The hammer rang once. A spark jumped off the anvil and did not go out. It waited. They followed.

The autumn fair was back on the Green for its second weekend. Lan had a plain wooden die in her pocket. She kept touching it to check it was still there.

The spark hopped past the cake stall and the hoopla. It stopped at the striped booth at the end of the row.

The booth's striped curtain swung shut behind them, and the noise of the fair went soft. One leg of Trial's workbench was newer than the others, and a tiny hammer was scratched beside the joint.

Trial looked up from her workbench and yawned. "You again," she said kindly. "I'll build it exactly as you wish. The fair packs up on Sunday night."

"My turn to wish!" said Inkling. "I want a game with everything in it."

"Everything?" said Lan.

"Dice and cards and a spinner," said Inkling. "Flags and tokens and a track. A maze in the middle. A treasure at the end."

Trial nodded. She reached into her box and built it exactly. The game covered the whole bench. It came with a rules card, and the rules card had twenty rules on it.

They read one rule a minute. It was twenty minutes before anybody moved.

Then they played. Lan rolled the die. "Do I move now, or spin first?" she said.

They looked at the card. Rule six said spin. Rule eleven said move.

Every turn, somebody stopped to ask which rule. After half an hour, Lan had had two turns. She could not remember what the spinner was for.

"I noticed something," said Inkling. "It's stuck because the rules are muddled. We need rule twenty-one. A card that explains the rules!"

Trial did not reach for her pencil.

"Watch what she does, not what she says," said Trial.

Inkling turned round. Lan was reading the rules card again, from the top. She yawned a big yawn.

Inkling went quiet.

Trial opened her little notebook to a new page.

"Thirty minutes," she said. "Twenty-five of them reading and asking. Five of them moving pieces."

"Only five?" said Inkling.

"I don't write down what you say," said Trial. "I write down what you do."

Lan and Inkling went to the games tent. At a little table sat a brown duck in a green sweater vest. A sign said ONE BREATH.

Children sat down. The duck took one breath.

"Roll, move, first one home wins. One breath. Go," said Primer.

The children were playing before their coats were off.

"How do you make them so short?" said Inkling.

"If you can't teach it in one breath, it's too big," said Primer. "Every rule has to earn its place."

On Sunday evening the hoopla was packing up. The everything game still covered the whole bench.

Inkling sat on the stool. "I spoiled it," she said. "I put everything in, and nobody wants to play."

Then Inkling did something new. She counted first, and named things second.

She kept the track. She kept Lan's die. She kept the little flags. The cards and the maze and the spinner went back in the box. Seventeen rules went with them. Three rules were left.

"Roll, move, first one home wins," said Inkling. It fit in one breath.

Then she thought of something nobody had shown her.

"One flag each," she said. "Once a game, you can plant it to make the other player wait a turn."

They played. Lan planted her flag at just the right moment and laughed out loud. They played three games before the hoopla closed.

Trial watched the third game. She wrote nothing down. She only smiled.

She gave Inkling a small cloth flag to keep. Inkling dropped it into Lan's pocket, beside the die. That was the second piece.

The curtain swung open, and the Green was full of fair again.

The spark dimmed to a warm dot and settled back on the anvil. The Green was just the Green again.

Back on the Green

At home, Inkling made up a game for Lan's little brother Tí. It had just two rules. He was playing before his coat was off.

Tell the story back to someone. Why did nobody want the everything game? What did Inkling take away?