Part 10 (1/2)

”First I speak,” said the kingfisher, ”and you wonder who it is that's spoken to you. Then you realize it's me; then you look at your thumb and your fish, and see that it was the fish's blood you tasted, that allowed you to understand the voices of creatures; then we converse.”

”I didn't mean a”

”We'll a.s.sume it was done that way.” The kingfisher spoke in the choleric, impatient tone August would have expected from his upshot head-feathers, his thick neck, his fierce, annoyed eyes and beak: a kingfisher's voice. Halcyon bird indeed!

”Now you address me,” the kingfisher said. ”*O Bird!' you say, and make your request.”

”O Bird!” August said, opening his hands imploringly, ”Tell me this: Is it okay if we have a gas station in Meadowbrook, and sell Ford cars?”

”Certainly.”

”What?”

”Certainly!”

It was so inconvenient speaking in this way to a bird, a kingfisher seated on a branch in a dead tree at no more conversational a distance than any kingfisher ever was, that August imagined the bird as seated beside him on the bank, a sort of kingfisher-like person, of a more conversable size, with his legs crossed, as August's were. This worked well. He doubted that this kingfisher was a kingfisher at all anyway.

”Now,” said the kingfisher, still bird enough to be unable to look at August with more than one eye at a time, and that one bright and smart and pitiless, ”was that all?”

”I a think so. Ia””

”Yes?”

”Well, I thought there might be some objection. The noise. The smell.”

”None.”

”Oh.”

”On the other hand,” said the kingfishera”a laugh, a raucous laugh, seemed always just beneath his wordsa””since you're here, and I'm here, you might ask for something else altogether.”

”What?”

”Oh, anything. What you most want.”

He had thoughta”right up until he had voiced his absurd requesta”that he was doing just that: but, with a terrible rush of heat that took his breath away, he knew that he hadn't, and that he could. He blushed fiercely. ”Well,” he said, stammering, ”over in Meadowbrook, there's, there's a farmer, a certain farmer, and he has a daughter a”

”Yes yes yes,” said the kingfisher impatiently, as though he knew well enough what August wanted, and didn't want to be bothered with having it spelled out circ.u.mstantially. ”But let's discuss payment first, reward after.”

”Payment?”

The kingfisher c.o.c.ked his head in short, furious changes of att.i.tude, sometimes eyeing August, sometimes the stream or the sky, as though he were trying to think of some really cutting remark in which to couch his annoyance. ”Payment,” he said. ”Payment, payment. It's nothing to do with you. Let's call it a favor, if you prefer. The return of certain property thata”don't get me wronga” I'm sure fell into your hands inadvertently. I meana”” for the briefest moment, and for the first time, the kingfisher showed something like hesitation, or trepidation ”a”I mean a deck of cards, playing cards. Old ones. Which you possess.”

”Violet's?” said August.

”Those ones.”

”I'll ask her.”

”No, no. She thinks, you see, the cards are hers. So. She mustn't know.”

”You mean steal them?”

The kingfisher was silent. For a moment he disappeared altogether, although that may only have been August's attention wandering from the effort of imagining him, to the enormity that he had been commanded to perform.

When he appeared again, the kingfisher seemed somewhat subdued. ”Have you given any further thought to your reward?” he said, almost soothingly.

In fact he had. Even as he had grasped the fact that he could in some sense ask Amy of them (without even trying to imagine how they could make good on such a promise) he had ceased to desire her quite so intenselya”small presage of what would happen when he did possess her, or anyone. But what one could he choose then? Was it possible he could ask fora””All of them,” he said in a small voice.

”All?”

”Any one I want.” If sudden horrid strength of desire hadn't whelmed him, shame would never have allowed him to say it. ”Power over them.”

”You have it.” The kingfisher cleared his throat, looking away, and combed his beard with a black claw, as though glad this unclean bargaining was done.' ”There is a certain pool up in the woods above the lake. A certain rock which juts out into the pool. Put the cards there, in their bag in their box, and take the gift you find there. Do it soon. Goodbye.”

Evening was dense yet clear, presage of a storm; the confusions of sunset were over. The pools of the stream were black, with steady gla.s.sy ribs raised by the continuous current. A black flutter of feathers in a dead tree was a kingfisher preparing for sleep. August waited on the bank till he had been returned, by an evening path, to the place he had started out from; then he gathered up his gear and went home, eyes wide and blind to the beauties of a stormgathering evening, feeling faintly sick with strangeness and expectation.

Something Horrific The velvet bag in which Violet's cards were kept was of a dusty rose color that had once been vivid. The box had once held a set of silver coffee-spoons from the Crystal Palace, but those had long since been sold, when she and her father wandered. To bring those strange huge oblongs drawn or printed centuries before out of this cozy box, with a picture of the old Queen and the Palace itself done on the cover in different woods, was always an odd moment, like the drawing aside of an arras in an old play to reveal something horrific.

Horrific: well, not quite, or not usually, though there were times when, as she laid out a Rose or a Banner or some other shape, she felt afraid: felt that some secret might be revealed which she didn't want to know, her own death or something even more dreadful. Buta”despite the weird, minatory images of the trumps, engraved with dense black detail like Durer's, baroque and Germanica”the secrets revealed were oftenest not terrible, oftenest not even secret: cloudy abstractions merely, oppositions, contentions, resolutions, common as proverbs and as unspecific. At least so she had been told the fall of them should be interpreted, by John and those of his acquaintance who knew card reading.

But the cards they knew weren't these cards, exactly; and though she knew no other way of laying them out or interpreting them than as the Tarot of the Egyptians was laid out (before she was instructed in those methods she used just to turn them down anyhow and stare at them, often for hours) she often wondered if there weren't some more revelatory, simpler, Somehow more useful manipulation of them she could make.

”And here is,” she said, turning one up carefully top to bottom, ”a Five of Wands.”

”New possibilities,” Nora said. ”New acquaintances. Surprising developments.”

”All right.” The Five of Wands went in its place in the Horseshoe Violet was making. She chose from another pilea”the cards had been sorted, by arcane distribution, into six piles before hera”and turned a trump: it was the Sportsman.

This was the difficulty. Like the usual deck, Violet's contained a set of twenty-one major trumps; but hersa”persons, places, things, notionsa”were not the Greater Trumps at all. And so when the Bundle, or the Traveler, or Convenience, or Multiplicity, or the Sportsman fell, a leap had to be made, meanings guessed at which made sense of the spread. Over the years, with growing certainty, she had a.s.signed meanings to her trumps, made inferences from the way in which they fell among the cups and swords and wands, and discerneda”or seemed to discerna”their influences, malign or beneficent. But she could never be sure. Death, the Moon, Judgementa” those greater trumps had large and obvious significance; what did one make though of the Sportsman?

He was, like all people pictured in her cards, musclebound in a not quite human way and striking an absurd, orgulous pose, toes turned out and knuckles on hip. He seemed certainly overdressed for what he was about, with ribbons at his knees, slashes in his jacket, and a wreath of dying flowers around his broad hat; but that was for sure a fis.h.i.+ng pole over his shoulder. He carried something like a creel, and other impedimenta she didn't understand; and a dog, who looked a lot like Spark, lay asleep at his feet. It was Grandy who called this figure the Sportsman; underneath him was written in Roman capitals P I S C A T O R.

”So,” Violet said, ”new experiences, and good times, or adventures outdoors, for someone. That's nice.”

”For who?” Nora asked.

”For whom.”