The Dragonfly Prophecy

by Jacquelyn Castle

  Paige and I laughed and ate our way over to the fortune-telling booths to meet up with the girls. In the middle of my love affair with my apple cider donut, Paige yanked my arm, pulling me in the direction of one of the gypsies.

  “No way,” I groaned. “You’re not making me sit through one of those stupid readings, Paige.”

  “Aw c’mon, Lex, it’ll be fun! You know, sometimes they’re right. The last one I saw read the color of my aura. She said it was pink and white.”

  “Really?” I shot. “And so what exactly does a pink and white aura mean?”

  “It means I have solid female energies and a strong divine inspiration. And a few other things that I forgot.” She laughed, but I knew how deep her New Age ideals ran. Paige was a free spirit and would have been the perfect hippie of the 1960s. Her faith lay in the crazy and bizarre, and no one remembered the last time her feet actually touched the ground. But that’s what made her so much fun to hang with. She was a weirdo.

  As soon as Paige let my arm go, something grabbed me, forcing me toward the gypsies. Not in a physical sense; it was an oddness I couldn’t explain. I stopped walking to revel in the feeling that seemed awfully strange. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. I’d never had a feeling like that, and trying to describe it would be like trying to tell a blind person what it was like to see.

  I zoned out of the conversation even more when the obvious finally screamed in my head. Paige had been right all along. There was another world, another place and maybe even another time. I’d been there. I knew there was more than what the rest of the world thought there was. Maybe these fortune-tellers knew it, too.

  “Lexi, Lex! You all right?” Paige shouted.

  “Oh, yeah,” I mumbled as I shook my head back to the here and now. “I just thought I... I want to go first.”

  “Get out, really?” She egged me on. “What gives, Lex?”

  I plopped my bag down and threw myself into the seat of the first gypsy to wave me in.

  “I’m just up for some laughs.”

  The woman at the desk rambled off the price list for each reading while my gypsy went off to ‘cleanse her clairvoyant mind.’ The laughter from our little group got a little loud, but not enough to break Paige’s extreme concentration. Her brows frowned as she lost herself deep in thought, studying the list of readings.

  “What should I go for, Paige?”

  “Hmmm. I would say go for the aura reading, then the palm reading and finish it all off with a good tarot card reading.” When the assistant told us the price and rang us up, Paige leaned over and whispered, “I know you, Lex, and you never bought into any of this. Why don’t you keep an open mind, just this once, and maybe they’ll tell you something good? If you really don’t believe in any of it, it’s useless and you’re wasting your money. Just think of all the donuts you could buy!” She laughed.

  “I believe, almighty Paige!” I threw my arms up like I was worshipping her. She rolled her eyes, apparently not amused. “Oh, will you relax! People change, you know. Maybe I believe in it now.” Paige smiled a little and I forked over the forty-five dollars hoping that at least one of them would give me what I needed.

  I sat in the rusty little fold-up chair and waited for my aura reading. It didn’t look like anyone else noticed the way the gypsies all flocked to a corner when we first walked in. They’re definitely a strange bunch, I thought, and laughed to myself at the mystical ambiance they created with all the odd-shaped candles and statues they had around their pavilion. The smell of burning, fruity incense was strangely pleasant and the gentle plucking of a harp rang out from the iPod dock. If they weren’t really in touch with the spirit world, they were definitely a pretty entertaining sideshow.

  The eerie but wildly amusing gypsy draped a tattered, red velvet sheath, which smelled like singed hair, around us. I shoved my nose in my shoulder and sniffed my extensions to make sure I hadn’t caught fire. Her dyed black hair was piled high on her head, with a few shorter strands cascading down the red billowy dress. It gave her that Halloween witch-like appearance. She complemented the whole ensemble with a few pieces of chunky jewelry that had to be as fake as her accent. If I didn’t laugh at this, I would never find anything funny again. I held tight, though, just in case they really were, well, real. I glared at her, and waited for her to tell me something stupid.

  Her finely polished and bejeweled hands covered mine and she hummed a deep, non-musical tone. It was only a few seconds before she opened her eyes and folded her hands neatly on the table. That was fast. A waste, just as I thought. But then she motioned to the other gypsies to join us at the table. Paige got a huge kick out of this grand demonstration of mystical ability. With four of the women standing around me, no one made a sound. They just looked at each other, then back at me, and then at each other again.

  “Well, what color is my aura?”

  “Gold and silver,” she whispered. All eyes grew wide as my gypsy explained to me what it meant. Paige moved closer, too. She had done this enough times to know something didn’t feel right.

  “Gold auras are very rare. It is even rarer to have both silver and gold as the only colors in your aura. We have read auras our entire lives and none of us has ever seen this. It is very powerful, very beautiful and can be very dangerous if you are not aware of your abilities and how to control them. You, my dear, are incredibly special. A gold aura means your spiritual energy has been brought to the surface recently, and your spiritual powers have been activated. A silver aura defines both physical and spiritual abundance. It also means that your cosmic mind has been awakened.”

  I started to say something until Paige nudged me hard and turned her eyes back to the gypsy. I guessed interrupting a clairvoyant while she was on a roll was a no-no.

  “You have very strong abilities in both the physical and metaphysical world. You will have to find out exactly what they are on your own. We have no way of determining what you are capable of, but I am certain you are far more powerful than even we are, especially in the cosmic world. You need guidance, my dear.”

  She reached out and grabbed my cell phone from the table, her fingers moving quickly as she punched in the numbers. “Call me tomorrow after my sisters and I have had a chance to research more about you. I want to speak with others and hopefully find someone with more experience in this than we have. Please, dear, do as I say. You don’t want to unleash your special gifts in a destructive way and that’s probably what will happen if...” She stopped abruptly.

  “If what? What?” I shouted, mostly out of fear. Paige put her hand on my shoulder to remind me to be calm around these people. The gypsy continued, even though I could tell she knew more than she would say.

  “If your abilities are found out by the wrong people, they may be tainted and used for evil doing. You have the power to do great things, that much we know. We also know you are able to communicate through different means to different entities. But there is so much more we don’t know and neither do you. Your ignorance is very dangerous in all worlds.”

  The rest of the girls meandered around, still smelling the incense and touching all the mystical marvels, not noticing what was happening behind the curtain. Paige peeked out, giving them a ridiculous smile and wave. “Can someone call Chace and see if he’s blowing us off tonight?” she asked. Her distraction worked well enough to give us a few more minutes to learn more about my new spiritual capabilities. Always being a skeptic, I thought the gypsies were a little over the top and Paige was, well, just being Paige. But I had a smidgen of hope that they were right and could somehow help me figure myself out.

  My mind wandered off and back to the conversation with William. He knew I had some kind of sixth sense and these ladies knew it, too. They even mentioned the existence of more than one world. My confidence in them ramped up and I felt myself hoping they were just like me, only more experienced. I held my breath and bit down on the inside of my cheek, trying to fight the urge to unload everything o
n them. I had to be sure they could help me first, or take the chance Aunt Fay would find out and I’d be committed to the insane asylum for sure.

  It wasn’t easy to control the nervous shake in my hand, but I unfolded it so my palm lay upright on the table. The gypsy’s movements were slow as she traced each line on my hand with her long fingernail. Paige looked on smiling, knowing this woman would find something else new and unusual to tell me.

  “You have an incredibly strong travel line. It means you will be taking a very important trip. This square on the line shows that you will be protected during the trip. An oddity in your travel line is that it intersects with your lifeline. That usually means your trip will be made due to health reasons or that your health will be affected because of the trip. Are you planning to go anywhere?” she asked.

  “Umm, no.” I wasn’t really sure if I was telling the truth. Would traveling to the alternate universe with William count? I thought to myself.

  My nerves calmed and the shaking in my hand stopped as if someone had thrown a switch. After weeks of second guessing myself, I wasn’t schizophrenic. Everything about the other world: William, my parents, all of it, every last bit of it, was as legitimate as the world I lived in. The relief that invaded me must have been noticeable to my gypsy because she peered at me carefully, and for the first time, smiled at me. It didn’t last very long, though. She looked down at my palm again and her smile turned into a deep frown, her forehead wrinkled, her grip tightened. She motioned one of the other gypsies to have a look.

  “This line right here,” she said while she ran her finger up the center of my palm and stopped at my ring finger, “is your line of destiny.” I looked where she had drawn the imaginary line with her finger and saw nothing.

  “What line? I can’t see it.”

  “You don’t have one,” she squeezed out. The sweat beads on her forehead ran down her face, streaking the charcoal eye makeup down her cheeks.

  “Don’t have one? What does that mean?”

  The gypsies scattered. One hung out the ‘closed’ sign while another closed the door and locked me and my entourage inside. The other girls were so oblivious to my reading they just thought the gypsies were closing up shop for the night. Paige welled up with tears. It must have been hard to think about possibly losing your best friend twice in one lifetime.

  “What does that mean? She doesn’t have a destiny? Is there something we can do to stop—”

  My gypsy held her hand up as if it would stop Paige from talking. It actually did and Paige shut up mid-sentence. “We can do nothing to change her life’s course. It is possible that you can, my dear,” she whispered. Her stare rattled me and I felt anxiety pull my stomach up to my throat. “Everyone has a line of destiny because everyone has a destiny. But you, with your silver and gold aura, are once again, the first. I don’t know what it means.” My gypsy continued the reading with such speed that I could tell she was done with me. She either saw enough or she was terrified. “Your Saturn mount shows an exceptional understanding of time, rhythm and deeper aspects of life that not many people are in tune with.” She folded my fingers back into my palm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “My dear, go home now. I’m sure you’ve heard enough for one evening. Please be sure to contact me tomorrow. By then I should have a better handle on all of this.” She handed my forty-five dollars back. “It was an honor to read for you and I won’t accept your money.”

  Paige pressed, “What about her tarot card reading and the rest of us? We wanted some tea leaves read and maybe a crystal ball reading or two.”

  “I’m sorry, we are done. Feel free to come back tomorrow and we will read for all of you as well. Good night, ladies.” We were escorted to the door so fast it was creepy, and we all scurried out of the tent.

  Before the girls could ask what was up, a few cute guys hanging outside the Burger Barn distracted them. Our group walked the dirt road slowly, while they flirted back and forth. Paige and I walked close together without saying anything to each other, probably because we were both still recovering from the reading. I knew what that meant. She knew enough about this stuff to know there was something strange going on with me and I would have to tell her everything. I had to think about how to present all that I knew so she wouldn’t think I’d gone mad. This was too much, even for her. The gypsies had it right, but I just needed Paige to believe it. She was probably the only chance I had in this world of getting to the world in which I wanted to live. With William and my parents.

  “There you are!” I heard Chace yell from a few feet away. “I thought you were meeting me by the cider mill.” He doled out air kisses to all except the one that he landed on my cheek. His eyes lost their gleam when he looked at me hard. “Lex, you don’t look so good. You feeling all right?” His concern worried me. If I had to explain why I looked so pale, he would definitely think I was a mental case.

  “She just got the crap scared out of her, that’s all!” Paige quipped. I shot her that ‘shut the hell up’ look and she changed the subject. “Hey, where should we go now?” she asked, not directing the question to anyone in particular.

  “Lex?” Chace whispered. “What’s that mean? What scared you? Tell me.” His lips folded in his mouth and he drew in a big breath, exhaling it slowly through his flared nostrils. Everyone could see he was genuinely perturbed at my silence and wasn’t going to drop it until I answered. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell him everything, but I couldn’t trust that he would believe me. Especially since our families were so tight, I knew the risk was too high that he would report to Aunt Fay. Not to be mean spirited or spiteful, but only because he’d think he’d be helping me.

  “Oh, Chace, lighten up! You know how Paige can be. It was nothing really, just some hokey palm reader who thinks I have some kind of... superpowers! Maybe I’m the modern day Wonder Woman?” I joked. He didn’t laugh. His face got so stern it reminded me of how my father tried to look whenever I got into trouble. “Chace?” My smile faded. “It was just a joke. Don’t tell me you believe in all that junk that Paige does, do you?” I tried to put up the facade that I didn’t believe one shred of it, even though I believed it all, and then some. He looked at me blankly and interlocked his hand with mine as we continued to walk.

  “You know, Lex, those people are kind of scary. I don’t know about you, but they kind of freak me out. Don’t you feel like they’re invading your head? Like they’re messing with your thoughts and they know all your secrets? Maybe they can even change them. I wouldn’t want anyone getting that close to my insides.”

  “Mr. Preston, I am shocked!” I laughed. “I had no clue you believed in any of that crap. Since when?” I prodded.

  “I’m just open minded enough to realize there are some things in this world we just don’t know about or understand. There have to be. Maybe there are a few select people who have that sixth sense, if that’s what it is. I don’t know. Wouldn’t you agree? I’m just saying I don’t discount anything until it’s proven to be untrue.”

  That sixth sense reference got my curiosity up, but even more unnerving was the idea that Chace may have believed the whole gypsy thing. He was such a techno geek and this kind of stuff just didn’t fit into his character, although a scientific mind like his certainly could have some knowledge to support a little streak of nonconformity. I figured it was just something I had never noticed, or had just forgotten.

  “Well, I don’t believe any of it.” I shrugged.

  “Really, then why were you so nervous a few minutes ago?”

  “Let it go, Chace. It wasn’t a big deal. She said some things to me that were so benign they could have fit into anyone’s life. I bet she said all that stuff to fifty people today!”

  “What’d she say then?” He jumped in front of me to stop me from walking with the group. Paige looked back and he motioned the girls to keep going. They obliged and were swallowed up by the swelling crowd.

  “I told you already. Something about some stupid ma
gical abilities and that I have special gifts and blah, blah, blah.”

  “Will you just tell me? Why are you being so... so secretive?”

  “Are you kidding? Secretive? Me? Chace, we’re pretty close, aren’t we?” He nodded. “So why would I hide something from you? I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. What’s with you anyway? You’re acting awfully weird lately.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked as I turned away.

  “To catch up with the others. You’re kind of freaking me out now.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He moved his hand around my waist in a way that was more restricting than playful. I tightened at the gesture and looked at him, confused.

  “Nicky sent me a text while you were getting your reading. She said there were some travel plans in your future. I don’t want to get up in your business, Lex, but...”

  “Then don’t,” I chimed in. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing and it’s starting to piss me off. Now, can we just forget this conversation before I say something I’m gonna regret?”

  “I’m just concerned about you, that’s all. There’s something you’re not telling me and that’s a first. That’s not like you—or at least it never was.” That was the first time Chace had made a negative reference to my mental state, and it just sent me into a complete tizzy. I didn’t know why, maybe because I’d never expected that from him.

  “Damn it, Chace! Leave me alone! Maybe she did say something and I just don’t want to tell you! Did you ever think of that?” I wiggled out of his grip with a fury I tried to hide, and stopped myself from saying anything else. I didn’t want to hurt him. I just wanted him to stop badgering me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” I said faintly. “I haven’t been sleeping so well and I’m in a bad mood, I guess. I think I just want to go home now.”