The Teller of Small Fortunes

A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna. Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences… Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and--of course--a slightly magical cat. Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in--and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.

Autorentext

Julie Leong is a twenty-nine-year-old Chinese-Malaysian-American fantasy author. She grew up in Old Bridge, New Jersey, and lived in Beijing, China, for several years as a teenager. Her experiences of feeling too Asian for suburban America, and too American for China color her stories of identity and belonging. She studied economics and political science at Yale and now works at a startup, but she has always nurtured a deep love for sci-fi/fantasy beneath her corporate exterior. Julie lives in San Francisco, California, with her husband and their spoiled rescue pup, Kaya. When she’s not writing, she enjoys making unnecessary spreadsheets and flambéing things.

Klappentext

USA TODAY BESTSELLER • A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this cozy fantasy debut, hailed as “perfection…a beautiful treasure of a book that will warm your heart and heal your soul.”—Sarah Beth Durst, Author of The Spellshop

“The warmest, loveliest book I’ve read in ages.”—Sangu Mandanna, author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences…

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a "knead" for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.

Tao starts down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past close in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.

Leseprobe
ONE

On the day the Teller of Small Fortunes came to Necker, the village was in an uproar because the candlemaker's would-be apprentice had lost all the goats.

Laohu plodded to a stop in the town square and Tao patted his rump. It had been a long day's travel for them, through forest and field. The mule stamped his hooves and snorted, relieved to be done with it, his breath rising in steamy tendrils through the early-evening chill. It was Tao's first time coming through Necker. She'd made good speed in anticipation of a hot meal and soft bed when they arrived, but the scene around her wagon gave her doubt she'd find much welcome at the moment. She sighed.

Wrapping the reins loosely over a wagon shaft, Tao swung gracefully to the ground, looking around at the activity. They'd come to a stop just in front of a tavern-a handsome one, two full stories and larger than a village like Necker rightly needed.

But where there should have been a crowd of well-fed villagers drinking ale, there was instead a strange assembly line, with rather a lot of yelling and chaotic banging of metal.

"One bucket o' grain and a bell to each! Hurry up now, take a bucket, there's a good lad."

"And who's to pay for all this grain, I'd like to know!"

"Oh, stuff it, Mallack, we can sort payment later; the headman'll pay you fair for the grain and you know that's true."

"Yes, well, I'd like to be sure of the price afore all the grain is spilled through the woods halfway to the sea and none to account for it! There ought to be a premium for interrupting a man's supper and raiding his stores without so much as a-"

"You scoundrel! If we don't find them, Necker'll be a ruin and your mill with it, for who'll buy your grain when there's no goats to feed and no coin to pay with?"

A teenage boy, gangly and flop-haired, sat on a stump some distance away, watching the commotion with a desolate expression. As he seemed to be the only one not rushing about, Tao chose to approach him first.

"Hello," she said, walking up to him. "Can you tell me what's happened, please?"

The boy startled out of his misery to goggle at her. "You're Shinn!"

"I am," said Tao patiently. "Can you tell me what's happened here?"

"But you speak Eshteran!" said the boy. He squinted up at Tao with suspicion, as if expecting her foreign features-dark, hooded eyes; tawny skin; and black hair twisted up into a loose bun-to change before his eyes and better suit her speech.

Tao sighed internally and tried a different tack. She flourished her cloak with one hand and bowed.

"Greetings, young sir, from this humble traveler. I am a teller of fortunes from the faraway empire of Shinara, and have come to these lands to seek wisdom and learning."

". . . in Necker?" said the boy, doubtful.

"Wisdom can be found in all places," said Tao. She pressed her hands together with what she hoped was solemnity. "Wheresoever river inscribes rock with truth, and men fan flames of creation."

"Ah," said the boy, suitably impressed. "You'll want old Derry the blacksmith and his forge, then? He's holding a pail on the left, there."

They both looked over again at the assembly line, which had now been more or less equipped with buckets of grain and various noisemaking implements. The boy drooped further, all elbows and knees and teenage despair.

"What are they doing with all that grain?" Tao asked.

"They're sending out search parties. I lost the goats, you see," the boy said miserably. "Arty had me watching the herd today, out in the west pasture, and I fell asleep after lunch, and when I woke, the goats were all gone.

"And now the village'll be ruined, and it's all my fault, although how was I to know that the goats would rather climb down all those rocks than stay in a nice sunny pasture full of grass? I was to be the candlemaker's apprentice, not a goatherd, and now who knows if Bern'll still have me! I'm good with his bees; bees don't make a fuss-they stay put where you want them, unless you fumble the hives-but Arty's bad leg was twinging again, and I didn't mind helping just for the day, and now look what's happened. Stupid goats!"

The words burst out of him all at once, a hot concoction of youthful indignation and shame.

"Hm," said Tao. "Perhaps I can be of some assistance."

She strode to her wagon and leapt back up onto her driving perch, Laohu shuffling impatiently in his traces. But rather than pick up the reins again, Tao ducked beneath the glowing lanterns swinging gently from where they hung on the jutting ridge beam, and into the small wooden traveling wagon that served as home.

A hanging curtain …