Write a story about "A family heirloom that brought each generation good fortune"
"Look at it, Shawn!" Uncle Derek gasped, extending a tarnished brass compass before their noses. "The MacLeay Family Heirloom!"
"Oh?" The teenage boy replied, his copper-touched eyebrows raised weakly with the mildest of contempt. He leered with disinterest to his older cousin, Fiona. The youth's hands remained firmly in his pockets, tucked safely beneath dyed blue hair. "What, then? Riches? Lands? A car or two?"
Fiona sighed, her thick glasses fogging as her humid breath steamed through her tightly clamped lips, her crossed arms a pale, barrier shield over her Hello Kitty jumper. "I dunno."
"Riches? Lands? A car or two?" Uncle Derek rested a hand over his heart, a sly smile crossing his scruffy beard. "The compass brought happiness to Robert MacLeay when he brought his flintlock to the Indian Ocean - his booty was quite enough to purchase these fine lands from a gentleman more bankrupt than he!"
Shawn shuffled, his faded black Converses scratching the heavy, mouldering carpet. His lips twisted dryly. “The last owner went bankrupt?”
"Aye, but stay your tongue - Robert MacLeay fed his family of twelve! Fresh citrus, red meat - more than enough to drink! He lived to see ninety winters and passed the compass down to his only surviving son, John."
"Who gave it to his son?" Fiona chimed in, adjusting her spectacles.
"Aye, to John the second."
"Then... John the second gave it to?"
"John the third."
"Then?"
"John the fourth," Uncle Derek whispered with a reverent nod. "Their family of six retired to the Cape Colony to dodge the tuberculosis that scythed through their highland kin. You know how treacherous that fever was? More called it consumption than need call the landscape consumed by fire!"
A comfortable pause soothed the dimly lit living room; heavy curtains were drawn back over thick windows, observing tradition's command more than the evening's wane. Fiona and Shawn's gaze fell to their sneakers, out shadowed in the room's gloom. Fiona spoke after a moment. "Then?"
"John the fifth."
"And?"
"John the sixth; he returned to Scotland to refurbish the family's castle. Bought half of Berwick with gold he'd mined where Williem Adama Teken did!"
"Uncle Derek?" Shawn grumbled, "Those names seem terribly unimaginative."
"Ah, but the name had brought luck - first to the lands, after the plague had despoiled it of farmers, then to the oceans, where pirates roamed, then to the colonies, where the colonists were dying, then to Africa, where gold was found! There was a touch of green on this family's loving branch - one that stung harder the harder it snapped!"
"Until you?" Shawn complained, "You, the umpteenth John? Wracked with debt, disowned - this place fell into inheritance council for thirty years!"
"Ah, but no - all because of the compass," Uncle Derek held it as a priest held a sacrament, his palms resting gently below its spinning pin, its glistening glass shield. "The compass sends us where we are needed; when the thirteenth John MacLeay came of age - the luck of the family was misapplied! Mortgaging our family's honor on the misfortune of others!"
"Debt."
"Aye, but that were a fitting end for John MacLeay! A fine end indeed, selling off the testament of our family's courage on the streets of London!" Uncle Derek sighed, shuffling through a chest brimming with dust, mottled pearls, and the yellowed pages of unread books. "Yet, it has returned… Returned to offer me redemption."
His thick, leathery hands clasped a sheet of paper, billowing with the musk of mildew, its black ink cascading in hundreds of convoluted tangles of dense calligraphy. "I have bought my brother's auction off! The papers are signed - they return the compass to me - the last, the last Shawn MacLeay, the last Fiona MacLeay. What do you make of that?"
Neither said a word. Both were captivated by the tarnished compass, its needle spinning with the grace of the faltering sun, its curved lines arcing with the cradling embrace of a genteel hand.
Within a few short years - having sourced the dust clogged chasms of their home's hidden bowels, Fiona and Shawn had sold a long-lost Rembrandt to the highest bidder, whereas Derek MacLeay - the twenty-second John - had found a treasure beyond his wildest dreams.