F is for Fairy by Pete Aldin

Author:Pete Aldin [Parrish, Rhonda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poise and Pen Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

K is for Kin

Lynn Hardaker

Gripping the miniature rose with her tweezers, Emma used a toothpick to curl down a tiny paper petal. The blossom was no larger than the tip of her smallest finger. Happy with it for now, she placed the flower on the desk. The taste of dust and disintegrating words hung on her tongue.

The bells over the door jangled to life and a man walked in. He gave her a tight smile, went to a shelf, and with his hands clasped behind his back, began reading the spines of books. Emma watched. She could tell he wasn’t going to buy anything. His type never did.

She returned to the flower and to the book it lay next to. It was a discard. One of the many books from one of the many musty cardboard boxes which were frequently orphaned on the doorstep of her bookshop; sometimes with a note “free books,” but usually without. She would bring them in and sift through them: throw out those which were too damaged by years of damp and slouching on basement shelves, and keep the few which she could sell. Of these, she would pick one to use to make her garden.

She took her scalpel to the discard—a volume of early twentieth century poetry—and gently cut out a page. When she first started making her garden, a couple of months earlier, she would construct a barrier of books on the counter so the customers wouldn’t be disturbed by the sight of a book being maimed, but lately she hadn’t bothered. It was her shop. Her book. If they didn’t like it, they could leave. Sometimes they did.

The military man left, empty handed. She took her carefully cut page, folded and creased it with a bone folder then sliced it with a paper-knife. The metal passed through the slightly powdery paper with a sound like a whisper. This would be the stem.

For the next couple of hours she worked on it. First she threaded it through the head of the rose, then she cut, pinched, and twisted it, never gluing or taping, until it was perfect. Almost perfect. Thorns, it was missing thorns of course. She deftly pulled down thin strips of paper and twisted them into satisfying thorns. During this time, a few customers came and went. She sold a copy of “Tropic of Cancer” to a student with a hipster beard; an illustrated edition of “Mort D’Arthur” to a nervous woman who kept fiddling with her wedding ring; and three Agatha Christies to a woman who smelled strongly of cigarettes and gin.

There were no closing hours advertised on the door, since she liked to stay open as long as she felt like. But when it looked like there weren’t going to be any more customers, she tallied her sales for the day, locked up her earnings, small as they were, in the strong box in the back room, and slid the box back under her compact, dusty sofa. Then she put the finished paper rose into an empty matchbox, locked up the shop behind her and left.

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