Allegories of the Tarot

by Ribken, Annetta

  The card name was written in jet at the bottom.

  “The Moon,” Anna said. “Jess, this is beautiful. Can I—may I touch it?”

  “It’s yours,” Jess said.

  Anna reached into the case with shaking fingers and lifted out the card.

  It was a little smaller than the usual Tarot cards Jess used, and fit quite nicely along the length of Anna’s hand.

  It lay there sparkling for a few seconds, and then something like a sigh filled the room. The card cracked into three sections and Anna squawked in dismay.

  “It’s okay, pet,” Jess said quickly. “Put the top two sections back in the case, and I’ll tell you how to use it.”

  Anna rested the pieces back on the velvet. One of her fingers brushed against a winking diamond, and turned numb with cold. She stuck the tip in her mouth and raised her eyebrows at her old friend.

  “You can use the first piece whenever you like,” Jess said. “It will give you three weeks, pain-free. Time enough to do something you’ve always wanted, but put off until later.”

  Anna looked at it. This piece held the scorpion, and the waves lapping against the edge of emerald grass.

  “How?” She asked.

  “You have to eat it.”

  “Will you stay with me?” She could have sworn the scorpion waved a shiny claw at her.

  Jess gripped her fingers. “Always. But listen, Anna, because once you take the first piece you have to take the others when the time comes. It’s the price of using this.”

  “You told me once that large magic always came with a price,” Anna mused.

  “Sometimes the price is worth it,” Jess said.

  “What will the other pieces do?”

  “The middle part will give you three days,” Jess said. “The last one will give you three hours, but there won’t be any pain afterward.”

  “You mean it will kill me.”

  “Yes.”

  They sat for a while in silence.

  “Three weeks with no pain?” Anna said eventually.

  “Yes,” Jess answered.

  “When do I have to take the other two?”

  “That’s your choice,” Jess said. “But once you take the first, you won’t pass until all of them are done.”

  “Pass!” Anna snorted. “What a silly word that is. It’s not like I’m writing a test, is it? I’m hardly likely to fail. Call it what it is, Jess.”

  “Die, then,” Jess whispered. “You won’t die until you’ve taken all three pieces. That’s also part of the price.”

  At Anna’s sharp look, she sighed. “Death isn’t always a bad thing, Anna.”

  “I know,” Anna said, thinking about the little pile of morphine tablets gathering in the bottle. She’d started collecting them a few days ago when they stopped working as well; skipping the scheduled dose unless the pain was so bad she had to take one. “I know.”

  She reached for the first piece, gleaming on the table between them.

  “I always wanted to see Greece,” she murmured shyly. “Will you come with me?”

  “I’d love to,” Jess told her, and Anna placed the scorpion in its sapphire bed into her mouth.

  The taste exploded over her tongue. Honey and wine and sunlight. Anna felt a single sharp prick—the scorpion, planting its sting in her tongue—and then it vanished in the warmth spinning through her body. It rushed through her veins, travelled to her hands, to the feet she’d thought would never be warm again, to her womb and liver and heart and groin. Anna cried out, once, head thrown back and heart pounding, and when she could think again, she found Jess gaping at her.

  “Oh, my. That’s been a while,” Anna said. She was blushing furiously.

  “Did you just—”

  “I most definitely did.” Anna drew in a deep breath. “Is that going to happen every time?”

  “No idea,” Jess steepled her fingers together and looked at Anna over them. “I didn’t know it would happen this time. How are you feeling?”

  “Book the tickets, Jess,” she said. “We’re visiting the Parthenon.”

  ***

  They saw the Parthenon, and so many ancient temples they blurred into one. They drank wine and ate hugely at the little tavernas they stumbled over, and daringly dipped into the bright blue sea sparkling under the Grecian sun.

  In mid-December, Anna found herself contemplating the little blue tray again. The effect of the card didn’t taper away; it stopped. She’d taken the first piece with that glorious sweetness at four in the afternoon, and exactly three weeks later at four the pain slammed back into her.

  Jess had warned her. They’d been back from their holiday for two days, and she was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for it, expecting it; and still it bent her over double, trying not to scream. For a few seconds her vision pin-wheeled and she had a momentary hope of passing out. Then pain filled the world, and she clutched at the tabletop, not realizing until much later that she’d peeled back two of the fingernails on her left hand.

  When she could finally move again, she reached out with trembling fingers and took the pills waiting for her on the table. Her seat was damp; at some point during the monster re-announcing its presence in her body she’d wet herself.

  Anna sat and waited for the morphine to work, looking at the sun-kissed skin on her hands and crying quietly.

  ***

  She didn’t use the next piece immediately. She found keeping the lid open at night meant she slept easier—the nights she let the perfume into her room meant nights she only woke up once to take her morphine.

  ***

  In December she booked a train ticket to London. Jess booked a taxi and got her onto the train, and she sat very still in her seat for the two hours it took to reach Euston station. The train was quiet, but she waited for the passengers around her to collect their bags and step out of the carriage before she opened the case.

  The middle piece held two four-legged creatures. Anna thought they were a dog and a fox. The figures radiated bronze and copper against emerald grass, a shiny jet path winding between them. The fox glanced up at her and winked. The dog panted, chased its tail, then paused and stared at her.

  “Hmmph!” Anna said. She was careful not to touch the velvet inner of the case this time as she lifted the sliver out.

  She hesitated, holding it cradled in the palm of her hand, and both of the animals sat down on their haunches and waited.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and popped it into her mouth without checking for a response. She didn’t want to feel guilty for eating them, but she did. They’d guarded her sleep for weeks; it felt like discarding old friends.

  The wafer dissolved in her mouth. At first it was sweet, but it quickly turned bitter and sharp. Anna grimaced and swallowed hard. She felt something lick the inside of her cheek, felt the soft pad of tiny paws over her tongue. Her throat distended briefly as something feeling like a foxtail brushed against it.

  She swallowed again, with the bitterness of a thousand tears resting in her mouth, and the warmth she’d been praying for flooded through her body.

  Anna sighed and closed the case.

  ***

  She spent Christmas with the children, and ate too much stuffing. She played with the baby, now just starting to walk, and slept without pain in her daughter’s spare room. Every so often, she’d feel something furred rub against her from the inside, and the taste of tears gathered on the back of her tongue.

  She took the morphine pills on the train twenty-one minutes before the pain was due back just as they left London. An extra two hours with her family against possible public humiliation was worth the risk. It paid off; she was cresting the morphine wave when the beast roared to life, and she’d made very sure to use the bathroom before she got on the train. Although, when the time came she must have made some small noise, because the girl across from her looked up from her magazine.

  At her stop, Anna shuffled slowly off the platform and made her way to the pa
rking lot where Jess waited with the idling taxi.

  Jess took her home and made them both a cup of tea. Anna sipped and told her about taking the wafer, and how the baby had wrapped the dog in tinsel on Christmas morning.

  “Anna,” Jess said. “Come stay with me.” She leant forward and grasped Anna’s hands. “I don’t like you being by yourself now.”

  “I can’t be under your feet all day, Jess. And your clients—“

  “Bugger the clients!” Jess snapped. “I don’t get any bookings from now until almost February anyway, you know that. Let me help you.”

  “You have,” Anna whispered. “You already have, pet.”

  “Have I? Have I really?” Jess let go of Anna and buried her face in her hands. “Part of me thinks I haven’t helped you at all. I’m watching you fade and bloom and fade again, and it’s killing me to watch it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Anna said helplessly.

  “No.” Jess lowered her hands. “No. You must think I’m the most selfish creature, Anna. Don’t be sorry. But let me help you for this last bit, please. I’ll beg if you want me to.”

  Anna snorted at her. “You couldn’t beg if your life depended on it, woman.” She reached out and touched Jess on the arm. She could feel her warmth, emanating through the soft cardigan. Her life.

  “I’ll come. Tomorrow,” she added, looking around the little kitchen she’d spent so many years in. “I need tonight here.”

  Anna drifted slowly from room to room with Mitzi padding along behind her. Here the bedroom, where she’d lain with Arthur for forty years, and the awful time just after his passing, when she’d cried herself to sleep for months wearing his shirts. Here the children’s room, now just another spare bedroom with a white and yellow comforter and a print of Paris on the wall. Here the bathroom, with its cracking, ancient bathtub and the toilet tucked modestly into a corner. Arthur had put the plumbing in himself. The lounge was dark and tiny. She barely used it in winter; the kitchen was large, bright, and easier to keep warm.

  She sat at the table with Mitzi perched awkwardly on the seat beside her, and had a cup of tea.

  “It can’t be that hard, surely,” she told the cat. “People do it every day.”

  Mitzi yawned, showing sharp little white teeth.

  “I think I’m nearly ready.” Arthur would be waiting for her, and the little one she’d slipped at seven months. She remembered the tiny little fingers and soft skin, before they took him to the Angels Yard behind the old hospital. The church wouldn’t bury an unbaptized child, and she’d never stepped into a house of worship since.

  Mitzi would be taken care of, and she’d signed the house over to Jess. She was ready, and past ready to be free of the monster.

  She’d wait though, for the New Year. No use spoiling everyone’s Christmas.

  ***

  Two days into the New Year, Jess caught her crawling to the bathroom. There was nothing left on her frame; Jess picked her up and carried her to the toilet, then back to bed.

  Anna asked for her pills and Jess sat silently beside her and together they waited for the morning.

  “She talks to me,” Anna said, as they watched the stars fade. “The moon.”

  Both of them glanced at the slim case beside the bed.

  “What does she say?” Jess asked softly.

  “She tells me it won’t hurt. That I will dance, if I wish it, in silver light. She says...” Anna licked her lips and Jess handed her the water glass. “She says I am loved.”

  “You are,” Jess said. “You are.”

  ***

  Mitzi curled up at the foot of Anna’s bed that night and didn’t wake up.

  They held a little funeral in the back, and buried her near the roses. It was unusually warm for the season, and Jess managed to scrape a little hole for the old cat to rest in.

  Anna didn’t speak for the rest of the day.

  ***

  That evening she came slowly into the lounge, holding the case.

  “Are you sure?” Jess asked.

  Anna nodded. She’d taken nearly a handful of pills and they hadn’t done a thing. She was sure.

  It tasted of sunlight, of roses, of friendship and a warm smile.

  ***

  “Dance with me, Jess.”

  She was light and young and free, and they danced around the old couch and armchair.

  Anna broke away and twirled. She looked at Jess and smiled.

  “Love.” She said, once, clearly. Her voice filled the room.

  “Love,” Jess agreed, and watched the clock hands turn behind her friend.

  ***

  The author of Wolfsong, Blood Moon Dance, and the Blue Moon Detective series, J H Sked was born in South Africa and moved to London, England in 2003. She currently shares a flat with a long-suffering housemate, several hundred books, and a kindle, and has an on-going war with pigeons and most forms of technology.

  You can follow her misadventures at her blog jhsked.blogspot.com or chat with her on twitter @jhsked.

  ***

  THE SUN

  The Strange Case of Sal and the Solar Elixir

  By Tristan J. Tarwater

  Sal pulled her hood back, looking over the cramped chaos of the caravan's interior. The medicine man had advertised "Astronomical Remedies, Cure-Alls and Liquid Solutions" on the side of his cart and in his grandiose speech given under the shade of the oak tree in the town square. Her ma warned her against venturing too close to the man and his cart at night. Her pa laughed to himself while the tall, dark man with braided hair and a top hat spoke of the miraculous quaffs lying beyond the curtained entrance to his cart.

  But she had been crying in the copse when his orange cart had rolled past, praying to the Red Father to bring her something, anything to get out of marrying Lem. Sal heard the clink, clink, clank of the large metal bells he had tied to his cart. The sight of the white horse and the orange cart threaded through the line of trees like stitching and Sal watched and followed behind the cart, joining her family in the town square.

  Medicine men weren't to be trusted, Ma had told her. Her father said, “Any man with no family and of able body should be fighting in the Frontier War. Give husbands and fathers the chance to love on their families and plant their fields.”

  But Sal watched the man speak, holding a bottle of something in a color she hadn't ever seen before, promising vivacity, uninhibited loquaciousness, and other words Sal didn't understand but could tell were good things, things to desire in oneself.

  “I'm here to see what you've got,” Sal said, feeling nervous and quite certain it was the correct way to feel.

  The medicine man looked up from the small stove, his face shining with sweat. Sal wondered at all the shelves, boxes and bottles crammed on shelves in what seemed like a meticulous manner throughout. “What's your name, woman?” he asked. He stood up, seeming taller in the small room.

  “Sal,” she answered without stammering. That was enough. She knew better than to give strangermen her full name and this was one of the strangest she had come across in her life. But he'd come to their town and had something she wanted, at least Sal hoped.

  “Sal,” he said, and his voiced whistled. “What do you want?”

  Her mouth fell open but no words came out. What did she want? She wanted a lot of things. She wanted to get out of Green Ravine. She wanted to not have to wash clothes in the creek only to have the wind blow them into the dirt. She wanted her brother back from the Frontier War, where the plains met the forest, dark and wet and cold and full of sharp arrows and swords and guns. She wanted Lem to not want her. She wanted to walk past the field of sunflowers full of seeds and see the great nations. Miz with its spires and vast navy. Qamer with its chains and silks. To burn her apron and visit the temples of deities both alive and dead.

  “You said in your pitch you have things people don't know they want or need,” Sal said. She heard the horse snort outside, as if laughing at her. “I's hoping you could tell me.
”

  “A pitch, eh?” he asked. He smiled, looking over his items, holding his hands out towards them. “Well, Sal, I am no psychic,” he said. The way the medicine man said it made Sal think someone else was a psychic. She looked around, foolishly, no one in the room but the two of them. “You will have to help me.”

  “I'll do what I have to,” Sal said. She wished she hadn't, once she had said it. Now the man made a sound like a snort, laughing at her. “I mean to say, you can count on me. I'll tell you what you need to help me.”

  “You sound so desperate and so bold,” the medicine man said. He held one finger up, letting it pass over the boxes and bottles like an antennae, trying to pick up something. The bottles seemed to flicker with light as his finger moved over them and Sal took another step closer, to make sure she wasn't seeing things. “I hardly think you need my help,” he murmured.

  “Things ain't always what they seem,” Sal muttered back. She watched as he stopped short and turned around, crossing to the other side of the caravan and opening a cabinet that looked too big for the small space but there nonetheless. The medicine man produced a key from a chain around his neck and he opened the cabinet. Something fell out. He said something that sounded like a curse under his breath. Papers rustled and things that sounded lighter than paper rustled.

  He pulled out a box, square in shape. It was made of some kind of dark wood, the top carved with circles within circles. He placed it on the table and undid the clasp keeping it closed and raised the lid.

  Sal sucked in her breath. As he drew back the lid, light shone from inside. Within the box were the same circles, like tracks, and vials of glowing, colored liquid embedded in the dark material of the base. The odor of something burning and metallic filled the air and Sal drew closer. If she squinted hard enough, she could swear the tiny vials were moving slowly in their tracks. Did the box have some kind of mechanism in the bottom? What was this?

  The center of the box held the biggest vial. It glowed, yellow-white. The medicine man picked it up gingerly, holding it in his hand like a baby bird he didn't want to crush.

  “You can have this,” he said. “For a price.”