Page 41 of Elmwood Inclusive Magic Academy
“That’s not true,” Hallie shakes her head, then turns to me earnestly. “Rae, fated mates are just a myth. Just an excuse toforce shifters to marry other shifters to form alliances for their pack. I understand if you’re…feeling confused, but…”
The hot feeling in my stomach rises to my chest. “I’m grateful for your help the other night, vampire, but I didn’t ask you here. This is between me and the fortune-teller.”
I lock eyes with Gwen, who quivers faintly.
“Well? Can you help me?” I ask them.
Gwen nods. Their long, pale green fingers fumble with their pouch.
“I…I’ve never done anything quite like this, but I’ve read about how to do it…it’s not exactly mer-magic, but I think I can try…”
They pull out a dark metal box with large, rusted hinges. They put it down on the table as the rest of us watch intently. The hinges squeak as the box opens. They pull out a bundle wrapped in black silk.
Persephone huffs. “Oh, notpaperagain…”
“It’s actually really cool, Percy!” Gwen says. They unwind the black silk from what looks like an old deck of cards.
Gwen explains slowly, as though describing a strange, foreign concept. “Paper is like having a reflection, but the reflection can be whatever you like! And it stays the same so you don’t forget. These papers, they’re calledtarots, they can tell you different things based on how you shuffle them.”
“I’ll save myself the paper cuts, thanks,” Persephone winces.
“I’m really good at shuffling now!” Gwen slowly takes the deck and cuts it in two, then moves the piles toward each other. A few of them slip onto the ground and they fumble to retrieve them.
I’m starting to question this entire plan.
“Well I’ll have to cross ‘mer-person reading tarot cards’ off of my first-year bucket list,” Hallie says to herself, grinning.
“Why would you have a list of buckets?” says Persephone, her pink eyebrows raised. “See, paperisweird!”
Gwen hands the deck over to me. “Ok, you’ve got to shuffle the cards…be careful not to cut yourself!”
The cards are so worn, I have no idea how I could possibly hurt myself. They look absolutely ancient. I have no idea who would even think to give Gwen a deck of tarot cards. The edges are worn and dark, and the images are simple but strange and haunting. I try not to look too closely at the pictures of burning castles and impaled knights.
“Think about the question that you want to ask the cards,” Gwen whispers.
I close my eyes. I think in images and smells - burning embers, soft laurel wood, cinnamon.
“Now cut the deck in three piles with your left hand…good…now put the last pile on the second one, then the second one on the first…”
I dutifully open my eyes to complete the task. Once I’m done, Gwen takes a deep breath. They draw a card from the top of the pile and lay it down in the center of the table. All four of us lean in, squinting in the moonlight.
My heart sinks. The first card is an image of a winged, dark creature, with five white letters hovering ominously underneath it. But Gwen picks another card from the pile and crosses it. This one has a man and two horses, one white and one black. Gwen picks a few other cards and puts them around the cross they’ve made.
After they’ve laid several cards, they sit back, staring at them. They cross their arms, tapping a long finger on their front tooth.
“Well…” Persephone moans. “Gwen, what does it mean? The first card, Death, does that mean her fated mate is going to die?”
“Or…that they’re already dead?” Hallie gasps.
“No, no…” Gwen shakes their head, their curls twinkling in the dim light. “Death doesn’t literally mean someone’s dead…on the contrary, it can be a fortuitous card. In this case, based on the cards around it, I think it might mean a sort of…rebirth. Like something ending…but more importantly, something new beginning.”
“Her fated mate’s a baby?” Persephone wrinkles her nose.
“Not literally,” Gwen taps their tooth again. “You see, you sort of have to read the cards holistically, take them in context.”
My head hurts. I had expected a perfect picture of my fated mate, a clear indication of who it could be.
“So what does thatmean?” I ask.
