The Raven King
Page 3

Tarot is a very personal thing, and as such, the art on each deck reflected the woman who owned it. Maura’s was all dark lines and simple colours, at once perfunctory and childlike. Calla’s was lush and oversaturated, the cards overflowing with detail. Every card in Orla’s deck featured a couple kissing or making love, whether or not the card’s meaning was about kissing or making love. Gwenllian had fashioned her own by scratching dark, frantic symbols on a deck of ordinary playing cards. Jimi stuck by the Sacred Cats and Holy Women deck that she’d found in a thrift store in 1992.
All of the women had turned over five different versions of the Tower. Calla’s version of the Tower perhaps best depicted the card’s meaning: A castle labelled STABILITY was in the process of being struck by lightning, burning down, and being attacked by what looked like garter snakes. A woman in a window was experiencing the full effects of the lightning bolt. At the top of the tower, a man had been thrown from the ramparts – or possibly he had jumped. In any case, he was on fire as well, and a snake flew after him.
“So we’re all going to die unless we do something,” Calla said.
Gwenllian sang, “Owynus dei gratia Princeps Waliae, ha la la, Princeps Waliae, ha la la—”
With a whimper, Artemus made as if to stand. Maura placed a steadying hand on his.
“We’re all going to die,” Maura said. “At some point. Let’s not panic.”
Calla’s eyes were on Artemus. “Only one of us is panicking.”
Jimi passed around the whiskey bottle. “Time to find some solutions, darlings. How are we looking for them?”
All of the women looked at the dark scrying bowl. There was nothing inherently remarkable about it: it was an $11 glass display bowl from one of those stores full of cat food, mulch and discount electronics. The cran-grape juice that filled it had no mystical powers. But still, there was something ominous about it, about how the fluid seemed a little restless. It reflected only the dark ceiling, but it looked like it wanted to show more. The scrying bowl contemplated possibilities, not all of them good.
(One of the possibilities: using the reflection to separate your soul from your body and ending up dead.)
Although Maura was the one who had brought the bowl out, she pushed it away now.
“Let’s do a whole-life reading,” Orla said. She popped her gum.
“Ugh, no,” Calla said.
“For all of us?” Maura asked, as if Calla hadn’t protested. “Our life as a group?”
Orla waved an arm to indicate all of the decks; her enormous wooden bangles clicked against each other with satisfaction.
“I like it,” Maura said. Calla and Jimi sighed.
Ordinarily, a reading used only a portion of the seventy-eight cards in a deck. Three, or ten. Maybe one or two more, if clarification was needed. Each card’s position asked a question: What is the state of your unconscious? What are you afraid of? What do you need? Each card placed in that position provided the answer.
Seventy-eight cards was a lot of Q&A.
Especially times five.
Calla and Jimi sighed again, but began to shuffle. Because it was true: They had a lot of questions. And they needed a lot of answers.
As one, the women stopped shuffling, closed their eyes, and held their decks to their hearts, focusing only on each other and the way that their lives were twined together. The candles flickered. Long and short and then long shadows played behind the goddess sculptures. Gwenllian hummed, and after a moment, Jimi did as well.
Only Artemus sat apart, brows furrowed.
But the women included him when they began to lay out the cards. First they braided a row of cards into a solid trunk, whispering positions and meanings to each other as they did. Then they laid out cards in branches that pointed to Artemus, to Jimi, to Orla. And they laid out cards in roots that pointed to Calla, to Maura, to Gwenllian. They knocked heads and laid cards over the top of each other and laughed over their bumbles and gasped over the order of the cards.
Eventually a story appeared. It was about the people they had changed, and the people who’d changed them. The reading included all the juicy bits: when Maura had fallen in love with Artemus; when Jimi had punched Calla; when Orla had secretly drained the common bank account for a business website that had yet to make money; when Blue had run away from home and been dragged home by the cops; when Persephone had died.
The branch that led to Artemus was grim and rotten, littered with swords and fear. The darkness in it led back to the trunk, joining up with something sinister mouldering in the root that belonged to Gwenllian. It was obvious that this darkness would be what killed them all if they did nothing, though it was impossible to tell what precisely it was. The women’s clairvoyance had never been able to penetrate the area directly over the ley line, and this darkness was centred there.
The solution to the darkness, however, existed outside of the ley line. It was multifaceted, uncertain and difficult. The upshot was straightforward, though.
“They’re supposed to work together?” Calla said with disbelief.
“That’s what it says,” Maura said.
Jimi reached for the whiskey bottle, but it was empty. “Can’t we just take care of it ourselves?”
“We’re just people,” Maura replied. “Just ordinary people. They’re special. Adam’s tied to the ley line. Ronan’s a dreamer. Blue amplifies all of that.”
“Richie Rich is just a person,” Orla said.
“Yes, and he’s going to die.”
The women contemplated the spread again.
“Does this mean she’s still alive?” Maura asked, tapping on a card in one of the branches – the Queen of Swords.
“Probably,” Calla grunted.
“Does this mean she’s going to leave?” Orla asked, tapping on another card and referring to a different she.
“Probably,” Maura sighed.
“Does this mean she’s coming back?” Calla demanded, pointing to a third card and meaning a third she.
“Probably,” shrieked Gwenllian, leaping up from the table. She began to spin with her arms in the air.
None of them could sit still any longer. Calla pushed back her chair. “I’m getting another drink.”
Jimi clucked in agreement. “If it’s the end of the world, I might as well, too.”
As the others left the table, Maura remained, looking at Artemus’s poisoned branch of cards and at Artemus himself, hunched behind it. Random men from mystical groves were no longer her type. But still, she remembered loving Artemus, and this Artemus was greatly diminished.