[excerpt from section 2]

Martha and Joanne were in their favorite Friday-night haunt, studying over coffee at The Turtledove, a somewhat shabby but marvelously comfortable café a few blocks from school. The walls were covered with collage, newspaper articles, and artwork, layers thumbtacked over layers until the original green floral wallpaper was only visible up near the ceiling. Shelves in the back corner were cluttered with dusty literature in hardcover and stacks of battered mass-market paperbacks donated by customers. A potted fern dangled over their table, its leaves throwing jungle shadows over their schoolwork. The smell of fresh coffee permeated everything, and one of Martha’s favorite jazz compilations came on in the CD player’s rotation. She was too distracted to enjoy it, though, rubbing her fingers over the handle of her coffee mug, watching Joanne hunch over her textbooks and fidget with her pencil.

“I just can’t concentrate,” Joanne admitted after ten minutes of unproductive brooding silence. "It’s been two solid weeks now, and we still haven’t heard anything from Dad. Every time the phone rings, Mom jumps like she’s been shot, and I hear her walking around downstairs at all hours of the night."

"Still nothing from the Department? No clues at all?"

"Nothing. You would think they’d take the time to concoct some kind of cover story, right?" Joanne dropped her pencil and sat motionless, staring at it as it rolled across the table.

"Maybe they haven’t contacted you because there’s really nothing going on. Maybe the phone is broken wherever he is, or maybe he’s under deep cover and isn’t allowed to contact anyone."

Joanne shook her head stubbornly. "It’s more than that. He’s in trouble, I can feel it I have to find out what’s going on."

"Well." Martha paused. "Have you tried divination? We’re not witches in training for nothing, here." She sipped her coffee carefully, trying not to burn her tongue.

Joanne shook her head again, more hesitantly. "Now why is it you’re the practical one today? I should have thought of that days ago."

Martha squeezed her hand comfortingly and released it.

"Obviously it’s because kitchen witch divinations involve chicken entrails," she grinned. "I’d forget that one on purpose, even if I wasn’t half-mad with worry "

Joanne smiled reluctantly. "Yeah, maybe. Does that mean you’re volunteering to do the divination?"

Martha smiled impishly. "Well, we could always make some chicken soup afterwards..." Joanne glared, drumming her fingers on the table. "All right, all right," Martha relented, chuckling. "But you owe me a dozen homemade cookies."

"Done," Joanne said, and they shook on the bargain.

Martha pulled her Tarot deck from its zippered pouch in her bookbag. The cards were worn enough to shuffle easily, but their edges bore no damage and the rich illustrations were as bright as the day they were first painted. She held the cards loosely in her hands as she closed her eyes to ground and focus her energy, breathing deeply and evenly. When she felt the pattern stabilize, she opened her eyes and started shuffling the cards. She offered the deck to Joanne, who wordlessly cut the cards, and then took them back to deal out the top three cards.

As she turned them over, Martha bit the inside of her lip. "I guess your intuition wasn’t too far off. There’s definitely something wrong," she said gravely.

"Oh, no, what is it?" Joanne leaned forward anxiously, peering at the cards.

Martha pointed to the first of the three cards, the World reversed. The blonde goddess figure on the card beamed with grace, surrounded by a ring of blossoms and five shining stars.

"The situation that called him away is represented here," she said slowly. "The reversed World usually refers to some kind of failure or loss of wholeness. Among the major arcana, the World is the highest numbered card, the closest to perfection. So when it’s reversed, that perfection is lost."

"For his current situation, we drew the nine of wands, reversed," she continued. The man on this card stood shirtless and barefoot, leaning on one of the nine staves that surrounded him before a murky gray sky. Martha drew one finger across the image. "It doesn’t give us a definitive answer about what kind of trouble he’s in, but it’s obvious that he’s in some kind of danger. This card reversed can mean illness, obstacles... basically any kind of calamity."

She swallowed hard at the last card, the ten of swords. A cloaked figure slumped on the ground, all ten of the swords jutting up out of his body, his blood staining the melting snow around him as the clouds overwhelmed the dim yellow sunset.

"And then there’s the ten of swords," she said, her voice flat with suppressed tension. Joanne gripped her arm, fingers digging into the flesh.

"What is it?" she hissed, her face pale.

"Failure," Martha said tightly. "Ruin. Defeat. Loss." She took a deep breath. "Desolation beyond tears." The two girls stared at each other across the cards, wide-eyed. Joanne’s eyes brimmed with tears, but she tightened her jaw and shook her head like a dog coming out of the water.

"No," she said softly. "That third card, that one is for the future, right? It doesn’t have to happen. We’re going to stop it." She fixed Martha with a look of wild determination, her blue eyes gleaming hot and fey.

"We have to find him," she declared. Her voice was low, husky and intense. "We have to help him. The world could be at stake!" She jabbed one finger at the World card.

Martha stared at the spread. "It’s a metaphor," she said weakly. "It doesn’t really mean the whole world."

Joanne clutched her pencil, seeming not to notice when it snapped in her hand. "It really means my father, though. Come on, Martha. We have to do something " Her face blazed.

"But what can the two of us do? We have to take it to the authorities We can call his bosses, or... I don’t know. Something " Martha pushed her hands through her hair, flushed. "We’re just students " she added hotly.

"Is that all you want to be?" Joanne challenged, her cheeks reddening. "The authorities certainly aren’t doing much of a job protecting him so far Come on. We’re smart, and good with spells, and we have surprise on our side. I’ll go alone if I have to " She paused, leaning forward intently. "But I’d rather have you with me."

Martha sat silently for a long moment, her heart pounding. "No," she said at last. "That’s not all I want to be."

Joanne grinned and sat back. "Good," she said softly, satisfied.

"How did you plan on finding him?" Martha said, straightening in her chair, trying to clear her head. She tucked her hair firmly behind her ears.

"Well, I checked the caller ID from the day Dad left, and the call he got didn’t come from the usual office extension. It was an area code somewhere in upstate NY. So I guess that’s where we should start."

"Hmph," Martha grunted dubiously. "That’s an awful lot of area to cover, not to mention which it’s hours from here. We’d have to miss some school. And that’s assuming that the call came directly from the area where he was sent. It won’t work." She held up one hand to forestall Joanne’s protest. "I do have an idea, though."

She leaned forward, lowering her voice so that Joanne had to strain to hear her over the jazz. "I’m going to borrow Professor McKaren’s book on summoning." Joanne’s eyes widened. "She’s my homeroom teacher this semester, and I know she likes me. I’ll just tell her I’m doing research for one of my final papers. So we’ll go to the north woods. I’ll summon an elemental. And we’ll convince it to help us find your dad."

Joanne was gaping at her, frozen in utter shock. "Summoning?" she gasped in a choked whisper. "You’re up to Summoning spells?"

"I haven’t used one yet," Martha said, the corners of her mouth quirking. "It’s not just high-level magic, it’s technically illegal if you’re not properly trained and certified. But this is important, right?"

Joanne nodded, her look of surprise fading very slowly. "Yes. It is."

They sat silently, each lost in her own thoughts.

"I’ll try to get the book on Monday," said Martha finally. "Until then, let’s try and get some work done, right?" She fished around in her bag and handed Joanne an undamaged pencil.

"I guess," Joanne said, flipping over a blank sheet of paper. She kept shooting little uncertain glances across the table as Martha sipped her lukewarm coffee and pretended not to notice. If nothing else, she had gotten Joanne’s mind off her problems. Martha smothered a little smile and opened her English book to read ‘The Raven.’

Back to Writing