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The smoke will carry what you feel

to him whose heart you’d claim.

If you want true love to call,

tuck clovers in your shoe,

then go about your business, dear,

and let him come to you.

Never give your love a knife

without a penny’s trade.

A coin returned will mend the cut

a sharp edge would have made.

FROM THE LITTLE GLASS OWL’S BOOK OF LUCKY CHARMS AND AUSPICIOUS OMENS, COMPILED BY ELECTRA GLASS

FIFTEEN

DESTINY CALLS

“Test your trivia skills today at Trivia Tuesday and make new friends!” Fortune squawked. “Bring your own bagged lunch or order ahead and the crew at The Broom and Board will conjure up some delicious sandwiches for you.”

Fortune was being obnoxious about this one. Tempest had tried to sleep in. She wanted to stop and pick wildflowers. But Fortune, it seemed, wanted her to go to Pocatello. She kept repeating the ad from the radio until Tempest caved.

“Fine, you lunatic!”

It’s just lunch, Tempest told herself as she drove toward The Broom and Board in Pocatello. And it was on their slow route east. Or, rather, the atlas’ route. This morning, when she’d flipped to the next page of the atlas, the cafe had appeared, along with several other scenic and suggested stops along the route, including a field of wildflowers she would have liked to spend more time in. A bit past Pocatello, there was a pop-up potato museum.

According to the voice on the radio, and Fortune, the owners of The Broom and Board Cafe hosted a pub quiz lunch event every other Tuesday. It was obviously more casual than the circuit events, but still a good place for her to get some practice in.

Since Tempest’s win in Boise had broken the ice, she was surprised to discover that she wasn’t nervous about competing anymore. So what if she stuttered on an answer or didn’t win a tournament? Why should she care? She never had to see these people ever again. On the road she was free to come and go as she pleased. It wasn’t like being back at the bookstore, trapped behind the counter, seeing mostly the same set of people day after day.

Fortune was perched on the sunlight-dappled dashboard, and a folk song was playing on the radio. Tempest hummed along. The windows were cracked and the air smelled like peak summer. Freshly mown grass and tilled fields.

The Most Important Question lay open on the passenger seat. Tempest couldn’t help returning to it. She brought it to bed most nights, reviewing the entries and starting discussions with Dandelion Wilder in her mind.

The entry she kept coming back to today was a short one. Characteristically short. Dan Wilder did not waste words.

Q: Which ancient instrument, originally used to tell fortunes, turned out to be the first magnetic compass?

A: The south-pointer.

The instrument was developed in China during the Han dynasty. Lodestone spoons were placed on smooth bronze divination boards and observed to rotate until the handle pointed consistently south. The phenomenon was attributed to magical properties in the stone. The instruments were used primarily for divining. It was only later understood that what the spoon was pointing at was magnetic north.

The earliest known navigation tool was not looking for destinations. It was looking for destiny.

That was it. That was the whole entry.

“But what did they think was happening?” she asked in her annotations. “The person who first noticed the spoon moving. What story did they tell themselves?”

Dan Wilder’s book had no answer for that, because it was full of facts and figures. But what it lacked, in most of the entries, was story. And Tempest, it turned out, was brimming with stories that were seeking to attach themselves to facts. All those untethered narratives she’d unintentionally absorbed, with their loose collections of floating details, were seeking structures to snap onto like magnets finding true north.

Or south, as the story may be.