The Book of Speculation: A Novel

Amos shifted his weight to his knees, bones pressing hard into the wagon boards. He released Ryzhkova’s hands and bent slowly forward, chest over thighs, until his forehead touched her tattered brown boots. Subservience, perhaps. Forgiveness, he hoped. He begged. He remained still, head at her feet, until she bid him rise with a firm tug at his shirt collar.

“Not this from you. You are my son, not a servant. Not a dog.” She smiled and was once more the kindly woman she’d so often been with him. “Please. I forgive you, but you must leave her.”

His fingers stiffened against the floor.

He had grown to a fair height in the years since joining the menagerie. At that moment he regretted his stature; he wished nothing more than to stand straight before this woman, but the low ceiling forced him to duck when he rose. He shook his head in refusal, but his stooped shoulders dampened the intended force. When he dropped down from the door and his feet touched grass, it seemed too late to stand properly.

He crept away in search of Evangeline. Like a dog, he thought. He found her preparing for the afternoon’s show, floating in her tub, hair spread in the water, her dress pooling about her like a water lily. At his approach she pulled herself up on the tub’s staves.

“Why are you crying?”

Ryzhkova had no energy to follow Amos. Her anger dissipated as quickly as it had risen, leaving her an empty sack. She dealt the cards again, watching for changes. Peabody was useless; he saw only money. The boy saw only beauty. She turned the cards again. With each reading came her father’s face, floating in the stream, and Amos there beside him. She turned and turned until her fingers could no longer bear the touch.

She could not stay. To watch a father die had burned her, making her into the hardened woman she’d become, a woman who had parted with her daughter because she’d learned that to cling too tightly was to strangle. Yet Amos had crept beneath her skin. She had little life left in her; to watch a son die would break her.

Ryzhkova locked the wagon door and waited for night to fall, until the chattering voices that stayed up latest—Melina, Susanna, Meixel—had quieted. She unwrapped her scarf and filled it with her possessions: letters from her brothers, the paintings, coins, and a small brass pendulum on a silk thread with which to find water and tell fate. Her hair had grown long, white, and rough like a horsetail, far removed from the black softness it had been when she’d been Yelena. If she looked at her reflection, she knew she would see a stranger.

The camp was quiet. Only Benno was about, practicing short tumbling passes near the fire. Deep in concentration he gave no indication that he saw her. She moved quietly toward the dray that carried Evangeline’s tub. Amos would be there; he would be unable to help it, not when he was so enchanted.

She found him, asleep, covered by a worn blanket, with his arms twined around the girl. His scarf had come loose and his hair escaped, reminding her of the untamed child she’d first known. She would kiss his forehead, run a hand down his cheek, but it would wake him. Or the girl. She had no longing to stare such a creature in the eye once more.

She whispered goodbye and called him by his name.

Ryzhkova returned to her wagon a final time to collect her belongings. She lit a tallow candle, one already burned low, and ran her hand over the box and the cards that had spoken so much. Taking them would leave nothing of her behind for him, and she wanted him to remember, to love her if he could, even just a little. She opened the lid to the box, looked at the cards that she’d inked so carefully, proud of their color. Perhaps, once the Rusalka pulled hard at his soul, perhaps he’d remember that she’d loved him and it would be enough.

She touched her hand to the paper, feeling Amos in it, and whispered a prayer for him. She said the words she would have said for her father. “Keep him safe. Give him family. Give him a home. Drive the Rusalka from him; that she will drown in sorrow deep enough to tremble through her blood. May the water take that blood and wash her and her line away. Let her not drown another man. Keep him safe.”

Ryzhkova was accustomed to tarot with its layers of meaning, interpretations, and reversals, and how a picture might look one way but contain a contrary truth. Used to her silent apprentice, she had forgotten that language itself was as subtle and slippery as her cards, and that words contained hidden seeds that blossomed with a speaker’s intent. A wish for safety meant nothing if the force behind it was a desire to kill. Though she spoke of love and protection, dread, grief, and anger bled through. Each word that fell from her tongue bound itself to paper with a small part of her soul, infusing the cards not with love as she thought, but with a hex burned strong and deep by fear. Buried in the heart of the deck, the Fool’s eyes shut.

She closed the box.