REBEL (english edition)

Captain Michael Castiglione stepped into the sorcerer's pavilion. It was a gloomy and eerie place. Pendants and glass crystals hung down from the ceiling; skeletons of less-identifiable animals took up the walls entirely.

Extremely ancient books with moldy covers were placed upon the shelves. The perforated ceiling made the rays of light, coming from the outside, filter through, which illuminated the peculiar adornments of carpets covering up the floor.

Thick white smoke came out of the incense diffusers, melting away bit by bit onto the ground, pervading the pavilion with heat and scent. However, Captain Castiglione only smelled the stink of alcohol soaking through his clothes.

He walked into that dense scented fog, though his armor hit and jingle-jangled against something. He pushed aside the split bone of who-knows-what animal and noticed that someone was staring at him. It was a woman, whether young or old might she have been, was impossible to tell, because of her long hair and countless shawls, which made it impossible to recognize. Her pupils were the most terrifying thing to ever look at, amidst all that maze of strange things.

The woman peered at Michael with attention: the young man was very tall, his muscles well-visible even underneath his clothes; his eyes were of tenuous light blue but his dark hair made its luminosity stand out, turning that turquoise into a vivid blue.

“They told me your predictions are always right.” Said the young captain.

“I don’t predict” the sorceress corrected him. “Predictions entail uncertainty. I read tarots and show mankind what it’s going to happen.”

Michael sniggered at it.

“Are you here to know your future, captain?” Asked the woman.

“The ship supposed to bring me back home is about to leave soon; I just wanted to kill time.” He did nothing but just saying that.

The woman sat down at her table and laid her hands upon the desk. She grabbed a big pack of cards and started to shuffle them. Her pupils gazed into the void. Not knowing what to do, Castiglione looked himself around, then took a short breath and took a seat in front of her, straight across the small séance table.

“These cards are the most antique you will ever see in your lifetime. More than two hundred years ago, a female ancestor of mine painted them. Her successors have been gradually adding other cards.” She put down the card deck at the center of the table, over a cloth with strange symbols that much recalled the carpets’ pattern.

“Pick the cards and lay them on the table. Choose where to position them and how many.” Said the seeress to him.

Michael obeyed and arranged twenty cards over the tablecloth. Later, he put the desk on one side.

The seeress moved a hand toward the first card on her right. Her skin was covered in thin velvet gloves. She turned the card over. Exquisite brush strokes had painted a rocky mountain which entered the sea.

“The Ocean Card,” the prophetess claimed. “The ocean brings to shore what the waters didn’t get to swallow. It’s the place where ancient and mystic creatures hide away. It suggests that something new will come to you like the wave arriving at the seaside. Yet, the ocean is unstable and, sometimes, wild. You have to watch out for your own actions because you will never know where they will lead you to.”

Michael appeared to be skeptical but stood to listen unruffled.

The woman picked on the second card. “The Golden Card. Gold represents prosperity, but not only the material one. It's a precious and tough stone to source.”

“Will I become rich?” The captain asked immediately.

“No,” she hushed him. “You will find something precious. Something that will be worth as much as gold or even more than that.”

She turned over the third card: there was a little boy hung up by the ankle on a fence. His hands dangled without getting to almost touching the soil. “The Rebel. The wise man knows that if he wants to live long he shouldn’t make himself too many enemies. The even-wiser man knows that, if the system is debased, it is necessary to rebel against it, even with your own life.”

The lady placed the card back down and took the fourth one. This was more recently made: it was clear from the color of the painting and sheet. It wasn’t crinkled nor yellowed; the red, green and gold to the crown, drawn there, were very vivid. “The Crown. It’s a symbol of power. A king or a man with great political power is fitted out with common sense and knows how to administer his power. However, the card is upside-down and it shows that anybody having this power doesn't handle it the right way.”

“Gold and Crown might bespeak my future success?” Michael asked. “They might as well. But you didn’t listen to me. The card upside-down is a negative sign. Into the wrong hands, the power might be deadly.” She explained.

Michael wasn't interested in her explanations. The last bottle of wine he chugged up made him tipsy enough to stand there listening, yet not that much lucid to be allowed to reflect upon the woman’s words.

“Fifth card: The Wheel.” She said. “The wheel of fortune turns but around that, her nemesis silently moves: the adversity. Be careful, since the good fate will be friendly to you in a certain moment of your life, but it could have in store a totally opposite destiny for you or somebody close to you.”

The woman moved a hand towards the sixth card. There was a man in armor, taking up a sword. “The Soldier. The soldier is a strong and brave warrior, but underneath his armor lies, however, a man, an imperfect human being ripped by the cruelty of war. He’s valiant, proud and courageous, but behind his helmet, he conceals an anguish that could explode and sweep over those who are next to him.”

Michael chuckled, noticeably disgruntled yet amused by the ease wherewith the sorceress gathered all of that. “You hardly ever know what life in war, woman, is” he uttered to her.

The fortune teller seized his venom: “It’s the card speaking, not me.”

Michael returned to gaze at anything but the witch’s hollow eyes. She took another card. Painted on it, there was a man dressed in several animal leather clothes. In one hand, he held a hatchet, in the other a fox trap.

“The Hunter. The hunting man is crafty and sly. He can wait, knows his preys very well and knows how, where and when to hit them. His victims are not aware of his arrival until they find themselves trapped or pierced by an arrow. Watch out, because someone hidden in the shadows is plotting against you, and is ready to strike you.”

The lady drew her hand near the eighth card, but as she brushed it lightly she had kind of a quiver. A shake going through her arm and then riddled throughout her body. She turned the card: a thousand red, orange and yellow flames had been painted down with heavy brush strokes. “The Fire Card. One of the four natural elements. Fire destroys and wipes out every trace of what it has been. But it’s thanks to the fire that mankind has survived for all these centuries. Some misfortune will come down on you and who’s around you, but it won’t kill you. It will make you stronger and understand what really matters to you.” Said the sorceress.

“A disgrace is nothing but a disgrace. No lesson learned from it.” The captain declared, with coldness.

The woman didn’t contradict him, but neither approved of his judgment.

Cards were starting to come alive and the invisible thread that connected them was becoming more and more thick.

“The Forest,” said the sorceress while observing the ninth card. Several trees of varied forms were tinged on it. The branches were full of leaves and didn’t allow the rays of sunshine to get to the ground.

“What a conglomerate of trees could ever mean?” Asked Michael sarcastically.

The seeress drew a breath: “Cards always hide a double meaning: one is literal and the other is symbolic. I can only help you see the second, but sometimes cards exactly represent what they show. The forest may only be a forest, an important place to you or one that will be important in the future; but from the symbolic point of view, the forest conceals, confounds and can drive you mad. Within itself, it keeps secrets that no man could comprehend but be careful, captain: just as the branches of the trees intertwine, establishing a strong bond of survival, so too you will be tied to someone. This knot is never to be broken. If that happened, one of the two trees would end up dying.”

Michael took a deep breath: “Tied to someone...” whispered to himself. “I don’t believe that could happen. There where I’m going to, nobody awaits me. I don’t have friendship bonds with anyone and I think this could hardly ever change.”

The witch nodded, but she said nothing. She moved her hand onto the following card but froze up. She trembled and Michael saw some preoccupation into her eyes.

“What’s happening?” He asked.

“I feel some negative vibrations.” The woman replied.

Castiglione was an anxious man and didn’t manage to stand there still waiting. He picked the card and turned it over. The woman had objections, but by the time she yelled, the card had been turned already. It showed up a rope; one far end was secured to a branch, the other was knotted on itself by the shape of a circle.

“The Noose!” The witch murmured.

“Speak up, harridan!” Michael spurred her on, not getting to tolerate the silence that had been set up. The incense kept on burning and made everything more evanescent. Castiglione felt like sucked into a hallucinogenic vortex.

“It’s death, or something akin to it.” Said the woman. “I think the Noose Card could be connected to the Forest Card. You will break a connection, and death will come at you.”

“If I die, as you say” asked the man, “then why are there other ten cards still on this table?” Clearly, he was angry.

“The Noose Card represents death, right, but not yours necessarily. It lingers around you and who stands beside you.”

“Go on with the other cards,” Michael claimed, losing his patience.

The witch obeyed.

She turned another card. There was a great painted hawk, with wings unfolded and bright eyes. However, it was upside-down.

The fortune teller stared at the captain with her hollow eyes, and it was clear that the card didn’t symbolize a good omen.

“The Hawk Card. The hawk stands for strength. It flies amongst the clouds and is the undisputed ruler of sky and earth. The card upside-down points out a destitution, removal or a negative changing.”

Michael raised his eyebrow. All of that seemed like nonsense to him. But meanwhile, time was passing by and he didn’t have anywhere else to go waiting for the ship to be ready for leaving, so he remained seated, waiting in silence.

The woman turned the twelfth card. “The Cemetery.” She said. “Contrary to what it may be thought, the Cemetery Card doesn’t indicate an ill omen. It symbolizes silence, reflection, quietness. A period of peace, the calm after the storm.”

“The Heir,” she uttered while turning the thirteenth card. It was represented by an elderly man who handed out a crystal chalice to a child. “It reveals a passage. Somebody will go away and leave everything that owned to his successor. However, this card also shows the life: from what it has been, a new reality is born. A continuous cycle, an exchange without end.”

“The Sword.” It was the fourteenth card. A sparkling two-handed sword, brandished by a knight whose face was hidden by the helmet, plowed through another soldier by opening his stomach from side to side. “A war will take place. The sword represents the strength, the power, and the victory.”

While the prophetess was talking, some voices were heard. Someone was calling for Castiglione by his name. He stood up and gazed at the witch. “My ship is going to sail off.” He grabbed a bagful of silver coins from his pocket and left some of them over the table, next to the cards.

“The prophecy is not completed.” The woman reminded him.

An impertinent Castiglione giggled: “Forget it, witch.”

The woman furrowed her brows and stood there baffled watching him. Michael left the sorceress' pavilion and disappeared. The smoke of incense rapidly shook as the curtain fluctuated in the air to the man's passage; then it went back to hover around slowly. The sorceress heard the sailors' voices, the sound of sails that were getting spread and the roar of cordons being thrown out into the sea to drive the ship away from the docking bridge.

The lady raised her hands to gather the cards but then she stopped. She observed those six cards that were still upside-down and turned them one by one.

The fifteenth card was represented by a jester, wearing a mask and very colorful clothes; the jester held one hand over the mask and his face could be seen underneath: he was a wolf in human disguise. It was the Mask Card. Deceit will be revealed; someone extremely close to you will betray.

The sixteenth card portrayed a red, entirely red swollen river. The Blood Card. It symbolizes a connection, an inseparable union. It's life itself.

The seventeenth card: a sun shone bright and high in the sky upon a corner of the card, on the opposite side there was a black sun. Lights and Darkness. The good and the evil hold hands and go forward at a fast pace along the same path. Nobody can halt the march of either of them, because they are one.

Only three cards were left. The soothsayer turned them three altogether and pulled them away from the others to oversee them. Third to the last card depicted the hand of a woman silently leaning on a man’s shoulder, who was sitting on an armchair. The woman’s hand was white, semi-transparent, while the man was painted in vivid colors. It was the Phantom Card. Past will come back from the kingdom of oblivion and it will be brighter than ever. Spirits are benevolent; they will show which is the right path to follow and will help comprehend what has been left behind.

On the penultimate card, a long bundle of really white threads was painted, gathered up with a golden medallion on one end. They were white horsehair. It was the White Horsehair Card. A product made with that material was usually offered to the dead fallen in war. It represented a glorious past, the bravery of the warrior that fought but fell on the battleground. It was an honor dying into battle, therefore the soldier’s funeral was supposed to represent a eulogy to his valor. A virtuous soldier would have died soon.

The last card: a skeleton with a long black cape, holding a great billhook in his hands. The Scythe Card. Death will come soon on earth to claim someone who previously escaped it. When it comes, nobody can defy it. It will take what it’s owed.

The soothsayer continued to gaze at those cards for a moment. Then she got up and pulled aside a strip of the outward-turning curtain. A great ship was already far, upon the line of the horizon.

Captain Castiglione had meant to leave without knowing the prophecy’s ending but, perhaps, he thought it was better that way. No man can change his destiny but can decide to ignore it, so that he doesn't worry daily about what's going to happen tomorrow.

The witch let go of the curtain and the darkness returned to enfold such a mystical place.