Allegories of the Tarot

by Ribken, Annetta

  With the audience still enthralled by the dragon and the horses, Khasar turned his burning eyes to the girl and her hand clenched on mine. Still, we were both powerless: I removed the chain and she walked out to him. The boys moved apart while the girl stood before Khasar an entire, breath-holding minute. This time he said nothing. He only nodded, and she lifted her arms, the shroud falling away and pooling, discarded, on the trampled grass.

  The entirety of her body was inked the blue of a sky at the edge of twilight, contrasting with the pale yellow mass of the star incised in the center of her back. It looked like she was a vessel carved so that an internal flame blazed outwards. The rays of the star were elongated, and edged in black, extending high between her shoulder blades, across her ribs, and down almost to her buttocks. The rest of her was spotted with smaller, gilded stars of eight points that seemed to float above her skin.

  “The Star,” he whispered, and let the word hang a moment. "L’Etoile Flamboyant, the Burning Flame, the Light that Illuminates. Imagined and sought for in the world-that-was, here only for you, Gentlemen and Ladies.”

  Cutting through the wonder, a gasp. Khasar had broken the bargain implicit between entertainer and entertained, ignored the tender, implicit bargain between the con man and the rube. No one at the carnival mentioned, ever, the world-that-was. Knowing this, he made a sign and the lamps cut out. In the sudden twilight, the Star glowed, pulsing, a fragile heart brutally exposed.

  Khasar’s last words dropped, stones in the gut of a river. “Never will you see anything so rare.”

  A snap of fabric, and the Star vanished; the light came on, making everyone blink, and Khasar and the children were gone. I pitied the acrobats who tumbled and contorted afterwards, trying to make that dazzled, moon-struck crowd smile. Before, when Khasar’s act was finished, the audience was pleasantly fearful and craved the sex-tinged refresher the acrobats could provide. Tonight they had gone inside themselves and nothing could coax them out, and the performers had the bewildered air of a whore trying to pleasure a dead man. After, Hobart declared Khasar and the Painted Children would be the last act, assuming anyone came back.

  It was even odds whether we would fill every space the next night, or be run out. Perhaps if we battened on the green of a single township, they would have none of us. But here, with settlements scattered around the edges of a new and alien sea, high on the hills beside ruins, we’ve become some sort of hybrid of circus and temple, and Khasar’s Painted Children the vessels of a dreadful and compelling sacrament.

  ***

  A path wound down the cliff, and at its base a trickle of pure water poured into the brackish sea. I led the horses down, two by two twice a day to water them, so they didn’t foul the sweet water higher up. Hobart’s had camped beside the drowned city about a week, and I was leading two mares to drink and bathe a bruised fetlock when I spied a small shadow between them. I didn’t know which of them had slipped from Khasar’s golden chain, and I hunched my twisted back further so I wouldn’t see. As the horses sucked water I heard one of them whicker, and a small splash, and I did look then, to see a small dark figure arrowing, swift towards the center of the sea.

  I halted up the path and wondered which it was, and how Khasar would balance his act between Star and Dragon, Dragon and Horse, Horse and Star. On the green in the center of the triangle of tent, obelisk, and three-domed ruin, the soul-eater stood snarling at Hobart, the two remaining children head-bowed beside him. I just registered that they were the Star—Le’Etoile, he called her—and the Horse-Boy when there was a great roar and a shadow that struck at the same time. Something writhed as it rose behind the ruins, coil upon green-gold coil, and a head twice the size of my tiger’s cage.

  The mares screamed and reared, and it took all I had to tug one down. The other pulled away and ran for the brown hills and the broken teeth there. We never saw her again. I could hear the other horses screaming, and prayed that their tethers held and that they didn’t break themselves apart against the ropes.

  Suspended in the sky and twisting upon itself like an eel in water was Leviathan, Serpent of the World. It had no wings but flew nonetheless, as if the air was a thick medium it had mastered. Its head was half mouth, its mouth was half fangs, each like an ivory dagger, and its flame-gold eyes glared at Khasar. Swift as a sparrow it lunged at him, the ferocious maw wide. Hobart jump-stumbled to the side, sprawling on the grass.

  Swifter than a sparrow, Khasar drew a knife and grasped the Star’s thin arm, pulling her to him and the point of the knife to her throat in one fluid motion. The point dipped into the skin beneath her jaw, and I imagined I saw—at too great a distance to see—a welling drop of blood that was not red. He never took his eyes off the Dragon.

  The beast stopped, mouth open, spanning the soul-eater from head to waist. A neat snap and Khasar would be cut in two—just a pair of legs and an abbreviated waist, spouting scarlet—but the girl would vanish down her brother’s throat. The Dragon drew back, just a fraction, impossibly suspended and the heat of its eyes blazing just as furiously.

  Water, I thought. The water had hatched this creature as if the boy was a mere egg, the tattoo a shadow of what was inside.

  The Star said something—softly, but we were all dead silent and frozen, even the mare in my grip. We’d never heard any of them speak, and it mattered little now we did, for it didn’t even sound like a human speech—more like the popping of a broken branch, or the sizzle of a stone falling from the sky to earth.

  The Dragon’s mouth snapped shut and the head tilted toward her. She made that sound again. Khasar didn’t move, except to tighten his grip on her arm. She didn’t look at him.

  The Dragon recoiled, segment by segment until it hovered again over the ruined observatory. Its golden glare bathed all of us, one by one, as if it considered a hostage it could take in its turn. But we knew Khasar loved none. Love is a rare thing these days; we use each other to live, to grasp us in midair like the catcher in the trapeze act. I am loved only by the tiger.

  If the Dragon devoured any of us, Khasar and Hobart would not even shrug. With a low growl that rattled the earth, the Dragon shot away like an arrow. In passing, the tip of its tail flicked a dome, crumbling it like sugar.

  The Night Circus was cancelled that evening, while Khasar regrouped. By some miracle, we lost no more horses, although Hobart, angry at the loss of the evening’s takings, cuffed me hard for losing the mare and my ear trickled into the hay all that night.

  ***

  I don’t know how the Dragon escaped, but I saw Khasar leading his two remaining children in their shrouds to the tent, saw the Star stop suddenly, like a sleepwalker awaking, saw her dart forward and tug the gold chain away from the boy. Khasar whirled about but was slower with a grasping hand than with a knife, and the Horse Boy danced away, found sure footing, and ran.

  At first I thought he was running to me, but then I realized the cliff was open at my back and he would pass me by on the way to that oblivion. Khasar uttered a word I didn’t know, except I knew it was terrible, and gave chase, leaving the girl standing alone. In my mind’s eye I soared over the scene, as the Dragon might, seeing the boy, a tiny dot, Khasar, a bigger dot streaking after, and many other dots, at the edge of comprehension, beginning to converge on the boy.

  His legs pistoned like any other horse, faster and faster, and even after he went over the lip of the cliff they stuttered in the air, carrying him even further. The air gave beneath him and he fell, even as the horses burst forth from his body, even as the Dragon burst forth from the other boy’s body, deep in the sea. Peering over the precipice, I could see how it should have been as hooves, flaring nostrils, thrashing manes hatched from his chest, his back—as he landed they would’ve galloped off in all four directions, lost like my poor mare yesterday.

  But the fall was too short, perhaps—no time to emerge fully. Or, like real horses, the fall was too much. The rest of the carnival were at the clifftop, and when he hit the g
round everyone drew in breath, a quick hiss, to ward off the pain of an expected blow. I could almost see the earth bend beneath him like a rubber sheet. I clapped my hands over my ears as the horses, four of them, bay, brown, black and golden, half-hatched from his body, writhed and screamed.

  Khasar watched, turned, and marched back to the Star, who made no attempt to run herself. He stood before her a long time, and when he moved his right hand there was a noise from the rest of the carnival, a small movement forward. Even carnie folk, at the edge of extinction, have their limits, and he stopped, for once uncertain.

  He must have done something, though, because that night as he led her, solo, to the tent she wore a mask of pulped and gilded paper. Long spines of stripped feathers grew from it, a shimmering blob of feather left at each tip, and gave her the look of an exotic insect. Through the eyeholes, a black shiny glitter made her look less human, more like a bird. But also, if you knew where to look, skin bruised purple-black, so it looked like her face was painted. I didn’t see the show but I heard the rubes leaving, and swearing that L’Etoile Flamboyant had risen in the air, to the apex of the tent, and showered down gold.

  I was squatting by the tiger’s cage, thick in its cat musk, when Khasar and the Star left the tent. There was a barrel-fire, for warmth and light, in the center of the green, and I saw Khasar slide between the girl and the orange glow. I have my own stupidity to blame for not seeing it sooner. I thought Khasar kept the Children away from the campfires so no one would see them close in the firelight, but it was the girl he was keeping from fire—the open flame of the bonfire, the contained metal heat of the warming bins. Her bruised eyes beneath the thick paper of her masked darted, openly longing, craving the flames. No, not the flame. The glowing coal beneath.

  I moved as fast I ever did before, in the world-that-was, and knocked the barrel over. Flame and embers spilled along the ground like gold coins, and burning wraiths flared through the air. Startled for once, Khasar dodged one, and lost track of the girl, who bent to grasp a glowing coal that tumbled to her feet.

  The outside of the coal was ash-black, and the living heart of it glowed where her fingers smudged the ash away. She lifted it to her lips and bit. Split apart, the coal blazed yellow at the core, red on the outside, and I waited for her scream as her lips burned and her tongue shriveled.

  Water for the Dragon, Air and Earth for the poor Horse, and Fire for the Star. It was like Khasar, in his arrogance, to try to tame the elements.

  He reached for her but she blazed forth, her mask and shroud gone in an instant. He recoiled, arms over his face, as she became too bright to look on, and the shadows she cast on the ground were so black they were voids, and one could trip inside and fall forever. The earth could never contain such light, and she rose, higher and higher, the deadly shadows shifting beneath her. Higher past the obelisk, the top of the tent, higher than the Dragon had squatted in the air, higher and higher until the sky blazed with a new star, brighter than the moon.

  ***

  The carny folk knew their best chance lay with Hobart, so no one stopped Khasar when he came at me to break me the final time. I made a play at pushing him away, at protecting my head, but once he beat me to my knees, I knew it was no use. The blows came again and again, until I could smell nothing but my own blood. When he stopped, I lay in a red-blaze blindness, hearing the tents come down, equipment being packed away, the horses laden. It’s easy enough, after all, to find someone to take care of the horses. Outside my swollen eyelids, I could feel the heat of starlight, so bright the carnival could break camp and travel.

  It was quiet after they left. All I could hear was the stream trickling to the salty sea, and something that might be the hiss of L’Etoile Flamboyant. But presently there was a padding of four feet, and a cat’s rank smell, and the warmth of the tiger beside me.

  ***

  I know when the sun rises and the Star fades the tiger will kill me, and there is a melancholy pleasure in the idea of the end of the waiting and the consummation. I hope afterwards the beast will not be lonely, and will find someone else to love.

  I lie content, with my blood congealing on the ground, the tiger dozing beside me while the new star blazes overhead.

  ***

  Samantha Henderson lives in Covina, California by way of England, South Africa, Illinois and Oregon. Her short fiction and poetry have been published in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit and Weird Tales, and reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Science Fiction, Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, Steampunk Revolutions and the Mammoth Book of Steampunk. She is the co-winner of the 2010 Rhysling Award for speculative poetry, and is the author of the Forgotten Realms novel Dawnbringer. For more information, check out her website at samanthahenderson.com.

  ***

  THE MOON

  The Moon

  By J.H. Sked

  She went to see Jess after the doctor broke the news. She’d known it was back before the tests, before the call from the surgery. She’d been here before, had done the chemo and the drugs and endured the operation to cut the monster out. She'd had Arthur then, and the kids were still in school. She'd had no choice but to fight.

  “I can arrange chemotherapy sessions to start from next week.” The doctor said, peering at his notes.

  “I don’t want chemo,” she told him.

  “Anna—”

  “I’m nearly seventy,” she said. “Just how much extra time would this buy me?”

  He’d said nothing, just blinked at her miserably.

  “How long?” She asked, gently, because she felt a sudden flash of pity. Being a white knight was useless when your shield was rejected.

  “Three months, maybe,” he said.

  ***

  Jess lived in a neat cottage just off the main street, with several cats and a rabbit, Mr. Thistles, who ruled all of them with an iron paw.

  Anna rapped smartly on the door and opened it.

  “Tea’s on the table,” Jess called. “I hope you brought biscuits, woman!”

  Anna grinned and slipped the packet of ginger snaps out of her purse.

  The beaded curtain tinkled softly as Jess stepped through it, still in the gaudy robe she wore for clients.

  “Nobody wants a fortune told by someone wearing a track suit and sneakers,” she’d once told Anna mournfully.

  She stopped just past the doorway and tilted her head at her friend. For a second, Anna caught a glimpse of the girl who’d swapped lunches with her during recess so many years ago.

  “Oh, damn it all.” Jess said, and Anna burst into tears.

  ***

  “I can’t heal this,” Jess told her.

  “I know,” Anna said. Although Jess was a good healer, and a strong one, she’d said the same thing years ago, when Anna had her first bout with the monster.

  “I can take some of the pain, when it starts getting bad.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said, and felt a huge amount of relief. The pain was what she most feared.

  “You’ll come then, when it gets bad?”

  “I’ll come,” she said, and patted Jess on the hand. The skin felt soft and fragile.

  ***

  She went to Jess the first time for the pain as summer turned, flirting with autumn in a rush of gold and bronze.

  Jess worked over her for nearly an hour, and they had tea afterwards. Anna brought raspberry creams and they giggled like schoolgirls at Mr. Thistles herding the cats from room to room.

  She visited again just before Halloween, now well past the time her doctor had expected to read her funeral notice. This time, Jess worked for close to two hours, and there were bourbon creams with tea but little laughter; both of them simply too exhausted for mirth.

  In mid-November, Jess came to her. Anna stopped her after an hour.

  “It’s helped, I promise. But killing yourself won’t stop this.”

  Jess sighed and sat down. “The morphine’s not touching it at all now, is it?”
<
br />   Anna shook her head. “I think I’m nearly done, Jess,” she said quietly. She nodded at the elderly tortie washing a paw on the window. “The kids wanted to take Mitzi back to London, but I couldn’t bear to give her up. Will you take her in, when the time comes?”

  “I’ll take her, pet. Don’t worry about Mitzi, she’ll fit in with my bunch just fine.” She patted Anna’s hand. “I have something for you.”

  Anna perked up. She’d almost drowsed off while Jess hovered over her, but she could feel the warmth left from the healing drain away, chased out by the thing wrapped around her organs.

  “Better than morphine?” She smiled, and Jess nodded.

  “Oh, I think so.”

  Jess hauled her handbag off the floor and drew out a slim box.

  It looked like an old-fashioned cigarette case, with a steel-blue pearlescent finish and silver trim.

  A tap of the silver button on the side and the lid swung silently up.

  “Oh!” Anna exclaimed, and her eyes widened.

  “What? What happened?”

  “Didn’t you smell it? The most incredible perfume, Jess.” Her pupils were huge. “It was wonderful.”

  Jess looked at her and smiled. The pain-lines bracketing Anna’s mouth had relaxed a little.

  “What is it?” Anna peered into the case.

  It was lined with midnight blue velvet. She saw odd little flashes of light nestled in the material. Anna squinted a little, but couldn’t make out the stones. Some sort of crystal or diamanté, she guessed. There was a pattern to those bright little pinpoints, but she was too tired to figure it out.

  There was a single Tarot card nestled in the velvet on one side of the case. Wafer-thin, it gleamed against the velvet. The whites shimmered opalescent, the yellows and oranges gold and copper and bronze. An amethyst scorpion crawled out of sapphire waves. The grass flickered emerald.