The Seven Markets (4 page)

“What else, Ellie?” Mama said.

Ellie considered trying to describe the blinding lights the man had inside his wagon, but she could not do it.

“Very little else, actually. A shovel, some eyeglasses, and a book as an example. Much of what he will have for sale is mundane indeed.”

Mama seemed to be considering Ellie’s tale, weighing it to see what she thought. For her part, Ellie forced down several small bites, chewing slowly and swallowing with some difficulty. Her throat seemed to have shrunken down to nothing.

“Very well,” Mama said at last. “Perhaps if we see your new friend at the Market, you will be able to introduce us.”

“Oh, of course!”

“Don’t see what kind of a merchant he can be if he can’t tell a shovel from a pair of eyeglasses,” Papa said.

“Stories change over time,” Mama said. “Stories about the Market as much as any. But I’m glad you met this fellow, Ellie. He sounds a good sort, if a bit confused. And now we have something of an idea what to expect day after next.”

“A shovel,” Papa said, stuffing his mouth and chuckling. “Well, we will see, won’t we?”

Neither Ellie nor her mother argued. As the meal continued, they spoke of several other things. Papa said he’d had a visit from Aaron Bullock, Joshua’s father, that afternoon. The two men had discussed at some length more details of a union between the two families.

“The chief headache is land,” Papa said. “Old Aaron would prefer his son wed and expand their own holdings. ‘If you were only our neighbors,’ he told me, ‘this would all be so much easier.’ Wants to take that farm of his and grow it until it gobbles up the whole village, I think.”

Papa stabbed a large chunk of meat with his fork and looked up at both women to see if either had a contradictory word to add.

“We dickered for some good time, I can tell you. But I think we may have reached the start of an agreement. It’s technical and I won’t bore you, but assuming the old sod doesn’t get a better offer, your old da’ might well have you sorted out before first snow.”

“Oh, Papa!”

If she’d been standing, Ellie would have flung her arms around him and squeezed until he popped. Good luck for him, they were all sitting.

“A fair good, too,” he said. “You know the Finnegan place up the road, eh? If’n we can sort out who it would be to collect the money, old Aaron and I will club together to buy the place for you two. ‘How’s that for a dowry?’ I asked him, and even old Aaron couldn’t argue with me there.”

Pushing back her chair, Ellie did hug him now, unable to control herself. He remained in his seat—possibly from a sense of self-preservation—and patted his daughter to help settle her down.

“Engaged isn’t married, Ellie,” Mama said. “You’ll remember yourself around that Joshua, girl.”

“Yes, Mama.” Ellie planted a kiss on her papa’s head and returned to her seat. She wondered if Joshua had known about this when they’d been together that afternoon. Then she realized of course he had. The idea for buying the Finnegan farm had actually been hers.

They finished eating and cleared the table. By the time they were drying their hands and the dishes were soaking, it was dark outside. Ellie asked Mama if she needed any more help and Mama told her
no, go on along
with a kiss and a quick hug.

What Ellie wanted to do was take to her heels and run all the way through town and right to Joshua’s front step. That wouldn’t do, of course; there was more than poor behavior waiting for her out in the growing dark. There’d been wolves in Oberton that summer, and several great bears seen milling about in the woods. No one had actually been hurt yet, but it would be foolish indeed for an unescorted girl to venture out so late. She wondered if more visitors had arrived for the Market.

Ellie found Papa outside sitting in his chair, enjoying a pipe. He blew wide, white smoke rings and pointed through them, showing his girl the stars.

“Papa,” she said at length. “Is Mister Bullock really going to let Joshua marry me?”

“Seems as like,” he said, not looking at her. “Can’t imagine why he’d trouble to come all the way out here if he wasn’t serious. But don’t you worry, dear heart, I’ve got old Aaron wrapped right around this.” He held up his pointer finger and jabbed it straight up into the sky, as if he were hooking Joshua’s father on it and making a trophy of the man.

“What d’you think made up his mind?”

Papa shrugged, tapping his pipe out onto the ground and refilling it without looking.

“The boy, I expect. If he had any trouble with you at all, which I doubt. Aaron Bullock fancies himself a businessman, Ellie, pure and simple. Safest bet is he wanted to make sure he couldn’t get a better deal for his son. Now me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t try and buy the Roderick place out before too long.”

The Rodericks, Ellie knew, owned the land between the old Finnegan farm and her own parents’ land. They were silver-haired and had no children.

“He’d do that?” she said.

“Oh, I figure. Add up the Finnegan place and the Roderick place and our place right here and you’ve got a tidy piece of land for yourself. Couldn’t do it for himself, but he’ll do it for his son, I’d wager.”

“It’s so much,” she said.

“That it is, Ellie girl. Is that all right with you?”

She smiled. “I suppose.” The three properties combined would make up the single largest farm in Oberton. Ellie shivered in spite of the warm weather.

“All right?” Papa said.

“It’s scary thinking of that much land. Papa, with all that, would Joshua and I be rich?”

He nodded as if the conversation had finally come to the point he’d been anticipating.

“Rich enough, if you take care. And I think you both would. Is that all right?” he said, a third time.

“I don’t know.” Ellie was unsure of how to express herself. “Thinking about living in a big house and filling it with children, I like that. I know Joshua would be a good father, Papa, but too much money, Mama always says people with too much go mad.”

“Smart woman, your ma.”

Ellie agreed.

Papa lit up his pipe again and blew more smoke rings into the night air, pointing up at the stars and the moon, naming them as he was wont to do. Ellie leaned back onto her elbows so she could look up where he directed. For as long as it took him to empty his pipe again, she felt as if she were a girl again. Skinned knees, dirt under her fingernails, looking at the sky through the eyes of her papa, the biggest man in the whole, wide world. She would have been that girl again, if she could.

“Tell you what,” he said, standing and then helping her up. “It’s getting late and your papa’s got plenty of work yet to do tomorrow. I imagine you’ve got a busy day ahead of you as well. And the day after—well, the Market’s exciting and that’s for sure, but I’d be surprised if your Joshua didn’t have a question for you. Good luck getting engaged at the Market, or so I’ve heard tell.”

He opened the door and ushered her inside. The house was quiet. Mama had gone to sleep while they’d been stargazing. Papa kissed Ellie on the cheek and told her to mind the hour and not stay up too much longer.

She went to her room and tucked herself in. She would have slept if she could. There were too many thoughts in her head as she lay in the dark, trying not to think about Joshua, trying not to think about being rich, trying not to think about the Market or the short man’s wagon or the others who might be coming to Oberton right at that moment. She decided she’d never be able to fall asleep. She’d lie awake all night, tossing and turning, and be exhausted come morning.

“Joshua,” she said, greeting him in the darkness. She imagined his hands on her, his lips on hers, the weight of him upon her in her childhood bed. The thought of him made her heart pound with a most unladylike urgency. But when it slowed again at last, she slept.

The short, stout man with the bushy red beard grumbled and complained when Ellie arrived. It was too early. He hadn’t had his tea. She’d just be underfoot. Best if she came back later, perhaps after lunch or—better!—a little before suppertime. It didn’t take long before Ellie realized he was just trying to get rid of her.

“I brought cakes,” she said, showing him the basket she’d filled before leaving home.

That perked his interest up some. She sat him down and fixed his tea while he picked at the goodies she’d brought. He ate with shy fingers, the way a bird will peck at its food. Ellie wondered how a man could be so stout eating so little but she kept the thought to herself.

“Very well,” he said, once the tea was gone and Ellie’s cakes transformed, as if by magic, into nothing but crumbs. “Y’re obviously not leaving, so we might as well get on with it.”

She made her best whatever-do-you-mean face, more out of playful habit than any hope he might fall for it. The short man chuckled and stood, brushing stray bits of cake from his lap. But when Ellie moved to follow him around to the wagon’s entrance, he stopped her with a single wagging finger.

“Up, up. Your place is out here, my lady.”

“Ellie,” she said. “My name is Ellie.”

For the longest time the only answer she received was a raised eyebrow and a studious look. He was waiting for her to say more. She held her lips shut and waited him out.

“Your true name?” he said at last.

“Of course not.”

“Fine, fine. Safe, that. You may call me Beesix, then, if you like.”

“Beeswax?”

“Beesix,” he said, enunciating the syllables better, emphasizing the last. “It means ‘bouncing bird’ in my language.”

“I’m not sure if my name means anything at all,” Ellie said. “By which I mean, it means me and nothing more.”

“Good thing to own your own name, girl. Hold on to that if y’can.”

He climbed the few steps into his wagon, threw open the side, and began producing items for Ellie to identify. His attention was as keen as the previous day; the instant he brought out something she didn’t know, poof, it disappeared, down into the space behind the counter where he hid each item away.

Over the course of the day she identified the following: a spinning wheel, a violin, a baby’s bonnet, a left slipper that might be worn by a lady at court, a knit sweater, a purple scarf with yellow stripes running through it, a ship’s sexton (which she only recognized because she’d seen a picture of one in a book), a pocket watch, a hairbrush, and a silver-framed mirror that went together in a set.

There were many more things she could not identify, which went down into the short man’s collection of goods to conceal before the Market proper. Some of them glowed with their own unearthly light. Some of them made noises, a loud buzzing or music, as if an entire orchestra had been shrunken down and tucked away inside for safekeeping.

And there was the rare item of interest that Ellie recognized, but which, like his lantern, defied her understanding just the same. A writing implement he produced from a bell jar was clearly intended for putting ink to paper. But when he clicked its far end, a point stuck out from the tip and it was this she could write with, if she only had a few scraps of paper.

“Pens?” he said.

“Yes, but—”

“But what? Pen’s a pen, no? Y’got pens?”

Ellie nodded her head, thinking for the first time about the rules he’d alluded to the day before and what happened when one broke them, even if it was only by accident. It was odd how in all the stories Papa had told her about the Market, he’d never mentioned that some things just couldn’t be sold there.

“It’s this part here,” she said. “See how it clicks? I’ve never seen the like.”

He snatched the pen from her hand and clicked the end several times with his thumb. Then he dove back into his wagon and produced several more pens of varying colors and sizes.

“Try these,” he said, spilling them out onto the counter.

Ellie sifted through them, selecting out the ones with curious appearances or unfamiliar attachments. She asked if he had any paper to test them on, and he allowed that yes, he had paper, but it was all in the form of books and those were for reading or for selling but not for writing in.

“Oh, I have this,” she said, remembering the folded Market flier in her pocket. She smoothed it out, face down, and began testing the pens. As she did this, the short man, who Ellie kept thinking of as Mister Beeswax, recommenced digging through the mess in his wagon.

She hated to scribble on the flier, so instead she wrote her name on it over and over again. First just “Ellie,” then “Ellie MacReady,” and finally, the same way she might try on a new blouse, “Ellie Bullock.” When he looked up to check her progress, she had separated the pens into two roughly equal piles. She folded up the flier and tucked it away in her pocket.

“Chimeglass,” he said. “Been carrying these since I don’t know when. Good quality, too. Give a listen.”

He handed her a small glass, about the right size for a single gulp of water. Sure she was doing it wrong, sure he would snatch the glass away and hide it from her sight, Ellie pressed the glass to her ear. She held her breath, listening, waiting for him to scold her for a fool and say, “Ah, no chimeglass then, eh? Right, right.”

He said nothing. And when her panic had subsided, Ellie realized she could hear music in the glass.

It flowed like water sliding over flat stones, reminding Ellie of her mother’s mother, who’d lived with them when she was young and who loved singing in the morning, lullabies and hymns and nonsense melodies she made up as she sang. More, it was her Nana’s voice Ellie heard within the glass. She felt tears welling up in her eyes as she realized how long it’d been since she’d even thought of her Nana, and how much she missed her.

“Most days I can’t even,” the short man said, holding out a hand for the glass. “Hurts too much, don’t it? Good hurt, sure, but it’s still a hurt, innit?”

Ellie nodded. It was with some effort and no small amount of relief that she removed the chimeglass from her ear and passed it back to him. He took it and added it to a line of six more similar glasses.

“I heard my Nana.”

“Liked to sing, did she?”

Ellie nodded.

“Tha’s how chimeglass works—oh, don’t be putting on hurt eyes. Best part though, is it’s real, it is. Dunno how they works but put that back up to your ear and I could lean in and listen just as well. Your Nana?”