The card displayed a beautiful, naked woman with a vase in each hand, pouring water onto the earth. Water from one vase formed a lake, while the other caused buds to rise from the ground. One giant star winked in the sky, and seven smaller stars clustered around it. It appeared to be early morning. On a branch in the background, a bird announced the dawn.
“Star,” the old woman whispered. She reached out and turned another card—I wasn’t sure if this was at random or following a specific sequence.
This time, the card showed an old, bearded man in a robe. He held a lantern in his right hand and a staff in his left. He appeared to be standing on some mountain precipice. He looked down upon a sea of clouds, nothing but empty space around him. There was something unworldly about his eyes as he gazed below.
“Hermit.”
Her brows twitched when she turned the card. Was that not good? For too long I’d nervously watched people’s faces, and now I picked up on the slightest changes in expression.
“Well, what next?”
She turned over another card.
“What?” I whispered the moment I saw the picture.
The words weren’t English, so I couldn’t read them, but the message was clear. Bad omens crowded the picture.
“The Tower,” she said, her voice low.
Against a star-filled sky, a tower was being destroyed. Lightning struck the tower’s summit and it collapsed, consumed by flames. In the air, I saw a golden crown, shooting flames, the lightning, stone fragments, and two men who screamed as they fell to the earth.
“Choose the last card yourself,” the old woman said, looking up at me.
“But…”
“Doesn’t matter which. These cards are older than me or that Roundabout, so treat them gently.”
“S-sure.”
I looked over the cards, around twenty in all. Three of them had already been turned face up.
They looked at me, and I looked at them. Which should I choose?
Then… Though it wasn’t that unnatural for a winter’s night, I felt a chill.
I reached out a hand, my fingers so numb I could scarcely move them.
The cold.
I knew this sensation; knew it well.
Inside my head, my guts, something was oozing. The core of me was somewhere warm, protected. My toes and fingers felt frozen, the cold slowly creeping up my arms and legs, leeching away my warmth.
“Oh.” The old woman gasped.
I started, as if waking up from a trance.
Shaking my head, I looked down to find four cards face up.
“Did I turn that?” I asked.
“Yes.” She nodded, her half-blind eyes staring at the card.
The card showed a man seated behind a three-legged table laden with cups, knives, and dice. A single leaf sprouted beneath his feet. His hair was curled and golden, and he wore a giant Bicorne hat twisted into the shape of the infinity symbol. He held a short stick in his left hand and a coin in his right. His brightly colored tunic was asymmetrical, and he wore pointy leather shoes over his tight leggings. He looked like…
“A clown?”
“No,” the old woman said—I realized that her table exactly resembled the one in the card. “Although some would say there’s little difference. He’s the Magician, a card that shows the power you have.”
“Power? You mean this weird—”
She shook her head.
“Nothing weird about it. Snakes see heat. Whales see sound. Wolves see scents. You see neighbors. Not everyone has a talent like yours. That’s all.”
“But—”
“Or perhaps anyone can see them under the right circumstances. The power itself is nothing special, just a power. A power any potential mage or alchemist has.”
“A mage?”
I’d heard about them. There were few left, but real mages existed. Some were strong enough that the church couldn’t just ignore them, but the authorities claimed the existence of mages helped proved that God was real.
“Agnella.”
At my name, I startled. The old woman’s eyes fixed directly on mine.
“I’m going to ask something strange, but can you answer?”
“Okay.”
She hesitated, then said, “Are you happy now? Or the opposite?”
“Huh?”
Good question. Was I happy, or was I unhappy? When I’d lived with my adoptive parents I never would have even understood the question, but I may have a better idea now.
There was a story that went like this: A city mule met a country mule by the side of the road. The country mule carried a heavy burden on his back. His shoes were worn-out, so he walked very slowly. But the city mule’s load was light, and he walked with a prance in every step.
The city mule said, “Oh, what a poor, unfortunate mule you are! Such a heavy load! You’re doing such hard labor.”
But the country mule just asked, “What’s labor?”
I was now conscious of both fortune and misfortune, and I knew I wasn’t fortunate. But at the same time, I’d never experienced good fortune. Did that make me unhappy? Or happy?
“Then what do you want, Agnella? We all said what we wanted.” Yolanda had been lying on the top bunk opposite me, head propped up on her elbow.
We’d often chatted until we fell asleep. That day, I’d had nothing to say. Unlike the other three, I didn’t have a dream.
“I don’t know,” I replied, gazing at the old woman.
“I see. If you could understand that, then…I wondered if maybe something like you could actually understand humans.”
The old woman shook her head, gathering up the cards from the table.
“That’s why you ate them? The dreams. Ate them whole. But you still didn’t understand?”
Dreams. Like she’d read my mind.
“Huh?!”
What did she mean? What was she saying? Why was she saying that? Wasn’t she just telling my fortune? My heart ached. A terrible pain started in my lower belly.
“Um, how much… I’m sorry, I don’t have any money. So. Could you give me a good fortune?” But I had nothing with which to pay.
“There’s nothing good or bad about it. I’m just here to check the milk that’s been spilled,” she said, sighing.
“Milk?”
“Like karma. Can’t get ahead of it to stop it. Can only see the result. Spilled milk can’t go back in the jug, but I always believe there may have been a better way for it to spill.”
She sighed louder.
“Listen close, Agnella. You’re a changeling.”
“A…changeling?”
“Faeries snatch human children away sometimes. Sometimes they take and dote on the children, other times they work the children hard. Sometimes they eat the children, but sometimes they even fall in love. If they just snatched the children, then that would be the end of it. But sometimes they leave a faerie or troll child behind instead. Those are changelings.”
“Then I’m…”
I remembered my adoptive father’s oft-told story, about the green light in the barn hatch. Emerald. Something everyone could see under the right circumstances…
Everything wrong in my life suddenly made sense.
What irony was this? The real me had been abandoned by her parents the moment she was born. Yet they’d wanted her, and to cover for it they left me behind…
Oh. Head to toe, start to finish, I was…
“I’m not…human?”
“Far from it.”
She put the last Tarot card back in the deck and moved to the desk in the corner. She picked up the Easter egg and gave it a little shake.
“For most changelings, this egg alone can start them over. But it seems you’re a more troubling type.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The goats. What happened to Gray and White? Did you say goodbye?” she asked.
“What?”
“The bull. What happened to Brown’s body? Did you dig a grave for him?”
“Uhh… I…”
“Why did your adoptive mother and father fear you? Why would they spend all that time raising you to the point where you could finally work, yet sell you away to an orphanage for a pittance right after losing Brown?”
“I… I was… I… Gray…and White…”
“Like I said, the milk’s already spilled.”
She put her elbows on the table, steepling her fingers.
“When did it first spill? A long time ago, when Brown died and his body vanished. And shortly after that, when both goats disappeared. Perhaps when you ate Agnella and became her. You are the one who snatched her away and at the same time the one who was snatched away. And…”
“Ah,” I whispered.
“You were never a faerie.”