Page 59 of House of the Raven
16
VALERIA
“I can see. I can see! I am not blind anymore. Bless the fae healer!”
Vicente Villanueva - Human Beggar - 5 DV
Blinking, I let my eyes adjust to the dim interior of the wagon. There are only two candles burning in each corner. The resinous scent of myrrh fills the air, as well as the sound of someone with long nails drumming their fingers. As my gaze sharpens, I discern a man seated behind a table adorned with a crimson silken drape. He wears a turquoise kerchief twisted and wrapped around his head to form a band. There is heavy kohl around his fierce green eyes and his dark beard is braided and adorned with colorful beads. El Gran Místico, I assume.
“Take a seat, dear,” he says, gesturing toward the chair across from him.
There is a set of tarot cards sitting to his right and a veritable crystal ball to his left. He’s a Romani diviner.
“Oh, I’m not here to—”
He cuts me off. “Of course, you are.” He glances pointedly toward the door, as if he knows the reason I don’t want to be out there.
Swallowing thickly, I take a seat.
He shuffles the cards with dexterity and lays the pile in front of me. “Take out three cards and place them in a row, facing down.”
I frown. “I shouldn’t. I don’t have any money to pay you.”
Swatting the air as though shooing away an annoying fly, he remarks, “No matter. It’s not like the whole town isbeating down my door.”
The emphasis he places on the last few words causes a chill to run down my spine.
“Please,” he nods towards the cards.
As I start to lift my hand from my lap, it trembles slightly, so I make a fist, take a few breaths to steady myself, then draw three cards and lie them in a row.
“The cards represent the past, present, and future. Now, flip the past, the one to your left,” he instructs.
I do so to reveal a card with ten coins and three robed men under an archway.
El Gran Místico lifts an eyebrow as he looks at the card. “Wealth but perhaps also… strife. A strange combination, don’t you think?”
Not from where I’m sitting. As a child, I suffered much after Mother’s death. Her absence was a hole right in my chest, a hole nothing could fill for a very long time. And though now it does not gape, it’s still very much present.
I turn over the next card, wanting to get this over with, but feeling oddly safe from Bastien.
The card presents a man trying to balance seven swords.
“Duplicity,” El Gran Místico says. “It seems you aren’t who you say you are.”
What?! How can he…?
“I haven’t said anything,” I blurt out.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Notto me, at any rate.”
I flip the last card over. It depicts a man wrestling a lion. I bite my tongue, afraid of what it may mean, given that the other two cards seemed eerily accurate.
“Fortitude,” he whispers, rubbing his beard, the beads clicking together. “Lots of it. It can also mean power.”
He regards me curiously, his thick eyebrows pinched. “Who are you?”
“Nobody.”
