Hi, everyone. Here's my new fanfic on Harry Potter. It's short, so I hope you can spare a few minutes to give it a look. Thanks for reading. Please comment and tell me what you think. Enjoy!
Arrival on exile
"Well, sir, here you go. Five cans of beans. Ten cans of soup. Eight cans of beef. Em. The tuna cans. The… the box of cookies. Em. Yes. What else?"
"The mushrooms."
"Oh, oh, sure. Here. Two, em, three cans of mushrooms."
"And twenty pounds of meat."
"I'm sorry?"
"You do have raw meat, don't you?"
"Well, em, sure. But… twenty pounds? I mean. You're… you're… obviously going for a camp or… or something. In this heat, twenty pounds of meat will be rotten in less than…"
"I'll worry about that, ma'am. Please."
The sixty-years-old grocer sighed and went back inside. It's almost over, she thought.
The man was a stranger in the island. No ship had reached the port since last week, and no one could tell how he had got there or why. His skin was white as sand, his features gaunt and sore behind the unshaved beard and ragged cloths. The children who saw him first coming out of the jungle thought him to be a ghost. Their cries and shrieks had let everyone know they weren't alone.
He had come down to the town at dusk. A mixture of lightbulbs and candlelight was shedding light on the palm huts as he strolled down the main road. From both sides of the street, dozens of nervous eyes had watched his steps from behind their glassless windows. Their moves were cautious. No one made a sound.
The knock on the grocer's door had broken the silence with the strength of thunder. Despite the old woman's well-known temper, it took her a moment to dare attending the call. Someone said she had stood by the door with her shotgun before letting him pass, but for the rest, it had only been the intruder stepping inside the house and the woman closing after them.
Then, the world went dead again. The men, the dogs, the very air. Quiet, awaiting for the man to leave.
"I'm sorry, sir" said the grocer when she returned. In her hands was a large, red-dripping paper bag. "I can only give you fifteen pounds. Is it alright?"
The man nodded. She added the package to the cans and put everything in an empty fruit box.
"Anything else?"
He shook his head. Besides his requests, he had remained silent all the time. His voice was grave, his stare sharp. Calming. It was weird, she thought. Every time she dared looking into his eyes for mean intentions, she found but an odd trace of frailty. Of kindness. Of fear. From what, who could tell? In her mind, she felt she could only be sure of one thing: that man was good, and he had paid for being so.
"Alright, sir." She took a large calculator from behind the bar. "So… the beans, the soup, the tuna…" She clicked and added some numbers as she numbered the products. A habit of her mother. In her trance, she didn't see the man taking the leather bag from his cloths. He left it in the bar, clanking, and grabbed the fruit box before she finally raised her eyes.
"Thank you," he said from the threshold. Then he went out. Out of the local. Out of the street. Out of existence. He left in the same way he had arrived. The same quietness, the same mystery. His dim shadow was the last thing they saw before he went back into the woods, never to return.
Above them, a blue star shining below the moon, brighter than the rest.
The woman stood still for several minutes. She pushed the off button of the calculator and risked a closer look at the bag. The gold and bronze and silver coins gleamed and shone against the bulb light like fireflies. It has to be a trick, she thought. The moment I grab it, it will disappear.
She took her chance, eyes closed.
In her fingers, the cold touch of metal. It was real.