“Eh, what can I say? There are charms to country living, especially where no dragons, eh?” She sighed. “Even Zelda fall in love.” She drew her lips tight after she said it, as if she regretted the slip.
“Zelda? In love?”
She sighed. “Yes, dahling, Zelda fall in love with little troll, dream of little gypsy-troll babies.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I sat the lamp on the table and the Light illuminated her face. Through the expired orange foundation, through the years of weathered skin, through the terse lips, I saw within her the same heart of the child who had refused to let her brother’s sacrifice be in vain. As I watched, she produced a small polished wooden box, similar to the one which held her cards. She slid it across the table toward me.
“A gift for teacher,” she said.
The Light showed me what was inside. The other eye of the dragon, the mate to the one around her neck. I opened the box and pulled it out, its pupil narrowing as it looked about the room.
“Zelda, you didn’t,” I said.
“I didn’t kill it, no,” she confessed. “Zelda only strong enough to blind dragon on her own, as a girl. Has probably died of old age by now, yes?”
“So that’s where you went when I tried to reclaim you from the convent.”
Her eyebrows arched. “You come back?”
“Go on and read my cards,” I said. “Don’t take my word for it.”
“You no interfere with Zelda’s reading zis time?”
“I no interfere.”
“Smartass,” she groaned. She flipped the first card. “Hermit. Biggie surprise. I do three card reading, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, zee Hermit means...well, is you, darling. Means you is painted into Tarocco deck forever, zat all of Europe knows you are rascal, are vagabond magic man. Means you no like other people—“
“Not true.”
“No? You take up with someone new?”
I considered, for a moment, telling her about my new apprentice, Lucian; about my annual volunteerism with the League of Jolly Old Elves; that I had seen Merlin II and Merlin III recently at a wedding. The problem was, I wasn’t sure if I could trust Zelda. I had never known if I could trust her. Even when she was my pupil, educating her sometimes felt like an exercise in keeping my friends close and enemies closer. I was never sure which one she was, so I always pulled her closer, just in case.
As I fingered the chain on the unblinking dragon’s eye, I couldn’t help but admire the person across the table, whether she was truly my friend or my foe. I might have been the teacher and she the student, but she was only a rung behind me in the Tarocco.
”Remember who you’re talking to, Zelda. The Hermit is a loner. No, I haven’t taken up with anyone.”
She smiled, a sinister, knowing smile I never could discern. Was it sincere? Was it plotting? For all my wisdom, I could not see through her strength.
But it was this weakness keeping me distant. Not just from her, but from others. Sure, I had learned a lot, and I loved to teach. But the only way I could remain to live another day—to right another wrong—was to keep my cards close to my chest. As close as Zelda kept her dragon’s eye.
She flipped another card. “Situation is...Hermit. Yes, yes, of course is Hermit, you are Hermit.” She cut the cards again and drew, but did not flip. Hermit. “You mock Zelda.”
“No, no, that’s not my magic. I’m not doing that.”
“Yes, Zelda is so sure of that! You avoid Zelda for five hundred years, then you show up and accept dragon’s eye as gift and then insult Zelda in her own tent! The nerve! If you were anyone lesser I would cut that fool beard from your face!”
“Challenge is...
“Don’t you ‘challenge ees’ me! I not read another card until you apologize.” The dragon’s eye around her neck flickered and seemed to vibrate subtly. I felt the one in my hand doing the same. I wasn’t sure what the end result of this magic would be, but I feared it.
“Zelda, I do apologize, but I give you my word as a wizard, this disruption with the Tarocco is not of my doing. I want to see what happens next.”
Zelda reached beneath the table and brought out a long cigarette holder, and a thin cigarette. She joined them, then leaned back to light her smoke on a candle. She took a luxurious drag then asked “Why? Why now?”
I spread my hands apart on the table linen, feeling the thin cloth beneath my papery skin. The printed paisley with violet and gold print on a red calico background fuzzed before me then remade itself in runes. For a moment, my eyes didn’t know what I was seeing, until the ancient script clicked into place.
WHY YOU LEAVE
Zelda always had been a master at image manipulation. During the Enlightenment, she was adept at inserting her face into the paintings of many a master. She could send a message via minstrel or scroll, the messenger never quite understanding his role as conduit for her gift. I wondered if she were still up to that old magic today—if it extended to more than just runes on a tablecloth or a face on a beer sign. Truly, this woman was formidable. Should I pull her closer?
She snapped her fingers, and her television spoke in the next room. “Like sands through the hourglass,” intoned the announcer, “so are the—“
“Why you abandon your pupil, teacher?”
I tapped the lantern and its brightness increased three fold. An orb burned like a miniature sun inside the cage. The dragon’s eye on the table crawled slowly toward the box from whence it came. Zelda’s eyes narrowed, but she continued to smoke, unmoved.
“Challenge is...” I said.
She rested the cigarette in a long, amber ashtray, and flipped the third card. Hermit.
“Is not funny, old one. Not funny.” She stood. “I want you to go. Zelda no care why you came, she no care what you see. I no want to see you or anyone.”
“Zelda, wait,” I said. It was only then that I knew for sure why I had come. Frustration wasn’t unfamiliar to me. I remembered my mistakes in Monte Carlo, my pride and arrogance, and the way I had set out on my own for far too long.
“Zelda, the Light shows me many things—some I want to see, and some I don’t. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s not the only truth. Did you know that?” She refused eye contact for a moment, and I heard myself sigh. I took a deep breath, and continued, this time more softly. “I know you might not want to believe me, but I did come back for you. We would have slain the dragon together, my dear, but I fear you were already too strong and too bold to wait for an old man like me.” I stood and moved the lantern to her side of the table. “My darling girl,” I said, and she winced visibly. “You have a chance to walk a different path to wisdom than your arrogant old teacher did. This troll—he loves you?”
“I think so, yes,” she whispered. Her face seemed as smooth and lineless as when she had been that little girl with the dragon’s eye.
“Maybe loss and loneliness aren’t the only paths to wisdom,” I said. I pointed to the lamp. “My gift to you.”
Zelda fell backward and nearly collapsed into her chair. The ashtray upended and her cigarette dropped to the floor. The area rug beneath it sizzled.
“Zee...Light of God?”
I stepped away from the table and headed through the curtain for the exit. “Let it light your way, my student.”
“You no take your necklace?”
“You earned it, Zelda, I could never...”
She crossed the room and pressed the necklace into my hand, and her lips onto my face. She kissed me not like a needy child, but like a loving friend. For a moment, I knew I could pull her closer, but I chose instead to pat her sweet orange face and walk away.
Behind me, Zelda’s television blared the start of a daytime game show. “Wheel! Of! Fortune!” the studio audience blared. Where the Wheel would take me next, I couldn’t know. For the moment, I didn’t want to know—I couldn’t care. For that one golden moment, it was enough it had brought me here.
***
<
br /> Red Tash is a journalist-turned-novelist of dark fantasy for readers of all ages. Monsters, wizards, trolls, fairies, and roller derby await you in her pantry of readerly delights. Tash is the author of the Amazon best-selling dark fantasies Troll Or Derby and This Brilliant Darkness; and a columnist for both LouisvilleKY.com and InveterateMediaJunkies.com, where she does double-duty as a comic book reviewer. Tash’s own work in comics is included in Scary-Art’s The Pit and the Compendium, Filthy Cake, and is featured in Arcana Comics’ Steampunk Originals. Prior to beginning her career in fiction, Tash wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column on parenting and family life, among other publishing credits. A rabid social media junkie, Tash can be found on every conceivable corner of the internet, so just google her—she dares ya. Beyond writing, Tash has absolutely zero interest in anything, unless it is rehashing her glory days as rollergirl Tyra Durden of the Derby City Rollergirls & RollerCon’s TeamMILF.
You can find Red Tash at RedTash.com
***
WHEEL OF FORTUNE
Vista Bridge
By MeiLin Miranda
The first suicide off the Vista Bridge after Juanita moved to Goose Hollow was a girl. The news said she was fifteen. Juanita didn’t see her jump, but she saw police and medical examiners swarming the light rail service road where the girl landed.
The second time, a forty-seven-year-old man jumped. Juanita was waiting at the train stop nearby. She looked up, and there he stood at the railing. She felt the bad luck radiating from him even at that distance, and she wasn’t surprised when he stepped over the side into the void. He landed on Jefferson Street in the middle of the morning commute. She called 911 so the cops could get there right away. No one should see that. She wished she hadn’t.
Juanita had lived in Goose Hollow five months when the third, fourth and fifth jumped. The neighbors said it had always been bad, the Vista Bridge suicides, but this year was the worst. The city started scraping up funds for a barrier, but modifying beautiful, historic bridges took time. “It’ll be months, maybe a year, before they finish the fence,” said the man down the hall. “I’m organizing a volunteer suicide watch. Do you think that’s something you’d want to do?”
County mental health trained Juanita to talk people down, and she took her place among the volunteers who walked the bridge. The first time she stopped a jumper, it was another teenaged girl. Juanita managed to touch the girl’s hand, just long enough to turn her luck around. They sat holding hands on one of the concrete benches set into the bridge until the paramedics came. She listened to the girl’s story: pregnancy, abandonment, and ostracism. “It’s going to be okay,” said Juanita, and it was. They stayed in touch. The girl’s repentant parents took her back. She arranged an open adoption with an ecstatic couple, found a scholarship and started college.
The second time, a month later, Juanita offered a woman lingering near the edge a cup of coffee from her thermos. Startled, she took it; their fingers brushed, and again, it was enough. The woman went on to turn her failing business around and become a crisis counselor herself.
After she stopped the third jumper the next month, Juanita acquired a reputation.
This morning, Juanita watched alone; her partner was out sick. She didn’t mind. Nothing would happen today. The odds were against it.
Juanita knew about odds. She’d worked for thirty years in a casino as a cocktail waitress before she retired. She had a reputation then, too. She’d been pretty—still was, if older—but the house didn’t pay her extra for her looks.
“Table three, honey,” the pit boss would murmur. “Guy in the plaid jacket.”
“Do I have to?” she’d complained at first.
“Life isn’t fair, Juanita, at least not here.”
Juanita would walk over, tray held high, and touch Plaid Jacket’s shoulder. “Can I get you a drink? They’re on the house.” She’d bring Plaid Jacket his rum and Coke, or just Coke if he wanted to stay sharp and keep his astonishing lucky streak going—and then he’d start losing. If Juanita liked Plaid Jacket—he’d tipped well, he’d been good to the other waitresses, or he’d just struck her as a well-meaning soul—she wouldn’t touch him again. He’d walk away with about what he’d come in with, give or take. But if he didn’t tip, or if he squeezed her ass, she’d bring him drink after drink, tapping his shoulder or brushing her hand against his each time, and he’d lose his shirt. No one knew why, least of all Juanita, but everyone in management knew she carried bad luck.
She never told them she could also be lucky. She didn’t do it enough to raise suspicion, but often she’d see a loser, someone raw, inexperienced, over his head and radiating desperate bad luck—people’s luck shone all around them. She’d touch his shoulder, bring him a drink and his luck would change enough to save him. Life wasn’t fair, but it didn’t need to be so harsh. Sometimes the losers quit while her touch lasted; sometimes they wouldn’t. Juanita only touched the unlucky once, with one exception: a foolish woman she’d heard had come to earn enough money for a child’s surgery. When the woman walked out with twice the winnings she needed, Juanita stopped her near the door. “Don’t come back,” she said, “don’t ever come back, not here, not another casino. No gambling, ever. Your luck is played out. Got it?” The woman nodded and hurried away, still crying. Juanita never saw her again, and she wondered if there’d been a child. She never touched someone like that again.
Her own luck, she left alone. She worked hard, lived clean, and saved her money. She still got flats, had her heart broken, caught the flu, but things worked out, mostly.
Juanita talked to many people on the bridge, most just neighborhood walkers and sightseers there for the spectacular view. Of the rest who came to the Vista Bridge, some were mentally ill. More were unlucky. She couldn’t help the crazy, but she could help the others.
Now, six months in, Juanita strolled along the bridge walkways in the early morning mist, her coffee thermos and some melamine cups in the bag slung at her hip. The cars hadn’t started their daily trek down Jefferson Street far below, but the warning bells of the MAX trains as they pulled away from the Goose Hollow stop floated upward, their shrillness hushed in the morning air. When she looked toward the sunrise she could see the train tracks, the tall buildings downtown—you couldn’t call them skyscrapers—the luxury cars lined up on the car dealership rooftop on Jefferson Street, and trees trees trees. Somewhere in the predawn clouds lurked Mount Hood. She loved this view, the little city in the trees she’d adopted as hers when she’d left Las Vegas for good.
She came to the sign at the span’s end reading, “We can help you cross this bridge” with the suicide prevention number in bold. Below it, another volunteer had taped a neon green hand-lettered sign: “Hi, you matter! Can you talk for a second? Please?” around a big felt-tip marker heart. Juanita turned back toward an identical set of signs at the other end.
A woman stood near the concrete bench at the other end. Juanita quickened her pace just enough so it wasn’t noticeable; the woman might merely be walking, and if she wasn’t, Juanita running toward her might spook her. The woman stayed where she was, hands braced on the railing, sometimes looking out at the trees and the almost-skyscrapers and the luxury cars, and sometimes down at the train tracks and the asphalt far beneath.
“Good morning,” Juanita called. “How you doing?” The woman turned her head, her gaze patient and expectant. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? On the house.” This didn’t always work with the men, but sometimes it made the women hesitate, at least long enough for Juanita to get close enough for them to see and hear her more clearly. She tried to get a read on the woman’s luck, to no avail; it hid as if behind a door. She couldn’t read the woman’s face, either. It constantly changed. Was she old? Was she young? Juanita couldn’t say.
The woman didn’t move as she came closer. “Let’s sit down and have a cup, okay? We can talk things over,” said Juanita. The woman drifted to the bench between its two ornate lamppo
sts and sat down. Juanita breathed again; maybe she wasn’t here to jump after all. Juanita kept her movements deliberate and slow as she sank down next to the woman and pulled out her thermos and a cup. Juanita believed “real” cups, not paper cups, might make people less likely to jump. If they had a real cup in their hands, somewhere inside they might be afraid to break it, even though the melamine ones didn’t break; she’d never thrown one from the bridge, but that’s what she’d heard. She handed the woman a steaming cup and a packet of sugar, making sure to touch her fingers.
The woman smiled and handed back the packet. “No sugar, thank you. Life is sweet enough, isn’t it? Though I suppose it’s bitter sometimes. It depends.” Her voice bore a vague Mediterranean accent.
“Life isn’t fair sometimes,” agreed Juanita.
They sipped the hot coffee and looked toward the West Hills, the impending sunrise at their backs. A car passed, headed south across the bridge to the road rambling like a goat trail past the big houses of the city’s well to do.
Juanita began to relax; this woman wasn’t a jumper. “So can we talk a little? My name’s Juanita. I’m a crisis counselor. If you’re in trouble, I can help. What’s your name?” The woman murmured something that sounded like Tuh-kay, and Juanita decided not to attempt it. “What brings you out this morning?”
The woman took her hand. “You do.”
Juanita smiled and squeezed it back. “We’re here because we care.”
“Not ‘we,’” said the woman, “you. You can’t do this anymore, you know.”
“I can’t what?”
“Juanita, you have your finger on the wheel. I cannot be parceled out like this. I am random.”
Juanita turned away from the West Hills toward the woman, trying to gauge meaning from her expression, but it shifted from second to second. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? Think of a roulette wheel. What would your bosses do if...let’s say if they knew you put your finger on the roulette wheel to make it stop where you wished it to from time to time, not where they wished it?”
Allegories of the Tarot Page 10