I wanted to know my own mind.
The cards were all reversed, and typically that could be read as an error by the fortune teller, an inversion of the deck that, by being endemic, indicated a full rotation. A full circle. But I wasn't inclined to use that excuse. Let them all be reversed. It had been that sort of week.
The Valet of Cups was an awakening. Crowley's card was feminine-the Princess of Cups-and she was the genesis of an Idea. The wellspring of the Imagination. She was-
Devorah.
In Nicols' last reading, the Princess of Cups had been a librarian figure. A woman who had given us guidance. The Chorus had tweaked her spirit, awakening the imagination in her, and she had become a rhapsodomancer-an interpreter of events filtered through a linguistic proxy. Devorah had found her voice in Milton's Paradise Lost, and she couldn't undo the damage I had done to her psyche.
What is done is done.
That was a debt I would have to pay someday, and the Valet of Cups was a reminder. Reversed, he was the closing of the springs. The shuttering of the mind. Water, buried beneath the earth, not yet allowed to bubble forth. Instead of being the awakening of the spirit to its higher calling, he was the loss of illumination. He was the soul, trapped in the flesh, bound to stay in this world a bit longer.
I had come back from the sky after all the souls had been freed in Portland. I had come back, because I hadn't earned the right to go on. Too much blood on my hands. Too much that I had to atone for.
But it hadn't been Death. Or the Tower. Or the Nine of Swords. It was the Valet of Cups. The postponed awakening. Show me the way to the Crown.
Les Filles de Mnemosyne. The daughters forever caged by the Watchers. If they were the wellsprings of the imagination-the Muses who gave us all our creative ideas-then what did it say about all of us that they were trapped in the Archives?
Show me the way. .
Above the Valet was the Hanged Man, who, in being reversed, was the only figure that appeared to be standing right side up. He was the Fisher King, and I had seen him in Nicols' reading too. He had been in the same place in the spread-the position over the card that represented the querent. He was the Heavenly influence, that which floated above. In being inverted, he was the antithesis of transformation. He was a magus caught by indecision-caught by too many choices, too many paths. Crushed by too much knowledge, he could not act. He was, indeed, trapped. His foot was caught in a loop of his own mental peregrinations, and he could not move. His hands were bound behind him, further symbolism of his failure to contain his wisdom (unlike the Magician card, a figure whose hands were free to indicate both Heaven and Earth). He hung over my head like the sword that hung over Damocles.
It had been hanging there a long time, hadn't it? Ever since the duel on the bridge. Antoine and I had fought over Marielle, and I had fled Paris, and the threat of discovery had been a persistent fear ever since. Stay hidden, and keep the deception alive. Don't let them find you; don't let them hunt you.
The Ten of Cups signified a fulfilled life, one filled with the contentment of family. In Crowley's deck, it was the Tree of the Sephiroth, the ten spheres of Life. Reversed, it was ten cups all spilling their wine. Noblet's wine was dark red, and it didn't take much to read the card as signifying the loss of life. All that blood, spilling out of all those chalices. Positioned behind the Valet, the Ten was all the history I had been fleeing. All that blood.
Below the Valet was the Knight of Cups, the physical manifestation of the mystical element arrayed above. In Crowley, he was an enigma. An individual who wore a mask and whose motives could never be ascertained. He was aloof, dangerous, and volatile. In another time, I would have liked to have drawn this card. He was the wolf, hidden among the sheep. The Noblet Knight carried the Grail and his expression was filled with sympathy and understanding. He was an insightful companion, an empathetic reader. One who intuitively understood the suffering of others.
Reversed, he was a buffoon. A man who was unaware that the contents of his cup were spilling out, splashing all over his clothes, his horse, and the ground. His expression became one of confusion, of chaotic frustration. The reversed Knight does not know why the ones he loves have hurt him so. He can't figure where all the blood is coming from. What have I done wrong? he asks, and no one will tell him.
The last card, in front of the Valet, was the Emperor. He stands outdoors, one leg crossed behind the other, leaning against a shield with an eagle symbol. He holds a scepter of office, topped with a globe and a cross. Though his beard is long and white, there is nothing about his countenance that suggests infirmity or dotage. He was the Hierarch, the leader of men and the keeper of knowledge. In Crowley, he sits on a throne, and his leg is crossed in the exact same triangular pose as the Hanged Man. They are not too different, these two men, though one is the king in power, and the other is the king in transition.
It happens every year. The old vegetable rituals. One king is buried, another is born. The king is dead; long live the king.
But my Emperor was reversed, because the office would never be mine.
By the time I discovered a locked door, I had the reading all figured out.
For the first time in a week-in a long time-I knew myself. I knew what my role was. I wasn't supposed to become the new Hierarch, nor was I just a tool. I was my own man. Neither angel nor agent. The reading showed me fear, the sort the fortune teller in Eliot's old poem held in a handful of dust.
Eliot cited Jessie Weston's book as an influence on The Waste Land, and her book, From Ritual to Romance, had offered an initiation into the Western mysteries via the Arthurian romances-the stories of Gawain, Lancelot, and Parzival. I saw the connections now; I understood the rituals Vivienne had enacted and which I had been completely oblivious to. No wonder she sacrificed me; I had let her down. I was not the knight she had expected.
There were too many reversals, though. Too many deviations, variations brought about by the flood of noise of our twenty-first-century lives. Too much chaos brought about by the passions of the body which we confused as being passions of the spirit. This was why Philippe used the old deck: it was pure.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
The dust comes upon us when there is no water, when we have lost ourselves in a desert of our own creation. Jesus wandered in the wilderness for forty days, according to the stories, where he was tempted by the Devil. All the temptations pursuant to the flesh. Not the Will. Not the spark. The Devil showed Jesus the desiccated flesh of the world, all the grains of sand running through his fingers, and said: This is all that you are, and all that you will be; why will you not take water from me and make clay from this dust?
I am not a Creator, Jesus said to the Devil. I am a Witness to creation.
The Chorus, emboldened by my focus, sparked through the lock of the door, and it swung open with a groan of ancient hinges. The spark of light fell into the room beyond, revealing the detritus of forgotten maintenance equipment.
A subbasement of Tour Montparnasse.
I gave the Chorus a new directive, and they flew out of my head, silver streamers penetrating the walls. Find a working elevator.
I needed to go back to the Archives.
I pushed the zero on the elevator keypad, and kept pushing it until the internal speaker in the car crackled to life.
"Why are you here?" Vivienne asked.
The same question again. The ritual started anew.
I held up the Hanged Man card so that the security camera could see it.