For weeks, the totem sits on the counter in Tuppenny with a price tag firmly affixed around its ankle, and three times, Earnest John nearly makes the sale. In this time, he is still convinced that he has somehow stolen the creature from the woods, plucking it unjustly from a branch. He has pulled one over on the great tree and stolen one of its fruit for his own gain. He likes this thought; likes how clever it makes him feel, likes the idea that he can even pull the wool over the eyes of a cosmic force, that he can even slip in and out of the Wardwood unnoticed. He thinks about it, after the shop closes at night, with a snifter in his hand and the little totem in front of him, and he laughs.
Or mostly he laughs. Late at night, time stretches and distorts, and he begins to think that those flat blue eyes are watching him back. Sometimes, he could swear that the wooden deer's neck has arched in a different direction, or that it has inched across his desktop of its own accord. In these moments, he doesn't feel so clever.
It is in these moments that he becomes so desperate to sell.
The totem looks strange in another man's hand, and Earnest John can't quite understand why it makes him so edgy, why his own palms go clammy watching him turn the little wooden idle over between calloused fingers. His own palms are damp, sweaty; his voice, nasal at the best of times, fades toward a whine that is almost enough to make himself cringe.
"…of course it's genuine. How do you imagine I'd fake such a thing?" For once, he lives up to his name. This is true, earnest, and he clutches his hands at his sides to keep himself from reaching out and plucking the little deer from this unworthy son-of-a-b***h's fat fingers. Instead he smiles, his sideways smile, his smile that never quite touches his eyes and certainly doesn't convince anyone he's telling the truth. And he raises an eyebrow.
"You imagine you've seen anything like it before?" And of course the man hasn't. Neither has he. It draws the eyes in, a quiet power. It feels warm to the touch, and to Earnest John, it thrums with a life that makes him strangely uncomfortable. It makes him feel small. It makes him feel weak. It turns his picture of the world on end.
He hates it. And yet, when the man makes an offer — a generous offer, one that perhaps implies belief, one that would set Earnest John for quite a while — he finds himself nitpicking and complaining, sarcastic enough to drive off the sale.
Earnest John is not the only one the totem makes nervous. It is frequently the rough-and-tumbles who eye it askance, the men with something sitting heavy on their conscious or clinging roughly to their shoulders. It is the ones he has always thought of as strong that go weak-kneed and dry-throated at the mere sight of it. There is blood on their hands they don't want witnessed by a ghost. A ghost most of them are superstitious enough to recognized.
So again he is prompted to get rid of the eyesore, the ill omen, the talisman of trouble. Once again it finds its way into new hands, into fingers that brush its contours and make his skin crawl. An honest young man, this time, a soldier with bright eyes and a sighing tone that would usually direct Earnest John to dig out the jewelry case and extract a small fortune out of eager fingers. All he has to do is tease and wink, and yet his teasing today takes on a bitter afternoon that makes the young moon scowl and flush and eventually storm-out open handed.
"What is wrong with me?" It is a whisper between chapped lips, his eyes locked across the table to meet laughing blue dots on the totem's face. The fork is limp between his fingers. This simply cannot go on.
The third time, he is himself; goading and charming and sly in the appropriate doses, pressing the wood into the prospective customer's hands and trying to ignore the sensation that those fingers are pressed against his own skin, somehow. He watches the sideways movement of the man's eyes toward the door, notes the tension mounting in his shoulders, and lets these signs go. Instead of stopping him before he can bunch up the energy to run, he lets the thief go, and take his Totem with him.
And good riddance.
Earnest John is surprised by his own grief at the totem's leaving. Relief takes him as well, a great relief, the rest of the day settling back into its own usual routine, but he finds his eyes flicking to where the rusty deer had sat and wondering where it might be now. He passes it off, mostly, as wishing he had made the sale, that he hadn't let it slip away from him with so little profit, but he takes the usual resumption of business as an encouraging sign. It was costing him money. Getting rid of it was profit enough.
By the end of the day he has convinced himself that everything is fine, and he hardly misses it at all. He is whistling between his teeth as he gives the place its cursory sweep, wondering [and not for the first time] why he doesn't coax one of his youngsters to stick around and take care of the little tasks for him, before he remembers their nimble fingers and sly grins. His is a shop full of trivialities to take. It is wisest to keep temptation out of reach.
He is grinning as he locks up the front and draws windows closed, as he puts things back into place and makes his way to the apartment upstairs, rickety stairs taken two at a time under too-long legs.
He is bouncing as he cooks up the last of his meat for this week. After this, it will be mostly old stew and potatoes, but tonight at least, he can enjoy a bit of luxury, a bit of celebration.
And his mood finally dies as he sits down at the table only to find those flat blue eyes staring across at him from where the totem sits.
He will likely never know how it returned to him. He will blame it on one or the other of his young pickpocket friends, who so frequently follow thieves from his front door and recover stolen goods — for a small reward, of course. He will rant at them and shake his fist, and none of them will ever admit to being the one to play the trick. None of them will ever collect.
But he won't try to sell Horus again.
