Shelley Thomas: The Seven Tales of Trinket

Her words froze my blood. I’d never spoken the words to anyone, but it was my secret dream to become a storyteller myself someday, though I feared I’d never be good enough. True, I told stories to Thomas as we walked, but that was just to pass the time. Wasn’t it?

The idea of becoming a bard galloped around in my head for a moment like a wild horse I was trying to coax back into its pen. If you have a dream and you hold it close to your heart, then you always get to have it. But if you let it out into the world then you discover, one way or another, if it will come true or not.

“Perhaps your father was the storyteller that came long ago. The women all said he was comely. I only remember that he sang the most beautiful lullaby,” Feather said, interrupting my thoughts. She hummed a bit of a tune that stirred the hairs on my arms. “I loved that song, for I heard him practice it in the forest every morning as I woke. But he would not sing it for me. He said he would sing other lullabies if I had trouble sleeping, but he would sing this song for only one girl. Only one girl. ” She let the words hang in the air between us. “My own father was angry, of course. Told him that if he would not sing the song for me, the Gypsy King’s daughter, he would be banished from the camp. Or perhaps my father threatened to slit his throat. I do not remember. The bard packed up and left the next day.”

“The lullaby. Do you remember it?” My voice shook slightly.

“I do not remember the words—only the tune. I so loved the tune.”

Feather hummed again. Alongside her soft, low voice, I heard another. Deeper, but smooth like butter and honey on a slice of warm bread. A voice from long, long ago.

But Feather did not hear this voice, since it traveled from somewhere deep in my heart and sang in only my own head.

“’Twas something about baubles, pearls, and small night birds,” she said.

Yes, I remembered the birds.

Feather tilted her head to the side, watching me.

“You look odd, Trinket. Have you heard this lullaby before?”

For the first time in longer than I could remember, no words would come.

“Perhaps it wasn’t about pearls after all. ’Tis possible it was about domineering fathers with fat eyebrows. You are not laughing, Trinket.”

I knew the lullaby. Not the words, precisely. But my heart knew the tune.

It was his lullaby.

He had been here.

I rose and began to walk. My stomach fluttered, and my palms started to sweat just a little. I had found the first footprint my father had left behind. James the Bard really had been here.

And I was not sure how I felt about it.

Feather caught up to me, clasping my hand again within her own, and swung me as if to dance. “If only I could find a man to sing to me like that…”

“Feather, you are far too young to be thinking of men singing to you!” I scolded lightly, rubbing the goose bumps off my arms, hoping she would tell me more about the storyteller of long ago, yet fearful at the same time.

“Trinket, are you not aware that I will be sixteen soon? For some, that is marrying age.” A breeze blew Feather’s curls around her shoulders as she looked past the wagons and the trees, into the starlit night. “Do you not think of marriage, Trinket? You will be pretty someday, you know. If you wore your hair loose and brushed it until it shone instead of braiding it, it would be quite lovely. So many shades of gold and brown. Mayhap someday a young man will see you and fall in love.”

“Ha!” I snorted. “We were not speaking of my marriage. We were speaking of yours.” I was glad Thomas was not awake to witness this conversation. The teasing would be endless.

“My father will make the match—sell me, more likely, to whoever offers the most. Of course, I have a plan for dealing with it…” Feather’s voice trailed off.

“Did you foresee something?” I smiled.

“Not yet, but I will.”

The next day and the day after that, Feather was again dragged away from chores once a line formed at the dark silk tent. “Your value grows steadily, daughter,” her father mumbled to her as his pockets jingled with coins.

Thomas and I had decided to stay only for the rest of the week, to store up as much food as we could before we ventured off. So, for the third day in a row, I drew the water from the stream alone and hauled the buckets back to the silver-haired woman. It was not the worst chore, indeed, and everyone did a job or two to pitch in. But as I rubbed my aching arms and raced over to Thomas, I could see he was becoming restless working among the chickens. “It’s too feathery here,” he complained.

“I know exactly what you mean,” I muttered as we split a boiled egg for lunch and stuffed the extra bread in our packs.

“Drawing the water doesn’t involve birds,” Thomas said, obviously confused. I reminded myself that I hadn’t chosen Thomas the Pig Boy to accompany me for his talent at finding hidden meanings in cryptic phrases.

Thomas smacked himself on the head with his open palm.

“Oh, I get it. You are talking about her .”

I shushed him.

However, my feeling that our stay had become too feathery remained. Each night, Feather told me of the futures she had made up and the bits of true visions that she had seen and did not understand. Sometimes we tried to piece things together and puzzle out what the odd images foretold. Most of it just made my head spin. Did the vision of the bird flying over the old man’s head mean a journey was to come? Or death was near? Or was it just a bird?

And there was the fact that when she was not in her silken tent, Feather watched me like a hawk watches a mouse. She was always nearby, and she had the uncanny ability to simply pop up whenever I turned around. When I asked her, nicely I hoped, why she was always so close to me, she replied, “Why, Trinket, can you not see that there are few girls our age around the camp? It gets so tiresome to talk with old women or little boys all the time.”

When I told her there were plenty of young girls to talk to, and that I was not her age at all, being only almost twelve myself, she replied, “But you, Trinket, are the only one who doesn’t want something from me.”

Was it true? Were Thomas and I the only ones in the Gypsy camp who did not want our fortunes told by Feather?

I had thought about it, of course. One does not enter into a friendship with a fortuneteller and not consider it.

And yet I could not bring myself to ask her.

Because perhaps, I did not want to know. What if she predicted horrible things for my future?

What if she told me I would never find my father?

’Twould have been better if Thomas and I had left earlier, for the day of our departure dawned deep red.

“Have a care about yourself today,” Feather said, pointing to the crimson sky. “Not a good omen.” She emptied her bucket into the barrel, then reached for mine. This would be the last time I performed this task for the Gypsies.

“You read signs as well?”

“It does not take a seer to read the signs of nature. Three birds crossing the skies above you mean good fortune. A halo around the moon means a change in the weather. Did your parents not teach you such things?”

I shook my head. “What does the red sky mean?”

“Within a week’s time: Battle. Violence. Death. Take your pick.”

“Can she really see the future, Trinket?” Thomas asked. We were at our little campsite nestled against the old tree near the outskirts of the Gypsies’ clearing. As I rolled up my blanket, he packed his satchel with all his earthly possessions: a seashell from his uncle who sailed, a soft cloth for cleaning, a copper or two, several boiled eggs, and bread loaves for the trip. He handed me the old map, which I placed in my own bag.