Windmaster's Bane

by Tom Deitz

  “Come in, my children,” she said in a tone that left no room for argument. The accent was thick but not entirely convincing—something between Bela Lugosi and the Bronx, New York.

  The three friends looked at each other and shrugged in unison.

  “How much?” Alec asked pragmatically. “It doesn’t say out here.”

  The woman shrugged in turn, jingling a good ten pounds of silver-and-turquoise jewelry on her arms. “That depends on your fortune: no more than five dollars, no less than one.”

  Alec hesitated, shot a troubled look at David. “You got an extra five?”

  “If I need to, yes.”

  Alec sighed and nodded.

  “Okay,” David said finally. “We’ll all come, then.”

  “Yes, you will,” the fortuneteller agreed. She turned and led the way into her tent.

  “So much for a tall, dark fortuneteller,” Alec muttered into David’s ear.

  They found themselves in a small, square waiting room whose walls were hung with faded and stained red velvet drapes probably pirated from some defunct theater. A cheap fake-Persian carpet covered the canvas floor, and there were several low couches upholstered in red plush and heavily scarred with cigarette bums.

  The fortuneteller gestured for them to sit down, and studied each of them for a long time, one hand cupping her chin, index finger extended along her jawline. She looked longest at David, then sighed and pointed at Alec. “You first.”

  Alec held back. “Can’t we all go together?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “I don’t want to confuse the spirits. Now come—or not. Will you know your fate, or hide from it?”

  Alec rose reluctantly and the woman motioned him through a slit in the back wall of the room.

  David scratched his ring hand unconsciously; it was itching even though the ring now hung upon a cheap silver-colored chain around his neck.

  “Well, she’s not your typical gypsy, anyway,” whispered Liz. “I wonder if she reads palms or uses cards, or crystal balls, or the Tarot, or what.”

  “Or Second Sight?” David suggested quietly.

  “What’s that?”

  “The ability to see things not in this world. Some people in Scotland and Ireland have it, or claim to—the people who claim to have seen the Faeries, among others.”

  “Oh.”

  Before David could speak further, the slit parted and Alec came back through, peering doubtfully at his palm.

  “So what did she tell you?” Liz asked, looking up curiously.

  “She said for you to go next—by name, as a matter of fact, which I find interesting—and beyond that I will say no more until we’re clear of here and can all tell the tale one time and get it over with.”

  Liz got up and rather self-consciously passed through the slit.

  Alec sat opposite David, hands draped between his knees, his gaze tracing the pattern of the rug.

  “Very strange,” he said. “Very strange.”

  David didn’t say anything at all.

  Alec continued to stare at the rug. “I don’t think Liz likes me,” he said after a while.

  “I think she has another problem with you, but that’s discussion for another time and place. Let’s not talk about it now, agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Alec said glumly. He looked at David. “So let’s see the famous ring.”

  David sighed, fingering the chain. “Famous or infamous, I’m not sure which.”

  “Come on, let’s see it.”

  David grimaced and reluctantly fished out the ring. Alec took it on his palm and examined it carefully, but said nothing. He looked a little puzzled.

  “You sure you got this from a girl?”

  “That’s what I need to talk to you about,” David replied as he secreted the chain.

  “So talk.”

  “I don’t quite know where to begin . . .”

  “Next,” Liz interrupted as she came through the curtain, a vaguely troubled expression clouding her face.

  David got up and parted the barrier, aware at once of the difference in temperature between the muggy outer room and the cooler inner one, aware as well of the overpowering scent of incense faintly mixed with cigarette smoke, and of the dim light cast by four dark blue candles that stood on knobby brass pedestals in the corners of the chamber. But most of all he was aware that he could hear absolutely nothing of the outside world. He might have been transported to deep space or under water, he thought. He felt the ring warm slightly on his chest.

  The fortuneteller sat behind a small round table draped with black velvet on which, true to expectation, squatted a bowling-ball-sized globe of some transparent substance. Oddly, it did not look like plastic, or really like glass. Half-seen shapes seemed to crawl about within it when David looked at it, making his eyes itch. Next to the ball was stacked a worn deck of Tarot cards with the top card turned face up to show the Magician. Lying on the velvet beside it was the Knight of Wands.

  “Come in David . . . Sullivan, I believe?” The woman closed her eyes and extended a plump hand in his direction, as if hoping to find confirmation written on the air in braille.

  “Right!” cried David, genuinely surprised, as he seated himself on a small stool opposite her. “How did you know?”

  “I’m a fortuneteller, I’m supposed to know.” The Bela Lugosi part of the accent had faded. She paused, staring more intently at David, then nodded. “For you there will be no charge.”

  “Why not?—out of curiosity, I mean?”

  The woman threw up her hands theatrically, setting the jewelry to jingling again. “Is it not obvious, my son, that it is I who should seek to learn from you? It is many years since I have met one with the Sight.”

  “How could you tell?” David gasped incredulously.

  The woman’s manner of speech began to change imperceptibly, as if she drew from parts of herself she did not normally let awaken.

  “Your eyes . . . they do not merely look, they see; and they have a gleam of silver about them, if you know how to look for it. I have not the Sight myself, but my mother did. It was she who taught me to recognize the signs.”

  “But I don’t even know how I got it. Everything was normal until two days ago, and then . . . all hell broke loose.”

  “Oh? Tell me.”

  “I don’t know if I should—you’d probably think I’m crazy.”

  “If I had not wanted to know, I would not have asked.”

  “I’ve seen . . . things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “A . . . a . . . castle on a mountaintop, for one.”

  “But not the main thing?”

  “No.”

  “And you’ve never seen such things before?”

  “No, never . . . I would have liked to, though, and that’s what bothers me. I have such a strong imagination that I thought . . .”

  “You were wrong. You have the Sight, and you have acquired it recently, and there are only a very few ways that could have happened without your intending it.” She looked at David, read the unasked question on his face, and said, “Wait here.”

  The woman rose and disappeared through a rift in the curtains opposite the entrance. In a moment she returned with an ancient brown book, as weathered as an old leaf, and almost as small.

  “This is The Secret Common-Wealth,” she said. “My mother gave it to me, and she had it from her mother, and so on back to Scotland. I have no son, nor am likely to have one, now. You are the one to take the book. It may contain answers, some answers, to your questions. Whether what it contains is true or not, I cannot say, but my mother believed it, and she did not lie.”

  David took the book hesitantly, overawed by the magnificence of such a gift from a total stranger. “I can’t accept this!” he whispered.

  “You must. Your fate may depend on it.”

  Reluctantly David secreted the volume in the pocket of his windbreaker. “I have to confess,” he said, feeling rather awk
ward and squirming on the stool a little, “that I thought you were a fraud . . .” He cleared his throat. “Well, actually, I thought that all carnival fortunetellers were frauds, but I’m not so sure about you now.”

  “Oh, I am a fraud,” the woman said matter-of-factly, seemingly undisturbed by David’s bluntness. “Certainly a fraud compared to you, if you chose to use your power—which I see you do not. But most people have so little fortune—real fortune, that is—that there is nothing for even the gifted to see. All they want to know about is love and death and money, so that’s what I tell them. But one in ten thousand, maybe, has a fortune that I can read, and such are you.”

  “What about Liz and Alec?”

  “Their fortunes are bound up with yours. They can tell you what I told them, if they so choose.” She pulled a cigarette out of a silver case behind the table but did not light it.

  “What about my fortune? Can you tell me anything?”

  The woman leaned forward. “Let me see your hand.”

  David laid his right hand on the table.

  “No, not that one, the left one—that is the hand where your fate is written.”

  David laid his left hand palm up on the black velvet beside the crystal ball.

  “Can I see the ring as well?” the woman asked after a moment.

  “What ring?” David was at once suspicious.

  “This finger wants to wear a ring.”

  Reluctantly David slipped the chain over his head and placed the ring on the table, where—to his surprise—it glowed softly.

  Abruptly the fortuneteller picked up the crystal ball and set it on the floor, as if fearful of some reaction between the two. A long time passed as she looked at David’s hand, but not once did she touch it. Neither did she touch the ring. Finally she spoke.

  “It’s all threes and sixes,” she said, “and one. You are one of the three; the three are stronger than one, yet the one is mightiest of the three. Six people you love, and those six people will cause you pain for pain you bring on them. Three weeks—the next three weeks—will see you tested—a testing such as you have never known before.”

  She paused then and studied his hand more carefully, following each line to its termination, examining each mound and hollow, her red-lacquered nail always a hair’s breadth above his flesh. “Three years may pass, and maybe three again, before all is done and you may rest, your labors ended. But remember, David, that among these threes and sixes you are the one, prime and indivisible, and thus strong. You will have to find the pattern, but if you can pass the next three weeks and remain as you are, you will grow stronger. . . . But, David Sullivan, if you choose the wrong road at the end, there may be no more roads for you at all.”

  David felt his throat go suddenly dry. “You mean I might die?” he managed to croak.

  The woman shrugged. “Death is always a possibility. He sits beside all of us, close or far. He is everywhere, if you look, but you are untrained in the looking, and I caution you not to. Yet you will see Death sitting beside someone close to you in less than two weeks’ time, of that I am certain. That is all I can tell you.”

  The fortuneteller picked up the ring by its chain, lowered it into David’s palm, and folded his hand around it. Then she took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Thank you for letting me meet you,” she said. “Long has it been since I met one like you, and never in this short-sighted country. As I have told you, I ask no payment . . . but if you would touch your ring to the crystal here, I would be grateful.” She stooped to retrieve the glassy sphere. “It won’t hurt the ring and it might help the ball. Maybe then I’ll be able to see something in it besides cheating husbands and new cars.” She lit her cigarette then and, after David had complied with her request, winked at him one last time before waving him away with her free hand, her metal-linked bracelets tinkling softly.

  David reached out impulsively, clasped her pudgy hand, and kissed it with unpracticed chivalry. “Thanks,” he said. “If you’re here next year, I’ll return the book, I promise.”

  The woman smiled. “If I am here next year, maybe I’ll accept it from you. But for now, take it, read it, study it. It may be your only strength. Now go! Compare notes with your friends.”

  “Well? Well?” Alec asked eagerly as David reemerged into the red-hung room. The sound of rain had faded.

  “Well?” echoed Liz. “You sure were in there a long time, compared to us. What were you doing?”

  “Talking shop,” David replied a little too lightly. “I was getting a few pointers on lycanthropy.”

  “Huh?” queried Liz.

  “Werewolves and such,” Alec muttered.

  “No, not really,” continued David. “But let’s not talk here.”

  They went outside, blinking into the glare of gaudy lights. The rain had indeed stopped, and the crowds were tentatively feeling their way back to the rides. The rich soup of mud was even worse than before.

  “Ugh!” said Liz. “We gotta walk through that?”

  “Let’s take our shoes off; we can wash our feet somewhere later, before we leave.”

  “Ugh,” Liz said again.

  “Why Liz, don’t you like the feel of mud squishing up between your toes?” teased Alec.

  “I’ll squish mud up against your nose if you don’t shut up, McLean!” Liz flared, and then broke into laughter over her inadvertent rhyme.

  David bent over, untied his sneakers, and picked them up. “I’m gonna take mine off anyway; anybody rides in my car has gotta have clean shoes.” He stalked off, leaving Alec and Liz frantically pulling laces in the mud.

  Fifteen minutes later they had found a place where they could talk: the unused chemistry lab of the high school building. Alec had been a lab assistant the year before and had a key no one had asked him to return, so they had crept in and were now sitting on the floor below window level, the room illuminated only by a blue mercury vapor lamp outside, exactly like the one at David’s house.

  “So spill it,” Alec burst out.

  “There’s really nothing to tell,” David said. “She just told me we’d be seeing a lot of each other for the next few weeks or so, and that our fates were bound up together.”

  David didn’t want to lie to his friends, but he knew he couldn’t tell them all the truth, at least not yet. This time, though, he had had time to decide on his ploy during their walk up to the lab.

  Alec’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is that all? You talked longer than that.”

  “All of substance; she told me some garbage about marriage and death and cars, but nothing very specific, as you’d expect. What did she tell you guys?”

  “There you go again, David,” grumbled Alec, “not being straight with us, I don’t think. But I guess I’ll have to live with it. I think she told you a lot more than you’re saying—serious stuff, too, judging by your expression when you came out.” Alec tapped the metal leg of a lab stool before continuing. “All she told me was to help you during the next few weeks as much as I could—that you were under a sore trial but didn’t know it yet, and would need my help.”

  Liz looked up in surprise. “That’s almost exactly what she told me—that three were mightier than one, but one was mightiest of the three, and that one wouldn’t survive without the other two. That was weird.”

  David looked straight into her eyes and smiled. “All the same crap.”

  “What did you expect from a fortuneteller?”

  “I dunno. Never been to one.”

  “I’m not going back, either,” said Liz. “Gave me the creeps, but I think she was serious. It didn’t sound like what I expected to hear. It just felt . . . right.”

  “Yes, it did,” Alec nodded.

  “You’ll get no argument from me there,” agreed David. “Let’s go wash this mud off and go home. I think we can use the restrooms up here.”

  It was very late when David finally got back home. Nobody was up, he was relieved to find. At last he had some time alone. He contri
ved a quick snack and crawled into bed with the fortuneteller’s book. He needed some answers, and he needed them quick.

  David looked at the cover curiously: The Secret CommonWealth, Or A Treatise Displaying The Chief Curiosities Among The People Of Scotland As They Are In Use To This Day. It was a brittle old book, very thin, and written in an archaic style that was sometimes difficult for him to make out—not surprising, when he learned that it had originally been composed in 1692. The author—a Reverend Robert Kirk—had been a Scottish minister who had become so interested in the local fairylore that he had written the first important study of the fair-folk—apparently coming to believe in them himself.

  David flipped the pages rapidly; halfway through he found part of what he had been looking for:

  There be odd solemnities at investing a man with the priviledges of the whol Misterie of this Second Sight. He must run a tedder of hair (which bound a Corps to the Beir) in a Helix about his midle from end to end, then bow his head downward: (as did Elijah I King 18.42.) and look back thorow his legs untill he see a funerall advance, till the people cross two Marches; or look thus back thorow a hole where was a knot of fir. But if the wind change points while the hair tedder is ty’d about him, he is in peril of his Lyfe. The usuall method for a curious person to get a transient sight of this otherwise invisible crew of Subterraneans (if impotently and over-rashly sought) is to put his foot on the Seers foot, and the Seers hand is put on the Inquirers head, who is to look over the Wizards right shoulder (which hes an ill appearance, as if by this ceremonie, an implicite surrender were made of all betwixt the Wizard’s foot and his hand ere the person can be admitted a privado to the art.)

  Then will he see a multitude of Wights like furious hardie men flocking to him hastily from all quarters, as thick as the atomes in the air, which are no nonentities or phantasm, creatures, proceeding from ane affrighted apprehensione confused or crazed sense, but Realities, appearing to a stable man in his awaking sense and enduring a rational tryal of their being. . . .