The Elves and the Shoemaker Reading Passage

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THE ELF

AND SHOEMAKER

by

Yard. 50. RHODES

Amber Quill Press, LLC

http://world wide web.amberquill.com

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The Elf And Shoemaker

An Amber Quill Press Book

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or have been used fictitiously.

Whatever resemblance to actual persons living or expressionless, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

Amber Quill Press, LLC

http://www.amberquill.com

http://world wide web.amberheat.com

http://www.amber-allure.com

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may exist transmitted or reproduced in whatever form, or past any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

Copyright © 2009 past Grand. Fifty. Rhodes

ISBN 978-1-60272-457-0

Encompass Art © 2009 Trace Edward Zaber

Layout and Formatting

Provided past: Elemental Abracadabra

Published in the U.s.

Also by M. L. Rhodes

After Hours

Always

The Bodyguard

The Bounty Hunter

Couplings

The Draegan Lords

Falling

Hearts & Bones

Oestrus

Lords Of Kellesborne

Magic

Masks

Never Let Go

Night Shadows

Out Of My Mind

The Professor's Hush-hush Passion

Shattered

Souls Deep

Take It On Organized religion

True Of Centre

Under My Skin

Nether My Peel II

Vertigo

Well Hung

Chapter one

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On a cold, snowy Midweek in January, a immature shopkeeper by the name of Logan Shoemaker hit rock bottom.

He wasn't sure at which point, exactly, it happened...merely happen it did. Information technology could have been when he went out to his ancient Ford pickup truck that forenoon to brand a run to the post office, merely to find information technology had not just i but two flat tires. Or it might have been when he tried to pay for the repairs at Big John's Automobile and his credit card was declined because he was over his limit. Only probably the straw that finally broke him was when he returned to the small, one-hundred-30-year-old Victorian house that served as both his home and his identify of business, to notice the note on the door telling him that if he didn't pay the electrical pecker by seven days hence, they were cut off his service.

Later on finding the disconnect notice, Logan crumpled the yellow canvas of newspaper in a fist and stared up at the gold sign decorated with blue moons, purple stars, and the words "Shoemaker'due south Magick Shoppe" hanging above the door.

"So where's the magick when I need it?" he murmured, feeling all the stress of the past few months pressing on him until he wanted to lie down, right hither on the front porch, and cry like he had when he'd been a little boy.

There hadn't been much magick in his life for quite a while now.

He'd tried, really tried, to keep an upbeat mental attitude, telling himself the issues would pass, sales would pick up, all would be well, the sun would come out, and any number of other falsely cheerful platitudes. Simply every solar day it had gotten harder and harder to see the brilliant side.

Things had been going downhill for months. On every front of his life. He couldn't recollect when he'd terminal spent fourth dimension with friends even. He'd expended and then much free energy on keeping the shop afloat or worrying about keeping the shop afloat that at that place hadn't been much left for anything else. Aside from customers, an occasional conversation with his regular clerk at the post function, and the old neighbor lady who lived behind him that he helped out from fourth dimension to time, he was pretty much on his own. Information technology seemed like the worse business at the store grew, the more isolated Logan became.

Not that his little store on the main street of the sleepy Rocky Mountain college town was e'er going to make him rich during the all-time of times, just at least in the by he'd always been able to pay his bills, eat, and get out at present and again. Up until the past year, it had been a comfy living. Even the smallest of liberal college towns had a dearth of back to nature, witting living, Infidel, metaphysical types who loved their herbs, oils and incense, dragons, elves, and fairies, pentacles, ankhs, Tarot and divination tools. Just the sad state of the national economy had reared its ugly head even here, and recent sales had tapered off to virtually cipher. He'd tried lowering prices across the board, running deep discount sales, and had fifty-fifty pimped himself out at a local metaphysical fair doing carte du jour readings to make some actress coin. In spite of everything, last month, December, had been his worst holiday season since he'd opened the shop.

And, damn, he'd needed to accept a expert holiday season. If he couldn't even earn decent money in December when most people were willing to spend actress, how in the hell was he going to make up the deviation now?

The thought made him physically ill.

"Hello, Logan."

Taking a deep breath to fight back the enormous lump in his pharynx that threatened to asphyxiate him, Logan slowly turned toward the sidewalk. He discovered a tiny, one-time lady bundled up in a nubby woolen coat and garish pink scarf, navigating the snowy sidewalk with her cane in one manus and pulling a handheld shopping basket on wheels behind her.

"Hi, Mrs. Khovansky." He shoved the disconnection notice in his jacket pocket and, though his anxiety felt like atomic number 82, jogged down the front end steps. "Permit me assistance you with your handbasket." The former lady lived in the business firm backside Logan's, off the alley that ran aslope the magick shop. He took the basket handle out of her gloved hand and walked with her. "What are you lot doing out this morning?" he asked her. "It's freezing, and the snow makes it slick for you lot to exist walking."

"Gah!" She waved a hand to dismiss his concern. "A petty snow hurts no ane. Animate common cold air is good for the lungs. My Ivan took his walk every day of the world, pelting or smooth, snow or sleet, and was healthy as a horse until the mean solar day he died at eighty-nine!"

Logan wasn't sure how old Mrs. Khovansky was, only suspected she was at least eighty-ix herself. "Well, I withal worry about you."

They turned into the alley and walked in the tracks left past a vehicle that had been through earlier. The snow had tapered off, but the sky was dark and foreboding, promising the storm wasn't over nonetheless.

"You know Mr. Jeffries' tea shop at the end of the block has closed." Mrs. Khovansky tsked. "Too bad. He was in business hither for forty years. We used to go in that location for his scones."

"I saw his sign was downwardly," Logan said, the weight on his shoulders becoming heavier still.

He knew he wasn't alone in his business problems. It seemed every couple of weeks some other store along Chief Street closed its doors. But, damn it, he didn't want to be ane of the casualties. He'd never expected or fifty-fifty wanted to get rich from his shop...he ran information technology because he loved it. He loved beingness his own boss. Loved staying active and giving back to the metaphysical community in which he'd been raised. He loved the quirky customers, the way the bell over the door jingled when people entered or exited, and loved creating new blends of oils, which he bottled and sold. He loved the sweet, woodsy scent of the Nag Champa incense he burned in the store and the way it had permeated everything with a odor he would forever find comforting.

He didn't want to lose any of that. It was more just a way to brand a living, it was his passion, his life. He wanted to exist here, in business, forty years from now, doing what he loved best. Only like Mr. Jeffries had.

&nb

sp; Of class, in the finish Mr. Jeffries had been forced to close his shop. However, he'd had a good long run before it had happened. Logan wanted a chance at that. But the way things were looking, he wasn't going to be in business concern forty days from now. If the electric company had their manner, it might exist a lot less than that.

"Practise yous know what Mr. Jeffries is going to do now that he'south closed?" he asked.

"Moving to Florida. To exist with his grandchildren."

They climbed the concrete steps to Mrs. Khovansky'due south kitchen door off the alley, Logan carrying her shopping basket. They stood on the stoop while she pushed the fundamental into the lock and turned it, and so she tottered in through the door Logan held open for her and set her patent leather handbag on the counter. He went in behind her and propped her shopping cart confronting the wall.

Mrs. Khovansky's firm e'er smelled of savory cooking, like thick beef stroganoffs and pirozhki. In spite of her tiny size, he suspected that she continued to cook traditional meals for herself even though her husband had been dead for years.

"It's simply as well, about Mr. Jeffries going to be with his family unit," she said, picking upwards the conversation as if there hadn't been a lull. "It'due south not so good to be lonely. It's the voices..."

That defenseless Logan off guard. "The voices?"

She looked up at him through broad owl eyes as she unwrapped the pink scarf from around her head. "Oh yes. Don't you hear them, dear? The voices in the dark in the otherwise quiet house?"

"Um..." Logan stared at her, not sure what to say. The little former lady had e'er been plucky and eccentric, but he'd never heard her talk nonsense before. Was senility finally catching up to her? "I...I'm not sure I've heard any voices at night. Has someone tried to break into your house, Mrs. Khovansky?"

"Break in? Like burglars? No, no!" She pulled off her glaze and hung it on the hook nigh the door, and then leaned in close to him, nigh conspiratorially, smelling strongly of rosewater and cabbage. "The other voices," she whispered.

"The others?"

"The ones that whisper in the night. They'll tell y'all things."

"What things?"

"Well, that depends on the person, doesn't it?" she said affair-of-factly, as if he should accept already known every bit much. "But if yous don't alive alone, you accept no issues." She reached upward and pinched his cheek as if he were five. "You're a good boy, Logan. Y'all shouldn't exist so alone. Find a nice girl. Become married. Have babies. Then you don't have to worry about information technology."

It wasn't the first time she'd fabricated the suggestion, and every bit he always had in the past, Logan kept his silence and but smiled at her. At present was not the time in Mrs. Khovansky's life to enlighten her to the fact that a overnice "girl" wasn't in his futurity considering he happened to like boys.

Non that he'd had many of them effectually lately either. His honey life had been pretty sad. Kinda like everything else.

He checked his spotter. Five to 10. He really needed to become his store open. "Can I aid you with annihilation else, Mrs. Khovansky?"

"No, no! You get. You lot've done enough. Yous're a dear to walk me home."

"Okay. But if it snows once again tonight, I'll shovel your stoop for you in the morning. Don't try to get out if information technology's icy."

He suffered through some other cheek pinch. "Such a good male child. You become now." She opened the kitchen door and ushered him out. "I'll tell Ivan and the others you've been a big help."

Earlier Logan could frown and question her, she'd already closed the door to continue out the cold, leaving him alone on the steps.

Ivan and the others?

Conversations with her dead husband. Voices in the dark... None of that sounded good. Trudging back to his house, his booted feet crunching on the snow, Logan decided he was going to have to make a indicate to cheque in on the onetime lady more than often.

But as he climbed the steps to his own covered front porch, information technology suddenly hitting him with horrific certitude that if he didn't come up with a solution for his business problems soon, he might take all the time in the world to look out for his neighbor. Because his store would exist gone.

* * * *

Hours afterward, when he locked the door at the end of some other painfully slow sales day, the knot in Logan's breadbasket that had been with him for weeks gave a painful twist.

He'd had exactly ii customers make purchases all mean solar day, and both sales had been for trivial, depression-priced items. The unexpected cost of the tire repairs this morning that he'd ended upward having to pay cash for had completely wiped out the funds he'd been saving for utilities. And then, starting from scratch with the miniscule amount of money he'd fabricated today, he could pay exactly--he did the math his head--v percent of the electric nib. And that was not buying any groceries, gas, or other necessities.

"How am I going to get out of this mess?" he murmured, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against the absurd wood of the forepart door later it was locked. He drew in several deadening, deep breaths, trying to clear his mind and tap into the well of inner peace that should have been somewhere inside him. It seemed, however, the well had stale up as effectively equally the shop's coffers. All he found for his trouble was an even more vicious twisting in his stomach and style too much noise in his caput.

With a sigh, Logan switched off the shop lights and made his way around a skimpy brandish of New Age calendars and Celtic deity statuary--skimpy because he hadn't been able to afford to order anything new in several months--on his fashion to his individual inner sanctum of the old house. His combination workroom and kitchen lay across the public surface area of the store, and a ready of creaking wooden stairs led to his sleeping accommodation, a spare room, and private bathroom on the 2d floor. It wasn't much in the way of space, and the whole place really needed some renovation. The forest floors were scratched and scuffed. The peeling, rose-strewn wallpaper in the kitchen wasn't original from when the house was built, merely it had certainly been there for the meliorate role of the last 50 years. The appliances had been updated at some bespeak, but had seen their heyday a few decades ago.

Nevertheless, the identify was all his. Even if he had to close the store, at least he wouldn't be kicked out of his dwelling. Bated from yearly property taxes, which he'd just paid a couple of months agone, give thanks God, he didn't owe a penny on the old firm. He'd paid for it in full v years ago when he'd bought information technology...a legacy from his elderly aunt who'd raised him. He'd been her sole heir, and had used the money from her manor to purchase the firm and fix his initial inventory.

In the kitchen, he cranked the thermostat down x degrees from where he kept it set during the day for his customers' condolement, so lit several candles in lieu of using the overhead lights. With money every bit tight as it had been, he'd been trying to keep his electric beak every bit low equally possible. If that meant wearing more clothes to stay warm, and eating by candlelight at night, so be it. A fire in the fireplace here in the kitchen or in the one upstairs in his bedroom would exist nice, merely wood cost money. The few logs and kindling he had left in the stack exterior the backstairs were for a true emergency, similar when the power went out for days during i of the spring blizzards that swirled over the plains and against the mountains.

Standing at the open pantry, he debated between a package of ramen noodles or...ramen noodles. His sensory recall, still, was remembering in vivid item the scent of Mrs. Khovansky'due south beefiness stroganoff. He tried to ignore the fashion the thought fabricated his mouth water.

While his noodles nuked--How much electricity did a microwave utilise when information technology ran for five minutes, he wondered. Should he give that up, as well?--he opened a bottle of vino from the rack on the counter. The scarlet Burgundy had been a gift from someone during the holidays year before final. Logan wasn't much of a drinker, simply subsequently such a lousy day, he was hoping, at all-time, for a big dose of forgetting and a expressionless-to-the-globe night's slumber. And, at worst, maybe he'd at least while away the next couple of hours before bed with a pleasant buzz.

He ate his dinner, such as it was, perched on a stool at the raised, elongated butcher cake that doubled as dining tabular array and work table. When he'd finished and had rinsed the bowl and spoon, he cutting upwards a withered apple tree and dropped a few small-scale pieces into Zeus muzzle, which sa

t at the end of the tabular array.

The hamster's pinkish, twitching olfactory organ appeared from out of his most recent couch, testing the air. Then he scampered out into sight, climbed into his basin of seeds, and promptly began shoving apple tree bits into the pouches of his cheeks. Afterward a moment he paused and nibbled furiously at the piece he nevertheless held between his paws and stared at Logan with dark, beady eyes that seemed to pierce right through Logan's soul.

"Enjoy it, petty homo. It may be the last fruit for a while."

Logan had grown surprisingly addicted of the rodent. He'd agreed to hamster-sit over spring break last year for one of his sometimes customers who was a student at the college. But when the end of spring intermission rolled around, no student had returned to picked upward the hamster. After trying for a couple of weeks to locate the young man, Logan had finally given up and officially adopted Zeus.

"Yous know, that sure is a big, of import name for such a small, unassuming fuzzball," he told the hamster. "The all-powerful Zeus."

Zeus looked at him every bit if to say, "Yeah, and what kind of a proper name is Shoemaker anyhow?"

"Well, I suppose you have a point there," Logan told him. And then he gave a one-half-chuckle and rolled his eyes. He hoped it was the vino that was making him and so chatty with the hamster and not because the stress and loneliness had finally driven him stark raving bonkers. Probably the wine. He poured himself some other drinking glass and took a sizeable swallow. Anyhow, it was better to talk to a hamster than hear voices like Mrs. Khovansky. At to the lowest degree he hoped and then.

"I of my ancestors really was a shoemaker, Zeus, and then there's no need to become snippy."

Zeus chewed and chewed and stared hard at Logan as if measuring his sincerity.

"Information technology's the truth. Aunt Lillian traced the Shoemaker genealogy dorsum to my great-great-several-greats granddad, who was an actual shoemaker."

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