44. Then Tinkers
THEN: TINKERS
Not all of our days with Magda were so solemn. At the dawn of our first summer with her, she made us mount Dusty next to her up on Apple Dumpling, and we rode to the outskirts of the next settlement, Carver. There she introduced us to the tinkers.
“A tinker is a person who travels for a living and sells and trades in metals,” she explained as their wagons and colorful tents came into view spread out in a vast field.
“They can fix things too. They used to be invited in Sheridan to mend people’s ironworks, but your Lord Torm declared all such things be brought to the smithy and to leave the tinkers out of it. ”
“Because they are godless and hail from Eccleston?” asked Rowena.
“Some do. That’s how tinkers started, but now they hail from all over.
And they live freely from any country. Some have no homes, so everywhere is home.
They trade in everything. There is music and dance.
There is a tattooist. There are wagons full of secondhand goods for trade.
There are wagons full of frivolous things like jewelry.
There are even books to be bought.” She directed the last part to me, knowing I was already reading her books in my free time.
We tied our horses up at a hitching post nearly already too crowded with other animals and then walked into the campground.
The field was packed with both tinkers and citizens of Carver.
The tinkers could be distinguished from the Carver people as many of them had inked patterns on their arms and necks.
I was fascinated in particular by this. A man with a fiddle was playing as if he could never tire of it, enthusiastic and joyful melodies floating over the crowd.
The scents astounded us. The half-putrid, half-sweet scent of lightleaf was everywhere, along with oils for sale that were meant for no reason other than to make a person smell good.
Everywhere we went, Magda was recognized and greeted.
From a satchel she had slung across her back, she traded tins of mother’s moss paste for various goods.
After a friendly but combative round of bartering with a tinker who sold metal goods like combs, nail files, and the like, she shooed us away.
“He thinks you’re my kin and I have to buy for you.
He’s trying to prey on my alleged grandmotherly nature. Begone.”
Enraptured, we drifted from tent to wagon to tent, our attention captured by one thing and then another and another.
We walked past a wagon where an attractive young man, bare chested and covered in tattoos, was bending over a table on which another young man was laid out, also bare chested.
There were flowers drawn with dark paint down the body of the lying man.
Along the lines of the flowers, the standing man was piercing a needle dripping with ink, the inkwell resting next to the lying man’s head.
I was transfixed by both their tattoos and their bodies.
And I found myself pining for Thane. I tried to put him out of my mind as much as I could, but these two men, not boys but still young, had the same lean figure Thane would have as he grew.
Wistful, I looked at them until Rowena pinched me that Magda had already called twice for us.