As the stranger wandered between the threadbare stalls, he absently tossed nutshells in his hand, eventually tossing three with one hand. Her cousin Sarney, age six, ran out from behind his mother Genell’s skirts and clapped his hands.

  “Look, mummy!” said the boy, “He’s doing magic!”

  “Shush,” said his mother, and then to Shrugg, “We’ve apple and raisin pies, for a reasonable price.”

  He caught the shells, one after another. Turning to the boy, he lit up a friendly face. It put Blaise in mind of donning a mask, or taking one off, so abrupt was the change. “Do you think that’s magic, young one?” he asked. “There are greater magics than that, you know.”

  Genell nervously ushered the boy behind her skirts. Blaise’s interest surged again. Maybe he’s a wizard! Wizards had to be young sometime before they became old men with beards. Magic was a thing of wonder and suspicion. There wasn’t even a healer here, let alone any arcane spellcaster. Such things were for cities.

  The traveller stroked his nonexistent beard and then strode behind an empty table. He brushed off the seeds and chaff and laid three of the nutshells on it in a neat row, all face down. Then he stooped and picked up a pebble. Placing it under one of the shells, he gestured at them with his open hands. He did that funny blinking and began moving the shells about, waving his hands around them and mixing them up. He stopped and tilted up the shells, eventually revealing the tiny stone.

  “Can you guess where the pebble is?” he asked of no one in particular as he hid it and mixed them up again. Gramma Bickert walked up and indicated the center one with her walking stick. Shrugg tilted it up and showed no pebble. Then he turned over one of the others and the pebble was there.

  “Here, that’s not anything. Do that again and I’ll get it right,” said Gramma.

  The boy obliged, exaggerating his hand gestures and smiling encouragingly. “Here,” he said, placing the pebble in her hand, “you put it under a shell.” She eyed him and did so. Shrugg lifted the shell again, showing the pebble, and replaced it. Then he shuffled the shells, back and forth. “Where is the stone? Where could it be?” he asked, in that funny way he had of talking to no one, or to someone behind you. He stopped and presented the three shells. The woman pursed her lips and chose the left shell but there was nothing there.

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  “Step aside, there, Missus Bickert,” said a veteran with one arm. “I’ll show you how to watch the pebble.” He was no more able to follow it than she was. Gramma Bickert seemed to enjoy his lack of success more than she was upset about her own. The apple seller, Genell, laughed as she had a go but had no more luck than her son Sarney. Others came up and tried but no one could find it, not once. Eventually, a pouting Downie swept all three shells from the table in a fit of anger. “There is no stone!” he grumbled. Blaise laughed at him and he turned bright red again.

  Blaise continued to surreptitiously watch the stranger from behind an empty stall. Shrugg smiled and shook his head, then bent down to retrieve the shells and the pebble. He blinked, bent over again, and straightened up. “Here it is,” he said, carefully placing the little rock on the table. He began to toss the shells in the air again with his other hand. “I wager,” he said, continuing to juggle the shells, “that I could catch an apple and add it to these items I have in the air.”

  “You wager what?” demanded Gramma Bickert.

  “I wager an apple,” he said with a grin.

  “You don’t have an apple!”

  “But if I catch it and add it to my circle, I get to keep it,” he said.

  “We’ll see about that,” she said darkly and selected a bruised apple from her stand. She threw it at him, hard. Blaise snickered but Shrugg managed to thrust out his belly, what there was of it, and deflect the apple upwards. Then he caught it and did indeed incorporate it into his loop.

  “You give that back!” shouted the old lady. “You haven’t paid for that!”

  “In a moment,” answered Shrugg with a smile. A group of onlookers had gathered, now, including the boy Sarney and his mother. Shrugg snatched the apple and took a bite out of it, then tossed it back in the circle of shells. Blaise raised her eyebrows. Not bad. No shells or apples fell to the ground. A couple of people clapped and murmured approval.

  “Now you’ve gone and bit it and I can’t sell it anymore! You have to pay for that!”

  “You threw it at him, Missus,” said the veteran. “It’s his apple now!”

  “He didn’t pay!”

  As they argued, Shrugg continued to steal bites from the apple. Then he caught the shells in his hand, one by one, and presented her the apple core. “You may have it back, dear lady,” he said with a smile.

  “You’re a trickster and a charlatan! A cheater! A thief!”

  “I am a man of my word,” said Shrugg, “and now I am a man with a fuller belly.” The crowd was enjoying the spectacle but Gramma Bickert was boiling with anger. She raised her stick.

  “Why you miscreant! I’ll-” Just then, Shrugg opened his other hand and there, nestled in his palm, was a fledgling sparrow.

  “Chirrup,” said the bird.

  “Ooh!” said the crowd. “Ah!” Then a few at a time, they began to applaud until even the old lady joined in. There could be no better omen at a Feast of Feathering than a sparrow. The traveller was the hero of the hour. He got a potato and a slightly burnt pastie out of it too.