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mally smooth café au lait complexion was sallow and grainy. |
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Leaving a trail of bloody footprints on the polished hardwood floors, Paula limped down the narrow staircase, past the shelves filled with fetishes and potions, to the table in the rear of her shopa room that also doubled as her kitchen. She began shuffling a worn deck of tarot cards. Her hands were shaking, but she dared not stop once she had begunthat could completely foul up the reading. After dealing the cards faceup on the table in a formation known as the Celtic Cross Spread, she closed her eyes and ran the tips of her fingers over the warm pasteboard. The cards were old, an heirloom from a great-grandmother once burned in the cracker part of Louisiana for witchcraft, and they were her only friends. Except this night the cards felt odd, foreign. They seemed to burn her fingertips like acid. |
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Paula gritted her teeth and concentrated harder, pulling images like splinters out of her mind. Finally, when she was ready, she opened her eyes and examined the cards. |
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The central card was the image of a winged devil crossed over the lovers reversed. |
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The devil could only be the dark host from her vision. But the lovers? That couldn't be her. It must mean that she was going to come in contact with someonea coupleand they would be in great danger from the dark host. |
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The top card showed a man struggling with ten tall polesthe 10 of Wandsindicating a man who takes on the burdens of others. The bottom card was the Tower, from which Paula received an impression of vast blackness like the inside of a dark cathedral. |
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The intermediate cards showed the usual mix of danger, opportunity and love, but the outcome card was the most feared of allthe smiling skeleton of death reversed. |
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Death? Death for whom? The lovers? Or the Devil? |
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Paula picked up the last card and stared at the skeletal figure's grin. She closed her eyes and kneaded the card carefully between her sensitive fingers. She saw the image of a mountain, cold and stark under an ashen moon. And trees, their bare |
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