Cartomantrix

Word count: Approx. 1,500
Notes/Warnings: None.

“Why did you wait so long to tell me?”

I looked down and away from Caleb’s accusing dark eyes. “Caleb—”

“That isn’t my real name, and you know it, Aunt Grace.” I winced and Caleb twisted the knife a bit more. “Or should I call you maman?”

I winced again and Caleb noticed, turning away, himself. “Call me whatever you feel comfortable with,” I said, my heart breaking. For years—since Caleb was old enough to speak, I’d longed for nothing more than to hear him call me maman. But now that he had . . . now that he had, I realized how much I’d grown used to and liked hearing him call me Grace. Even though that wasn’t my name.

“I don’t think you want me to call you what I’m comfortable with, right now.” Caleb paced to the window and twitched the curtains aside to look out while I hastily wiped away tears I didn’t want him to see. “All these years . . . all these lies . . . all the times I came to you, begging you to tell me what I was—who I was, and why I was such a freak—”

“You are not a freak, Caleb,” I insisted, my voice shaking with the effort of holding back tears and excuses. “And I didn’t lie to keep you in the dark, but to protect you.”

“From what? And why tell me the truth now?” he demanded, glancing at me with his father’s troubled gaze. “Who are we, if not Grace and Caleb Lasher? Why don’t we age like everyone else and why have we lived for so long?”

I held Caleb’s intent gaze with some difficulty. “We are the Lenormands. I am Marie Anne and you are Alexander II, named for your father . . . Tsar Alexander I, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias.” Caleb’s already wide eyes widened further. “As to why we have lived for so long and why we do not age as others do . . . that I do not know. I know only this.”

I picked up the old purple velvet bag in which the cards lay waiting. And for the first time in nearly two centuries, I opened that bag and tipped out those cards. . . .

As soon as they touched my palm I could Feel the Talent, lain long dormant in me, begin to manifest . . . to infuse the cards with meaning that only I—and possibly Caleb, if he could open his mind—would be able to interpret.

Resisting the strong urge to begin reading, which came upon me so powerfully, it was as if no time had passed at all, I held the cards out to Caleb. He reached for them—the first time he’d touched them since he was a mere babe—and took them with a steady hand. He had no Earthly idea . . . who I was—who he was—no idea of his talents or heritage. For if he had, his hands would have shook with the moment.

Yet Caleb’s ignorance was entirely my fault. And despite our seeming immortality, I regretted all the wasted years I’d left us both languishing in that safe cocoon of ignorance. But the time had come to cast off that cocoon . . . to See once more, and to Know.

“Tarot cards?” he asked incredulously, obviously torn between laughing disbelief and dawning horror as he fanned them out and scanned the faces. He’d never believed in tarot or oracle cards. In the intangible things that one couldn’t see or touch or quantify. He was so like his father in that moment, in manner and even in look, that it quite took my breath away. “What do those have to do with anything?”

“That deck,” I began mildly, “is older than you are, and I made it myself. It is very accurate and very powerful. I have never had a reading go wrong with it and as far as I know I—and possibly you—are the only ones who can use it.”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “Fascinating.”

Ignoring his sarcasm and cynicism, I went on. “With that deck I Foresaw many things, good and bad. And they always came true. On the night of your christening, I did a reading for you, and what I Saw. . . .” I sighed and looked away from him. At the Oriental rug on which my bare feet rested. “I Saw that there were those that wanted their own . . . pet Seer, for lack of a better term. One they could keep and control like a slave. And that they would stop at nothing to obtain one. They had tried to obtain me, but I was too . . . wily and well-known for them. But a babe in arms . . . the babe of a noted Seer, one that could be raised and indoctrinated with whatever the abductors chose . . . that was an even better prospect.

“It was then that I chose to disappear. To die, in essence. People had been noticing that I wasn’t aging like a normal woman—and they considered your birth, at my advanced age, a miracle—and were starting to . . . talk. So I died, and went into hiding, both to conceal who I was and to protect you from those who would take you from me and keep you in a cage. And I raised you as if you were any other child, rather than as the last scion of the Lenormand line . . . the last of the Great Cartomancers.”

Caleb was frowning, still studying the cards. “The great whats?”

“Cartomancers. Those who practice divination using cards, Cal—Alexander. I am a cartomantrix and you, despite your lack of training, will be a natural cartomancer.”

Now, Caleb—Alexander looked up at me, still frowning. “I don’t believe in divination.”

“You don’t have to. It is a fact of our world and does not require your belief or approval.” I shrugged and placed the velvet bag on the coffee table, then patted the spot next to me on the sofa. Alexander’s face took on that mulish look that was pure Lenormand . . . before sighing and coming to sit.

“But why tell me all this now? Why, maman?” he asked quietly, holding the cards out to me again. I hesitated then took them with a sense of both relief and doom. I wanted to read, at last, after two centuries of not Knowing. But, after two centuries, it could surely wait another few minutes. And then, I would See what there was to be Seen.

“Because there’s something coming, mon coeur. Something so powerful, I don’t need the cards to See its approach, for I Feel it in my very bones. And whatever it is, it is . . . not good.” I placed the cards on top of their bag. “It may be coming for us both, but in my heart . . . in my heart I know that its focus is you . . . and untried, untrained Divinator as powerful as I am but more easily influenced.”

“Who says I’m easily influenced?” Alexander demanded. I smiled just a little, and reached out to brush a lock of hair back from his forehead. He didn’t flinch away, for which I was grateful.

“Your disbelief in the power of the cards—in the power you, yourself possess, and which is growing stronger every day—is your vulnerability. If you don’t gain control of your powers, learn to harness them before this thing, person, or event comes along . . . you’ll be in trouble.”

Alexander’s mouth twisted into a moue and his eyes hardened . . . but then he let out a breath and mumbled. “Fine, say I believe you about . . . the divination-stuff, and that I have eerie, woo-woo powers . . . say I believe you. How would I go about learning to control my powers? How do we find out more about this not-good thing that’s about to happen?” Sitting forward, now, Alexander’s eyes narrowed in that attentive, intent way that reminded me so of his father. “And how do we stop it?”

Feeling a burst of relief and pride that almost eclipsed my worry and fear, I gestured at the coffee table. The cards thereon spread out in a fan of color and symbols without being touched, and Alexander gasped. Smiling, I took a moment to rally my power and focus, and I calmly said: “Pick a card, mon coeur. Any card.”

END