"The jacks are but mere princes," he said. "Swords to spades; the work in the field remains." He put the deck back together and set it aside. "Do you come under the influence of a sword?"
"It's the sword hanging over his head," Nicols offered.
Piotr smiled again. "And you wish to know why your hand isn't on the hilt?"
I nodded. "Yes, I do."
Fortune tellers. I could see a vague shimmer of the Weave when I tried, but real precognition always made my skin itch. A Deterministic Universe was not a model I found very comfortable. I, like Pandora, hoped that Free Will was what was left in the box.
"Please," Piotr said as he stood. "Sit." He crossed to the miniscule kitchenette where he put the deck of playing cards in a drawer. As Nicols and I squeezed ourselves around the other side of the table, Piotr opened a cabinet and got out a wooden box. Inside was a large deck of tarot cards.
The deck was his own design, hand-painted and enchanted over a period of four years. On one of my previous visits, he had told me its history. This was the third deck he had done since coming to the United States. For many years, he had worked menial jobs-washing dishes, picking fruit, detailing cars-and the casting of fortunes was done on the tailgate of pickups, in cramped storage closets, and over upended crates behind gas stations. When he had saved up enough money to open his own shop, he burned the set that had given him life, and made a second, one meant to give him security. The third was meant to show him the way to freedom.
Dark with color, they were based on the original Visconti-Sforza designs that Bonifacio Bembo had painted in the mid-fifteenth century. Piotr's flourishes came from personal knowledge of Persian and Oriental motifs as well as Aleister Crowley's unavoidable influence upon twentieth-century magickal thought. My efforts to read the world, Piotr had told me when I had asked about the designs.
He took the deck out of the box and offered it to me. I took the cards, and started to shuffle them. Cold and slick, they stole heat from my fingers as I made them dance cheek to cheek.
"Tea," he asked, and Nicols nodded for both of us, more out of politeness than need. In the cupboards, Piotr found a small teapot and matching china cups-frosty white with tiny inlays of blue fish. He set the kettle to boil, and after putting several spoonfuls of loose tea into the pot, he returned to the table. I laid the shuffled deck between us.
"Do you wish the Prince of Swords to stand for you?" When I declined, he nodded toward the stack of cards. "Usually, I do an arrangement called the Celtic Cross," he said to Nicols as I cut the deck. "It's a ten-card layout that speaks of where the significator-" he inclined his head toward me "-has been and where he is going, and what forces are available-as adversaries and as allies-to him or her. The person requesting the reading has the option to pick a card to represent themselves in the reading, a self-designated avatar, before we start. This will help ground the reading, in that it gives the etheric energy a place to gather."
"So why didn't you use the Prince?" Nicols asked.
"It's not one I would choose for myself," I said. "It's someone else's symbol."
"But it has significance. What did you call it? 'Mind without purpose.' " When I didn't answer, Nicols turned his question to Piotr. "What does that mean?"
The teakettle started to whistle, and Piotr went to the stove to turn off the heat. "The Prince of Swords represents Unfettered Mind," he said as he filled the teapot with hot water.
A redolence of ginger and mint filled the small room, a fresh scent that reminded me of the crisp Himalayan spring. Using a narrow lacquered tray, he brought the teapot and cups to the table. "The airy part of Air," he continued, "is where the Mind is released from the prison of the body and allowed to act without restriction. The actions of the Mind are based purely on its desires, and it is guided solely by its internal supra-religious logic."
"That's much clearer," Nicols said dryly.
Piotr gave him a tight-lipped smile, a slender movement of his face that was both melancholic and tragic. "These actions are not tempered by Spirit or Body. It isn't Lust; nor is it any of the baser emotions. Mind is simply Intellect. It is Force without Reason."
Nicols looked at me. "The whole reading is going to be like this, isn't it?"
"Most of what I've learned has been like this."
"And here I thought you were being obtuse with me on the ferry just to yank my chain."
I shook my head. "I tried to keep it simple."
"Apparently," he sighed. "Okay, let's pretend I understood what you just said." He pointed at the deck. "Markham opted to pass. So what happens next?"
"His unconscious mind chooses the first card." Piotr's fingers brushed the deck and the top card seemed to turn over on its own accord. A man and a woman stood face to face, and their hands touched cheek and chest of the other. "The Lovers," Piotr said.
Nicols raised an eyebrow. "Now why doesn't that surprise me?"
I wasn't surprised either. I had never drawn the Lovers before, not even when I had specifically been charting a path toward Kat. But now, here, close enough to touch, my history with her was overpowering. A burning sensation melted through the lining of my stomach, acid released into my body cavity. I didn't want to face the wrath of Antoine and the Watchers, but the Chorus wanted Kat. They wanted me to want Kat.
Piotr placed the card on the table, and picked up the rest of the deck. With a smooth motion like wiping water off a mirror, he laid out five more cards. The first one went down across the Lovers, forming a stubby cross. Then one to the left, one above, one below, and one to the right. He paused, as this was the first part of the Cross. These six cards represented the current situation, and I needed to reflect upon them before looking to the future.
He set the rest of the deck aside, and poured three cups of tea while I considered the cards. Even with his shortened fingers, his grip was firm on the kettle.
Our hands betray us. You can never really escape your past, can you? Ignore it, certainly, but it still haunts you. Always informing the etheric world around you.
The card to the left of the Lovers was the Nine of Swords, beneath was the Eight of Swords, above was the World-the last Major Arcana card. To the right was the Prince of Swords-still caught in my threads, though now it lay in front of me-and laid across the Lovers like a prudish loincloth was the Queen of Cups.
"That's a lot of swords," Nicols noted. He blew on his tea to cool it. "The Eight, the Nine, and the Prince again."
Eight was interference, chaos strewn across the path. So many directions, so many currents of flow. They divided the magus' focus, kept him from realizing his Will. Distractions, the Chorus whispered. As it lay beneath the Lovers, the Eight was the root of my question. The entanglements of the recent past that had ensnared me. The history from which I sought to extricate myself. These eight swords were the confusion of Malkuth. The black iron prison that prevented us from leveraging Reason to effect our escape from the persistent cupidity of the flesh.
The Nine of Swords, by virtue of being on the left, was my past, that empirical truth that I couldn't escape. This was the realm of the Chorus, that anarchy of cruelty trailing behind me, all the way back to the night in the woods. This card was the world as I remembered it, as I was born into magick on that night of violence and pandemonium. These nine blades, blood-tinged points piercing the earth, were symbolic of my ruptured body.