The King’s Pennies

You find inside the worn brown suitcase a single slip of paper, folded messily. You check the pockets for anything else but find nothing. You are temped to open the paper.

It could be love letter, or a letter from a loved one. Or maybe it’s just blank.

You unfold the tattered parchment to find three words written in sloppy red ink.

He

Is

Dead

You flip the paper over and look for anything else, a clue. Who was dead? You stare back at the suitcase. Some hidden force tempts you to shake the suitcase.

You shake it carefully and instead of hearing nothing, for there was nothing in the case, you hear the distant jingle of coins, as if they were so close to you, yet so far away.

You are shaken. There was nothing in the case. But three new words appeared on the paper in near clean paper.

So

Are

You

The force causes you to shake the suitcase again and this time, there was nothing. No noise, no coins. Nothing.

But you look yo your hands now covered in green ink. The paper bleeds through.

To a king, a penny is a penny, a worthless piece of metal. But to a young merchant, he knows how to turn pennies into dollars. He knows how to trick the mind into believing that there is more to a penny than metal.

The words stopped writing now. A king, a merchant. This was no village, or even a small town. It was a riddle. And you were great with riddles. And that meant that you were going to solve whatever mystery you were up against.