Chapter 10 - Part I

Today you have escaped the imposing walls of alabaster limestone and ivory marble for the only the third time since your arrival.  Your training has kept you busy but you have been afforded some freedom before the next task.  You knew how you wanted to spend that time and so for the day, you left the place you call home to face the masses in the streets.

                Your search is not difficult.  There are thousands who play this part, but you have a higher mind today.  You want only the best. 

                Among the beggars, the handless thieves and the castrated rapists, an old man, hair white as the walls of the university, exposed to the late morning sun, is wrapped in a velvet cloak of tired black.  He huddles, murmuring softly to himself.  His hands beat lightly against the tools of his trade in a rhythmic motion, ignoring your presence entirely as you kneel before the man and place a single cube of silver in the palm of his hand and another of copper in his waiting bowl.

                You know what happens next.  The method is the same for all fortune tellers.  He simply understands it better.  From a pile of black glass rocks, he will take one.  With his shaky might, he will break it upon the hard, straight edge of his iron anvil, steel if he is as good as his reputation.  The stone will fracture, producing a shiny edge on both of the resulting pieces. 

He will tell you that nothing is absolute, he will tell you that the gifts of the keepers can be both a blessing and a curse.  He will tell you that one piece of obsidian will reveal all the successes and gains to be had from your next actions.  He will tell you the other contains the secrets to all the failures to be had.  If you are lucky, the larger piece will be your good fortunes, and the smaller, will be forgettable.  If you are lucky, the half of your happy future will cleanly cut and each facet of the imperfect stone will tell the old soothsayer of glory and triumph.  If you are lucky, the other piece, the stone of disgrace, will be nothing more than a chip; irrelevant and meaningless. 

You have always been lucky, you tell yourself, you have nothing to fear.

But what, then, are you doing here?

His spotted hand runs over his holdings of black glass rocks, each individual, each unique to their fortune seeker.  His dull eyes then fix on you, and you feel yourself tremble.  The man’s once black irises are blanketed with a milk white fog and you know he cannot see.  Yet somehow his pupils focus on yours and bore into your soul.

Then, he selects the stone.  Your stone, your obsidian.  It had been waiting for you to come this day, and now it will reveal its secrets.

He raises his fist, fingers firmly holding it in place as his hand descends upon the anvil.  You hear the obsidian crack and you feel trepidation rush over you and you struggle to see the result.

The pieces have fallen upon the dirt road.  The old man’s right hand combs the dust and debris, searching for that smooth, cold stone.  He picks up one, and deposits it into his free hand.  He picks up the second soon after.  Then he picks up a third piece.

Even the fortune teller seems taken aback, unsure what so many pieces will reveal.  You know this when he mutters, “You walk east, and arrive west, young man.  Your roads are more than can be travelled by two feet”  His accent is hard to understand, he speaks an ancient dialect of the middle tongue, whether natively or by practice, you cannot say.  It is not your language but you understand enough.

He produces the largest of the three pieces, rubbing it in between his fingers several times before laying it gently upon the anvil.  It is long, and the thickness of you little finger.

“This is your good fortune.” Says he, and you let out an involuntary sigh of relief, “It is a nearly flawless cut; there is little to stand in your way.  If you do what is in your mind to do, you will become a great name in your field and respect will come from friends, enemies and superiors, all.

He then produces a medium piece of obsidian, once joined to the largest piece, it is no larger than the silver cube you paid.  He fits the two pieces together again, but they do not fit perfectly.  A sliver of black appears to have chipped away in the violence of the breaking.

“Your misfortunes will be few.  Your prestige, your alliances and promotions will remain intact without fail. But you will have other miseries; the piece of misfortune is clean and without abrasion.  Your failings will be unrelated to your success, too far removed from your gains.  You may recover easily.”

“And the last piece?” you speak up for the first time, knowing it is not done this way, but fearing to be left without the knowledge.

The old man ignores your thoughtlessness, and answers with his hand.  He produces the last, and smallest piece.  What the piece lacks in size, it makes up for in thickness, appearing more as an uncut stone than broken obsidian.  He places it on top of the other two pieces, and then pauses to consider the three.

He glares at the constructed tower, his blind eyes darting over each facet of each piece.  Finally he grunts, satisfied, but haughty.  “This is neither fortune nor misfortune,” he repeats slowly, first to himself, and then to you.

“This is neither fortune nor misfortune… This is a die cast by GOD!” he cackles suddenly and with strength not expected in a man as brittle as he, the old man pushes the anvil over and all three pieces succumb to the violence and fall.  “This is another, you who are not you, and it will as easily break your fortunes as redeem your failures, but you will have no control over it.

You are frantic.  You know you should not believe in this nonsense.  The world had rational explanations for phenomenon; you learned that in the walls of the university.  But terror fills your heart.  The three pieces of obsidian had slid to the dirt before the anvil had finally crashed.  The weight of the steel easily crushed the large and medium pieces, breaking them into a million new futures.  But on top of the black rubble, the smallest, thickest piece remained intact, cushioned by the two pieces beneath it even as it dealt their shattering force.

“What does this mean?”  You say, but the man will not answer you again.  His sightless gaze does not return to you, for he is in his own world of magic and mystery.  He does not stop laughing and it is all you can do to run away before it infects your mind.

When you return to your dorm, you try to forget about it.  You try to rationalize that the ranting of an old and crazy man means nothing.  You do not speak of this to even your dear friend and bunkmate.

But you never forget, Cedric.  You are the fortunes of GOD, you are proof of the existences outside of the spectrums of man.