Page 38 of The Forest of Lost Souls
On slices of whole wheat—two slathered with mustard, the other two with mayonnaise—she builds a pair of sandwiches from cold roast beef, Havarti cheese, shredded lettuce, tomato, andsliced gherkins. With a bottle of good cabernet, she takes dinner in a rocking chair on the porch.
Vida has finished one sandwich when the breeze gently tumbles the white fedora across the yard.
Belden Bead has been dead twenty-four hours. Casketed in the Plymouth. The windows had broken out to admit cascades of earth as the soil had been compacted. The crime boss of Kettleton County is beyond any possibility of being reunited with his hat.
Before attending to her second sandwich, Vida hurries into the yard to retrieve the fedora, lest it might be carried aloft and spun away. Not a single drop of blood mars it. Although the hat has been blown hither and yon during the night and through the following day, it looks as white and properly blocked as it had been when she’d first seen Bead wearing it.
Experience has cultured in her a belief in signs and omens. The fedora is a humble object. If Belden Bead hadn’t perished by his own misdirected violence in his attempt to kill her, the hat might even have a comical quality. Nevertheless, it is invested with portentous meaning by virtue of its pristine condition and Nature’s use of wind and night to conceal it from her until this moment.
Vida stands in the yard, turning the hat in her hands, deciding what she should do with it. Millennia earlier, when hunters ventured into the wilds with bows and arrows, when they killed a deer or a pheasant, they not only brought the meat to their tables, but also made a coat from the deer’s hide or used the bird’s feathers to enhance a garment. Nature is honored by the full and wise use of what it provides.
With sudden conviction, Vida puts on the hat. A perfect fit.
One day it might be useful. Just a hunch.
She returns to the porch, to her chair, to her second sandwich.
The cabernet held by the stemware is a deeper red than the sky. Soon after darkfall, when an early moon rises, its spectral light traces the beveled edges in the cut-crystal bowl of the wineglass, transforming those patterns into hieroglyphs awaiting translation.
Turning the glass in her hand, Vida remembers the raven-haired woman in the ramshackle house, eighteen years earlier, and the sign in the yard decorated with crescent moons and stars.The truth and the future revealed here.
34
WHAT THE SEER SEES
The pea-soup-green table is speckled with other colors where the surface has been chipped or scratched to reveal the past in the present. As before, the paper blinds are closed over the windows, though on this occasion the nameless seer has lit three candles in glass cups, when previously only one was provided. Subtly shimmering luminous circles overlap one another on the table; reflected on the ceiling, their light dances with greater sprightliness, forming a pattern suggesting a mystery in need of a solution.
The book—payment for the seer, which Vida brought the previous day—lies before the woman. A soft draft stirs the candle flames, and fingers of light smooth across the paperback, as if a ghostly presence can read it by touch without opening it.
Facing ten-year-old Vida across the table, the seer says, “You were right when you said this book is mean and angry, that it wants you to believe things that aren’t true.”
“But,” says the girl, “you wanted what I valued least. I’m not sure what else I could pay you with.”
“Oh, this is ample payment, child. Not this evil little book. The payment is your ability to perceive the anger and the lies that the story promotes. I am well rewarded to see that in you.”
Puzzled, Vida says, “I’m not sure I understand.”
“One day you will. You might have an old soul, but you are still very young.”
“So then ... will you tell my future?”
“If you’re sure you want to hear it.”
“That’s why I came the first time. That’s why I’ve come back twice. So do you use a crystal ball, cards, tea leaves?”
“No, child, I need none of that. Your future will be full of strife and struggle, loss and grief, doubt and fear, and pain.”
Vida is silent, waiting. At last, she says, “That sucks.”
After a Mona Lisa smile comes and goes, the seer says, “Your future will be full of peace and comfort, love and joy, hope and fortitude, solace and delight.”
After another silence, Vida says, “Which is it?”
“Which is what?”
“Well, gee, that sounds like two different futures for two different people.”
“They are one and the same future, dear. All those things will be yours to experience.”