The Book of Speculation: A Novel

It was something he could not promise. He remained still.

Ryzhkova inched toward the barrel where the cards lay, still spread from the last client. She leaned over them and gestured for Amos to do the same. The cart felt smaller and warmer than it had moments before. A single candle provided light. Over their heads the portraits of her relatives flickered in light and shadows, their eyes laughing at him. “I will not trick you. No lies for us. But,” she said, raising a gnarled finger, “I will teach you how.”

Until then Amos’s life had been one of unwavering honesty. When he sat with Ryzhkova and watched her fingers play over the cards, he did not know what it meant to lie or that soon he would lie to the very woman teaching him the art of deception.

She showed him how to slip a card into the edge of his sleeve, how to stash one in his scarf, how to reverse a card to change its meaning, all of it too quick for the untrained eye to see. His first attempts were fumbling, clumsy, and sent her into fits of laughter. Hours of quick turns and pocketing, subtle flips and slides later, Ryzhkova grabbed his sleeve.

“You showed my cards to the girl, didn’t you?”

A subtle tic, a twitch of his left hand betrayed him. Anger flared in Ryzhkova’s eyes, then went dead. He had the sudden thought that a strong wind might blow her away like ash.

“You must not see her.”

He raised a hand to protest, but she continued.

“She is beautiful, yes. But she is not like you, not like me. Look at her. She is half a soul, hungry for another. You stay with this girl,” she spat the word, “and she will drown you.”

He shook his head fiercely.

“She will not mean to. She thinks only of love, not the price. She knows only want. That is the way of Rusalki. Drowned girls.” Her voice hitched. “They lure a man, play with him, dance with him until he dies. They drag him into water, not knowing he will perish. When he is dead they grieve. In grief, they look for another to comfort them, and so they go on. Leave her to another boy, to one who is not mine.”

Amos’s stomach lurched. He could not tell Ryzhkova what he’d seen when he’d held Evangeline, or how it had been she who had pushed him away. His teeth dug into his cheek until he tasted blood.

“I say this to protect you. Because I have seen. Because I love you, like my son.” Her boot hit the table. A card bounced. The Page of Cups, a dark-haired boy with an overflowing goblet. “The girl, she may not know, but she will drink your soul. She cannot help it. Half a soul will kill to be whole.” She struck her hands against the card box, bent thumb standing in defiance, shaking with fear and threat. “You will not lie to me. You do not see her.”





11

JULY 17TH


I have a week. The book is a beautifully broken window with an obstructed view of what is killing us, and something is definitely killing us. It isn’t just my family’s endemic sadness. Yesterday I found a newspaper photograph of my grandmother two days before her death. She’s young, an angel in an Esther Williams swimsuit, smiling so brightly it hurt. Genuine happiness, then nothing. Enola is home, falling into trances with tarot cards.

But I’m alive in the water. The bottom swarms with horseshoe crabs. They’ve been here more than a week now, far longer than their mating season. Could be global warming. It’s warmer this summer, and the tides are vacillating to where at low tide I can walk out to the rocks with my feet dry. Joblessness is setting in and each day there is more plaster on the floor. A crab shuffles across my foot. Claws grab and release.

Lavinia Collins drowned in 1876, in Bridgeport, the land of Barnum. If I looked across the water I could see where she died. Born on February 3rd, 1846, to Clara Petrova, daughter of the drowned Bess Visser. Lavinia was dead by thirty. Everything after her birth is in the damaged pages, gone in a wash of spoiled ink and paper. Not a hint of foul play. Last night Churchwarry brought up the Flying Wallendas. Wire walkers, a circus family dating back four hundred years, with a string of falls and accidents tragic enough to be called a curse. Falling wire walkers live in the same world as drowning mermaids. A package arrived this morning, wonderfully musty, with a small note from Churchwarry.

I expect this returned, though there is no rush. I’d let you keep it, but I suspect neither of us can afford that. Marie would shout at me until my ears fell off. It’s rather rare.