They say the woman sold dreams; I’m not so sure.
Dreams are easy, their sellers slick. A little too alive, a little too bright, brittle in their happiness. You can hear their laughter down the corridor, feel the pressure of their presence eight stalls away. Dream sellers never whisper when they can splash glitter in your eyes; their wares always shine, even the dark ones, the dreams you only half remember. Oh, dream sellers keep tables overflowing with stock, and when you leave them you always feel your legs tremble, whether you’ve bought or whether you’ve sold.
She wasn’t like that. She sat in a pool of something close to silence – not quite it, though, not entirely. Her hands moved slowly, deliberately, lifting black stones and clicking them together once, then twice, before deliberately, carefully, placing them in one of the stone containers that hung from black iron hooks around her stall. She was older than youth and younger than age, with smooth skin touched by smiles and frowns, and hair a shade of blonde that had probably always looked grey. She made no motion to the passers-by, hawked no wares. Her eyes never left the stones, not once, even when I stopped in front of her.
“What are you selling?” I asked, curiosity giving me the boldness to interrupt her in her contemplative efforts.
She shook her head.
“I said, what are you selling,” I repeated, thinking she had misheard.
“I know,” she said. Her voice was sweet, higher than I expected from her shoulders stooped so low. Click, click. Another stone found a place in a container. It rattled as it settled down the tube.
“Oh – uh – well,” I stuttered. I almost turned away, alarmed by her demeanor – and yet. At market dangerous things sometimes ply you with smiles, but I had never been rebuffed before. Everyone was there to sell, and so to treat a customer thus was nothing short of bad business. Bad business, at market? My curiosity bade me stay. “How much?” I asked.
That earned me half a smile, but it was the half in shadows, with a mocking lift to the curve of the upper lip. “As much as the stars in the sky,” she said, and when I raised my eyebrows she said, “Is that not how much you love your mother?”
“But I didn’t ask-” I started to say.
“You didn’t ask anything at all,” she agreed.
“Are you not selling?” I demanded. Anger clipped the rounded edges off my words. I was feeling slighted, rejected by this strange woman with her hand-knit scarf and her scarlet skirt, her swirl of contradictions.
“Not to you,” she said, and clicked another stone away.
“Why not?”
She reached into a container then, and drew out three black stones. In shape they were not quite round, flattened on the top and bottom, with a faint imprint as of a thumb slightly askew to one side. All three were the same. “Which stone is the oldest?” she asked.
I stared at them, searching for a sign, but they were each to the other as you are to yourself. Finally I had to admit my defeat. “I don’t know.”
“Good,” she said, and dropped one stone back where she had found it. “Then you have enough already.” She took the other two stones and clicked them together, depositing them after a minute in a container to the left of that which she had pulled them from.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or complimented, but something in her smile pushed me towards the latter as she waved me away.
“You have enough,” she said.
I asked about her, later. Everyone swore they had seen her sell her wares, but no one knew anyone who had bought. They claimed she was a dream seller, but I’m not so sure. I’m just… not sure.
Photo and sculpture by Amy Fox. Amy is a writer, sculptor, painter, producer, actor, improvist, editor – and apparently she occasionally also sleeps. Check out The Switch, her latest project!