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The Price Is a Memory: Bargains That Cost You Who You Are
The mermaid paid with her voice. The miller’s daughter promised her firstborn. In The Blackcandle Pawnshop, every thirty days costs one memory of her.
By Juliet Croft ·
In short: Stories about bargains are really stories about price. Juliet Croft looks at what characters have paid in fairy tales and classic novels — a voice, a child, a soul, a face — and why The Blackcandle Pawnshop charges in memories of the woman who saved him.
Every story about a bargain is really a story about price. What the character wants is usually simple: to live, to love, to be saved. What they agree to give up is where the story actually lives.
What characters have paid
In Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, published in 1837, the sea witch takes her voice in exchange for legs. She can be near the prince, but she can never tell him who she is.
In the Grimms’ Rumpelstiltskin, a miller’s daughter promises her firstborn child to a stranger who spins straw into gold. She makes the deal when the child is only an idea. The price comes due when it is a person.
Faust signs away his soul — in Marlowe, for twenty-four years of power. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a young man’s portrait ages so that he never has to, and the cost shows up in a locked room.
The best prices share something. They are paid slowly, they are paid in the self, and the person paying understands only later what they have given away.
Why memory
When I was building The Blackcandle Pawnshop, I wanted a price that would get worse precisely as the hero got better at his job.
So here is the deal. A dying man takes the devil’s job pricing the corrupt of New Orleans. Every contract he closes buys him thirty more days. And every contract costs him one memory of the woman who traded her soul to save him.
Memory is a cruel currency because it is the one thing that makes the bargain worth it. He is staying alive for her. Each day he buys, he knows her a little less. If he keeps going long enough, he will have saved his life and lost the reason he wanted it.
The ledger
There is a ledger in the shop. Forty-seven names are written in it, and forty-six of them are crossed out — the men who held the job before him. They stopped paying. One name is still clean.
I won’t tell you what that means. That is what episode four is for.
Why we keep telling these stories
Because everyone has made a smaller version of this deal. Taken the job that pays and costs something. Kept quiet to keep the peace. The fairy tales just make the price visible.
The Blackcandle Pawnshop is forty-six episodes, finished, and made for your phone. The first fifteen are free to everyone.
Questions people ask
What is a Faustian bargain?
A deal in which someone gives up something essential — traditionally their soul — in exchange for power, time or a wish. The name comes from the Faust legend, told by Marlowe and Goethe.
What does the Little Mermaid give up?
In Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 tale, she gives the sea witch her voice in exchange for human legs.
What is the price in The Blackcandle Pawnshop?
Every contract the hero closes buys him thirty more days of life and costs him one memory of the woman who traded her soul to save him.
How many episodes are in The Blackcandle Pawnshop?
Forty-six. The first fifteen are free to everyone at julietcroftfilms.com, and the rest open when you add your email.
Notes from the cutting room
Two short essays a week on the books behind the dramas — the bargains, the hauntings and the reckonings. The same email unlocks all forty-six episodes of The Blackcandle Pawnshop.
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