Dressed in the black garb of an aged remedy woman, Esmeralde gimped up the roadside oblivious to the steady stream of fairgoers traveling in the opposite direction, south to Middlemarch. After a fitful night of little sleep, she had awakened this morning to consult the portents of her felted Possibles Bag and all signs had pointed north as Indigo Rose had foretold, not south to the yearly event known in all the lands as "the World's Fair" as Esmeralde had hoped. She had been unable to resist the benign lure of the Fair's frivolities these past thirteen years, festivities that included music and dance, arts and crafts, fiber and frolic and best of all, fraternizing with friends of old. A few rounds of the fermented Crystal Cordial she carried in her flask always loosened the tongue and lightened the heart and more often than not, she came away from the fair days with useful information.
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Thinking of her stall mates in the great hall, she sighed with resignation. Not that she would miss the affectionate prattling of Chloe the button lady so much, but each spring found her yearning for the lore of Sierra Blue and the chance to trade anew for one of Sierra's whimsical garments. Like herself, Sierra had been one of the potluck twelve these twenty years past although they never spoke of it aloud. Talk of the twelve was nothing to reminisce over at a fair filled with folk from all the lands. So Esmeralde settled for Sierra's tales of old told and retold around the campfire at night. She never grew weary of the legends of the ancients who ruled and the folly that sent the world into the last age of ice. A born storyteller, Sierra had sat at the knee of Mamie Verde when she could still utter words enough to teach the tales, tales no one believed these days, although many would do better to heed the veiled warnings. No matter, Sierra knew her yarns.
This morning, Esmeralde had unpacked her wares: the medicinal herbs and salves she would have sold as simple remedies for childhood ailments and common colds in her stall under the main tent this day. Then she rummaged in the back room of her cottage and ended up ransacking her dark pantry—for what? What had Indigo Rose said to bring? She failed to remember and there were too many wax sealed tinctures and corked vials back there in the murky dust to gander a wild guess, so she brought them all which was why she walked so heavily on her right leg to balance out the weight of the clanking vessels.
Esmeralde was not really lame, but it helped to look that way, she had discovered. Already this morning, a farm family made space for her to ride a distance among squirming sheep dog puppies in exchange for a few copper's worth of soothing mint tea. Numerous others along the muddy track had inquired about stronger remedies hidden in the stoppered vessels, of which she masked ignorance. If they only knew, she thought craftily, her keen eyes sparkling. But it was best no one did just yet.
No matter what Indigo wanted, Esmeralde felt certain she must have it safe in her felted bag and she would see her friend soon, for the sun was already high in the sky this spring morning, although rain threatened. After she crossed the broad trestle to Bainbridge it would be but a short hike to Indigo's greenhouse garden overlooking the verdant valley and all would be made clear. Or as clear as things got these days.
Both she and Indigo had waited in their separate cottages in neighboring villages last night searching the stars for a sign and found not a glimmer in the gloom. Waiting for fire in the sky was a passion that had staled these past 20 years and now Esmeralde felt certain the sign would never come. Maybe the frozen crystals had lost their fire or maybe they were just lost in general, tucked in the back room of the potluck somewhere out of Smokey Jo's short reach. No matter, no fire had appeared at dawn this morning or any other and Esmeralde was done waiting. She and Indigo would decide this day how best to take matters of the twelve into their own hands.
No sign meant that Sierra most likely had journeyed down from the top of the Notch, lest the Tear Drop had flooded--and if it had not already, it would this day. No one needed tea leaves or magic potions to forecast that from the wet air and whiff of smoke that burned her throat as she walked the broad track along the River Runne..
If Sierra had traveled to Middlemarch, Esmeralde reasoned, she was in danger. Whether soldiers from the Northland Guard had halted her at the bridge and stolen her potluck garments or taken them from her stall, Esmeralde felt certain Sierra had fallen captive, too. She could see it happening, plain as day. As always, Sierra would have been too complacent, too certain of her disguise as a fiber farm wife, too far removed at the Top Notch to sense unrest brewing and know it for the trouble it was. To her husband Kendrick she had always cast a blind eye.
Kendrick had been placed in Sierra's path twenty years ago for a reason, and he had served well to divert her from her destiny. Esmeralde had never been able to fully divine where his allegiances lay and that troubled her. No coincidence it was that Kendrick had stolen Sierra from her rightful place next in line as the leader of the Potluck, and taken her to a remote area riddled with secret Sledder passes to the north, snowy trails that Esmeralde suspected were now used by only by Lowlanders. Here and there among the villages along the main track to Bordertown, rumors of the twelve had surfaced again. The legendary knitting witches would be hunted down and imprisoned for misusing magic, she had heard. Esmeralde sought to discover who had infiltrated their circle, sundered as it was, but still a circle of sorts.
The heavy felted bag, what she called her possibles bag, smacked soundly against her side as she trudged on, nothing but an unnoticed crone in dark garb giving way to swifter foot traffic at the side of the road. Her old boots trodden down in the back gave witness to better days and the hand knit beret perched at a crazy angle atop her dark hair here and there threaded with gray. Only her eyes betrayed her, clear and gray, sparkling in her dark gypsy face, cunning and crafty.
Whispered rumors along the track revealed naught compared to what she and Indigo Rose had witnessed in a shared vision a few nights ago. Together they saw the lost crystal, regal in its broken beauty, found at last. Whether just wishful thinking or the power of twelve beginning to resurface--or perhaps too much Crystal Cordial-- they thought they watched the jagged amethyst edges smoothed and fit back into Aubergine's original necklace, the hammered silver necklace made whole, uniting all once again with a power great and terrible.
But the only one of them able to verify this possibility would be Lavender Mae, except nobody could find her now. Of the twelve it was she who knew her crystals and their properties. After the potluck broke up, Mae became morose, a tiny figure muttering among the crystals and dyestuffs in the back room or smoking in the kitchen garden with Indigo Rose. Unable to shed her deep funk, she fled north, where she was seen from time to time foraging among the freshets that pooled and repooled below the Crystal Caves forever searching for a crystal to replace the one lost, until finally she was never heard from again.
Stories of a scavenging river rat with fierce claws and a mane of flying hair shielding a pouch of rare crystals slung around its neck surfaced every year or so, but Esmeralde could not envision how this genderless creature who some claimed smoked the crazy weed that grew beneath the shadow of the Northland Glacier and remained burnished brown from the fierce Alpine sun could be their beloved Lavender Mae who had sweetly ground the crystal dyes into potluck powder years ago.
Esmeralde's eyes clouded. The possibility existed that there might not be an interloper at all. Too much rumor and unrest meant that there may yet be a traitor in their midst in addition to the dark one who fled south to the Lowlands twenty years ago. If Aubergine no longer had the good sense to chastise Smokey Jo for speaking out of turn in the yarn shop, or if Lilac Lilly could not keep the secrets of the potluck close as she had these twenty years past—except for that one time--Esmeralde would know soon enough, for she and Indigo would seek to reveal the infiltrator this day. Which was why all the notions and potions and unlabeled vials. Esmeralde used to know what was in each and every aqua bottle without a second glance, but now many of the blown glass vessels looked alike, and some appeared empty, their contents dried up from disuse or crumbled into dust.
The wide trestle bridge that crossed the Runne into Bainbridge loomed to the right and Esmeralde broke away from the midday crowd, turning toward the familiar track with relief. Across the bridge stood the Trading Post and Granary, where flat bed wagons backed up to the loading docks, the mules' heads held by boys too young to be conscripted into the Northland Guard.
Ever hopeful, Esmeralde scanned the riverside for her favorite band of fossikers but saw none, although it looked like a small group had made recent camp under the shelter of the bridge. She had formed a grudging truce with the rag tag group of boys eluding conscript after several had sought to rob her one evening as she traveled alone from Bainbridge to her cottage in the southern foothills. Boys able to elude the recruiting soldiers were no match for the contents of her Possibles Bag. In the end, they gave up all they had stolen and more to be free of the pox contained in one of her unstoppered bottles.
From the waterlogged treasures the boys had fossiked from the river beds, Esmeralde found somewhat she could use and made the thieving youths offers they could not refuse for first pick of future finds. Now the group of boys that roamed the river valley seeking treasure in the form of small crystals and relics released from the frozen depths of the glacier sought her out for the Northland silver she was willing to pay, plus the remedies she provided. Oftentimes Esmeralde would go out of her way to cross paths with this band of misfits, lead by a slight but fierce boy called Trader. As always, she looked for shards of cold fire crystal or any other sparkly fragment she could use for a sign hidden in their sodden finds but none of the fossikers had come to her this past fortnight and she feared they had been caught. Esmeralde had gone so far as to leave word at the Trading Post, risky for sometimes soldiers lay by on the wait for fossikers, eager to round them up in droves and transport them by caged wagon to the Border Town garrison, where they would be trained and fit for Lowland fodder.
The ground floor of the Trading Post was cool and dark after the heat of the midday sun. Esmeralde lingered near the cases of crystal jewelry and silver bangles before fingering the beaded pouches and bags. Nothing caught her eye as she glanced through the vials of snake oil and other so called medicinal herbs.
"What's in the satchel?" the storekeep asked, pointing to Esmeralde's heavy Possibles Bag. Esmeralde knew him well. He had a penchant for hard cider and mind numbing herbs to counteract the constant eyestrain he caused himself by going over ledgers in poor light. His name was Oswald.
"Nothing for sale, Ozzie," Esmeralde replied, with an eye toward the barroom and the cold glass of Cordial she felt certain awaited her there.
A handful of foreign coins lay on a tray behind the counter and Ozzie slid them toward her without comment. Obligingly, she rummaged through them until her fingers came across the likeness of the dark queen newly minted.
She pointed to the thinly stamped circlet of gold. "Where did this come from?"
"Dead Lowland soldier," Ozzie shrugged. "One of the body pickers brought it in."
Esmeralde eye him keenly. "A fossicker?"
"Yes, but not the one you seek," Ozzie said.
Esmeralde fingered the likeness of Tasman, already seeing the haze of thinly veiled magic. "How much for the coin?"
"What's in the bag?" Ozzie asked again, rubbing his tired eyes. "Headache powder? A vial of mind ease, perhaps?"
Grumbling, Esmeralde pulled out a roll of felt and unwrapped a pair of ground crystal spectacles linked by thin metal. "These will ease your eyes for ever."
"Never in my life had I hoped to cast weary orbs on a set of these." Ozzie lifted the glasses reverently and hung the hooks around his ears. He blinked at her through the twin lenses. "I can see all." he declared.
"I know," Esmeralde replied. "I've been saving them for a special trade."
"How much?" Ozzie asked.
"Not so fast," Esmeralde warned. "Such specatables are worth more than ten pieces of your Lowland gold." She fingered the coin. "But I'll take it." She turned toward the tavern.
Ozzie offered a sweep of his hand. "Be my guest."
"As always," Esmeralde replied. She flashed him a cunning smile before pushing open the double doors of the mead hall. "I'll let you know what else."
After a brief rest and a few drops of Crystal Cordial at the bar, Esmeralde left the Trading Post and turned off the track for the steep hike to Indigo Rose's cottage. Nothing had come of her inquiries. There was no news of the fossiker known as Trader.