Carrick's Coffee Tavern

Carrick’s Coffee Tavern was the epitome of the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover.” It was a ramshackle building with peeling black paint and oddly placed windows that made one wonder if the architect had been quite sound in the head. After its first host building had collapsed in on itself, it relocated to the backwater district of Winterstown where there was next to no parking for carriages and even less space for the moderners who used automobiles. Its backyard overlooked the Chastoll Creek, which flowed for hundreds of miles down from the Mountain of Chastile. Just behind the creek was a dark and foreboding forest that appeared more gray than green. The coffee tavern itself appeared to be collapsing under the weight of the two larger buildings on either side- Drake’s Apothecary on the left, and Morgana’s Outfitters on the right. It seemed as though Drake and Morgana were trying to reach each other, in the process nearly crushing Carrick’s Coffee Tavern.

But what Carrick’s was lacking in setting and presentation, it made up for in product. Nowhere else in Winterstown offered better, blacker, richer coffee than Carrick’s. The coffee tavern could have made great profit if only it was more well-known. 

But alas, the little coffee tavern was nearly anonymous- which made it the ideal candidate for the meeting Pearl Wittenberg had arranged for today. 

The tarnished brass bell over the door jingled as Pearl stepped into the dimly lit tavern. Fairy lights strung from the ceiling and a small fountain in the center gave the place a darkly magical ambience. The smell of coffee hung heavily in the stuffy air. In the back right corner, a twisting metal staircase that looked less than up to par on safety codes spiraled into the sagging ceiling. The seating area housed only two other customers. In the left corner, a middle-aged man was flipping feverishly through a very large, very old book. Two tables over from him sat a woman with dark skin, a dark cloak, and bright eyes. She leaned forward, her elbows on the table, eyeing Pearl. Pearl hastened over to her and went to sit down across from her, but instead the woman pulled out the chair next to her. 

“Avith Margrave?” Pearl asked nervously, taking the seat and inching it slightly away from the woman. 

Avith nodded sincerely. “Pleasure to meet you, Pearl. What issue did you want to discuss?”

Pearl’s eyes flitted around the shop. The man in the corner seemed thoroughly engaged with his work, as did Carrick. “I’m sorry I- I c- couldn’t give you more details early- earlier,” she said, stumbling over the words.

“Nothing to worry about.” Avith’s fiery eyes never left Pearl’s own icy blue ones. “What is it?”

“I heard you take Curses away?” Pearl was wide-eyed, gazing hopefully up at Avith. 

Avith’s melancholy face betrayed no emotion. “You heard correctly.” 

Pearl fidgeted. “Then I- I hope you can help me. I’ve been Cursed to die in the presence of a Chastilian.” She rolled up the left sleeve of her cloak to show Avith the red band around her wrist.

Avith nodded again. “I see.” 

“How much do you charge? I’ll pay anything.” Pearl’s eyes grew desperate. 

Avith placed her work-worn hand over Pearl’s elegant one. “How were you Cursed?”

Pearl inhaled deeply before her story came spilling out. “My mother married a Chastilian. My grandmother hated the Chastilians, and she was a witch, so she cursed me to punish my mother. Now my family has cast me out to- to protect me.”

“Forgive me for interrupting,” said a man’s voice with an English accent. “But are you discussing Curses?” 

Pearl jumped in her seat and turned to see the other man in the tavern, now holding his large, dusty book beneath his arm. 

“Indeed,” Avith said coolly. “And you were eavesdropping?”

The man sat himself down across from the two women. “I’m Ignatius,” he said, shaking Pearl’s hand, then Avith’s. His own hand trembled. He studied Avith’s face for a moment before dropping his book on the table and madly flipping through it. He landed on page 256 and pointed his finger triumphantly at a name. 

“Avith Margrave, Curse absorber!” he declared. Then he added with a note of uncertainty, “That is you, right?”

Avith looked like she was trying not to roll her eyes. “That’s me.”

Ignatius pushed the book in front of Avith, turning it around so she could read it. “It says here you were Cursed to take on the Curses of others, but that you decided to use it for good by helping other Cursed. Is that true?”

Avith’s eyes moved from side to side as she scanned the paragraph under her name. “I suppose,” she said, “though they missed quite a lot.” 

“Such as the fact that the original Curse was never meant to take the Curses away from those you absorbed them from,” Ignatius filled in, obviously proud of the fact that he knew so much about Avith. “I found that out from the Marbury Catalog of Cursed Heroes.” 

“Do you want something from me?” Avith asked Ignatius bluntly as Pearl squirmed with impatience. 

“Well, you see, I’m a bit of a Curse enthusiast myself,” Ignatius said, closing his book. “I’ve been researching them most of my life, but I guess my research went a little too far and I accidentally Cursed myself.” He paused for dramatic effect.

Avith cleared her throat. “So what’s the Curse?”

Ignatius leaned forward over the wooden table. “Beware the Cursed Triangle,” he said softly, like he was disclosing a secret. The words hung in the air, confusing and cryptic. 

The bell jingled over the door, eliciting a nervous twitch from Pearl. A young man with shaggy hair the color of ashes entered, eyes on the floor, and slouched up to the counter, where Carrick welcomed him. 

“W- what’s the Cursed Triangle?” Pearl asked in a hushed voice. 

Ignatius shrugged. “That’s what I have yet to find out.”

Avith drummed her fingers on the table. “What does the Curse do?”

“Brings on a sleep like death,” Ignatius intoned. “The Cursed Triangle has extended throughout history, taking down rulers and commoners alike. Once an entire kingdom fell to it. Yet no one knows precisely what causes it- or what exactly it is, for that matter.” 

Silence fell, and Avith’s keen eyes followed the young newcomer as he took his cup of steaming black coffee to the corner where Ignatius had sat before interrupting Avith’s meeting with Pearl. 

“I take it you’ll both be wanting me to absorb your Curses, then.” Avith looked from Pearl to Ignatius. 

“Is it possible?” Ignatius asked. “The books didn’t say if you could absorb multiple Curses simultaneously, or if you had to finish one before you could take on another-”

“The books are not to be trusted blindly,” Avith cut him off. “If it would put your mind at ease, I can tell you how it works.” 

Ignatius’s eyes lit up. “Would you?”

Avith exhaled. “I was Cursed by a neighborhood witch when I was young and foolish and didn’t understand why one should not poke sticks at bears. She was very temperamental, and unable to decide on a single Curse for me, so she Cursed me to attract other Cursed ones like a lamp attracts moths, and to take on their Curses to become my own.” Pushing back her own left sleeve, she revealed her entire forearm to be covered in red bands, some faded, some bright.  

“But she didn’t plan on you taking the Curses off of others,” Ignatius put in. 

“No, she did not.” 

“What about the- the Death Curses?” Pearl asked, clicking her fingernails anxiously. 

“I have died many times in many, many ways,” Avith said quietly. 

“Do you have to finish a Curse before you can take on another one?” Ignatius pressed. “For instance, if you absorb a Death Curse, do you have to die before you can take on, say, a Suffering Curse?”

“I see you are familiar with Curse classification,” Avith commented. “The Death Curses are the only possible ones to finish. The Curse disappears once I die and return.” She massaged a strip of brown skin nearly buried in the red bands. “The rest stay. Some fade with age, others grow stronger. But most of them stay.” 

Without warning, Ignatius grabbed the table, steadying himself against it. His face drained of color. Void of his previous energy, he seemed weak, barely able to remain sitting upright. 

“What is it?” Pearl cried, leaping to her feet. 

Avith recognized the signs. “It’s a Curse!” She reached for Ignatius’s arm across the table, ready to absorb the Curse, but he slipped to the floor with a thud, sound asleep, breathing shallow and face white as snow. 

“But- but where’s the Cursed Triangle?” Pearl’s voice was strained as she fought back tears of fear. 

Avith scanned the tavern. Carrick was nowhere to be seen, unaware of the drama playing out in his seating area. The young man in the corner had been staring, watching the events unfold, but now whipped back around in his seat as though he had been ignoring them. Avith looked down at her own chair, at Pearl’s empty one, at the place where the newcomer sat, and at Ignatius’s unconscious body in the center of the triangle they had formed. She ran over to the young man, grabbed his shoulder, and pulled him around to face her. 

“You! Are you Cursed?” she demanded, fiery eyes boring into his own rather colorless ones. 

“Why would I be Cursed?”

“Answer the question!” 

“No! I swear I’m not!” 

Avith roughly let him go, and he smoothed his collar and stood up. He was a little shorter than Avith, and still retained the lankiness of adolescence. 

“Who are you?” Avith asked gruffly as Pearl watched from a few feet behind her, looking like she was ready to flee at any instant. 

“Angelo Potiphar,” he replied, keeping his cool remarkably well.

“From where?”

“Western parts of Bréemont.” 

Avith held out her hand. “Your arm.” 

Angelo extended his right arm. 

Avith’s eyes of fire met Angelo’s icy stare. “Your other arm.” 

A curious look came over Angelo as he gave her his left arm. She shoved the sleeve back, uncovering a bright red band around his left wrist. “You are Cursed, you little liar!” 

“I’m not!” Angelo began to sound desperate. “I’m not Cursed, I swear!” 

“Then where did you get this?” Avith pressed a fingernail onto the band, nearly breaking his skin. 

Angelo gasped in pain as Avith’s finger made contact with the band. Avith did not move, allowing him to remain in his suffering for a moment. Then she calmed. “If you truly are not Cursed, then I will not be able to absorb anything from you.” She encircled his wrist with both her hands, completely covering the band, and breathed deeply. Her breath became shaky. When she pulled her hands away, the band was gone, a fresh one showing on her own skin where the last gap of brown had been. 

Angelo sighed, sounding as unsteady as Avith. “You don’t know what you’ve done,” he said, voice quavering. 

“What were you C-Cursed with?” Pearl asked, inching closer. 

“He wasn’t Cursed,” Avith said, her face stoney as she rolled her sleeve down over the brand new mark. 

“I was,” Angelo insisted. “The Curse is a Tongue Curse- one of never being able to tell the truth- with a side effect of intuition.” 

Pearl looked from Angelo to Avith. “Who are you?” she asked Avith. 

“Angelo Potiphar,” Avith replied with such confidence she seemed to believe it. 

“H- how?” Pearl inquired, staring at Angelo. “And- and if you couldn’t tell the truth- who are you?”

The young man hung his head. “A traitor to my family.”

Avith’s face grew compassionate. “I’m sure your father still loves you,” she said. “He and your mother miss you and want you back.” 

The pain in the young man’s eyes became overwhelming as he ignored Avith and addressed Pearl. “I am Silas Bramble, the only son of a Chastilian warlock, Cursed because of bringing shame on my family through a lie.” 

Pearl’s ears began to ring. 

“About a year ago, I made a bad trade for my father’s business in the enchanted item trade, then lied to both my father and his client, who happened to be a very important man, in order to save face,” Silas continued. 

“W-wait,” Pearl stammered. “Did you say you were a- a Chastilian?”

Silas nodded. “I grew up at the roots of the Mountain of Chastile.”

“I’m afraid I can’t stay,” Avith said coldly. “I can be of no more help to either of you. Good day.” With a great flourish of her cloak, she left the little tavern, slamming the door behind her and sending a cloud of dust down from the ceiling.  

Pearl backed up, glancing at  the man Cursed with death sleep, and the Chastilian boy. “I should be going as well,” she said, making for the door with such angst that the hair on the back of Silas’s neck stood on end. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I’m Cursed!” she wailed. “Cursed to die in the presence of a Chastilian!” She yanked open the door, and suddenly there was an avalanche of wood and stone as the doorframe and surrounding wall collapsed, burying her. Silas ran to the unconscious man on the floor and pulled him under a table as the building around them began to crumble. 

* * *

The next day, the story was wedged into a tiny square in the Winterstown newspaper- Carrick’s Coffee Tavern Faces Collapse- Again. Underneath this heading was this short paragraph: 

“Carrick Morrison, fifteen-year proprietor of Carrick’s Coffee Tavern, must close business due to collapse of building that failed to comply with safety codes. While Morrison was taking out trash, the building’s front and side walls caved in, killing Pearl Wittenberg, 20, and injuring Ignatius Rosen, 47. Morrison testifies that two other customers were in the tavern when he went outside, but neither have been identified and their whereabouts remain unknown. This is the second time Carrick’s has suffered a collapse, the first time being at its former location downtown. Neighboring outlets Drake’s Apothecary and Morgana’s Outfitters have agreed to aid Morrison in demolition fees and expand their buildings into the space.”

Eight months later, there was no trace of the ramshackle building with peeling black paint and oddly placed windows. Drake’s and Morgana’s finally embraced each other, standing straight and tall and boasting of their sound structure and brand-new parking lot. Business went on as usual for Drake’s and Morgana’s while the memory of Carrick’s faded into the archives of the newspaper. Carrick himself had tried to reopen his tavern twice, but curiously enough, both buildings collapsed the day before he’d planned to open shop. Finally abandoning his dream of a coffee tavern, he got a job at Drake’s taking inventory of frog legs, unicorn hairs, and potion kettles. He liked to work in the back of the store with the view of the forest and Chastoll Creek. When he wasn’t taking inventory, stocking, or selling, he studied potion making in the hopes that he could rid himself of a strange rash on his left wrist. It had appeared the day before his very first building had collapsed, when a rather rude customer had left the shop in an extremely foul manner. The band never itched, never hurt unless he touched it, and never seemed to really do anything except circle his wrist like a strange, permanent bracelet. 

One day, a strangely familiar woman with dark skin and bright eyes entered Drake’s Apothecary and purchased an ounce of honeysuckle. Carrick took her money and placed the little jar of dew in a plastic bag. When he handed it over to her, he caught her looking at the band on his wrist. Memories flashed before his eyes. This woman was one of his final customers before the second building collapsed. He’d overheard a bit of her conversation while she was there with the unfortunate young woman who was killed. They had been talking about Curses, Carrick remembered. Could that be what the mark on his wrist was all about? 

“Excuse me, do you know if this is a Curse mark?” Carrick asked, pointing out the red band. 

The woman took her bag of honeysuckle in her left hand. Her sleeve slid back slightly to show a sleeve made of red bands that looked just like the one on Carrick’s own wrist. She shook her head, smiling. “No,” she said. “That’s nothing to be concerned about. Have a good day.” 

The little bell over the door jingled, and she was gone.