The Book of Speculation

16

Though Burlington, New Jersey, was bustling and an excellent place to restock, it was not expected to be a financial boon. “Friends,” Peabody muttered while writing. “Fiscally responsible teetotalers. A difficult lot for any showman.” Amos’s brows raised in question. “The Quakers, my boy. Fine persons with whom to conduct business, but they do not indulge. How I wish purse strings were not so reliant upon the flow of liquor. You’ll find your work with Madame Ryzhkova to be lighter here than you’re accustomed. Perhaps you’ll enjoy a rest. Spend a bit of time with our mermaid, yes?” In his book, next to Burlington, Peabody had written, Witch trials here before war. Shall take care with Amos.

Peabody’s words proved accurate. For the first time in many months Amos was at loose ends. There was still work to be done, supplies to be purchased, horses to be reshod, smudge-charred cloth to be replaced, all of which Burlington could provide. Amos liked Burlington. A patchwork of buildings ran along High Street, some brick and peaked like New Castle, others wood with squared barnlike roofs. There was also a firehouse with a towering steeple almost like a church. A mix of people filled the streets; dark-skinned men walked freely here — Amos had even spied one working in a bakery. Wandering the town, he began to picture a small house, brick perhaps, with a chimney, and a bed that didn’t rattle over wagon ruts, a place he might share.

He’d been helping Meixel haul feed sacks — a bit of white ribbon tucked away in his pocket for Evangeline — when Madame Ryzhkova snatched his ear and twisted it painfully. “Come,” she barked. Amos’s face turned hot at Meixel’s laughter.

The seer pulled him into the wagon with such ferocity that he tore his pant leg on an exposed nail. As Ryzhkova berated him, he worried the frayed threads with his thumb, comparing their softness to Evangeline’s hair.

The angrier Ryzhkova became, the harder it was to glean her meaning; she slipped into the other language, clunking syllables like falling rocks. He knew she railed about Evangeline. Ryzhkova waved the cards at him, disgust carving deep lines in her face. It was too much to see Evangeline and not touch her, not talk with her, but he’d known that they’d become reckless, and suspected they’d been seen trading kisses. Ryzhkova knew. Her skin grew mottled and purple, and Amos became afraid, for himself and for his teacher; bodies were not meant to work in such a way. He took her hand, brown fingers closing around the cards and her crooked knuckles.

At his touch Ryzhkova’s voice dropped to a whisper. Amos felt the portraits watching, begging him to listen. When he looked in her eyes he found them tired and sad.

Amos had learned much from Evangeline, how a smile did not always mean happiness, that crying might mean sadness or joy, and that women could be much comforted by an embrace. He put his arms around Ryzhkova, resting his cheek by her breastbone in the curved space where women held their children.

She cried upon him, her words weaving an incantation. “My son.” My son, my son, my son. She spoke of worry, how she could not bear another loss. She knew Evangeline was this thing, Rusalka. If he was a good boy, if he was smart as she knew him to be, he would listen. My son, my son. She told him his lies mattered little, but he must stay safe. She could forgive him anything except losing his life. My son. She’d read him in her cards, had known she’d find him, she’d given him the name meant for a son of her flesh.

When her breath came evenly, she took Amos’s face in her hands. “You must leave her. My own father, one of them stole him from me. Monster. She will kill you.”

When he frowned, she closed her eyes to block his denial. “You would laugh, smile. My Amos, your soul is so good she longs for it, but if you stay with her your end will be drowned in a river. She will find another as if you never were. If you do not break with her, you will die. She has killed. She will again. I see this.” Her palms smoldered with the same unnamable thing that allowed her to touch the cards and see what would come to be.

“Your card,” she croaked, “was the Tower. I saw it all that time ago. The girl will bring this on you. Same reading there is Devil. Not reversed, as you like him. Over and over I read cards for you. Never do they change. She, the girl, she is there in middle.” She took the deck in her hands, and a card’s worn edge called to her. She pressed the Queen of Swords to Amos’s hand, reversed so that the dark-haired woman’s eyes bored into him. A woman — Evangeline — bringing loss.

He shook his head, unbelieving. She had not seen how frightened Evangeline was that night she’d walked from the woods, or felt the desperation when she’d held on to him.

Little knots formed in Ryzhkova’s brow. She pulled another card from the deck in the same blind manner. The Devil, upright, a sneer on his face. Without pause she drew a final card. The skeleton on horseback. Death.

“This is what I saw. Then the girl came. We can leave here,” she said, touching his wrist. “We can go to my daughter. I will take you to her — a beautiful woman. Whole.”

A fine sweat broke over him at the thought of leaving Evangeline. He wrested the cards from Ryzhkova and felt her painted relatives’ condemning eyes. Even the pretty girl glared. He shuffled and let his fingertips slide until he felt a cold pricking beneath his fingernails. He pulled the card from the deck, revealing its broad bright face to his mentor. The Sun.

“Happiness, light,” Ryzhkova shouted. “He speaks to me of happiness. I tell you the girl will be the end of you. Happiness, you tell me.”

Amos searched again until he felt a card speak to his bones. The Hierophant — a powerful figure who ruled over alliances from a throne set between two pillars. A marriage.

“Bah,” said Ryzhkova. “Do not say such a thing. Soulless cannot marry.”

Amos remained intent, flying through the deck, turning card after card, painting the life he saw for himself, a life he dared imagine with a small house and Evangeline. The Wheel of Fortune, the Ten of Pentacles, the Ace of Cups, the Lovers, Two of Cups. Together they spoke of marriage, a love that spilled over so that all would be touched by it, as flows water.

The last image stabbed her, a man and woman, hands joined around a cup, pledging fidelity. She squinted and pointed her crooked finger at Amos. “You see what you want. You taint cards with your hope. You do not read future, you see wishes.” Her hand, weighted by rings, bent-branch thumb pointed outward, slid the cards back into the deck. The ends of her yellowed fingernails made the cards move. Much time had passed since Amos had first witnessed Ryzhkova make the cards dance like butterflies, magic that amazed as much as frightened. Once the cards settled, Ryzhkova placed her hand against the stack and pressed until her knuckles turned white. She closed her eyes, her face wrinkling until her features became indiscernible, forced out three quick breaths, and began to murmur over the deck. Her body swayed like a candle flame.

Something had broken between them; a tie he’d not realized was tenuous.

She spread the cards across the bare crate, a wash of color against dull wood. Four remained uncannily face up. Amos fixed on the pictures that stared up at him, the Tower, Three of Swords, Death, the Devil.

“Just as before. You see? She will wear you, bleed you, as water cuts stone,” she said, her voice a quiet ache. She repeated the ritual. Nine of Swords, a figure crying in anguish, blades looming over his head; Ten of Swords, a body, facedown by a river, run through with blades. The Tower. The Devil. Before she could clear the cards a third time, Amos took hold of her hands. He shook his head.

“Every time is same,” she said.

He felt badly for her anxiousness, but what she asked was impossible. He held Ryzhkova’s hands and thought of Evangeline’s tapered fingers. He knew of no way to apologize, but would repair whatever he could. In time, he hoped the women would grow used to one another. He hoped, foolishly perhaps, but he’d always loved the Fool.

Amos shifted his weight to his knees, bones pressing hard into the wagon boards. He released Ryzhkova’s hands and bent slowly forward, chest over thighs, until his forehead touched her tattered brown boots. Subservience, perhaps. Forgiveness, he hoped. He begged. He remained still, head at her feet, until she bid him rise with a firm tug at his shirt collar.

“Not this from you. You are my son, not a servant. Not a dog.” She smiled and was once more the kindly woman she’d so often been with him. “Please. I forgive you, but you must leave her.”

His fingers stiffened against the floor.

He had grown to a fair height in the years since joining the menagerie. At that moment he regretted his stature; he wished nothing more than to stand straight before this woman, but the low ceiling forced him to duck when he rose. He shook his head in refusal, but his stooped shoulders dampened the intended force. When he dropped down from the door and his feet touched grass, it seemed too late to stand properly.

He crept away in search of Evangeline. Like a dog, he thought. He found her preparing for the afternoon’s show, floating in her tub, hair spread in the water, her dress pooling about her like a water lily. At his approach she pulled herself up on the tub’s staves.

“Why are you crying?”

Ryzhkova had no energy to follow Amos. Her anger dissipated as quickly as it had risen, leaving her an empty sack. She dealt the cards again, watching for changes. Peabody was useless; he saw only money. The boy saw only beauty. She turned the cards again. With each reading came her father’s face, floating in the stream, and Amos there beside him. She turned and turned until her fingers could no longer bear the touch.

She could not stay. To watch a father die had burned her, making her into the hardened woman she’d become, a woman who had parted with her daughter because she’d learned that to cling too tightly was to strangle. Yet Amos had crept beneath her skin. She had little life left in her; to watch a son die would break her.

Ryzhkova locked the wagon door and waited for night to fall, until the chattering voices that stayed up latest — Melina, Susanna, Meixel — had quieted. She unwrapped her scarf and filled it with her possessions: letters from her brothers, the paintings, coins, and a small brass pendulum on a silk thread with which to find water and tell fate. Her hair had grown long, white, and rough like a horsetail, far removed from the black softness it had been when she’d been Yelena. If she looked at her reflection, she knew she would see a stranger.

The camp was quiet. Only Benno was about, practicing short tumbling passes near the fire. Deep in concentration he gave no indication that he saw her. She moved quietly toward the dray that carried Evangeline’s tub. Amos would be there; he would be unable to help it, not when he was so enchanted.

She found him, asleep, covered by a worn blanket, with his arms twined around the girl. His scarf had come loose and his hair escaped, reminding her of the untamed child she’d first known. She would kiss his forehead, run a hand down his cheek, but it would wake him. Or the girl. She had no longing to stare such a creature in the eye once more.

She whispered goodbye and called him by his name.

Ryzhkova returned to her wagon a final time to collect her belongings. She lit a tallow candle, one already burned low, and ran her hand over the box and the cards that had spoken so much. Taking them would leave nothing of her behind for him, and she wanted him to remember, to love her if he could, even just a little. She opened the lid to the box, looked at the cards that she’d inked so carefully, proud of their color. Perhaps, once the Rusalka pulled hard at his soul, perhaps he’d remember that she’d loved him and it would be enough.

She touched her hand to the paper, feeling Amos in it, and whispered a prayer for him. She said the words she would have said for her father. “Keep him safe. Give him family. Give him a home. Drive the Rusalka from him; that she will drown in sorrow deep enough to tremble through her blood. May the water take that blood and wash her and her line away. Let her not drown another man. Keep him safe.”

Ryzhkova was accustomed to tarot with its layers of meaning, interpretations, and reversals, and how a picture might look one way but contain a contrary truth. Used to her silent apprentice, she had forgotten that language itself was as subtle and slippery as her cards, and that words contained hidden seeds that blossomed with a speaker’s intent. A wish for safety meant nothing if the force behind it was a desire to kill. Though she spoke of love and protection, dread, grief, and anger bled through. Each word that fell from her tongue bound itself to paper with a small part of her soul, infusing the cards not with love as she thought, but with a hex burned strong and deep by fear. Buried in the heart of the deck, the Fool’s eyes shut.

She closed the box.

A knot in her scarf fashioned it into a sack, easily carried on her shoulder. She blew out the candle and stepped from her wagon. She crossed the camp slowly, careful to not let the coins she carried jingle.

Benno watched as she passed his wagon. She did not understand him, laughing one minute, somber the next. But he watched over Amos as would a sibling. He was strong, like her brothers, but protective as they had not been. She nodded to him. The tumbler executed a small bow.

“You have sharp eyes, yes?” she asked.

“Always, Madame,” he answered.

“Good. You will use them. Watch her. Keep him safe.”

Confusion clouded Benno’s face, but Ryzhkova said nothing more and continued past him. Soon she heard the soft thumping of Benno’s palms against the ground as he practiced. Ryzhkova walked from the circle of the menagerie’s wagons and disappeared into the darkened streets of Burlington.