34 WHAT THE SEER SEES

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."

"Okay, but . . ."

"But what?"

"I mean . . ."

"You mean?"

"I thought there'd be ... details. Like—what strife? What joy? What loss? What love?"

The paperback is gone. Vida hasn't seen the woman take the payment. Indeed, the seer's hands have remained below the table. It's as if the book has been washed away by the rippling waves of candlelight.

"It's not for me," the seer says, "to paint your future in fine detail. It's yours to paint. If I revealed it, then you would have no life to live, only a role to play, a script to follow."

This seems to be a nice lady, and Vida is loath to suggest that she is either a fraud or just plain silly. She can only say, "Well, I guess I see why you don't take money for this."

The enigmatic smile comes again, widens, and is accompanied by a soft laugh. Her hands appear and fold together on the table. "Do you know what a myth is, Vida?"

"Sure. An old, old story about something that never happened even though people once thought it did, or pretended to think so."

"You're a smart girl."

"I read a lot. My uncle and me, we don't do TV."

"Myths are more than stories. They're also lessons. Longer ago even than history knows, when our species was young, we acted far more on emotion than on reason. It's still a dangerous tendency of our kind, of human beings, but back then we were even more childlike than now. We weren't ready for higher knowledge. We wouldn't have understood if directly instructed. Do you follow me?"

"Sort of, I guess. All right."

"And so," the seer continues, "myths were inspired, initially to instill in people the idea that this life has meaning, and over time to help that idea strengthen into a conviction. This took many centuries, but there was no reason to be in a hurry because time as humans perceive it is an illusion."

Although she's a girl who is interested in many strange things, Vida is overcome by a mild frustration. She curls her toes in her shoes, shifts in her chair, and sighs. "Then why do clocks work?"

"Past, present, and future exist all at once, but that's too much for humankind to handle, too confusing. We need them to flow one into the other in an orderly fashion. So we perceive time as we need to perceive it to cope. Or the perception of time is a crutch we've been given, whichever you prefer to believe. And so—clocks."

"Maybe I'll understand when I'm like a hundred," Vida says.

"Long before then, dear. Myths, as I was saying, were lessons by which we learned how to think about the world we can see and the world we can't. For countless centuries, it wasn't the truth of the myths that mattered, but the new ways of thinking that they subtly taught us. Over millennia, myths evolved to lead us ever so slowly to a deeper understanding of the world and our place in it, the reason for our being, slow enough for us to handle it all."

"Like taking baby steps."

"Exactly. We took baby steps as a species until eventually we arrived at the revelations, the truths, on which our civilization is built. But all the myths that instructed us are still relevant, in part because they made us what we are, and in part because we still need stories to teach us how to live, as we keep forgetting."

"This is making me dizzy."

"Not at all. You aren't a dizzy girl."

"So that's all the future you're going to tell me?"

The seer opens her clasped hands, revealing a white flower with thick, waxy petals. The bloom is so large that it couldn't have been concealed in the small hands of the seer. The bloom is three times the size of the largest blossom from a magnolia tree, and the petals are thicker, as if it is carved from ivory.

Vida says, "Where did that come from?"

"Where all things come from. It is the amaranth. The undying flower of myth."

The woman passes it across the table. Vida shakily receives it.

The flower is so beautiful, so radiant in the low light, that Vida feels a special responsibility not to damage it.

"We are," the seer says, "made of all the myths that brought us through millennia to the truth, but there is one in particular that you will shape your life around."

Sensing that the amaranth up lights her face in a way that the candles never could, Vida says, "What myth is that?"

"You'll know in time. You'll be a champion of the natural world and all its beauty, the guardian of wild things, for you'll neither wish to dominate nature nor confuse it with what is truly sacred."

"I don't know what that means."

"You will. One day. Be brave."

That word sort of scares Vida. "I'm not brave."

"You are the essence of bravery, child."

"Why do I need to be?"

"Because all things will come to you, good and bad. The bad is yours to cure by action, the good to enjoy and share. Remember these words, girl, these words that will be of especially great importance one day— moon, sun, and smoking river. To chase the meaning of those words will put you at intolerable risk. Be patient, and the meaning will eventually come to you when you need it, for that is who you are. All things come to you in their time."

"I don't understand."

"You will."

The seer waves a hand across the three glass cups. The candles are extinguished as one, and the room falls into a darkness that is little relieved by the wan daylight passing through the mottled window shades.

Vida rises from her chair, turns from the table, and finds herself in warm morning light, on the far side of the county road, walking home on the dirt lane, the long stem of the amaranth tucked behind her right ear.

This time, unlike on the two previous occasions, she realizes more clearly and urgently that she has transitioned here from the kitchen in the ramshackle house as if by magic or in a trance. She halts and starts to turn back—thinks, Don't! —and then hurries along the colonnades of trees, under the vault of their branches, eager to get home and show her uncle the amaranth.

Climbing the porch steps, she reaches for the flower tucked behind her ear. It is not there.

Frantic to find what she has lost, she retraces her steps across the yard and all the way to the end of the long unpaved driveway, but she is unable to retrieve even one waxy petal. She stops at the county road and stares at the house where the seer waits with fortunes untold and strange truths to impart.

Although, for the time being, young Vida is more mystified than enlightened, she understands that the amaranth was for her and her alone to see, that she should hold the image of it forever in her mind and take courage from what it promises.