Mr Carnovan's Little Shop of Dreams, Part 1b of 5

'Now Mr Carnovan is quite short, and there are those who unwisely refer to him as one of the “wee folk”. They never make that remark twice, at least not in Mr Carnovan’s hearing. It’s not that Mr Carnovan has anything against the wee folk. Indeed not. He has been seen sharing a friendly pint with many a garden gnome, the two of them laughing and joking long into the night, until the stars disappear into the west. And a special chair is reserved in a warm spot beside his fireplace for any of the Old Ones passing through the neighbourhood. No, he has nothing against the wee folk. It’s rather that he has too much respect for them to claim to be a wee folk himself. He is short, not wee, and he’ll thank you to remember the difference, Mr Michael Orrin.’

Michael father’s pinched Michael’s nose between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Oww,’ giggled Michael, ‘that hurts.’

‘It’s to help you remember the difference. You’ll thank me for it one day. Now, back to the story. Mr Carnovan has inherited most of the features of the Carnovans, although his nose lacks the impressive dimensions that have given us the proverb ‘As plain as the nose on a Carnovan’. The present Mr Carnovan’s nose is more reasonable in size. I believe his mother contributed that feature to his face, for his father boasted a truly enormous nose, a veritable elephant’s snout it was. Like most of his clan, the present Mr Carnovan is pleasingly formed. Indeed, he is accounted a handsome man by most. He is, moreover, a most friendly man, genial when geniality is called for and sober when sobriety is needed. I have always enjoyed his company when he has consented to grace me with his presence. He is a man of great charm. And he shares his house with a brindled cat named The Murphy.’

‘Like me!’

‘Indeed, just like you, Michael. I am glad to see that you are paying attention. And Mr Carnovan’s Murphy is just like your Murphy, a cat wise beyond his years. For it is well known that brindled cats are the wisest of cats, and they choose their companions carefully. It speaks highly of Mr Carnovan, and of young Master Michael Orrin, that cats of such intelligence have chosen them as friends.

‘Now there is nothing about the Little Shop of Dreams to catch the eye, not so that you would notice. From outside, there is no hint of the wonders to be found within. In the window there are only a few blue boxes like the one you’re holding. They are stacked up in a pyramid. But truth to tell, the pyramid has become a bit lopsided over time, and the boxes are in need of a good dusting. There is so much dust that if you walked into his shop, you would start sneezing—enormous explosions that would send the little blue boxes flying about the shop. Mr Carnovan would rush about trying to catch them as they tumbled through the air, mumbling “Oh dear, my goodness, who would have thought young Michael Orrin could sneeze like that!”

‘Now, Mr. Carnovan and his family have been in the business of providing dreams for generations. He is too modest a man to record the year in which the firm was founded over the doorway to his establishment. I have no such hesitation. The first Little Shop of Dreams was started in 1642. It is rumoured, and I admit that I do not know if this is true, that one of Mr Carnovan’s younger brothers bestirred himself and sailed off to America and founded a branch of the shop there, in Los Angeles, I believe. We will wish him every success and allow him to enjoy the California sunshine.

‘Mr Carnovan is now a bit older than your granddads. He has, as the saying goes, earned his rest and is enjoying his life of semi-retirement in Lansby. If a customer walks in, Mr Carnovan attends to their needs with admirable thoughtfulness. But he does not put himself out to attract patrons. Perhaps twice, sometimes three times, a day, the bell over the front door to the Little Shop will jangle, and Mr Carnovan will emerge from the back room where he smokes his white pipe and reads his books, all of which have red covers. There are, of course, more customers during the Christmas season, when Mr Carnovan follows the family tradition of offering a special sale on Christmas dreams. But since Christmas is several months off, we will tell the story of the Christmas sales at the Little Shop of Dreams some other time.

‘The present Mr Carnovan never married and has no children. He sometimes talks about retiring and turning the Little Shop of Dreams over to one of his nephews. But I am getting ahead of my story. Time enough for the future in the future.’

‘But if it’s so hard to get to Lansby, how did Grandmother get there?’

‘As I said, only those with courage and persistence ever reach Lansby, Michael. Now everyone knows that your Grandmother Orrin has both in abundance, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, then, do you doubt your grandmother could find Lansby? It would take more than a few mischievous Lansbians and their misdirecting fingerposts to send your grandmother astray. No, for those that need to find it, the Little Shop of Dreams is easy to find. All one has to do is set one’s right foot down on the proper path, and the rest of the steps follow. Now, where was I in my story?’

‘You were about to tell me how Grandmother found Lansby.’

‘Was I? Well, I suppose I should tell you then. One bright sunny morning, just after the rains had ended and the clouds had drifted off toward the east, your grandmother wrapped her best shawl, the one that’s as blue as the grass, around her shoulders and picked up her special carrying bag made of string as green as the clouds. She chose a walking stick made of dark elderberry wood from the stand beside the door and put on that Red Sox baseball cap your Uncle Brendan sent her from Boston in America. She put it on backwards, like all the young men do, and stomped her left foot three times before she opened the door to let Old Woman Edná, the spirit that protects her home, know that she was leaving and that Edná was to watch over the house while she was away. Then she stepped outside and put the cap on straight and stomped her right foot three times. She gave three mighty stomps of her right foot—one, two, three—just to wake the guardian spirits of the land and let them know that Nora Kathryn Orrin, O’Connor that was, was stepping forth, and they’d better behave and watch over her as she travelled. And a guardian spirit would have to be a very foolish spirit indeed not to tend to your grandmother.’

‘But you still haven’t said how Grandmother found the road to Lansby.’

‘Patience, Michael, patience,’ Michael’s father said with mock severity. ‘Surely you know that the penalty for interrupting a storyteller is never to learn the ending of the story. Now you don’t want that, do you?’

Michael giggled and shook his head no.

‘Good. Let us get back to your grandmother and not leave her standing on her own doorstep because her impatient grandson keeps interrupting the storyteller. Now, your grandmother looked to the east and then to the west and then to the south. But she didn’t bother to look to the north, because the only thing north of Dunfanaghy is your grandmother’s house. She knew that it would be useless to look north, and your grandmother never wastes time doing what is useless. Still, no matter where she looked, she saw not the slightest sign of the road to Lansby. For, as everyone knows, the road to Lansby is hard to find. Finally, she closed her eyes and felt in her pocket for her agate stone, the special wishing stone that her mother had before her and her mother’s mother before her mother. And she held it in her hand. And the stone felt smooth and warm in her hand. She thought about her grandson who was troubled by the nightmares and how she needed to get to Lansby and Mr Carnovan’s Little Shop of Dreams.

‘The thing about wishing stones is that you mustn’t ever make a wish. You only think about what you want. And if the wishing stone favours you, it sends a sign. So your grandmother thought and thought about you. And when she looked to the south, she could see a place far away, high, high up in the hills where there was one blade of grass that was bent over as if someone had stepped on it. She looked a bit further on, and she could see another blade of grass that had been trampled. And she knew that was the sign she had been waiting for.

‘So she closed her gate and stepped out on the road. For the longest journey begins when you put your right foot down in the proper place. Then all the steps follow one after the other until you arrive where you are going and there you are.

‘Now, it would be a very long story to tell you all the dangers your grandmother had to brave on the road to Lansby. The telling of it would keep you up long past your bedtime. So I’ll save the stories about your grandmother’s meeting the ogre and the three tuneless tenors or how she tricked the giant into helping her cross the deep black waters of the torrent. No, I think that tonight I will not even tell you how she persuaded the knight who guards the pass to give her a ride over the mountains on his roan horse. Those will be stories for other nights.

‘In fact, Michael, I can see that you are having a hard time keeping your eyes open. Even a ogre would be forced to admit that those yawns you’re yawning are very big yawns. So, my lad, let’s put the box from Mr Carnovan’s Little Shop of Dreams up here on the top shelf of your bookcase, for that is where it will do the most good. Tomorrow I will tell you how your grandmother bought the box. But you must promise me one thing.’

Michael nodded eagerly.

‘You must not open the box. All its magic would escape if you opened it. Tonight all you have to know is that it will send you only good dreams. And if the devil comes at you with a nightmare, you tell him that you are sorry but you have a box bought by your grandmother at Mr Carnovan’s Little Shop of Dreams, and he will go away and not trouble you further. Can you do that for me, Michael?’

Michael nodded and then yawned again. He rolled over onto his side, and his father tucked the covers around him and then switched off the light and pulled the door most of the way closed so that only a little light came into the room from the hallway. Just before Michael’s eyes closed, he looked up and saw the blue box gleaming from the edge of the top shelf of the bookcase.

*****

The Murphy spotted the box the moment he entered the room. Lú na Micniai, the guardian spirit of the house, was sitting on the top shelf and tossing the box from hand to hand. Even in the dim light, it glowed with colour as it tumbled through the air. When Lú saw The Murphy, he stood on the toes of one foot, stuck his other leg out straight behind himself, and twirled the box around on the tip of his right thumb so quickly that the box looked like a whirlwind that The Murphy had once seen.

‘What do you think’s in the box, Mr Murphy?’

‘I know what it is the box, Lú, and you are to put it down. My cousin in Lansby in Donegal, also named The Murphy, makes those. Those are not for the likes of you.’

‘And why might that be, Mr Murphy?’

‘Because they are filled with dreams, and why would a house guard like yourself be needing a dream? You never sleep.’ The Murphy checked over his shoulder that the boy was asleep. Then he levitated. Now, cats never levitate when humans are watching. But if you ever wonder how the cat made his way atop the refrigerator to sample the cream-filled brandy cornets you left there for safety while you went to answer the telephone or how he got up on the roof, the answer is levitation. One moment The Murphy was standing with all four of his paws on the floor and the next second, he was on the top shelf sitting next to Lú, his tail wrapped around his body and one of his front paws hanging elegantly over the edge of the shelf. In the dark at the top of the bookcase, he was nearly invisible.

Lú shifted a few inches away, not so far as to be rude and imply that he didn’t want to sit near The Murphy but far enough to allow The Murphy more room. Experience had taught Lú that the cat was not above punctuating his assertions with his claws. Not two weeks before, Lú had had to replace his second-best pair of gold trousers because the beast has taken a mind to mayhem and snagged a claw on them while they were chatting. And the cat had refused to own up and reimburse Lú for the cost of a new pair. And as everyone knows, gold trousers of the sort every self-respecting house guardian wears cost a galleon full of moonbeams. Now, The Murphy was the house cat and Lú was the house guardian, and the both of them together were responsible for the safety and well-being of the Orrin family. And Lú was willing to cooperate with the cat in carrying out their duties. But, as he said to the lads down to the pub, that didn’t mean that he had to like the furry monster. No, that was why manners had been invented—to allow you to deal with difficult creatures without resorting to magic spells. And The Murphy—and if you wanted his opinion of the animal, Lú na Micniai would be only too happy to give it to you—The Murphy was a difficult creature.

‘And it’s your cousin, the aforementioned Murphy, who makes these boxes of dreams?’ Lú had been raised to be a proper, polite house guard, and he thought it only decent to show an interest in The Murphy’s family, even though, truth be told, there were more than enough brindled cats named The Murphy in Ireland to make a regiment in the devil’s army as far as Lú was concerned. But in the interests of domestic harmony, the house guard was willing to try to get along with the cat, not that it was easy, mind you. And The Murphy always rubbing up against the boy and purring. That shameless, the feline was. It wasn’t fair. Just because house guardians were too quick to be seen by humans, even the ones with the sharpest eyes, and just because they didn’t have soft, silky fur, and just because they couldn’t purr, didn’t mean they weren’t the real protectors of the house. The cat was asleep half the time, not that Lú would ever complain that he had to do most of the work. No, he was only too happy to shoulder more than his fair share. Of course, it made no difference in his pay. It was his nightmare that one day the monster would eat him and then claim afterwards that he thought the house guard had been a mouse. Well, Lú, had his magic ready if the cat ever tried that out. It would be the last time The Murphy trifled with Lú. And just let him try to shred Lú’s trousers again. There was now a small magic spell in the left back pocket of each pair of his trousers that would take care of that. Lú grinned at The Murphy. The cat could make of that what he would.

‘Yes. But he’s a well-brought-up cat, and he lets the human take the credit—this Mr Carnovan of Lansby that the man was telling Michael about.’

‘For a human, the man tells a good story.’

‘Yes. He’s almost as good as my cousin Murphy who owns a cottage in Gouldavoher near Luimneach. Have I told you his story about the cat who saved . . .’

Both the cat and the house guard sat up, alert. ‘Did you hear that, Mr Murphy? It sounds like one of them nasty snarflies that have been sneaking about the neighbourhood at night and snarfling up leftover chocolate ice cream and leaving not a lick for anyone else.’

The cat and the house guard leapt off the top shelf and ran out the door to Michael’s room. The house guard skied down the banister, his bright green hat flying off his head as he bounced off the end of the railing. He grabbed it just before it flew out of reach and pulled it on securely, folding the tops of his ears over it to hold it in place, as he headed into the kitchen to confront the snarfly. Murphy bounded down the steps, taking three at a time. He skittered a bit on the pestiferous rug at the bottom of the stairs. Why the woman insisted on having these rugs, he would never understand. But he quickly righted himself and galloped into the kitchen on Lú’s heels.

In his bedroom, Michael stirred and turned over as his dream ended, and then went back to sleep.

Continues