Wandering Shops
Also known as Tabernae Vagrantes. These are the mysterious shops from which people buy magical items, only to return when there turns out to be a problem (as there always does), and find the shop is vanished (as seen in H.G. Wells' "The Magic Shop", and various other fantasy stories).
One of these shops appears in The Light Fantastic, under the name "Wang, Yrxle!yt, Bunglestiff, Cwmlad and Patel. Estblshd Various. PURVEYORS". The proprietor explains that he operates under a curse, having failed to supply an item requested by a sourcerer, and being irritating about it. Twoflower apparently gained the Luggage from a similar shop, although this was contradicted in a later book where it states that luggages like Twoflower's are fairly common in his home country, although The Luggage is considered singularly angry, aggressive and homicidal. Perhaps both are true and this particular example just happened to be bought in one of these shops.
Another, a pawn shop specialising in enchanted musical instruments, was encountered by some members of the Band With Rocks In during the events described in Soul Music, while they were trying to replace a ruined musical instrument. This proprietor of this shop appears to be based on Auntie Wainwright in the BBC programme Last of the Summer Wine – an extremely resourceful old lady. They were there able to buy the guitar which brought the Band fame (or which caused all the trouble, depending on your point of view). When two members of the Band came back to try to get more information about the guitar they were wholly unsuccessful, but after leaving, the presence of a faded '1' on the guitar caused one Band member to wonder who could have pawned the guitar: "... but, I mean, number one. Even the conch shell was number fifty-two. Who used to own the guitar?" to which his companion responds: "Don't know, but I hope they never come back for it."
A wandering shop also features in the Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!? game from which Rincewind must acquire a number of items. This shop's proprietor is similar to the one in Soul Music.
Read more about this topic: Other Dimensions Of The Discworld
Famous quotes containing the words wandering and/or shops:
“By the Isar, in the twilight
We were wandering and singing,”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threat’ning with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)