by A. M. Manay
November laid out the tools of her trade on the table in the center of her tent: a five-minute hourglass, a sketchpad, some sharp pencils, a bowl of sand, and a lamp. She worked barefoot. Contact with the dirt floor helped to ground her, just as the bowl of sand somehow cleansed her palate between clients, washing away the last vision and making way for the next.
Her costume was a white, Grecian gown she’d found for three dollars at a secondhand store. In the dim light, her fair skin and wavy, inky hair made her ghostly and beautiful rather than sickly and pale as she appeared by daylight. Her cash box sat at her feet, to be turned in to Mike for the count as soon as the gates were closed. A lamp and a fan were plugged into a generator outside; early fall in the San Joachin Valley was brutally hot. She opened the flap of her tent, put out her sign, and sat down to wait.
She hoped it would be quiet that night. The first few days in Tracy had been ridiculously busy. She’d had lines halfway down the midway due to her reputation from the year before. This was their second-to-last night, and usually this was when the crowds started dying down. She was exhausted, though she was glad to have a little more money to put by for the winter, assuming she could keep it away from her mother. In theory, her dad’s death benefits from the force should easily get them through a few months in a trailer park in Nevada, but money went through Julia’s hands like water.
During the day, November's business was light, and she was grateful for some cool weather for once as she did math problems and sketched. Work began to pick up at sundown, after Neil had delivered her a dubiously nutritious lunch of a hot dog and some cotton candy.
Things quieted down for a spell, so she broke out her new textbook: Modern Physics from A to Z. She was just finishing the first chapter when she heard her next visitor.
“I hope we’re not interrupting you,” came an amused voice at the entry.
Oops. She could usually hear her clients’ footsteps or see their shadows on the canvas in time to hide her books, but these people had been completely silent. “Not at all,” she said quickly, then stopped short as she looked up to see her visitors. They're here, she told herself, disbelieving.
Her heart came into her mouth as the blood left her face. Her whole body shook once in sympathy as her world reordered itself. Finally, the Oracle remembered to breathe again.
She began to put her book away, carefully marking the page, pressing the bookmark into place, struggling to find calm and control in the ritual. She made herself look back up at them, willing her face not to show her fear.
November forced a smile and welcomed death through her door.