Worthless Relics of Former Times (32)
Godiar couldn’t withstand both of us at once. He pushed aside his obvious reluctance and got to his feet.
Go back to the INDEX.
Godiar’s surprise was immediate and genuine. “That is a row of shops. Nothing of any great value or quality. Why do you ask?”
“It caught my fancy.” Mother smiled in a way that made me despair. “What kind of things do they sell?”
Godiar frowned. “Spices. Beads. Worthless relics of former times. You have need of such items?”
“Need?” Mother laughed. “No, not at all. But I am more curious now, with your description.”
“The day is almost over,” I said. “We don’t have time to get to the Cellar Precinct and explore the area Father is most likely to have walked. If we familiarize ourselves with this Precinct instead, we can begin our investigations in earnest tomorrow.”
Godiar couldn’t withstand both of us at once. He pushed aside his obvious reluctance, and got to his feet. “Then let us leave now. Now that your copies are complete, I can take the originals home with me, although I do not wish to carry them around all afternoon. I shall return here with you afterwards, to collect them.”
I suspected he also wanted more opportunity to listen to our conversations.
Godiar led us through the Mill Precinct, and I realized he followed a familiar path. Godiar had come this way for our inks and papers, although his former path turned away from our current one, and we didn’t get within sight of the ink shop. If we had, I would have asked a gentle question about it, just to confirm my understanding of what was happening.
A disturbance in the street drew Godiar’s attention for a moment, but he quickly realized what was going on, and lost interest. Mother, just as quickly, became mesmerized. Two naked youths, oiled and ebony, performed a strange ritualistic dance, mirroring each other’s movements almost perfectly, to the beat of a soft drum. A hundred or more onlookers pressed in around them.
Godiar realized we were no longer following, and came back to explain what we saw. “They compete for the honour of their families, by dancing for the Old Goddess and striving for her favour. The old hag is dead, so the whole effort is futile.”
Godiar was clearly not a believer.
Mother cast a withering gaze at our friend, but caught my eye by accident. She pulled herself away from the spectacle, and we pushed our way out of the crowd.
Our destination looked much like the other nearby establishments. Completely unexceptional. Part of a row of small shops, each featuring a few obvious wares on the street, and other things hidden in narrow depths. The focus of Father’s attention had been the trinket shop in the middle of the block. To the left of the trinket shop, spices, then nuts, then fabrics. To the right, superstitious charms, then dried flowers, then beads and bangles.
There was no good reason for us to be here, no reason that this humdrum little shop would have stood out on any map. It was a fiction, a blatant lie, and Godiar should have known it. I would never have accepted such an obvious ploy. Perhaps he just didn’t want to see it?
The trinket shop’s wares filled tables and shelves reaching back into the shadowed depths, and it was an eclectic mix. Items of various woods, stones, crystals, glass, fibres. Statuettes, paperweights, artistic sculptures, tapestries, mats, figurines, models. I had no idea what Father would have been looking for here.
There was barely enough room in the little shop for all three of us poking about at once. I soon lost interest and returned to the street. Mother seemed to be searching for something in particular, and I’d ask her about it when I had the chance. I wandered the nearby stores, aiming for aimlessness, while trying to aim (without seeming to) for a spot that intersected with the Trace I had seen on the map. I noted the dry flowers. I noted the charms. For all of Godiar’s religious dismissiveness, there was plenty of superstitious belief on display in Agali.
Beyond the line of shops, an alley stretched away in the vague direction of the Cellar Precinct. On the map, Father’s old Trace had come out of it and returned to it. There wasn’t even the slightest echo of Father in my senses, though. It baffled me how I could simultaneously be so oblivious to him ever having been here, but at the same time have some deep-seated subconscious knowledge of his presence that only emerged because of drawing that map.
“Do you see something?” Godiar asked from right behind me, startling me.
“Nothing,” I said. This had the advantage of being the truth, in case that was something Godiar was able to discern. “It would be so easy to get lost here. All these winding streets and little alleys snaking everywhere.”
Godiar agreed. “It is a matter of familiarity, however. I seem to recall getting lost in Peledar innumerable times. The Mill Precinct reminds me a lot of your city. In some ways.”
He had me there. “Hmmm. I suppose you’re right.”
Mother appeared behind Godiar, apparently satisfied with the shop and its contents. She grimaced at me.
I understood. I’d brought attention to this alley where Father had been. Now she would not be able to pretend some random whim to lead us through it. Godiar would certainly suspect if she tried.
So she brightly turned away, and we walked the Precinct for another hour before finding ourselves near to home by dusk.
Godiar retrieved his maps, and we bade him goodnight.
We watched, on our Mill Precinct map, as his fresh Trace burned a path in our awareness.
“Did you learn anything?” I asked.
“Nothing. The shopkeeper says foreigners visit from time to time, but he doesn’t remember Aranon.”
“And there was no sign in the alley. I couldn’t feel anything.”
“Too many others have passed the same way since.” Mother sighed.
Godiar’s Trace moved inexorably away from our lodgings.
“Shall we?” I asked.
Mother nodded, and we slipped out the door into the gathering dusk.
Continue reading with Part 33 next Thursday.