The Seven Markets (2 page)

“About
anything,
” Ellie said. “It was terrible. I was so excited I wanted to jump up and shout, but I couldn’t get the words together.”

“Well, I don’t expect that quiet will go on too much longer, eh, Tara?”

“No,” Mama said. “Before noontime enough folks’ll have seen that someone will muster the words. Once the cat’s out of the bag it’s going to spread like wildfire.”

Papa considered a moment, scratching the stiff hairs on his chin. “Well, someone’s already let the cat out, I figure. Don’t you agree, Ellie?”

“Papa?”

He examined the flier, fingering the torn bits, separating them and holding the split edges right up to his nose.

The flier was printed on heavy linen stock that might have been a bright, festive yellow at one time. The sun and elements had faded it, and what Papa held in his hand now was the creamy color of drying oatmeal. The center of the flier was lighter than its outside border, creating the illusion of a dull glow spreading out from the middle.

The words printed across the page showed none of the wear of the page itself. They might have been set there only the night before.

“Bet you anything,” he said. “Only thing anyone’s talking about in town right now is the Market. Tara?”

Ellie knew Mama had good instincts for the invisible world. Her charms always held, and when she wanted a bread to rise or a pie crust to hold its shape, it did.

“Your da’ may have a point, hon.”

A shiver tickled its slow way up Ellie’s spine, catching the breath in her throat. She felt her cheeks flush red and was grateful again to be sitting.

Papa comforted her, holding her hand tight in his.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, full of the need to apologize, to make it right. “What can I do?”

“Do?” Papa said, smiling broadly. “Nothing to do, and no reason to do it. Ellie girl, the Market is a good thing, one of the best. And there’s no shame being the one who tells folk about it, least no shame I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s true, baby,” Mama said, approaching from behind and rubbing Ellie’s shoulders. Mama had magical hands. It was impossible to feel worried or afraid when she was there.

Ellie read the flier again, still expecting to find she’d gotten the words wrong. She was a good reader and had been for some years. Still, a person can see things they want to see if they’re not careful. She read aloud, “Mysteries, wonders, and dreams.”

“That’s what it says,” Papa said.

“Just like you told me, Papa.”

“Yup, just like I told you.”

Sure enough, when Ellie took herself to town the next day, the Market was all anyone could talk about. She fielded questions from everyone she saw—who had told her? When had she heard? Did she believe it? Could she believe it?—but if anyone guessed it was Ellie who’d broken the village’s spell of silence, they didn’t raise the point within range of her hearing.

The largest question, in point of fact, was
where
the Market would be held. The flier specified only “Oberton Village,” and there was some dispute over just what that might imply.

Mister Tanner, when she stopped in with a fresh shopping list from Mama, insisted the Market would be held right in the center of town. “Where else would it be?” he said. “Nice, big open space out there, and plenty of shops for visitors to wander.” He’d hired Mitch Danvers’ son, Robbie, as temporary stockboy for the three days specified on the flier. This was, he told anyone who’d listen, not just to cover the till when the crowds began piling up but also so he could sneak out and have a look at the Market with his own two eyes.

Reverend Childs told Ellie, in terms that left no room for interpretation or negotiation, that the Market would occupy the fields before and on either side of his own church. “There’s no other place for it, really,” he said, acting out for Ellie, with his hands, how the land could be best used for both Market and visitors.

Everyone had an opinion. And what Ellie noted for herself was, as insistent as a person might get, as utterly convinced as they might be that their theory was the correct one, the conversation never seemed to devolve beyond one person explaining, calmly but still with great enthusiasm, not why the other person was wrong but simply why they were correct.

It was the most congenial discussion she’d ever seen. Remembering the furious debate that had erupted over the location and construction of the new schoolhouse the previous summer, Ellie couldn’t help but find it rather remarkable.

She lingered in town, enjoying the energy the Market’s impending arrival had injected into her neighbors. She did a small amount of shopping, buying little things Mama had asked for and which Ellie suspected she did not need. As she started home her shopping bag felt emptier than when she’d arrived. She secured it over her shoulder and began the long walk home.

“Heading out without saying good-bye,” came a voice from behind.

“Joshua!” Ellie spun to find Joshua Bullock, a year older and nearly a head taller than her, stepping out of Tanner’s carrying a good-size burlap sack of flour.

“I didn’t see you there,” she said.

“I wasn’t,” he said, gray eyes alight with pleasure.

They stopped short of embracing, propriety demanding she maintain a ladylike distance with the eyes of half the town on them.

“I’ve missed you,” Ellie said, swelling at the sight of him.

“I can tell from the way you raced past, eager to escape town without seeing me.”

“Shush, beast. Have you heard?”

“Aye. The Market. I always figured it for a tale.”

Ellie appeared stricken and he fell back in mock regret, nearly dropping his sack as he floundered.

“Well it’s a delight to be proven wrong,” Joshua said. “My sister hurried home to tell us when she heard. She was buying bread from the McCulloughs. My poor ma fainted at the news.”

“Is she all right?”

“Of course. You know how she gets.” He shifted the sack to his hip before thinking better of it and setting it on the ground. “Not looking forward to carrying that home, I’ll tell you.”

“It does appear quite heavy,” Ellie said, hoping he’d take it as a compliment.

“It’s light, actually, but unwieldy. Still, Mister Tanner wouldn’t send anyone out with a delivery until after the weekend and Ma insists she needs to ‘bake, bake, bake’ like there’s company coming. I suspect she believes the entire Market will be dropping by for a bite.”

Ellie giggled, imagining Joshua’s mother darting around her small kitchen baking cakes and desserts for the weekend’s visitors.

“If you didn’t have your flour there,” she said. “I’d have you walk a bit of the way home with me.” The Bullock farm was on the opposite end of the village from the MacReady farm; walking Ellie home would only lengthen the distance he’d need to lug the heavy sack.

“I can go a short way, I think, if you’d like.”

“I would,” Ellie said. “Very much so.”

She waited until they were a good distance outside town before letting him hold her hand. His palm was damp with the day’s humidity, but she didn’t care. His hand could have been on fire and she wouldn’t have complained. When they walked together like this, she frequently felt the need to verify that her feet were touching solid ground, for she felt she could have been flying.

Joshua asked how she’d come to learn of the Market and Ellie related her tale, offering her stolen flier as evidence. She held it out and was overcome with the sudden, perverse certainty he would snatch it from her and run away. Instead Joshua turned it over in his hand, examining it back and front. When he returned it, Ellie folded it up and hid it away in her pocket like the most precious of treasures. If Joshua noticed her urgency, he did not let it show.

She asked his plans for visiting the Market and he told her, plain as day, “I was planning to attend with you. If I might be so bold, Miss MacReady.”

Ellie composed herself and squeaked out a response in a voice that hardly seemed her own. “You may, sir,” she said. It was all she could do not to jump for joy.

By that point, Joshua Bullock had been courting Ellie MacReady for a hair more than a year. They’d become familiar with one another—walking together as they did now and kissing on more than one occasion—and Joshua’s father had begun negotiations with Ellie’s papa on his son’s behalf. They were young to be considering marriage, but both families were successful and all parties agreed the match was a good one. “Within the year, Ellie,” Mama had said. “You’re still so young and there’s no need to be rushing.”

In moments like these, however, Ellie could not agree with her mother. The heat rising up from her belly told her there was every reason in the world to rush.

“Would you like to stop a minute, rest your arms?”

“Please,” he said.

They were passing the site of the old Finnegan place, which had lain fallow for two summers since the family had picked up stakes and moved away to the coast. The house had not borne the harsh winters well with no one to care for it and was little more than a skeleton. Ellie made out its face, the bare windows and doorless entryway, and its limbs, the half-flattened barn and bare ribs of what had been their grain storage.

“Here,” she said, arranging her skirts so she could sit.

He thudded the unwieldy sack onto the ground, rounded his shoulder twice to loosen it, and took his place beside her. Joshua still held her hand in his, only now as they sat together it had come to rest in her lap.

“Ellie . . .”

“Hush,” she said, turning to place her lips on his. His height was less of an obstacle sitting than standing. It would be no obstacle at all if they were lying down.

She pressed his palm to her breast, sighing at the heat coming off his hand. She brought her hands up to his face and rubbed the rough stubble of his chin as she continued kissing him. He tasted of salt and sweat and dust. Of hard work and most of all, it seemed, of desire for her. She opened her mouth and nibbled his lower lip, pulling at it playfully and letting it go.

“Ellie . . .”

He was twisting in place, letting her lean on him, letting her press up hard against him, when the sudden awareness of eyes on the back of her neck came over Ellie. She sat abruptly up, then stood, flattening her clothes, making herself proper once more.

Turning in place, she saw they were alone. Still, she wondered if she would receive a talking-to when she returned home. Mama and her charms.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was—I don’t know what came over me.”

He smiled, his rough features vulnerable, his dark complexion ruddy. He looked more like a boy than she’d ever imagined he could. Unable to resist, she reached out and ruffled his hair.

“Quit it!”

She leaned over to kiss his forehead and, promising herself she would behave, again took the spot next to him in the fractured shade of the old farmhouse.

“This is a nice place, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he said. She felt his fingertips on the back of her neck and decided that was a degree of chastity she could oblige.

“They were talking in town. Perhaps you found yourself caught up in the conversation—I know I did. About the Market and where it would be held. Everyone had a theory and if I had to offer mine, I’d say this spot right here.”

“The Finnegans’?” he said, surprised.

“As good as any other place. Owned by no one, nearby to town but not right on its doorstep. Farther from home for you but not so far to walk—if one isn’t lugging a fat sack of flour, that is.”

He considered this, an easy smile on his face. The fingers dancing along the back of her neck stepped up to her braid of nut-brown hair and insinuated themselves like field mice in a thicket. She shuddered with delight, his fingers tiny feet scrambling along the back of her neck.

“It’s a fine place. Finer now, I should think.”

“Hush,” she said.

He slid an arm around her shoulder and Ellie lay her head in the crook of his arm, against his chest. They sat that way a while, speaking idly but mainly enjoying each other’s silence.

When they returned to the road, Ellie and Joshua spent several minutes competing to see which of them would walk away from the other first.

She kissed him on the cheek—but only after searching in all directions lest they be seen. Then she shooed him on his way.

“You first,” he said, grinning like the oversized fool he was.

“Very well,” she said, turning and walking—but only a handful of steps.

She stopped and spun, hoping to catch him with his back to her, the sack of flour slung over his shoulder.

He stood in the road, beaming.

“You,” she said.

He crossed the distance between them and this time it was he who kissed her. He leaned down and pecked her cheek.

“Go,” she said, knowing he would not.

But he did. She counted four steps before he turned, and, seeing her still anchored in place, head cocked, hands on her hips, he dropped the sack of flour and darted back to her waiting arms.

When they separated this time, it was Joshua who had the bright idea. “On the count of three,” he said. “We’ll both turn and both walk away and that way neither of us is leaving first.”

Ellie nodded. It was a very sensible idea.

“One,” he said.

“Two,” she said.

“Three,” they said, speaking together.

Neither of them turned. Ellie broke out laughing and Joshua joined her, slapping the flat of his hand on his thigh and falling back, planting his bottom on the dirt road. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Ellie helped him up. As she pulled his hand, he pulled hers and she toppled over, landing across his lap. She should have been scandalized but somehow it only made her laugh harder. It was unseemly; if
anyone
came along at that moment it could very well prove their end. But she couldn’t help herself and neither could he.

It was some time later when they were able to disentangle their limbs and stand. Ellie brushed herself off and turned so Joshua could whack the dust from the back of her blouse. It was cream-colored and attracted filth the way a magnet drew iron nails across a wood floor. A losing battle. Still, he did what he could.