Phoenix and Ashes

Eleanor shivered, and cast a glance towards the windows herself. 'What else could it be?'

'I don't know,' Sarah replied, and shook her head. 'Whatever it is, it won't disturb anyone inside the bounds, and outside, well, you'd have to be able to see them, and most people can't.' She pulled on her lower lip with her teeth for a moment. 'I'm inclined to think at the moment that it's just a blow-up left over from May Eve. That's one of the four Great Holy Days when the boundaries between the spirit world and the real world are thinned. Witches —well, we tend those doorways on those days—let the ones that want just to look in on their loved-ones out, and keep the doors open so they can all go back at daybreak. You know the old song, where the lady's three sons come back to her? She called them on May Eve—'I wish the wind would never cease, nor flashes in the flood, till my three sons return to me in earthly flesh and blood.' '

'But—' Eleanor began.

Sarah shook her head. 'Can't tell you more than that; it's witch's business. But like every other job, witches have been lost to the war, and if one of those doors wasn't tended—or if it was opened by someone inexperienced who let it slip closed too early—' She shrugged. 'If that's all it is, then they might be angry because they know a witch is in this village, and they want me to let them through.'

'Well, why don't you?' Eleanor asked, reasonably.

'Because I don't know what door it is.' She sighed. 'If things don't improve, I'll have to arrange something, but otherwise, we're probably better off leaving well enough alone. There's always the chance they'll find their own way over. There's help on the Other Side if they truly want back.'

Eleanor wanted to ask more, but the look on Sarah's face told her that she wasn't going to get anything more, so she changed the subject. 'One of the books I found in the library talked about fortune-telling cards,' she said instead. 'And the one they talked about seemed—well, it seemed to make more sense than some of the other things I was reading.'

Sarah's tense expression eased. 'Ah. The Tarot. I can see where that'd be useful, and fit right in with your mum's notes. Wait a moment.'

She turned and went to a cupboard, bringing out something rectangular wrapped in silk. She set the package down on the table and unwrapped it. It was an oversized deck of cards.

'These are the Tarot cards,' Sarah said, picking up the well-worn pasteboards, and separating out one smaller stack from the rest. 'The ones that'll be the most use to you right now, for giving you things to think on, are these—'

She fanned out the cards in her hand; Eleanor could see that they didn't look anything like playing cards. They were pictures, like the one she'd seen in the book, called Strength.

'These are the cards called the Major Arcana, the most powerful in that there's the most meaning packed into them, and the most symbolism. There's twenty-two of them, and this,' she pulled one out of the deck 'is the first, the last, or the card that travels through the whole deck. And in this case, since you're the Seeker right now, this card represents you, on your journey through the Powers as you try to master them.'

Eleanor looked down at it; the card showed her what looked like a young man, dancing on the edge of a cliff. There was a little dog at his feet, the sun overhead, and he held a rose in one hand, and a stick with a bundle on the end, like a Traveler, in the other.

'The Fool,' she read aloud, and looked up. 'Why is that me?'

'Well, you've had all that study; when you look at the stories about King Arthur and the Grail, who do they call the Perfect Fool, and why?' Sarah countered.

'Percival,' she replied immediately. 'Because he was innocent, unschooled. He could ask questions no one else would, because he didn't know he shouldn't.'

'And that's our Fool,' Sarah replied, tapping the card with one finger. 'The Fire in his card is his intelligence; he burns with curiosity and the need to know things He's perfectly innocent; he breaks the rules because he doesn't know they're there and doesn't know he should abide by them. Sometimes that's for good, and sometimes it can bring disaster. He's the Seeker, who moves from card to card looking for wisdom. He's fearless, because he doesn't know he should fear. He isn't worried about being on the edge of the cliff, because he isn't thinking about the next minute when he might fall off, he's thinking about right now, and besides, for all he knows, he'll step out into the empty air and it'll hold him.'

Eleanor studied the card closely. 'So if he's concentrating on now, he isn't looking forward?'

Sarah nodded. 'That's the negative side of him. He's not at all in the spirit, and very much in the body. He breaks rules that sometimes shouldn't be broken and will bring him grief when they are. He can fall off that cliff. He means change, but change isn't always good.'

She paused, waiting. Eleanor sensed she was waiting for her pupil to come up with some answers of her own. 'So, this concentration on his physical body—that's his Earth aspect? It looks to me like he's mostly Fire and Earth. Not much water symbolism here. Of course, though, there's Air—the Air he could step off into.'

Sarah nodded. 'Change might be the Water aspect, but mostly the Fool is Intellect and Passion, and that's Air