Harbinger (19 page)

Yanking off my gloves, I hurried to my room. This time, I was grateful that the bolts were on the outside of the door. I grabbed the diary from the windowsill. With one eye on Dragon in the courtyard and the other on the diary, I turned it upside down and shook it out. A shower of tarot cards tumbled to the ground.

22

THERE WERE NINE CARDS IN ALL.

Some had names printed down at the bottom: Death, The Lovers, The Sun, and The Moon. On other cards, the names had been crossed out and changed, like The Path and The Circle. Still others hadn’t originally had any names at all, but M. H. had added them anyway. The Vision. The Ritual. The Harbinger.

But all of them had words scribbled on the back. I read and reread them, but I couldn’t get “ill carry pain” or “an of blood” to mean anything to me. Then one card tugged at my memory. It read:

nant moon with

Autumn will be born

Death will be Autumn’s

ill cradle the Earth

I flipped over all the cards, my eyes flitting across their backs. Searching for what had to be there.
Yes! There it is.

Another card had the words “ark of the preg.” I lined that card next to the first one and was struck by how simple it’d been.

Putting the cards together had lined up other phrases too. And now I had

ark of the pregnant moon with

as midwife Autumn will be born

an of blood Death will be Autumn’s

its mercy will cradle the Earth

Remembering those words from the diary, I found the card that had “In the d,” which seemed to complete the phrase. It was hard to tell, since there was no punctuation, and I tried out a few of the other cards just to make sure. None of them worked.

But these three cards, put together, made sense. Well, not sense, but at least I could read what they said.

In the dark of the pregnant moon with

the sun as midwife Autumn will be born

in an ocean of blood Death will be Autumn’s

twin and its mercy will cradle the Earth

I didn’t understand and read it again, out loud this time. The words had weight, each one falling heavy on my ears. Like the beating of a drum. Now, instead of ramblings, they sounded like a prophecy.

Hand shaking, I turned over the cards.

The Moon. Walking a path across the Earth. Its yellow face frowning.

The Sun. Glowering at the city below it.

Death. The grim reaper pausing by an open grave.

Not good.

I grabbed the pen off the ledge, checking that Dragon was still smoking across the yard. Then I scribbled the words down on a blank diary page.

My heart was thudding. There had to be more. Now that I knew what I was looking for, the words fell into place as I rearranged the other cards. The next message was another set of three cards. I spoke the words cautiously, fearing and yearning for them at the same time.

Stronger than the others the Harbinger

peers far into the Future There men

will feast off of the Earth like maggots There The

Circle will fail the Family Two quarrel and the

Harbinger alone slaughters

the lambs Forging a new Path and journeying

the sea of time To finish what has begun

Dread knotted in my belly, and far away, at the edge of my hearing, music thrummed. Drums joined my pounding heart. I flipped the cards over.

The Vision. A sleeper waking from a nightmare, warding off swords.

The Lovers. This card was upside down. Two masked lovers reaching out for each other. A sword slicing the air between them.

The Ritual. A figure hidden behind a mask and a robe, rowing a boat away from shore. Six swords glittering, just under the water.

A voice cut across my thoughts. “That’s the Past.”

My heart stopped and the music with it as two bare feet appeared in front of me. I blinked up, seeing the white sundress and the blond braid.

Rita.

“Shit. You scared me!” It’d been stupid to let myself forget where I was. I fumbled with the cards, stacking them together as I got up and checked out the window for Dragon.

Through the hazy waves of heat rippling off the sidewalk, Dragon gestured violently at another guard with her cigarette. Her voice drifted in through the window. “. . . No. I told you, not locusts. Crickets. Practically covered the whole damn state of Utah. The crops, rations, even the grass . . .”

“You’re doing it wrong.” Rita crossed the room and stood next to me at the window. Her words were soft and her eyes vague as she peered outside. “We used to do this all the time when I was little. You have to lay them out the right way if you want to tell your fortune. Three rows of three.”

“I don’t want to tell my fortune,” I snapped, my pulse still hammering in my head from her surprise appearance. I’d been lucky it’d just been Rita. Dragon would come back inside soon, and I still didn’t know the last message.

“But you laid out the cards.” Rita sounded dazed. “Three for the Past. Three for the Future. You only need three more to bridge the gap between them.”

To bridge the gap?

“To know how the Future will come to pass.” She beamed at me. A little girl’s smile.

I don’t want that Death card anywhere near my future.

Then Rita’s eyes went wide and she skewered me with them. “Only one person can stop Death’s approach.”

I backed away from her. She’d just answered my thought. And what about her disappearing the other night? Were there other secret doors in the Compass Rose? Or was it something else?
Maybe she’s just another of your hallucinations.

No.
Whoever Rita was, what she’d said about the Past and the Future had gotten my attention. I took a deep breath. “Can you show me what you mean about the cards?”

She nodded, giving me a simple smile that wasn’t all there. “Deal out those cards you were looking at when I came in. One, two, three . . . the Past you’ll see.” She pointed at the floor, showing me where to lay them down.

The smell of cigarette smoke drifted in through the window, and Dragon was still safe on the other side of the courtyard. So I sat back down on the floor and laid out the top three cards again. The nightmare Vision. The upside-down Lovers. The Ritual, with its shrouded boatman and swords.

Rita knelt next to me, reaching out toward The Lovers. Her voice was sad. “The Past is unfinished . . .” Then she pointed to another spot on the floor, just to the right. “Time moves forward. Lay down the next three, right here. Four, five, six . . . the Future it predicts.”

She sang the rhyme in a little child’s voice, sending shivers up my arms as I dealt out the next three cards, arranging them in a row. The frowning Moon. The glowering Sun. Death’s sharp scythe.

She shook her head. “No! Not so close to the others! Those cards are the Future.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and I hurried to put space between the Past and the Future cards. I didn’t want to be the one who sent Rita off the deep end. I scooted the foreboding Future cards a little farther to the right, so now there was a bigger gap between the two lines of cards.

She rewarded me with a smile. “Yes. Seven, eight, nine . . . a bridge across time.”

Rita pointed to the blank space between the Past cards and the Future cards, showing me where to put the final three.

Not sure of the order, I put the blindfolded Harbinger, with its crossed swords, in the middle of the open space.

“Higher. You’re building a bridge.” Then she sang to herself, “Over the river and through the woods . . .”

Trying to finish this before she completely stopped making sense, I shoved The Harbinger card farther up, so it sat a little higher than the other cards.

This time, Rita nodded her approval. “This is the one who brings destruction.”

She waited for the next card and I showed her The Circle, with the winged woman with the goblets. Rita pointed to a spot to the left of The Harbinger.

“One foot in the water and one on land. Time flows through the goblets, back and forth, back and forth.” Rita’s soft voice wavered, getting lost in her own words. “Time balances strong with weak. Weak with strong. The planets spin round and round. And her— she’s part of The Circle. Connected to all. She’ll teach you the pattern, but she won’t change it.”

Her words prickled at my mind, agitating my thoughts. I wanted to finish this. To be done with these eerie pictures and secret messages.

The last card in my hands was the most disturbing. Some of the people in the other cards were wearing masks, but this crowned figure was completely hidden from the world. Only the hands hinted at its humanity. And above the palms floated a set of scales and a sword. The card had originally been labeled Justice, but M. H. had renamed it The Path. I laid The Path down on the right side of The Harbinger.

This final card completed the literal bridge between the line of Past cards and the line of Future cards. Now that Rita had begun to explain the cards, I recognized some of the symbolism. “The Path means balance too, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” Rita pointed to the picture. “A king rules alone, one fierce leader controlling the fate of the world. Weighing weak against strong. Not just observing the balance, but keeping it . . . with the might of the sword.

“The Circle goes nowhere . . . round and round, round and round, round and round. But The Path . . . The Path forges into the Future, leaving terrible retribution in its wake.” Rita shuddered, her eyes cloudy. “These three cards, The Circle, The Harbinger, The Path, they are the bridge between the Past and the Future. Only one person can stop this.”

Suddenly, the vagueness went out of Rita’s face. Her eyes turned wild, like a caged animal. “You must be careful, Faye. He is here. You are both crossing over the bridge now.”

Then the fog returned to her eyes and she looked down at the cards with a puzzled frown. In her wispy voice, she finished off her eerie rhyme. “Nine cards portend . . . the day this world shall end.”

Hand shaking, I turned the three bridge cards over, the words lining up perfectly. This final prophecy was the longest of the three, the slanted letters crammed onto the cards.

Look carefully for the Harbinger

is shielded from the glare of day

But the moon will know them Peer into strangers’ eyes

for the Harbinger will carry pain with them

through the lonely places of the Earth When the hour

arrives the Harbinger will smother the sickness that is humanity

Only the Harbinger can wash this world clean

The words were sour in my mouth.
Only the Harbinger can wash this world clean.
I didn’t think M. H. was talking about some kind of angelic cosmic baptism.

No.
The words sounded more like someone ready to drown a litter of unwanted puppies. Now I was the one who shuddered.

“Does this mean what I think it does?” I looked up at Rita, but she was gone.

The words on the tarot cards rang in my ears the rest of the morning as I finished cleaning the bathrooms. I hadn’t finished copying down the prophecies before Dragon came back from her smoke break. But I
had
managed to rip my scribbled notes out of the diary and stick them into my sock. The folded paper jabbed into my ankle while I scrubbed sinks and breathed in chemical fumes. While I choked down cold tuna fish casserole. While I wondered about the Harbinger.

Was any of this real? Rita seemed insane, totally out of touch with reality. And yet I couldn’t deny that something real was going on with the diary and Holbrook and my Family. When Dragon escorted me to Free Time, I was relieved to have something else to think about.

Ever since the arson attempt the day before, the tension had been crackling at Holbrook. An undercurrent of agitation bristled through me as Dragon locked the gate. Forty disaffected kids fenced in together. Add blinding heat and no shade, and it was a recipe for anarchy.

My Family was sitting back in the same corner as the other day. There was a gap between them and everyone else. A no-fly zone.