The Book of Speculation: A Novel

Amos knew some of what Madame Ryzhkova did; her cards told tales people paid handsomely to hear. But there was an insurmountable obstacle to the arrangement: apprentices spoke. He put his hand across his lips and shook his head.

Peabody gently took Amos’s hand from his mouth. “It will be of no concern. I thought upon it and began to understand her reasoning: you will be a lure. I can think of few things more intriguing than a mute fortune-teller. Unspoken futures. You and she will find the way of it. Profits, my boy, just think of it! An abundance of profits.” Peabody slapped his small desk, jostling the inkwell. He tried mightily to ignore the look of terror that crept across his protégé’s face. “Come, now. Change is a wondrous thing. It was change that brought you to me.”

Amos looked at the cushion where he spent his nights, wondering if that would change as well.

“I could never tell you to leave,” Peabody said. “You may stay here as long as you wish. I would like that.”

The transition was noted by a line in Peabody’s book: 19 June 1794. Wild Boy promoted to Apprentice Seer.

When Amos approached Madame Ryzhkova’s wagon, she opened the door before he knocked. Her hair was pulled back from her forehead by a dark green scarf knotted at the base of her skull. She smiled broadly; he could not remember ever having seen her smile. He blinked.

“Amos. Come in. I have much to show you and we are already behind.” She waved, and Amos observed her swollen, twisted thumb, how it turned sharply and bent away from the rest of her hand, and part of him latched on to this. He followed the crooked little woman into her lair and away from what he’d known.

Her wagon was surprisingly spare. There hung from its walls a few small paintings—swarthy men and an angelic young woman.

“My family,” she said, noting the direction of his gaze. “Father,” she pointed to a thickly bearded face. “Brothers.” Two younger men with Ryzhkova’s intense stare. “Katerina, my daughter,” she gestured to the young woman. “My beautiful Katya.”



The rest of the wagon held little beauty. Madame Ryzhkova slept on a rough mattress atop a traveling trunk. He imagined such a bed left her bones aching.

As if reading his thoughts, Ryzhkova said, “The seer is a blade. Too much softness dulls the mind. Silks and curtains are for guests.” He must have jumped because she laughed, a sound like wind through grass. “Peabody, he likes too much comfort. Yes, it is good you came here before he made you dull. Now, sit. Listen.”

Where Peabody’s face was full, Madame Ryzhkova’s was hollow, the skin pleated and rumpled. Her nose stood perpendicular to itself, a large protuberance turning its tip sharply downward. Her hair stuck out from beneath her scarf, iron wires pointing in all directions. Amos found her eyes fascinating; dark gray in color, he’d seen their like only in animals—the color of goats’ eyes before they rammed.

She pulled an empty crate into the center of the wagon floor and motioned for Amos to sit beside it. On it she placed a lacquered black box adorned with pictures in brilliant oranges and reds, each outlined with gold. Amos was drawn to a caged bird whose long tail feathers curled around the box’s edge.

“The firebird,” Ryzhkova said. “You like him, yes? You’ll like even better what is inside.”

She opened the box and revealed what looked to be a deck of playing cards. The back of each card was inked a distinctive deep orange. “Watch. Listen,” she said and tugged at an earlobe. She set the box on the floor and began turning the cards face up. Each flip of paper revealed a masterpiece—the tall figure of a woman holding a single sharp sword, the sun beating down on a field, a hand holding a star, all in meticulous detail. The old woman touched them with reverence.

When the crate was covered in cards she said, “I will tell you their names and you will learn their faces, how and where we set them. In this way we speak.” She pointed to the pictures and explained them just as Peabody had once explained people. “Fool is fool because of blind happiness. He does not see misfortune.” The card depicted a young man about to merrily walk off a cliff. “Pride before the fall. He is like a child. Like you.” Ryzhkova smiled. He looked away from her cracked, yellowed teeth to the card and the little dog that pulled at the Fool’s curled shoe.