They did not have to wait long for their first visitors. Alba heard the low tones of the priest outside as he addressed them; she heard the jingle of the coins dropped in his palm; then steps, unsteady and uncertain; the swinging of faint lamplight.

“Oracle, we seek your help.” The voice, a man’s, quavered a little.

“What assistance do you seek?” Alba tried to make her voice terrible. Oracle-and-not-apprentice-like. “What question may the oracle answer?”

“Oracle, we wish to marry.” A woman’s voice now. The couple came into view. Their hands clasped tightly together, their fingers intertwined, they approached Alba with fear and trembling, but also, she could see, with hope. Below her, the waters had begun their whispering; the hissings curled around her hair and ears.

“Oracle.” The man kept his eyes on the floor of the cave. “Will we be happy? Should we join our lives together?”

“Tssssss…,” the vapors hissed in Alba’s ears. “Suffering… suffering awaits.…”

Alba looked at the couple. Their garments were little more than rags, spattered with mud and, she guessed, animal offal. They would be peasants from the neighboring countryside; it would have been all their coins they gave to the priest. Though young, they appeared already old: The man retained only a patchy crown of hair that burst into tufts near his ears; the woman, too, had a slackness in her skin that looked like age but was really hunger. Alba looked at the way they wound their hands together so their fingertips grew bright in the other’s clasp, at the way the lines on their faces softened when they glanced at each other. Covered in filth, they nevertheless gleamed.

“Suffering!” the waters hissed again. The vapor rose around Alba’s shoulders; she could feel its damp fingers grasping. She leaned, trying to move away from the whisperings. “Suffering will come to them. Unhappiness will plague their marriage.”

Alba shifted, trying to ignore the waters. “Your love is true,” she said, making her terrible voice softer.

Behind her, as she considered how to make her words more profound, she could hear the waters protesting, steaming and spitting. “Suffering! Suffering awaits!”

“No treasure is greater than love.” She felt her words still falling short, but the couple beamed at each other, cheeks and fingertips growing even brighter in the lamplight.

“Thank you, Oracle,” they exhaled in unison. They did not wait to see if she had more to say.

As they exited the cave, the waters continued their angry sputtering—“ Misery! Suffering! Grief!”—and the oracle chided Alba, “You did not listen to the waters.”

“But they love each other.”

“But they asked if they would be happy.”

“There is happiness in love.”

“You should have told them suffering awaited them.”

“But the telling of that itself would cause them suffering! At least now they will have each other.”

“You should not try to shape the future, Apprentice.” The oracle sighed. “You should merely say the future revealed to you.”

“But doesn’t that telling also shape—” Alba began, but she was interrupted by voices and the jingle, again, of coins outside.