The Nowhere Emporium (3 page)

Daniel’s eyes cracked open a fraction. He screwed up his face at the sunlight flooding the room. He sat up, and rubbed his eyes with a knuckle. The blurred edges of his mind began to focus.

He lay in a small, comfortable bed in a cosy room with an arched wooden roof. At the opposite end of the room were two doors, one of which was open. Through the open door, Daniel could hear the sound of birdsong and the babbling whisper of running water. He shuffled to the edge of the bed, swung his legs from beneath the thick duvet. His bare feet sank into a deep carpet.

Memories came bursting back: of running through Glasgow, Spud chasing close behind; of the horror as the car came towards him; of hitting the hard ground.

Daniel climbed from the bed and stumbled towards a small mirror that hung between the doors. He gazed at his reflection, expecting to see cuts and bruises, but there were no marks on him, no sign that he had been hurt at all. A great fear began to build in his chest. His lungs tightened. His head spun. What if … what if he had been hit by a car?

Am I dead?

He did not have time to contemplate this question, because a flicker of movement drew his attention to the window, and he
realised that a girl was staring at him through the glass.

He stumbled backwards as she moved to the door. She stood in the doorway, brushing long wild curls from her grey eyes. She looked him up and down, arms crossed.

“Enjoy your snooze, did you?” she said. “Nice and comfy?” She looked around the room and shook her head. “Unbelievable. This is nicer than
my
room!”

“Who’re you?” said Daniel. “Where am I? Am I … dead?”

The girl screwed up her face, took another step into the room.

“Dead? What are you going on about? Why would you be
dead
?”

Daniel blinked. “But … but I was standing right in the middle of a busy road! A car was going to hit me…”

The girl tapped her foot on the floor. “He must have saved you. I wonder why. What’s your name?”

“Daniel,” said Daniel. “Who are you talking about? Who must have saved me?”

But the girl was already opening the blue door, the one that had been closed.

“This is all very strange,” she said. “No one new ever shows up here.” She narrowed her eyes. “Nobody real anyway. Stay put. I’m going to find out exactly what’s going on.”

And she slipped off through the blue door before Daniel could ask her name, or why she was so interested in him, or what she’d meant about nobody
real
ever showing up.

Daniel patted himself on the chest. He felt real. He certainly didn’t feel dead. Then again, how would he know what being dead felt like? He stared at the door through which the girl had left, and tried the handle. The door was locked. So he went to the second door, the open one. A hilltop view lay before him, patchwork fields and a forest beyond, under a crystal blue sky. The air was warm and sweet as honey.

Daniel stepped down some narrow wooden stairs into a meadow of waist-high grass. He realised he’d been in a wooden caravan – the sort of wagon he imagined travelling folk might use, or circus performers in olden times. The wagon was painted a deep, shimmering blue, decorated with golden flourishes. Something struck him then: if this was all real, how could that girl possibly have left through a door
inside
the wagon?

He was thirsty; his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. He moved towards the stream, bent down and drank. The water was ice cold and pure, and probably the best drink he’d ever had.

“Ah! Awake I see!”

At the sound of the voice, Daniel spat out a mouthful of water, spun, caught a fleeting glimpse of a dusty grey suit and then tripped over his own tangled feet, tumbling to the grass.

“Oh, very graceful,” said the man in the suit. “The Royal Ballet will be knocking at the door any time now.”

Daniel scrambled to his feet, rubbing his elbow, and recognised the owner of the Nowhere Emporium immediately. “You! What are
you
doing here? What am
I
doing here? Am I dreaming?”

The man in the dusty suit scratched his nose. His wild hair swayed in the breeze. “We’re all dreaming, Daniel Holmes, in our own way. Follow me, if you will.” At this he turned and marched up the wooden steps, into the wagon.

Daniel hurried after him.

“Wait! Where’s the girl?” he asked, once they were inside.

“Girl?” the man said. “Don’t bother yourself with her. You have more important things to think about at the moment.” He opened the blue door and indicated the shadowy beyond. “This way. All will be explained.”

Daniel took a slow step towards the door. He peered through.

“That’s not right,” he said. “That
can’t
be right.”

Beyond the blue door was a square entrance hall, like the inside of a castle, that seemed to climb up and up forever, criss-crossed with a hundred – or a thousand – entangled and intertwining stairways, all lit by the flickering glow of torchlight.

The man in the suit stepped into the hall. “Don’t look so worried,” he said. “Nothing can harm you in here. I checked the corridors yesterday, caught the last of the escaped lions.”

He wheeled away and began to stride across the hall.

Daniel was unsure what to do. He watched the man in the suit, and then his eyes widened. “Lions?” he said. “Hey! Wait! Wait up!”

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

The man in the grey suit sat behind his desk, stirring tea in a china cup.

“No,” said Daniel. He watched a small whirlpool form in the liquid and tried to sound braver than he felt. “No tea, thank you. Just tell me what’s going on.”

He had followed the man across the hallway, passing dozens of staircases, to another doorway – this one with a curtain of deep, red velvet. When he’d brushed through the curtain Daniel had found himself back in the Emporium.

The man in the suit sipped at his tea, then returned his cup to a saucer on the desk.

“There really is no way of making what I’m about to say any easier for you to hear or comprehend,” he began. “So here it is: Daniel Holmes, you should be dead.” At this he stood, and began to wander around the shop, his hands clasped behind his back. “Allow me to explain. My name is Lucien Silver. I am a … traveller. This Emporium is my means of transport. It dances through time, taking me from city to city, town to town, village to village, all over the globe.”

“Through time?” said Daniel. “Like Doc Brown?”

Mr Silver gave him a blank look. “Who?”

“Doc Brown,” said Daniel. “You know. Marty McFly.
Back to the Future?
It’s an old movie I saw at the children’s home. Doc and Marty have a time machine.”

Mr Silver shrugged. “I do not get to the cinema much,” he said. His grey eyes sparkled in the light of the fire. “And my Emporium is not just a time machine.” He pointed to the red curtain. “Beyond that curtain, beyond the many staircases we have just passed, lie my Wonders. Think of the Emporium as being like a tree. The hall of staircases you just walked through – that is the trunk. Branching off it are the passageways, hundreds of them, where the Wonders lie. Wherever I visit, customers are drawn to this place. For a small fee, I allow them to step through the curtain and experience what it’s like to fly among the endless stars, to taste the colour of the sunset and explore the very boundaries of imagination. I allow them to visit my Wonders.

“Of course, I cannot allow my customers to remember what they have seen in the Emporium. Not any more. Many years ago, when the shop first opened, they remembered everything. But we soon became much too busy to cope with the crowds. Now they leave with a foggy glow of happiness, perhaps even the sense that their life has changed forever. But they cannot recall the shop. To them, it’s as if it never existed.”

He frowned, and a sudden weight seemed to cause him to sag. “When you ran away, strayed onto that road, you nearly died.”

Daniel opened his mouth, but found his throat thick and choked.

“If that’s true, if I nearly died, then why am I here? How did I get out alive?”

“Because I interfered,” said Silver. “I saved you, Daniel. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do. It was not an easy decision to make. But
the day you returned to the Emporium – the moment I realised you remembered being here the previous day – I knew you were special. I knew there must be a reason why you came to my attention.”

“What sort of reason?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Mr Silver, drumming his fingers on his chin. “But I am offering you the chance of a lifetime, my boy – the chance of a hundred lifetimes. Come with me. Learn about the Emporium. Prove that I was right to interfere. See the world in a way nobody else can. What do you say?”

Daniel said nothing. He stared out of the Emporium’s windows. Glasgow was hidden beneath a veil of thick swirling fog.

“You need persuasion,” said Mr Silver. “Seeing is believing, or so they say.”

He strode towards the shop door, reaching for an elaborate metal instrument on the wall. To Daniel, it looked like a complicated cross between a clock and a compass. There were many dials, and rings of numbers set within smaller rings. Mr Silver began to manipulate the hands of the instrument. When he was satisfied, he spun and headed for the fire, scooping a handful of coal from a bucket on the floor. He tossed the coal into the fire. There was a great roar, and the flames became so bright Daniel shielded his eyes. For the briefest moment, the flames burned a deep red, and the fire exploded, sending a plume of soot billowing into the store.

As Daniel coughed the soot from his lungs, a bar of bright sunlight began to burn through the smoke. When the soot had settled, Mr Silver stood by the door of the Emporium and opened it with a flourish.

“See for yourself,” he said.

Daniel stepped to the doorway and felt a warm breeze on his face. He had been expecting, of course, to look out onto a Glasgow street; to see shoppers bustling past, weighed down
with bags.

But that is not what he saw.

He inched out of the door onto a wide walkway. The air was warm, the sky awash with deep reds and purples. Beyond the walkway, where a road should surely have been, there was a canal lined with tall narrow buildings, all columns and spires and colourful shutters.

“What happened to Glasgow?” Daniel said, ducking back into the Emporium as a passing old woman, laden with a heavy basket, stopped and peered suspiciously at him.

Mr Silver shut the door and made sure the sign in the window read CLOSED.

“We left,” he said, as though this was the most regular occurrence in the world. “That’s Venice. We’re in Venice now.” He glanced at the instrument on the wall. “The year is 1854. July, I believe.”

Daniel craned his neck to get a better view from the window. He wiped the glass, which was foggy from his breath. He tried to find some words.

“It’s impossible!”

“Yet here we are,” said Mr Silver.

Daniel felt the need to sit down. “So we’re … we’re … we’ve just … this is … really?”

“Indeed,” said Silver.

“But. I mean. How? Just …
how
?” Daniel’s eyes widened. “It’s magic, isn’t it? It has to be! How else can we have just come from a caravan in a meadow that’s
inside
a room? There’s no other way for all of this to be real, to be happening.”

Mr Silver smiled. “One thing at a time, Mr Holmes. One thing at a time.”

“And you want me to come with you? All around the world?”

A pause.

Daniel narrowed his eyes. “What’s the catch?”

“The catch, Daniel Holmes, is that you will work to earn your place here. What I am offering is not a holiday. It is an opportunity. A challenge. You must show me I was correct to bring you here, that you are, as I suspect, special. If you succeed in that, then the Emporium will become your home.”

“And what happens if I don’t come up to scratch?” said Daniel. “You sack me? Leave me somewhere halfway round the world a hundred years before I was born?”

“I will do no such thing,” said Mr Silver. “If you do not belong in the Emporium, you will simply be returned to your own time. Your old life.” He offered a hand. “So, do we have a bargain?”

Daniel organised the facts in his mind: he was an orphan leading a miserable life; he didn’t have any friends; a gang of bullies had made it their mission to ensure his life was as uncomfortable as possible; he was lost.

And now he’d been invited to escape all of that and travel through time in a magical shop, with a man he suspected was either a genius or a lunatic – or maybe both. He had the opportunity to be someone else, even if it was just for a while. And if he was someone else, maybe he wouldn’t feel so alone.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

Next morning, as Daniel dressed, he stared out of his wagon at the blazing sun, low in the morning sky. He did not trust his own eyes. As far as Daniel could tell, his wagon and the meadow outside it were somehow contained
inside
a room
within
the shop. How did it all work? How did Mr Silver bring outside
inside
? Was it like a movie set? An illusion? If he were a bird flying in the sky above the wagon, would he get only so high and reach a wall?

The familiar sound of beating wings, and Mr Silver’s gleaming magpies glided through the open door. They fluttered around his head, touched down on his shoulders, stamped their feet and pecked at him. They twitched their heads and flapped this way and that.

Get ready! No time to lose!
they seemed to be telling him.

Daniel finished getting dressed. The magpies chased him out of the door, across the hall of stairways and through the curtain.

Mr Silver was waiting behind his desk in the shop front.

“The only downside to travelling by flame,” he said, expecting Daniel to know what he was talking about, “is the mess it tends to create.” He ran his hand along a tabletop, coating his fingertips with a thick layer of soot. “Your official Emporium duties, in the beginning at least, will consist of keeping the front of shop presentable. I expect this place to be shining when we open to the public this evening.”

Daniel gazed around the soot-covered room. “When do we open?”

Silver raised a finger, shook off the soot. “Our doors open at twilight and close at dawn.”

And so, with excitement buzzing through him, and a job to keep his mind busy, Daniel set to work, cleaning and tidying and clearing the place of soot. Everything was filthy. How long had it been since Mr Silver last cleaned? Daniel adjusted columns of books and polished the silver and jet stone pieces of a beautiful chess set. Every time he turned away, the pieces would move around the board, as though a game between two invisible opponents was underway.

So much work made the day rush past, and by early evening the day had melted to twilight. Daniel became aware that a curious crowd was beginning to gather outside. He peered out through the window.

“Why haven’t they come before now?” he said. “We’ve been here for two days.”

Mr Silver, who was at his desk writing in his battered old book, barely glanced up.

“Most of them haven’t noticed us until now,” he said.

Daniel narrowed his eyes.

“You mean you haven’t let them notice, don’t you?”

To which Mr Silver only smiled.

Then, at last, Silver snapped his book shut, locked it away in its drawer, stood up, and threw on his coat.

“Showtime,” he said, patting his hair in a futile attempt to flatten the wild tangle.

The door of the Emporium creaked open. Silence poured into the shop, deep and electric. Daniel held his breath, listening to the drumbeat of his own heart.

Mr Silver held out his right hand, then waved his left hand over
it. Where only a moment ago there had been nothing but empty space, a dove sat in his palm, white feathers glowing in the light of the fire. Daniel breathed a hundred different scents: chocolate and wood fire, pipe smoke and cinnamon. Mr Silver’s grey eyes shone as he released the dove and watched it fly out into the darkness.

“Welcome to opening night, Daniel Holmes.”

A flash of light illuminated the darkened sky.

Then the customers began to come.

Their eyes grew wide as they caught sight of the treasures within the Emporium. Grown men and women became like children once more, anxious to touch and inspect every shining trinket.

When they noticed the curtain, Mr Silver would pull back the material with a flourish, inviting them to witness the Wonders beyond. Daniel watched with fascination as they filtered through. His mind fizzed with curiosity.

“This is supposed to be a shop,” he said. “So how come nobody’s buying anything?”

Mr Silver wagged a finger.

“That, Daniel, is where you are wrong. Come with me.”

The moment he stepped back through the curtain, Daniel knew something magical had happened. The entrance hall full of staircases, once steeped in shadow and silence, had become alive with warmth and light. The soft flicker of the torches had intensified, reflecting and dancing on the sparkling walls. Aromas of caramel and spice filled the air.

The hallways were dotted with performers and vendors, men and women scattered here and there, at the foot and summit of stairways. Each was dressed in a combination of black and shimmering gold. Some handed out candyfloss, or caramel apples, or warm chocolate pies; others performed magic tricks, or juggled, or swallowed swords. No two were identical.

“Where did they come from?” said Daniel, passing a bare-chested
man who was breathing fire. The flames formed the shape of a pouncing tiger, then an elephant, and finally a dragon.

“From within,” said Mr Silver.

As they walked, they passed several customers chattering excitedly about rooms that contained impossible things: oceans and deserts and windows to the stars. A little girl tugged on the sleeve of her mother’s coat. “I saw a dragon, Mama!” she was saying. “A real dragon with fire breath and wings and a spiky black tail!”

“I can understand what they’re saying!” said Daniel, who had until that moment forgotten that he was in a foreign country, and that these people were not speaking in English.

“Of course you can,” said Silver. “What use would I have for an assistant who could not communicate with my customers? You can now understand and speak any language that you may need.”

Daniel tried to remain cautious, suspicious even – mostly because nothing he cared about tended to hang around for very long. But wonder had begun to chip away at his armour.

“Are there other shops like this?” he asked. “Is there more magic out there?”

“There is nowhere else like my Emporium,” Mr Silver said. “There is magic, certainly, and plenty of it – but it exists at the edges of things, in the corner of the eye and the back of the mind. Our world is filled with the extraordinary, Daniel. For many reasons, most people only see the things they wish to see. They are afraid of anything that cannot be explained by a scientific formula or written in a textbook. So they ignore the unknown. But for those of us who open our eyes, those who truly dare to wonder, there is treasure everywhere.”

They went around a sharp bend and through a tunnel of black stone to a door set in a corridor of black slate. A golden nameplate was attached to the centre of the door, and looping letters spelled out simply:

Mr Silver reached into his coat, producing a crimson scarf and gloves, pulling them on with great care. He opened the door.

The cold breath of winter brushed Daniel’s face. He sucked in a deep lungful of air. It smelled like a December morning.

Mr Silver’s feet crunched on the ground as he stepped through the door. Daniel followed, moving from dim hallway to clean sunlight. He was standing on a frozen pond in the middle of thick woodland. Everything around him glittered with a coating of frost, from the tips of the tallest trees to the forest floor.

In the centre of the pond stood a simple fountain made from three circular tiers of stone. A thin silvery liquid flowed over the stones.

Mr Silver smiled at the look on Daniel’s face.

“You question whether my customers are actually buying anything? I can assure you that they are. I sell them amazement. I am a merchant of wonder.” He leaned over and gathered a pile of frost from the frozen pond, rubbing it between his gloved fingers. “But my customers do not pay for their experience in the Emporium with coins or notes. No. My price is a piece of their imagination.”

Daniel took one step back.

“Oh, it’s easily done, if you know the way,” Silver said. “Customers are free to wander through the doors, to be amazed and wonderstruck.” He indicated the silver solution that flowed over the fountain. “The Emporium takes a little of their brimming wonder, their imagination – never enough for the customer to miss it of course – and it becomes the liquid you see here. It is the fuel that powers everything you see; the lifeblood of the Emporium. Imagination is the root of magic.”

“Do they know?” said Daniel. In the pit of his stomach he felt sick at the thought of imagination being extracted from clueless customers. “Do you tell people what you’re doing to them?”

Silver shook his head. For a fleeting moment he looked old and fragile, standing in the frost.

“It wasn’t always this way. There was a time, when I was a younger man, that my own imagination was enough. But I am growing older. I must keep the Emporium running. And no harm comes to anyone – that is a promise! Imagination is alive. It grows in the mind like a tree. The Emporium merely clips a few of the branches. What little I take grows back, in time.” He observed Daniel. “If this has changed things, if you wish to leave, you may do so. I will drop you back in your own time. Just say the word.”

Daniel stared at the fountain, at the silvery imagination flowing over the stone.

He was filled with doubts and questions, and he was wary of Mr Silver’s power. He considered what it might be like to return to his life, to the rain-soaked streets of Glasgow; to loneliness, and to nobody. He looked into Mr Silver’s serious grey eyes.

“I don’t want to go back,” he said. “I want to stay, and see the world. I want to learn about magic. I want to know secrets. I want to be somebody.”

A smile played on Silver’s lips, and he bowed his head to Daniel. “As you wish.”

Something moved in the tops of the trees, a blinding flash of silver soaring into the blue sky.

“How did you do it?” Daniel asked. “How do you make all of this?”

“Tomorrow,” said Mr Silver. “Tomorrow I will start your lessons. And we will begin to find out if you have what it takes to become a part of the Nowhere Emporium. Tomorrow, the first test awaits!”

“What sort of test?”

But no answer came.

Daniel stood alone in the frozen world. The only sign that Mr Silver had been in the woodland at all was a trail of footprints in the frost.