Allegories of the Tarot

by Ribken, Annetta

“What do you want?” Sal asked, looking at the round vial. She wanted to reach out and touch it now but it looked so hot, she wondered how the medicine man held it.

  “Bring me something,” he said slowly. “The start of which is so insignificant, the result of which is so far removed from its beginnings, it seems like...a miracle.”

  Sal frowned slightly. The light from the vial illuminated the medicine man's features, clean shaven and sharper in the dark caravan. “How long do I have to get it?” she asked, thinking about the white horse outside and the habits of traveling medicine men.

  “I'll leave by sun up,” he said. He flashed a smile at her, a smile like a crescent moon lying on its side. “Bring it and the elixir is yours.” He placed it back in the wooden box and Sal watched the trail it seemed to leave in the air, watched its light glow and then fade, shut out once the wooden box was snapped closed. “Sun up,” the man said.

  “I've got it,” Sal said. She could imagine the way the vial would feel in her hand, warm. Not warm, hot. Almost too hot but hold it she would, uncap it and drink it down. And then she'd be rid of this town, these people. She'd see the things she wanted to see. “You won't be disappointed.”

  “If you say so,” the man said with the same type of smile. Sal felt like she should hurry. The sun had been down for some time and she had snuck out of the house without her mama or Pa. Without saying anything more she turned and left.

  What was it the man had said? Something with a small start which had grown big. A miracle. She stared up at the sky and saw the stars. In school, she had learned they were made of gas. A scientist of Miz had discovered it and though the Church opposed her findings and warned people against it initially, the evidence had been sound and the possibilities it opened intrigued many throughout the scientific community. Sal wasn't a scientist. She was a nineteen-year-old woman, trying to avoid being stuck in this town.

  The only lights glowing in the town at this hour were the ones in the saloon. It wasn't a big saloon, not like the one in Templetown, where they went on the high holidays. But it was big enough for those who wanted a drink, a game, or a place to relax after working on their farms and fields or in the mill. Sal didn't usually go. She liked drinks but her Ma made a decent ale at home and Lem usually hung around the saloon. She'd work her cloak to hide her face but it was too warm this night to keep it for long. With a sigh and a push of the swinging doors, Sal entered the drinking establishment.

  Sal squinted against the bright light, seeing the full chairs and tables. A band played music, a guitar, violin and hand drum, the singer's voice pretty over the conversation of the townsfolk. A few people looked at Sal as she entered but she just nodded and made her way to the bar, sitting down at the counter.

  “What'll it be, Sal?” the bartender asked. Kila was nice, Sal thought. Warm, never gossiped like her daughters, didn't water down her drinks. The robust woman smiled, putting a glass in front of her before Sal could answer.

  “Four Corners,” Sal said. Kila smiled and raised her ruddy brows. Sal had brought money on the off chance the medicine man charged money. Why had she thought that? Sal sighed as Kila poured the elements of the drink into the glass, the fizz of the soda water making a quiet rushing sound she barely heard over the noise of the bar.

  Sal dropped the coins onto the counter and thought. The start of things. Her drink was made of four ingredients, though it seemed like three. Soda water, salt and the special brew Kila made in her kitchen, which was herbal but sweet. Four ingredients to make one drink. Soda was water and gas. Salt was a stone. Alcohol was made from grains. Sal knew that. She stared up at the rows of bottles on the shelves. Grains or vegetables or fruits.

  Wheat came from seeds. Most plants did. The sunflowers in the oil fields grew from seeds, black and shaped like tears. A single sunflower could produce over a hundred seeds. Sal took a sip of her drink. It was room temperature but made her mouth feel cold. There must have been mint in it.

  Sunflowers made seeds for oil. Wheat made flour for bread, grains for food. Did the medicine man want her to bring him a sunflower? She doubted it. Seed to sunflower. She took another sip of her drink and wondered if the bars in Miz really had ice year round, shaved ice on the streets with syrups to go over them. Sal had had snow sweetened with milk and honey but it must taste different on a hot day, when sweat dripped down one's brow.

  Sal didn't think a bottle of alcohol was the answer either, so she finished her drink in silence and then turned to go, waving a solemn goodbye to Kila before she made her way out.

  A warm breeze brushed past her, quiet, the clear sky deep and full of stars. Sal looked up at them as she walked, trying to think of what the man could be asking for. A miracle. What types of things were miraculous? Magic was miraculous but no one used magic in the Ravine. All users of Magic lived in the cities using their skills in industry or politics. A few were at the Border, fighting in the Frontier War. Her brother had written home about seeing one of them, a woman who had some kind of strange metal under her skin in spots, rigid and dark, and how she had risen up barricades during a crucial maneuver. How'd that woman get her start? Fil hadn't said. Even if Sal knew, the witch woman wasn't there. Sal couldn't take her to the medicine man.

  Sal walked through the streets, finding herself heading back to her home, the dark and humid night surrounding her like a heavy cloak. She couldn't give up but her family would find her missing soon, wouldn't they? Maybe she could show her face at home and sneak out again, with none to be the wiser. It wouldn't be hard. Sal walked up quietly, seeing the lights of her home.

  Her ma and pa were standing in the field, under the moonlight. Her father had his arms wrapped around her mother's waist, Ma standing in front as they looked over the garden and land. Her father buried his face in her mother's hair and must have said something because she laughed, reaching up caress his face. Her mother looked back and kissed her father, longer than their usual kisses and Sal blushed as their hands strayed over each other. Sal didn't know if she should move or say something as her mother turned to her father, the pair of them kissing and embracing under the night sky, their whispers drifting over the wind, their skin seeking the warmth of the other. Sal saw her mother say something to her father and he hesitated before he grinned and took her by the hand, the pair of them rushing into the house. Sal watched as the light in the house flickered and moved into their bedroom.

  Sal looked down at the dirt road. She wondered if there'd be a baby in the spring. She thought of Lem and marrying him in the autumn and summer children. He wasn't a bad man, he just wasn't what she wanted, not now. Sal sighed and looked back at the window with the flickering light. The house she'd been born in. A thought formed in Sal's mind and she turned around and walked back down the road, thinking about her mother and father in the room and the medicine man's words.

  The caravan was still where it was earlier, of course, the horse asleep, standing on its hooves. The light still glowed from within the caravan and Sal wondered if the medicine man slept at all. Sal knocked on the door more loudly than she intended and her heart thumped in her chest.

  After what seemed like too long, the medicine man came out. His shirt was opened, suspenders hanging at his sides, his hat still atop his head. He looked at Sal with blurry eyes. Perhaps he had dozed off.

  “I figured it out,” Sal said. “I have your payment.”

  “Do you now?” the medicine man asked, starting to button his shirt. “Well, give it to me, then.”

  “I'm the payment,” she said. “You said something that started out like nothing, only to become something miraculous. I know how I started. As an act between two people. Heat and movement and ten moons later, I came along.”

  The medicine man laughed. “You think highly of yourself, don't you?”

  “I have high hopes,” she said, more cheerfully than she thought. She frowned and raised an eyebrow at him. “What does it mean though, me paying you?” Sal wasn't sure, but already she could feel the
town shrinking behind her.

  “It means,” he said, holding a hand out toward her. “You come with me.” Sal felt her fingers tingle and then her hand as she stepped closer and reached up. He held her hand in his and led her back into the caravan, the case already sitting it out on the table. Releasing her, he walked over to the case, opening it, the same burnt, ozone smell filling the room.

  Sal watched the vial, his hands unable to dampen the light the container emanated. Finally, she reached out toward it and uncorked it. Heat seemed to pour out of the lid and the smell of hot metal tingled in her nose.

  Without a hesitation, Sal brought the vial to her lips, heat both comforting and vivacious leaping from the edge of the vessel and filling her mouth. It was like lying in a warm field on a summer day. The life of the earth singing around her, earth at the height of her energy. More poured through Sal, flaring through her limbs. She gulped, the taste of a hundred tastes she'd never had before dancing ecstatically on her tongue, rich and unctuous. Citrus and amber and crushed sunflowers, warm sand and hot roads and lusty thunderstorms raging with the energy of sweltering, humid weather and churning oceans. Memories of the Ravine became singed and the corners of them curled and folded in as fire engulfed them until Sal alone was left, feeling warmer than she had ever felt before. The road lay before her and the medicine man beside her, the sunflowers of the oil fields growing ever smaller behind her.

  ***

  Tristan J Tarwater is the author of The Valley of Ten Crescents fantasy series as well as the weird urban noir short story, Botanica Blues and the upcoming comic, The Misadventures of Streetsman Shamsee. She has contributed to the roleplaying site Troll in the Corner and Pelgrane Press. A fan of speculative fiction herself, the first fantasy book she fell in love with was The Crystal Cave. Originally hailing from New York City, she considers Portland, OR her home.

  ***

  JUDGMENT

  A Body for Your Birthday

  By Jennifer Wingard

  “Nana, I don’t have time for a reading. Let me get on with the work or you’ll end up tripping on one of those gaps in the patio and breaking a hip.”

  “In the old country, people took the cards seriously, Antony.”

  “You were born here, Nana. Visiting relatives in Brooklyn is about as ‘old country’ as it gets for you, you silly old woman.” Antony softened the words with a peck on his grandmother’s wizened cheek, but it didn’t help him escape the sharp pinch from her gnarled fingers.

  “Keep it up, Nana, and I’ll leave your patio the way it is and you’ll end up in the hospital where the only pasta is overcooked macaroni and cheese.”

  Rosemarie reached out to pinch him again, but he backed away with a grin—one she mirrored when he tripped over the rug and almost landed on the freshly mopped kitchen floor.

  ***

  Rosemarie shrieked in tandem with the slam of the patio door when Antony stalked back into the kitchen an hour and a half later.

  “Antony, the cards—”

  “No time, Nana. Where’d you put your phone?”

  “Same place as usual. Where I’d remember it.”

  “This is serious, Nana. There’s a fucking skeleton under your patio.”

  Rosemarie’s eyes snapped up from the cards she studied, Antony’s face white even through streaked grime and sweat. “It’s her. I know it’s her. The cards.”

  “If you don’t stop yapping about the cards and give me the damn phone, I’m going to track dirt all over your clean floor.” Antony ran one shaking hand through his hair, and started again. “Nana, I need you to get the phone for me so I can call the police.”

  Rosemarie sprung from her chair with speed that belied her seventy-two years and dug the phone from beneath a stack of Sudoku books on the tiny built-in desk.

  “Don’t bother with the police. They’re all but useless. Call him,” she said as she waved a wrinkled, yellowing business card, plucked from an address book on the desk, in front of Antony’s face.

  “Nana, I have to call the police. If we don’t call them, we’ll both end up in trouble for not reporting this. Someone is dead. The cops have to know.”

  “Fine. Call them, but it’s a waste of time. Tommy Kinter knows more about the case than anyone else, though.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if it’s that important to you, we’ll call him after we call the police.”

  Ten minutes later, Antony handed the phone back to Rosemarie and continued the conversation as if there hadn’t been a lengthy interruption. “Now what’s this man and your cards have to do with anything?”

  Rosemarie perked up, years dropping from her in her excitement. “Ten years ago, when I was still doing readings at the place over on James, this woman came in for a reading. Even though the room was candlelit thanks to Maria being a dotty fool and wanting to give it a gypsy ambiance—whatever that means—I could see the bruises on this woman. Darly something or other, she said. She looked like she’d been a punching bag for someone, and her questions made me certain the poor thing was in a bad way with a monster of a husband.”

  “I don’t get it, Nana. What’s this got to do with your cards and this Kinter person?”

  “I’m getting to it, boy.” Rosemarie took her seat next to the window and opened the red-checked curtains to get a view of the street. “She asked me about her marriage, should she leave her husband, that sort of thing. This”—Rosemary gestured at the cards before her—“was her spread. The cards never tell the same thing twice, but today, her cards came up. Judgment. Because of this one, I warned her to leave. She needed a new start, a different direction in her life, or things would end badly. I know he killed her. Had to be him. She was in tears when she left me that day. Swore she was leaving before it was too late.”

  “He? Her husband? And you still haven’t told me about Kinter.”

  “Three days later, this Darly woman was all over the news. Missing person. Her mother appealed to the press, certain her son-in-law murdered her daughter. Kinter was a detective working the case, but he’s not your typical cop. He’s…special. Sees things. Old country Romas would call it a curse, but, in his line of work I can see how it would come in handy.” Rosemarie traced the offending card with one wrinkled finger, tapping the upturned face of the woman pictured before speaking again. “He’s not with the police anymore, but he would want to know.”

  Antony stared at his grandmother, trying to work through her reasoning for thinking this particular body was a missing woman from a decade-old case. “I’m sorry, Nana, but I don’t see why you think this is that Darly woman or why Kinter would need to know.”

  Rosemarie waved him off without bothering to explain further and dialed the number on the card she still clutched.

  ***

  “Ms. DellaPenna—”

  “Mrs. DellaPenna,” Rosemarie snapped at the young policeman, giving him a look that never failed to make her children quake.

  “Uh, sorry. Mrs. DellaPenna, we’ll go around the side so there’s no need to track in and out of your house. We’ll need several hours to have forensics go over the scene and remove the body and the surrounding area. Looks like it’s been there a long time, though, so it’s not likely we’ll find much. If you need counseling, the department has a grief counselor and you can make an appointment—”

  Rosemarie interrupted the officer once again, “I’ll be fine, young man. I’m no daisy.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure you will be fine, but just in case, I’ll leave the card with your grandson.” Officer Daly handed the card to Antony while Rosemarie rolled her eyes at him.

  Antony’s disapproving glare was wasted on her as she surged to her feet to greet someone behind him. He turned from the officer to see his grandmother wrapping a man nearly twice her size in a hug.

  Officer Daly hissed under his breath, but rose to shake the newcomer’s hand. “Kinter. What brings you here?”

  Rosemarie turned to the officer, her eyes crin
kled at the edges in the way Antony knew meant she was up to no good. “Tommy is an old family friend. I’d feel so much more comfortable with him around while there are strangers on my property.” She rested a wrinkled hand on Daly’s arm, patting him gently like he was an anxious dog. “It’s important for the old and helpless to feel safe, don’t you think?”

  Daly barely managed to refrain from choking at the absurdity of Rosemarie being helpless, but nodded his agreement before promising to update them later and leaving the room.

  “I see you’re as feisty as ever, Rosemarie. You must be Antony,” Tommy said, extending his hand toward Antony as Rosemarie ushered him to the couch.

  “Yes, sir. And you’re Mr. Kinter, I suppose.”

  “Okay, okay. We’ve had our meet and greet. Let’s get on with things.” Rosemarie nearly bounced with impatience from her perch on the edge of her seat. “It’s Darly whats-her-name. I know it is.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that on the phone, but what makes you think it’s her?”

  Rosemarie waved her hand at the question she deemed unimportant and continued, “Have you kept track of that husband of hers over the years?”

  “He’s remarried and living on State with the woman he was seeing at the time his wife went missing. Always thought he’d done her, but there was no evidence he abused her, as you thought, let alone killed her.” Tommy leaned forward, drumming his fingers on the thick file he carried. “I dug through my old files after you called. Did you know Andrew Marsden’s mother owned this house ten years ago?”

  Rosemarie’s shriek answered the question for him.

  “I’m going to call my old partner then head over to see Marsden. Will you be okay here with people tearing your back yard apart?”

  “Of course I will,” Rosemarie spat. “I want to go with you, though. Want to see the bastard squirm. Maybe you could rough him up just a little.”

  “Nana!” Antony stared at his grandmother, trying to reconcile the bloodthirsty woman in front of him with the cheek-pincher he’d always known.