Allegories of the Tarot (26 page)

The outside of the coal was ash-black, and the living
heart of it glowed where her fingers smudged the ash away. She lifted it to her
lips and bit. Split apart, the coal blazed yellow at the core, red on the
outside, and I waited for her scream as her lips burned and her tongue
shriveled.

Water for the Dragon, Air and Earth
for the poor Horse, and Fire for the Star.
It was like Khasar, in his
arrogance, to try to tame the elements.

He reached for her but she blazed forth, her mask and
shroud gone in an instant. He recoiled, arms over his face, as she became too
bright to look on, and the shadows she cast on the ground were so black they
were voids, and one could trip inside and fall forever. The earth could never
contain such light, and she
rose
, higher and higher,
the deadly shadows shifting beneath her. Higher past the obelisk, the top of
the tent, higher than the Dragon had squatted in the air, higher and higher
until the sky blazed with a new star, brighter than the moon.

***

The carny folk knew their best chance lay with Hobart,
so no one stopped Khasar when he came at me to break me the final time. I made
a play at pushing him away, at protecting my head, but once he beat me to my
knees, I knew it was no use. The blows came again and again, until I could
smell nothing but my own blood. When he stopped, I lay in
a
red
-blaze blindness, hearing the tents come down, equipment being packed
away, the horses laden. It’s easy enough, after all, to find someone to take
care of the horses. Outside my swollen eyelids, I could feel the heat of
starlight, so bright the carnival could break camp and travel.

It was quiet after they left. All I could hear was the
stream trickling to the salty sea, and something that might be the hiss of
L’Etoile Flamboyant. But presently there was a padding of four feet, and a
cat’s rank smell, and the warmth of the tiger beside me.

***

I know when the sun rises and the Star fades the tiger
will kill me, and there is a melancholy pleasure in the idea of the end of the
waiting and the consummation. I hope afterwards the beast will not be lonely,
and will find someone else to love.

I lie content, with my blood congealing on the ground,
the tiger dozing beside me while the new star blazes overhead.

***

Samantha Henderson lives in Covina, California by way of
England, South Africa, Illinois and Oregon. Her short fiction and poetry have
been published in
Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit
and
Weird
Tales
, and reprinted in
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Science Fiction,
Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded
,
Steampunk Revolutions
and the
Mammoth
Book of Steampunk
. She is the co-winner of the 2010 Rhysling Award for
speculative poetry, and is the author of the Forgotten Realms novel
Dawnbringer
.
For more information, check out her website at
samanthahenderson.com
.

***

THE MOON

The Moon

By J.H. Sked

She went to see Jess after the doctor broke the news.
She’d known it was back before the tests, before the call from the surgery.
She’d been here before, had done the chemo and the drugs and endured the
operation to cut the monster out.
She'd
had Arthur then, and the kids were still in school. She'd had no choice but to
fight.

“I can arrange chemotherapy sessions to start from next
week.” The doctor said, peering at his notes.

“I don’t want chemo,” she told him.

“Anna—”

“I’m nearly seventy,” she said. “Just how much extra
time would this buy me?”

He’d said nothing, just blinked at her miserably.

“How long?”
She asked, gently,
because she felt a sudden flash of pity. Being a white knight was useless when
your shield was rejected.

“Three months, maybe,” he said.

***

Jess lived in a neat cottage just off the main street,
with several cats and a rabbit, Mr. Thistles, who ruled all of them with an
iron paw.

Anna rapped smartly on the door and opened it.

“Tea’s on the table,” Jess called. “I hope you brought
biscuits, woman!”

Anna grinned and slipped the packet of ginger snaps out
of her purse.

The beaded curtain tinkled softly as Jess stepped
through it, still in the gaudy robe she wore for clients.

“Nobody wants a fortune told by someone wearing a track
suit and sneakers,” she’d once told Anna mournfully.

She stopped just past the doorway and tilted her head at
her friend. For a second, Anna caught a glimpse of the girl who’d swapped
lunches with her during recess so many years ago.

“Oh, damn it all.” Jess said, and Anna burst into tears.

***

“I can’t heal this,” Jess told her.

“I know,” Anna said. Although Jess was a good healer,
and a strong one, she’d said the same thing years ago, when Anna had her first
bout with the monster.

“I can take some of the pain, when it starts getting
bad.”

“Thank you,” Anna said, and felt a huge amount of
relief. The pain was what she most feared.

“You’ll come then, when it gets bad?”

“I’ll come,” she said, and patted Jess on the hand. The
skin felt soft and fragile.

***

She went to Jess the first time for the pain as summer
turned, flirting with autumn in a rush of gold and bronze.

Jess worked over her for nearly an hour, and they had
tea afterwards. Anna brought raspberry creams and they giggled like schoolgirls
at Mr. Thistles herding the cats from room to room.

She visited again just before Halloween, now well past
the time her doctor had expected to read her funeral notice. This time, Jess
worked for close to two hours, and there were bourbon creams with tea but
little laughter; both of them simply too exhausted for mirth.

In mid-November, Jess came to her. Anna stopped her
after an hour.

“It’s helped, I promise. But killing yourself won’t stop
this.”

Jess sighed and sat down. “The morphine’s not touching
it at all now, is it?”

Anna shook her head. “I think I’m nearly done, Jess,”
she said quietly. She nodded at the elderly tortie washing a paw on the window.
“The kids wanted to take Mitzi back to London, but I couldn’t bear to give her
up. Will you take her in, when the time comes?”

“I’ll take her, pet. Don’t worry about
Mitzi,
she’ll fit in with my bunch just fine.” She patted
Anna’s hand. “I have something for you.”

Anna perked up. She’d almost drowsed off while Jess
hovered over her, but she could feel the warmth left from the healing drain
away, chased out by the thing wrapped around her organs.

“Better than morphine?”
She
smiled, and Jess nodded.

“Oh, I think so.”

Jess hauled her handbag off the floor and drew out a
slim box.

It looked like an old-fashioned cigarette case, with a
steel-blue pearlescent finish and silver trim.

A tap of the silver button on the side and the lid swung
silently up.

“Oh!” Anna exclaimed, and her eyes widened.

“What? What happened?”

“Didn’t you smell it?
The most
incredible perfume, Jess.”
Her pupils were huge. “It was wonderful.”

Jess looked at her and smiled. The pain-lines bracketing
Anna’s mouth had relaxed a little.

“What is it?” Anna peered into the case.

It was lined with midnight blue velvet. She saw odd
little flashes of light nestled in the material. Anna squinted a little, but
couldn’t make out the stones. Some sort of crystal or diamanté, she guessed.
There was a pattern to those bright little pinpoints, but she was too tired to
figure it out.

There was a single Tarot card nestled in the velvet on
one side of the case. Wafer-thin, it gleamed against the velvet. The whites shimmered
opalescent, the yellows and oranges gold and copper and bronze. An amethyst
scorpion crawled out of sapphire waves. The grass flickered emerald.

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.