It was a monkey – a little brown monkey with
a long white mustache, a pink nose, and a cute tongue that kept
flicking in and out of its mouth. And it was looking at her.

Hazel ran back into the store, closed and
locked the door, sat down on the floor, and began to cry.

John was giddy – at least, Kaia assumed he
was giddy. She had only known him a few hours, but his excitement,
although contagious, seemed a bit excessive. She felt that she
ought to be more excited than him; after all, she was the one who
had just received one of the most prestigious internships in the
world.

“
Don’t worry,” Quin
said.

She jumped and gasped. “I didn’t know you
were there!” She was startled. He was walking behind her as
silently as a timorous cat, the kind from the desert region.

“
My apologies,” he
said.

“
What were you saying?” She
turned to look at him.

“
Don’t worry about John
being so hyper. His favourite thing – probably in the universe – is
to show people this room. It’s his pride and joy.”

“
He didn’t make it, did
he?” she asked.

“
No I didn’t!” John cut in
delightedly. “But I’m in charge (more or less) so it’s like it’s
mine! And I’ve made some significant changes to improve safety and
efficiency, and basically, it’s the bat’s eyes!”

“
Bat’s eyes?” Kaia raised
her eyebrows.

“
Yeah, you know... the
beamel’s leer? The crasaton’s tail? The pop lizard’s tongue? The
bee’s knees?”

“
Oh, you mean it’s neat.”
She nodded in understanding.

John released a loud sigh. “We need to work
on your vernacular!”

They rounded a corner and saw Rock and Clyde
standing there, waiting. A couple of other security guards in their
black sunglasses stood a ways behind them.

“
Need to get rid of those
glasses,” Kaia heard Quin mutter. “Annoying.”

“
Here’s the man of the
hour!” John announced, gesturing to Clyde. “Ready to join the
tour?”

Kaia shuffled her feet a little, still
feeling a bit embarrassed about the role she had played during
Clyde’s interview.

“
There you are,” Rock
responded, crossing his arms. “I was about to page you on the
intercom.”

“
You’re so impatient,” John
replied in a scolding tone of voice.

“
I’m not going in. I have
work to do. Bring Clyde back to me when you’re done with him.” Rock
turned and began to stride away from the group with the other
security guards close behind.

John faced Clyde and rubbed his hands
together, grinning. “Well,” he said, “this is going to be fun!”

Kaia raised her eyebrows in mild concern as
John bounded past him and headed for the end of the hallway.

*******

The room was huge and had far more people in
it than Kaia had imagined. When she had first learned about this
legendary room – literally legendary, as there was much debate
about whether or not it actually existed – she had imagined a
largely empty room with wisps of uncertainty that sort of tickled
the corner of your eye when you gazed around, accessible only to
the greatest and most secretive branches of the government. After a
short moment of reflection on the scene before her, however, Kaia
realized that the imagined scenario didn’t make a whole lot of
sense, and the actual scenario was much more logical.

People bustled here and there, running back
and forth with papers and baskets – and a giant horse pulling a
cart thundered through a Door at the back of the room. Doors were
lined up neatly in rows; she counted at least fifteen to a row, but
since the room was round, some of the rows appeared to have more or
fewer in them. Each Door was outlined by a neatly painted frame,
and a name appeared on a sign over it. Ambassadors came and went
through them, and assistants handed them baskets and documents and
scribbled-on pieces of paper. One man yelled for his wife over the
commotion of the room, and she, struggling to contain her large,
voluminous skirts, scrambled to avoid the other people in the room
while getting to her husband as quickly as possible. There were
men, women, children, travel animals, wares, and suitcases – even
birds!

The room was a veritable madhouse.

“
Officially we call it
Vrata Soba.” John gestured around to the wild collusion of chaos.
“We are also pushing legislation to enlarge the facility, and
possibly move it off world. As you can see, it creates a great
amount of liability for not only the government, but quite possibly
the entire planet. If it were off-world, we could contain it a bit
more.”