Closing Time

The door chimes jingled gently as the stranger entered the front room of the tiny shop. The owner, a witch of great power and extraordinary beauty, stood behind the centuries-old wooden counter. She glanced at the grandfather clock standing in the corner; eleven bells would sound in fifteen short minutes.

“Welcome!” she said, her voice pleasantly sweet, “to The Daffodil Magic Shoppe, where we offer do-it-yourself magical solutions for non-magical people. Is there something we can help you find?”

Enticed by her honeyed greeting, the man bowed dramatically low, “Thank you, miss,” he said.

“Merona,” she said, “you may call me Merona. I’ll have none of this ‘miss’ business.”

“Certainly,” he tipped his precarious and pointed hat, “and I am usually known as Teranan.”

His eyes wandered a bit too freely for her taste, but she returned his curiosity with some of her own. He was tall and if she had to guess, possibly part elvish, with golden eyes and golden-grey hair. His beard was pointed. Typical of human warlocks, she thought.

She glanced at the clock. “Good Teranan,” she said, looking him directly in the eye, “we close at eleven bells, which will occur roughly thirteen minutes from now.”

“Oh, oh, of course,” he said, “I am more or less just looking. I have heard of your famous little shop with its magical doo-dads. I wanted to see it for myself.”

“We are flattered,” she said, waltzing around the counter, her form gliding graciously through the shelves full of knick-knacks, obviously placed there to part impulsive customers from their pennies.

Merona laid a gentle hand on the man’s elbow, giving it a slight a squeeze, “Good friend Teranan, if you are ‘just looking,’ may we provide a brief tour?”

He nodded, “A woman as beautiful as you may show me anything she wants.”

Rolling her eyes, Merona glanced at the grandfather clock. The ornate inlaid dial at the top of the elegant wood frame indicated that there were only ten minutes left before closing time.

She posed a question, “Other than trying to flatter me, what are you actually looking for?”

“I’m looking for something that will help me.”

“Well,” she said, “if help is what you seek, you’ve come to the right place. Over there, by the window, we have a collection of magic brooms. They will sweep whichever room, barn, or stable your heart desires.“

“Up there,” she pointed at a wide shelf above the same window, “is the number one best seller among all the wives that visit us.” She leaned close to his ear and whispered, “Self-cleaning dishes, of course.”

She winked at him before pointing to a bucket full of horse blinders in the next corner. “Ah, these are loved by the farmhands; they sell almost as much as the dishes do!”

She held some up for him to see. They looked like regular blinders. “You put these on your trusty steed and instantly their minds are envisioning wide fields full of delectable grass. They don’t even realize they’re being brushed or shod!”

He rubbed his beard, “So, you’re saying those blinders keep them from kicking?”

“One thousand percent guarantee.”

Merona patted the side of the ancient grandfather clock, “Six and a half minutes to go, good friend, before we close up for the night.”

He admired the clock, noting a familiar pattern engraved in the wood.

“Is that a genuine Doldrathine clock? It’s much larger than I would’ve expected.”

“You have an excellent eye,” said Merona, “it most assuredly is.”

“How did it come to be in your possession?” he asked, a measure of awe in his voice.

“Well, since there’s only five minutes left until eleven bells, I shall be brief.”

He nodded.

She continued, “It was one of my earliest enchantments, and a failed one. The customer was not happy. I ended up having to refund their entire purchase, but here we are.” She patted the clock again, “I wouldn’t trade him for the world.”

With a glint in his eyes, he said aloud, “Oh, but you could…”

“Well, yes,” she countered, nonchalantly, “I suppose I could. But I wouldn’t. Shall we continue?”

His left hand disappeared inside his cloak, swiftly and silently. Having been in the retail business for many years, Merona pretended not to notice.

“Let’s see,” she said, voice still a picture of merriment, “perhaps these maps?” She unfurled several rolls of parchment on a small table, next to the bucket of blinders.

He approached, carefully pretending to be interested.

“What do they do?” he inquired, observing that the map was marking itself with a variety of different colored inks and symbols. The marks appeared and then vanished, almost simultaneously, before again reappearing.

“Wait for it,” she said, barely containing her joy, “they’re ‘Legendary’. They tell you all the legends a usual map possesses without you having to know how to read it!” She pointed at a red ‘X,’ right over the tiny dot labeled Daffodil Magic Shoppe.

“You are here,” said the enchanted map, the disembodied voice a bizarre duet between a rodent and a child.

“I gathered that much,” he said, his voice bored and bordering on impatient, “what else have you got?”

“For starters,” said Merona, “We’ve only got four minutes left. We will close at eleven.” She seemed to wink, almost imperceptibly, at the looming grandfather clock.

“However,” she continued, “might we show you our latest product?” She pointed at a collection of hammers, hanging neatly on hooks in the other corner.

“If you must,” Teranan replied, a note of exasperation in his voice.

Merona smiled, her red hair framing her face, “You don’t need lumber to build with, you just swing the Auto-Hammer toward any broken branch or stump you find lying around. It will turn into a plank. After you have several planks, you tap again, giving you a little square piece of wall. Once you get several pieces, you put them in a stack and give them a tap. They will join together into a larger wall!”

“Interesting,” said Teranan, “though… not exactly what I’m looking for.”

“Sorry to hear that,” she said, “I was going to say that once you have several walls, you repeat the process and you’ll have a tiny house! It’s very popular among the free peasants.”

He grunted, a frown crossing his face.

She tapped her wrist and went to stand behind the wooden counter. “Three minutes left, Teranan.”

He practically growled at her, “Well then, let’s not dally. I’m not here to buy something. The only help I need is all of your coins, jewels, and any other small things of value.”

Her smile lit her eyes as she blinked, slow and steady, “Are you… robbing me?”

He laughed, “Of course I am!” He pulled out a burlap sack, “Put everything in here, or else.”

“Or else what?” she asked, as her gaze held his own in a fierce staring contest. His left hand reappeared from inside his cloak, brandishing a wand.

“Oh,” she said, “You mean to use magic against me?”

He grinned mischievously, “If I have to.”

“Seeing as you only have two minutes until we close, I suggest you hurry it up.”

Teranan shoved the bag under her nose, “Fill it!”

With an intense, all too-sweet expression, she complied. Now chuckling, she loaded up his bag.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, holding his wand under her chin, ready to curse her if she tried anything other than give him what he wanted.

“I forgot to bring my wand to work today and now here you are robbing me,” the chuckling Merona mused, with a slight shrug.

“So?” he pressed. “How is that funny?”

“Well,” she said, her mesmerizing eyes now fully locked onto his, “The Daffodil Magic Shoppe has made a name for itself by selling enchanted goods that do what they’re supposed to do long after they’ve left the confines of our establishment.”

His bravado spoke volumes, “Is that meant to scare me?”

“It should,” she said, “because it means that my magic is pretty impressive without a wand.”

He blinked, “Are you… threatening me?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said, “but we are going to close in exactly ten—”

“You keep saying that!” His scowl was not becoming, and the hand holding his burlap sack had begun to twitch a little bit. “Just hurry it up then.”

“Nine…,”

“I really don’t know why you’re counting down.”

“Eight…seven…,”

“Seriously, you don’t seem--"

“Six…”

"--all that scary.”

“Five…four…,”

His wand was still under her chin, pushing ever so slightly on the soft skin of her neck.

She kept counting, “Three…two…,”

“Would you stop counting?”

“One.”

Eleven ear-splitting peals rang out from behind the burglar. Teranan spun around to find that the grandfather clock appeared to have sprouted a pair of gnarled arms as well as two knotted legs. It was no longer in the corner of the shop; it was now violently ticking two inches from his face!

“I tried to warn you,” she said, “but he gets rather ticked off if we don’t close precisely at eleven bells.”

Merona giggled, watching as the clock struck one visibly confused would-be robber, “I’m terribly sorry Teranan, but it seems that you’ve run out of time!”