Tarot

Session One - the tarot reading



There is a tiny balcony at the back of the captain’s cabin. Beyond it, lies only the ocean, and no one can see Ariadne Caligari as she sits there. And so today she is not a Fate Witch (well, not as most would understand it) and wears no veil. Instead she’s just a girl in a blouse and skirt (a blue skirt, what is more. No one will see it beneath her black overgarments later) sitting cross legged on the balcony with the wind blowing through her hair.



She has a bangle on her wrist which jangles (and she can’t remove, which might be a problem) and a sketchpad in her lap.

 One page one, she’s drawn a blade, wreathed in flame. Behind the sword is a shadowy figure – the hand holding the hilt is a ghost in charcoal. The sword drives the man.

Ariadne chews on her lip.

“You aren’t a ghost,” she says out loud. “But you will become so if you aren’t careful. Swords are too strong in you,”

One page two, she’s drawn the edges of a face – cheekbones, a small neat beat, a flash of a smile – and instead of an eye she’s drawn a coin. There’s a faint fondness in the line of her pencil and she smiles when she looks at that picture.

“You hide behind your coins,” she says, her words carried away by the winds. “There’s a greater light there. But you carry the four,” and she sketches four shiny pentacles beside his picture. “You won’t keep it forever. But I don’t know yet where you will go. I don’t know where I will take you. But I know our fates are tied. For a little while,”

One page three, she’s drawn a double sketch – a man overlaid by a bear. She frowns at that and says, in some confusion, “the Knight of Cups? But you don’t look romantic. Maybe I’ve misread. Or is that Knight of Wands?” and turns the page to a figure in shining armour and says “but you look like a sailor too. You shouldn’t be a knight,” and she shakes her head. “At least you pay me the proper fear.”

The two bigger men scare her a little.

And, on the last page, there is no person at all, but only a cauldron. Ariadne stares at that picture of a while, and then slowly sketches in another image above the cauldron. On the white piece of paper emerges a fat white moon.

“You are all burdened,” she says quietly “with glorious destiny. And you all carry blood and havoc in your wake.”

For the first time, the Fate Witch smiles.

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,”