Bilfred Baker's Marvelous Bookshop

SpoilerShow

from Proverbs and Sayings, Collected Over Many Years

An eel at morning, an eel at evening.
- from a small fishing village on the North Coast, often beset by storms

When you pass through a gate, be careful, lest you close it on your shadow.
- from the steppelands east of Oazikieria

You’ve passed this shop many times, and each time a faint memory has tugged at your consciousness, but you’ve never been able to figure out exactly what it is. Now, upon succumbing to the desire to enter the shop, it comes to you.

“I think … Yes, I remember now. A dream-book. Some time ago, I purchased an empty dream-book. Something to put the dreams from mind to paper, ease the night into a peaceful slumber. When the dreams stopped, I found myself no longer in need of the book and gave it to another in need.

“By now the book has traveled far and wide, with a story, I hope, of its own to tell. Even without reading the dreams, the pages tell a vibrant story. The writers’ style, the inks they used, the condition of cover and page. Vibrant fuel for a tired writer’s imagination. I couldn’t say if the book I once held is here now, but I have a feeling it it, or another like it.”

“Ah.” Bilfred Baker smiles.

“That sounds like a book I’d actually have,” he says. “I can’t tell you how many people come in here looking for the latest installment of 'Bogus Blainard'. Such garbage! I always have to disappoint them.”

He twirls one end of his moustache around his finger. You wonder if he does that instinctively or if he’s trying to look like a villain from a silent movie.

“The books I sell come to me by strange ways. If one, alone and friendless, scribbles one’s thoughts onto a roll of paper and stuffs it into a bottle, wishing desperately to reach someone, somewhere, that bottle may come to me; I am known also to scavengers, scrapers, and traders of all sorts of odds and ends, who travel to places that you will never have heard of; they know that I will pay for the scraps they bring me. Crows, ravens, and magpies fly often in and out of my attic, and in their scatterings and lining their nests, I regularly find some fragments of interest. But, of course, I scarcely have time to read all the stuff. It is up to my customers to decide if any of it ever finds a home.”

He gestures further into the store, beckons you to follow.

“Over here should be dreams … I think …” he says. None of the shelves seem to be labeled.

You look through the shelf he’s pointed you to. There are several old, cloth-bound books on it, accompanied by a large typed sheaf. Other papers seem only scribbled on.

“Of course, it could be anywhere else in the store,” Bilfred adds helpfully.

You study the spines of the books. What did your dream-book look like? … You don’t remember, exactly. You don’t think it’s any of these, although they do seem interesting. A book on the use of dreams for divination, a stapled-together pile in progressively worse handwriting that at least starts out as someone describing a dream they had, and what actually appears to be a record from a mental hospital are all on the shelf.

“Don’t see it?” asks Bilfred.

“No …” you say.

“Well, as I told you earlier, it could be anywhere! I’ll leave you to search for a while.”

You look through many more books, but you still don’t find your dream-book. Eventually you return to the front desk.

Do you want to purchase one of the books, leave the store, or talk to Bilfred more?