Chapter Sixteen #3
“No. Ricci didn’t think so. ‘Not CREA.’ I could read that scribble.”
“So…who was it?”
“The question of the hour. We’ll see what Nick can dig up.” Daniel smiled ruefully. “He loves a challenge.”
“I should have realized… It felt…” Mel rubbed her arms. “Ricci was so scared. He kept talking about his daughter, who had just gotten married and…” She felt suddenly ill. “His daughter was pregnant. No wonder he was so upset.”
“Understandable, considering how Nick and Grace reacted.”
“I just… I feel horrible about this. I should have… I…” Mel stood.
“Nothing you could have done,” Daniel stood to join her.
When she turned around to face him, he breathed in deeply and took her hands in his.
“Pret-zels!”
Mel smiled as a medieval salesman hawking his goods made his booming call right beside her.
She had spotted a likely candidate: a toddler in a stroller.
They were always fun to entertain, along with their usually harried parents.
Mel smiled and waved at the mother, then at the toddler, but as she leaned down and pulled an origami frog out of the purse at her waist, there was another, very different shout behind her.
She turned and saw a man in a black cape being pursued by one of the swordsmen from a lane act. It was probably all in good fun, but as the men ran at full tilt toward her and the toddler in the stroller, she stepped forward to block his path.
Instead of going around her, the man tried to grab her arm, but she dodged him, almost falling over the stroller behind her.
Anger. Confusion. Greed. “That was dangerous, sir.” Mel said, trying to stay in character as she berated him.
The mother pushed her stroller hurriedly away.
What was he afraid of that had him barreling through a crowded area like that?
She tried to get a look at his face. “There are wee ones about, ya blackguard!”
“Strega.” She saw the glint of a very modern gun in the shadowy folds of the cape. She froze in terror.
For a moment, he wavered, scanning the crowds around them, then gazed at her as if she was the one with the weapon.
“Hey you! Stop!” The swordsman skidded to a halt, sword in hand, staring at the gun. “Don’t—”
“Fottuta strega,” the man hissed at her. Then he grabbed her and pointed the gun at the swordsman.
I can change this. Nothing is fixed.
“No! Don’t… don’t shoot. I’ll… I’ll go.” Mel was pulled toward the entrance. “No! Non sparare a nessuno. Io andrò.” She repeated, realizing who he was.
I will change this!
When Mel saw her father running toward them, the sunlit morning blinked out.
Daniel blinked.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Is there somewhere in Renaissance Europe we can get a decent cup of coffee?” Daniel asked. “I got up way too early this morning.”
Mel glanced up the bank. “Mom keeps a coffeemaker at her shop. It’s not espresso, but you’ll love it.”
“Lead on,” Daniel said. “I really need it.”
“Uh-huh,” Mel said doubtfully, peering into his eyes. “Headache?”
“Not at all,” he replied. Mel is safe right now. The rest is subject to change.
“You see me okay?”
“Plain as day.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” She showed him her fist.
“Cute.”
“I just don’t want you keeling over on my watch. Your sister would have my hide,” Mel said.
He got the feeling she wanted to say more, but instead led him up the steps.
“If it weren’t for all the folks in normal attire—”
Mel spun around in front of her mother’s shop, hands on hips like a pouting cartoon pixie. “What do you mean ‘normal’?”
He grinned. “I would have thought I had gone through a portal into another…”
“Century?”
“More like—”
“Missy!” A woman stepped out of the doorway of the shop. “Why are you not with your father? And who is this fine-looking man?” Her accent was pure Romani. “Have you brought me a customer?”
Mel had her mother’s eyes and complexion, but Mrs. Noblett—Madame Amelia—had long, curly, dark hair shot with silver, although he suspected it might be a wig.
She was dressed in colorful garb from head to toe, including a bright-colored headscarf, gold hoop earrings and heavily made-up eyes.
Mel had definitely not inherited her mother’s stature, because Madame Amelia was surprisingly tall.
“This is Daniel, Mom. Dr. Daniel Woodruff,” Mel said. “Daniel, this is my mother, Trish Noblett.” She turned back to her mother. “Daniel was just saying how coming to the fair was like traveling back in time.”
“Or to another world,” Daniel added. “Like Oz or Wonderland.”
Something about that made Trish give a double take. “Wonderland?”
That wasn’t the reaction he expected, but he motioned to the colorful activity around them.
There were all varieties of period dress mixed with people in casual clothes talking on their phones.
“Well, it’s not exactly what I imagined.
But you know, that other-worldly element, feeling out of place, out of time, out of reality. ”
Mel’s mother came over and raised a hand mysteriously. “There was a boy, once, who truly did believe he had fallen down the rabbit hole, but his name wasn’t Daniel.”
“Mom,” Mel said with a hint of warning.
“Oh, hush now,” she said, her Romani accent gone. “I am simply trying to break the ice with your friend. You remember the boy, don’t you?”
Mel sighed. “Yes, I was only six at the time, dressed in a rabbit costume for dad’s show.”
“She was the rabbit my husband would pull out of the hat,” Trish explained. “She was so tiny.”
“She still is,” Daniel quipped. Mel elbowed him.
Trish’s subtle hand waving continued with her story. “The boy came under the fence after having crawled through a drainage pipe, right into the dress rehearsal of the Lady Alice of Wonderland show.”
“I thought he was lost,” Mel said, “So I took him back to my parents.”
“Dressed as a rabbit?”
Trish nodded. “He was younger than Mel and didn’t know there was festival going on. Imagine going through a hole and being led through Wonderland by a white rabbit.”
“I guess he wasn’t expecting Wonderland or Renaissance Europe,” Daniel said, smiling.
Trish put out her hand. Daniel took it firmly.
“Good to meet you, ma’am,” Daniel said.
“Very pleased to meet you, Dr. Woodruff.”
“We are both dying for a cup of good coffee, if that’s all right?”
“Of course. Anything you need.”
“Why don’t you read Daniel’s cards while I make it?” Mel suggested.
“And a cup for me too, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes’m,” Mel said, dropping a curtsy. She winked at Daniel and disappeared through a beaded curtain.
Daniel took in his surroundings. The tiny room was lit only by the sunlight coming through the windows and door, which were heavily draped with gauzy fabric and beads.
There was an oriental rug on the floor, a round table covered with a tapestry cloth, five mismatched chairs draped with velvety throws, a chunky candle, and a deck of tarot cards with a rock resting on top.
A hint of burned sage added the final touch to the room’s ambiance.
“Please.” Trish gestured to a chair. Her accent still hadn’t returned.
He sat, spying at a plaque on the small counter: We will gladly accept thy cards of credit ~ Lady Visa & Master Card.
“Mrs.—”
She put up her hand. “Call me Trish. It’s best if we do this before we talk. It’s a very short reading and won’t take long.”
As she handed him the deck, he noticed how much her eyes reminded him of Mel’s—an ever-shifting blue-gray.
“Please shuffle these. Once you’ve finished, select the card that calls out to you.” Though she still wasn’t using her accent, her voice had become more formal, deeper in tone. “If you are right-handed, please select the card with your left.”
Daniel shuffled the cards thoroughly and then fanned them out on the table, facedown. None of them called to him, so he closed his eyes, ran his left hand along them and pulled one out.
“Turn it over.”
The card was numbered XVIII and labeled The Moon. Daniel wasn’t familiar with the tarot, but the design on the card was old and stylized.
She studied it for moment then looked up at him.
“The card you select tells us something about you. It could represent who you truly are at a deeper level, or who you are today. It can be affected by what you are dealing with at this moment: a situation you need to resolve, a decision you need to make. The Moon is the wild card of the major arcana. The card of artists and writers and musicians”—she paused—“and seers.”
Daniel stiffened. Mel must have told her mother about him, and somehow, she had made him select that card from the deck. She was married to a magician after all.
“The Moon is a powerful card,” she went on, caught up in the reading. “It can be unpredictable and terrifying. If you have the strength, it is a card that can change the world.” She paused for a moment, searching his face. “Does this have meaning for you?”
Daniel cleared his throat and nodded. “Yes,” he said in a quiet voice.
The beads on the door to the back room clicked and clattered as Mel stepped in with three pottery mugs on a wooden tray.
“Coffee.” They looked like they should be holding mead instead.
Mel set the steaming mugs on coasters and sat beside Daniel.
Trish slid the Moon into the deck and handed it to him again.
“Now shuffle again but this time focus on an issue or situation you wish to resolve, or a question you wish to ask. Then cut the deck, again using your opposite hand, into three stacks, rejoin the stacks, hand the deck to me and tell me the question,” she said.
She looked at her daughter. “If you prefer, Mel can leave.”
Daniel sat for a moment, thinking about everything he could ask, then felt something warm touch his finger.
Mel had pushed the mug against his hand.
Her intense expression was a stark contrast to the curlicues of color and sparkling paint twining down the side of her face and the flowers and ribbons in her hair.
“She doesn’t need to leave.”