Chapter 8 - Ollie!

For a moment, I couldn't tell where the voice had come from. Then my eyes found a light.

At the far end of the shop, a single low lamp burned over a wooden counter. It was the only warm thing I could see in this place.

Behind the counter sat a still, dark shape. Only its hands moved, pale in the lamplight, lifting small glass beads from one jar and dropping them into another, one by one, without a moment of waste.

Cautiously, I looked away, and only then did I take in the rest of the shop. It was much bigger than the street had any right to allow.

A single aisle ran straight from the door to the counter. On each side of it, shelves climbed from floor to ceiling, and between them, narrower aisles branched off, stretching so deep they seemed to disappear into a darkness I couldn't see the end of.

As I walked past them, I noticed the shelves were full. Not of anything I'd consider useful, though.

They were full of miscellaneous things: a single leather glove, a pocket watch without hands, a pair of reading glasses folded on top of a thick grey cloth. From what I could see, none of it had a price tag either.

Nothing in here looked like it was for sale. It looked like it was just collecting dust. Walking forward, I spoke while watching the hooded figure.

"...Were you expecting me?"

"For a while now." A thin voice came from the counter. "You walked past once already, Oliver."

The voice was quiet and level, and it didn't seem to belong to any particular age or gender. I found myself struggling to tell whether the person was even human or not.

I should have asked how they knew my name.

Instead, I found myself thinking about my first day, standing on the street and pointing, Igris telling me there was nothing there. I'd walked away so easily. Yet someone had apparently been sitting in here the whole time, watching me.

The thought alone made me want to leave, but my curiosity kept me still.

"What is this place?" I asked, focusing entirely on the seated figure.

Its hands paused.

"Somewhere the gods don't look."

'Gods? I thought there was only one?'

I thought back to the unserious God who wore my face. It had never really occurred to me that there could be places he couldn't reach...

"I see... How come my friend couldn't see it?" I asked.

"Your friend has nothing here." Its hands began moving again. "Go on. You didn't come in to talk to me."

That was true. I did have more questions, but whatever had tugged at me from the street hadn't let go when I stepped inside. It had only grown more certain.

Turning around, I began to follow it. It led me off the main aisle and into one of the narrow ones branching away into the dark.

As I walked through it, another array of strange items appeared. A birdcage with its door left open. A bundle of letters tied with string. A wedding ring on its own.

I decided to keep my hands by my sides. These past few days, I'd come to know Transit as an odd place where seemingly anything was possible. I wouldn't have been surprised if I touched one of these things and disappeared somewhere.

Eventually, the tugging stopped.

On my right, on the third shelf from the bottom, tucked slightly towards the back and half hidden behind a chipped teacup, sat a marble.

Blue glass, with a white swirl twisting through the middle. And on one side, a tiny chip. Small enough that you'd only notice it if you knew to look for it.

I'd seen that chip happen.

I remember.

* * *

My glass of juice was warm. I mean, of course it was. It was the middle of summer, and the glass had been sitting next to me in the heat for way too long.

In fact, everything was warm. My body was warm, the air was warm, even the shade I was hiding in was warm. Summer had a way of doing that.

"Haaaah." Releasing a frustrated breath, I threw my Nintendo onto the grass. I'd been sitting in the shade of the big tree in our backyard, losing the same damn level for about an hour now. I was so focused on beating it that I hadn't even found the time to take a sip of my boiling orange juice.

"Ollie!" A loud, siren-like screech almost blew out my eardrums.

I knew who it was, but I didn't look up. If I looked up, she'd know I was listening. And if she knew I was listening, my suffering would never end...

Snatching my Nintendo back off the grass, I started the level again for the umpteenth time, staring even harder at the screen. The level had suddenly become even more important.

"Ollie, look!" I heard from behind me.

Then a shadow fell across the screen and disappeared again, and a pair of pink sneakers appeared at the edge of my vision, untied and caked in mud. Above them were two very dirty knees, one of them slightly scraped, though she clearly hadn't noticed yet.

"I'm busy."

"You're always busy."

Not getting the response she wanted, she planted herself right in front of me and blocked the sun, which was the most annoying thing she could have done, and she knew it.

When I still didn't look up, she just crouched down until her face was right there, her bright blue eyes peering at me over the top of the screen.

Tina was seven years old now, and somehow even more annoying than when she was a farting baby. Her cheeks were pink from the heat, and her dirty blonde hair stuck to her forehead. Seemingly not noticing my annoyance, she held out both hands above my screen, palms up and pressed together, the way you'd carry water when you don't want to spill a drop.

"Look, Ollie! I found treasure."

"It's probably a rock."

"It's not a rock!"

Belatedly glancing over my screen at her open hands, I saw a marble. Blue, with a white swirl through the middle, and absolutely filthy. She'd definitely been digging near the storm drain again.

Mom would kill her if she found out.

"Cool." Already annoyed, I gave a half-assed response and went back to my game.

She didn't move. Out of the corner of my eye, I could already see her face turning into a pout.

"You didn't look properly..."

But before I could say anything, she grabbed my wrist with her sticky little hand and pulled it off my Nintendo. Then she pressed the marble into my palm and dragged my hand up toward the sun.

"Now look."

In my other hand, the Nintendo was still going. I could hear the music speeding up, the way it always did right before the boss battle started.

"Tina, I'm literally in the middle of—"

"Look!"

Then I looked, properly this time. And honestly, it was kind of amazing.

With the light coming through it, the swirl wasn't white at all. It was every colour at once, all folded up inside itself, like somebody had squeezed an entire rainbow into something small enough to fit between my fingers.

"...Okay," I said. "That's pretty cool."

"It's got a galaxy in it."

"It's got poop in it," I teased.

"No it doesn't!" Perhaps thinking I was serious, she snatched it back to hold it up to her own eye, but fumbled it.

It dropped straight onto my glass of orange juice with a sharp little clink, knocked it over, and rolled off into the grass. Warm juice soaked into my shorts while she made a noise like the world was ending.

"Tina!" I shot up, warm orange juice dripping down my legs. "Are you serious?!"

She didn't hear me. She was already on her knees in the grass, patting around frantically, making that dumb headless-chicken noise that usually came a few seconds before she lost it.

For a moment, I genuinely thought about leaving her there. I mean, she'd dropped it, so she could find it.

Then I noticed her shoulders begin to shake.

I groaned, loud enough that she'd know exactly how much I didn't want to do this, and dropped onto my knees beside her.

"If Mom asks ANYTHING, this was all your fault."

Crawling around on our hands and knees, we eventually found it, although there was a tiny chip on one side now.

She stared at it for ages. While I watched her stare for ages.

Her lip was doing the thing it did right before she cried, while I was already trying to figure out how to stop it.

But she didn't cry. She just ran her thumb over the chip, really carefully, and nodded to herself.

"It's okay," she said. "Now I'll always know this one's mine."

Her eyes glinting with small tears, she smiled slightly, staring down into the little marble.

* * *

"Oliver! Tina! Come inside, I made cookies!"

Tina was gone before I could even stand up. At the back door, though, she stopped and turned around. She was grinning, the gap where her front tooth used to be on full display.

"Ollie, c'mon!"

Standing up, I smiled back, and ran towards the door, hoping to get the best of the cookies first.

* * *

The warmth faded, and the darkness of where I was settled back in around me. I was standing in the aisle with the marble crushed in my fist, so hard that the edges of my fingers had turned pale.

I couldn't have said how long I'd been there. A minute, maybe an hour. My cheeks were wet, and I hadn't noticed when that had started either.

I opened my hand slowly, half afraid of what I'd find. It was the same marble.

But deep inside the swirl, where there had only ever been white, a thin thread of gold now ran through it. It hadn't been there before. I was sure of it.

I turned it over in my fingers, looking for some kind of explanation, but couldn't find one. Sighing, I slowly wiped my face on my sleeve and made my way back out to the main aisle, towards the lamp.

This time, I didn't stop at a distance. I walked right up to the counter.

Up close, the figure was smaller than I'd thought. Their hood was black, with a thin line of gold stitched along its edge that caught the lamplight when they moved. A few strands of white hair had slipped loose from beneath it. A length of dark cloth hung from the rim of the hood, covering their face completely.

Their hands, though, looked young, slim, and extremely pale. Long, delicate fingers, the nails clean and neatly kept. A woman's hands. The voice still didn't fit.

The person behind the hood couldn't have been much older than twenty. And yet the way they sat there, perfectly still, made me think otherwise. Someone who ran a place like this couldn't have been simple.

"That one's been waiting a while," they said, head still tilted downwards.

'A while, huh.'

Tina had been gone for years.

I wondered if it had been sitting on that shelf the whole time, tucked behind that chipped teacup, waiting for someone to come back for it.

My fingers tightened around the marble until I could feel the chip pressing into my palm.

"Is she here?" My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "The girl it belongs to?"

A bead slipped from their fingers, and in the same moment, their other hand caught it before it reached the counter.

"I keep things," they said. "Not people."

'So she isn't here...' Knowing that, even if it didn't mean much, felt better than nothing.

"How much for it?"

The hands paused over the jars.

"It isn't for sale." A bead dropped. "But I make exceptions for this kind of situation."

"Then what do you want?"

"An answer." Their head tilted very slightly, the cloth over their face shifting.

Not waiting for me to respond, they asked their question.

"Tina. Do you think she'd want to be found?"

I opened my mouth, ready to respond, but nothing came out.

I'd thought about finding her a hundred different ways since I died. Where she might be. What she'd look like. What it would feel like to see her again. Not once had I thought about whether she'd want to see me.

'Isn't it obvious? Why wouldn't she?' was my first thought.

But taking a moment to digest their question thoroughly, I considered the fact that she'd been dead for thirteen years. Thirteen years in a place like this. She could have made her wish already. She could already be somewhere I'd never reach.

She could be happy without me.

"...I don't know," I said finally. "I never really considered it."

"No," they said. "People rarely do."

Saying nothing more, they returned to their beads, and somehow I understood that was enough.

I'd paid.

I put the marble in my pocket, beside my ticket, and turned to leave. I was at the door when they spoke again.

"Oliver."

I turned. They'd lifted their head, just slightly.

"Is it kinder to remember," they asked, "or to forget?"

This one didn't sound like a price. It sounded like a real question, the kind you ask when you've been wondering about something for a very long time.

I thought about my mother's cooking, and how I couldn't remember the taste anymore. I thought about the thread of gold in the marble that hadn't been there an hour ago.

"I don't know," I said. "But forgetting doesn't feel kind."

They didn't respond right away. My only sign that they'd heard me was their thin hands, held still over the jars a moment longer than they should have been. Then they went back to sorting.

"Hold onto it more carefully than she did."