Pil flailed, hissed, and threw herself toward me. She pitched such a silent fit that we at last let her hold on to my arm. It was a discouraging development, magical for sure, but not the problem biting us hardest just then.
Finally, Halla, Pil, and I walked up to the oracle’s dingy tent flap. I had thought the tent was a pretty pale green, but the canvas was just thin and faded from a decade or two in the sun. Whistler was off wandering around the fairgrounds, scavenging the corpses, while Bea watched and looked disgusted.
Halla leaned toward the tent flap and called out, “We are ready.”
No sound came from inside the tent.
Halla said louder, “We are ready now!”
When nobody answered, Halla closed her eyes and nodded. “Thank you for waiting for us, oracle. Many people may die, and Bib has delayed us foolishly. I know that a wise person like you would not risk even more deaths than does foolish Bib. Please help us. We are ready.”
I said, “Hell, you could’ve said that the first time.”
Halla stared at the closed tent flap. “I did. I thought that everything before ‘We are ready’ was obvious.”
“Enter!” came the oracle’s voice from inside.
We pushed into the dim tent, lit by three lanterns. It was the size of a small farmyard, and I could have walked across it in ten steps. The air smelled cool, musty, and dry. The oracle’s elderly lions lay across the tent from us, staked out, lazy, and no more interested in us than they would be in four grasshoppers. Each was the size of a large hound.
The oracle stood with his back to us, raking hay and probably lion scat from in between the beasts. “Find a place to sit. I hate to let this build up. By the way, your entreaty was remarkable. Obsequious and uncaring at the same time.”
The tent held no obvious chairs, benches, or stools. Some boxes and large sacks had been dumped in one corner, so Halla and I each seated ourselves on a box. Pil knelt beside me, crushing my arm as if it were the only thing keeping her from floating off into the sky.
The oracle joined us within a minute, plopping down on a big sack full of something soft.
I glanced at Halla and then back at the young man. “Do you need us to do something? Say anything? Pay you anything?”
“Nah,” he said.
He picked a small canvas bag off the ground, dug inside it, and pulled out four semi-withered winter apples. He tossed one to each of us. Pil didn’t try to catch hers. It bounced off her collarbone, and she watched it roll away.
The young man shook his head. “I’m sorry, that was careless.” He fetched the apple, brushed it off, and set it on the ground in front of her before patting it twice as if it were a little dog. He passed us each a wooden cup, pulled out a bottle of wine, and dropped the empty sack at his feet. He must have had a good idea of exactly how many apples and cups he’d need.
“I wish we could drink from glass, but the road is jouncy. Jerky and bouncy.” The oracle smiled as he poured, bit into his apple, and gazed back and forth between Halla and me.
Halla examined her apple. “Is this part of the ritual?”
“No. It’s part of dinner.” The oracle took another bite and kept talking around the mouthful. “I’m hungry. You are too. I don’t need prescient powers to know that. Bib, you’ve been lying on the ground like a forgotten turd for eight hours.”
The wine was mouth-puckeringly sour. I didn’t offer to feed Pil or hold her cup. If she wanted a drink, she could let me go with at least one of her own hands. Halla drank the wine as if it were water.
The oracle wiped his lips with a plain, dingy handkerchief he had pulled from his sleeve. “Now then, I can’t see your enemy in detail, or tell you his greatest weakness, or anything along those lines. That’s not how this works, just to be clear. I don’t want any complaints later.”
I glanced at Halla. “All right.”
“First of all, he lives on a mountain. That never bodes well, you know. It’s not good for you, I mean. He possesses vast physical power.”
“How vast?” Halla asked in a calm voice.
“Well, that’s hard to say, isn’t it? We’d need some frame of reference. A mountain is vast, but is it vast compared to an ocean?”
I put as much false politeness in my voice as I could—which I guess probably wouldn’t fool a real oracle. “This could be the very knowledge we need to prevail, sir. We’d be obliged.”
The young man frowned so hard he almost pouted.
Halla said, “Compare his power to ours.”
“Oh!” The oracle grinned. “He could kill you both at the same time. Easily. One hand for each of you. You know . . . you’re not fated to meet this fellow. You can still choose. I’d consider forgetting about him and doing something else this spring.”
“We have no choice.” I held up a clenched fist. “We heard that he called Halla’s mother a rancid bitch. What else can you tell us?”
“He’s awfully unhappy. That may not be germane, but you never know.” The oracle closed his eyes and scratched his ear. “Let’s see . . .”
Halla leaned forward. “Where is he?”
A familiar voice joined us from the center of the tent. “Oh, this is such a sad, whimpering sight,” he said. “I ought to devour you right now and save time.”
I stood and saw one of the lions stretching and tugging at its tether. The oracle tried to jump up and turn around at the same time, and he fell into Halla’s lap. She rolled him onto the ground like
