Penny Buttonwick's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

By midmorning, the mat was busy but uneven. Pixies came, pointed, argued, drifted off. Penny watched the edge of the brush for her recruits and their promised names. Instead, a small pixie burst through the ferns, wings dusted with grit. She carried no buttons, no leaf, no offering. She stopped at the mat's edge, breathing hard. "The northern cliffs path," she said. "It's gone. Stones came down across it this morning. Nothing's getting through." Penny's hand went still above her tray. The shell buttons. Her anchor rate. Cut off at the source. Penny followed the messenger up the slope to see for herself. Where the path had wound between the cliffs, a wall of jagged boulders now stood, piled higher than three pixies stacked. No gap. No handhold she trusted with a full pouch. She flew a slow loop and landed back at the rubble's base. Three shell buttons left in her tray. That was her supply now — every one she'd ever trade. Penny pressed her palm flat against cold stone. Then she turned, wings sharp, and started back toward the mat. The rate would have to change. And before the rumor reached Nettlevale, it would have to change from her mouth first. She did not stop at the mat. She passed it, gathered her tray, and flew low to a moss-covered cottage tucked just off the brush trail. The door gave under her shoulder. Inside was dim, dry, defensible — one window, one chimney, one way in. Penny set the three shell buttons on the sill where any visitor would see them first. She scratched a new number into a fresh leaf: one shell, six toggles. Doubled. Then she pinned it to the outer door and stood beneath it, waiting. The mat was abandoned. The cottage was her counter now. Scarcity was the trade. The red-haired messenger lingered by a mushroom near the door, watching. Penny called her over. "Go back through Nettlevale," she said. "Tell every pixie you pass: shells are six toggles now, and only here." The messenger nodded and lifted off. Penny watched her shrink between the trees. By dusk, the first buyer pushed through the ferns — not a recruit, not a name she needed, but a pixie with four toggles and a worried face. Penny did not lower the rate. She shook her head. The pixie left to find two more. The path was gone. The counter was set. The exchange had a door now, and Penny stood inside it.