Wait
A card reader at the end of the mortal world
More and more, the Death card looked like the Ferryman.
Maybe she imagined the Ferryman to look like the Death card, because no one she knew had ever seen the Ferryman’s face. She certainly hadn’t. In the dim shadows that fell from the hood of the painting that depicted Death in the spread in front of her, she made out the bridge of a strong but sculpted nose, high cheekbones, and a firm but not unkind mouth held in non-expression.
He neither grinned nor grimaced as he reached down toward the souls of the living.
You never knew which one he was reaching for. Sometimes, a particularly jumpy querent thought someone in the crowd looked like them, or a loved one, and in those cases invariably saw the shadowed eyes focused on that dear friend down below.
Sometimes, other cards in the spread didn’t support that kind of loss, but she learned early on that if a person felt they had a reason to worry, they probably did.
After all, the magic wasn’t in the cards. It was in her and the person sitting across her table in equal measures. That was the only way it worked, her and another person. She couldn’t read for herself, not alone. Something critical was broken off; some circuit wouldn’t close.
