Sweets and Soured

By Emily Barnett

For young Margery Jones, The Candy Shoppe was more than a store to buy sweets. It was a place of opportunity.

When she walked through the gilded doors, sugar and color assailed her senses. Rows of rainbow lollipops, orange taffy, grass-green gumdrops, and striped pickleberries lined the shelves. Tiny planes zipped around the arched, stained-glass ceiling with bubblegum-bubbles trailing behind.

Margery flounced about in her custard dress, gazing at the candies. She could practically taste her freedom. Her future.

The Candy Shoppe had become a ceremony of sorts for the children of Applegaven. When a girl or boy turned twelve, they went inside to meet the Shopkeeper, who gave them a choice: return home with a bag of treats, or enter a new world of glucose glory.

Margery had no intent of staying in her impoverished existence. Her father had grown crooked from hard labor. Her mother’s beauty had faded at twenty-five. Everything about her town was gray, and The Candy Shoppe promised a bright future.

Margery rounded a jellybean aisle and found a middle-aged man as tall and thin as the licorice behind the counter. The Shopkeeper. His top hat spun with pinwheels and his white suit matched his dazzling smile.

“Welcome, Margery Jones,” he said. “My name is Flippity Gilbert. You have a difficult decision ahead of you.”

Margery snorted. “I know what I want.”

“Hmmm.” Flippity strode to a curtain near the back of the store. Margery knew a window didn’t hide behind the drapes. There were no windows in the Shoppe. Every child knew that, as they’d all tried sneaking a peek before their time.

But when Flippity pulled a cord, a window did indeed appear. Instead of revealing the dusty street outside, it showed Margery’s home.

“What is this?” Margery’s excitement dissolved into suspicion. “Have you been spying on me?”

Flippity rolled his eyes in time with his pinwheels. “This window shows the future of the one who gazes upon it, Miss Jones. I assume this house means something to you.”

“It’s mine.”

Flippity nodded knowingly, then the image rushed forward until Margery could see inside her rundown house. Her parents were there, old and feeble. Her little brother, Caleb, now looked about fifteen. She leaned forward to hear their conversation.

“Do you have enough for rent this week, Da?” Caleb asked. His cheeks were hollow, and Margery felt a stab of pity.

Da shook his head, the bags under his eyes dark as a raincloud. “I need ya to pick up a few more hours at the mines.”

“He will not!” Ma snapped. “He’ll be killed in those caves. We’ll get by on what we ‘ave.”

“What we ‘ave is nuthin’,” Da said.

Ma sighed, sliding down into her rickety chair. “If only Margery—”

“Don’t,” Da said. “Don’t speak her name. It’s hard enough without the reminder.”

“If only we’d done more…” Ma whispered. “If we’d known.”

The image swirled and disappeared into the white wall. Margery blinked and lifted her brows to Flippity. “Was that supposed to scare me?”

The Shopkeeper frowned. “Scare? No. Perhaps invoke compassion.”

“All I saw is a horrible life I’d be a part of if I stay.” She tapped the toe of her shiny ballerina slipper. Ma and Da had given half their monthly earnings to buy her new clothes for the ceremony. She was doing them a favor. If she left, they’d have one less mouth to feed.

And what a life she would have. Her parents might have been foolish enough to pass up this opportunity, but she wouldn’t.

“All right, if you’ve made up your mind.” Flippity slid behind the counter and opened a book that smelled like dusty chocolate peppermint. “Margery Jones,” he read. “Will you choose a life of sweets and leave this life behind, or will you choose hard work by helping those you love?”

Margery wrinkled her nose. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”

“I’m not making you do anything.” Flippity’s lips curled. “The choice is yours.”

There was a breath of a moment when regret nearly pulled her under. She thought of Ma’s cool touch when she was feverish, Da reading stories at night, her brother’s laugh. But then sugar drifted through the memories, and her stomach growled.

Margery wanted more than just “getting by.” She wanted to fill her belly every day. She wanted to wear delectable dresses and live in a house where dust didn’t exist.

“A life of sweets, please.”

Flippity tipped his hat at her. “As you wish. To enter, you must pick a candy, eat it, and let it transform you.”

Margery thought it an odd choice of words, but her stomach pinched with hunger. She ignored her unease and scoured the rows, suddenly ravenous. She ripped down a bag of pink candy clouds.

She was practically salivating as she tore off the plastic and shoved a piece in her mouth. It melted on her tongue, and she moaned in delight as the rush of sugar tingled in her fingers.

And then it spread. Her whole body tingled, and her vision swirled. No, she was swirling. The Shoppe turned yellow and blue as she went around and around. Yellow. Blue. Yellow. Blue. Like a pinwheel. Like a lollipop. She felt sick and…stuck. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

Where am I?

“Jeremy Jansen,” Flippity read from his book the next day. “Will you choose a life of sweets and leave this life behind, or will you choose hard work by helping those you love?”

“I choose this life, sir,” the boy said without hesitation.

Flippity smiled warmly. “You may take a bag of sweets home with you. My candies are quite rare outside of the Shoppe and will buy your family a year’s worth of food.”

His smile fell when the boy’s eyes landed on a large blue and yellow lollipop.

“Oh, not that one,” Flippity warned. “It was just made yesterday, and it’s still a bit sour.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Barnett lives in Colorado with her husband and two hobbit sons. Her whimsical yet poignant stories have been published in several anthologies and online magazines. In her free time, you’ll find her drinking coffee and writing fantasy novels with all the feels. She’s far more dramatic on paper.

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