Young Writers Society

The shop that I was to work in over the next few weeks was a terraced building. The view from outside the large, dusty black window had been blocked off by a piece of tacked up red cloth. The sign above the window was blank. Bere told me he was yet to finish that part, but it was going to be done closer to the time when the shop was actually opening.

When I pattered on the door Vast opened it wide and ushered me in. ‘Come on, come on, we’ve got much work to do,’ he said with little formality.

Inside the shop was dim, with a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a dark red tint having over everything. The air was thick with dust. When the door swung closed it shut out the rest of the world. I turned to Vast who stood with his head down in the reddish glow.

He tapped a metal box with a grid on it a few times before it choked and hummed loudly.

His eyes took on a purplish tint as he looked about the air as if following some kind of insect. ‘I suppose it gets rid of the dust and keeps the air circulating.’ He sighed heavily. ‘It does need some repairs though.’

The walls themselves reminded me of a library. They were covered in shelves- newly panelled and put up. That was probably Bere’s work, and I was tempted to explore them to see how good a job he had done when Vast patted one of the boxes.

‘I need someone agile to set these up.’ He waved his hand to a step ladder near the window. ‘You can use that to get to the higher shelves. Your brother did put them up, a strong boy he is. You are both very different in your height and build, but your eyes are the same, and your smile. Who gave them to you?’

I grinned a little at the mention of it. ‘Our mother.’

‘Yes, just like that. Not that he smiled much, mind you. That brother of yours is a stout one, but he makes for a bland conversationalist.’

He took a pocket knife from the depths of his heavy jacket and, his hands trembling, he made a few attempts to flick it open it. When it flipped up the edges gleamed scarlet in the light from the window. In less time than it took to open the knife he sliced the edges to cut the top off the box in one swift, deliberate movement. Inside were carefully packed hundreds of glass vials full of different colours. Some of them were thin, half transparent green liquids, others were bottles of thick, purple goop, some white as clouds and some red as blood.

‘Are you an apothecary?’ I asked.

‘Not quite.’ He handed a bottle to me. Inside was a green and clear mixture of something with a thinner consistency than water. ‘Agriculture and farming. That there is a high quality fertiliser.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘It’s a type of liquid you get from Vein Plant, it grows in Tigris mostly. It’s not cheap, so be careful with those. I need them on the top shelf, out of reach of children.’

I briefly considered that there might be some kind of joke asking me to help him stock shelves, perhaps as a test measurement against children. I stood next to the shelves and reached as high as I could to put the bottle on a shelf. Then with the ladder I climbed up and moved it two shelves higher.

Behind me Vas laughed. It was a tired, breathless sound.

‘What if you need to get them down?’ I asked.

‘I’ll hire a full time assistant once we’re up and running. Or maybe I’ll just drink some elasticity elixir and see if it will have the same effect on me as it does on daisies.’ He barely laughed again when he choked. The sound was like the crumple and crackle a paper bag would make if you sucked all the air out of it at once.

It didn’t take me long to have a guess why he needed someone agile. There were a lot of different bottles to be put in different places, and with no disrespect ever intended to the old man, he was a slave driver and made the most of every moment I was there.

‘That one you use at the end of summer,’ he said, handing me a bottle of cloudy yellow liquid with a cork in the top. He liked to talk, mostly to tell me random scraps of information about plants, animals. He said little about himself but sometimes I wondered if his mind was full of so much information that he didn’t have much room for memories. ‘It keeps them alive and in bloom for a little longer. Strengthens them against the cold.’ He sighed and handed me the bottle. ‘It works on people too, but it’s expensive, and using it too much has the same effect as sunburn. The skin flakes until it‘s red and raw. It’s better just to buy an extra jacket.’

When he handed me the next few bottles his eyes caught mine in that stare. I don’t know what about his expression changed, beneath the creases of his face it was always hard to tell, but whatever it was it always made me aware again of the cold blue colour of his eyes. ‘With the increases in Road Tolls though, it gets expensive to transport this stuff. It makes the underground a little tempting, don’t you think.’ The dimples darkened in a half-hearted smile and he broke his gaze.

‘The underground?’ I knew exactly what he meant, but I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to agree or not.

‘Come, Chibi,’ he said, breaking my thought and dismissing the comment as if he had merely suggested bread instead of cereal for breakfast.

Ditri

Chibi: based on the Japanese word which loosely translates as ‘Childlike.’ In Itaka it’s meaning is similar, and to use it as a noun or a name would be the equivalent of calling someone a ‘small boy’ or ‘small girl.’

It is used as a pet name for someone who is youngest or smallest in a group of peers, though also taken offence to if used to refer to an adult.

/Ditri

‘My name’s-’

‘Formalities, formalities!’ He said loudly. ’Let’s not waste time with them.’

He did that a lot. At first I thought him to be ignorant, but mother always warned me of calling my elders ignorant when I myself was only fifteen years old. It was always when I tried to tell him anything about myself, and it was always with a very loud voice and a quick change of conversation. Why he did this I didn’t know, but for all the time we worked together he called me by that name.

Maybe he just didn’t like names. The more I thought about the name Vast, the more I considered that it might have been a name he gave to himself.