‘Sit. Down,’ he said.
‘But, your Grace…’
‘You will sit down or I will make you,’ said the gypsy king.
The heat and the sounds of the caravan jerked Sam back into focus. She pushed her chair away, jumping to her feet. She felt violently ill with the fear emanating from Lala, but her anger overpowered it.
‘Don’t you dare speak to her like that!’ she yelled at the king.
A sizzle of filthy energy fizzed about the room. Samantha recognised it at once. Hate. It slicked her nostrils and tongue and she heaved and reached around for something to hang on to. The king laughed, a fractured, frightening sound, which opened in Samantha’s mind a sliver of a vision. Then, as suddenly as it had come, it was gone, and with it the foul energy. She could not understand what she had just glimpsed, but she sensed it slithering away – it felt like decay, dark magic, madness.
The king now smiled at her, a chalky offering of warmth.
‘Wait a moment, please, please,’ he said. He spread his fat fleshy hands before him and smiled meekly up at Samantha. ‘I’m sorry. I apologise for speaking so rudely. I will make it up to you and yours. And I promise you, good witch,’ he swivelled to face Lala, ‘no harm will befall anyone in this camp and only great goodness from me shall follow if you will peacefully allow your charge here to complete her reading. I see that you fear I am offended, but I assure you, my Romani sister, I am only charmed and delighted by her insight.’
Samantha swayed.
‘Sit down, my kitten,’ murmured Lala, turning towards her and cupping her face. The aged skin of her soft palm was a feather-stroke. ‘Sit down now, child.’
Samantha dropped back into the chair; she felt as though a blowfly batted about behind her eyes.
‘Certainly we will finish for you, your Grace,’ Lala continued. ‘There is but one card left to draw – your future – and I am certain that the child will be able to complete the reading quickly.’
Lala looked down at Samantha and gave her a meaningful stare.
Samantha stared back, dazed. What is going on here, Lala? she asked with her eyes.
Please, just finish. And do it quickly, Lala’s eyes answered.
Samantha reached for the deck; the king leaned back against the day bed, and the whispers began again. This time there was heat behind the hushed voices and she thought she heard a muffled shriek from the cards. She turned the top card and placed it to the right of the hourglass.
‘Your future,’ she said coldly. ‘What will be.’
The king stared bug-eyed at the card. Sucked in air. ‘What is that?’ he said. ‘What does it mean?’
The card was almost completely black. But forming the centre, staring up at each of them, was a man in pieces. His head, shoulders, stomach, loins and legs had all been dismembered – as though he’d been wrenched from the card and, like a photo, ripped and torn before being crudely pasted back onto the blackness. His face was terrified, his arms clenched across his disembodied chest as though he scrabbled to hold at least this piece of himself together.
Samantha lifted her eyes to the king’s. His jowl quivered.
‘A major Arcana card,’ she said. ‘Your destiny – the Falling Tower.’
Samantha felt Lala willing her to deliver to the king the vanilla-version of this card: that this was a chance for him to be forewarned against a major change that would soon befall his life, and to see this disruption as merely an opportunity to transform things for the better.
Instead, she told the truth.
‘The foundations of your power are weak and rotten,’ she said. ‘Your tower will crumble.’
The lamp on the table before her flickered. She continued. ‘The two choices you are now struggling with will determine whether or not you escape the fall of your empire with your life. Choose one way and you will live on. Select the other option and you will die in agony, with your last breath poisoned by regret.
‘Either way,’ Samantha said, ‘your tower will crumble.’
Dwight Juvenile Justice Detention Centre, Sydney, Australia
‘So that’s what makes all that noise,’ Zac shouted, on his knees in the mud next to Luke.
‘Yep, that’s the swamp rat,’ said Luke, lifting his eyes from the garden bed. ‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’
‘She stinks,’ said Zac.
Luke nodded. A sheen of fuel oil shimmered in the air. He’d never been able to figure out whether the 1980 Holden Commodore had originally been red or blue. The panels that remained were a mix of both. At the moment, he couldn’t see much of either colour – the swamp rat was caked in dried dirt and splattered all over with fresh mud. It had no boot, bonnet, rear windscreen or doors, and the swamp rat’s driver, Mad Mike, was also head-to-toe in mud.
Through the hole in the passenger side of the car, Luke watched Mad Mike rip the handbrake up. The engine cut out. The sudden absence of noise was almost as disturbing as the roar of sound had been.
‘Oh my God, how loud is that car?’ said Zac, poking a finger in his ear. ‘What is that anyway? Is it even a car?’
Mad Mike swung out of the driver’s side of the vehicle and crunched over the gravel driveway leading to the Dwight Administration Building. He stopped at the folding chair near the steps leading to the entrance.
‘Mike, can you not do something about the noise from that ridiculous vehicle?’ said Matron Cole, blinking up at him from the chair in which she watched Luke and Zac weeding and the rest of Section Six raking, sweeping mud from the paths and clipping plants. ‘I mean, have you purposely modified that thing to produce that deafening racket?’
Mad Mike scratched at the grey stubble on his cheek. A wad of something brown flicked off his face with the movement. God, I hope that’s mud, thought Luke, grimacing.
‘No muffler,’ Mike mumbled.
‘Well, why do you not attach one, then?’ said Matron. ‘Do you know how sick we all are of hearing that thing tearing through the grounds?’
‘I like it loud,’ said Mad Mike. ‘That way, none of these here delinquents is gonna be able to steal it out from under me, are they?’
He grinned.
Luke wished like hell he hadn’t. Mad Mike had maybe three teeth left and Luke didn’t think those would be hanging around too much longer either. There looked to be even more fungus on them than the last time Luke had been lucky enough to cop a viewing.
Matron actually shuddered.
‘Well, get on with it, Mike,’ she said. ‘You know you’re not supposed to bring that thing out the front here. What if we have a visitor? You make us all look like a pack of hillbillies.’
‘Orright, orright, Mavis. I just gotta pick something up for the laundry,’ said Mad Mike, making his way up the steps.
‘You are not to move one step further, Mike Archer,’ said Matron, standing. ‘Just look at the state of you. We do not need you to traipse half of the soccer oval into Admin. What are you here for? I’ll get it. You watch the inmates.’
The moment Matron cleared the doorway, Mad Mike dropped into her chair.
‘You been good, Black?’ he said.
‘Always, Mike,’ said Luke. ‘And you?’
‘Aw, I’m never good,’ said Mad Mike, grinning widely. Luke’s breakfast flip-flopped in his stomach with another spew-view of Mike’s teeth. ‘My pa always told me, “You may be well, son, but you’ll never be good!”’
Luke smiled weakly. Mad Mike always told the same joke.
‘And what about Narelle?’ Luke asked. ‘How are things going with you two?’