Serendipity Market

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Chapter One

Toby'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.

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Excerpted from Serendipity Market by Penny Blubaugh
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.