“Swords,” she muttered, tapping her long purple index fingernail on the spiral made by the first seven cards. “Swords here in the country of flesh. There’s fighting over this, has been and will be.”

Between me, myself and I? I wanted to ask.

“Death, the Sun, the Lovers. Lots of major arcana. Your future’s controlled by others. There’s powerful people playing with it. You’re gonna have to fight to get it back. And over here” — she slid the fingernail down the silk next to the upright row of four cards next to the spiral — “this is the country of truth. There’s the Devil, the Star, the Tower. In the country of truth, where your spirit lives, your life still isn’t your own. Other stronger spirits, or maybe gods — they’ve got the say in what happens to you.”

A nice metaphor for my blackouts.

She touched the juggling man. “Something got out of balance in the past, yours or somebody’s. Stuff that’s supposed to shift around, change, grow — it’s all gone stagnant and sick.”

Sherrea looked up, but it was a blind look. “The air’s not moving around you,” she said, “but there’s a wind that’s trying to blow. Somebody’s gotta pull the windbreak down.” Her voice was changing. Now she wasn’t looking at me at all; she was looking at the tops of her eye sockets. All I could see were the whites. I rocked slowly back from the cabinet.

“Sit still, munequita,” said the new voice. It was lower than Sher’s, and thick with an accent that ought to have been Hispanic and wasn’t. Sherrea’s lips, making the words, moved differently than they usually did. Her face looked suddenly much older. “You afraid of me?”

Munequita meant — I felt the infinitesimal shift of new knowledge. Little doll. I shivered. “I wouldn’t say that. Not yet, at least. Who are you?”

A hooting laugh. “Nobody you know. Listen now. It’s time you was doin’ what you supposed to. You got work to do, and all you do is look out for your own self. You not ready to do your work. That’s bringin’ danger on you, and all the ones bound to you.”

“Nobody’s bound to me,” I said firmly.

“You think that? Where you been, sittin’ in a hole? You wait ’til le Chasseur comes. But you dangle those lives over the fire and that’s all for you. I give you warning.”

Sherrea’s lips had drawn back from her nicotine-stained teeth in a big nasty smile. I stood up carefully. “Well, thank you. I’ll be going, then.”

“Sit down.” I can’t describe that voice. I sat down. “But you can save your ass. You gotta learn to serve, and let your own self be fed by the spirits. Serve the loa, serve all the people, and go hungry and cold yourself. Then all the parts of you gonna come together and make you well. But strong people want to keep chained what you gotta make free. There’s gonna be blood, and fire, and the dead gonna dance in the streets. But if you give what I tol’ you, the light of change’ll shine in the tower of shadows.” I felt like someone who’s gone to get a wart removed, and been told he needs radiation and chemo. I am not good at hungry and cold. “So what is it that I have to do?” I said.