The Crystal Reader
Sammy
The reader was small and round, with a pointed snout and bright black eyes. I had never seen her species, but she carried the still quality of someone listening to things other people couldn’t hear. She appeared, in the best possible way, like a hedgehog who had taken up a spiritual practice.
“Traveler,” she said, when I stopped at her table. Her gaze moved to Guruk, then Berry, then back to me. “You are looking for something.”
“Yes.” I didn’t bother denying it since I’d asked half the market by now.
“Humans. They may have come through the veil recently.” I described them in the order they came to me: Mako first, then Abby, then Tia, then Robin, then Valeria.
I had described them so many times at so many stalls that the words came without thinking.
Their hair, height, the tiny details that a stranger might notice.
“And one more,” I added. “Her name is Raine. Blonde, blue eyes, she has an expression like she’s already decided she’s right about everything and is waiting for you to catch up. ”
The crystal reader’s whiskers shifted. “I have not seen them,” she said, her black eyes widening from beads to saucers. “But I can tell you what I feel.”
I glanced at Guruk. He raised his brows as if to say, your call.
“Okay,” I said.
She reached across the table and touched one finger to the back of my hand.
Her fingertip had a sandpaper texture. The contact lasted perhaps three seconds, but it sent a jolt through me.
A tiny spark, like the mildest electric current.
Then she withdrew, folded her small hands together, and went quiet for a moment that stretched longer than was entirely comfortable.
“One of yours,” she said finally, “is sleeping behind running water.” Her widened saucer-eyes were steady on mine. “Neither lost nor found. Held, but not harmed.” A pause. “The holding was not her choice. But she is not afraid. She does not have it in her to be afraid for long.”
The last part landed like a blow to my gut. I knew who that described.
“The water,” I gulped, barely breathing, “Running water. Like a…like a falls?”
The reader tilted her head. “I cannot say more than I see.”
My hand tightened on my notebook. The falls. The shining falls. Amethyst light. Sleeping behind running water, neither lost nor found.
“Thank you,” I managed with a squeak.
She waved me off with one small paw and turned to the next customer.
I stood at the edge of her stall for a moment, not quite ready to step back into the flow of the market. Guruk’s hand came to the small of my back.
“I know,” I muttered before he could speak.
His palm rubbed in small, comforting circles. “I wasn't going to say anything yet.”
“You were thinking it very loudly.”
His hand pressed slightly warmer. “The falls,” he said quietly. “We are going the right way.”
“Yeah.” I exhaled. “Yeah, we are.”
I reached for my notebook and wrote every word the reader had said, exact and verbatim, before any of it could soften in my memory. Neither lost nor found. Held, but not harmed. Not her choice. Not afraid for long.
“That's Raine.” The conviction of my words echoed in the air like the falling of stones. I had no doubts. “That has to be Raine.”
Guruk
Sammy wrote for a long while, lost in her thoughts at the crystal reader’s revelation. I stood guard, letting her ease her mind with her notebook, when I spotted him.
At the far edge of the market, near the western road, far from the village, far from any route his duties would take him, out of uniform and moving with purposefulness…the deputy.
I did not move. Did not change my posture or the direction of my gaze, letting my eyes track without my head turning.
He had not seen me, or if he had, he gave no sign of it.
He was moving between two stalls, pausing briefly at each, his attention directed east. Toward us, though not at us specifically.
No, toward the direction we had come from.
Sammy said something beside me. I answered, although I could not have said what I told her, and kept the deputy in my peripheral vision.
He stopped at the edge of a stall selling maps and travel goods, spoke briefly with the proprietor, and accepted something small that disappeared into his vest. Then he turned and walked without hurrying back toward the western road.
Back toward the village.
I watched until he was out of sight. My mind was already moving, sorting, filing, examining the shape of it.
The deputy had no business at this market.
His territory was the village and its immediate surrounds.
He was not a trader, not a traveler, not someone with family in the valley settlements. There was no reason for him to be here.
No sanctioned reason.
I thought about the status message I had sent last night. Our direction. Our heading. Our intended next stop.
The crossroads market.
Berry’s tail flicked against my neck. Not the single press of pay attention. Two quick taps, lighter. They had seen him too.
I reached up and stroked between their ears once, our wordless communication. I turned back to Sammy.
She was still writing, head bent, her pen scraping across the page. The worry and the hope competing in the lines of her face, present even now. She glanced up when she felt my gaze and offered me a small, tired, yet determined smile.
My little human. My mate. Nothing was going to touch her.
“Are you ready to keep going?” I asked.
“Almost.” She finished a line and looked up fully. “Can we eat something proper first? I think we’ve earned it.”
“An excellent idea, little one,” I said with a grin, hiding my concerns behind a calm smile. “I have just the place in mind.”
I guided her deeper into the market, away from the western road, keeping her in the center of the crowd where we were surrounded…invisible with the throng of creatures. She did not notice the route I chose. She was already asking me the name of something hanging from the neighboring stall.
I answered her and watched the crowd, saying nothing about what I had seen.
Not yet. Not here, in the open, where sounds carried.
She didn’t need more burdens, especially not on a hungry stomach. Tonight, around the fire, I would decide what to tell her and how.
Sammy
Guruk knew a food stall at the center of the market run by a pair of fae sisters who sold something they called ember bread—flat rounds cooked directly on hot stones, served with a thick herb paste that tasted of garlic and something I had no Earthly comparison for.
We sat on a low bench at the stall’s edge and ate without speaking for several minutes, which was, I had learned, one of the highest forms of compliment the food deserved.
“This,” I said through a mouthful of the hearty bread, “is going in the notebook.”
Guruk wiped a crumb from the corner of my mouth. “I thought the notebook was for quest information.”
“The notebook is for everything important.” I swiped at his thumb with my tongue. He laughed.
I fished for my notebook and wrote: Ember bread. Center market, fae sisters’ stall. Herb paste — investigate ingredient. Ten out of ten, would recommend to all party members, would consider restructuring entire journey around obtaining more.
Guruk watched me write with the expression he sometimes got when I did something he found entirely Sammy and entirely wonderful and didn’t have words for. I was getting better at reading it.
“What?” I smirked at him, head tilted to the side to study him.
“Nothing.” He broke off another piece of bread and handed it to me. “You missed something.”
“Did I?”
He reached into the canvas bag and produced a small object, setting it on the bench between us. It was about the size of a quarter, a carved token in dark wood, smooth and round, with a many-sided shape pressed into its face.
A die. An eight-sided die.
I picked it up. The carving was precise and clean, the facets even. Someone had taken real time with it.
“The stall two rows back,” Guruk said, watching me turn it over in my fingers. “The carver said he has been making them for years. No one here plays the games they are meant for, so they have mostly sold as curiosities.” He paused. “I thought you might like one. Something from the road.”
I closed my fingers around it.
A gaming token. In Havenlore. Sitting warm and solid in my palm, eight-sided and perfectly made, found in a crossroads market by an orc who had never played a game in his life and had gone back two rows to buy it for me while I was writing in my notebook.
I stared at him. Heat blooming in my chest as love filled me. Love for my orc.
“Guruk,” I said, choking back tears.
“Yes?”
I didn’t have the words. I kissed him instead — a quick press of my mouth to his cheek, as we were in the middle of a market and Berry was observing us from Guruk’s shoulder.
With their head tilted at the precise angle, it meant they were paying attention, and while I loved the little florin, I didn’t quite want an audience when loving on my orc.
Guruk made a low sound in his throat, pleased and slightly startled. I leaned into his arm and looked down at the token in my hand.
An eight-sided die. Eight possible outcomes. Eight directions the game could go from any given moment.
“Thank you,” I said for far more than the token, and knowing he knew it.
“Always,” he said. Meaning more than the word, and knowing I knew it.
The market thinned as the afternoon wore on.
We made one last circuit of the northern stalls.
Nothing new, no further sightings, and then we joined the throng of travelers heading east out of the square toward the highland road.
The path narrowed back into the trees, and the noise of the market fell behind us by degrees until it was just birdsong again, our footsteps, and the overflow of the spring somewhere far behind.
I turned the token over in my fingers as I walked. Eight sides. Smooth and warm from my hand.
Neither lost nor found. Held but not harmed. Not afraid for long.
“Raine is going to be so annoyed when we find her.” I giggled, a little delirious at the thought of finally finding one of my friends, even my frenemy.
Guruk glanced at me.
“That’s what she does, you know?” I shrugged, not sure how to explain Raine, but I trying anyway. “When she’s scared she gets annoyed. She always plays a warrior character, so I guess it’s her thing.” I smiled at the sky. “She’s going to be so mad, and I cannot wait to see her explode.”
Guruk stroked his chin in thought. “She sounds formidable.”
“She’s the most stubborn person I have ever met in any world.” I closed my fingers around the token. “ So, I know she’ll be fine. She has to be fine. The reader said she’s not afraid.”
“She doesn’t have it in her to fear for long,” Guruk agreed, solemn as a vow.
“Exactly.” I tucked the token into my pocket, close and safe. “She’s okay. I know it.”
Berry hummed their agreement between us. And as the afternoon wore thin, we walked on to whatever awaited beyond.