56 pages • 1-hour read
The Teller of Small Fortunes
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Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and anti-gay bias.
Tao is a young Shinn woman who makes a living as a traveling fortune teller. She journeys around the kingdom of Eshtera in her wagon that is drawn by her mule Laohu. When she arrives in the village of Necker, she finds the place in an uproar because Cam, the candlemaker’s apprentice, has lost all the goats. Observing the chaos, Tao speaks with Cam, who explains that he was supposed to be watching the animals but fell asleep, and they wandered away. Recognizing an opportunity, Tao retrieves a bronze gong from her wagon and dramatically announces to the villagers that she can see their goats in a vision. She says they are at a stream to the east, near some blackberry brambles. In reality, she passed this location earlier and noticed the animals there. When the villagers find the goats in this exact spot, they welcome Tao warmly.
The next day, Tao sets up her blue silk tent in the village square. As customers line up, she tells them that she only tells “small fortunes” rather than life-altering prophecies. She reads their fortunes using tea leaves, palm readings, and Shinn fortune stones. Her first customer is Cam, who learns that he’ll burn his finger while rolling wicks. Throughout the day, Tao earns a respectable sum telling small, specific predictions to the villagers.
That evening, she reflects that she should move on from Necker soon. If she stays too long in one place, she knows that people will begin to become increasingly suspicious of the Shinn woman in their midst, especially when her small prophecies begin to come true. Besides, she risks attracting attention from the Guild of Mages in Margrave, Eshtera’s capital. Tao only deals in minor predictions about everyday matters, avoiding greater visions that might register more strongly as magic and lead magefinders to her—they are always looking for practitioners of magic to join the Guild and serve Eshtera.
Chapter 2 Summary
Two hours west of Necker, Tao winces as her wagon jolts over rutted tracks. As she travels, memories of her past in Margrave intrude, and she recalls her stepfather’s harsh voice criticizing her posture and manners. She pushes these thoughts aside, focusing instead on her destination of Havelin, where she again sets up her fortune-telling tent at the village square.
Among Tao’s first customers is Esther, a woman in her thirties who is the daughter of Havelin’s aging tinker. She appears nervous and explains that she is worried that she is unmarried, especially with her father getting older. When Tao reads her palm, Tao discovers Esther’s past romance with a woman named Jane who has since married a man. Esther confesses that she can neither bring herself to marry a man she doesn’t love nor live openly as herself in the conservative village. Tao compassionately offers her an alternative path. She tells Esther about a nunnery near Whitelake, which is three days’ travel away—Tao says it is a community of women who “care for each other” (22), away from society’s judgment. As Tao packs up her tent that evening, she reflects on Esther’s difficult choice between staying in familiar surroundings and finding a place where she can truly belong. Though uncertain if Esther will find the courage to leave, Tao hopes she made that choice a little easier by showing her another possibility.
Chapter 3 Summary
Leaving Havelin, Tao intends to head to the coastal town of Shellport, but she and Laohu find their path blocked by a massive fallen tree in the foothills. After two hours of ineffective hacking with her hatchet, Tao makes little progress clearing the obstruction. Two strangers appear on the other side: Siltarien “Silt” Silvertongue, a charming dark-haired former thief, and “Mash” Mastrick, a hulking bearded warrior laden with weapons. Though initially wary when they offer to help, Tao watches as they efficiently clear a path for her wagon.
They refuse payment for their assistance, so Tao offers to read their fortunes. Mash goes first, and through a palm reading, Tao sees a vision of him giving his daughter a kitten. However, when she tells him this, Mash is visibly disturbed. He reveals that his four-year-old daughter Leah was abducted by raiders six months ago. Silt explains that he and Mash are tracking the bandits responsible and searching for the missing child. The three make an uneasy camp together for the night, and by morning, Mash announces that he and Silt will accompany Tao to Shellport. He wants to verify if her fortunes truly come to pass.
As they journey together, the conversation gradually flows more easily. Mash recites self-composed poetry about his wife Anna, while Silt explains his background as a “reformed” thief who gave up stealing to impress a woman named Peony. After some hesitation, Tao shares that she came to Eshtera with her mother at age eight, after her father died in Shinara. Her mother remarried a Margrave nobleman, and Tao was raised and educated in the capital before leaving home several years ago to travel the kingdom telling fortunes. Though initially finding the company disruptive to her solitary lifestyle, Tao begins to enjoy Silt and Mash’s presence.
Chapter 4 Summary
Tao, Mash, and Silt arrive in Shellport, a ramshackle fishing port with an overwhelming fishy stench. They secure lodging at the Drunken Sprite inn, where Mash asks the barkeeper about bandits matching the description of those who took his daughter, showing him a mage-created drawing of Leah. Though the innkeeper has no information, he promises to spread word of the missing child throughout town. Over dinner, Mash explains to Tao how his daughter disappeared while playing in the woods near their farm. This was around the same time that nearby Windmere village was raided. Despite approaching the local magistrate, Mash received little official help, forcing him to hunt for the bandits himself.
The next day, at Shellport’s market, Tao sets up her fortune-telling tent next to a baker’s stall. The apprentice baker, a red-haired young woman named Kina, struggles to sell her misshapen pastries despite their delicious taste. Silt, clearly smitten with Kina, secretly buys her entire tray of odd-looking creations, and then, using his thieving skills in reverse, plants them on unsuspecting shoppers throughout the market. While exploring the market, Tao meets a witch who offers to trade a luck potion for a fortune reading. When Tao attempts to read the witch’s palm, she sees only a heavy thread of fate suggesting terminal illness, and the witch accepts this with resigned dignity.
Later, Kina visits Tao’s tent seeking a fortune. Through tea leaves, Tao sees a vision of Kina traveling with Tao on her wagon, leaving Shellport behind. When Tao reveals this, the impulsive baker immediately decides to join her journey, excited at the prospect of adventure beyond her routine life at her uncle’s bakery. When Silt learns that Kina will be accompanying them, he’s delighted and offers to help her prepare. Tao feels a little bewildered by the suddenness with which she’s acquired three traveling companions. She wonders when she might return to her quiet, solitary life, certain that her new friends will leave her soon enough.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The theme of Navigating Identity Amid Prejudice and Expectation is central from the novel’s opening pages, and Tao's status as a Shinn woman in Eshtera is shown to immediately set her apart. When the candlemaker's apprentice exclaims, “But you speak Eshteran!” (2), the comment reveals the prejudice and assumptions Tao regularly encounters. Her strategy for navigating prejudice involves a calculated performance, where she deliberately plays into Eshteran stereotypes about Shinn people through “dramatic showmanship” and affected speech. For instance, she responds to Cam by saying, “Greetings, young sir, from this humble traveler” (2). This culturally performative behavior serves as both defense mechanism and survival strategy, demonstrating how marginalized individuals must navigate others’ expectations, often at the expense of authentic self-expression.
Alongside identity, the theme of The Weight of Foreknowledge shapes Tao’s complex relationship with her fortune-telling abilities. Her insistence that she tells only “small fortunes” reveals her deliberate limitation of her own power; this is something she does out of fear rather than inability. This self-imposed boundary reflects her understanding of the moral weight that prophecy carries. Despite her attempt to focus on the “small fortunes,” she nevertheless is forced to face serious, life-changing questions, as when Esther asks Tao about the possibility of her finding love. Tao read Esther’s palm and “there had been no love lines clear enough for her to follow to their end” (21). Still, she compassionately lies to Esther about her future, nudging her to find solidarity in a community of lesbian nuns and framing it as a fortune. By choosing not to tell Esther that she likely won’t find love, Tao demonstrates her belief that some truths can harm rather than help.
Even as she reads fortunes, Tao refuses to explore “the heaviest pathways that pulled at her like anchors—for those would be the big truths, the grand fortunes, the life-altering visions” (29). She understands the profound weight and responsibility attached to this type of foreknowledge, especially as she fears that just knowing about a future event does not give anyone the power to change it. As a child, she saw a vision of her father’s death, but she could not prevent it; as a result, she is wary of the “big truths.” When Tao’s vision of Mash's daughter elicits a strong emotional reaction, this validates her caution, as she witnesses how even the seemingly “small fortunes” truth can disturb its recipients.
The theme of Finding a Sense of Home in Relationships emerges as Tao gradually acquires unwanted traveling companions, challenging her preference for solitude. Initially resistant to company, she describes Mash and Silt as “two unwanted escorts of dubious reputation” (38), yet simultaneously acknowledges their presence is “not […] entirely unpleasant” (38). When Tao partakes in small, shared human experiences—like hearing laughter in Necker’s tavern, or sharing meals with Mash and Silt where Mash recites poetry—they spark an “odd, familiar longing for someplace she had never been” (15). This highlights how she longs for connection, perceiving it as a type of homesickness.
The novel contrasts Tao’s present companionship with painful memories of her past home and family. She is grateful that she is “free now […]. Free of him, free of all of them” (17), thinking especially of her stepfather who treated her cruelly and her mother who did not defend Tao from him. In contrast, she enjoys her time with Silt and Mash, despite her initial reluctance. She recognizes that “a home [is] somewhere you wouldn't have to feel quite so alone” (23), and her new companions break through her shell of solitariness.
Food and baked goods emerge as a motif representing comfort, connection, and cultural memory. Kina’s misshapen but delicious pastries symbolize the value of substance over appearance—a metaphor that extends to human relationships as well. When Tao takes her first bite of Kina’s creation, “a soft, crumbly sweetness and the taste of late-summer strawberries flooded her mouth” (50), illustrating how sensory pleasure creates moments of presence and joy. Similarly, food connections emerge in Tao's cultural memories, as “the scent of steam rising from bowls of warm rice” (35) forms part of her fragmented recollections of Shinara. The communal sharing of food becomes a foundation for developing relationships, as when Silt devises an elaborate scheme to distribute Kina’s unsold pastries. Food thus functions as a vehicle for connection, bridging cultural differences and creating moments of shared pleasure that counterbalance the themes of isolation and cultural displacement that otherwise define Tao’s experience.
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