The Fortune Tellers

Marya was having a Very Bad Morning.

Nothing was going right. Her brother fought and kicked and hit when she tried to dress and feed him. She tripped and fell twice while getting ready for work, and had to waste precious water scrubbing her hands clean. The politz and their Dogs were rather sharp and thick on the streets today, and a few seemed to swing around and sniff the air after she passed by.

Luckily the streets had many people going about their business, so she could fade easily into the crowd.

The bakery almost seemed like a haven, which was unusual and suspicious. There was usually more screaming and waving of arms, telling all the workers to work harder or faster. But today the owners seemed subdued, reduced to glaring at her and pointing and grunting to show her to her station. She started kneading dough with a silent sigh of relief.

The bakery seemed dark. Unusual, and a bit disturbing.

Once she had punched all the loaves down and set them aside for the second rise, she concentrated on the cheaper, easier loaves. The wheat had already been ground, so it was easy for her to make a large batch with the flour, salt, and spices. She had a knack for this sort of thing, knowing just how much water to dribble into the mix before kneading. She made the balls, and took a break while they were resting for a few minutes.

She stepped outside, and looked up - and her mouth formed a large O.

There were clouds in the sky!

Oh, how she hoped for rain! A slight wind picked up, carrying a hint of growing scent.

She kept her happiness to herself when she slipped back inside. Nowadays, there wasn't much to be happy about, and those who displayed it were subject to intense scrutiny. And her life was one that couldn't bear much more scrutiny before shattering.

Loaves were shaped, bound, quartered, stabbed, and set on tiles to bake. She made a wish over each one, spreading her wishes for a little blessing to all who ate her loaves. Somehow it was the best way to avoid suspicion. And the politz. And their Dogs, noses quivering, but not for a thing you could smell.

It got darker, and she wished for rain.

She watched the mistress prepare dough from the finer, more expensive, whiter flour, while her hands busied themselves making biscuits with leftover dough. She thought she could do it, it seemed easy, but she knew better than to ask to help. The last who tried had been beaten out the door. She was trying to avoid attention, not draw it. So she watched, and learned.

The master had already taken the loaves she'd punched down and was baking them special in the oven. So they had an order to fill - that would mean a bit more money. They were hard task masters, but tried to be fair with their workers. To a point. Shouting was allowed, but not hitting without reason. Thankfully, they didn't look for reasons to hit.

Then it was time to sell. As workers scurried home, they would stop in, and she'd hand off loaf after loaf and take the fenig it cost. All the coins went into a hole in the top of a heavy lock box right below the counter. She didn't try to keep any; she knew it would be difficult to knead bread with a hand chopped off for thievery. And getting a job afterward? Good luck, with the stump telling your story of desperation without words.

She wasn't that desperate. Yet.

Then wages, and her own hurried rush to get home with her loaf. They used to get the small, misshapen, or burnt bread for free, but since Marya started working there, all were the same good quality. They were still given a loaf, but now they didn't have to quarrel over who got what awfulness. It was a relief, and worrying all the same - what if someone tried to rob her on the way? That loaf was dinner, breakfast, and lunch. If her brother didn't try to gobble it all down, like he usually did.

She slowed. There was a knot of people in the street, blocking her way.

She glanced at the dark alleys, made darker by cloud cover. There was more wind. Who knows what lurked there? Better not chance it. She would just have to wait till whatever-it-was broke up.

Then a howl came from within the crowd, and her blood went cold.

The politzi Dogs! The politz found another victim!

She stopped, but the people behind her didn't. She was pressed into the people in front of her, who were also pushed forward. Wiggling around to protect herself and her loaf made for interesting gymnastics, especially when those around her tried to pinch off bits for themselves. Sometimes they missed and pinched her instead. At least, she hoped they missed.

She was small enough that the pushing and shoving eventually popped her out of the crowd, for a front-row place in the action.

A boy. A child. Skinny, frail, and wearing the clothing of one of the itinerant tinker families. The Dogs had him cornered, whining from under the hoods that the politz used to cover their eyes. They kept reaching out to grab him, and the politz were having troubles keeping them in check, yanking savagely on the chains attacked to spiked collars around their necks. The spikes were turned inward, and she could see the blood trickling down their necks and staining the edges of the hoods.

She didn't notice the wind pick up and start to howl, and the lightning and thunder swirl up as if out of nowhere.

But the Dogs did. They continued to whine, but they started swinging their heads around from side to side. One or two snuffled the air like the strong winds brought them a scent.

For a moment, her eyes met the child's.

Everything went clear.

The politzi were liars. Fortune tellers weren't causing the unrest in the city! How could they? This was a child! A visitor! How could he cause the drought that plagued their kingdom for twenty years? She was so angry, her hair stood on end.

As if to prove her a liar, the storm broke.

The first stroke of lightning stabbed almost in front of her, striking a politz. The flash was blinding, and the boom of thunder took away her hearing, but somehow she could still see the way his body arced, the scream ripping from him that she couldn't hear. She saw the light snake down the chain and hit the Dog, who also reared back. The hood covered his face, but she knew he'd be screaming too.

The crowd was thrown in all directions by the explosion. How she landed on two other people at the mouth of an alley she knew, she would never know. And her legs worked. So she scrambled up and ran.

All she heard was roaring in her ears. She ran, still holding her bread, as rain poured down in streams that seemed ready to flood the town. She could see the continuous lightning, but could no longer hear the thunder that must accompany each stroke. She ran, and ran, and the roaring continued in her ears.

Which alley was she in again? She'd been running for a long time. She squinted through the sheets of rain to figure out where she was, slowing at the opening onto a street to get her bearings.

There was someone standing in the road.

The boy.

He saw her, and she saw his eyes widen with recognition. She tried to run back up the alley, but he was quicker. He darted towards her, and made big gestures and finger twiddles and pointing towards their left. She got a strong impression that he was also deaf from the explosion, and he was trying to get her to take him out of the city.

She shook her head no, pointed up and over. Her tiny room was there - and her brother. She had to get to him, but she didn't want to tell this dangerous stranger where she lived.

He shook his head frantically, pointed to the roofs.

They were burning.

She screamed, but neither heard it. She took off running for her brother, and didn't realize he followed.

The stairs she clattered up were rickety and wooden, but held in the downpour. Her hand was shaking as she lifted the latch, burst into the room.

Her brother was in the corner, curled up, rocking and moaning.

She could smell the smoke.

She dropped the bread, ran to him, put her arm around him. He hugged her hard, almost choking her. She had to adjust his hands and arm before trying to get his attention, but he wasn't paying attention, just grabbed her harder. She had to pull his hands away, begging him to stop accidentally trying to kill her.

A hand reached out, shook her shoulder.

The boy!

He shook her again, pulled her away from her brother who whimpered and grabbed for her again. But the boy took his hands into his own, gripped hard but not to hurt him. He shaped words with his mouth, slowly, so she could see: Get. Food. Get. Money. We. Must. Leave. Now!

There was smoke in the air, a thin haze getting darker. Lightning flashed through the open door.

She gulped. Her brother seemed to actually be moving. She could see the boy's lips moving, but still couldn't hear what he was saying. There wasn't much to grab - her extra shirt, his, the bread (why wasn't it sopping wet?), and the few coins she'd manage to save. The first three were thrown on the bed sheet and gathered up, the fourth went into her tiny purse down the shirt she was wearing with today's pay. The smoke was noticeably thicker as they passed under the waterfall in the doorway.

How the boy managed to keep her brother moving, and down the stairs, she didn't understand. But soon they were moving through the streets, working their way towards the nearest city gate.

The roaring she heard had been replaced with a dull ringing, like someone hitting a bell repeatedly. Others were in the streets, also heading for the gate. Everyone trudged along, dodging roof tiles and other clumps of stuff. The town behind them was burning, and even the thunderous rain didn't seem like enough to put it out. Other buildings were just - falling. Houses built in the poor districts in the last many years weren't built to withstand rains that never happened, so they didn't. They melted.

They would be in sight of the gate, if it weren't for the rain, when they heard howling approaching. They shouldn't have heard it over the ringing, but they did somehow.

A Dog burst out of a side street, coming right for them. Even with the crowds of people leaving, some instincts were too tightly ingrained to fight. People found a way to move, and he came straight for them, chain dragging on the cobbles behind him.

Her brother roared in return. Usually he was curled up on himself, so she didn't realize how big he truly was. He stood up straight and swung. An arm the size of a tree trunk hit the Dog mid-section, and the Dog went flying. They didn't hear the crack when the poor thing hit the wall, chain thwacking, but they did see him slide to the street and not move.

The crowd closed up again, and they were out.

The boy took the lead, tugging her brother in a specific direction. She'd never been outside the gates, so what did she care? She stumbled along, as the rain finally lessened. Occasionally she'd glance back - the city was in flames, under boiling thunderclouds still full of lightning that lanced down repeatedly. Water was gushing out of the gates with the people, and the thirsty land soaked it up.

What used to be soft rolling hills in the long ago were now a series of dust and dirt hills, and the boy led them over one of them in particular. And another, and another. She didn't care that they were pulling farther and farther away from the road. She still couldn't hear, though she thought she caught glimpses of the boy talking to her brother. She couldn't be certain. And still he led them who knows where.

She didn't notice when the rain stopped.

She did notice when one hill hid a family wagon, and when a blanket was wrapped around her. She was led up the steps into the back, and she was allowed to sink onto a surprisingly soft carpet. A large shape that was her brother in a bigger blanket flopped aside of her, and they were asleep before she knew the boy joined them, with his own comforter.

*********************

She could hear again.

"But what about your brother? Did you find him?"

"No, Mama. I tried, but every time I searched like you taught, the Dogs would start howling, and they finally got me. I could only run so fast, and they were everywhere."

"I don't understand. The runes-"

The voice stopped when Marya sat up. She could see in the wagon. The louvers were open, letting in light, and road dust.

She saw the boy, and what looked to be an older copy of himself, but in girl form. Mama indeed. She sighed. "I know you're a fortune teller. I honestly don't care. You helped us get out when the politz did not. It does not take the mind of a philosopher to know who's a real person, and who is a monster in disguise. Thank you. You probably saved our lives."

She nodded, but she didn't look happy. "I sent Davide here to find his brother. He was confiscated by the guard many leagues up the road, and the runes told me to find him in the town."

But Davide was already shaking his head. "No, Mama. You are reading into the runes again. They said you would find answers here, that is all."

And Marya was already shaking her head as well. "If the politz took him, it was to train him to be a Dog. They look for mutes, because something in them can sniff out fortune tellers. They are trained, somehow. They put them in chains and send them out with their handlers. Some... do not survive. They are too kind, I think, and cannot bear their part in the killings. The rest..." she gestured helplessly, nodded at Davide. "It is as you saw. Our parents would have done the same to my brother here as soon as he reached his tenth year. They planned to sell me to the sluttery. I left with him the night before the celebration, got a job at a bakery. I make a better bread maker than a whore."

Davide's mother stared at her in horror. "Your... parents? Would sell you?"

Marya shrugged. "In their eyes, I was a useless girl child. The boy was useless as an heir. I moved to the far side of the town to hide from them. I love my brother, and would not see him chained in a spiked collar. He cannot work without someone else trying to sell him, so I made bread to feed and house us. It is all I could do."

"And this godsforsaken kingdom still blames the fortune tellers for the drought, that plagues only your land and no one else's?"

"It is what we believe. Since the town of Gray Ridge was destroyed years ago, the rains stopped. I don't know what happened today."

"Yesterday. And another town has been destroyed. If my son was there, unless he fled, he does not live."

Davide swirled the cup he was holding, gulped its contents. Held the rim in the weak light. His face showed the answer, and they both cried silently with their arms around each other.

Marya hugged her knees. She wished someone cared enough about her and her brother to cry like that when they had vanished. As far as she knew, her parents didn't even look for her. She wondered if they were still alive, and what they would do now.

Davide's mama knocked on the front of the wagon, and Marya realized they had been traveling the whole time. The creaks of the wooden wheels finally reached her mind, though they had been in her ears the whole time. "Husband, please get us out of this horrible kingdom as fast as the mules will take us!"

"Working on it!" the cheerful voice belied the obvious pain the man was in. Marya could hear it in his voice. He'd heard them talking. "We can stop for a noon meal, the mules will need to eat too."

"I saved enough hay for them. Greedy villagers thought they could take it all."

"Not without paying for it, and we needed some to get out of here."

Davide's mother was still shaking her head. "We never meant to come this far in. But they took our boy, and we wanted to find him. Now, he is beyond our reach, and we stayed for nothing."

Davide shook his head, pointed at Marya with his nose.

His mother looked at her thoughtfully. "Well, there is that." She brooded with her thoughts, and both kids settled down for more sleep as the wagon creaked to itself while they traveled.

The border could not be clearer.

Aside and behind her, dried grasses and dying trees. In front of her, a bridge, a trickling river, and green, green, green, on the far bank. Marya kept them busy naming flowers and plants and leaves as the cart rolled. And there were ruts in the road! This is what a road that ran with occasional water felt like!

Davide's mother, Fenna, chuckled and tried to answer each question before the next fell. And learned that Marya was very interested in which were good for cooking, especially baking.

She didn't realize what a good night's sleep could be had on sweet grass, without the threat of a knock on the door, or baying Dogs.

None of the children were awake when Davide's father sent out pigeons, each with a tiny scroll on its leg.

Part 1: https://vocal.media/fiction/the-fortune-tellers

Part 3: https://vocal.media/fiction/the-fortune-tellers-55fb0yri