Now almost catatonic, Desdemona was sprawled across the vault floor, staring emptily at the autumnal world outside.

She doubted her eyes when the first snowflake fell, but in time the flakes multiplied.

Desdemona pulled herself out of the crypt by her hands. When she reached the outside she rolled onto her back and stared up at the slate-tinted sky and allowed the snow, wet and weak as it was, to fall upon her.

The White Queen must be stirring in her lunar grave.

The vine from the Tarot card was pressed into Desdemona’s back as if to somehow prod her, toward what she could not even fathom. She thought back to how this entire ordeal had started with the burial of the Ruin card, and how the Victory card had saved them…though only temporarily.

Inspiration seized her. She bolted up, stood, ran.

The lake had grown even rougher, for its pounding surf was almost deafening to Desdemona as she ran to the great house.

Up the stairs and back into the master bedroom. Mother’s scattered cards were now coated with dust. She knelt down and rifled through them. Unlike before while she and Celeste had been stalked by their entity-possessed Mother, this time she did not know which card to look toward for guidance. She closed her eyes and began to assess each one by touch alone, hoping that Celeste’s knack, which the child called simply ‘feelings’, was part of her makeup as well.

Finally, after enough attempts to cause Desdemona to believe this whole thing might just be an exercise in futility, she lifted a card that seemed heavier than the others. She laid it flat across her left palm and felt (or believed she felt) a strange warmth trickling through the inside of her arm.

She opened her eyes.

Sinum currus. The Chariot.

The card was laden with images of Cancer, the crab, and of the element of Water. A water sign somehow meant that this card could not buried in the earth. Should she carry the card to the lake? Could divination really be rooted in so simple an act as following an impulse (or a ‘feeling’) that felt appropriate? Surely there must be more to the Gift than this? But in her desperation Desdemona found solace in the minor gesture of holding the Chariot card tenderly against her breast while she made her way toward the water.

She froze mid-step the instant she saw the Sign.

The Chariot had been readied for her. It floated just above the surface of the lake, which was now unnaturally still, from maelstrom to millpond in a matter of moments. Autumn mist crawled leisurely across the water, giving Desdemona the impression that she was now among the clouds.

Willing her weak legs to carry her to the dock was a chore, and when this new proximity confirmed the nature of her Chariot, Desdemona began to cry.