Leah Giarratano - Disharmony

She hurried back to her seat, breathless, shoving her bag back beneath it. She pulled her knees up to her chest and chewed a thumbnail. How am I going to be able to get away from them, she worried. Why would Sera just send me out here on my own? Couldn’t this mighty Council have sent someone to guard me if I’m so important to the Telling? And how the hell am I supposed to pay for anything when I get there? I mean, Sera didn’t even give me any money!

For what felt like the hundredth time, Samantha mentally face-palmed over this fact. What kind of nutjob plan was this anyway? In the car and at the airport, she’d been so bewildered by everything that she hadn’t even thought to ask about money. Sera had told her that all she needed was in the wallet.

There had to be something else in there. She decided to go through everything she had to look for anything that could possibly help her. She bent forward and dragged her bag out from under the seat. From the only pocket of the bag, sewn into the fabric, she removed the plastic wallet and emptied it out onto her tray. Her boarding passes. And only one other thing: the Carnivale ride pass.

She picked it up and turned it over, studying it from every angle; she even held it to her nose and sniffed. It was just cardboard. Her lips turned up in a small smile. How did it work? All she could see was a crumpled ticket lined with faded green stripes. In large green capitals right through the middle were the words ‘ADMIT ONE Dodgem Cars’. And yet it had got her through every gate and checkpoint so far, and faster than anyone else had cleared them.

In spite of her anxiety, a thrill of excitement fluted through her stomach. What on earth did all the airport people see when they looked at the ticket? She had supposedly been around magic her whole life, but no one had ever showed her anything like this. She wondered what else Sera could do. Sera didn’t feel like most people. In fact, she didn’t feel like anyone Samantha had ever met before.

Suddenly she dropped the smile. Sera wasn’t here right now and she’d just sent her across the world alone. She gathered the tickets up and put them back into the wallet, then shoved it into the bag. Her fingers hit something hard. And this? What was she thinking, giving me this ? She pulled the phone out of the bag and turned it over in her hand. It was pretty old-school. She flicked the cover open with a finger. The screen stayed blank. And it would be staying that way for a while, given that it had no battery! So, no money, a dead phone and unknown enemies waiting at Sydney airport for her. Great.

She sighed and threw the phone back into the bag. Her hands found her tarot deck, or maybe her tarot deck found her hands. Through the lacquered box she could feel the cards inside jostling. They whispered to her. She closed her eyes, fingering the gold cord around the box.

‘Is there anything I can get you, Ms White?’

Samantha snapped open her eyes.

One of the serene, supreme, scented stewardesses stood there. Smiling, of course.

‘Um, no,’ said Sam. ‘I’m good.’

‘Okay, then.’ The smile stayed stuck, but Samantha felt the woman’s annoyance as she bent towards her. ‘You’ve clicked on your attendant’s light,’ she said.

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Samantha. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘That’s no problem,’ said the stewardess. ‘Everyone does it. It’s very sensitive.’

And then something weird happened. As the woman leaned over Samantha to depress the Call button, their hands touched briefly. And this time Samantha saw an image. It was the woman in her uniform, standing by a doorway, a black wheelie luggage bag by her side. A young child, a girl, maybe five, was crying piteously, her arms outreached. An older woman held the child back, terribly upset for the woman by the door – her daughter – and for her granddaughter who couldn’t understand what could be so important outside that door that would make her mummy leave her. Again.

The stewardess clicked off the button on Samantha’s console and straightened in the aisle. The image vanished.

Samantha squinted through the gloom at the woman’s name badge.

‘Thank you, Rebecca,’ she said.

‘You’re very welcome, Ms White,’ said the stewardess.

‘My name’s Samantha,’ she said, mentally gathering up some of the love she’d felt by the doorway in the image. She gently pushed the energy particles outwards. ‘What’s your daughter’s name?’ she said.

‘Daisy,’ said Rebecca, blinking slowly.

‘Daisy loves you very much,’ said Samantha. ‘Are you on your way home?’

‘Seventeen hours, thirty-nine minutes,’ said Rebecca, glancing at her watch.

‘She’s a lucky girl,’ said Samantha.

‘I’m a lucky mum.’

Samantha eased up on the emotion-emission.

A register of surprise flashed through Rebecca’s eyes. She straightened her shoulders and smiled, genuinely this time.

‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’ she said. ‘I make the absolute best hot chocolate, and I have to be awake now, anyway. You’d be doing me a favour.’

‘I’d love a hot chocolate,’ said Samantha. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had one before.’

The stewardess turned, still smiling, but Samantha saw her shake her head, as though to clear it, as she walked away.

Samantha grabbed her tarot deck. This time, the cards whispered urgently. She figured she had time for a single-card reading before Rebecca returned. The thought gave her comfort. She had other skills she could draw upon besides running from people.

Hungrily, now, she scrabbled to undo the cord, wrapping it around and around her wrist to keep it safe. She opened the black lacquered box and withdrew the cards, immediately raising them to her face and breathing them in. She wasn’t aware that she smiled widely. She lost herself as she shuffled the deck, no longer airborne but in a lake where the cards swam about her, darting playfully. She joyfully tumbled with them, but a nagging worry tugged at her, finally pulling her back into herself. The single-card draw.

She never drew a single card. Why would you? If you posed a question of the cards and drew only one answer there was nowhere to hide. What ambiguity could there possibly be? What hope for better things if one drew an ill-fated card? She always felt it better to draw a suite – to paint a picture of possibility – than to draw a single card. A destiny card.

And yet the cards flew through her hands, butting against them insistently, urgently.

And one card forced its way into her palm.

Wait, I haven’t asked the question, she thought. This was not how to draw the single-card reading. The most important thing was to have the question uppermost in the mind when shuffling the cards. Nevertheless, she clutched the card in her hand.

The others were now silent, still, waiting.

Am I doing the right thing? That will be my question, she thought.

The cards jostled. Nope, wrong question, scratch that. She knew she was doing the right thing – she had no choice but to leave Romania. Tamas had almost died because of her.

What will happen at the airport?

Um, wrong again. The cards would warn her of danger if that was coming, and she already knew that was coming. Would there be any use in frightening herself even more?

What do I need to get through this?

The card grew warm in her hand. She opened her eyes. She straightened the rest of the cards and put all of them but one back into the box, pushing forcefully to close the lid. The deck knew a member was missing. She heard them hex and spit as she dropped them back into her satchel. She kept the golden cord wrapped around her wrist and the answer card face down under her tray table. The cord itched and the answer card hummed with heat.