The Egg Merchant

She trusted him right away, putting her faith in him and his parabolic merchandise instantaneously. I was more cautious, unsure of his smile and the contents of the vessels in front of him.
"Where did these ones come from?" she inquired, pointing to the pumpkin oranges and mango yellows, though she seemed especially attracted to a rosy gold, and her eyes kept going back to it. I think she was thinking of her dogwood roses at home, when the sun hits them in the evening.
He replied that they came from the sun. Her eyes went the widest I'd ever seen but I scrutinized the eggs and asked if I could pick one up.
He said certainly and smiled as I looked them over, all resting on small silk pillows, some with patterns of spirals or old victorian filigrees or stripes. Some of the patterns were raised with bumps and ridges under my fingertips.
I lifted one (green and brown, except on the sign it was called "olive and chestnut") and shook it lightly. There was no sound. The merchant's smile did not falter.
"What's inside of them?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Warmth, fire, plants, seeds. Sometimes secrets."
"Secrets?" she piped up beside me.
"The trees like to whisper their secrets in the wind. If you buy dusk (grey) and one of those," he gestured to a maple green egg and the evergreen prickly egg beside it, "you'll be able to hear the secrets."
"Let's get one," she said, already digging through her purse for coins.
I didn't believe in them, as much as I wanted to, but I bought a few, for fun, and so did she, including some secrets and the rosy gold egg from the sun.
"Take this one," he told me, handing me a solid off-white ("ivory") with a raised pattern like starbursts. "Perhaps it will help you."
I took it and shrugged, because it didn't look all that special, but he wrapped it up in durable plastic and then shiny paper and a ribbon for each egg, and I put it in my bag.
At home I took them out and laid them on the windowsill, a parade of slowly warming carapaces. They cracked one by one, and revealed that the egg merchant was not lying.
When the ivory egg cracked, out came a tiny light, like a luminous speck of dust. It followed me like an affectionate pet, though it didn't wind in figure eights around my legs or beg at the door to be let out.
I wonder how long they last. My eggs holding tides and caramels and hyacinths and secrets were left empty long ago, but I still have the light.

Text by Lucie MacAulay