Knight and Day

I was almost to the end of the street where I would have to make a right to go to my house when I noticed something wasn’t right. There was supposed to be a small antique shop, followed by a bakery, but that wasn’t what I saw at all. The antique store was there, and the bakery, but between the two sat the strangest thing. A store where one didn’t belong. That made no sense. Buildings didn’t just appear out of thin air, and that was most definitely not there when I stopped at the bakery for muffins this morning.

The door looked old and very out of place next to the other two shops. I stood there and stared at it, trying to decide what to do. Instinct said I should keep walking, or call someone, anything but go inside. But curiosity got the better of me, and I stepped toward the door. There had to be a logical explanation for this. Although no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t think of a single one that made sense. The door had a slight glow to it that called to me and made me want to go inside. A sign on the door read Marden’s Magic Emporium. Marden’s Magic Emporium? That sounded like some crazy shop from a carnival where ladies in colorful gowns pretended to read palms and crystal balls. What was this doing in Dunstan?

I took a deep breath to prepare myself, and slowly released it, then I opened the door and stepped inside. Woah. I looked around only to find that instead of answers, I was more confused than I was before I walked in. When I was a kid, probably around ten or so, my friends and I went to a local haunted house on Halloween. It had been so overdone that we thought it was comical instead of scary. But this put that place to shame. However, this wasn’t comical at all. It was creepy as hell. There was a large black pot—or I guess, in this case, it was a cauldron—in one corner. It had some strange bubbling concoction in it that I couldn’t begin to identify. A weird purple haze floated along the ceiling giving the place an eerie feel. But the huge mermaid statue holding what appeared to be a crystal ball felt…welcoming somehow.

Arrows were pointing to the left around the mermaid, so I cautiously stepped deeper into the store. One step, then another, until finally, I was far enough inside to see where the arrows pointed. Three people—they had to be people right—stood behind a large stone counter. They were dressed up in costumes like those people who go to conventions to role play games and comic book characters. One was dressed like an elf, and the other two were maybe dwarfs? But either way, the costumes were first class. I was just about to speak when a tall man appeared in the doorway behind the counter. He was also dressed in a costume, but his was a wizard or a warlock or something like that. He wore a long flowing robe and had a beard that came down to his chest.

“Oh,” I said. “Gandolph, right? Or is it Dumbledore?”

He didn’t say a word. He just glared at me for a moment and rolled his eyes. He turned to the girl who was dressed as an elf, nodded, and then walked back into the room he had entered from.