“An alien in every egg!” Bosto called. “Take one home before it takes you home!”
He wound the key hidden beneath a painted shell. A purple creature shot out on a spring, hit him under the chin, and fell back inside.
Two children laughed. Their father read the small word NOVELTIES on the sign.
“Does it do anything else?”
“Not at this price,” Bosto said.
The father walked on. To the next buyer, Bosto leaned closer.
“Wind it today. Tomorrow it will hatch by itself.”
The man chose a green egg and paid. Kade was fetching change, and Bosto called after him to keep it away from the cat.
Behind him, Kade laid the money envelope beside her coat. She had counted her day’s wage before they opened. Bosto liked to forget agreements when money got near him, so she had made this one difficult to forget.
The fair spread along the river street. There were fried onions, drums, and a tall stranger asking questions three stalls away. Bosto could not hear the questions over his own voice. He had heard that visitors from other worlds sometimes came to the port now. None had yet bought anything from him.
A boy in a yellow cap pointed at the last shell in the box.
“That one moved.”
“A lively choice.”
“It doesn’t have a key.”
“The finer models don’t.”
Kade turned around. Bosto quickly put the shell behind his low display gate. The latch closed with a small click.
“I haven’t tested that one,” she said.
Bosto remembered a warm bump against his ankle when he carried the box past the rest tent that morning. He had thought a spring had come loose. He had bought the toys secondhand; some were better than others.
Now the odd shell gave two soft knocks against the wood.
“Keep it for me,” the boy said. “I’ll get my mum.”
Bosto took a small deposit and dropped it into the till.
“Better hurry. It may grow.”
Kade watched the boy go. “You don’t know what it is.”
“That is why he is interested.”
The tall stranger stopped before the booth. Her coat had four sleeves. Two were empty, and two held hands covered in pale, hard plates. A little box at her throat made her voice sound like the station announcements.
“I am looking for my child,” it said.
Bosto looked down the street. “Yellow cap? He has gone to his mum.”
“My child is small and round when frightened. Loud music frightens him.”
The drum stall began another tune. Inside Bosto’s gate, the shell shook.
The stranger tapped twice on its wooden frame. The shell answered twice.
Kade took a step back to give her room.
“I am Ulk,” the stranger said. She lifted her hand. Its pale plates carried three brown dots, close together. The shell had the same three dots. As they watched, two short legs slid out from beneath it.
Bosto put his palm on the gate.
“Ah,” he said. “That model.”
Ulk bent toward it. The child’s legs scraped against the wood.
“Please open this.”
“I have a customer interest to protect.”
Kade stared at him. “Bosto.”
“A deposit has been paid. Fair dealing matters, Kade.”
“It could matter sooner.”
The boy returned with his mother. He saw the small legs and grinned.
“It really is alive!”
Ulk held out her hand to the child. Bosto moved his empty display frame between them.
The child knocked hard against the gate. People nearby turned from the drum stall. For once, Bosto had a crowd without having to shout for it.
“Friends, a rare chance. An actual visitor. We could arrange viewing times—”
“No,” Ulk said.
“Only small groups. Quiet groups. We are a family business.”
“There are two of us,” Kade said. “And I leave at six.”
The boy’s mother asked what she had missed.
“Bosto sold you a promise,” Kade told her son. “That child belongs with its parent. Here is your deposit.”
She opened the till, counted the coins he had given, and put them in his hand.
“I wanted something alive,” he said.
“Then you wouldn’t want it stuck in there,” his mother said.
He looked at the gate. “Can it walk?”
“Yes,” Ulk said. “Very well. It walked away from me.”
Bosto smiled at the crowd. “We might discuss an exclusive arrangement. I have experience presenting unusual things.”
Ulk looked at the small metal latch. Bosto’s frame blocked her hand from one side, so she reached around the other. She lifted the latch and opened the gate.
The child unfolded another pair of legs. It crawled across the table, climbed Ulk’s sleeve, and tucked itself beneath her chin.
Bosto lowered his frame. “We haven’t settled anything.”
Ulk rubbed a thumb over the child’s three dots.
“We have settled this,” she said.
She walked away from the music. The boy followed for a few steps, waving. One little leg lifted from her coat and waved back.
The crowd remained.
A man held up a green painted egg. “Mine hasn’t walked.”
“You must wind it,” Kade said.
“He said it would hatch.”
“It opens,” Bosto said. “There are different kinds of opening.”
“There’s a different kind of selling, too,” the man said.
Kade slid the till toward Bosto. The money from the day’s sales was still there. His pitch fee had come from his own purse that morning; he would not get that back. Neither would he get much from these customers.
They formed a line. He returned each payment and took each egg. One woman insisted on winding hers in front of him first. The creature hit her wrist and drooped sideways.
“An alien with a bad back,” she said.
At six, Kade put her wage envelope in her pocket and took her coat. She did not stay to advise him.
Two children from the first crowd came back. Their father waited by the food stall.
“How much for the one that hit your chin?” a child asked.
Bosto named a lower price. He opened the shell and showed her the spring and key.
“This is a jumping toy,” he said. “It jumps once. You wind it again.”
She tried it. The purple creature struck his chin for the second time that day.
“Does it always do that?”
“Only to people it likes,” he said.
She held out the coins. “I want that one.”
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