as a small watermelon. It resembled oxidized hammered copper, but didn’t appear to be actual metal except for an elaborately carved plaque in the shape of a large V with Celtic knot patterns and symbols.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Dragon’s egg,” he answered with unmistakable reverence.
My eyes jerked back to the ovoid. “It’s not, um…”
He turned to me and cocked his head as if to say, “Not what?”
“It couldn’t hatch. Could it?”
He shrugged and looked at it again. “Don’t know. Right circumstances? Maybe.”
“Dolan,” Maggie called. “We need to get that chime alert in place. Like we talked about. So she does no’ have to wear the shoes all the time.”
He looked down at my shoes, nodded and walked off toward the workshop.
I whispered to Maggie. “What is he?”
“Brounie,” she whispered in return. Then leaning in, she said, “He and Molly are seein’ each other on the quiet. A right fetchin’ couple they make from the looks of it.” She nodded as if she’d just passed the juiciest bit of gossip that ever left lips.
I’d never lived in a small town but had heard the scoop; that everybody always knows everybody else’s business. I briefly tried that on for size, wondering how I’d feel about all my comings and goings being ‘on the record’. The downside was no privacy. The upside was people who know, and perhaps care, about each others’ well-being.
I didn’t know what a brounie was, but made a mental note to undertake the study that very day.
“Maggie.”
“Aye?”
“I feel like I’m in way over my head. I don’t know what a brounie is. I don’t know what a wind devil is, but I think I should know before I sit down for a casual lunch with one. Before last night I’d never heard of nurture nymphs and I have a feeling that’s a drop in the bucket. There’s an entire panorama of things I don’t know about. Isn’t there?”
She nodded without hesitation. “Aye. ‘Tis true. That’s what the records are for. By the time you hold the first court at Hallowstide, you’ll be up to speed. That I can promise you.”
“How can you promise me that?”
She gaped. “Because the Powers That Be are…”
“Never wrong.” I finished the sentence with a hint of sarcasm because I believed the old wives’ saying, that there’s a first time for everything. “Until they are,” I said. “I could be the first time.”
Maggie laughed. “If this is truly troublin’ ye, we need to go see Esmerelda.”
“Why? Who is that?”
“She’s the weaver from across the way.”
“Ye-a-a-h. Who is she really?”
“Oh.” Maggie made a face like she was thinking. “I guess the best way to put it is that she’s the goddess of Boheme, guardian of Gypsies. Something like that. She weaves cloth and dreams, tells fortunes, and plays a mean tambourine.”
“Tambourine,” I repeated drily.
“Come on. Let’s lock up and go have tea with Esme.”
“We just had tea.” My cup was half full and still warm.
“What has that to do with the proposition? You can no’ have too much tea.”
I laughed, wondering that a woman her age could speak that sentence seriously. Then I remembered she wasn’t coping with a human bladder. She was fae, whatever that meant.
Maggie had grabbed the shop keys and was headed toward the door while I was lost in thought. Again.
“Wait. First, why are we going to see, um, Esme? And, second, if we keep closing the shop during store hours, how do we sell anything?”
“We’re goin’ to get your fortune sorted out once and for all.” She took my sleeve and pulled me out on the sidewalk. As she was pulling the door shut and locking it, she said, “Do not worry yourself about the sales. Everythin’ that should belong to a person will end up with that person whether we close for a bit or no’.”
It would be a groundbreaking, novel idea for a human shopkeeper, but for all I knew, it wouldn’t seem at all strange to a magical merchant.
“By the way, did ye sleep well last night?”
My grin answered for me, but I added words. “The best. The house has what Americans would call a good vibe.”
Maggie began walking quickly across the circle.
“I think I should tell you that I don’t believe in fortune tellers.”
Maggie halted abruptly, turned to me and laughed. “Rita, you are a delight. You took the news that you enjoyed lunch with an Assyrian wind devil, a creature who’s foreign even to me, in stride, but fortune tellin’ gives ye pause.”