Alexandra the Antiquarian, The Red Blades and the Magik of Things

Tucked away in the sleepy borough of Stowley(and shoved between a cranky bookseller and indifferent cobbler) is a place of business the locals affectionately call the ‘junk shop’. Truth be told the store doesn’t, and perhaps has never, had a proper name. To the uninformed or uninspired, ‘junk shop’ would seem an apt title. Inside a patron will find shelves and barrels overflowing with knickknacks, oddities and baubles. Each item either lost or shunned by its previous owner but finding its way here all the same.

On any given day, you’re just as likely to find a rusted iron sword or gleaming ruby brooch, a forbidden tome wrapped in wyrm skin or floral scarf tailored for a cat. Its wares are eccentric and elegant, just as the shop’s proprietor is equal parts eccentric and elegant.

Amongst the ever-present aroma of ginger tea and smokey sage, Alexandra glides between her items for sale like autumn mist on a morning lake. She’ll greet you warmly and compliment your choice of clothing gracefully, just before rattling off a nearly incoherent exposition on how you probably didn’t know but most jewelers in the south only started using catch latches fifty years ago and so your treasured family brooch is likely a fake but oh-Im-sorry-I-didn’t-mean-to-offend-please-don’t-go. She means well.

But a cozy shop for finding a deal on assorted relics is only half the story for you see, Alexandra is an Antiquarian. Once upon a time, ‘antiquarian’ had a rather humdrum definition as someone who collects and studies antiques, simple. However, with the somewhat recent cultivation of knowledge around magik and its great mysteries, antiquarian has begun to mean much more.

I’ll now speak on the study of magiks, so if that is not of interest to you then this is an excellent opportunity to visit the privy.

In Perry Caldwel’s treatise on the nature of magik, The Thrice Broken Mirror, the ancient scholar writes at length on the failings of humanity to harness or subdue magik as its existed since the first forests. How even though we can see magik, feel it flow through the wind, see it bend reality or mimic time, the great force refuses all courtship by humans (a point with which I disagree but do not have the hours in the day presently to justify).

But, as Perry theorizes, perhaps we mortals are not completely devoid of powers beyond ourselves. Citing the work of Roger Golden, who differentiated humans from beasts by virtue of our gift of imagination, Perry states that our natural magik lies within the things we create.

Not such a stretch, is it? Even amongst the most skeptical folk, a sorrowful ballad can bring a deluge of tears for reasons that may escape, well, reason. The emotions of our will are so powerful that they can themselves be imprinted upon the things we create. Take the curious case of The Red Blades for example.

Once, in the far east, twin long blades were commissioned to a modest yet skilled sword maker by a king for his doting sons. Prior to the creation of these swords, the brothers had expressed no ill will to one another at court or amongst the common folk. By all accounts, there was peace in the kingdom and on the eve of summer’s end, the swords were gifted to the sons, who look resplendent next to their father with their new arms of office.

The change was gradual at first. Servants reported bickering at meals between the sons, something not seen since they were children. Before long open arguments ensued over matters of little import, bringing the king so much distress that the princes were banned from sharing a room until their squabbles could be resolved. This did nothing to quell flames.

On a chilled and rainy morning, the head of a sow was delivered to the elder brother by the younger, an open challenge to his right to inherit the throne. The king attempted to intervene but to no avail. A civil war gripped the land, spurred on by each brother’s hate for the other and whilst the countryside burned, the king died with neither son taking a moment’s notice.

Beneath a thundering autumn sky, the brothers would slay one another with the very gifts their father gave them. So much hate reduced to nothing but blood, tears, and steel.

In the chaos that followed, the twin blades disappeared, no doubt looted by fleeing soldiers. They would remain disappeared until some years later when a yeoman of modest means, Tupper Rosslen, purchased an antique blade while on journey. At first, Tupper could not believe his good fortune at acquiring such a well-made sword and would frequently flaunt it to each tavern he visited. But, as noted in his personal diary and eyewitness accounts, Tupper soon began to obsess.

At first it was an irritation at the suggestion of removing it for supper. An annoyance some would consider beyond social nicety. Shortly after, Tupper was known to openly berate any who would cast looks upon his beloved sidearm. He was notably banned from the Mysgrave market square for striking a pedestrian repeatedly with the sheathed sword as they dared pay him a compliment about it.

Two months later, Tupper would be arrested for murder in the western city of Port Tarrow. He had travelled at a moment’s notice to a city he had never been to and drove the ruby steel into a man he had never known, all the while screaming curses of vengeance.

The murdered man was a local merchant named William Apted. Amongst his many wares for sale? The sword’s twin, the missing red blade.

What power did these blades possess? Why the sudden and violent change in any who handled them? Using my not inconsiderable skills of detection, I believe I have the correctness of it and the answer lies with their maker.

You see, the swordsmith commissioned by the king to create these fine works was once soldier. This soldier, like many, was oath and duty bound to a king he held as fine and virtuous. Whilst away from home, a sickness sweep through the farms and this soldier’s family was left to die outside the city walls, sick and starving.

Upon his return, the soldier found not his wife or three daughters, but a silver coin for each of his loved ones burned on the plague pyre, as was custom by law at that particular time. The way the king and his advisors figured it, the cost of their death was less than the cost of medicine and food required for their life.

Years passed and hate filled the soldier’s heart. Perhaps his prayers to the fates were finally answered when, after having made a name as a respected swordsmith, a royal envoy arrived at his door carrying papers of commission. He silently agreed.

Night after night he toiled with vicious intensity. Each hammer blow was a curse on the king’s name, a curse on the king’s family. His hatred and wraith became folded within the layers of steel until the swords knew nothing but a desire to destroy the other. The rest, as they say, is all stuff I already told you.

Now, back to Alexandra.

As an antiquarian, or an antiquarian as she defines it, Alexandra studies not just the make of an object, but the magik within. Its ‘soul’, if I may be so bold. She has spent years developing her own spells and rituals around the subject, citing the works of Harrow and Saxinby (and myself if we’re being honest and I strive to be nothing but).

In the dark comfort of her shop, she ‘speaks’ to her things, soothes their pain and praises their strength. She creates a safe space for the lost and abandoned, the bent and broken. Why, if one were to ask politely, they may even be able to hold a pair of long swords, once wrathful and bloodied, now resplendent and calm.

Are all things Alexandra acquires charged with the dramatic emotions their previous owners? No, of course not. I know on good authority that she has a pair of andirons in the shape of dancing geese that just make her giggle. Nevertheless, she’s known throughout the trading houses both east and west and if any merchant should speak of a ‘cursed’ object, they’ll be sat down with a cup of ginger tea in no time.

In this time of magikal enlightenment, Alexandra and her nameless shop of things has become a pilgrimage for those seeking to understand the mysteries of the antiquarian, and by extension, the mysteries of the magik within us all.

Also, at mid-week she sells all her cookware at half-off so I highly encourage you to visit then.