The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [34]
“This is amazing!” I say. I move slightly so the dusty antique fertility statue by the door will stop poking my shoulder with her stone fingers. She’s been for sale for a long time. “How did you do it? Look at the letters! They’re so perfect.”
“Mr. Davidge the printer did that,” Dory Maud replies, pleased, looking over my other shoulder.
“Because Dory Maud did Mr. Davidge,” Elizabeth says from the stairs. She’s still wearing her nightgown and her invented curls are two days old.
“Oh, go on back to bed,” Dory replies, without heat. I don’t want to think much on this. Dory is what Mum used to call a “strong-looking woman,” which meant that, from the back, she looked like a man, and, from the front, you preferred the back. Elizabeth is the pretty sister, with long straw-colored hair and a nose turned up by lineage and habit. No one notices what the third sister, Annie, looks like, because she’s blind.
I page through the catalog. I know that I’m being stalled but I discover that I’m rather happy to be stalled. “Are our teapots in here? Who will see this?”
“Oh, the three people who read the adverts at the very end of the Post,” Elizabeth says. She’s gone up two more stairs but is far from back in bed. “And who are willing to wait a few years for shipping.”
“The Post? On the mainland!” I exclaim. I’ve found our teapots — there is a very precise line drawing of one of the stout pots with my utilitarian thistles on the side of it, and now I can see that the illustrations are in the same hand that draws the adverts in the back of our own little Skarmouth newspaper that comes out each Wednesday. The printing says that the teapot pictured is a “representative design” and that “supplies are limited.” It also says that they are signed and numbered, which my teapots are not. It is strange to think of something of mine heading over the ocean without me. I point to the signed bit and ask, “What’s this?”
Dory Maud reads the description. “That makes them more valuable. It won’t take you but a moment to sign and number them. Come in and have tea. Elizabeth will stop grousing. Where is your brother?”
“I can’t stay,” I say regretfully. “I need to take — Dove — tothebeach. Do you think Finn can leave the cart behind the shop when he’s done unloading?” I run all the words together to avoid being asked about it, but the sisters aren’t paying any attention, so I needn’t have bothered. Dory Maud has opened the door and found Finn standing there holding Puffin, who has followed us all the way to Skarmouth after all.
“I hope you enjoy the taste of poverty in your bowl,” Elizabeth is saying. “The price of that advert was dear enough, but have you thought of what it will cost to ship those catalogs out to mainland wives?”
Dory Maud says, “They pay for the catalog. It says that right in the advertisement that I showed to you not an hour ago. If you didn’t have shingles for eyes, you might have seen it. Finn Connolly, come in here. Why do you have that cat? Is she for sale as well? Has it come to that?”
Finn says, “No, ma’am,” as he enters the shop, where he gets poked directly in the chest by the fertility goddess. I move a step backward so he can get away because the last thing I need is for Finn to suddenly decide to become fertile.
“I really have to go,” I say. I don’t want to seem rude.
“Where are you going again?” Dory Maud asks me.
“Perhaps I should ring Mr. Davidge, too,” Elizabeth says from the stairs. “Then I might not mind the bills, either.