The Fortune Teller's Daughter Read Online Free Page A

figures. I don’t suppose he told you where you
could find his carnival.”
    “His
carnival?” She blinked. “There’s a carnival?”
    “Nevermind.
Look, if you see Maurie, you never saw me, okay?”
    Her worry
lines disappeared behind a smile full of crooked teeth. “That man is a louse. I
wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire.”
    I decided
Elma Totenheim wasn’t so bad after all.
    She watched
me leave, noted the time and the direction I turned. I could feel her eyes on
me, nose pressed to the glass of our building’s front door, too afraid to come
in contact with the rest of the world and too afraid to let it pass by without
her.
    Besides,
before that morning when the dwarf woke me from my sleep, I’d spent the last
two years not all that different from Elma Totenheim. Static. Waiting.
     
     
     

4
    __________________
     
     
    In front of
my building I found a second flyer taped to a stop sign. I turned right, made
it half a block, and found the crescent moon and raven drawn messily in the
dirty back window of a taxi cab idling at the curb. I picked up my pace.
    A set of
stars drawn in chalk on the sidewalk at the corner pointed me to cross the
street and I followed the signs, even the weird ones that might not have been
anything except for the fact that I was looking for them. A moon sticker on a
mailbox. A set of ravens stenciled on the side of a building. By then I was
running from one to the next, touching them to make sure they were real and not
some hallucination as proof I’d finally gone completely crazy. My heart skipped
beats as I ran to catch up with the dwarf, chasing the symbols I knew had to be
for me.
    Breadcrumbs.
    When I
caught sight of a boy with a crescent moon stitched to his backpack heading for
the el station, I darted out in the middle of traffic without looking first. A
horn screamed when I skidded to a stop before a bus had a chance to smear me
irreparably across the intersection.
    There was no
time to scream. I held up my hands, as if that could protect me from the bus
rushing towards me, and froze.
    An arm
grabbed me around the waist and yanked me out from its inevitable end.
    “Girl,” the
man with the vice grip boomed above me, vibrating through me. “You’re going to
get hurt.”
    I twisted
around and stared into the midsection of the tallest man I had ever seen. His
size was monstrous, both tall and very wide. I stood dumb until my eyes finally
made their way into the clouds from where his face peered down at me. First the
smallest man I’d ever spoken to, and now the biggest. I rocked onto my heels.
    “Wow. You’re
a giant.”
    “A
colossus,” he corrected, a single eyebrow raised. Then he released me.
    When he
turned and started back into the crowd, I caught a tattoo of stars peeking out
at his wrist.
    Breadcrumbs.
    Unfortunately
his stride length made it impossible for my little legs to keep up. Naturally
everyone got out of his way as he clomped towards the el, but crashed back into
an impossible swarm behind him. By the time I made it onto the platform, he was
gone and so was his train.
    At least I
knew what line he was on, which meant I only had to search the south half of
the city. No problem.
    It was only
when I was crammed on a bench waiting for the next train did I stop to consider
how ridiculous I was behaving. It was unreasonable to believe that the dwarf
had left me a trail to follow. He hadn’t spray painted those ravens or arranged
for that taxi to be there right when I needed it.
    Weird things
like that didn’t happen. Usually.
    I remembered
being young, standing in front of a shop window staring at a mannequin wearing
a pink scarf and mittens I wanted very badly, but my mother had ignored my
begging. And as I stared at them, willing them to be mine, a girl passed behind
us wearing the very same pink scarf and mittens. I’d placed my hand on top of
her reflection and said, “ Oh, déjà vu .” I have no idea where I learned
the word, but I