Page 76 of A Thousand Painted Hours

The girl divided her cards and divided them again, and began to lay them out in a cross. We all watched as she carefully placed them, one and another and another. A shadow darkened her face, and she paused for a moment, looking at the cards with concern. She held the other cards in her hands. Her gaze flickered up, caught on mine, then on Nina’s. A strange hush filled the room.

“Don’t frighten us,” Diana said, and laughed.

The girl raised her enormous eyes. “Perhaps I should—”

“Oh, no!” Rocky cried, his face flushed with gin. “We’re all caught in your web now. You must go on, girl. You must!”

She looked at her hands, at the cards spread in front of her, and then laid out three more. Her mouth did not change, and I thought for a moment that she might weep.

I almost spoke up to say, “Never mind, darling—” when she began to speak.

She pointed to the first card, which showed a sun. “This is the current moment,” she said. “A time of innocence and the illusion of safety. Happiness,” she added. She took a breath, as if settling into herself. “But it will not last. There is a time of challenge and great darkness coming, and it is very nearby.”

Grayson made a little noise. “You heard us talking about the war, I’m sure. That’s convenient.”

“I did hear you,” she said with great calm. “And that might be what is coming. The card”—she pointed to a card with a tower and fire and a man falling from the turret—“says everything will change. All of you will change.”

Glances flew around the little group. Tanveer rested his forearm on his leg, close to mine in my lap, and the warmth gave me a sense of grounding.

Henny continued, “This is coming about from the old systems, greed and moral rot that must be broken.” She pointed to another card. “Justice asks to be considered, but it will not come cleanly.”

The writer spoke up. “‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.’”

I suddenly had a sense of a miasma entering the room, like a dark fog flowing along the floor, a presentiment of my own. “Oh, let’s not be so dour!”

Rocky said, “No, please, Henny, do go on.”

She frowned, looking at the cards with great concern. “I don’t think anything is going to be the same. A great deal of death and sorrow is showing here, and—” Suddenly, she swept the cards into a heap, mixing them up emphatically.

“Wait, you didn’t read the rest!”

She stood up. “I do not wish to finish. My apologies.” Scooping up her cards, she hurried to collect them. One fell on the floor, the same that had been at the end. I reached out and picked it up. “What is this one?”

She bowed her head, taking it from me. “The world. Reversed.” She shook her head. “Good night.”

In the aftermath of her retreat, a vast silence dropped into the room. “That was grim,” Rocky said, and tossed back his drink.

Nina clapped her hands. “Never mind,” she cried, standing. “Let’s dance!”

“Not I,” Tanveer said, standing. “I’ll take my leave of you good people.”

A rush of sweet anticipation pooled in my belly, and I forgot the strange psychic. Rocky also gave his leave, and I waited until Peter followed, then floated up the stairs.

—38—

My room had been lit with oil lamps, one burning by the bed, one on the dressing table. The drapes had not been pulled, and the storm beyond continued to slap rain against the windows. I went to the window, feeling that sense of warning, and looked out. What was coming?

A quiet knock came at my door, and I forgot everything as I flew across the room to let Tanveer in. He had shed his English clothes for a kurta and pajamas, his turban left in his room, leaving his hair in a knot on his head, pieces of it falling around his face. I swallowed, so consumed with want that I almost could not move.

“May I come in?” he said quietly, his hands behind his back. All of the moments of our times came back to me in a rush, weaving together the boy who had drawn tigers with me, and the one who’d shown me the stars and taught me to swim, and taught me to kiss and to make love coming together into a braid of love that shimmered through me, expanding out of me to enfold him, too. I reached for his hand and drew him into the room, tangling arms and then mouths and tongues and hope and longing. I unbuttoned my blouse and shed my chemise, he discarded his kurta, and I stepped out of my skirt, and then he led me to the bed. We took off the rest and pressed bare skin to bare skin, and hands to curves and angles, and everything else moving together until we were one being, woven back together at last.

Much later, curled against him, I said, “Do you believe in people seeing the future, like the spiritualist tonight?”

He brushed hair from my forehead, ran his fingers down my face. “I don’t know. I am quite sure she believes.”

“She was very frightened.”

“Perhaps there is a feeling of things in the air, something she can access. It is true there is much talk of war. And that would certainly change everything.”