This Isn't What It Looks Like (4 page)

Only after the middle card had flipped over—as if stirred by a breeze—did the Seer open her eyes and pick up her monocle.

The card was delicately painted with a picture of a slender youth standing against a backdrop of billowing
clouds. He was thrusting his sword forward while looking back over his shoulder.

“Ah, yes, the Page of Swords,” said the Seer. “A stealthy card, the spy in the tarot deck. A natural for an invisible girl,
yes? It means, I think, that you have been sent to this world on a mission.”

“A mission? What kind?”

Ignoring the question, the Seer held her hand over a second card. By the time her hand moved away, the card had flipped over
and was lying faceup across the first card. The second card bore a compass-like design framed in four directions by animals
and crowned on top by a sphinx.

“Behold—the Wheel of Fortune.” The Seer traced a circle in the air, and then an X. “You are at a
crossroads. Which direction will you choose? This way you follow the angel, that way the eagle, this way the lion, that way
the bull.”

“How’m I supposed to know what that means?” asked the girl, staring at the card.

“Some say the Wheel means good luck, but do not trust it,” said the Seer dismissively. “Your mission will go well or it will
go badly. What is certain is that the Wheel will spin again.”

“Thanks, that’s really helpful,” said the girl, who had lost her memory but not, evidently, her tendency toward sarcasm.

“The cards can only tell us what we already know,” the Seer cautioned.

“But I don’t even know where I’m supposed to be going. I don’t know anything.”

“Patience.”

The Seer turned over another card. (Or was it that the card turned itself over?) This one was decorated with an Egyptian motif.
It showed a somber-looking woman sitting with a scroll in her hand and a crescent moon at her foot.

“Here is your destiny—the High Priestess. She is the bearer of secrets. Is it perhaps a secret that you seek?”

“Yeah… I think… I think maybe it is,” said the girl slowly. “
The
Secret.”

She didn’t know where the thought had come
from; nonetheless, a small flame had been lit in the darkness of her mind.

The Secret. She was seeking the Secret.

“The Secret, yes,” said the Seer cryptically. “That is what we all seek in the end, isn’t it?”

The Seer raised her hand slightly and another card was revealed. Unlike the others, it faced the girl rather than the Seer.
The girl read the inscription:
Ace of Wands.

“This fourth card takes us back to your distant past, to the foundation of your journey.” The Seer shook her head sadly when
she looked at the card. “See how it’s upside down? It seems an old wrong must be righted. You will never rest until the wand
is returned to its rightful position.”

“What wrong? What wand?”

“It may be that something has been stolen from you. Or perhaps you have stolen from someone else?” The Seer shrugged. “Then
again, sometimes a wand is just a wand.”

“You mean like a magician’s wand?”

“What other kind is there?” The Seer nodded with satisfaction as another card turned over. Here a robed man stood holding
a wand aloft with his right hand while pointing downward with his left.
The Magician
, it read. “How else could you have gotten here—if not by magic?”

“How do I get out of here? That’s what I want to know,” said the girl, who was growing more irritable
by the minute. “Or do I just click my heels and say, ‘There’s no place like home’?”

“
As above, so below.
As in this world, so in the other. This is why the Magician points upward and downward at the same time. I cannot tell you
how to get from here to there. Only that your actions in this place will reflect in that one.”

A sixth card turned over, and for the first time, the Seer looked surprised. “The Fool? But surely…”

“What? Why is that weird?”

“The sixth card signals the goal of your quest. And yet the Fool is always the questioner. You.” The Seer paused thoughtfully.
“Perhaps it is you yourself you must find….”

The girl looked at the card. And now it was her turn to be surprised.

“What is it?” asked the Seer.

“A minute ago I saw a guy—a jester—who looked exactly like this. I kept thinking he looked familiar. And I think I just realized
why….”

The Seer raised her eyebrows. “The cards are more helpful than you expected?”

“Yeah, maybe,” the girl admitted. “Hey, um, what’s your name? In case I want to find you again or something.”

“Me? My name is Clara. But most people call me Cassandra.” She laughed. “They say I too often predict disaster.”

Cassandra. Cassandra. The girl repeated it in her head.

“I see the prophet’s name is known to you. You are a student of Greek mythology?”

The girl smiled. “Not really, I just—I just know the name really well, that’s all.”

Cassandra. Her name was Cassandra.

The Magician. The Jester. The Secret.

Her memories fell into place one after another, like cards in a deck.

She was indeed on a mission. A mission into the past. A mission to find the Jester.

To find the Secret.

And to find herself.

She was the Secret Keeper, they had told her. It was time to learn what that meant.

When Cass’s attention turned outward once more, the Seer was gone. Her tree stump perch was bare. And so too was her tree
stump table. Save for a lone fly that flew away as soon as Cass noticed it.

Had she only imagined the encounter? Had it all been in her head?
^*

As Cass’s eyes focused on the stump in front of her, the rings appeared to vibrate. Was she dreaming, or were there fewer
rings now than previously? Did that mean that she’d gone further back in time? Or maybe the rings had represented her future
and now she was solidly in the past?

She was about to conclude that she was slowly going crazy, that she had imagined the tarot card reading
and
the change in the tree stump, when she noticed a shiny object on the ground in front of her. The Seer’s golden monocle.

Had the Seer left it for her intentionally? And if she looked into it, would she see what the Seer saw?

As she picked up the monocle, Cass noticed
something odd about it: it was made of two lenses, one on top of the other. It was, in effect, a
double monocle
.

A double monocle that gives you second sight—it makes sense in a way, she thought.

With only the slightest bit of nervousness—what could she see, after all, that wasn’t already there?—Cass held up the Double
Monocle to her eye and looked blinkingly through it.

P
ietro’s circus never looked very inviting in the early morning hours. Tent flaps were closed. The shades in the trailers and
vans were pulled down. And then there was all the stale kettle corn, half-eaten hot dogs, and over-chewed wads of gum strewn
across the ground.

By the time Max-Ernest made his way to the clowns’ camper-van, the soles of his sneakers had doubled in thickness and long
threads of cotton candy trailed through the dust behind him.

He hesitated at the door. If anybody knew where Pietro was, the clowns would, but interacting with the clowns was never easy.
Screwing up his courage, he knocked—a little louder than he meant to.