The Cost of Memories

In Which Shadow Comes For A Late Night Visit

It is late, far later than I usually stay at the pawnshop unless I am expecting someone to come to sell me a memory, but I can't stand to leave the shop right now, mainly because of the note that Shadow slipped into my pocket over a week ago. It doesn't help that I know that it would not have escaped his notice that the person with me was from the Department.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm waiting for some kind of punishment or not. I know that Shadow has a nasty, dark side, one that lurks within the scars that usually mar his face when I see him. He has always been fairly generous with me though, probably because he knows that the quality of the memories I copy.

As I sit in the dark, lit only by the glowing light of all my jars, I try to find the memory of how and when I first met the dealer. It had to have been some time after Uncle Pierce died and I decided to leave the DMA permanently, but it seems to have vanished just like the memories of what exactly happened between Finn and me to cause me to leave. All that is left is the weird tooth gap that Mrs. Miles so adeptly enounced the last time I had seen her.

When my nerves can't be tamed by the quivering of my legs any more, I push myself out of the chair, my lungs struggling to get enough air to my brain to think. With jerking movements, I make my way to the shelves. The memories nearest to me stir, creeping up in the jars to come as close as they can to staring curiously at me.

I touch the smooth glass of the closest one, almost able to feel heat radiating off of it as its sunset orange glow becomes brighter. This memory is one of my favorites that I had copied recently, the young memory of a child running through a field of wildflowers as the fireflies begin to make their appearance to dance at night. It belongs to Harriet, an older woman whose earlier memories get clearer the closer she gets towards her grave. I don't think that she comes in for the money; I think she comes in to relive the days that she remembers the best, trying to cement them into her memory as her more recent memories slip through her fingers with the passage of time.

She is one of the customers that stays the longest after I extract a memory to copy or give her back one. Each time she asks me how I remember what memory belongs to who without labeling my jar, and I patiently explain to her that because of how I pull the memory from someone's mind, we remain connected. She then has to wander through the shelves with me, pointing to a jar that catches her attention, so I can tell her what is inside of it.

It is a game that I relish even when it get cut short because her granddaughter comes to the pawnshop all aflutter with the worry that Harriet has wandered in to bother me again. The older woman always pats her cheek with a gentle hand, telling her that she was just reminiscing in a place where someone appreciates the value of memories.

"You should give up this old place," Shadow says behind me, and I snatch away my fingers like the jar had burned me. "You're too soft to be running a place like this, Maeve, and people know that. One sad story out of their mouth and you scramble to try to fix whatever problem they have."

The glow surrounding us catches his scars, throwing a shadow map across his face. He taps a nail against one of the jars next to him, and I watch as the memory retreats back towards the bottom. "Money and charity and all that nonsense cannot fix most people. All it does is teach them who to come crawling to when they want a handout."

"I like to think that broken people can be fixed, not with money and charity, but with kindness. That's why I don't give up the pawnshop and why I don't keep most of the profit I make off of copying memories for you. People come here to sell me things, yes, but they also come here because they know whatever they leave with me, I will respect it as if it were my own. They come for the companionship that is woven into the very walls of these shops, knowing that someone will be here to listen to them even if no one else in their lives will.