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She shook her head.
I smiled up at her a little bitterly. “Well, if you did, with your intuition, you’d know immediately what this card represented.”
She nodded, looking thoughtful. “I’ll take your word for it. It’s your insights that matter. If this means something to you, then tell me what it means... without specifics. Unless you want to share.”
“What it means to me...” I stared at the tower, the lightning, the fires. “Upheaval is correct. Things being on fire. A crown being knocked off the top of a tower. Destruction.”
Ria nodded. “There was a large upheaval in your past that prompted the beginning of your problem. The roots may have been growing before this dramatic event, but this event was what sealed the deal, and caused the final destruction. You wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to. All you could do was jump out the window, hope you didn’t get dashed on the rocks below.”
I swallowed. And nodded. I hadn’t had a choice, not in my mind, anyway. Responsibility had been thrust upon me. A responsibility that still haunted me today, had become my whole existence. And it had all started with Emory Brock. My father. Whatever life I had wanted pre-Emory had no longer been relevant. Its relevance had been shattered immediately upon learning the news, like the people exiting the tower may be about to be dashed upon the rocks below.
After a moment in which she had let me contemplate this, she started up again. “Are you ready for the next card? This next one will represent the current state of the problem you face.”
I didn’t feel particularly ready. “I’m ready.”
She turned over the next card. It was upside down, but I could make out the lettering.The Hanged Man. Wonderful.
But Ria seemed somewhat excited. “This one might be trickier for you to relate to. When a card is upside down like that, it’s called ‘reversed’. That means that some of the meanings of the symbols must be looked at in reverse. They may have a more negative meaning. And they require extra attention. So let’s spend some time on this one.”
I looked at the card. From my position, The Hanged Man was just a man standing up on one leg, like a flamingo. “’The Hanged Man’ sounds quite negative. Should I be glad it’s reversed?”
“There are cards in the deck like this... ‘The Devil’, for example. But you must look past your immediate associations and, guided by my pointers, find something deeper. So, The Hanged Man would usually indicate sacrifice, surrender, a noble kind of sacrifice, for something that you care about deeply. Reversed... it means you might be putting off your problem, distracting yourself from it. You might be waiting for something that will never come. You may be out of sync with your intuition. You might be going too fast, or too slow.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Too fastortoo slow?”
She was quite patient. It must be important to be impatient when your job was telling fortunes to skeptics. “It’s not precise. You must guide the meaning. Do you think you’re going too fast, or too slow?”
I was tight-lipped for a moment. Then I begrudgingly came out with it. “Too fast.”
Ria smiled. “That seemed hard for you to admit. I can see this card is quite accurate for your present state. It may be suggesting that you ought to take a pause, or slow down a little, so that you can get a more accurate perspective on your problem.”
I rarely spoke in metaphors, but I was maybe getting the hang of it. “If I slow down, my problem will overtake me.”
“Not necessarily. Need I remind you of the tortoise and the hare?”
I leaned back in my chair. “I already feel like the tortoise. Slow.”
She smiled, not unkindly. “Well, you just told me you’re too fast.”
I shrugged. “That’s what my brothers would say.”
“You think you’re going too slow. Your brothers think you’re going too fast.” She leaned in. “You trust your brothers? You listen to them?”
I looked away. That perfume, which had been intoxicating at first, now made me feel slightly claustrophobic. But in both scenarios, it sent a warmth to my crotch that I didn’t want to cultivate right now. “I trust them. I don’t always listen to them.”
She leaned back, sensing my discomfort. “Well, perhaps you ought to share with them a little more. They might not have the solution for you, but they possibly know you well enough to let you know when you’re going too fast. Keep you balanced, so you don’t rush ahead and miss a solution staring you in the face.”
“Hmm.”
“You don’t need to agree with me. But go away and think about it. If you think the card accurately reflects where you are now – and I have to say, it seems it does – it might offer you some insight over the coming days.”
“And the last card?”
She wordlessly flipped over the last card. ‘The Sun’, reversed. A smug, large-faced sun presiding over almost half of the card. Beneath it, a naked boy rides a horse, looking... carefree. Vulnerable. The horse looked grim, looking down at the ground.
She glanced up at me. “Wow, three cards from the Major Arcana. Those are the named cards that aren’t from one of the suits: wands, cups, swords and pentacles. You lead a dramatic life. Or maybe you have a profound depth of feeling.”
But I was staring at the upside-down face of the sun. Apollo, in Greek mythology, was the god of the sun. My future contained Apollo. I’d already known that. But was the fact that The Sun was reversed mean that I would defeat Apollo? Or did it mean that I was to be defeated by Apollo?
