The world titled as Clover jumped downwards. She would have skidded heavily on her back if she wasn’t prepared. Luckily she was. She flipped herself forward and landed feet first. Then she quickly moved out of the way to see if Bowden would fall.

He did not.

He was walking.

The bridge was built so you would tilt as the bridge does as you walked across it.

“I’ve come here before you know. He might change the outside location of the place, but his method of reaching the shop has always been the same. So, I’m sorry but I’m just going to fall for that,” he grinned catching the disappointed look in her face.

She said nothing and turned away.

Though entering the shop, it seemed as though you were falling into the hole, when you did enter the shop, it was as though you walked up through a hole instead.

“You know, it’s disorientating at first, but you get used to it after a while,” Bowden said looking down into the hole and the sky of the world they left behind. 

“Shut up,” Clover responded. She scanned around the shop looking for its proprietor.

When Clover first entered Andy’s shop as a child, she wondered if the shop was carved out inside a mountain. It’s wall was a craggy rock surface. Aside from the four large entry holes in the ground, there were seemingly no other entrances.

The shop was very large and circular. The round wall itself was covered with string. Flasks and bottles hung onto them, on each string layer, with different assortment of colourful liquid and solids inside them.

Shelves with other goods were stacked haphazardly in a maze like structure around the shop. In the middle of the shop was a circular walled pond. Yellow and pink lilies and dark green lily pads floated serenely on its surface. A large stalactite hung over the middle of the pond, slowly dripping water into it. Every time a droplet was released, the stalactite seemed to change the colour of its icy hue.   

Clover walked towards the centre of the shop, where she found a stocky man in a blue silk suit addressing a crowd of children dressed in dark grey robes.

A child had his hand up.

“Yes?” The man asked.

“So, if the Travellers don’t drown in the water, they cannot travel through space?”

“Hurm… well, why don’t we ask one ourselves,” the man said looking over at Clover. “We have one in our midst today after all… or make that… two,” he said resting his eyes on Bowden.

“Andy, what is this,” Clover asked looking at the children. Her voice was close to angry. Not quiet. But very close.

“Children, I would like you to meet Clover Whitelock and Bowden Browngate. Clover and Bowden, meet the Scholars of Ire.”

“Ire? They don’t look very angry to me,” Bowden chuckled. No one else did. “Oh… okay. Okay, sheesh, I’ll just not talk.”

“What are these children doing in the shop, and what on earth are you telling them?”

“The shop’s history child.”

“They are just children they don't need to know about us!”

“Children who have to know. The Scholars of Ire hail from the world of Trath. As young scholar picked children, they must harvest knowledge with vigour so strong so when they grow older, they can make all the decisions necessary for their people.”

“It is right that we know and learn,” the children said together in unison.

“Let’s skip through about how this seems creepier then it should be. Why are you teaching them and what are you teaching them about us,” Clover slowly said.

“I’m teaching them about what the shop does. Everything about what the shop does. This isn’t the first lot of children I’ve had to teach. Every year they come, pay me good money. You lot are not my only customers you know, the people of Trath frequent my shop as well. Do you think you are the only people to dimension dive?” Andy said in a huff. “...But I’m sorry if this dredges up bad memories. I didn’t think it through. It’s been a long day,” he said slightly dejected.

The children all faced Clover.

“What…were you teaching them?”

“What the stones he sells are. The stones in the pond,” a voice quipped.

“He was telling us about the island of Travellers. How you have to drown to be one.”

“That’s… pretty accurate,” Bowden chimed in.

Clover elbowed him. “Well, yeah. I guess. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be angry at you lot. But this really caught me off guard. It’s been a long day for me too. I don’t like being suddenly questioned. By a group of strangers. Though very cute little strangers you seem to be.”

The children stared. She sighed.

“What would you like to know?”

“Everything!” A little child cried.

“It is right that we know and learn,” they said in unison again.

“Alright. But I’m going to make this quick, so I can talk to Andy about buying some things okay? I have… a… wait… I have... a child to find,” she said, rubbing her head.

“Well, we come from the World of Lost Things. We live in an island, surrounded by mist. I don’t know what’s beyond it, and no one has ventured far enough to find out. But all of us seem to have wandered, lost into that world. Like seemingly all things on the island. And that’s the first thing we remember. Nothing else beyond that. Then…” Clover trailed off. Suddenly she did not want to continue the rest of the story. Bowden did not have the same objection.

“Then the island elders each take a child to raise. If they can find one. To past on their duties. Couldn't find a new child soon enough some of them. Then when we reached fourteen, we are drowned in the river. There’s this really large river that runs in the middle of the island. If you stare hard enough at it, you see… these pictures of other worlds. We call it the Travellers River. The elders say that we have wandered here to become one of them, as the river calls to us. And it really does feel like its calling... Anyway, some of us... we wake up in the river, as though we aren't drowned. We swim to the surface, find air and dive back down. To get our ground stone. We swim to the bottom pick up the first stone we get and swim to shore."

Words sail through Clovers head. 

“…But the current is strong, and the river is vast, so some the test, they do not past.”