Penny Buttonwick's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Dawn came gray and cold. Penny set out her trading mat and laid the shell button at its center. She was smoothing the cloth when a small shape dropped from the brush and landed light on the edge of the mat. A pixie. One of the merchant's, by the gold dust still clinging to her wings. "I want to join you," the pixie said, quick and low. "I'll trade for your side." Penny did not answer. She studied the dust, the angle of the wings, the way the pixie's eyes kept flicking back toward the oak. Penny climbed up to the small house perched high in the branches above her mat. From its rail she could see every path in. No second shape moved in the brush. No wings followed. She came back down and motioned the pixie toward the willow whose long green curtain hid a door in its trunk. Inside, away from any watching eye, she folded her arms and waited. The pixie reached into her satchel. She set a button on the floor between them — a seashell shape, pale and curved, ringed in tiny diamonds that caught even the dim light. "She keeps this hidden," the pixie whispered. "If she finds it gone, she'll know who took it. I can't go back." Penny picked up the button. She turned it once, twice. The weight was real. The fear in the pixie's voice was real. But a clever merchant could spend one button to plant one spy. Penny closed her hand around the shell. "You'll stay here until the exchange opens," she said. "You don't leave this trunk. You don't send word. If you're true, you'll have a place by my mat by midday." The pixie nodded fast and sat. Penny shut the willow door behind her and slid the latch. She had a hostage now, or a gift — she did not yet know which. But the merchant was short one pixie and one rare button, and the exchange would open with both in Penny's hand.