forum Draft 3 of chapter 1 - any feedback appreciated (warning, very long read)

Started May 14, 2025 by @n o s t r a d a m u s location_city

tune

Hello, I'm officially on draft 3 (and year 3) of writing my novel. Any feedback on this first chapter would be much appreciated, the first draft is still floating around on here somewhere but I think I've done a much better job on this one :)

Apologies for the length.

It was an odd hour when Mr. Mondavario awoke. Odd for him anyway. It was not an uncommon occurrence for him to wake at 9 or 10 o’clock at night, when the sky had long since gone dark, and then to go back to bed at 4 or 5 in the morning. But today was different.
When he opened his eyes, dim smoky sunlight was streaming through his windows and when he turned his head to the alarm clock on his bedside table the time read 7:15am. But there was something else on his bedside table besides the clock this morning, something which had most certainly not been there when he’d gone to bed a few hours before. A package and a folded note. Confused, Mondavario threw back the covers and sat up. He swung his pyjama clad legs out of the bed and pulled it onto his lap with a little heft.
The package was boxy and wrapped in brown butcher’s paper with a little bow of twine holding the note in place. Mondavario carefully slid the note out with his long bony fingers and unfolded it. ‘It’s time’ is all it said in a scrawling cursive hand. He set it aside and undid the twine and the paper on the box, pulling the lid off with a sliding fwup. As he placed the lid beside him on the bed, Mondavario stared curiously at the contents of the box. Neatly arranged inside was a gilded doorknob and two old-fashioned little keys.
“Oh dear. I see,” Mondavario muttered. He stood and hurriedly dressed, slipping out of his front door a few minutes later carefully cradling the box in his hands. It was chilly outside and he shivered as he padded through the morning fog up the deserted street, his breath coming out in heaving white puffs. The streetlamps were off and the sun was just rising over the trees, casting gold streams of light over the frosty grass.
Mondavario went as quickly as he could, walking in the middle of the road instead of on the footpaths in front of the sparsely populated houses. Magpies chortled their morning greetings as he neared the main road, looking both ways before crossing the street and coming to an abrupt stop underneath the awning of a small red-panelled shop. He fished in the pockets of his overcoat for the key with one long knobbled hand, gripping the edge of the box with his other. Sun hit the windows of the shop, illuminating the golden lettering on the windows. ‘Mister Mondavaio’s Antiques, Oddities and Pet Cremation Services’ it read.
He unlocked the door and placed the box on the sales counter just inside, flitting through the old oak shelves cluttered with bizarre and extraordinary objects to a set of drawers labelled ‘Not for sale, display only’. He rummaged through the drawers until his fingers closed around a glass-handled screwdriver which he took back up to the front door of the shop which he had left ajar, sitting himself down on the ground with the box beside him.
Mondavario cautiously removed the doorknob, placing the loose screws in the pockets of his overcoat, and replaced it with the one from the box. He stuck one of the little keys in the front of the door and turned it to make sure it worked. Then he stood and took the other key with him into the back of the shop, returning a few minutes later to discard the box and the old doorknob. And then finally to turn the sign which hung from the glass door over from ‘CLOSED’ to ‘OPEN’ during the day for the first time ever.
#
Later that morning, around 11, somebody noticed that Mr. Mondavario’s shop was open. A few people had already walked past by then, keen to get their Sunday morning shopping done, but none of them had paid any mind to the sign on the door. Mondivario’s shop was never open during the day nor was it open often. To the other people who lived in town, Mr. Mondavario was an eccentric mystery. He dressed strangely, never spoke to anyone, and woke only at odd hours. Nobody had ever seen him at the local pub or the post office or the general store or at cattle auctions or the farmer’s market or the annual town faire. Nobody had ever seen him eat, or smile, or make any sort of conversation with anybody at all. As far as the other residents of the town were concerned, all Mondavario ever did was sit in his shop and read books in the wee hours of the morning.
Nobody was quite sure either how he managed to afford to keep the shop running. It opened seemingly at random, exclusively late at night. And as far as anyone could tell, he had never sold anything inside. Those who had happened inside on the rare occasion that the lights were on and the door was unlocked always came straight back out, empty handed and looking utterly bewildered. Indeed in the time that the shop had been there, which was as long as anybody could remember, none of the items on display in the shop window had ever moved. But today was different.
Angus McLeod trailed behind his mother on the footpath. He was 12 years old and short for his age, with a large freckle covered nose and ears that stuck out from wavy red hair. His limbs were gangly, knees knobbly, and arms freckly. And his face, which seemed as if it should be twisted into a pixie-ish smirk, instead turned down in the same glum frown he had held it in for nine months now. Until he noticed the ‘OPEN’ sign hanging from Mr. Mondavario’s shop. He stopped and stared at it open mouthed. Never in his life had he ever seen the shop open before, though he checked every time he walked past despite his mother telling him to not go near it. Angus had long since given up hope of ever happening inside. But there it was, illuminated and unlocked.
“Mum.” Angus breathed in awe, “It’s open!”
He hoped, maybe, that she would let him go in for a look. He’d been on his best behaviour for months now and had only managed to get in trouble once or twice. Surely that counted for something. Surely she couldn’t ground him forever. But his mother didn’t turn.“Come on Angus.” She called, now much farther up the footpath than he was.
“But-”
“Come on.” She repeated forcefully.
Angus huffed and his excitement faded back to his usual glum frown as he trudged after her. He still wasn’t sure what it was that he had done that had gotten him such a long punishment in the first place. It didn’t seem that bad to him. Not compared to other things he’d been in trouble for before. But his mother seemed to think otherwise. It had been nine long gruelling months since his indefinite grounding had begun, and it showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.
He caught up to her and they entered the town’s general store together, a little bell rung as his mother pushed open the door. “Stay close.” She said lowly and sharply.
Angus nodded. He’d barely been allowed out of her sight in public since his grounding had begun. He knew he had a penchant for getting into mischief, but it seemed like overkill to him. He wasn’t incapable of staying out of trouble. Just highly adverse to it.
“Hello, Leo,” His mother said politely to the counter attendant.
“Louisa,” He addressed her in kind. Then, “Angus.” begrudgingly.
Angus put his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts, his frown turning to a scowl. His mother always said it was silly that Angus thought Leo, the dower balding man who worked the counter of the general store, held a grudge against him. Leo was perfectly friendly to her. But whenever Angus went in he could feel the man’s eyes watching him, as if waiting for him to cause some kind of trouble. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong…’ he told himself, ‘…not for a while.’
They went about their business. Angus trailing behind his mother as she grabbed a few things off the shelves. He was glad when she finally took everything up to the counter and paid, pulling a folded green shopping bag out of her purse and stuffing all she had purchased inside. Leo eyeing him as they left. Angus unclenched his fists and removed them from his shorts as they exited. But his gladness at being free from being watched like a hawk vanished almost instantaneously though, as he spotted a familiar but unwelcome face coming towards himself and his mother up the footpath.
“Oh! hello, there,” the face’s owner called as it approached. It was Mrs. Merkins. She lived a few streets away from them and she was a horrible gossip. Angus’ antics were one of her favourite topics of discussion, and if she managed to rope Angus’ mother into a conversation they could be stuck here outside the front of the general store forever - one of Angus’ mother’s favourite topics of conversation also happened to be his antics. Not that he’d done anything recently that she could talk about. Which meant instead that he would have to stand beside her and listen to her complain about him in general rather than in reference to a specific incident. Which was definitely worse.
“Deirdre.” His mother replied pleasantly.
Mrs. Merkins was a short, round woman overly fond of floral tea dresses. Angus wasn’t sure exactly how old she was because she dyed her hair instead of letting it grow out grey but she was certainly old. Angus hoped, perhaps vainly, that Mrs. Merkins wouldn’t acknowledge him. If she did it would mean he would have to participate in bad-mouthing himself, something he was already doing on a daily basis to show his mother that he understood why she was upset with him, even though he really didn’t mean it deep down.
“Spring’s come on quickly hasn’t it?” Mrs. Merkins said.
Angus let out a little internal sigh of relief. She was going to ignore him. He listened as they chatted politely for about fifteen minutes, staring up at the birds flitting through the morning sky, before their conversation turned to him and his behaviour. He had known it was coming but it still made him deeply uncomfortable, there was something very unsettling to him about being discussed as if you weren’t present, despite very much being so. If there was an upside to it, it was that at least it aided him in figuring out how his mother really felt about him. What he gathered about himself through what she said to others was rarely positive. Often it was quite upsetting.
The way his mother seemed to think of him was starkly different than how he felt about himself. And he was never really sure whether he was right or she was, nor which was worse. If his mother’s opinions on his character were correct then he was as good as devil-spawn, a magnet for trouble and mischief and bad fortune - which would mean Angus didn’t have a very strong grasp on how serious his troublemaking was. If his opinions on his character were correct then there was nothing wrong with mischief every once and a while if it was mostly harmless - which would mean his mother simply hated him because of the way he was. He didn’t know how to feel about which of them was right. Angus knew he was a bit of a troublemaker but most people seemed to like him and his teachers’ always said he was clever - though usually when he was in trouble for something. They would always open with the same line whenever he was called into one of their offices, ‘You’re a clever boy Angus, but…’, nothing good ever followed the word ‘but’. Usually it was ‘… but I’m going to have to give you a detention,’.
Angus didn’t mind detention much anyhow. He was usually the only person in it and the teachers would joke around with him or pull things out of the confiscated belongings cupboard for him to entertain himself with, they would even let him leave a little early sometimes. His mother did mind his detentions though. Very much. Whenever he got one, which had been less and less frequently over the past few months, she would kick up an enormous fuss no matter how trivial the thing he had gotten a detention for had been. ‘What will the neighbours think!’ she would always yell. Under normal circumstances Angus didn’t care what the neighbours thought, but his mother’s and Mrs. Merkins’ conversation made him wish he’d found some excuse to stay in his room instead of tagging along to the general store.
“Really,” His mother was saying to Mrs. Merkins “He’s just so frustrating. No matter how many times I tell him to behave he just can’t manage it,”
Mrs. Merkins was shaking her head mournfully, “I’m grateful my boys never gave me so much trouble as your’s has given you. They’re good boys, never a foot out of line. Your’s seems like a nightmare, I would never cope knowing I had such a terror living in my house.”
“You’ve got very well behaved sons Deirdre. I just…” His mother trailed off and then leaned in conspiratorially, lowering her voice to a hushed whisper so that Angus wouldn’t hear, even though he was directly beside her and very much would. “I just thought that separating him and the Wilson’s son would fix things. They used to cause so much trouble

together, I thought their son was a bad influence on Angus. But it seems to have been the other way around,”
Angus’ frown turned down into a scowl once more. The Wilson’s son was Caspar, his former best friend. They had been thick as thieves as long as Angus could remember, until the beginning of the summer holidays when his mother had imposed his indefinite grounding and forbade him from seeing or even speaking to Caspar. He felt awful about it but he had obeyed and from that point on he had avoided Caspar as much as he could. It had been the worst thing he had ever felt when his best friend had turned up at the front door on the first day of the holidays and his mother had made him tell Caspar he didn’t want to be friends anymore. Caspar had come back every single day all through break only to be turned away again and again. When school had started back up, Angus had needed to hide every break time to keep his promise of not talking to Caspar. Eventually, after months and months, Caspar gave up. He had still hid since then, just in case, but it had been a long time since Caspar had found one of his hiding places.
“He can’t help himself,” Angus’s mother continued. Mrs. Merkins was listening intently, no doubt committing as much of the conversation to memory as she could so that she could parrot it to the next person she saw. “But even with the Wilson’s boy out of the picture, he just…”
It broke Angus’ heart to think of Caspar. Whenever the name came up, a clawing pain would drag through his chest over and over. He would see his former best friend in his dreams at night sometimes, it made him feel so guilty. That there was a deep subconscious part of him that couldn’t keep his promise to his mother not to see Caspar. He would do his best to avoid dreamland Caspar, but it would never work. Caspar always caught up to him when he was asleep, even if he couldn’t when Angus was awake and running off to hide far from the classrooms.
“…It would be nice if he tried for once. But he’s hopeless.” His mother sighed.
This made Angus’ ears burn a bright beetroot red. Tried. Tried. He’d done nothing but try all year. The clawing in his chest that had started crept outwards until his whole body felt hot and raw. Angus bit down on the inside of his cheek.
Mrs. Merkins was nodding merrily along, apparently this was just the sort of thing she wanted to hear. “You’ve got a real issue on your hands. You know…” She started with an air of cautiousness, “…there’s a place for boys like your Angus. My great nephew was a real troublemaker, not quite on par with your boy but he caused his father a good deal of stress when he was younger.”
Angus knew, instinctively, what was coming next. It was a thing he’d dreaded his mother would suggest herself. Sending him away. It was an idea he hated. He would rather be locked in his room forever and never allowed to speak to another person in his life than be sent away. He wanted this conversation over.
“Mum,” He said, tugging at her arm slightly. She jerked it away.
Mrs. Merkins had begun fishing in her purse for something, a brochure for some horrible borstal school, no doubt. “Mum, can we go now?” Angus said with more urgency.
Mrs. Merkins found what she had been looking for and had begun to open her mouth to continue speaking before Angus interrupted again by tugging at his mother’s arm. “Oh for heaven’s sake Angus!” His mother shushed him, “Entertain yourself, will you! Deirdre I’m sorry,”
“Oh it’s fine really,” Mrs. Merkins said, “It’s better I tell you how my nephew delt with his son, privately.” She meant not in front of Angus.
His mother considered this and turned to look at him. Angus went a little pink in the face and waited for her to say the three things she always did on the rare occasions when he was permitted to go off on his own. Don’t get in trouble. Don’t talk to Caspar. Don’t go near the antique shop. She had said it enough times over the past nine months that he could recite it for her. Always the same three warnings. The first two made sense to him given they seemed to involve whatever it was he had done to be grounded in the first place. But the third had always puzzled him. Mr. Mondavario’s shop had nothing to do with his penchant for mischief and until this morning it had never been open anyway. Why she bothered warning him not to go in he had no idea.
He braced himself for the warnings as she turned to him. “Don’t get into any trouble,” She said, dumping some of the change Leo had given her from their shopping into his hands. “If you see Caspar, don’t talk to him.”
Angus waited for the third. Don’t go near the antique shop. But it never came, his mother had turned her back and resumed her conversation with Mrs. Merkins. He stood in astonishment for a moment. On the one hand, he didn’t want to hear a single word of the rest of their conversation but on the other he didn’t want to be in any more trouble. And on a third imaginary invisible hand, he had never seen the antique shop open before and it was far enough away that he wouldn’t hear a word about whatever horrible borstal school Mrs. Merkins’ great nephew had been sent off to. He dumped the change, mostly silver 10s and 5s that wouldn’t be useful for anything, into his pocket.
It was a second before a wonderful thought began to take root and blossom in his head. She hadn’t told him no. If she got cross with him for it, she couldn’t say she had told him not to. She’d forgotten. Angus’ long held frown vanished, creeping instead into a pixie-like grin. He turned on his heels, towards Mr. Mondavario’s shop. Away from the dreadful turn in conversation that had taken place.
It only took him a few moments to reach the panelled red shopfront. Angus marvelled at it before he went inside, taking in all the little details he could. If he was going to get in trouble for this, he may as well get his money’s worth. It’s not like something as trivial as this would get him sent away any more than anything else he’d done. He suspected that if his mother really had meant to say ‘don’t go near the antique shop’ his only real punishment would be that his indefinite grounding may go even longer than it already had, and then he would need something to sustain himself through many hours of staring at his blank bedroom walls.
So he did his best to drink in every detail, trying to bottle up every drop of it in his mind, placing the prospect of being sent away to some horrible borstal school as far away in his mind as he could to make room. The marquetry rocking chairs and crystal lanterns in the shop windows. The gold writing on the sign. The slight peeling of the dark red paint on the weatherboard panelling. Forcing it all into his memory as clearly as possible so he could pour over it later. Angus even tried to cram the doorknob into his brain as he reached out and twisted it. To his delight, the door to Mr. Mondavario’s shop swung open. It was the first time he had felt happy in months. He shuffled in quietly and closed the door behind him.
The shop was dim on the inside. The lights hadn’t been turned on and instead the whole place was lit by the minimal sun coming in through the windows from outside. And it smelled odd, like old books and dust and lavender incense. Angus stood just inside the doorway and stared mouth agape at all of the shelves of weird and wonderful stuff. The first few rows of oakwood shelves were filled to the brim. Angus’ eyes scanned over them all. There were gilded sextants and candy-coloured crystal balls, feathered dreamcatchers and haunted-looking porcelain dolls, stuffed birds posed on perches and copper pots and inkblots. Wrought iron candelabras and musty old mink coats draped over ancient armchairs. Angus shuffled slightly closer to get a better look at it all, consciously keeping his hands clasped behind his back to be sure he wouldn’t accidentally break anything.
He had just moved in front of a preserved snake in a jar when a soft reedy voice called to him, “Can I help you with anything?”
Angus turned with a start towards the front counter, where an aged Mr. Mondavario peered up at him over a paperback so old the cover had fallen away. He had never seen the man up close before, only in far off glimpses hurrying across the street. Angus took a step closer to him. His face had the very strange quality of looking at once very young and very old all at the same time. Crows' feet streaked from the fire-bright eyes and greying hair stuck out at every angle as if it had been struck by lightning. The withered mouth turned upwards in a wry smile. Angus felt unnerved by the friendly expression, there was the tiniest hint of malice somewhere in it he couldn’t quite place. Perhaps it was because he had been startled or perhaps it was because the front counter where Mondavario sat was in shadow, but the ginger hair on Angus’ arms stood on end.
“I was just-” He began slowly. But Mondavario finished the sentence for him.
“Looking?”
Angus nodded a little sheepishly. Against his better judgement he moved forward towards the man until he stood beside the front counter and could see the whites of Mondavario’s eyes in the dim light. It wasn’t a thing he wanted to do but his body moved on instinct, disconnected from his wants or needs the way he imagined an animal might move closer to oncoming car headlights despite the ominous roaring of the engine approaching.
“I know you.” Mondavario said though not in a way that indicated recognition of any kind. It was a factual, dry statement.
Angus swallowed, hard. “You do?” his mouth had abruptly grown very dry, the beautiful and bizarre objects that surrounded him melting away into the background of his suddenly blank thoughts. “From around town?” he figured. It was a stupid thing to say and obviously not what Mondavario meant but he said it anyway.
“No.” Mondavario replied flatly, “I know you.”
“Oh,” Angus swallowed, attempting to dispel the dryness of his mouth.
Mondavario had a wild look about him, displaying sharp pearly teeth as he smiled widely. “They told me you’d be dropping by.”
“They?”
“Oh yes, They. To be fair, to be fair…”
Angus waited for Mondavario to finish, sucking in a tense breath, but instead the shopkeeper let the words hang in the air. “Oh,” He said and swallowed dryly again. He had the sudden urge to back out of the store and as far away from Mondavario as he could get.
“They have stories about you,” Mondavario said, “Some true, some lies.”
Angus wearily nodded, the way one does to placate someone who’d lost their mind. A grimace had begun to spread across his face that he hoped looked like a smile. “Do they now?” He said, backing towards the shop door until his fingers closed around the handle.
“To be fair, to be fair…” Mondavario repeated.
Angus laughed awkwardly, he wanted to be as far away from Mondavario as he could. No mischief was worth the disconcerting thundering of his heart that the strange man had set off. He turned and swung open the door, sticking out a single foot and cramming his head around it. He could see his mother and Mrs. Merkins up the street still yammering away, a pamphlet firmly grasped in his mother’s hand. He really didn’t want to hear a single word of their conversation. Angus didn’t know why he was so opposed to being sent away, something about it just felt desperately heart-clenchingly wrong. And he also really didn’t want to be stymied out of the shop by some batty shopkeeper.
He took in a deep breath, buried the part of him wholly unnerved by Mondavario, and backed into the shop. Closing the door and turning to the counter. “I’m going to have a look around,” he said sternly and sautered between the shelves as far back into the shop as he could, trying to look nonchalant and burying the part of him that felt like a scared cornered animal.
Angus paid no mind to his surroundings until he strayed into a room he was certain he was not supposed to be in, being so determined to seem as if Mondavario hadn’t rattled him that he had ignored all of the wonderous shelves of mysterious objects and oddities. Angus turned back to find that he had come so far he couldn’t see the front of the store at all. The room he stood in was some kind of back office, with a dark mahogany desk and ancient computer that was stout and heavy like a lead box. Wooden cabinets with a million little drawers lined the walls and defiantly Angus pulled one open to see what was inside.
The drawer itself was scarcely wider than his freckled hand and in it thousands of tiny notecards gleamed white in the dimmed light. Cautiously he pulled one free. There was writing on it in a scrawling cursive hand but he couldn’t discern what it said, the short paragraph appeared to be gibberish. Angus pulled another card, and another and another. All were covered from edge to edge in artfully rendered nonsense. Begrudgingly he shut the drawer. Then, stuck his head back out through the doorway to see if Mondavario had heard. The shop was silent.
There was a door on the other side of the room and Angus, perhaps getting a little carried away with the opportunity for mild mischief that presented itself, padded over to it. Deciding that he would find wherever the back of the store was then return to his mother, which surely would buy him enough time for whatever conversation they were having about him to be over. He turned the handle as quietly as he could and slipped inside. Unlike the fairly small office, this room was practically cavernous. He was sure it must be the very back of the store, realising then that the shop was certainly bigger on the inside than it seemed on the outside. Or deeper, perhaps.

The cavernous room was filled with a labyrinth of bookcases. They were labelled by subject though Angus could barely make out the words as he passed they were so old and worn. Every shelf was covered in a thick layer of dust, and as he walked along the winding isles he could see his own footprints on the hardwood. Not even Mondavario came back here it seemed. Angus followed the shelves along until they came to a dead end. A single book lay on the ground in front of the final bookshelf. He crouched and retrieved it from the floor. It was so coated in dust Angus couldn’t even see its colour, let alone its title. He blew on it to try and take the dust off, which backfired and instead sent millions of dust particles swirling into his face. Angus hacked out a series of coughs as he brushed the dust off the book with his sleeve instead.
It was dark green, leatherbound and its title was illuminated in gold foil letters. ‘The Land That Was Lost’, no author. Angus flipped through the pages. They were all blank. “Hm.” He said. And put it back on the shelf in the gap it had fallen from. There was a click, and the bookshelf began to turn. He took several slow, cautious, absolutely and utterly bewildered steps back in astonishment as a new room revealed itself.
It was the smallest room in the shop by far, and it was definitely the darkest. There was all but a flickering lamp on a little dark wood side table to see by. Although, seemingly, it wasn’t plugged in to anything. Along one wall was a locked glass cabinet filled with jars of wet-specimen rodents and mustelids. There were ferrets, rats, spiny mice, wood mice, polecats, sables, chinchillas, gerbils, lemmings, weasels, mole-rats, martens. There was a brass plaque above the keyhole that labelled them as ‘Messengers’.
The back wall was covered with a moth-eaten tapestry that was so worn and faded that Angus couldn’t make out what the picture on it was supposed to be. He ventured forward towards the door frame to try and see better. He placed his hands on either side of it and peered through, not daring to let his feet cross the threshold. It wasn’t much better up close.
He swivelled his head to see what was along the back walls of the door frame. One corner was empty. In the other corner, sat a boxy object covered by a heavy velvet cloth. Strangely, it was the only object not coated in a thick carpet of dust. Angus stepped into the hidden room to get a better look at it. He rubbed the material between his fingers, deep red and buttery and embroidered with golden stars. It made a great woosh as it fell to the ground. His curiosity had gotten the better of him.
An elderly woman's face stared back at him. Eyes blue and unblinking. Her hands unmoving and her fingers spread across a set of cards with pictures of people and stars and symbols all over. He leant forwards to read what the words on the cards said, ‘The Nine of Swords’, ‘The Tower’, ‘The Fool’.
He waved his hand in front of her through the glass box she was in. She didn’t wave back. She couldn’t, he realised, spotting a slot for coins on the side of the box. Small cracks had started to form in the paint around her cheeks and a paisley scarf covered the scalp she didn’t have. Her glass eyes sparked in the dim light.
Behind the box, on the wall, was a sign he hadn’t noticed. ‘The Great Fortune Teller!’, it proclaimed in old-timey font, ‘20c per prediction’. He fished in his pocket for the change his mother had given him, wondering if it was even possible that something so old would still work. The coin landed in the bottom of the slot with a hard clink. The Fortune Teller blinked, “I am Madame Dubois. Knower of all things,”.
The voice was worn and her mouth didn’t move with the words. Her blinking was slow and mechanical. “I am Madame Dubois. Knower of all things,” she repeated. Must be broken, he thought and began to walk away. “Wait.” a desperate voice called from the box. Angus turned back. The machine gave out a loud lurching sound. Her blinking stalled. Eyes half-way between open and closed, “I am Madame Dubois. Knower of all things,”.
Angus drove his knee into the side of the box sharply, trying to get her to work. He wouldn’t get his 20c back if she didn’t finish. He kneed the side again, but she was stuck mid-blink. “I am Madame Dubois. Knower of all things,”.
Determinedly, he knelt down to the starry velvet cloth on the ground and tried to pry open the coin slot. The screws were loose. He tugged harder and harder. A clang of metal each time he tried. The machine gave with a final tug, sending him flying back, holding a large hunk of metal. He had managed to pull off a substantial section, he could see the cogs and gears that moved the upper body of- “I am Madame Dubois. Knower of all things,”.
There was a cruel shine behind the furthest gears. He leaned forward on the cloth and stuck his head in amongst the gears, trying to see what it was. Arm outstretched, fumbling to dislodge the shining object. He turned it in his fingertips as he sat back. It was a tiny gold key, the kind used on antique cabinets. Long and slender with a filigreed end and a simple single-notched set of teeth.
Above Angus, a noise started to come from the upper reaches of the box where the mechanical torso stared out. Clicking and whirring. He rose slowly, hands and face pressed against the glass. “I’ve been waiting for you. Angus.”
He froze, solid to the spot. He was sure these mechanical box things weren’t supposed to know people’s names. They were a cheap trick for carnivals meant to fool small children. They weren’t sentient. But the paint encrusted machine-woman seemed very much alive. Her movements much more fluid than they should be if the cogs and gears below were really what controlled her. The cards beneath her fingertips gleamed in the dim light of the stuffy room. A fear-like dread crept through him much the same as how Mondavario had made him feel - like a deer in the headlights awaiting an oncoming car. “Who-” he began, then changed his mind “What are you?”
“I am the Fortune Teller. Do you not want to know your fortune?”
Angus swallowed and then reluctantly nodded, he had the distinct impression he wasn’t allowed to say no.
“Once upon a time there was a land of stories, myth and magic. Where birds soared, and deer frolicked, and trees swayed in the breeze. And the people of this land lived in harmony with it all until a blue scourge tore through the enthral…
Man turned their backs on the land. Eaten up by purblind delights and asinine slights and an imaginary twinkle in the eye. They left the birds to drop, and the deer to stop, and the trees to be felled for the fire. But hope remains for harmony. A boy, a king, a sage. Called to the land and to the skies, to sweep through blue’s dismay.”
The Fortune Teller paused then and said “And that boy is you.”
Angus stared open mouthed. What she was saying was too impossible for him to believe, and his mind was whirring. First Mondavario and now this. Perhaps his mother was right to ground him indefinitely because of his penchant for getting wrapped up in mischief.
He began to wonder. What credence could this talking box’s words hold? There was no real magic or other dimensions. She was about five years too late if she wanted him to believe that. He was 12, not a little kid. His belief in dragons and fairies and wizards had long since departed him. He didn’t believe it. Couldn’t. That he would be some kind of king, that people would love him and look after him and admire him, and that he would be some kind of bastion of hope. It was too good to be true.
He had been silent for a number of minutes, considering the possibility that this was some kind of practical joke Mr. Mondavaio liked to play on people who hung around in his shop too long. But in all of his pondering he realised that The Fortune Teller had continued speaking and he had been to wrapped up in his thoughts to hear what she’d said. From the stale silence that wafted through the air around him, Angus gathered that she had ended on a question and was waiting for him to answer. So he did. “…No?”
“No? Don’t you want glory? Or magic? Or power? To be a god among men?”
Angus shrugged, “Not particularly, no. Especially if it’s offered by a talking box” The fortune teller considered this in her stilted mechanical way, wringing her robotic hands with a whir and a click. She stayed very quiet for a few moments, Angus could hear the feet of one of his classmates shuffling along on the ugly carpet not too far off.
She seemed to come to a decision as she spoke once again, “I didn’t want it to be this way deary. I really didn’t. But there’s a bit I left out.”
“You must use the key and you must leave, or great peril will befall this land. Your very presence is a sinkhole of doom and destruction and the longer you stay here the more will be sucked in. Just think of those in your life now, how many have been worse off for knowing you. Burdened by your presence.”
That made Angus pause. He didn’t care so much about the magic and the fantasy, they would be nice to have that was sure. Nor did he really believe he was capable of dooming an entire planet by simply existing. But she was right about something, he thought. There were people who were worse off for knowing him.
His mother for one. Who did nothing but fret and pull her own hair out over his antics. Caspar for another, who had given up on him eventually. Even his dad had gotten fed up with him and left, from what he could remember of him. If Angus hadn’t been the reason, his father surely would have taken him with him when he had run off.
The more he thought about it the more examples he found. His teachers, his classmates, that one boy he had met when he and his mum had gone on holidays to the beach, Leo watching him like a hawk in the general store, possibly even the sheep who roamed about in the paddocks he mucked around in. Mrs. Merkins’ voice taunted him from inside his own head, ‘I would never cope knowing I had such a terror living in my house.’
What if he got worse? Regretfully, resignedly he asked “What happens if I stay?”
She clicked, when he said that. “If you stay, you will become a captain of industry. A businessman, rich and powerful. You will start at the bottom, a junior clerk but eventually you will rise. Lifted by those blinded by power and money, who see a glimmer of the good you could do elsewhere. You will build a business ever present in the hearts and homes of those who do not know better than to be wary. But the business you deal in will destroy everything it touches, eating away at those who stand beneath it. The work you do will cause disasters. Floods, fires, hurricanes. The world will crumble in on itself trying to fill up your pockets with the thing that matters least. And it will hurt those you love most in the world worst of all”
She paused. “And you cannot outrun your fate. It is known in this world and the Otherworld. The harder you push against it, the harder it will shove you in retaliation. It will catch up to you if you decide to stay or go. It is your choice whether you would like to choose a world where your fate will do good or do harm.”
Angus did want to do good. He didn’t want to become this evil monster she was telling him he would be. “But choose you must. Forever. Once you choose one path you must stay on it and you can never look back. If you choose this world, then you may never enter the magical realm again. If you choose the Otherworld, the door will seal behind you never to reopen.”
He knew he was smart enough to accomplish what she said, after all his teachers told him so. It was their go to every time he got in trouble for something, ‘You’re a smart boy Angus but…’. That sentence never ended well. On the whole though, Angus mostly managed to get out of those ‘buts’. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“I tell fortunes. Ask me something, and I will tell you,”
Angus considered this, trying to figure out what he wanted to know. But only one question came to mind, one ‘but’ he knew he may never get out of, “Will I even be friends with Caspar again?”
She answered swiftly and matter-of-factly, “You were never friends with Caspar to begin with. He will come to you and you will make amends. However, if you choose to stay, there will be consequences that will separate you forever.”
They were never friends to begin with. The idea buried itself like a knife in his chest and raked down his torso, tearing out his innards and leaving them bare for the world to see. Because it was true. He didn’t want to admit it but it was. He knew deep down that they were closer, that’s why it had hurt so much to ignore him all those months. Could they really be separated forever?
Belief had begun to spark in him, and in his mind he furiously tried to dampen the embers it created. It wouldn’t cost him anything in theory. She could be lying. But she was a robot moving on its own, how could she not know something he didn’t?
It was a knot, this problem, and he could unravel it if he thought through it hard enough. If he tugged on the cords of the logic to see where they looped under one another. He tugged and tugged and tugged. What if he could prevent anything bad happening now that he knew the truth? No, it was predetermined she had said. What if he could come back here after he had done all that good somewhere else? No, there was no way back she had said. What if? What if he just sliced the knot open like Alexander the Great. He tried to figure it out, but his mind wandered as it had a tendency to do and he couldn’t focus on what string of the knot of the problem he was even supposed to tug at.
“Exchange your life in this world for a life in another. If you remain you will become the greatest threat humanity will ever know, destruction will take form at your very fingertips. Cities will burn, great floods will descend upon the earth, mothers will grieve their children, and fathers will cry themselves to sleep in what is left of their beds….” She paused.

“…You will destroy this place. You will gather immense power and it will be misused here. I know of a place where this power is needed. You will be safe and you will be happy, as will everyone you have ever known and ever loved. For they will no longer know you.”
The fortune teller smiled, “All you must do is open the door beneath me with that key of yours.”Angus stood stiffly, dread seeping into his bones. He couldn’t move. The Fortune Teller had stopped moving too, and the light in her box had gone out. It seemed she had said her piece and now it was up to him to decide.
He had to ask more questions. Or, at the very least, get his 20c back. He presumed his mother hadn’t actually intended for him to spend it. Angus began to bang on the glass to try and get the box to start up again.
“Hey lady!” Bang! Bang! Bang! “Hey lady!”
“ANGUS. ALBERT. MCLEOD!” His mother’s voice bellowed. Angus turned and stashed the key in his pocket out of view on instinct. Scrambling on hands and knees as her furious face stared down at him from the dimly lit doorway. The corners of her mouth pulled down the way they always did when she was disappointed with him and her eyes gleamed dark and sharp like a falcon’s.
“Didn’t I tell you not to come in here!?”
Angus stifled the guilty look that had begun to spread across his face. All thoughts of mechanical fortune tellers and magical lands dashed, replaced by a panic like an ice bath. He didn’t know if it was better to pretend that he had disobeyed her or to tell her she had forgotten to forbid him from going into the shop. He bit down on his inner lip, hard.
His mother had crossed her arms now and had shunted her shiny strawberry blond hair back off her shoulders, which made her fair features turn from merely appearing stern to startlingly daunting. “Well?”
Angus bought himself a few seconds by getting to his feet, as slowly and as steadily as he could muster. His hands didn’t shake when he brought them to his knees to push up from the floor but he certainly felt as if they should have. His mind was whirring again with the Fortune Teller’s words as well as with trying to come up with some excuse. Angus noticed the brochure Mrs. Merkins had given his mother, which she had folded over and stuck into the front pocket of her jeans. She tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for him to answer.
Now that he was on his feet and better able to see her face, Angus noticed that it was not so much furious as it was exasperated. He could get away with saying nothing. He sucked in a deep breath and shrugged as woefully as he could trying to make himself seem pitiful, like he couldn’t have helped himself even if he’d tried. One of the benefits of having a mother who expected him only to misbehave was that she wasn’t shocked when he did so. Angus thought maybe that she would have been cross with him no matter where she had found him.
His mothers’ face drew down from snarling to seething and she let out a heavy tired noise somewhere between a sigh and a snarl. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.” she said and grabbed him sharply by the arm.
Angus let her lead him out. As they wove back through the shop he stared at the folded brochure in her pocket and the familiar guilt began to set in. Not for being badly behaved, but for being a bad son. Angus ignored the magnificent objects that adorned the shelves, he buried the brief and fleeting moment of wonderment he had felt on entering the shop. He resigned himself to the fact that the Fortune Teller was right. He did do nothing but make people feel worse off for knowing him. Perhaps Mrs. Merkins was even right to suggest he be sent off somewhere horrible, where he would be someone else’s problem.
Angus shot a look over to Mondavario as they neared the door. The strange man had resumed reading his paperback and didn’t look up when Angus’ mother opened the door and the bell chimed to signal their leaving. He appeared so unassuming that it made Angus wonder if he’d imagined the whole thing, that he had simply walked into some plain back room and his subconscious had conjured something he had wanted to believe. Some cloud-fancy born of being bored all the time or some justification for having ignored the warning his mother had forgotten to give.
Angus exited the shop beside his fuming mother, head bowed and scowl returned deeper than ever. And behind them an indistinct breathless whisper followed with the slam of the door.
“You’ll be back.”

If you actually read this far, thankyou :) You're a legend