Page 67 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“Hmm? Well, sort of. Aren’t we all animals? I’m glad you have come. It is a difficult time for all of you. Who will come and sit with me first?”

“Sit with you?” said Sir Hurst, with utmost suspicion. He’d already upended his cup into a bucket by the door.

“Yes, that is what the chairs are for. But you must come one at a time.”

“The king does not go anywhere unescorted.”

The Lady thought, drumming her broad fingers on her hip. “You can see the room first. And pat me down for weapons. And then you will know it is safe, and we will all sit. Yes?”

“No. Look, we came to check if you’re the Lady of myth, and you obviously aren’t, so we’ll be on our way.”

“Then there is no magic for you,” she said sadly. “I think to have come all this way, you must be in need of it.”

Gabriel surprised Bridget by saying, “That’s fine, Sir Hurst, we’ll do as she said.”

Sir Hurst was unamused, but that was his perpetual state of being; he went next door with the Lady and completed whatever searches he deemed necessary, and when he came back out, he was red in the face and she was chuckling.

“I showed him everything,” she said. “He knows I have nothing to hide. All right. Who first? You.” She pointed at Bridget without pausing for any other volunteers. “You will sit.”

Bridget handed her untouched cup to Sidney, who immediately started drinking it, and followed the lady inside. The doorway was so small she had to turn sideways slightly to fit through it, and the Lady laughed and clapped her on the bicep approvingly.

The second room was just a table and two chairs. In the middle of the table, a stack of cards; when Bridget sat down on the chair she was ushered to, she saw by the light of one sputtering tallow candle that they were incredibly finely made, painted in bright, expensive scarlets, blues, and greens, and finished with delicate gold accents. They were completely incongruous here, in the middle of nowhere in this hut, and would have been notable even at court. They must have been worth a fortune.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” said the Lady. “Italian, like my mother. Have you played this game, with cards?”

“Card games? Yes.”

“Have you asked them to tell you the story of yourself? The things you’ve forgotten you know?”

“Um… no.”

“A shame. Nobody wants to know about themselves these days. They only want to show people who theythinkthey are.”

“Yeah,” said Bridget unconvincingly.

She was starting to feel uncomfortable. Despite the chill outside, it was very close in this room, and the candle smelled strongly of weird meat. She didn’t particularly want to know what pronouncements this woman was going to make about her either.

“I see you hate this,” said the Lady, “so I will make it quick, because I am not cruel. We will draw for the challenge you face now and for the dream of your future, should you overcome it.”

She spread the cards across the table with a sweep of her hand, and then said, “Choose.”

“Me? I thought you’d do it.”

“I would choose if I wanted to know my own challenges,” said the Lady. “But I already know my roof has a hole and the weather will turn this week, so there you go. Choose two cards.”

Bridget thought it would play too much into the ridiculousness of it all to spend much time thinking about this meaningless choice, so she pulled out two cards almost at once, and the Lady smiled.

“Decisive,” she said. “I like it. Now we will turn them over.”

She revealed the first card. It looked to Bridget like a blond man with very tall hair and vivid green hose doing a dance; it was only when she looked closer that she realized he was hanging by one foot, and that she was looking at the scene upside down.

“The Traitor,” said the Lady. This didn’t sound promising. “You see he is reversed? He tells of useless sacrifice, of things given that were not demanded. A failure to give what is really needed. Dominance of the ego, an obsession with success, perhaps. What do you think?”

Bridget was growing more irritated by the second. “About what?”

“Does this ring true, O great knight of the round table? Are you plagued by ego? Have you given too much of yourself away? Lived for others, when they had not asked you to?”

“No,” Bridget muttered, but she sounded so annoyed thatthe Lady laughed, which made her slump farther down in her chair.