This story is an unfin­ished work-in-progress. It will be updated here as it is written.

Part I. The Let­ter to Friends and Family

Serin sighed, and absent-mindedly flicked another few twigs onto the fire that smoul­dered away in front of her. After a few moments they caught the flame and began to burn. As she stared into the flame, seek­ing enlight­en­ment or per­haps reti­nal dam­age, her mother’s right hand appeared over her shoul­der and dan­gled a steam­ing cup of cof­fee between her and the fire.

“Come on,” came her mother’s voice from behind her. “Drink up, and tell me what happened.”

Serin’s mother, Anja, pos­i­tively dwarfed her daugh­ter as she moved around to sit next to her on the bench before the fire. While the two women shared many of their fea­tures — long auburn hair, olive-tanned skin and eccen­tric cloth­ing — a life­time of cook­ing and eat­ing good food had left Anja with what would be described as a ‘weight prob­lem’ if she were ever to con­sider it a prob­lem. Serin, by con­trast, had spent more than half of her thirty-two years as a for­tune teller. As she was told by her mother when she was young, for­tune tellers had to be beau­ti­ful, and dis­tant, and of course thin. “Fat ‘n’ middle-aged jus’ don’t do for a lady o’ fate,” Anja used to say. “Least­ways, not out­side the Carribbean.”

So it was that while her mother became fat and middle-aged, Serin stayed thin — mostly — and beau­ti­ful — depend­ing on one’s taste — and dis­tant. Or at least, she tried to remain distant.

“Dis­tance, that’s the prob­lem,” Serin con­fessed. “They all expect me not to care, but I can’t help it.”

“I know, dear, I know,” her mother replied. “I’m sure you’d rather be mak­ing them a cup of cof­fee and hav­ing a chat, really, but there you go.”

“Yeah. I guess there ain’t much money in that, though, is there?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. Have you ever heard of Guid­ance Coun­sel­lors?” Anya said the words slowly and care­fully, seem­ingly for her sake rather than Serin’s.

“Hah!” exclaimed Serin. “Not really our style, is it?”

“No, no, that’s quite true.”

There was a long pause while both women sipped their coffee.

“So,” Anya asked at last. “What’s got you ruf­fled today?”

“Well…” There was another preg­nant pause. “There was this woman and her hus­band, came in for a read­ing. I could tell, just by look­ing at ‘em — you know the way it is — that they was in trou­ble. It’s a shame, they were such nice peo­ple deep down. But one thing had led to another, and another, and now their mar­riage is up cer­tain creeks and they’ve not a pad­dle between ‘em.

“Prob­lem is, with just a few things said at the right times, they could have been on the way to fix­ing. I think I might even have been able to help them on their way, too. But… That ain’t my job. I just told ‘em what the cards said, and they weren’t say­ing good things. It’s all they wanted, and all they got. It just… sad­dens me to think how much bet­ter things could’a been if I’d been a friend not some weirdo mys­tic in a li’l tent.’

“There, there,” Anya said as she pat­ted heav­ily her daughter’s shoul­der. “I under­stand. But you can’t be friends with every­body, right? Your friends are us lot. She waved her hand at the rest of the camp. ?Every­one else is just strangers or cus­tomers. Nobody can make friends with the whole world, dear.”

“‘S’pose you’re right,” Serin said, star­ing down at the cof­fee cup on her lap. “That don’t make me feel any bet­ter about going to the city on my own, though.”

“Sorry,” her mother replied, stand­ing up and kiss­ing the top of her head. “Come on now, off to bed with you. Gotta’ be up early tomor­row!” With that, she dis­ap­peared off to her own car­a­van leav­ing Serin alone by the fireside.

For a few min­utes Serin sat in silence, lis­ten­ing to the crack­ling of the flames and the snores of those who were tak­ing their well-earned rest. For a moment, the scene was illu­mi­nated by the faint light of the moon, before as sud­denly as it had arrived it dis­ap­peared again behind the next bank of cloud.

Her body set­tled and her mind peace­ful, she with­drew from her bag her other set of tarot cards — the ones cus­tomers never got to see, the cards that were only for her. She shuf­fled them absent-mindedly for a while, then began to pick at ran­dom from the deck.

“The Fool,” she said, tak­ing her first card. “Inno­cence, naivete, the begin­ning of a jour­ney. Figures.”

“Four of Swords. Relax­ation, respite, yet with a sense of bod­ing. The calm before the storm. Yep.”

“Stop,” came a voice from behind her as her fin­gers reached for the third and final card. Kyren’s voice. Serin smiled as the man hugged her from behind, and moved her hand sub­tly across to a dif­fer­ent card. “Try that one instead,” he said. Then, almost before she had a chance to appre­ci­ate being so close to him, he was gone again, head­ing back across the camp as silently as he’d come.

Still smil­ing, she drew the card that he’d cho­sen for her.

“The Magi­cian. Power, poten­tial, the abil­ity to achieve your desires.”

Serin grinned, and whis­pered a ‘thank you’ into the night air, just far the chance that Kyren might hear it.

Slowly pack­ing away the cards, she was half tempted to turn over the card that she was going to pick last, but after a moment’s thought decided against it. Some things were bet­ter not known.

Early the fol­low­ing morn­ing, the light dawned slowly across the gypsy camp. But it dawned across one car­a­van and two horses fewer than it had set upon the night before, as by that time Serin had long since gone, rid­ing east into the ris­ing sun.

Besides the patch of tram­pled and cropped grass where her horses had stood, Serin left only two things behind — two neatly folded let­ters, one pinned to the door of her par­ents’ car­a­van and one pinned to Kyren’s. Both were read by those intended, and nei­ther was spo­ken of again.

Part II. The Let­ter to the Brother and Sister

That was the surest sign that she was approach­ing a big city, Serin reflected. Not the ever-increasing num­ber of houses or the ever-thickening air, although those were def­i­nite clues. No, the really telling thing was the num­ber of passers-by who reacted as if they’d never seen a proper car­a­van before, or horses for that mat­ter. Still, it was bet­ter than being the mod­ern kind of gypsy — where they faced fear and hatred from the loa­cls, all she ever had was sus­pi­cion and bemusement.

As dusk fell, she pulled up into a bar­ren patch of land with barely enough grass to keep the horses happy.

“Still,” Serin mut­tered to her­self as she clam­bered up onto the roof to retrieve a bale of hay for them. “Might be the best I’ll get for a while.”

Hay in tow, Serin started to climb back down again, until a voice piped up from behind her that nearly made her fall off.

“‘Scuse me,” the voiced asked con­fi­dently, “are you a witch?”

Serin turned awk­wardly on the lad­der, still hang­ing onto the rail at the top of the car­a­van. Stand­ing by the horses was a young girl, seven years old at most, her mucky hands twist­ing her check­ered blue dress out of shape. Behind her right leg the face of a younger boy peered up at her, his atti­tude a com­plete con­trast to the girl’s defi­ant stance.

Serin let go of the rail and dropped to the ground.

“Mummy says you mus’ be a witch so we have to stay inside, but I snuck out to see if you was or not. You’re not an old crone with a big black hat, so I don’t think you are, but mummy said ‘the whores of the Devil have many dis­guises’ or some­thing like that an’ I pre­tended to understan’.”

“A witch?” Serin chuck­led. “Heav­ens no, I’m just a lady with strange ideas!”

“Oh,” said the girl, look­ing thought­ful for a few sec­onds, until she at last decided that the gypsy woman’s answer had been sat­is­fac­tory and nodded.

“Well, now that we’ve estab­lished that I’m not going to poi­son you or shut you in the oven, what would you each say to a gin­ger­bread man?”

At this, the lit­tle boy piped up as the voice of parental reason.

“Mummy said not to take sweets from strangers.”

“Well then, dear, my name is Serin. See, I’m not a stranger any­more! Now, what’s your names?”

“My name’s Eliz­a­beth Turner,” announced the girl as she stood up straight and tried to look respectable.

The boy shrank back fur­ther behind the girl’s dress. She looked down at him.

“Come on, Lawrence!” she whis­pered just loud enough for the entire field to hear. The boy shook his head, and Eliz­a­beth sighed melodramatically.

“This is my baby brother Lawrence,” she announced.

“Now then, since we’re all intro­duced,” Serin replied, “I’ll go and get the sweets.”

Less than a minute later she was back out­side, care­fully unwrap­ping a cloth bag and hand­ing its con­tents to the two chil­dren. In the time in which Serin was inside the car­a­van, Lawrence had finally come to the con­clu­sion — doubt­less with Elizabeth’s ‘assis­tance’ — that Serin was not a threat, and he ate his gin­ger­bread man with almost as much vigour as did his sister.

Barely had another minute passed when a bell rang out from one of the houses along the road. A look of panic crossed Elizabeth’s face. She wolfed down the remain­der of the bis­cuit, wiped the crumbs from her hands onto her dress, and grabbed her brother’s arm.

“Wait for us!” Eliz­a­beth called out as she half ran with and half dragged Lawrence home. “We’ll be back after dinner!”

Serin smiled and dis­ap­peared inside her caravan.

Two hours later, the two had still not returned.

Ah well, Serin thought, and sup­posed that their mother must have detained them with more tales of witches and the Devil. She sighed, and retrieved the Tarot deck with which she did read­ings for customers.

Six of Pen­ta­cles. King of Wands. The Magician.

Hmm.

Intrigued, she drew more and more cards for more detail on the reading.

By the time her tiny table was all but cov­ered and barely two dozen cards remained in her hand, she seemed sat­is­fied. Grab­bing a pen and paper, she pushed the cards aside and began alter­nately to wite and to idly chew the end of the pen.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Eliz­a­beth and Lawrence rushed to the field as soon as they were allowed to leave for school.

They found no car­a­van, no horses and no Serin. Instead, lying in the thin grass where the car­a­van had stood, was a cloth bag con­tain­ing a half dozen gin­ger­bread men and, attached to the top, a let­ter addressed to them both.

Eliz­a­beth read it and nod­ded sagely. As usual, she pre­tended to under­stand it.

When she got home from school, it was pressed between the pages of her diary, which in time was con­signed to a box in the attic.

For four­teen years it was for­got­ten about, until one day she was sud­denly reminded of it by a lec­turer of hers at the time, a cer­tain Pro­fes­sor McThag­gin. A mere few weeks later, Eliz­a­beth showed the let­ter to the pro­fes­sor — and both their lives changed for­ever in a moment.

But that is, of course, another story.

Part VIII. The Let­ter Home

The coach­man vaulted down from his perch, leav­ing the horses calmly snort­ing behind him. Instantly he had an audience.

An old woman elbowed her way to the front with sur­pris­ing ease. For a moment she and the coach­man looked at each other con­fused, before he at last matched her face with Serin’s descrip­tion of her mother.

“Anja?”

“That’d be me.”

“Then this would all be for you,” he said, ges­tur­ing to the car­a­van. “As would these.”

So say­ing, he handed her the heavy box and the let­ter that Serin had given him along with her instructions.

The box, Anja passed to the burly man stand­ing beside her, who drew con­sid­er­able atten­tion when he opened it to reveal more money than those present had ever seen. Their smiles grew even wider when they saw the note that said ‘For Everyone’.

For a crowd so enrap­tured, it was per­haps sur­pris­ing that the tiny sound of paper being torn attracted their atten­tion instantly back to Anja again.

She opened the let­ter from her daugh­ter, cleared her throat, and began to read.

And this is what she said.

“Dear­est Mother, Father, Kyren and all of you my friends, greet­ings from the City.

“A full year has passed since I left before dawn on that misty Spring morn­ing. It feels so long ago — life here is much more quickly-paced than our docile life on the road. It almost seems that some here are sim­ply too busy to sleep!

“Of course, they make the best cus­tomers. Even in the big city, it seems, peo­ple have the same prob­lems, the same wor­ries and the same super­sti­tions that they do in the country.

“These days I’m a reg­u­lar fix­ture of the mar­ket here. One of the mar­kets, any­way — there are so many in Lon­don, and most run every day of the year!

“Just a month ago I was named in a mag­a­zine for our sort (they have mag­a­zines for every­thing here!) as the most accu­rate fortune-teller Lon­don has seen in recent years. Such an hon­our, and busi­ness has more than dou­bled since! It’s keep­ing me busy indeed, so much so that I barely have time for other commitments.

“Speak­ing of such, do you recall that man from the city who trav­elled with us for a while, a few years back? It turns out that he’s still around and hav­ing fun dab­bling in any­thing and every­thing he can. In fact, he and I are being paid to go hunt­ing ghosts in some old manor house soon!

“Life becomes more and more like a sto­ry­book with each and every pass­ing day!

“That’s why, for now at least, I’m going to keep turn­ing the pages. I’m stay­ing in the city for a while, run­ning free through the mul­ti­tudes who crowd this land of opportunity.

“Please take care of the horses, look for­ward to the next let­ter and the next box of money, and wait for me.

“I’ll be back to see you all again some day.

“Thank you, all of you, for the per­son I’ve become and the chance that I’ve been given.

“Now the future calls, and I must go.

“My bless­ing upon all of you.

“Eter­nally by your side,

“Serin.”

Anja sighed, and smiled, and as rapidly as if she’d com­manded it tears were wiped from eyes, and life returned to nor­mal. Her audi­ence shuf­fled off to resume their jobs — all except Kyren. As Anja walked past him to unhitch the horses, she gave him a know­ing pat on the shoulder.

“Now then young man, just so’s you realise, you don’t need ta’ be leavin’ us fancy let­ters. We know.”

Kyren just smiled, and thought.

And, the fol­low­ing morn­ing, the camp was short of a car­a­van once more.