I Offered Free Readings and Now Everyone Has a Prophecy Problem

A funny, feel-good cozy fantasy short read

De: Blythe Merry

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Petra Finch has a gift of foresight.

It tells her when bread is going to burn. When it's going to rain. When someone is about to make a decision they'll regret, which is more often than you'd think, and which she mostly keeps to herself.

On a slow Saturday at Bramblewood Market, with nothing to do and a sign made from the back of a seed packet, she offers free palm readings. Tips welcome.

By noon she has given seventeen of them.

Most are petty. You will spill wine on your good shirt tonight — wear the blue one. Your cat has been getting into the neighbours' house. The neighbours know. They haven't said anything yet. One involves a man sitting on a barrel for a few minutes to collect himself. One is distressingly significant, and she can't work out whose it is because she forgot to get a name.

And one is apparently about her.

The problem is that the prophecy reader cannot read her own palm. The symbols are there — a door, a book, and something she's been calling an obstacle for three years — but they won't resolve into meaning when she looks at them herself. The only person in the market who knows the symbol system is the quiet bookseller two stalls down. The one she's been avoiding since the Incident at the Solstice Fair. The one who, it turns out, has been buying dried rosemary every market for two years despite not cooking.

She's going to have to ask him.

He already knows she's going to ask.

I Offered Free Readings is a warm, funny cozy fantasy short read about knowing too much and seeing too little — and what happens when the gift finally points somewhere you can't ignore.