“These are the two facets of your current reality.” She sighs. “They change. Sometimes there is a flower, a bed, a fish, a lake—”
“A lake?”
She shoots me a questioning look. “Yes. Now turn the ones on top and below over.”
I flip them. “Um…” A crown. And a gate. “What does this mean?”
“A crown can be many things. It can mean a wedding. Or a prince! Or a fortune. Or a kingdom.”
“Great. Not vague at all. And the gate?”
“A passage. A change. A crossing. A secret.”
“How can you ever make sense of these cards,” I mutter, “when each card has a thousand possible meanings?”
“It’s not a thousand,” she mutters, frowning. “You like to exaggerate.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. Now flip the central card.”
“What does it represent?”
“Your fate.”
“I don’t believe in any of this, you know that, right?” I murmur as I flip the final card—and freeze.
It’s a merman.
How is this possible?
“What does it mean?” I whisper.
“I don’t know! I keep getting the same cards when I do a spread for you. The present always changes, but the future and the central card always remain the same.”
I swallow hard. “But does it mean… I’ll marry this merman?”
“Marryhim? No. I told you, the crown can mean many things.” She shakes her head. “It also doesn’t necessarily mean he is a merman. Maybe he is someone caught between two situations in life.”
“Like Iason and his two love tokens?”
“Maybe, yes. It only means that this person is a central part of your fate. A hinge on which your life revolves.”
“Could it mean I need to go visit him?”
“You know who he is?” she breathes.
Getting up, I grab my cloak. “Thank you for this, Lily.”
“Where are you going?”
“To visit my fate.”
The cards had been the excuse I’d needed, the pretext to return to the haunted woods. The cards showed me the merman, so here I am. It’s not that I’ve been thinking about him every day and night since I last saw him.
Not at all…
This can’t be what the cards meant, though, I think as I walk among the trees, heading toward the Silver Mirror Lake. Lily said it herself. Every symbol has many meanings. Maybe the merman is indeed Iason with his two princesses, me and an unknown face in another palace, both wearing his tokens around our necks, his rings on our fingers.