The Teller of Small Fortunes

ONE

On the day the Teller of Small Fortunes came to Necker, the village was in an uproar because the candlemaker's would-be apprentice had lost all the goats.

Laohu plodded to a stop in the town square and Tao patted his rump. It had been a long day's travel for them, through forest and field. The mule stamped his hooves and snorted, relieved to be done with it, his breath rising in steamy tendrils through the early-evening chill. It was Tao's first time coming through Necker. She'd made good speed in anticipation of a hot meal and soft bed when they arrived, but the scene around her wagon gave her doubt she'd find much welcome at the moment. She sighed.

Wrapping the reins loosely over a wagon shaft, Tao swung gracefully to the ground, looking around at the activity. They'd come to a stop just in front of a tavern-a handsome one, two full stories and larger than a village like Necker rightly needed.

But where there should have been a crowd of well-fed villagers drinking ale, there was instead a strange assembly line, with rather a lot of yelling and chaotic banging of metal.

"One bucket o' grain and a bell to each! Hurry up now, take a bucket, there's a good lad."

"And who's to pay for all this grain, I'd like to know!"

"Oh, stuff it, Mallack, we can sort payment later; the headman'll pay you fair for the grain and you know that's true."

"Yes, well, I'd like to be sure of the price afore all the grain is spilled through the woods halfway to the sea and none to account for it! There ought to be a premium for interrupting a man's supper and raiding his stores without so much as a-"

"You scoundrel! If we don't find them, Necker'll be a ruin and your mill with it, for who'll buy your grain when there's no goats to feed and no coin to pay with?"

A teenage boy, gangly and flop-haired, sat on a stump some distance away, watching the commotion with a desolate expression. As he seemed to be the only one not rushing about, Tao chose to approach him first.

"Hello," she said, walking up to him. "Can you tell me what's happened, please?"

The boy startled out of his misery to goggle at her. "You're Shinn!"

"I am," said Tao patiently. "Can you tell me what's happened here?"

"But you speak Eshteran!" said the boy. He squinted up at Tao with suspicion, as if expecting her foreign features-dark, hooded eyes; tawny skin; and black hair twisted up into a loose bun-to change before his eyes and better suit her speech.

Tao sighed internally and tried a different tack. She flourished her cloak with one hand and bowed.

"Greetings, young sir, from this humble traveler. I am a teller of fortunes from the faraway empire of Shinara, and have come to these lands to seek wisdom and learning."

". . . in Necker?" said the boy, doubtful.

"Wisdom can be found in all places," said Tao. She pressed her hands together with what she hoped was solemnity. "Wheresoever river inscribes rock with truth, and men fan flames of creation."

"Ah," said the boy, suitably impressed. "You'll want old Derry the blacksmith and his forge, then? He's holding a pail on the left, there."

They both looked over again at the assembly line, which had now been more or less equipped with buckets of grain and various noisemaking implements. The boy drooped further, all elbows and knees and teenage despair.

"What are they doing with all that grain?" Tao asked.

"They're sending out search parties. I lost the goats, you see," the boy said miserably. "Arty had me watching the herd today, out in the west pasture, and I fell asleep after lunch, and when I woke, the goats were all gone.

"And now the village'll be ruined, and it's all my fault, although how was I to know that the goats would rather climb down all those rocks than stay in a nice sunny pasture full of grass? I was to be the candlemaker's apprentice, not a goatherd, and now who knows if Bern'll still have me! I'm good with his bees; bees don't make a fuss-they stay put where you want them, unless you fumble the hives-but Arty's bad leg was twinging again, and I didn't mind helping just for the day, and now look what's happened. Stupid goats!"

The words burst out of him all at once, a hot concoction of youthful indignation and shame.

"Hm," said Tao. "Perhaps I can be of some assistance."

She strode to her wagon and leapt back up onto her driving perch, Laohu shuffling impatiently in his traces. But rather than pick up the reins again, Tao ducked beneath the glowing lanterns swinging gently from where they hung on the jutting ridge beam, and into the small wooden traveling wagon that served as home.

A hanging curtain of embroidered canvas hid the interior from both rough weather and curious eyes; behind it was everything Tao owned, tucked away as neatly as could be managed in what might generously be called a storage chest on wheels. Pots and pans of various sizes hung on one wall from a crooked nail. Opposing them was what Tao thought of as her pantry: a small bag of winter apples; jars of grain and tea leaves strapped into place on their makeshift shelf; mint and nettle, hung in bunches to dry. Here, also, was her bedding: a few sacks of hay (which conveniently also served as Laohu's feed-though it meant that when they went too long between resupplies, her sleep inevitably suffered for it) swaddled in thick woolen blankets. In all, it made for a cozy-if humble-nest.

But all this Tao took in with only a quick glance. Everything was where it should be. Which meant that what she needed would be in the back, where she kept the things most precious to her.

Moving through the cramped space with the ease of familiarity, Tao sorted through the carefully wrapped bundles in the very rear of the wagon, behind the small stools and folding table. From these bundles, she extracted a disc of hammered bronze, hung on a ribbon, and a small cloth-wrapped mallet.

Grasping the ribbon and mallet in each hand, she ducked back out through the curtain, blinking in the warm glow of the swaying lantern light. Tao stood tall on the perch of her wagon (or as tall as her slight frame allowed), made sure her hooded cloak was billowing impressively so that its blue velvet lining could be seen, lifted her chin, and-with ponderous ceremony-struck the disc.

A low note tolled out, brassy and deep and authoritative, and a hush rolled out over the crowd of villagers as they finally noticed the young Shinn woman perched upon a traveling wagon in the middle of their square. Tao struck the gong once more, and the sound reverberated as all eyes fixed on her.

"Greetings to the people of Necker!" she cried out into the general bafflement. "I am Tao, Teller of Small Fortunes."

She gestured grandly with the mallet toward the side of her wooden traveling wagon, where, indeed, TELLER OF SMALL FORTUNES was painted in neat black letters, along with the addendum, in much smaller lettering beneath: (no spells, potions, or ancient prophecies).

"But tonight, I shall give you the gift, free of charge, of a Moderately Sized Fortune! You there, mistress." Tao pointed at a harried-looking woman in an apron holding several buckets by the tavern door. "Tell me-is there a small stream, flowing through a grove of pines, just to the east?"

"Aye, so there is," said the woman, narrowing her eyes.

"And you, Master Arty," Tao pointed now at a rangy older man leaning heavily on his walking stick. "Tell me-are there plentiful berry brambles along that stream?"

"Here now, how did you know my name?" Arty said in confusion, rubbing at his leg.

"Yes, there are," cut in the aproned woman. "And so?"

Tao spread her arms dramatically wide, closing her eyes and tilting her head back, as if listening to voices only she could hear. "People of Necker . . ." she intoned. "I have seen your goats! Look to the east where blackberries and cold mountain water meet, for there you shall find your herd!"

The villagers burst into buzzing cacophony.

As a teller of small fortunes, Tao didn't often have a chance to play the showman, for she'd feel rather silly making such a fuss about announcing whether or not it'd rain next Scholarsday, or when the carpenter's daughter's warts would go away. But she had to admit-she rather enjoyed it when she could.

"She's Shinn, she is," cried the gangly boy, who had jumped up from his stump at her proclamation. "She sees things in rocks!"

"And what's a Shinn woman doing all the way out here in Necker, I'd like to know," said a woman with a pinched mouth and holding a broom.

"How'd she know my name? I've never once been to Shinara in my life," shouted Arty over the din.

"Enough, enough!" shouted the woman in the apron, banging a bucket with a wooden spoon to regain the crowd's attention. "We're losing the light if we mean to be finding these goats afore dark. Well now, this fortune teller says to look along the stream to the east, so someone may as well look there-we meant to search in all directions anyways."

A chorus of ayes met this decisiveness, and the villagers began pairing off and setting out in multiple directions, some glancing back at Tao and her wagon. The gangly boy dashed off to the east, having grabbed his own bucket of grain and yelling over his shoulder, "I'll check the stream!" His hopes of redeeming himself had clearly been renewed by faith in Tao's prophetic abilities.

Tao bit back a smile, stowed the gong and mallet back inside her wagon, and climbed down to unhitch Laohu and await the outcome. The stream with the blackberry brambles wasn't far-perhaps half an hour's light run for a motivated youth with long legs. She had crossed it not long before she arrived in Necker, her wagon wheels rattling over the stones and Laohu laying his ears back at the cold water as he daintily lifted his hooves high. Tao remembered leaning down from her wagon to grab a handful of the ripe blackberries, savoring each bright burst of sweetness as she ate them one at a time.

What Tao also remembered was the sound of leafy chomping, the distinctive scent of livestock, and the even more distinctive caprine chorus of maas coming from behind the brambles as her wagon rolled on by.


Little more than an hour later, with the sun slunk beneath the hills and a purple dusk fallen over the land, grateful villagers wrung Tao’s hands and pressed a second mug of foaming ale upon her over her half-hearted protestations.

The woman in the apron, who it turned out was Hattie, the tavernkeep's wife (and the true local authority in Necker, official headman notwithstanding), had warmed quite instantly to Tao once Cam had returned in triumph with a herd of disgruntled, blackberry-stained goats before him.

"No, we won't hear of it, we won't be taking any coin from one such as yourself tonight," tutted Hattie as she set a basket of warm bread and a full plate of cheese ("finest goat cheese in all the hilltowns, of course") on Tao's table near the tavern's hearth. "After what you've done for us! And we hope you'll be staying the night here, for there's many of us hoping to have our fortunes read by you, if you've the time. A real Shinn fortune teller, imagine that-not even Shellport's had one of those, I reckon!"

This was greeted by many approving just sos and self-satisfied nods all around, for Necker often felt the rub of being a smaller, poorer neighbor to nearby Shellport. (Shellport was a middlingly large, marginally important port city that had three whole taverns and even their own resident mage. Admittedly, he was quite old and deaf, and a rather less imposing figure than most other Guild mages; he did mostly fishing-net charms these days, some of which could have rather unexpected effects on one's chowders, but still, a western town having a mage at all was not something to be sniffed at.)

"I would be honored," replied Tao with a respectful incline of her head, "to rest the night in your fine tavern, and of course, to tell fortunes for all who would wish it tomorrow."

Hattie beamed at her, and all the villagers raised yet another loud toast-Cam's young voice loudest of them all-to the traveling Teller of Small Fortunes, who looked Shinn but spoke fair Eshteran, and who had saved Necker's goats, and thereby their necks, too.