I am here to kick-start the wonderful AU Exchange! Get excited people! :D

Title: the shorter story
Author: franztastisch
A Gift For: sweetwatersong
Rating: M
Warnings: guilt, consent issues (in an imagine-Clint-was-Loki's-scepter kind of way. Weird I know)
Prompt used: "You have lost something worth keeping," the fortune-teller says, and you do not need to tell her she is right. But what is lost, can be found again.
Summary: be careful what you wish for is written in matter-of-fact writing on the little sign by the entrance. he only wishes to be dry, and idly he wonders if there is any way even that can go wrong.
Author Notes:This kind of took over my brain for a while, and I am stupidly proud of it. The tarot cards mentioned were made by my sister as part of her BA Illustration. Thanks a million to geckoholic for beta, title from The Blower's Daughter by Damian Rice.




and so it is:

the cards are worn and old and unlike any he has seen before - oranges and browns picking out animal-headed figures that shift and contort - and the fortune-teller deals them in a manner that implies years of practice.

he's only here to get out of the rain, he wouldn't have come in otherwise. he has no time for those who purport to tell the future; lairs and scoundrels, the lot of them, who prey on the hopeful and insecure. but this tent was the only place out of the rain, and its surprisingly foreboding air has ensured that he is the only one brave enough to enter.

be careful what you wish for is written in matter-of-fact writing on the little sign by the entrance. he only wishes to be dry, and idly he wonders if there is any way even that can go wrong.

the fortune-teller splays the cards out and asks him to pick nine. wishing to be dry had cost him one silver piece for his fortune told, and the rain was relentless enough that he felt this a reasonable price to pay, his opinions on fortune tellers notwithstanding.

he picks nine at random.

the fortune-teller dealing the cards is unlike any he's ever seen before, much like how her tent is unlike any he's seen before. usually they are gaudy, brass and glass beads hidden among silks and gauzes that the proprietors believe give a mystical air. this one is dark. there are herbs in bundles hanging from the supports and charms made from animals bones. and the fortune-teller herself... she wears cotton and wool roughly woven, as if she wishes to hide. but her eyes are green glass and her hair is the same orange as her cards. she is too beautiful to hide, however much she tries.

she turns the cards over, one after the other, but she doesn't explain them and he doesn't know them well enough to even guess what they could mean.

she frowns lightly.

"you have lost something worth keeping," she says in a voice that implies that this is like any other fortune she could give. but he startles minutely, because she is right.

the few candles lighting the tent gutter slightly as stray breezes sneak in through the canvas. the fortune-teller touches her cards lightly.

"recently," she says.

he came in to get out of the rain, but no amount of rain will keep him in here with a woman who can so easily find out his secrets.

he leaves.



and so it is:

he works odd jobs, out in the borderlands where the law is a word only. he smuggles people out of persecution, smuggles water and gold and precious black oil. he camps out under the stars with only his dog for company. it's lonely, under the stars, but he can do little about that. loneliness is just something he has to get used to.

he had been hired by a man in the city to find someone. that's why he'd been on the outskirts of town. but that person was dead now, so it didn't matter. he couldn't get paid if the man was dead, so he just never went back. didn't want to go back anyway. nothing to go back for.

but he doesn't much like the town either, so mostly he stays in the borderlands. the people there are more honest even as they rob you blind. it's comforting, in its own way. and he's close enough to the town that if he needs company, he can find it. so he's happy.

or happy enough.



and so it is:

occasionally he'll work with another. this other man is more silent than even himself, and his hair is too long. he's seen trouble, this other man. more trouble than he himself has. he screams in the night, and is missing his arm. he would call the man unkind names, if that was his way. but it isn't so he calls him the soldier, because it’s better than calling him the hollow man.

the solider has worked the borderlands far longer than he has. the solider has the air of a man who has lived far longer than is kind to. he seems ancient in a way even the old of the town do not. the solider likes his dog though. the solider also gives off the air of a man who hasn't had much happiness in his life, so he feels it's no great loss to share his dog with him, even though the dog is now his only friend.

the solider isn't the type to call friend. but maybe eventually he will be, through time spent together, if nothing else. the solider calls him hawkeye when he calls him anything, and it's a name of sorts, so he answers.

they mostly smuggle people now. two is better for that and the soldier is just as much a crack shot as he is. the state to the north is even worse than this one, the man who runs it fond of money more than people. he has a thing for those with gifts and not much mind to ask for their help, preferring instead to take it by captivity and enslavement.

he and the soldier do not take kindly to this notion. freedom is worth more than any money, something they have both worked out for themselves when they were very young. the soldier’s lesson was harder than his he thinks, and the leaning of it more painful. but he learnt nonetheless.



and so it is:

he's in town for supplies - a new saddle bag, more bullets, fletchings - when he meets the fortune-teller again.

he's in a bar. the type that has no name and stolen cable and a fight twice a night. he chose this bar because if they have fights twice a night they're not going to care about his dog, who lies curled at his feet. he's not paying attention to anything much outside of the contents of his glass, but his situational awareness is good enough that he pegs the drop in conversation anyway.

she's still in cotton and rough wool, which now does an even worse job of hiding her than it did in her tent, and moves with an unconscious grace he's never seen in someone this side of town. but still, he doesn't want her near him. she's uncanny, with her green eyes that see farther than they should. he dislikes people knowing his secrets.

be careful what you wish for her sign had said.

she sits down next to him.

"have you found it yet?" she asks and he can't pretend she's not talking to him because suddenly there's no one else around.

"it's lost," he replies, because he's not going to pretend to be stupid for her.

the noise she makes implies frustration.

"it can be found again," she says.

her hair glows under the candles and dull electric lights of the bar. it's like she's lit up from inside; a house at night with the curtains drawn.

he doesn't answer and she shrugs and turns her attention to the barman. she has what could be a spider tattooed on the base of her neck. it looks like a cartel or maggia marker, but he doesn't know why it should look familiar.

then he decides he doesn't care and turns back to his glass.

"do you get lonely," the fortune-teller asks after a while, "out there under the stars?"

it’s a question that’s almost not a question, as if she knows the answer already and just needs him to agree. he hates that tone, that feeling of being known without consent. and then he realises that he never told her what he did, never said where he was going or where he was coming from. his gaze snaps sharply to hers.

"you left before i could finish," she says placidly and he wants to hit her hard enough for the fortune-teller smugness of knowing to disappear like a fog burned away by the sun.

but she said 'lonely' somewhere between the way believers say 'god' and the gifted say 'i don't know, i just can'. reverent and resigned, like happiness you can't touch. so he doesn't, the violence coiled tight in his muscles, because she must know of loneliness as he does. she must, because there is no one within striking distance of either of them now and they're sat two feet apart. because even in the worst downpour, her dry tent is empty.

a house at night with the curtains drawn. but the light inside is a fire and no one is yet willing to get burnt.

he puts down his glass and leaves, which he realises too late is a yes.



and so it is:

he and the solider smuggle two children over the border. they’re tiny, not even in their teens. one, the boy, is fair skinned with hair like burnished gold, the other, the girl, has skin so dark it gleams and hair so white it hurts to look at. he doesn’t need to know why they need an escape, only that they need one, but the boy tells him anyway.

they are the lightning-makers.

the gifted come in many guises, most of them harmless or innocent; those that can heal others, those that can heal themselves, those that can make tiny rainstorms, or change the colour of things, or clean water, or calm animals. small, marginally useful talents that can often easily be hidden.

but there are others – fewer in number – who’s gifts make them commodities to those willing to pay. lightning-makers, fire-bringers, mind-readers, and sometimes even death-merchants and fortune-tellers. these ones can be dangerous, partly because of what they can do, but more for what they can be made to do. humans break so easily, especially young ones, if you can be bothered to learn the pressure points.

lightning-makers are valuable in war. lightning-makers are taken young and lightning-makers die young too.

these two lightning-makers hold hands, because they only know each other, and when they let go, light arcs between their hands.

he and the solider get them to the resistance outpost. they’re paid in a few silver pieces and half a lamb.

he has seen lightning-makers with no hands, fire-bringers with no arms.

he would have done it for free.



and so it is:

“i could freeze things,” says the soldier one day. he jerks his chin to the north. “he took my arm.”

there’s only one ‘he’ to the north. the soldier curls in on himself slightly.

“took my mind too.”

“you got it back,” he says gently after a while, but the soldier doesn’t reply to that.



and so it is:

“it is difficult for us gifted,” she says.

he doesn’t know how she always finds him. doesn’t know why he lets her.

“i’m not,” he says, the lie easy in his mouth.

she looks at him.

“remember who you are talking to,” she says and ice floods his veins. he’s spent so much time pretending now that he doesn’t know what to do. he’s drowning in thick fog. a little known fact that cost him everything and she can pull it from her cards easy as breathing.

“i ask them about you, sometimes,” she says after a while, awkward for the first time he can remember. “you’re fascinating.”

“don’t,” he manages to whisper.

“alright,” she says quietly, after a while.

there’s a moment where neither of them say anything, and he doesn’t know what she’s thinking but his mind is a whirl of worry and fear and what if she asks? and why do i care? and a swirling horror of this can’t be happening again.

and then she touches two fingers to his wrist and everything stops. it cuts through his thoughts like a knife, and he wonders if this is her gift, if this is what she can do, because suddenly his heart is beating too fast and his sun-dried skin is tingling and he doesn’t know where to look. she terrifies him. he doesn’t know how she always finds him and he doesn’t want to find out what it’s like when she doesn’t because she’s the only person in this whole godforsaken border town that talks to him like he’s just another guy, and not like a man who brings gifted children into their midst because he’s a bleeding heart set on ruining them through gleeful passive-aggressiveness.

“i’m gonna be gone for a while,” he manages to choke out. and he wasn’t, not up until about five minutes ago, but he can’t stay here. here where her fingers stop his mind and the heat of her close scares him so much he doesn’t want to let her go.

he never wanted the possibility of being left again, but here he is, in a situation he doesn’t understand even though he tried to protect himself against this, he tried so hard. but all it took was a rainstorm and some dog-eared cards and everything spiralled out of control again.

“i know,” she says quietly, sadly; and that’s not fair. she can’t mess with him like this. this fake-real fortune-teller who can pull his secrets from the air but keep him close with the word ‘lonely’.

he wants to ask if she saw that in her cards too, but he can’t because her hand comes up, so gentle, to smooth the frown line from between his eyes and he has to leave because this feels like the chili-honey they give you for fevers out west. sweet and burning and not at all helpful.

“don’t leave without saying goodbye,” she says as he leaves.

he’s only said goodbye once and it hurt more than anything he’s ever lived through. he never wants to say goodbye to anyone ever again. leaving without saying it hurts so much less.



and so it is:

he stays away for nearly two months before he runs out of provisions completely. and he could go anywhere, any number of border towns, but he comes back to this one because he needs to know if her cards told her what he can do and if it means she’ll leave, even though she has never left, he always has.

the last person he told (was forced to tell) asked him to leave and he said his only ‘goodbye’ and it was like knives to the chest.

he comes back because far in the north there is desert but the sand is never as warm as her hands. because to the west there is rain and he thinks of tents with signs that say be careful what you wish for. because the people he smuggles are so often dead-eyed and he needs someone alive. because the gun fights and silent arrow shots can quiet his mind.

because the soldier has his dog and he hasn’t seen him in months.

because the stars make him feel lonely.

“did they say what i am?” he asks as soon as he finds her, in an alley where glass crunches under foot and a generator whirs like a dying dragonfly.

“no,” she says.

she scares him. she scares him because she makes him feel and because she can tell him secrets he’s hidden even from himself. he wants to never see her again. he wants to stare at her until his eyes dry out, until he can’t see anything or anyone else. he wants to touch her but he’s scared he’ll never let go.

she scares him because there is the possibility that she can tell him what he is, and his need to know is only matched by his desire to never find out.



and so it is:

“what can you do?” she asks quietly.

“i don’t know,” he says. “if i try very hard i can do nothing at all. if i don’t pay attention i can do anything.”

“what do you want to do?”

he touches the edge of one of the cards; two women intertwined so that he cannot be sure where one ends and the other begins, the patterns on their skin shifting in the light of the tent. he doesn’t know what card it is, none of them are named.

the fortune-teller makes a little noise in the back of her throat.

“i don’t want to be alone anymore,” he says reluctantly. his wants are dangerous; voicing them even more so.

she reshuffles the cards, deals them again. nine cards face down, their spotted backs hypnotising. she turns them over and the two intertwined women are revealed over and over; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

he stares at them in confusion.

“what does that mean?” he asks, dreading the answer because there was only one before and he feels out of control.

“what did you do?” the fortune-teller replies, wary and something else.

don’t want things, he thinks desperately. but it’s too late.

“i don’t know.”



and so it is:

he isn’t expecting it; her touch burning across his skin. in the part of his mind that can still form coherent thought, her touch reminds him of bushfires or scorched earth – either made new or made unusable. he’s not sure which; doesn’t care all that much, not when her hands slide under his shirt, following the contours of his ribs.

she kisses him, her mouth a brand against his, and he doesn’t stop her, despite being terrified of what might happen as he does. but he’s also terrified of what might happen if he doesn’t, what part of him might break free and float away, leaving behind only desert-loneliness and regrets.

he doesn’t want to be alone any more.

“come on,” the fortune-teller whispers into his mouth, tugging him through a partition and into a part of her tent he’s never seen before. he notes the discarded books, the hairbrush on the table, the clothes in neat piles. but only briefly, because there are her warm hands again, turning him, pulling at his clothes, lowering his defences until he feels as if he’s flying apart, desire spilling everywhere like a river in spate – reaching places it’s not meant to go, washing away everything that isn’t the touch of her hands, the rough cotton of her dress, the feel of her skin.

naked she is more beautiful than he ever could have imagined and her skin against his sends sparks racing up his spine.

be careful what you wish for the sign outside says.

there are many ways for this to go wrong, but with her hands and arms and lips around him, he forgets to worry about any of them.



and so it is:

“i’m a widow,” the fortune-teller says, and he frowns at her in a way that implies what of it?

she turns in the bed to face him, the blanket slipping to reveal her bare breasts.

“you – ” she stops and her eyes widen.

“i what?”

she touches him; his shoulder, his sternum, his bottom lip. now he wants to push into it more than he wants to shy away. that scares him too.

“i’m a widow,” she says again, but this time the undertone ran more to the tune of we are the same, you and i.

“but i am not a widower,” he says gently but she says nothing in return. the kind of nothing that reminds him that she is a fortune-teller, and when fortune-tellers are real they are rare and they are dangerous and they know.

“i’m… i’m not a widower,” he says, the surety leaving him like being punched. “am i?”

“i thought you knew,” she whispers and suddenly pain and panic and desperation explode in his chest; shrapnel pieces ripping his insides until his only goodbye was yesterday and he’s bleeding love all over the dirty ground three cities away.

he gasps and jerks and falls to the ground, the bedclothes ripped from his body to leave him naked and trembling.

“no,” he says. and again, “no.”

because ‘goodbye’ meant ‘be happier’ and ‘goodbye’ meant ‘i never meant to hurt you’ and ‘goodbye’ meant ‘find someone you can love more than me because all i ever wanted was for you to be happy’.

‘goodbye’ never meant ‘goodbye’.



and so it is:

he leaves.

he takes only his travel bag, leaving everything else in a pile on her floor. he hasn't enough gas in the little motorbike he keeps in the stable behind the bar so he takes his horse, even though the journey is too long for her. he leaves without his dog, without his weapons, but with the taste of the fortune-teller on his tongue.

he doesn't say goodbye.



and so it is:

the courtyard is much as he remembers it; the scuffed earth, the broken drain and the half exposed wires suspended between hanging baskets of flowers. but when he bangs on the door it’s opened by a boy he doesn’t recognise. and when he asks after the woman who used to live here, the boy’s mother says, “she was killed, poor woman. an accident, ‘bout nine months back; a mutie downtown. a little kid, a fire-bringer - didn’t know what she was doing. killed five people. was taken down south so that bastard up north couldn’t get at her. awful thing, could see the smoke for miles. why d’you want to know?”

and he says, “i’m her husband,” like it hasn’t been four years since he’s used the words. says it like he still has a right to the title, just for a few seconds. because common-law marriage or not, whatever he did or didn’t do, he loved her like fire ants under his skin.

he left because she asked, not because he wanted to. he just loved her too much to refuse.

the boy’s mother brings him inside, sits him down. she talks to him, but he doesn’t hear; can hardly see for the memories and pain. the kitchen is changed. still cramped and low-ceilinged, yes, but there are children’s toys now. the old television is filled with candles, the wires from outside clearly having given up the ghost finally. there are more plants. his wife’s boots are gone from behind the door, and her oily handprints from around the handles.

a little traitorous part of him can feel the closure. he can mourn her loss now that she’s actually gone and not three cities away being happy with someone else. but he doesn’t want closure. he’d take the guilt and the hurt and the perpetual ache, he’d take anything, for her to still be here. he doesn’t want to be happy; he wants her alive. even if she’s not with him, even if she hates him. he doesn’t care.

him leaving was supposed to keep her safe. him leaving was supposed to give her a choice.

him leaving was supposed to let her live.

he doesn’t know how long he sits in his old kitchen, a malaise settled on his shoulders like a cloak, heavy and smothering. the boy’s mother seems content to leave him there - and distantly he’s comforted by the trust of the people of the inner cities – bustling around him, humming and washing and keeping the chickens off the counter. she doesn’t ask why he left his wife, why he returns now. doesn’t tell him he’s a bad man, that he should have been here. he’d noted no obvious male presence in the little kitchen; maybe she understands about absent husbands. maybe she’s content that he showed up now to grieve for a woman dead almost nine months, to care that she’s gone. maybe that’s enough, for her.



and so it is:

at dusk there is a knock at the door and the boy returns with the fortune-teller.

he did not expect her, but the fact that she found him is less surprising than it once was. she can always find him. it must be her cards.

“i followed your tracks,” she says. “i have a bike at the stable, and money enough for gas.”

she isn’t wearing her usual rough wool and cotton – they would be no use on a bike anyway. she’s in more fitting clothes, better for long journeys on dirt bikes; leather straps and buckles and a long scarf to keep her hair from her face and… those are, those are his trousers.

“they’re more comfortable for riding,” she says gently, and he feels as if someone spilled hot tar in his chest, oozing between his ribs to stain his clothes and drip, burning, to the floor.

“she was supposed to be better without me,” he chokes out, and distantly he registers the boy’s mother ushering the boy from the room, but it’s drowned out by her arms around him, too-warm and smelling of hot metal and long miles on a bike. he doesn’t hug back though, doesn’t lean in. he wants to hurt, wants the pain. it’s what he deserves after everything he’s done.

“i made her,” he whispers brokenly, and he wants to cut off his hands, like all those kids smuggled over the border. like it would make a difference. “i made her. i don’t want – ”

but he does want – he wants so much it spills out everywhere, like water slopping from a bucket.

“i loved her so much, and i thought… but she – i.”

he can’t get the words out, the shame too great. he never meant for it to happen. he never wanted to be that person.

wanted. wanting. wanting is the whole problem though.

“she worked at the garage, and i did much as i do now. i’d leave and come back, and it was wonderful but then… then she said…”

sometimes when you leave i feel as though i’m waking up and i wonder where i am. isn’t that weird?

he can’t continue.

she touches his shoulder, and it’s a brand through his dust-and-mud spattered shirt. “we should go,” she says gently, before getting up and going into the other room. he can hear her thank the boy and the boy’s mother and he hears the boy’s mother say, “he is a good man,” and the fortune-teller reply, “yes,” and when she comes back into the kitchen he’s crying so hard he can barely see.



and so it is:

the fortune-teller spent all her spare money on gas, so they sit by his horse as night draws in.

“what do you want?” she asks.

“i shouldn’t want things,” he replies dully.

“everyone wants things.”

“i could hurt you.”

she puts her hand on his arm. “but you won’t.”

she’s still wearing his trousers. they stretch tight over her hips and hang too long past her ankles. the leather jerkin she wears buckles tight over her shirt; her waist seems tiny now, after all those loose dresses. he remembers the swell of her breasts, the heat between her legs, the taste of her on his tongue.

she draws in a quiet breath and he sees her pupils dilate. he wrenches out of her grip.

he wants his wife back. he wants her alive, somewhere. but he wants more than that, wants to go back to when life was stable and he didn’t have to second guess everyone’s actions, look between the lines for his wants and his desires to make sure that their actions were their own. he wants before, before secrets and confusion and waking up, to when he worked the borderlands smuggling children out of slavery because it was right and not because the idea of someone in thrall to another made him want to claw his own skin off.

he feels a hand on his shoulder and turns, but there is no one there. he looks back at the fortune-teller and her eyes are wide.

“she was there, wasn’t she?” he says quietly. “just for a moment.”

“someone was,” she says.

he can’t cry anymore. he has no more tears left and he’s exhausted.

he lies down and she lies down with him, close but not touching. his horse shuffles from foot to foot and blows out a quiet breath. she’ll need re-shoeing, but he’s proud of her for getting him this far this fast. suddenly he misses his dog, and the soldier.

“i don’t want to be alone,” he says as the fireflies come out, “and i don’t want to be scared anymore.”

not wanting is easier. but only just.



and so it is:

they barter a rickety cart to get home. the fortune-teller only had enough gas for a one way journey, and at a slower pace, his horse will be able to get them both home with no trouble. they’ll have to share the cart with her bike, but they’ll also get a dry place to sleep, so it’s a good deal.

before they leave she spreads her cards out on the cracked paving stones, a bigger deck this time, but still with the same browns and oranges, the same shifting patterns.

he doesn’t want to see the cards – he worries that while he’s around they’ll only ever reveal what he wants, but he doesn’t say anything.

she sits quietly, spreads the cards out in an arc, picks two, then three more, then two again. turns them quietly; two, then three, then two again. the backs of the remaining unturned pack seem to shift in the morning light. he still doesn’t know what they mean, but he sees that same card again; two women entwined.

“what is that card?” he asks, pointing at the women. there were nine, the last time he saw that card, now there is one. there is only ever supposed to be one. he shivers, though it’s warm.

she deals the cards again, picks three. darker this time; blacks and browns, very little orange.

“it wouldn’t help you,” she says, “to know now.”

he nods.

he realises that he trusts her.



and so it is:

when they are closer to the town than any other inhabited place, they meet the soldier. he has three dead pheasants, and a quokka, a smuggled girl of around fifteen and his dog.

he is really happy to see his dog.

the fortune-teller seems unsurprised, and he realises that she must have seen this in her cards. she offers the soldier and the girl a place in the cart with the bike and ties their horses to the back. they make an odd sort of procession as they enter the town but none of them mind.

the girl can fling tiny darts from her hands with terrifying accuracy. she is dark-haired and almond-eyed and his dog loves her. he thinks maybe the soldier loves her too, but he can no longer trust himself on that front so doesn’t inquire further.



and so it is:

he finds that the fortune-teller sold almost the entire contents of her tent to raise the money for that gas needed to go after him.

he leaves to spend two months in the borderlands as penance, but she comes after him after three days.

“my cards said you were being stupid,” she said. “i can’t abide stupid men.”

something in his chest breaks and trickles through his ribs. she still has his trousers.

two days later and the soldier and the girl come back. they have a smuggling job, and the soldier picked up a new bow for him a while back that he thinks would be worth using now.

“a water container,” the girl says, “and there should be some kids too.”

he looks over at the fortune-teller, and she gives a little smile and a nod.

“come back in one piece,” she says.

he doesn’t say goodbye.



and so it is:

he falls into a pattern. it’s much as his old pattern, but the girl makes a difference. he likes the girl; she’s funny and quick witted and makes the soldier smile. she is also, he is pleased to find out, older than fifteen.

they smuggle a great deal of water now. a drought has set in, as it does every year, and the desert to the north encroaches further every day. people in the town say it is the northern territory’s doing; that their leader has found the right gifted child now, the right mutie, to dry them out. he wants their water, their women and their gas.

(‘mutie’ was just a name, before. now it increasingly takes on that tone that all words can take; unsavoury, derisive, scornful. gifted, special, boy.

he doesn’t like it.)




and so it is:

the fortune-teller though, she makes the most difference.



and so it is:

he comes and goes as he pleases from the fortune-teller’s tent. she imposes no rules, voices no wants, and he tries to do the same for her, though he isn’t sure how well he succeeds. her tent is his base in the town now, and thanks to the territory in the north and the town’s general mistrust both of gifted people and of her, he finds himself less welcome than he once was.

but this doesn’t bother him; he has the soldier, he has the girl and he has her.

he also has another.

the fortune-teller takes him aside one day - before he was to go out with the soldier and the girl to liberate more water, save more children from the clutches of the north – and tells him of a man in the foothills. “he is like no other i have ever met,” she says. “his gift is unprecedented and, in some ways, much like yours. go and see him.”

his eyes snap to hers. for all that they have been through, for all that he trusts her, he hasn’t yet fully explained what it is he can do. she has guessed, that much is obvious, but he knows he owes it to her to tell her fully.

but he still doesn’t like others knowing – it’s dangerous and it’s insidious and even he can’t be sure when it’s at work.

“i haven’t asked my cards,” she says. and then, “i just want to help.”

he goes.

the first thing the man says to him is “you need help,” and then “tell me everything.”

he is disturbed to find that he does, eventually, the man cultivates the type of silences that make him feel safe. he wonders if this is the man’s gift, but he smiles sadly and says “no” and proceeds to tell him, in a soft voice, of his gift; how it manifested late, how it lost him his wife and ruined his life and completely undermined his confidence and certainty. how it bursts out of him when he’s not careful and can destroy anything, whether he wants it to or not.

he understands why the fortune-teller sent him here, even as he wants to yell at her for sending him to a man who can pry out his secrets more easily than she can.

the man tells him he lives alone now, here in the foothills. he was a doctor once, and while he’s stable now, he’s still worried that he’ll hurt someone.

he thinks about calling the man the hermit, but settles on the doctor. the hours and days spent in  the foothills with the man make him feel scraped raw, but it does help and he feels he owes him the kindness the name ‘doctor’ brings.

every time he comes back after spending time with the doctor in the foothills, he brings the fortune-teller hard-won fresh oranges in thanks and she kisses him chastely on the cheek.



and so it is:

sometimes, when out in the borderlands with the soldier and the girl, he lies awake at night far from the campfire and remembers what the fortune-teller looks like naked. he remembers the soft skin of her breasts and the heat between her legs and lets his want spiral into the night air.

but then he remembers touching her and watching her pupils dilate with desire and the uncertainty floods back in. he can never be certain if the want is hers or his, and he doesn’t want to take the risk. it hurt too much last time, and he is adamant that trying when he knows what the outcome could be, what he can do even without trying, would make him the very worst type of person.

it doesn’t stop him wanting though.

but then again, he’s not yet found anything that can stop him wanting, much as he’d like to.



and so it is:

he finds himself going back to the doctor much more often than he would ever have suspected – the foothills are cool and there’s no one about to look at him; not disdainfully, as the people of the town do, or curiously as the girl does, or with solidarity as the soldier does. and there are no carefully neutral gazes, as perfected by the fortune-teller in what he is sure is an attempt not to break the fragile and often confusing truce they have built around themselves since returning from the city.

there is only the silence and the quiet support of a man who understands, on a fundamental level, the guilt you can carry for things that aren’t really your fault.



and so it is:

“so what is it you can do?” the girl asks him as she keeps lookout.

they’ve hit up a small convoy of water carriers and their cart is piled high with gallon tanks. there’s also a child (there’s always a child). she is young, really young, and doesn’t speak. no one has worked out what she can do yet, but the haunted look in her eyes and the way she jerks away from them ensured that they took her with them when they’d liberated all the water they could fit on their little cart.

(soon they won’t be able to do this anymore; the north is gaining more and more stocks of gas, and soon the convoys will be of cars and bikes and trucks and his poor horse won’t be able to compete. he worries about that day.)

“i can’t do anything,” he says, because the less people know the better.

the girl snorts.

“of course you can do something. you wouldn’t be here, doing this, if you couldn’t do something.”

he doesn’t say anything to that.

“c’mon,” she says, idly throwing a stone to bounce off the soldiers back. “we’re all in the same boat here.”

“it’s not nice.”

“none of it is nice. and even those that are get twisted.”

he acknowledges that statement with a curt nod. “some can get more twisted than others,” he says anyway.

the girl looks over to the soldier but he doesn’t give any indication that’s he’s listening, even though they both know he is.

“fine, fine,” she says eventually, when it’s clear he isn’t going to say anything more and the soldier isn’t going to back her up. “i’ll just try some more with the silent one then.”

she jerks her thumb at the girl in the cart, and then signals to swap.



and so it is:

turns out that the little girl is a type of death-merchant.

they find out by accident. his dog scares a small bird from some scrub when they make camp and the bird flies straight at the little girl, dropping dead as soon as it hits her hands, which she automatically raises to protect her face.

it could just have broken it’s neck, but the look on the little girl’s face is enough to tell them that it didn’t.

“is yours worse than that?” the girl asks him.

he looks at the way the little girl huddles into the blankets they lent her, clearly terrified of touching anyone.

“no,” he manages to whisper. he wants to say yes, because it’s caused him so much pain and he’s still terrified of what he can do. but at least he had a childhood of some description, at least he found out everything bad when he was old enough to halfway deal with it. this little girl has probably lived in terror of touching people for as long as she’s been alive.

“what is it?” the girl says.

“i can make people do things,” he says and he immediately feels guilty for telling the girl before telling the fortune-teller, even though the fortune-teller must know.

maybe it’s because he could cope without the girl, could cope without the soldier, but he’s not sure he could bear to lose the fortune-teller.

“what things?”

“anything i want,” he forces out, eyes darting away. and, he doesn’t say, want spirals out of me like dust from a beaten carpet if i’m not careful.

the girl looks at him steadily for a moment.

“show me,” the girl says eventually, and he sees from the corner of his eye the soldier and the little girl watching, their eyes glittering from the light of the fire.

“no.”

the girl turns her hands out to him, palms up and wrists naked and vulnerable.

“i trust you,” she says. “show me.”

he stares at her.

“i trust you,” she says again, “you won’t hurt me.”

“you don’t know that,” he forces out, because she doesn’t and, what’s worse, neither does he.

“yes i do,” she whispers, looking him dead in the eye.

the strength it takes to make his fingertips connect with her wrist is monumental, and he can hear his heart beating loud in his ears. put your hair up, he thinks as his fingers brush her skin, because she has such an elegant way of doing it and it makes the soldier stare at the curve of her neck. and because it can’t hurt.

she’s halfway through the motion before her eyes widen, realisation kicking in.

“sorry, sorry, sorry,” he breathes out, terrified. he tucks his hands into his armpits and fights the urge to curl into himself.

no one says anything for the longest time and the only movement is the little girl, curling up against his hip. she’s wrapped head to toe in the grubby blanket they gave her, no skin visible, not even the tips of her fingers, but he understands the gesture. when did he gain the solidarity of child death-merchants?

“it’s ok,” the girl says eventually. “it’s ok, you’re ok.”

moving her arm in a deliberate way that he’s sure is meant to put him at ease, the girl puts her hand on his shoulder. he flinches dramatically nonetheless, but she doesn’t remove her hand.

“did you know about this?” she asks the soldier after a moment, and he can’t lift his head to face the betrayal and mistrust that must be showing on the soldier’s face.

there’s a long silence, and he imagines them leaving; the soldier and the girl leaving and taking the water and his horse with the cart and that damn quokka the soldier tamed for no reason he can fathom.

but instead of leaving the soldier says, “yes.”



and so it is:

he tries to leave – he tries to get up and run and run and run until the stars are his only witness, until his wants can’t influence people and he can’t hurt anyone unknowingly – but the little girl cries out and the girl grips his arm so tight her nails leave crescent moons on his skin.

he struggles, panic gripping his chest like a vice, but the girl is much stronger than she looks and she locks his arm in such a way that he can only escape with a dislocated shoulder, if he escapes at all.

“how?” she asks the soldier, slightly out of breath from their struggle.

the soldier is silent long enough for him to look up, curiosity winning out over fear and as soon as their eyes meet, the soldier says, “i was happy,” and his entire body relaxes in shock. “i was happy and i hadn’t been happy for so long that i realised it couldn’t be entirely… natural.”

the soldier says ‘natural’ just like any other word.

“and then you would go back to the town and the feeling would go too. and i realised it was you, that you wanted me to be happy and so i was.”

he wants to cry, because regardless of the feeling, no one should feel things they aren’t supposed to, that other people want them to.

“but the thing is,” the soldier continues, “that ‘fake’ happiness reminded me what real happiness could feel like, so…” he trails off and then shrugs, his meaning clear despite his silence.

it’s not all bad and i don’t blame you.

the girl loosens her grip on him then, and he scrambles free, walking away from the fire and out into the dark and the encroaching desert. none of those by the fire attempt to follow, and the only thing the girl says as he leaves is, “come back soon.”

and he realises that, this time, he will.



and so it is:

it’s only a week after he left everyone by the fire in the middle of the night that he slinks back from the borderlands, his skin raw from sand and sun and his mind playing over, again and again, the fortune-teller’s words;

i can’t abide stupid men.

it was a much shorter self-imposed exile than any before because of it. but also because he left behind the child death-merchant, and if he owes anyone his presence he feels it is her – they have too much in common, too much pain and fear, for him to abandon her.

her and the fortune-teller. and the girl and the soldier. ties that bind and draw him back, like rivers to the sea; inexorable.



and so it is:

“i want to show you something,” the fortune-teller says one day, gesturing at the table where she plies her trade. “come, sit.”

her cards are laid out as they always are, a wide arc, waiting for nine to be picked. he eyes them mistrustfully.

“i want to show you something,” the fortune-teller says again.

he sits down, watching – slightly mesmerised – as the patterns on the back of the cards shift in the muted light.

somehow the fortune-teller had managed to re-buy much of what she sold to follow him to the city, but there are still some things missing; her old hammock, and some of her dresses – she still has his trousers, after all.

there are also new things; charms he made for her from pigeon feathers and acacia twigs, nuts and bolts strung into wind chimes that turn in the hot wind from the north, strings of dried orange peel from the oranges he gave her, their subtle scent permeating the tent like the ghost of all the thank-yous he can’t say out loud.

and some things are exactly as they were; the sign outside still saying be careful what you wish for.

this tent is as much home to him as anywhere he’s ever lived, maybe even more so.

he watches as she sits across the table from him and places her hands either side of the splay of cards.

“i know things,” she says after taking a deep breath, picking nine cards at random and laying them out in the now-familiar four-five pattern. “i know things because of my gift and i know things because i look and because i listen.”

she turns a card; two strong tailed creatures curled round each other.

“but before this knowing there is another knowing.”

the next card; a human figure with a leafy tail.

“knowing yourself – myself.”

three more cards; a spider, a woman sat under a star, a creature clinging to a staff – upside down.

“because you must have a baseline to understand everything else, or you can’t understand what you’re seeing.”

two more; a dancing human figure with an animal skin on its back, two dogs – upside down.

“this is me.”

the last two cards; a dark tower – upside down, and the two women entwined.

“but then, this is also me.”

she sweeps the cards together and holds the deck out to him.

“these are the extension of my gift – this is how it is expressed. they are me, just as those nine cards are me. but then see – this is you.”

she gestures at him to pull nine cards and – despite his fear of influencing them, of them showing more than he can cope with – he does as she indicates. the spotted patterns swirl in the light, just as they always do, as she turns them over, one after the other.

two frogs – upside down, the strong tailed creatures, the spider, a human figure with a lizard’s head, two figures with dog skulls for heads, the woman with the star – upside down, the two dogs – upside down, a man with his arms to the sky – upside down, and the women entwined.

“we overlap on some fronts, though you could have guessed that already.” she smiles at him and he manages a small smile in return, despite the fact that he is mostly confused and apprehensive. she’s right, after all.

“but then, the cards are also me so – ”

she shuffles and spreads the cards again, gesturing for him to pick again and then, after he does, for him to turn them over.

the entwined women; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.



and so it is:

“this is us,” she says, tapping one of the nine pairs of entwined women. “this is what happens when your gift meets mine. you think my cards did this because somewhere deep inside you, you wanted it known and therefore made it happen – ”

he can imagine what ‘it’ is now – can imagine what this card means, and why it comes again and again and again, why it’s them. he can imagine and it feels like nights out under the stars with the remembered taste of her on his tongue.

“ – that it was your doing; your desire and your gift. it was not – is not. i tell the future and i tell the present. it is me as much as it is you. you could force me, i am sure, but you will not, you have not. it was there before.”

he thinks about the unconscious distance they kept between them, even when they first met. he thinks about the way she always found him, and how he couldn’t work out why or how.

he nods, once, cautiously, to show he understands.

the fortune-teller looks at him for a long, silent, moment as the cards sit on the table between them. out of the corner of his eye, the entwined women look like snakes and the shifting light created by the breeze pulling the canvas makes everything seem unreal – underwater. if being underwater was this hot and orange and wanting.

“you have never forced me,” says the fortune-teller quietly. “you make great sacrifices to not force me; sacrifices of your happiness, your well-being, your comfort. i’m telling you, you need not make these sacrifices.”

he opens and closes his mouth, any words he was half-thinking of saying dying on his tongue. for all her assertions, for all her claims, he’s not quite able to accept that. his gift interacting with hers may explain the cards, but he’s not comfortable enough with himself to trust he has control.

she reaches for his hand but stops at the last moment, her hand hovering in no-man’s land before retreating back into her lap.

the two cards momentarily blocked from his sight by her arm have changed; two sets of entwined women changing to the spider and two strong-tailed animals curled around each other.

“i went to the foothills,” she says when he remains silent. “he says you can control it now. says you’re not pushing.”

still he says nothing, but slowly, he can feel his hope and want spiral out into the air. he feels so off kilter that he can’t stop himself and terror simmers underneath it all.

“the barman in that bar you like so much doesn’t give you free drinks when you’re upset anymore.”

the fortune-tellers voice is getting quieter and quieter, faint pleading entering her tone – though pleading for what, he can’t work out right now.

“i can feel you, but here,” she waves her hand slightly, indicating the air between them, “not here,” she touches two fingers to her chest, to her temple.

she’s leaning closer too, and he can see her pupils are dilated. momentarily, his terror wins out over his hope and want, until he realises –

he’s not touching her.

“you’re not making me,” she whispers. “it’s the same here as it is when you’re in the borderlands, when you’re in the foothills. you’re not making me.”

with shaky hands, she gathers her cards, carefully putting them away in the small chest under the table before getting up and coming around to his side. he follows her as if magnetised, his body turning in his chair almost without his permission.

“please,” she says, looking down at him with eyes almost black, “let me touch you.”

her hair is burnt red and her cotton dress is almost formless, and she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen in his life. his heart stutters, once, twice, terror swelling and then breaking as he nods.

when her fingers connect with his cheek they both gasp, because it doesn’t feel like fire ants, it feels like hot earth, like being a hair too close to a fire. it feels like matches to gasoline and being filled to bursting.

it feels like coming home.



and so it is:

it’s only hours later, held in the cage of the fortune-teller’s limbs, that he thinks to ask about the little girl.

“she’s alright,” she says, turning in her narrow bed to drape herself over his bare chest. “the soldier is looking after her. i’m making her gloves.”

“she’s going to overheat,” he says, thinking of the long hot summers ahead.

the fortune-teller kisses him.

“she’s going to be loved.”





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