TUTUPEEP & DODO Volume 7: The Hobsboggle Market Meltdown (Free)

TUTUPEEP & DODO

Volume 7: The Hobsboggle Market Meltdown

There came a day when Tutu's pantry reached a state he could only describe as "structurally concerning" — three eggs, half a wheel of stale cheese, and a jar of pickled something he could no longer identify or trust — which meant, whether he liked it or not, a trip to Hobsboggle Market. He did not like it. He went anyway.

He'd learned, by this point, that leaving Dodo home alone resulted in outcomes ranging from mildly chewed furniture to a genuinely alarming incident involving his good boots and a very confused garden snail, so she came along, tucked into a sling he'd fashioned from an old scarf, riding against his chest with the serene confidence of a very small, very fluffy passenger who fully expected the world to entertain her.

The market did not disappoint her. It rarely did.

They had made it perhaps thirty feet past the entrance arch — past the singing cauldron stall, past a Gnome-Critter hawking self-stirring soup pots — when Dodo spotted it: a floating gourd, enormous and orange and covered in a fine dusting of enchanted glitter, bobbing gently in the air above a produce cart, tethered by nothing more than a shimmering thread of stabilizing magic. It was, by any objective measure, the single most fascinating object in the entire market, and Dodo's enormous blue eyes locked onto it with the unblinking intensity of a creature who had found her life's purpose.

"No," Tutu said, already sensing where this was going, tightening his grip on the sling. "We are here for eggs. Not gourds. Eggs."

Dodo lunged.

It was not a large lunge, given her size, but it was enough — enough to tip Tutu off balance as he reached for a basket of said eggs, enough to send his elbow crashing into a neighboring display of singing apples, which erupted into a discordant chorus of alarmed musical shrieking as they rolled in all directions across the cobblestones. He staggered sideways, trying to catch an apple mid-roll, and instead put his foot squarely through the bottom shelf of a cart belonging to a Gnome-Critter who had, until roughly four seconds ago, been having a perfectly pleasant day selling enchanted buttons.

The cart tipped. Buttons — hundreds of them, in every color and size imaginable — cascaded across the market square in a glittering, rolling flood, several of them attaching themselves, with a small magical pop, to the nearest available fabric, which happened to be Tutu's vest, his sleeves, and, memorably, one directly onto his left ear.

"MY BUTTONS," bellowed the Gnome-Critter, in a voice considerably larger than his stature would suggest, already scrambling after the rolling tide.

"I'm so sorry, I'll pay for—" Tutu began, reaching for his coin pouch, only to feel Dodo lunge a second time, this time successfully wriggling free of the sling entirely and tumbling toward the floating gourd with the single-minded joy of a creature reunited with a long-lost friend.

What followed was, by later market gossip, one of the more memorable ten minutes in recent Hobsboggle history. Tutu chased Dodo through the wreckage of singing apples, still-rolling buttons, and one increasingly irate Gnome-Critter, knocking over a stack of self-stirring soup pots along the way (they began stirring themselves furiously in protest, spraying broth in a wide, defensive arc), tripping over his own ears twice, and finally catching up to Dodo just as she reached the gourd's cart — only to watch, helplessly, as she gave the shimmering tether a single enthusiastic peck, severing the stabilizing thread entirely.

The gourd, freed from its magic, dropped like an actual, ordinary, un-enchanted pumpkin, directly onto the cart's owner, a mild-mannered Fox-Critter who let out a startled "oof" and sat down heavily in a puddle of soup-pot broth.

By the time the dust — and the buttons, and the broth, and one final rogue singing apple that had rolled the length of the market before finally, mercifully, running out of momentum — had settled, Tutu found himself standing in the wreckage of no fewer than four separate stalls, coin pouch entirely empty, having paid for a cart of buttons, a bruised Fox-Critter's afternoon, a replacement gourd tether, and, for reasons he still didn't fully understand, half a dozen singing apples that had gone slightly hoarse from all the shrieking.

Dodo, meanwhile, had settled contentedly onto the cobblestones a few feet away, entirely unscathed, cooing softly over a small, sparkly button that had rolled to a stop directly in front of her — not even one of the fancy ones, just a plain, unremarkable green button, which she had nonetheless decided was the single greatest treasure in all the Enchanted Woods.

Tutu looked down at his empty coin pouch. He looked at the button in Dodo's beak. He looked at the general, glittering, broth-soaked ruin of the market square around them, several vendors still picking up their scattered wares with pointed, unimpressed glances in his direction.

"You," he said, sitting down heavily on an overturned crate, "you cost me everything. Every single coin I had. For a button you already had a dozen of at home."

Dodo chirped happily, entirely unbothered by the accusation, and held the button up toward him with obvious pride, as if offering to share her singular treasure with the one creature in the market who mattered.

Tutu looked at the button. He looked at her enormous, hopeful blue eyes. He felt something in his chest do a small, traitorous, entirely unwelcome thing.

"Fine," he said, taking it from her with two claws, examining it in the afternoon light as though it were something genuinely precious. "It is a very nice button, I suppose."

Dodo trilled with delight and climbed straight back into her sling, mission, whatever it had been, thoroughly and triumphantly accomplished.