The Mystic and the Student

The fortuneteller’s tent smelled of incense. The student couldn’t have put a name to it, but it was some herb or another- a bittersweet, haunting smell. Once inside the tent, the noise of the fairground was muted, the ecstatic cries of the children and the lively music of the carousel muted. It was a different world.

Or so the mystic would like people to think.

The mystic smiled bewitchingly. Her lipstick was a peculiar shade of green.

“Good evening, Jane.”

The student’s wide spaced eyes were fixed on her. She smirked slightly.

“I’m supposed to ask how you know my name. But I won’t. That would just be cliché. And anyway…”

She shrugged.

“My name isn’t Jane. I assume you took a guess.”

The student sauntered across to take a seat in the other chair, all the time keeping her eyes on the mystic.

“You’d be a cliché too,” she observed, “in a story. The wise fortuneteller. People would complain you had no character depth.”

A piercing laugh broke the sluggish air of the tent, and the mystic fixed glittering green eyes on the girl disdainfully.

“Is that what you think then? That life is a story?”

The girl smiled lightly, and somehow it was deeper than the mystic’s brittle laugh.

“No,” she answered in a whisper. “Life is not a story. Life is a library, with the billions and billions of stories contained therein. My story. Your story.”

Glancing up at the ceiling of the tent, she continued offhandedly, “This tent, could I interrogate it in such a way that we could both understand each other, would probably have some stories to tell. But I can’t.”

Lazily, the mystic spread a deck of tarot cards onto the table. The purpose of the student’s visit, no doubt. They all wanted to know what was coming. Or rather, they wanted to know that what was coming was good. They wanted a pretty fairytale, tied up with red ribbon. The mystic could give them that. She’d given the truth- once, long ago- to people who asked for it, and then realized it was better not to. They didn’t want it. Ever. They only claimed to.

“If life is a library,” she asked shrewdly. “Then who’s the librarian? Who organizes? Who creates? Who puts the stories back on the shelves when they’re finished?”

The student hesitated.

“…Someone, perhaps,” she said at last. “Or no one, maybe. I suppose you find out when your story has to be put back on the shelves.

“Perhaps,” answered the mystic easily. The girl was surely nothing special. Just another one of the mundanes who so often visited her tent. Wanting the pretty fairytale tied up with red ribbon. The mystic could at least give her that.

“Shuffle the cards,” instructed the mystic. “They need to pick up your vibrations.”

“To my knowledge, I’m not shivering.”

Neatly, the girl shuffled them, flicking them back and forth in a complex pattern. Finally, she placed them back on the table in front of her.

As the mystic laid out the cards, she risked a glance up at the girl.

There didn’t seem to be anything special about the way she looked. The student was young; if the mystic had to guess, she might say sixteen or seventeen. She was pale skinned. Well, a little paler than usual perhaps. Long dark hair fell to her waist in something between straight and wavy, and she looked out at the world from wide brown eyes set in an oval face. Her smiles were small and discreet, but frequent. She seemed to be laughing at the world.

“Well,” began the mystic in a way that she hoped didn’t sound too rehearsed. “Good things ahead, I’m pleased to say. I think you have a great romance in sto-“

“Liar.”

The mystic froze. No one had ever interrupted her in a reading before.

She struggled to regain composure, and then rearranged herself in her seat, pulling the spangled shawls about herself. She looked imperiously at the girl.

“Excuse me?”

The student fixed her with a world-weary look.

“You’re lying. Do you tell the same thing to everyone who comes here, or do you rearrange the words a little?”

“You are being extremely impertinent!”

“That’s my privilege, fortune teller,” the girl informed her coolly.

The mystic had nothing to say to that.

And… suddenly… the girl seemed not so ordinary.

Suddenly the girl seemed almost older than her- though the mystic was nearing forty, and this girl surely couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen.

Lost for words, the mystic stared at the student.

“Look at the cards,” the girl urged gently. “I mean actually look at them. See what they say about me.”

Her hand shaking just a little, the mystic examined the cards.

She looked at all of them. Examined them carefully.

Then she checked them.

Then she checked them again.

Finally, she looked up at the girl, blue eyes wide and mystified.

“Who are you?”

The student took the cards and examined them carefully, as had she. The mystic realized this girl was an old hand at tarot. The easy, casual way she handled them, and the fact that she picked them up in perfect order- she’d done this before. She looked almost disdainful.

As though she knew better ways to divine the future.

“I’m a student,” she answered.

Swiftly, the mystic snatched the cards back. She wanted this to be over. Now.

“Of what?” the woman asked.

The girl paused thoughtfully.

“Just a student. A student of whatever takes my fancy. You shouldn’t confine yourself to studying one subject you know.”

Carefully, the girl caught up all of the tarot cards. Neatly, she shuffled them into a deck again and placed them on the table. For a moment, she looked at them.

“I’m leaving,” she informed her. “I’ve work to do. You’re going to need a new deck of tarot cards by the by. Now that my energy’s in them, you’ll never get it out again.”

Quietly, the mystic observed the girl. It seemed too ridiculous for her to simply walk out the door. No story would dare to end in such a way. No story would dare leave the reader unknowing of the girl’s identity.

But there were no great, enigmatic last words. No mysterious parting gift.

The girl looked at her pityingly one last time and then walked out.

Shakily, the mystic slumped back in her seat. Reached for a cigarette- lit it up and thrust it between her lips. The doctor said no, but she needed this.

Then suddenly, the girl leaned in again briefly.

The mystic said nothing, but only stared.

The girl stared back for a moment.

“I like the name Jane,” she said finally. “I’m going to use it.”

Jane walked out.

With nothing else to do, the mystic smoked her cigarette.

And wondered, just briefly, how much life was like a story.

I’m not sure exactly. Is it post-modern? Or me just being irritating? It’s something.

I was going to turn this into a full-length story, but now I think I’d rather not. I like it as it is. Feel free to make up your own explanations of who the girl was, why she came to the mystic, what their names were, and what they had for lunch last Tuesday. I rather like not knowing.

Goodbye for now.

- Isilthrar