Marked in Flesh
Page 64

I don’t want to lose any more friends, she thought as Ruth put the deck into its box and opened the next deck.
The next deck didn’t appeal to any of them, but the third . . .
Meg’s hands tingled lightly as she touched the cards. Realistic illustrations. She pulled out all the pictures of water—lakes, streams, waterfalls, surf.
“Here’s an illustration of the Great Lakes,” Merri Lee said, setting the card with the ones Meg had already culled.
“Specific and general.” Meg went to a drawer and took out the postcards she had gotten from Lorne. She pointed to one of the prophecy cards. “A waterfall would be a general image that could be anywhere.” She laid a postcard of Talulah Falls under it. “But this would mean a specific place.”
“How many specific places did you learn?” Ruth asked. “We had the impression that you were taught one image to represent a particular thing, like one image to stand for small dogs and one for large dogs, but no particular breed of dog.”
“But Talulah Falls is a distinctive landmark,” Merri Lee said. “Maybe different combinations of cards could mean different things. Meg, what does seeing these two cards together mean to you?” Merri Lee set the postcard of Talulah Falls on top of the card illustrating the Great Lakes.
“Lake Etu,” Meg said as soon as she placed her fingers on the cards, surprised that she didn’t have to think about it at all.
“It could also mean Lake Tahki,” Ruth said. “A third card might be needed to narrow down the location.”
“That’s a good point.” Merri Lee handed Meg a card that showed the sun setting behind a mountain range. “What about this?”
“West.”
“And together with this?”
She took the second card. “Sunset.”
Ruth eyed her. “How do you feel?”
“My hands tingle a little, but they’ve been tingling since we opened this deck of cards.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.” Ruth sounded disappointed.
“We haven’t asked a question,” Merri Lee said. “Let’s arrange these cards in categories, the way Meg did with the water, and then do a test. We’ll include the postcards too.”
“What about the other decks of cards?”
“Let’s start with what we have and see what happens. Ready?”
Meg nodded.
“Where did the Courtyard’s bison come from?”
“I already know the answer to that.”
“Yes, but if you had to give us the answer using cards, which ones would you choose?”
Meg looked over the cards and chose the card she’d said meant West, then a card that showed tall grass and little else. Then she frowned and rubbed her right hand. “It’s not here. The yellow pebble isn’t here.”
“Wait a moment.” Ruth opened another deck of cards and quickly went through them. Then she held up a picture of several bars of gold stacked in a vault.
“Yes,” Meg said, taking the card and setting it beneath the other two.
“West as a direction or region, a picture of what I’m guessing is prairie—Mr. Wolfgard could confirm that when he returns—and bars of gold.” Merri Lee sounded pleased. “The answer to the question is Prairie Gold, which is west of us.”
The tingling faded.
Meg stared at the cards. Could this work? Could she really answer questions this way?
“We would need cards that have pictures of bad things,” she said.
“Yes,” Merri Lee agreed. “But a picture of a bad thing doesn’t have to be graphic.”
“Okay,” Ruth said. “Is there anything in this landscape deck that doesn’t feel right to you, Meg?”
After looking at all the cards, Meg shook her head. “None of them feel wrong.”
Ruth reclaimed the card with the bars of gold before they collected the rest of the cards and put them back in their box. “That was the landscape deck. This deck is called cityscapes.”
Meg hugged herself while Merri Lee and Ruth sorted the cards into categories.
“Meg?” Merri Lee said.
The calves and thighs of both legs burned, burned, burned—the prelude to prophecy. Meg clenched her teeth and held one hand above the cards, moving slowly from one category to the next. Her hand buzzed painfully when it brushed against the last category. She pushed those cards to one side, then backed away from the table until her hand stopped buzzing and her legs stopped burning.
Merri Lee and Ruth looked at the cards and then at her.
“Meg?” Ruth said softly. “Why did you set these aside? They’re all cards that show skylines of different cities.”
Burned, burned, burned. She’d had the same sensation above her ankle when she’d seen the prophecy of Nadine’s shop burning. If she made a cut, if she saw . . . No. She didn’t want to see what was going to happen in those places. And she didn’t want her friends to carry that much of a burden of knowing.
“Meg?” Merri Lee said. “Why did you set these cards aside?”
She shuddered and swallowed hard. “I don’t think we’ll need them.” Her stomach rolled. “I can’t look at anymore today.”
She ran to the bathroom, but once she was out of the sorting room, her stomach settled. When she returned, the cards were put away, the decks set out in their boxes on the counter.
“We didn’t want to put them away,” Ruth said.