Morrigan took out a white
candle and a stick of dragon blood incense, and set them up in the
corner of the room. She sat cross-legged, and leaned forward to light
them. No matches were necessary. No lighter either. She simply
touched her finger to the end of the wick, and with an iridescent
spark, the candle flickered to life. It shone at first with a bright
blue flame that gradually settled into a more normal orange. It was
the same with the incense—another reason why she preferred not to
have an audience.
She stared into the
candle for a moment, and took a few deep breaths to clear her mind of
all thoughts but those of the magic she intended to perform. Danu and
Dagda sat on either side of her, instantly falling into silence, as
though they knew she needed her complete concentration. Their energy
beside her only seemed to add to the growing sense of power that
charged the room.
Morrigan closed her eyes
and began to shuffle the cards. As she did, she allowed her breathing
to become more even. A silence filled the room as the rest of the
mortal world fell away. Soon the only sound she heard was the light
thump of her own heartbeat, echoed by the quicker, fast paced beat of
the cats’ hearts. She wasn’t sure how much time passed as the
cards slipped through her fingers. It might have been minutes. It
might have been hours. When she allowed herself to fall into a
trance, time became insubstantial, irrelevant.
The tarot cards were so
old; the designs on the back were almost completely worn away. She
had to shuffle gently to keep them from crumbling to pieces in her
hands. Yet they held a power that she knew no newer cards could offer
her. As she shuffled them, she focused her energy into them, silently
requesting to be given the answers she was seeking. She allowed the
image of her mother to fill her mind. When she finally felt the cards
had fallen into the order they were meant to be in, she placed the
deck face down on the floor, and cut them with her right hand. Then,
taking one last, calming breath, she lifted the top card from the
pile. With a trembling hand, she laid it down and read it.
“Wheel of Fortune,”
she said aloud.
In the center of card was
a wheel. As she stared at the picture, that wheel seemed to turn
clockwise. The movements made her feel slightly dizzy. The bedroom
around her became more and more surreal. The scene on the card
became her reality. The figure of the sphinx that sat on top of the
turning wheel looked so very real. It might have turned its head to
look at her. Its lips may or may not have moved. Morrigan swore she
heard a deep, resonating voice whispering the meaning of the card
into her ear. Destiny approaching. An unexpected and sudden change
was coming—change that could lead to good fortune.
It was the card of fate
and karma returned. It meant that she needed to be prepared—to
expect the unexpected. Morrigan knew the cards were telling her
something was going to happen—and soon. Her destiny, whatever it
was, was about to be realized. Even if it did bring fortune, it still
scared her to death. She considered packing up the cards right then
and there. Her rational mind had every intention of doing just that.
Her hands didn’t get the message her brain was sending. Before she
knew what she was doing, she had already flipped over the second
card.
“The Empress,” she
whispered. She exhaled deeply. “My mother.”
It was the only
interpretation imaginable. Even as she said it, the pregnant woman,
crowned with stars and adorned in a gown decorated with pomegranates,
turned to her and smiled. She was no longer a vague featureless
stranger, but the same woman Morrigan had sketched earlier that day—a
face that mirrored her own. It was an older version of herself, which
she saw in the reflection in the nearby full length mirror, had
turned chalk white.
The Empress was a symbol
of maternal power—of strong feminine influence. But could it mean
that her mother was returning? She had never allowed herself to
consider such a possibility. To dwell on something so unlikely would
have been too painful. But now, with just the flip of a card, she
found herself daring to dream. There was only one way to find out for
sure. She had to keep going with the reading.
“Six of Cups.”
The third card in the
spread represented her past, and even her immediate present. The six
of cups specifically symbolized childhood, and she was, technically,
still a child. But she had a feeling that her childhood was about to
end quite abruptly. The cups in the picture were lined up across a
high stone wall, each cup holding the memories of her past.
Her past. It was nothing
but a childhood filled with longing—longings which were perhaps
about to be fulfilled. She visualized herself taking each cup down
from the wall, and pouring the troubling memories away. It was time
to start fresh. A new world was about to open up for her. She had
known it as soon as she had seen the image of her mother’s face.
But what would that world be like? What was waiting for her in the
future?
Morrigan turned over the
fourth card.
“The Knight of Wands.”
The man on the horse
carrying the staff had her baffled. Not because she didn’t know its
normal meaning, but because as she stared at the card, it began to
take on the physical attributes of the knight in her drawings. He had
the same long dreadlocks, the same bewitching stare, even the same
cocky smile. The familiarity did not cancel out the meaning of the
card. The knight of wands was representative of a dark man filled
with a kind of honey-tongued charm. He was also fiery and arrogant, a
man with a definite possibility of a dark side. If the knight of
wands was coming into her life, she knew she needed to proceed with
caution.
She thought she was done
with the fourth card, and was preparing to move on to the next, when
once again, she found she had lost control of her body. This time,
her hands refused to move, while her eyes forced their way back to
the knight in the card. She watched as the long haired stranger began
to move forward—wandering over various landscapes, some high
mountains, some meadows and fields ripe for the harvest. He kept
looking back over his shoulder, as though he were speaking to
someone. He was on a journey, and he wasn’t alone. Morrigan didn’t
need to see his companion to know who it must be.
So, her journey would
soon begin, and she wouldn’t be traveling alone. She would have a
guide. Whether or not that would be a good thing was another question
best left to the cards to answer. The next card told her nothing she
didn’t already know.
“The Moon,” she said.
“Caution.”
It was a scary card. It
warned of tricks and illusions. The two howling wolves that stood
under the moon looked back at her menacingly, growling, showing their
pointed fangs in a snarl. For the first time since she began the
reading, Danu and Dagda made their presence known by lifting their
heads and hissing threateningly in the direction of the beasts.
Even the cats sensed it.
The journey she was about to embark on wouldn’t be all fun and
family reunions. There would be obstacles and deceit, most likely
from people she thought could be trusted. The moon was a sign that
danger was certainly awaiting her. In was an ominous omen.
“Shhhh.”
She hushed the hissing
cats, and gave them each a gentle stroke to try to settle them down,
though she was far from settled herself. Again she felt the urge to
stop the spread. Her instincts were telling her that no good was
going to come out of this reading. She was only going to scare
herself. She should never have done it in the first place. When would
she learn that sometimes it was best to let life play out without
interference or prophetic warnings? Then again, she knew that to be
forewarned might be her only advantage. So with more bravery than she
felt, Morrigan flipped over the final card.
“No . . . .” she
gasped when she looked down at the terrible, skeletal face. “Oh
no.”
She should have known.
She thought a part of her did know even before she glanced down at
the gruesome scene—a skeleton with a scythe in a field of body
parts. With the divination going in the direction it was, what else
could be the final outcome?
“Death,” she
whispered. “Death.”
She knew that in most
cases, the death card was a symbol of personal transformation rather
than literal death. But a deeper sense of understanding told her that
this time the card was meant to be taken literally. She saw only
glimpses and shadows in her mind. Brief flashes of faces, some
familiar, like her mother and the knight—some still strangers, like
a beautiful, almost angelic blonde woman in a flowing white gown. But
around them all, including herself, she saw the shadows of death.
Morrigan
felt decidedly shaky as she gathered up her tarot cards. She placed
them securely in the bottom of her bag just as she heard the door
downstairs slam shut. The reading hadn’t made everything as crystal
clear as she had hoped, but one thing was certain. Her whole life was
about to change.
