The Reading, The End
And here we are at last, finding out what happened. It’s been a long journey, and I thank you all so much for sticking with Emily and her troubles.
What’s next? Who knows. But for now, just know I appreciate you more than you know.
THE MAGICIAN
I am with Emily as she runs into the house, searching for the person she knows is trapped there. She runs up to her bedroom, trips over something, someone on the floor. She looks down and is shocked to see her aunt there, the one she believed to be dead.
Kneeling, she tries to wake her aunt up, but there is blood welling from a blow to her head, pooling on the hardwood floor. Frantically Emily pulls her aunt onto the bed and goes to get a wet cloth.
There is a shift in the scene, and Emily wakes up on the bed. As she sits up, her head aching, a bottle rolls out of her fingers, bounces on the carpet. She can smell something burning. She turns to look for her aunt, but she is alone.
Emily stumbles to the window but is too dizzy and nauseous to open it. Behind her, she sees a shadow looming and she turns. Jonas grabs at her, telling her he will save her, but she has the Goddess in her and she sees the lies in his eyes.
She slips away from him and falls into the window, shattering it, cutting her right arm deeply. He pauses and smiles at her, and above the roar of the flames, she hears him say, “That will do just as well.”
Emily finds herself falling, landing roughly on the ground outside the house, feels her left ankle break. She looks up at her bedroom window, confused and frightened. She sees a glimpse of a white shape surging past the window, knocking her uncle down. Now I am standing next to Emily who is watching her home burn. Marc is standing next to her. He tries to put his arm around her but she shakes him off and moves away. He does not try to follow her.
The scene shifts and she is in her office, arm and leg both heavily bandaged. She is dressed in black, and I see that while it is in mourning, she has also chosen it for the power it gives her. She is running her fingers over a glass badger, calling on his strength, fierceness and determination.
She is now facing the shareholders. Each has a copy of the poisonous memo. Some are holding it tightly, most have set it down and will have nothing to do with it. I cannot hear Emily, but I know she has all the courage she needs to explain recent events to them. She must be cautious in her explanations, though. The fire destroyed any proof she had that Marc was harming her. And stockholders can be skittish. She is quietly eloquent.
The scene shifts and I see Phillip standing behind her. Now I can see that he is the shadow man from the first vision. His search for her was one of protection, not destruction. His anger was not aimed at her, but was on her behalf.
I break from the vision and question Emily with a look. She blushes.
“He didn’t want me to come see you. He thinks all this is nonsense, hocus-pocus. He thought you would twist my thoughts, make things murkier for me, not clearer. He never much liked Richard, so he had no use for his advice.” She smiled. “He’s becoming more open.” “Did he drive you here? Is he waiting out in the car?”
She laughed. “Why ask? You know he is. He still doesn’t think this is a good thing, he’s humoring me. But he can’t deny that I’m much better than I was, although he believes it’s because I’m no longer being slowly poisoned by Marc.” Her face clouded.
“When I was in the hospital, I asked them to run all kinds of tests. They didn’t want to, but I have money. I get what I want because of it. They found arsenic among other things. I can’t ever prove he fed it to me, but I know. And he knows that I know.”
“Where is he now?”
“That I don’t know. We’ve got people looking for him. I’ve started divorce proceedings and my lawyer is making sure he can’t get any money. Without my uncle Jonas to back him up, Marc turned and ran. I thought he’d stay and fight, but he knows that I know what he’s done. While the immediate proof vanished with the house, he knows that I can find other proof. He’s better off vanishing than facing me.”
I saw the warrior queen in her face and I knew she was right about that. I had my doubts that Marc was gone for good, but I kept quiet. Suspicion isn’t proof either. I hadn’t finished the reading yet, so I didn’t know if a warning might not come from there anyway.
“Choose a rune.”
Emily is lying in a pool of darkness, Marc is standing over her gloating, and the fairy child is shriveled up in a box.
Emily explodes out of the darkness, searching, screaming. Marc stands in front of her, attempting to calm her but also blocking her view of the box.
Unseen by Emily and Marc, the shadow man, the Green Man leans over the shriveled fairy and plucks a wing from the dessicated corpse, tucking the wing away. He vanishes only to reappear behind Emily.
Emily turns, runs through the shadows, then stops, gasping. Slowly, painfully, she controls her breathing and stands up straight. Closing her eyes, she clenches her fists. Taking a deep breath, she lets out one final scream, then turns to look at where Marc had been standing. He has vanished. She takes a step after him and the shadow appears, solidifying at her side. I don't know what the creature is, but it's powerful and protective of her. I catch a glimmer of the fairy wing around its neck.
I shook myself out of the reading. “So, Phillip is your shadow man, your protecting boar, the faithful dog.”
Emily frowned at my words. “You sound so dismissive. He’s good for me, I believe.”
I reached out and held her hands. “He is, and there’s nothing wrong with him being any of those things. He’s a very powerful man in his own right, different from your father but equal in stature. To be the boar, the dog, these are not bad things at all. He is not the friendly white dog you first saw, the one that became the fox.”
“No, that was Marc, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “That seems most likely. I believe now, though, that you have a wolfhound, a pit bull, a rottweiler. A loyal, faithful and honest companion.”
She relaxed and smiled. “Yes, I’d say that’s an accurate description.” Then she leaned forward. “I do have a question, though. Several, actually.There are some things I don’t understand about what happened.”
“What would those be?”
“I don’t understand how I fell out of the window. I don’t know what that flash of white meant. It was the deer, what did you call it, a hind?”
“A hart, but that works as well. The white deer, anyway.”
She nodded, waving it away. “But who was it?”
I smiled at her. “You know. You may not want to admit it, but you do know who it was.”
She paused for a long time, then looked at me and I could see the child in her was still present and very vulnerable. “My aunt?”
I nodded. “Remember I was surprised when you said she had died. I knew she was alive. But if she didn’t want you to know, I realized there must have been a good reason for it, and I chose to respect that wish. I caught a glimpse of her at one point. She didn’t want you to see her. She had been. . .badly damaged. Her husband, your uncle, tried to kill her, just as he killed your parents. She escaped but just barely. She didn’t want you to see her, but she was never going to let him hurt you. She didn’t realize he had enlisted Marc’s aid, or I think she might have let you know she was alive.”
Emily nodded slowly. “I remember when I lifted her onto the bed that she looked odd somehow, but I thought it was the blood on her face, and my panic.”
“That too, but she was hurt. She pushed you out the window to save you from the fire. But she kept Jonas there, made him die with her in the flames. She was a brave woman, your aunt.”
Emily paused, leaning back in the chair, closing her eyes for a moment. Then, without opening her eyes she asked. “What was up with that dead fairy and the wing?”
I sat quietly, considering. I thought I knew, but there wasn't a way for me to tell her. She'd have to come to her own conclusions. She opened her eyes and sat up, looking at me. “You can't tell me? Seriously?
I shook my head. “I don't know for certain. I can speculate, but it's your vision. Things that haven't yet happened? Things that could happen depending on how you handle what you know or suspect? That's all mutable, and so I can't honestly say. I will, however, say this. How much do you want to know?
“Everything,” she blurted. I took a sip of tea and let ther sit with her response. After a bit she said slowly, “Knowledge is power. But do I really need to know some things?”
I shook my head. “I can't answer that. And your answer will change from moment to moment, day to day. Just remember to ask yourself if the knowledge will heal or harm you.”
“I won't know that, will I? Not until I find out and it happens.”
I touched the back of her hand briefly, not long enough to connect. “True. But remember, you now carry Hathor inside you, and I think if you trust her, then you'll know what you need to do.” I smiled gently. “I do have my suspicions, but for right now, remember that you're still healing.”
She moved and thumped her bandaged ankle on the table, yelping in surprise at the flash of pain. “No kidding I'm healing.” She gave me a rueful grin. “Can you tell me when I can get this cast off?”
I nodded solemnly. “In five weeks. Your doctor will say six, but your ankle will be fine in five, if,” and I scowled fiercely at her, “you rest it and do as you're told.”
“So then I guess you know it all, don’t you?” She gave me that brilliant smile.
“Well no. Not entirely. I don’t know when the wedding date is, for starters.” I laughed at her deep blush. “You know and I know he’s going to ask you, so there’s no point in playing coy.”
She laughed. “I know. We spent a long time talking things over while we were figuring out what to do about the shareholders. That memo was really vicious, and it had enough truth in it to be truly believable. It took a lot of work and politicking and charm to calm them down. Having Phillip back me up every step of the way, and having the doctor’s reports of my poisoning went a long way towards allaying their fears.”
I thought over what I’d seen and cautioned her about at least three of her shareholders whom I believed to be still under Marc’s influence. We walked back out onto the porch and looked around. “So, you’re content to be a hermit here? It really makes you happy?”
She looked into my eyes, searching for the truth.
“Oh yes. I love the quiet, the peace.” I grinned at her. “But I have a good dress, and I wouldn’t turn down an invitation to the wedding when it happens. I suspect I can be in society that long, anyway!”
She laughed and handed me an envelope. “Your payment. I think it’s fair.”
She turned at my garden gate framed by my irises, smiling back at me as I hugged her payment: deeds to the property all around me so I’d never have to worry about developers, and 10 shares of stock in the Kuan Yin paper company, owned by Emily Logan and Phillip Eagleson.
The End (for now)