Shadows
Chapter Two: Oxbrow & Son

“What do you mean two herrings, this was only one last time?!” exclaimed an appalled customer. Angie sighed.

“Yes, that was because it was the item on offer last month,” she explained, trying her best to sound calm and polite, “so it was half price. This month all the chamomile mixtures are half price, see?” she said, gesturing to the sign she’d painstakingly made the night before that had already been knocked over twice and trodden on. “Chamomile tea, lotions, bathing mixtures, you name it!” she recited half-heartedly, genuine enthusiasm not being her strongest ability.

“But I don’t want chamomile, I want the lavender cream.” stated the unimpressed customer, pointing to the small basket of blue-stoppered bottles and jars.

“Well I’m still selling the lavender cream, it’s just that it’s back up to the usual price of two herrings this month.”

“But I’ve only got one herring, I spent the rest at Julie’s Jewellery earlier!” sulked the petulant young girl, her arms crossed. Angie was wondering if she would be forgiven by the city guard for caving the girl’s head in. They’d given her leeway the time she’d accidentally tripped that visiting baron into a barrel of week-old fish but she felt that was probably due to the fact the man had been a boorish menace to the guards, not out of any particular fondness for her. Better not risk it, she thought, and put on a forced smile.

“Well how about this?” she reasoned, “I’ll pour half of the cream in one of these jars into a smaller one and then you can pay me one herring for that?”

“No, I shan’t bother with it then.” pouted the girl, who turned to flounce off down the street. Angie’s eye twitched as she placed the jar back into the basket. It hadn’t been the worst afternoon of trading, she conceded. The chamomile tea had been selling well, not least because of the delicate fragrance but also because it helped marvellously with the hay fever some people suffered from at this time of year. The wandering minstrel who sometimes frequented the market hadn’t turned up today, which she counted as a blessing as well. And best of all Jacob Oxbrow hadn’t shown his face yet and she was only about an hour from closing up the stall, so was silently hoping that would mean not having to deal with him today either.

Most of the market stalls were starting to pack up already, having been there since early morning they’d long sold their wares and finished for the day. She watched them from her splintered stool behind her stall up Slope Street, so called because it sloped down from the Garden District, where all the well-off families in Velayne lived, all the way down to the port and docks along the bay. The quality of housing got gradually more cramped and ramshackle the further down Slope Street you went, and the quality of shop decreased too, though she would never dare say this to Mrs Gable, whose apothecary was situated towards the lower end. Angie rarely ventured up Slope Street as far as the Garden District, save for the Pausday School sometimes and the odd occasion in which she’d had to nip into one of the fancier shops for some rare ingredient or book on herbs. She didn’t like the Garden District much and never really felt she was welcome much there either, which suited her just fine. She was vastly happier down by the docks where she knew her way around, everyone knew everyone else and she was relatively well liked and respected. Attending to people’s health complaints and conditions wasn’t a particularly pleasant job most times, nor the most highly paid, but it was one she was good at and people appreciated her skill and hard work. Though she could, and frequently would, moan and complain about Old Tarwick’s feet and boils until the cows came home, there was nothing as satisfying and heart-warming as seeing the old man’s grateful smile at the end of every visit.

The familiar sounds of the gulls cawing noisily above the bay and the sea salt breeze that rolled across the rooftops made Angie smile as she watched the warm orange sun sail across the sky on its descent towards the distant waters of the Northern Sea. Not often did the island of Adwich, northernmost of all the territories in the Empire, get weather this warm and sunny, its usual climate being much more on the rain and fog and cold side of things. Angie quite liked the sun. She didn’t like much if she was honest, a trait she sometimes regretted and wondered what doors it had closed for her in life in the early hours of the morning, but she liked the sun. Looking out across the bay watching the sun dip below the cool blue waters of a seemingly endless ocean put her at peace, and all stresses about lavender cream and the like faded from her mind.

“Well, well! Evangeline, what a pleasure to see you at market again!” said a voice dripping with self-importance and attempted charm. Angie felt rage bubbling up inside her within an instant and fought the urge to growl at the approaching boy.

“Jacob Oxbrow, I believe? To what do I owe the pleasure?” Angie asked, with such thinly veiled sarcasm no-one could have interpreted the question as sincere.

“Ah, but the pleasure is all mine my dear Evangeline, to get to see your radiant beauty once more and hear your dulcet tones caress my ears.” replied Jacob, whilst Angie nearly threw up. She did not consider herself a radiant beauty[3] and whilst she did not recognise the word ‘dulcet’ she decided it was far too fancy a term for any noise that came out of her mouth. The thought of anything of hers caressing anything of Jacobs, ears or otherwise, repelled her.

This was not because of the boy’s appearance, whom she grudgingly admitted was rather quite handsome. He had short black hair and a strong build, with dark brown eyes that shone with confidence. His looks reminded Angie of one of the princes in the book of fairy tales Mrs Gable had got her for her 14th birthday, which unfortunately had been misplaced[4], but that was where the comparison ended. His lips were twisted into a permanent self-satisfied smirk that was rather unpleasant to behold and if you stared too long into his eyes you could see the hunger and cruelty lying behind them. To Angie’s irritation those eyes had become fixed on her in recent months, which had meant having to suffer sickening compliments and bandy false flirtations with him until he went away. More than once she had considered telling Jacob what she really thought of him and at least twice had slipped a short knife she used for harvesting herbs into her boot in case he tried anything, but despite her inner strength and iron willpower she was acutely aware that any physical conflict might not end so well. Jacob was tough and rarely without his three followers, boys she had never bothered to remember the names of, and it didn’t take a genius to realise the odds would not be in her favour, dagger or not.

Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t manage to wipe that smirk off his face first, Angie thought to herself, wishing she’d brought the dagger with her today. Mind you, now Verne was back in port perhaps he could pay Jacob a visit and help her lay down some ground rules, she thought, smiling to herself. Though it didn’t take her long to realise that Verne would not always be around to watch out for her and she had no idea how long he was staying in port this time for starters. No, Jacob Oxbrow was a problem she’d have to deal with by herself.

Snapping back to the present, as Jacob finished a particularly long compliment Angie feared might have been an attempt at poetry, she coughed politely and discreetly began to pack up her stall.

“I would hate to sound rude Jacob, but I’m afraid I must head back home,” Angie began, concocting an appropriate lie in her mind as she went, “My aunt is unfortunately most unwell at the present and I daren’t leave her alone in the house too long. I hope you will understand if I excuse myself?” She finished, bundling up the wares left on her stall into a small hessian bag that she wore over her shoulder. She took a step down the street but Jacob sidled round the stall to stand in front of her.

“That is a great shame to hear,” he replied, his words coated in false sincerity, “I wasn’t aware you had an aunt. Forgive me – I always thought you were an orphan, but it pleases me to know you’re not alone in the world. Do send her my regards and I wish her a speedy recovery. Perhaps my friends and I could accompany you back to your home? The sun is going down and I would hate to see such a delicate beauty such as yourself come to any harm.”

“Most kind of you all!” Angie smiled, looking round at the four boys as if to thank them, but in reality she was assessing any possible escape routes with steadily increasing panic. There was no-one else around so shouting for help wasn’t an option. Her mind raced with possibilities for escape and found her options few and unpleasant. If only Verne were here, she thought, and she felt a spark of an idea take shape in her mind. Ah yes, there is that option, she remembered, and subtly started to search her bag. “Really, it is most kind but I’m capable of taking care of myself, thank you. I couldn’t ask you to take your evening up escorting little old me home.” Jacob and the boys were advancing towards her now and Angie felt like a net was closing around her, her heart racing.

“Oh, I couldn’t send you off alone,” smiled Jacob, giving Angie a look like a cat closing in on a cornered mouse. “If anything were to happen I couldn’t live with myself. Here, take my arm,” he said, offering a meaty arm towards Angie who was still desperately fumbling in her bag for something. “Show me the way to your home, I’ve always wanted to see where it is…”

There was a short sharp crack and a thick black cloud of acrid smoke exploded in the middle of the group, engulfing Angie and the four boys. Jacob lunged forwards and caught a sharp elbow to the nose followed up by a sharper kick in between his legs that made him yelp and collapse to the ground, coughing and heaving. The other boys were flailing their arms towards where Angie had been, whilst trying to waft away the foul smog and retching at the pungent smell that burnt their eyes and throats. A small, soot-coloured figure darted out of the cloud and down a nearby side alley, head down and their pounding against the uneven cobbles.

Bugger bugger bugger! Cursed Angie under her breath, wiping stinging tears from her eyes and gasping for breath. The smoke bomb had exploded too close and knocked the wind out of her as she’d ignited it, but she’d been braced and tried not to breathe too much of the smog in shock as she had done once before. It was the damn ignition cords, she fumed to herself as she ducked round a corner and down another non-descript alley, they’re too damn fiddly! Whenever Verne made her the next batch of smoke bombs they’d have easier triggers, she swore. The sounds of shouting and coughing behind her grew fainter and fainter as she kept running, vaulting over some discarded crates and slipping down some worn steps which led onto Harbour Walk, the seafront road that connected to the many piers and docks of Velayne.

She looked down at her clothes, where a massive black soot stain was etched into the front of her dress. Her hands were blackened too and without a mirror to hand she could only hope she’d kept her eyebrows this time. People walking around the bay enjoying the sunset, as Angie had been just a few minutes previously, were taken aback to see her striding towards them looking as if she’d been in a fight with a chimney sweep’s brush. A mother hastily escorted her child to the other side of the street muttering something Angie didn’t catch, but she didn’t mind them moving out of her way. She was eager to get home, get a hearty meal inside her and listen to what Verne had to say this time - he always managed to wring a good mood out of Angie. When he was telling his tall tales of life on the high seas, often whilst drunk and often whilst including the entirety of the tavern’s clientele in his energetic retelling, no-one was capable of staying in a bad mood.

“What am I going to do with you, boy?” sighed Mr Colywick exasperatedly as he flipped the sign in the door over from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’. He fiddled with the brass key in the door, then once it was locked, turned and flapped his arms above his head as he struggled with the pole hook to pull down the window blinds. Robert stood in the middle of the shop floor looking sheepish, twiddling his bowtie between his fingers nervously. All of a sudden his feet seemed very interesting. “I mean,” groaned Mr Colywick, tussling with a particularly tricky hook, “this is the third time this month I’ve heard you getting all in a tizz over a book! I mean don’t get me wrong lad, I love your enthusiasm but there is such a thing as restraint you know!”

The old man finally finished his battle with the blinds, laid the pole hook back against a bookshelf and turned to face Robert who was endeavouring to occupy as little space as possible. He adjusted his spectacles and placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders in what he hoped was a comforting fashion.

“Look lad, I’m not telling you off. You and I both know that you’re the best damn bookkeeper’s apprentice in Velayne, probably Adwich, and I’d wager in the whole of the Empire too. You do have your quirks though, don’t you lad?” Robert nodded, still not raising his head. “I knew that when I took you on, I told myself: ‘Elphias, that Hickson lad is an odd one but there’s no-one who knows books like he does. What’s the harm in trialling him as your new apprentice?’

“Now I’d like to think we’ve come a long way with some of your odd habits, eh lad? Remember when you felt uncomfortable seeing someone touch a book whilst not wearing gloves, hmm? Or when Mrs Averby folded over that page corner in front of you and you started twitching and foaming at the mouth?” Robert remembered.

“Yes, Mr Colywick.” He shamefully replied.

“Well, you don’t do that anymore, do you?” Mr Colywick smiled with attempted joviality. “So all we need to do is keep on working at this and then we can relax!”

“Yes, Mr Colywick.”

“You know why I’m so worried about this, don’t you lad?” There was a pause.

“No, Mr Colywick.”

“Fair enough, fair enough. What you were saying about Mr Oxbrow earlier, rather loudly and in front of quite a few customers I am told, was very inappropriate.”

“B-but it’s true, Mr Colywick!” Robert started, raising his head for the first time since Mr Colywick had returned to the shop that afternoon. “Oxbrow puts no time or effort into any of his work, he b-b-butchers beloved b-books and, and, and-” Mr Colywick had raised an old, gnarled hand the texture of a walnut.

“I agree, lad, I agree. Angstrom Oxbrow is a pathetic excuse for anyone who professes to know anything about books. Everything you’ve said on the matter is true in my eyes, I don’t disagree with you there.” Robert was rather taken aback by this admission, and stumbled over his words in disbelief.

“B-b-but why then-?” Robert started, but Mr Colywick’s hand was politely raised once more.

“Because on top of all of that, Angstrom is a very angry, very petty man. If he were to hear what you’ve been saying about him in front of crowds I’d dread to think what he’d do. It’s all for your own good, lad! Whilst you may know everything there is to know about books you’re still quite naïve when it comes to people, aren’t you?” Mr Colywick sighed, slipping his spectacles off and wiping them with a grubby handkerchief before placing them back onto his beak-like nose. “Not only would getting rid of you sate his lust for violence but it would dispose of a competitor, so don’t try and tell me he wouldn’t try anything. I hear as well that his young lad has inherited his father’s temperament and not his mother’s, gods rest her soul. Why, Mrs Froud told me when I was down at the docks earlier that Oxbrow junior and his gang of no-goods have been causing no end of trouble for the poor girls down near the dockyards and caused a rather nasty ruckus with a group of young sailors the other month. They lost, of course,” smiled Mr Colywick to himself, “once the older sailors piled in ’n all – but the fact Oxbrow junior and his group are still loitering around our fair city makes me uncomfortable.”

Mr Colywick turned to face Robert again, and looked up at the gangly young lad. Puffing out his chest a bit, making the man look a bit like a small balding owl, he said:

“For those reasons I am grounding you for the next two weeks.” Robert deflated further still and opened his mouth to argue but closed it again once he saw the sad but stern look in Mr Colywick’s eyes. “Once the summer festival has finished Mr Oxbrow and his son will shut up shop for autumn whilst he travels to his brother’s farm on the mainland to help with the harvest season. Hopefully by the time he returns he’ll have forgotten all about the little incident today and we can go back to normal routine, but whilst he is in town you are to keep a low profile, understand me?” Robert nodded.

True, he would have loved to see the summer festival. It was always a highlight of the year in Velayne, a three day event that seemed to bring the whole island together. People would travel from all of Adwich’s settlements, from the nearby hamlet of Shepsmoot or as far along the southern coast as the port town of Alderbay. Sometimes you would even see traders from the far north villages that would bring rare fish and sea creatures, but that often required a cool summer to allow for the food to stay fresh on the long journey to Velayne, and this summer was shaping up to be a scorcher. That was a shame, thought Robert. He had had a fascinating conversation with one of the fishermen named Atuc, he remembered, about narwhals. The man had claimed to have regularly seen them in some of the northernmost ice lakes around his village of Tundrin, but Robert had insisted that according to Vanmeiyer’s Flora and Fauna the narwhal was a mythical creature of which there was no authentic record.

Atuc had said: Yes there is, I’ve seen them.

Robert had replied: Well I do beg your pardon, but Vanmeiyer is the eminent authority on the matter and I’m inclined to agree with him.

Atuc had stated he did not care if Van-what’s-his-face was the illegitimate austerity on anything, and had made uncalled for derisions about the man’s ability to be able to locate his own posterior if it was staring him in the face.

Robert had politely explained that this was an anatomical impossibility, but if he were allowed to get back to the matter at hand he would quite like to see one of these so-called narwhals and had asked Atuc to take him to see them when he returned home to Tundrin after the festival.

Atuc had graciously agreed to take him there when Tundrin next had a heatwave, but Robert foolishly had neglected to ask when this was likely to be. He was quite eager to see Atuc again so he might ask him for a weather calendar.[5]

“I said, did you understand me lad?” repeated Mr Colywick, staring into Robert’s eyes which had glazed over. Within an instant life sprung back into his eyes and after blinking twice Robert looked down at Mr Colywick and gave a sad nod of acknowledgement.

“Yes, Mr Colywick.”

“Now there’s a good lad.” Mr Colywick sighed with relief, and felt he had been sighing more this evening than he had been breathing. “This evening needs brightening up,” he said, giving a jolly smile and sticking his thumbs into his braces. “Whilst I was down at the docks supervising that order of new bookbinding materials I dropped into the market and picked us both up a lovely fresh cod! Why don’t you light the fire and start cutting some veg and I’ll get preparing the fish – might even break out some of Mrs Colywick’s Special for a nightcap!”[6] With that Mr Colywick shuffled past Robert and towards the back of the shop where there was a set of small, winding stairs leading to the upstairs floors. The 1st floor was full of more books, and on the 2nd floor was the kitchen and a small bedroom and study where Mr Colywick resided. A short climb up a collapsible stepladder led to the attic where Robert slept.

Before heading up to the kitchen Robert stepped out the back of the building into a small courtyard that was bordered by the backs of several other shops. He strode over to a pile of chopped logs and balanced a few awkwardly in his arms before beginning a tottering journey back in through the door and up the stairs to the kitchen. As Robert grappled with the tinder box, Mr Colywick humming merrily in the background as he filleted the cod, he wondered about what book to read tonight.

Thank goodness he’d discovered that cache of mythology books in one of the old storerooms last month, Robert mused to himself. He’d already read pretty much the entirety of all the books stocked at Colywick’s Book Emporium, and if he was to be relegated to his attic for the evenings of the next two weeks he’d need fresh material. One of the volumes in particular felt very old, he remembered as a spark leapt from the tinder box and landed in the kindling in the fireplace, very old indeed. I can’t wait to learn its story, Robert thought, eyes aglow as the fire burst into life before him.

There was a reason Robert was so good at book repair. There was a reason he could tell immediately whether a book was an original or a copy. There was a reason he could take hold of a book and instantly know how and when it was damaged and consequently how to fix it. Most people can only read books by opening their covers and reading the words printed on the pages, but Robert knew how to read whole other stories hidden from the everyday reader. By touching a book, taking a deep breath whilst closing his eyes and then opening his mind just like this, he could read the past.

Footnotes:

[3] Despite her views on this matter, any observer with functioning eyesight would most likely disagree. She was frequently covered in blood, sweat and muck from her work and did nothing to accentuate her looks by choosing to wear bland dresses and tunics more befitting a lady four times her age, not to mention her well-loved and oft-repaired hobnail boots, but the fundamentals were there.

She had rich shoulder length red hair that she swept up behind her in a messy but practical braid that dangled over her shoulder, and sparkling hazel eyes with a green tinge. Her milky white skin was currently gently sun-freckled, and though she rarely chose to fix her mouth into anything more than a disinterested scowl a genuine smile from her was brighter and more cheerful than a thousand sunrises.

[4] Into a crate of timber being loaded onto a ship heading south to Elthrium.

[5] The island of Adwich was one of the larger landmasses in the Empire. Located north of the main continent of Elthrium, the largest landmass where most of the people in the Empire lived, Adwich was a thin but long island that stretched as far north as the ice caps. The southernmost settlements like Velayne and Alderbay experienced four seasons’ worth of weather, though summer often lasted less than a week some years and autumn and winter always seemed to take up an unfair amount of the year. By the time you got as far north as the ice fishing villages like Tundrin spring and autumn were rarely seen and summer had been declared missing, presumed dead.

[6] Mrs Renata Colywick had passed away quite a few years ago but had lived on in the legacy of her highly infamous homebrewed spirit, commonly referred to as a ‘Mrs Colywick Special’. What exactly the drink tasted like had never actually been found out, as by the time anyone began to launch into a description of its flavour they were often burbling incoherently or already unconscious.