Short Stories by Francesca Astraea

Bethanie had been meaning to visit Bezzina’s Emporium of Magical Artefacts and Antiquities her entire year at university. Typically, she only managed it on her final day in Southend, when her bags were packed and she knew it was now or never. The trip was a little gift to herself, a ‘congratulations for surviving this far’ kind of a thing.

There was no chance of her coming back, so she knew that if she didn’t get down there now, she never would. There was no way she’d make the two-hundred-mile trip just to visit a crumbling antiques shop, not between the funeral and the probate and her maxed out overdraft. Besides, she’d heard a rumour that Bezzina’s always had what you were looking for, and she was looking for… a miracle?

Not a miracle, she corrected herself as she made her way down the high street. She wasn’t that naïve. Maybe just… something else to think about.

Once outside, her first impression was of disappointment. Was this it? The boutique you were told to visit from the moment you set foot in the town, that commanded eighty thousand hashtag uses on Instagram despite not having a website, one of the few places in Great Britain today where you were guaranteed to find actual magic.

The window display was appropriately summery, full of fresh flowers that grew, wilted and re-grew as Bethanie watched. A mini fridge, painted in a minty ice cream colour, had a neat, handwritten sign on the front: Any foodstuff placed in here will multiply by eight. Solar-powered. A pink and white striped parasol bore another sign: Will shade the holder from sun and nightmares.

  Although the display was neat and pretty, the shopfront itself had seen better days: paint peeled off the walls, weeds lurked on the path and the sign, which was probably hand painted, was peeling so badly that from a distance, it read ‘Bezzinas Emooriun or Maoical Artefacts and Antiauities’.

Bethanie hadn’t come to stare at the building, so she stepped through the paneled door. A small sign, in the same hand as the product tags, was tacked on the inside of the glass: Help wanted. Enthusiastic assistant required for light administrative duties, stock management and customer service. Weekends only. Apply within.

  Inside was worse.

The shop floor felt like a junk yard, or perhaps the living room of a very old, not-quite-there art dealer. Shelves leaned on cabinets propped up by chairs and ladders and guitar amps. There was a little order; clothes pushed together on a rail, white goods stacked on a kitchen table. It was very clean, but it felt rather like Bethanie’s bedroom back at home, when she had started doing a serious clear out before uni and got disheartened when she realised it was impossible to go through eighteen years of stuff in one day.

Not what she would have expected from Great Britain’s foremost dealer of magical antiquities.

Bethanie hoped the new assistant enjoyed tidying.

The man behind the counter was also not as Bethanie expected. She had anticipated someone otherworldly, perhaps wearing Victorian-esque attire or smoking a pipe. An eyepatch would not have gone amiss; nor would a raven perched on his shoulder. What she got was a gentleman in his seventies who looked like a lot like her old yoga teacher. Small and lean, he wore a shirt that was almost certainly made of hemp or organic cotton. His blue eyes, behind gold-rimmed spectacles, glimmered like gems. The only thing suggesting he had anything to do with the business of otherworldly retail were his arms and hands, which were tattooed in a cacophony of designs. Symbols on his knuckles; some sort of cross on one hand; a sailing boat and waves crashing up one arm and around his elbow.

Bethanie realised she was staring and turned her attention to the shelves. What was really here for her, in this cramped little shop? This watch, which told the time of your next significant social encounter? This kettle, guaranteed to pour out whichever you most needed to drink and without requiring a plug? This rocking chair, stocked with just the right number of cushions for the bottom seated in it?

‘Can I help you at all?’ Bethanie jumped. The shopkeeper had an accent that matched neither his yogi shirt nor his tattoos: it was the same type of English the Queen spoke. What was it called? Received pronunciation.

‘Oh, no, I’m just… looking.’

‘Anything in particular?’

Bethanie shrugged. ‘I’m not sure.’

His eyes twinkled. ‘That’s quite all right. Now, to me you look rather artistically minded.’ Did she? She was wearing denim shorts, battered Converse and a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, with her braids tied back. She wasn’t aware she had the words ‘I used to take costume construction as a bachelor’s degree’ tattooed on her face. ‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m good at first impressions.’

‘Right.’

‘We have this scented candle, which never burns down and provides the nearest people with endless creative inspiration.’

‘Not really necessary at the moment.’

‘This book of Shakespeare plays, which shows you a different version of a different play each time you open it.’

‘Interesting.’ It was, actually: if she had been able to take her course into next year, it would have been a fantastic resource for her research.

‘Ah, and we have this.’ He held out a small tin of paints. It looked second hand—or third hand or fourth hand, with dents and lots of splash marks.

‘Will it show me my destiny?’ Bethanie was only half joking.

‘No, it will show you your unconscious.’

‘My what?’

‘Your unconscious. The part of your brain you’re not… conscious of.’

‘I know what—how does it work?’

He frowned at the label. Another tattoo peeked out of his collar: more symbols Bethanie had never seen before. ‘You paint whatever you’d like, anything at all. Then, when you’re finished, you’ll find… the completed piece might not be what you thought you were painting after all.’

‘Can you prove it?’

He smiled faintly. ‘It did come with some excellent pieces, obviously we can’t sell them if we want proof of the paints, so if you’ll excuse me a moment…’ He disappeared through a door behind the counter, returning a moment later with three A4-sized portraits, all framed in burnished silver. He turned one over and read off the back.

‘This one says… I painted this at the white cliffs of Dover. Ended up portraying my childhood instead.’

The picture in question was of a steep, craggy cliff face, over which a man dangled a small child. The detail was exquisite; Bethanie could see the terror on the child’s face.

Although she was not completely convinced about the paints’ magical properties, painting would give her something to do between obligatory solicitor’s visits and family visits and graveside visits. She handed over cash—her final twenty pound note—and used the change to purchase a small watercolour pad in the art shop down the road.

A year later, in a newly opened café-co-working-space-art-gallery two hundred miles from Southend, a young woman exhibited a collection of over twenty watercolours. Most customers were drawn to them immediately, only to recoil when they looked closely.

The first few portraits looked like Hamlet and Anne Frank’s diary and the sort of footage on the news that made you turn over. Oxygen masks hung from gurneys; dozens of skulls lined hospital corridors; small children sat alone in the courtyards of bleak, square buildings. Aeroplanes crashed into garnet Ford Fiestas, each one the same 1990s model. Buildings burned and non-English words—experts would notice legal terminology in Latin—spiraled out of the plane engines and car exhausts. Once or twice, old ballgowns and costume jewellery would lie, torn and battered, amongst the debris.

As viewers browsed the exhibition, if they went in a clockwise direction, they’d notice that very gradually, the charcoal buildings and rusted gurneys began to fill with tulips and ice cream cones. Children were accompanied by parents, skulls filled up with lavender plants and cherry blossom. By two thirds of the way through, the Fiestas were whole again, smart and shiny. Planes flew overhead, dresses were restored to mannequins. Only a few stray oxygen masks peeked through plant pots, with the odd Latin phrase hidden in the car windows.

By the end portraits, each page was almost fully given over to flowers: too many to name, mostly invented, in colours one couldn’t find names for. If one looked carefully, it was possible to spot aeroplanes in leaves and oxygen masks in rose petals. Most people didn’t look that carefully.