Allegories of the Tarot (28 page)

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.”