“Neither am I. That’s why it’s a game.”
“I’m not good at these sorts of games.” Jericho ate another bite of blintz.
I’ve noticed, Mabel thought, and stirred her tea for the twentieth time.
“Fine. What sort of power would you have?” Jericho asked.
“Oh. Anything would do, I suppose. It would just be nice not to be so hideously ordinary.” Mabel laughed and waited for Jericho to disagree with her: Why, don’t be silly, Mabel—you’re anything but ordinary. Why, you’re extraordinary all on your own!
“There’s no such thing as hideously ordinary. If something is hideous, it’s automatically extraordinary. In a hideous way.”
“Never mind. Let’s change the subject,” Mabel grumbled.
“I told you I wasn’t good at this game,” Jericho said. “Besides, the more I read about Diviners, the more I think it’s a curse as well as a gift.”
“What do you mean?”
“Diviners are truth-tellers. But people rarely want the truth. We say that we want it when, really, we like being lied to. We prefer the ether of hope.”
“But hope is necessary! You have to give people hope,” Mabel insisted.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Jericho folded his arms across his chest. “In an amoral, violent world, isn’t it unconscionable to keep offering hope? It’s like advertising for soap that never gets you clean.”
“Now you’re just being cynical.”
“Am I? What about war? We keep grappling for power, killing for it. Enslaving. Oppressing. We create ourselves. We destroy ourselves. Over and over. Forever. If the cycle repeats, why bother with hope?”
“But we also overcome. I’ve seen people fight against that sort of oppression and win. What you’re talking about is nihilism. And frankly,” Mabel said, taking a steadying breath, “frankly, that bores me.” Nothing emboldened her quite as much as someone claiming the good fight couldn’t be won.
“How is it nihilism to embrace the cycle and let go—of attachments and morality and, yes, the opiate futility of hope?” Jericho fired back. Mabel’s naiveté annoyed him. She might think she’d seen the world, but, really, she saw only a particular slice of the world, neatly bordered by hedgerows trimmed daily by her parents’ idealism. “All right,” he pressed. “If you believe in hope, what about true evil? Do you believe there is such a thing?”
Mabel felt as if the question were a test, one she might easily fail. “I believe real evil is brought about by a system that is unjust or by people acting selfishly. By greed.” She’d never really articulated her thoughts on the matter before, and it satisfied her to say them aloud.
“That’s the do-gooder answer.”
Mabel bristled. “I don’t go for the bogeyman. There’s plenty of evil to fight in life without having to make up devils and demons and ghosts. If you believe that there is Evil in the world, capital E, doesn’t that take away your belief in free will? I still maintain that people have choices. To do right. To have hope. To give hope,” Mabel said pointedly.
Jericho was very quiet, and Mabel feared she’d insulted him. But then he looked her in the eyes in a way that was unnerving.
“Have you ever had a moment that forced you to question what you believe?” he asked. “Something that forced you to reexamine your ideas of morality, of good and evil?”
“I…” Mabel stopped. “I suppose not. Have you?”
“Once.” Jericho was very still. “I helped a friend end his life. Does that shock you?”
Mabel was stunned into silence for a moment. She wasn’t sure she liked knowing this about Jericho. “Yes. A little.”