Serendipity Market

S
ometimes it's the way a leaf tumbles to the ground. Sometimes it's the slant of the afternoon sun, or the way the moon shadows ring the rocks at the water's edge. This time it's the appearance of a yellow-green finch in March. Stories are all around, so Mama Inez and Toby always watch for signs. When Roberto sees story signs everywhere, he moans, “How will I ever learn which ones to follow?”

Toby taps Roberto's foot with his big dog paw, and Mama Inez says, “You'll know. You have gatherer blood,” and Roberto has to be content with that.

Toby and Mama Inez try to follow all the signs and to slip into all the stories they can find. “Because then,” Mama Inez explains to Roberto and to Franz after dinner, “when we need to balance the world, we know what stories we have to draw from, what matches, what fits.” She remembers when the finch led them south and Toby became a finch, too, a chocolate-brown one. A burgundy oak leaf took them east to a puppet play with singing frogs, and Mama Inez joined the chorus. Ice crystals dangled from the moon and led to a northern kayak race.

Now Mama Inez pulls a fruit crumble from the oven and sets it to cool in front of Roberto.

Roberto, eyes on the dessert, says, “Know
what's available. That, at least, makes sense.”

“So,” Franz says as he slices the crumble into fourths, “maybe you should tell him just how to become a cloud, or an unobtrusive squirrel. Milk?” he adds, raising an eyebrow at Roberto.

“Yes, please,” Roberto says, to both the milk and the problem of how to become a cloud.

“Oh, he already knows,” Mama Inez says as she takes her share of crumble.

“Ah.” Roberto sighs. “Magic. Of courseâ¦”

Toby, who's also having milk on his crumble, licks at his bowl with enthusiasm while Mama Inez smiles and echoes Roberto. “Of course.”

How it Begins

T
oby's bark is rough and deep. It wakes Mama Inez the same way his tongue would, if he were to lick her on the face. Sandpaper on her soul. She sits up in bed and looks outside, careful to check each cardinal direction. Mama Inez's bed is at the end of the world, on the top of the house with the witch's-hat roof. The windows look north and south, east and west. And even though the
sky is a clear, translucent blue, even though the gold glimmers of sunrise still lie on the edge of the sky, she can tell that Toby is right. The spin of the world is off again.

Toby is always the first to feel it and, she supposes, she's the second, although now that Roberto's getting older, now that his powers are growing, it isn't always easy to know. Maybe this time he's the second. Still, she knows she and Toby are right.

Mama Inez pulls and twists at her thick mane of hair, lifts it off her neck, and piles it on the top of her head. She swings her legs out of bed and rubs her toes in Toby's dark coconut-shell fur. She says, “Time to get to work, then, my boy,” and Toby barks once, in agreement.

Her long nightgown swirls around her ankles as Mama Inez pads across the cool morning floor. Toby follows, placing his big paws on either side
of her right foot. They walk in lockstep to the old walnut desk under the east window. Mama Inez lifts the top, folds down the writing surface, sits in the smooth cedar chair, and takes out ten small envelopes shaped like birds of prey, ten pieces of paper the colors of the rainbow. She picks up a thick-nibbed fountain pen. In wide strokes she writes, ten times, “You're invited to the Serendipity Market at the end of the world. Saturday next. Bring your story, bring a talisman. Help us balance the world's spin.”

She folds each invitation to fit, neatly, squarely, into the confines of the bird envelopes. Toby breathes on each letter, breathes until the wings begin to move. They're sluggish at first, but soon the birds are circling the witch's-hat tower. Mama Inez sends them on their way, kestrels to the south, hawks to the north, falcons to the west, owls to the east. Two birds each to the
south and the north, three each to the west and the east.

Once the birds are gone, Mama Inez puts on her favorite black clothes and decorates them with her red scarf, the one covered with tiny mirrors that glint in the sun like snapping eyes. Then she brushes Toby until the gloss on his fur shines.

Together they begin the walk downstairs, turning in the continuous spiral that starts at the witch's-hat roof and ends at the very bottom of the house. Toby always walks down on the right, just as he always comes up on the left. Toby prefers the wide side of the stairs.

“One,” murmurs Mama Inez as she begins the walk. There are sixty-seven steps, twenty-two for each floor, with one step added at the bottom, as an afterthought. Because of that trickery with the bottom step, and because she lives in a house
at the end of the world where magic occurs on a regular basis, Mama Inez likes to keep track of things. She starts her day keeping track of those steps. “Sixty-seven,” she says, satisfied, as her feet touch the smooth, square tiles that make the floor look as if it's built of river mud.

Her bare feet make no noise as she crosses to the kitchen. Beside her, Toby walks, and his nails click on the tiles. His feet sound like tap-dancing spiders.

Franz and Roberto look up from a breakfast of yogurt drenched in wildflower honey, and thick slices of dark brown bread. Mama Inez reaches for the teapot, pours a cup, sips it, and sighs, pleased with the warmth.

“Time for a gathering,” she says.

Roberto grins at his uncle. “Ha!” he says in triumph. “I told you I felt something.”

“You're always way ahead of me,” Franz
says, shrugging. “You all are. I never know until the last minute, and then I have to work like the Furies to get ready.”

“That's why you have me,” says Roberto. “So you only have to work like one Fury, not the whole lot of them.”

Franz laughs. Mama Inez looks at Roberto and says, “When you're ready, you'll be able to choose.”

“Are the invitations gone?” Franz asks.

Mama Inez nods. “Saturday next,” she says, speaking through a bite of bread. “Ten invitations.”

“Will they all come, do you think?” asks Roberto. “Last time we just had seven. The only reason we balanced was because of the phase of the moon. I think that's why we need a gathering again so soon.”

Toby barks as if he's saying yes.

There's a moment of quiet contemplation, and then Franz says, “Saturday next, you say?”

Mama Inez nods.

“Start today, Roberto?”

“Of course. Or we'll look like those Furies for real.”

Franz laughs again.

Mama Inez watches them go out to their workshop, near the back of the garden, to begin planning the rings, each a token of remembrance for a storyteller. Then she and Toby go back up the sixty-seven stairs to begin some planning of their own.

Mama Inez opens a door between the west and the north windows. She's greeted by the smell of damp earth. A potter's wheel sits square in the middle of the room, surrounded by shelves of squat, sun-glazed jars. Each jar is unique in shape, in size, in color. Some are made of red
river clay, some of the purple clay found beneath the willows. A few are yellow or a creamy beige, variations in the clay found in the small cave behind the waterfall that reflects the morning sun in water ribbons the color of rain.

Toby walks to each of the three bags of clay stored in this cool, damp place. He examines each bag, sniffing with his round black nose. He stops by the bag with the purple willow clay and rests a large paw against it.

“Purple, hmm?” says Mama Inez.

Toby barks once, emphatically, smiles a dog smile at her, settles down next to the bag, and closes his eyes.

Mama Inez studies the jars on the shelves. She takes down the two purple ones, takes them back into her room, and weighs them, one in each hand. She is a scale of justice, judging her jars. She looks at the jar in her right hand and
shakes her head. “No. Too small for this large a stumble.” Then she examines the jar in her right hand and blows out a small puff of air. “And this one doesn't have enough character.”

She goes back to the potter's room and takes a thick lump of clay out of the bag. She drops it on the wheel with a smack that echoes off the wall.

“For this gathering, we need an extra-special Storie Jar,” she tells Toby. Humming something that sounds like the sun glistening off water, Mama Inez begins to smooth the purple willow clay.

In the workroom by the garden, Franz and Roberto examine slices of silver and chunks of gold. They lift pieces, feel their weights, hold them up to the sky, and explore their shine.

“Peaks and valleys,” Roberto says about one piece of gold.

“Filigrees,” Franz answers, holding out a thick silver piece. “And look. Naughts and crosses.”

“Do you think so?” Roberto says as he reaches for the piece of metal. He holds it up, lets it flare in the sun. “Well, maybe,” he says after a moment. “I thought, at first, that I saw swirls. You know. Vortexes.”

“And now?”

“And now I could see it going either way.”

“Metals work that way,” Franz agrees in a peaceful voice, and they move on to a piece of rose gold.

What Happens Next

M
ama Inez's birds fly through sun and wind, rain, and even occasionally snow, seeking their recipients. Sue is easy to find. Her bird sees her and spirals down to the heat of midsummer.

When Sue hears Lightning whinny outside the kitchen window, she flies out the side door of the house, looking a bit like a bird herself. Lightning doesn't talk unless he has something
to say, so she assumes whatever's going on has to be important.

Something that looks like a bird is hanging out of Lightning's mouth. When she takes it and wipes the horse spit off, she sees it's addressed to her, Slewfoot Sue.

She doesn't get many letters. This is exciting.

“Bill!” Sue yells out. “Come look at what Lightning done caught.”

Bill comes around the side of the house. He's red in the face and tired-looking from working outside on a day this warm, but he perks up when he sees Sue's soggy letter.

“Something good?” he asks.

“Something for me,” she says, proud.

Bill looks at her. He waits, eyes wide open, while Sue turns the letter over and over, feeling the paper, looking at her name in fine script. Bill finally says, “So, what's it say?”

“Well, that's a right reasonable question,” Sue says, and she opens it. But when she's done reading, Sue is still confused. “Tell my story?” she says to Bill. “Balance the spin of the world?” she asks Lightning. “Not much that's happened to me is all that unusual.”

Lightning whinnies long and low, and Bill says, “Why, Sue, what about how we met? And courted? Story like that'd put most anything right.” Lightning butts Sue with his big head, seeming to agree. Sue stands in the hot, hot afternoon, watches the grass ripple in the breeze, and finds that she agrees, too.

She shows both Bill and Lightning the letter one more time. She points to “Saturday next” and says, “You think I can get there by this here day? All the way to the end of the world?”

Bill laughs, pats Lightning, and says, “You and Lightning just go on ahead. Won't be no
problem at all,” and Lightning stomps his right front hoof three times.

Sue sends her bird back up with a “yes” written on it and starts to plan what she and Lightning will need for a trip to the end of the world and back again.

Just before she leaves, Sue says to Bill, “Wish you could come, too.”

Bill hugs her hard and says, “Got to bring the herd in. You know that. But you and Lightning”âand he pats the horseâ“you two'll do just fine.”

And so it goes as the world stutter-steps in its spin, as Roberto and Franz analyze pieces of metal, scrying for inspiration, as Toby and Mama Inez prepare for another gathering at the Serendipity Market.

Tris hands Zola an envelope shaped like a falcon and waits patiently while he reads the letter inside. Whatever it is makes Zola happy, because he grins and nods his head.

“Want to share?” Tris asks.

“Nothing much.” Zola's voice is light and airy. “Just an invitation to balance the world.”

Tris smiles. “Should be right up your alley.”

Zola stops pretending indifference and laughs, pleased and apprehensive at the same time.

Maddie jumps up and down, excited and feeling important, when she and Earl receive their owl.

Renata opens the second falcon and thinks of Clarisse, a wistful thought. She thinks she can't do this, not without her. But when she shows Michael the letter, he says, “You've got to go. She'd want you to be there.”

Rosey and B.J., miles apart and with completely different stories, open the other two owls that have flown to the east. Both look at the invitations in surprise. Rosey fingers the paper. “It's from Gram,” she says to Samson, the red bird who's stayed with her since her adventure. “But she must remember that it was a little, personal thing. Not something involved enough to fix the world.”

Samson twitters, and Rosey knows it's his way of saying that Gram knows what she knows and if she wants Rosey, then Rosey should be there.

At the same time that Samson is telling Rosey to go to the end of the world, B.J. says, “Would you go?” to Nodia.

Nodia nods and says, simply, “Magic. Of course I'd go.”

In the northern village of Enlay, John rolls a cigarette and looks at the hawk letter resting, wings still, on the bench. Christobel takes a furtive swipe at the letter with her claw, the hawk beak snaps, and Christobel jumps back and complains with a loud meow. John narrows his eyes and says, “Stay or go?” to Christobel or whomever else might be listening. Christobel licks a paw, acting quite unconcerned, but overhead a cloud, in a shape that mimics the hawk letter, skims over the sun. When John looks up, the cloud flaps its wings once, then disappears, which makes John say, “I take that as a yes.”

Maisie gets her letter as she and Thom are starting to eat the deep-red grapes and the small round of cheese they've brought for their picnic. As the hawk wings stop moving, she opens the
envelope, unfolds the letter, reads, then hands it to Thom. He reads, too, then says, “An interesting opportunity.” Maisie takes three grapes, chews, then says, “I certainly think so.”

The kestrel wings over the Immigrant Bridge and flutters down Mae's chimney. She picks it up from the hearthstone, reads the letter, then sighs, a sigh that carries through the house, that taps against the walls. She picks up a pen and writes, “I'm so sorry. I'm on my way to my brother and sister-in-law and their almost-here baby. Should you need me at a later date (and let's hope you won't need to balance the spin again for a long, long time!), please let me know.” She folds the letter, slides it into the kestrel envelope, breathes her breath on it to bring back its life, and sends it back up the chimney.

From the house at the end of the world, Mama Inez and Toby watch for their birds to return. They gaze at the sky when they're hanging laundry to dry in the sun and the wind that's touched penguins and polar bears. They watch when they're gathering lavender and sage in the herb garden. And when Mama Inez brushes out her just-washed hair, leaning out of one of the tower windows, she watches the water droplets rush to the ground, and watches for bird shadows at the same time.

Mae's kestrel is the first to return, with its message of no.

“Not an auspicious beginning,” Mama Inez tells Roberto and Franz two mornings later. She and Toby have negotiated the tricky tower steps with a feeling of nervousness. If the first reply is a no, what comes next?

But “Always worrying,” is what Franz says.
“Let it rest. Wait and see.”

“No use crying,” Roberto chimes in, “until you know what you're crying about.” His grin is wicked and funny at the same time. “I've heard that often enough.”

Toby drinks milk and rubs his chocolate head against Mama Inez's leg. She sips her tea. “I suppose you're right,” she says, the worry still there in her eyes.

But the next morning Mama Inez and Toby practically dance down the sixty-seven tower steps. She clutches a handful of thick rainbow-colored notes.

“Yes,” she sings out, jubilant, as she comes into the kitchen. Franz and Roberto, arguing calmly about whether the plain gold band they're passing back and forth should have eyes, glance at her. There is no surprise on either face as she says, “Eight yeses!”

“Well, of course,” Roberto says in a quiet way, and he goes back to his discussion.

In the west, one person struggles to find the words, struggles to write them down. He still has trouble dealing with this world. Finally he simply writes, very carefully, “Yes,” and sends the falcon on its way.

Mama Inez is kneading bread when the last bird flutters outside the window. Toby sees it and gallops outside to retrieve it. He drops it at her feet. Mama Inez dusts the flour off her hands, unfolds the letter, and sees the careful printing. She breathes out a long breath and says, “Nine, then. A good number.” And Toby barks and nods his big head.

No matter what the state of the world, the market, with its buying and selling, laughing and
haggling, dancing and sharing, is always a special event. Baskets and birdcages, weavings and whistles, fabrics and fruitsâall change hands as people come to listen and to tell.

As the day wears on, as the moon is just starting to show her face, the market makes its first shift. The selling and buying are through, and now it's time for the dancing. Fiddle music begins to glide through the air, and it pulses like a heartbeat. Everyone, even Toby, begins the intricate weaving and passing, the hand clasping and clapping, the loud and soft footfalls that have been passed down from a time long forgotten.

Just before the dancing is through, Toby and Mama Inez disappear. Roberto and Franz never look in their direction as they glide into the gentle darkness that tugs on the edges of the dancing circle. They don't stop moving their feet, they don't raise an eyebrow. They know just where
those two are going. They're on their way to the Indwelling and, from there, to the storytellers' tent. Franz and Roberto will join them there, and the market will shift once again.

Because Roberto has the gatherer instincts, he's been to the Indwelling several times. He's tried to tell Franz everything he's seen, but there's never been a way to describe the feeling of the place, the inner peace mixed with the thrumming excitement of stories that reflect the business of living.

Inside the Indwelling, it's just cool enough to be comfortable. The air smells of dust and salt and stars, and the moon reflects itself in the stream that divides the place into neat halves. There are shelves of varying widths that travel from the entrance, over the stream, and back to the opening that leads out into the night. The shelves are filled with squat raku and sunbaked
jars the colors of the clay in the potter's room in the house with the witch's-hat roof. They're the exact right size to hold small treasures, and they have conical tops that make them look like beehives.

Toby walks across the stream, just outside the entrance, on a walkway of smooth stones. He walks back and forth seven times, and he makes sure that his paws are always dry. Then, his part of the beginning ritual complete, he sits and watches the moon's reflection rest on the water.

Mama Inez takes the purple jar she made just days ago. She raises it above her head, where the moon waits, leans down and holds it for several seconds against the reflected water moon, then stands slowly, sure to keep the jar level. Now, her half of the rite finished, she smiles at Toby, and the two of them leave to begin their night's work.

Even before she is back from the Indwelling, people gather beneath Mama Inez's tassel-draped, desert-gold canopy, waiting for stories. Some slouch on pillows big enough for three and drink the steam-coated spiced tea served in salt-glazed ceramic cups. Others sit at low, square tables, sip cold melon drinks, and rattle tiny ice cubes against the sides of thin glasses wrapped in silver filigree.

Mama Inez sees the waiting listeners, then sees her storytellers, a small moving amoeba of a group in the tellers' waiting area. Roberto is with them, looking something like a shepherd with a herd of wayward sheep. As Mama Inez and Toby come closer, they begin to hear snatches of conversation, to see the tellers' interactions.

Zola holds a length of midnight-blue cloth shot with gold. He's talking to a tall woman with
a death grip on a basket of seashells: “â¦at the booth by the basket weaver's. It'll be a fine shirt for him. Make him look quite royal.”

When the woman doesn't respond, Zola fidgets a bit, then adds, “Wouldn't you agree?”

The woman, who has no idea who Zola is talking about, nods, serious and nervous at the same time.

A large white horse, who looks as relaxed as he would if he were in his own stable, munches on a clump of grass. Periodically he pokes his head through an opening in the tent, as though keeping watch on someone. Every time he does this, a woman runs her fingers through his mane or holds her hand in front of his nose to feel his breath on her fingertips. She says very softly, “Lightning, I don't think we're at all in the right place. I mean, I guess this here's the end of the world, but I'm thinking that we don't fit in, not
one bit. Everybody else looks right fancy. And like they know just what they're going to be doing.”

Lightning glances at her, calm and easy. When a man with greenish-blond hair comes over and rubs Lightning's neck, then says, “He is a beautiful horse, madam,” Lightning sniffs the stranger's hand, nods his head, and looks at Sue as if to say, “See? We're exactly where we should be,” which makes Sue laugh.

Closer to the entryway than anyone stands Maddie, who clutches her twin. Even for an elf, she's quite pale. “Earl, I'll faint. Or you'll talk and distract me, and I'll lose track. Which will make me sound ridiculous, as if I have no brain.”

“And that would be unusual becauseâ¦?”

“Earl,” she moans.

“You were so thrilled when the invitation came,” Earl says.

Maddie nods. “Before I saw all these people. Before I really knew what I'd have to do.” She breathes out, hard, then looks at him and says, “You could do it, you know. I'd sit beside you and look quite interested.”

“Oh, no. You were the one who most wanted to come, after all.”

“Ummmm.” Maddie breathes again. “At least promise you won't interrupt.”

He flashes her an evil grin. “Only if you lose your place. Or faint.”

Toby goes to stand by the most relaxed-looking person in the cluster. He doesn't look travel worn, like the man talking to Lightning. He's not nervous, like Maddie, and he seems completely comfortable, unlike Sue. He's smoking, in an absentminded kind of way, but when Toby comes near, he drops his cigarette and grinds it out in the dirt, then picks it up and puts
it in his pocket. “No littering,” he explains, and Toby taps his head against the man's knee.

Other books

The Missing by Sarah Langan

Fanfare by Ahdieh, Renee

Devil Ash Deceit (Devil Ash Saga) by Olson, Mitchell

Love Rock'ollection: The Brutal Strength Rock Star Trilogy, books 1-3 by Mankin, Michelle

The Inside Passage (Ted Higuera Series Book 1) by Pendelton Wallace

Betting My Bride: A Hotwife Novel by Lexi Archer

Nine Years Gone by Chris Culver

Kitchen Promises (Riverside Trilogy, #3) (The Riverside Trilogy) by Cumberland, Brooke

The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872 by Ralston, Gary

Dog Tags by David Rosenfelt