belly, and you must like the taste of them, since you returned to the same food stall when it was time to make a new bargain. To you, the pies were worth whatever you paid for them. To the piemaker, whatever you offered was worth more than the pies. Now, imagine for a moment that you were so hungry you feared you might die. What would have stopped the piemaker from taking everything you had in exchange for a handful of crumbs?”
“I wouldn’t have let him,” said Lundy firmly.
“But again, imagine you were ravenous, you were starving, that hunger had wrapped its hands so tightly around your bones that you couldn’t think straight. There is wanting and there is needing, and when you want, you can make good choices, but when you need, it’s important the people around you not be looking to take advantage. When there are no clear prices, only the nebulous idea of ‘fair value,’ people get hurt. People get cheated. We had some bad bargains in the beginning, when folks looked at what we were building here and saw themselves as rich and powerful, while the rest of us existed only to fill their pockets with everything we had.”
Lundy, who had met her share of bullies, said nothing.
“One day, all those people who had started bargaining in bad faith, who had looked to take advantage or not fulfilled their agreements to the best of their abilities, woke up and found they wore the signs of their failures on their faces. They had feathers in their hair. They had beaks, or talons, or stranger. And the ones who realized they’d been negligent with their fellows, who worked to make things right, found themselves back the way they had been in fairly short order. The ones who didn’t . . .” The Archivist looked meaningfully toward the door, and through it toward the clearing where the birdcages hung.
Lundy’s dinner—chicken pie in flaky pastry—seemed suddenly sour in her stomach. “What happened to them?”
“Most flew away. Some had done things so terrible that they were locked up for the protection of those around them. A few stayed free, and worked their way back toward their original shapes. Most who become birds now follow their example. It takes a very long time. There’s not much a bird can do to provide fair value.” Seeming to catch the direction of Lundy’s thoughts, the Archivist smiled. “The chickens we raise are only that: chickens. You haven’t eaten the vicar.”
“What’s a vicar?” asked Lundy, and sagged in relief.
The Archivist ignored her question, which may have been for the best. “Most of the children who live at the Market spend at least some time as a bird. It teaches them to be frugal in their bargains and mindful of their obligations. Their parents are happy to help them find value that can be done on two good wings, unless they’ve become some sort of flightless bird, and then we find other ways. Moon doesn’t have a parent to step in for her. Had she made it all the way into her cloak of feathers, I would have been forced to stir myself to find her things an owl could do to buy the way back to girlhood. It’s only a permanent condition if the one transformed allows it to be, continuing to be indolent or greedy until their mind fades into the mind of a bird.”
Lundy frowned deeply. “My grandpa was sick for a long time before he died,” she said. “What happens if someone’s too sick to give fair value?”
“Health is a thing that can be bought, as can everything worth bartering,” said the Archivist. “But if someone truly cannot give fair value—if they are undergoing childbirth, for example, or if the health they need must be purchased by someone else, because they were injured or sickened too quickly to make their own bargain—the world is forgiving. This is the Market acting, to balance itself, to keep us happy and hale and working together, not draining one another dry in the name of personal enrichment. A new parent, weary from bringing a life into the world, may be waited upon hand and foot for weeks, their every need met, their every desire catered to, and still be seen as owed something, for the great good they have done us. How do you balance out the fair value of a life? And it’s true that sometimes, one who has lived long enough to feel themselves