10c13ae209c31d5ccfd7e946aeb13c0b by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

hand, Eyeno sprinted back into town, arriving there almost immediately. But the Street of Crafts had changed. In place of Missieur Pierre’s there stood a money shop — a shop where you could buy coins with coins, which in her dream seemed to be a perfectly just and equable arrangement. A mark for a mark; a penny for a penny. Consequently coins circulated quickly and the town prospered. This money shop was crowded with richly dressed people all brandish­ing coins. She swiftly found herself in the forefront, clad in a gown which was dingy and raggy. She was facing a brawny apron-clad shopkeeper. Behind his counter buckets and buckets of coins overflowed on to the floor. The man’s moon-shaped face was the bronze of a penny, on which his features were merely engraved. His was a crescent mouth. Coin-eyes were miniatures of his whole face. Within those eyes, a tinier crescent mouth and tinier eyes. Would those tinier eyes also contain his whole face in minuscule?

“Mr Penny!” the eager shoppers clamoured. “Mr Penny!”

Eyeno thrust her glass jewel at Mr Penny. She was consumed with a desire to wear a bronze penny in her eye. She wanted a metal monocle of visible value squeezed between her lids. The other customers burst out laughing. They guffawed, they brayed. Mr Penny’s crescent mouth cracked open in a grin. He quaked with merriment.

“Gold for glass!” he hooted.

No, she didn’t need a golden orb with Lucky’s head on it. A bronze penny would be fine. An ordinary penny minted in Saari, stamped with an anchor on front for security and an eye on the rear for prudence. An eye, to fit in her eye, why of course!

She had thought of this before. When she was younger she had several times privately pushed a penny into her empty socket. But unless she kept her head tilted right back the flat coin would never stay there. It would quickly fall out. You couldn’t walk round staring straight up at the top of the sky. In her dream she forgot all about such silly contretemps. She flourished her paste gem which had cost a mark and a half and a fortune.

“Please, Mr Penny!”

The keeper of the money shop chortled. “Bronze for a botch, bronze for a bungle!”

“I coin words too,” she cried in appeal. “I’m a poetess.” She realized that her feet were bare. She was a pauper, in rags, with a cheap chunk of cut glass in her hand.

The bronze-faced man leered at her. “Which word will you pay me,” he asked slyly, “which you can never ever use again? Will you pay me I” — he struck his chest — “or eye” — “and he pointed to one of the coins in his face — “or love, or true, or twice?”

Horror invaded her heart. She couldn’t possibly hand over to him any word that would be lost to her forever. Fighting her way through the crowd, who plucked at her rags and stamped on her toes, she fled.

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