The Nowhere Emporium Read Online Free Page B

than he felt. “No tea, thank you. Just tell me what’s going on.”
    He had followed the man across the hallway, passing dozens of staircases, to another doorway – this one with a curtain of deep, red velvet. When he’d brushed through the curtain Daniel had found himself back in the Emporium.
    The man in the suit sipped at his tea, then returned his cup to a saucer on the desk.
    “There really is no way of making what I’m about to say any easier for you to hear or comprehend,” he began. “So here it is: Daniel Holmes, you should be dead.” At this he stood, and began to wander around the shop, his hands clasped behind his back. “Allow me to explain. My name is Lucien Silver. I am a … traveller. This Emporium is my means of transport. It dances through time, taking me from city to city, town to town, village to village, all over the globe.”
    “Through time?” said Daniel. “Like Doc Brown?”
    Mr Silver gave him a blank look. “Who?”
    “Doc Brown,” said Daniel. “You know. Marty McFly.
Back to the Future?
It’s an old movie I saw at the children’s home. Doc and Marty have a time machine.”
    Mr Silver shrugged. “I do not get to the cinema much,” he said. His grey eyes sparkled in the light of the fire. “And my Emporium is not just a time machine.” He pointed to the red curtain. “Beyond that curtain, beyond the many staircases we have just passed, lie my Wonders. Think of the Emporium as being like a tree. The hall of staircases you just walked through – that is the trunk. Branching off it are the passageways, hundreds of them, where the Wonders lie. Wherever I visit, customers are drawn to this place. For a small fee, I allow them to step through the curtain and experience what it’s like to fly among the endless stars, to taste the colour of the sunset and explore the very boundaries of imagination. I allow them to visit my Wonders.
    “Of course, I cannot allow my customers to remember what they have seen in the Emporium. Not any more. Many years ago, when the shop first opened, they remembered everything. But we soon became much too busy to cope with the crowds. Now they leave with a foggy glow of happiness, perhaps even the sense that their life has changed forever. But they cannot recall the shop. To them, it’s as if it never existed.”
    He frowned, and a sudden weight seemed to cause him to sag. “When you ran away, strayed onto that road, you nearly died.”
    Daniel opened his mouth, but found his throat thick and choked.
    “If that’s true, if I nearly died, then why am I here? How did I get out alive?”
    “Because I interfered,” said Silver. “I saved you, Daniel. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do. It was not an easy decision to make. Butthe day you returned to the Emporium – the moment I realised you remembered being here the previous day – I knew you were special. I knew there must be a reason why you came to my attention.”
    “What sort of reason?”
    “I don’t know yet,” said Mr Silver, drumming his fingers on his chin. “But I am offering you the chance of a lifetime, my boy – the chance of a hundred lifetimes. Come with me. Learn about the Emporium. Prove that I was right to interfere. See the world in a way nobody else can. What do you say?”
    Daniel said nothing. He stared out of the Emporium’s windows. Glasgow was hidden beneath a veil of thick swirling fog.
    “You need persuasion,” said Mr Silver. “Seeing is believing, or so they say.”
    He strode towards the shop door, reaching for an elaborate metal instrument on the wall. To Daniel, it looked like a complicated cross between a clock and a compass. There were many dials, and rings of numbers set within smaller rings. Mr Silver began to manipulate the hands of the instrument. When he was satisfied, he spun and headed for the fire, scooping a handful of coal from a bucket on the floor. He tossed the coal into the fire. There was a great roar, and the flames became so