The Town Crier

If Forum Cookies is your strain, this is your sign: the Town Crier. Noon in the Forum, the worn stone step in the middle of the market, three rings of a brass bell, and every stall within earshot.

If Forum Cookies is your strain

You hear it first, and you pass it on. The baker’s oven is fixed, the lemons came in early, the ferry is running late, the woman at the top of the hill has finally finished her boat: by noon it is all written down in your big plain hand, and by five past it belongs to everyone. Keeping news to yourself has never once occurred to you.

You do it the same way every day. A round of the town in the morning, a stop at every door that opens, then the step in the middle of the square when the shadow is shortest. Three rings of the bell, one breath, and you read, loud enough for the back of the market and slow enough for the slowest listener. You never shout. You carry. When the news is bad you read it gently, and then you read the next item, because there is always a next item.

At your best you turn a square full of strangers into one room. People who came for lemons go home knowing that the bridge is painted and who found the lost umbrella, and somehow they feel they had a hand in it. You are generous with news the way other people are generous with bread: you would rather it went round than kept. Half of what you know, somebody handed you; you hand it on with their name attached.

Your flaw is the surprise. If the square is planning something for somebody, do not tell you; it will be on the scroll by morning, in your neatest lettering, between the price of butter and the weather. You are sorry every time. Every time, the square forgives you before you have finished reading.

What you need is a step to stand on, a bell that rings true, and people who tell you things. Give you that, and noon is never late.

Your hour: Noon, when the shadow touches the line
Your place: The speaking stone in the middle of the Forum
Your object: A brass handbell wrapped in a handkerchief
Your tempo: Three rings and one breath
Your weather: High sun, short shadows
Your flaw: You read out the surprise

Your people

Cindy at Midnight (Cinderella 99)Cindy at Midnight runs from the last stroke; you wait for the shortest shadow. Between you, the day is covered at both ends.
The Night Courier (Sour Diesel)The Night Courier never opens what he carries, and you read everything out loud. You have agreed never to swap jobs.
The Funky Gourmet (Blue Cheese)The Funky Gourmet throws the party and you announce it, which is why the whole square always turns up.

Things you say

Three rings, one breath, then the news.
Everything on the scroll gets read.
If you want it kept, don’t tell me before noon.
I don’t shout. I carry.
News isn’t news until somebody says it out loud.

A scene from your world

The last item on the scroll

The Town Crier comes down the hill road at a quarter to twelve with the scroll under his arm and the bell in his coat pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief so it cannot ring before it means to. He wrote the scroll at dawn at the kitchen table, from what the town told him on his round: at the bakery, at the ferry steps, at the gate of the woman who has been building a boat in her front garden for three summers. He reads it over once on the way down, moving his lips. He always does.

The Forum is already full. Lemons and mandarins in their crates, pale butter in its crocks, the sandalwood man’s little boxes stacked like a model town, the spice seller sneezing at her own pepper. In the middle of the square is the speaking stone, worn into a shallow bowl by a hundred years of criers, and beside it the old sundial, its shadow shrinking toward the brass line set in the paving.

He climbs onto the stone and watches the shadow. When it touches the line he unwraps the bell and rings it three times, and the Forum does what it has done every noon for longer than anyone remembers: it turns around. The butter woman puts down her paddle. The lemon man takes off his cap. Even the sandalwood man looks up from his knife.

“Oyez,” says the Crier. He does not shout; he carries. “The oven at the bakery is mended, and bread is back at seven. The lemons are early this year, and sweet. The ferry runs late on Thursdays until the new rope comes. The boat in the garden on the hill is finished, and its builder would like it known that it floats, and that she has not tried it.”

There is one more item. He finds it at the bottom of the scroll, below where he stopped writing, in somebody else’s hand, small and careful, and he reads it before he understands it, because everything on the scroll gets read. “Thirty years of noons today,” he reads. “The square would like to thank the Crier.” He stops.

Somebody taps a spoon against a butter crock. The lemon man raps his crate. The spice seller, it turns out, has a little brass bell of her own and has had it all along. The whole Forum rings back at him, a hundred small wrong notes, and the Crier stands on his stone in the noon sun with the scroll hanging open and finds, for once, that he has nothing to add.

Then he rolls the scroll up, pins it to the notice post for anyone who missed it, and goes to buy lemons. Behind him, the shadow on the sundial has already begun to grow.

The Forum

The Forum: A sloping market square above the bay, paved in pale stone, with stalls on three sides and the hill road coming down on the fourth. It has been called the Forum for as long as anyone has been arguing in it.
The speaking stone: A round step in the middle of the square, worn into a shallow bowl by every crier who ever stood on it. Anyone may stand there; only one person rings a bell from it.
The noon line: A brass strip set in the paving beside the old sundial. When the shadow touches it, the bell rings and the market turns around.
The bell: Brass, with a turned wooden handle, carried wrapped in a handkerchief so that it never rings by accident. Three rings mean news; one ring means something lost has been found.
The notice post: An oak post at the edge of the square where the day’s scroll is pinned after noon, for anyone who missed it. By evening the margins are full of other people’s handwriting.
The morning round: How the news gets onto the scroll: the bakery at six, the ferry steps at seven, every gate that opens on the way down the hill. The Crier writes down everything and decides nothing.