"Messages from the Third Circle cost extra," she wheezed. "That's what it says on the board outside." "Cross my palm with silver," she demanded, sticking out a grubby hand. She coughed again, clutching her colored shawl tightly about her shoulders, as though wrapping herself against some ancient and invisible winter wind. "Tell me about the woman you saw on the mountain," I said. "This broken star on your Mount of Luna shows a brilliant mind turned in upon itself-a mind that wanders the roads of darkness."
She stared at it distastefully as the candle flickered. "This is the hand you were born with," she said, barely glancing at the palm, then letting it fall and picking up the other. My fingers spread-and then curled in upon themselves like the toes of a chicken's severed foot. The Gypsy turned my hand over and dug her thumb painfully into the very center of my palm. Harriet was my mother, who had died in a climbing accident when I was a baby. In spite of the stifling heat of the darkened tent, my blood ran cold. "I see-a mountain," she went on, almost strangling on the words, "and the face-of the woman you will become."
"Eleven," I said, and she nodded her head wearily as though she'd known it all along. I waited it out patiently, almost afraid to move. But before I could make a move, the Gypsy's dusky hand had covered mine on the black velvet of the tabletop.
Darby in the churchyard not ten minutes earlier, pausing to have a word or two at each stall of the church fête. It sounded as though a large bird had somehow become entangled in her lungs and was flapping to escape. As her fingers gripped the glass, I thought I could feel ice water trickling down inside my gullet.Īt the edge of the table, a thin candle flickered, its sickly light glancing off the dangling brass hoops of the Gypsy's earrings, then flying off to die somewhere in the darkened corners of the tent.īlack hair, black eyes, black dress, red-painted cheeks, red mouth, and a voice that could only have come from smoking half a million cigarettes.Īs if to confirm my suspicions, the old woman was suddenly gripped by a fit of violent coughing that rattled her crooked frame and left her gasping horribly for air.
She cupped her hands around the thing, as if to shield my eyes from the horrors that were swimming in its murky depths. "Never have I seen my crystal ball so filled with darkness."
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