On the edge of the jungle was the villa of Henry Abollo. He was a dealer in the bizarre. He sold only to collectors that shared his passion.
Those that lived in Magalíluismili had never seen Henry Abollo, but they knew that he lived in the villa as they knew that the aranhas armadeiras could be found in rotting fruit.
The children of the village made up fantastic stories and these stories were elaborated upon by their parents and each child placed Henry Abollo in their cabinet of bizarre memories.
The objects could not be sold using modern methods; they were the secrets that spies pass around in subterraneous hideouts, in catacombs, in sewers. If a man on the street came in possession of one of these secrets he would find the secret unfathomable.
And so Abollo held a sale. Once a month his cabinet of curiosities was opened and a collector would appear in the village.
Although the shadow of the collector upon the mind had the life span of the butterfly, the strangeness, the incongruity, the beauty found in the unknown left a mark upon the villagers as a pattern stamped upon the wing of a butterfly is remembered long after the butterfly has turned to dust in the memory of the entomologist.
The sale consisted of one item and only one buyer. As the item was always different so was the buyer. The sale was a slow affair. Abollo made sure he took his time, he was slow, meticulous, the mechanism of the sale was just as important to him and the buyer as the sale itself.
With most transactions Abollo always asked for the money up front, but unlike most sales the buyer would be in the dark as to the condition of the merchandise.
If the buyer thought the merchandise was flawed or damaged the buyer could not stop the transaction.
Once the sale had started there was no turning back. The buyer already in agreement with Abollo was instructed to send a vanilla envelope to a post office box in Magalíluismili. The amount of money differed depending on the object that Abollo had advertised. Any kind of departure, no matter how big or small, and the sale was cancelled. The buyer had one chance at the purchase and one chance only. There had been times when a buyer had sent the money in a white envelope and Abollo was forced to cancel the transaction. When the buyer offered to double the original payment Abollo cut off all communication.
As with all dealers of the bizarre Abollo started off selling only the small objects believing that the departure would not make a huge impact upon him, but Abollo had forgotten the adage that says:
"A lot of small things make up a big thing."
A bull is no longer a bull when it has had its legs removed.
Once the sale had gone through there could be no reversal. Abollo was hit by the stark realization that all those little things he had sold off, thinking that the smaller they were the less important they were to him, were in fact very important.
Abollo came to the conclusion that he could only sell one of each object. No matter how much the buyer demanded a said object once its identical had been sold there could be no sale.
The Amazon River is not one long continuous river it is made up of many parts.
