Threads

Chapter Six: Part 1

Chapter Six

A New Acquaintance

            The day before they moved the shop, the backroom coffee maker broke. Alice, who disliked the idea of living without one, volunteered to go out and get another. “I’ll just be a minute.”

            “Take your time.”

             She stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking up and down the street. She’d been shopping here already, but mostly she’d just been into clothing stores. There was a large red, brick building on the corner, and she could read part of a sign that said, “ool For the Gifted”.   It probably didn’t say “Pool for the Gifted”, so it had to be one of those magic schools Azura had talked about.

            On one side of Threads was a dusty looking antiques shop, the other was a pet store. She blinked, trying to remember if she’d seen that before. Alice wandered over to it, staring in the window of “Francina’s Familiars”. The window front was a room that housed a number of kittens. Four grey kittens rolled about in playful tussles, while two entirely white kittens sat in the corner watching the others with disgust. She couldn’t help herself - she was supposed to go get a coffee maker, but she didn’t think Azura would mind if she just popped in to look at some fuzzy kittens. After all, she was the boss, so she couldn’t get in trouble, right?

            She pushed open the door.  The inside looked like any other pet store.  Cages and tanks lined the walls, and the shelves were full of wood chips and pet food.  Great tangles of magic pulsed and flowed around the ceiling over her head.  The threads writhed, crawling up the walls with eerie, serpentine movements and Alice stared at them, rubbing at her arms. She had goose bumps. The threads of magic seemed to glow in different shades than she’d seen so far. The threads in her shop were vivid, bright and beautiful. These one’s glowed with dull and sickly light, and they never stopped pulsing, even though nobody was working a spell.  The second thing she noticed was the thick layer of smoke that hung in the air, brushing past her skin as she walked, filling her nostrils with a burnt, ashy smell.  As she walked down the first isle she found the source of it. Alice stared in astonishment.  The first cage housed a tiny lizard with a pair of bat-like wings on its back.  It was sleeping, curled on its side with its long tail around its feet.  Its scales were black as pitch, and the surface of the creature shone, reflecting its surroundings. When it exhaled, a thin trickle of smoke leaked from its nostrils and drifted out of the top of the cage.

             “It’s a dragon,” Alice breathed.  She continued slowly down the aisle.  Each cage housed a similar creature. One was a bright red color and she paused to admire its scales.  The cages and the dragons in them were getting bigger and bigger. The one at the end of the isle made her breath catch.  This dragon was awake, starring at her, its yellow eyes slits in the black scales of its face. It was curled up, arms and legs folded under itself as a dog would lie, but it was obvious that if it stood on all fours it would be taller than she was.  Wasn’t it dangerous?  She noticed a sign on the shelf above the cage, “All Dragons Have Been De-Fired”. She snorted. De-fired? Like you would de-claw a cat?

            Alice noted that all the cages seemed just a bit too small for their occupants.  It didn’t look as if any of them could stand comfortably.  It seemed cruel, and she felt a pang of sorrow for them, in spite of how scary they might look. 

She wandered down the next isle. This one held mostly parrots, budgies and cockatoos, except for the cages at the very end, which held several different types of owls. One of the barn owls hooted enquiringly at her. It stared so intently that Alice couldn’t help feeling like she was the one being examined.