Folio Two, Page Thirty-Three (svegra mos bietkron tal-biet)
The entire block smelled like incense, and the air was thick with smoke and spices from the open air market close by. While my family lived in a very bourgeois portion of town, this was the heart of the suburb’s historic district with buildings going back before the Invasion and the Occupation, and the houses were enormous. It was only accessible by bike or microrail or on foot.
I had enough money in my pocket to buy a bath at the Temple of Sahamatsra and a small votive statue to give for use of the Oracle, which they kept in a bronze box beneath the temple’s icon. I didn’t need a summer career fair to tell me what I wanted from life. I could taste it beneath my tongue like a coin for the dead, feel it shudder in my bones and sing through my blood like a major scale arpeggio, but thinking about it made me feel sick. Besides, the heroines from the stories always consulted the Gods before doing anything.
Most Oracles are people. In our region, there are three temples dedicated to Sahamatsra with small boxes that contain bones way back when Menarka was still a dream. Some claimed that Sahamatsra had preserved the bones of one ksibja player, inscribing each with the enigmatic phrases in the language the world spoke before people came. According to the myths, Kobsarka’s temple had the thighbones of Sahamatsra.
I let the attendants bathe me and drip the milk onto my ksibja. One of the priestesses who had known my mother accompanied me right up to the icon.
“We don’t usually take these out for kids,” she said.
“I know.”
“And sometimes the answers you get won’t be what you want. You understand that, right?”
I nodded.
She handed me a thin sheet of copper and waited while I inscribed my question, then wrapped it around the figurine for me and placed it beside the statue with all of the others. I watched her take the box from the front and shake it vigorously, waiting for the bones to fall into place. I picked three from the top.
“Something will happen to you,” she said when she looked at the first one. “This one signifies motion in a direction, often against one’s will, and a conflict of some kind that you will never see directly. It’s someone you’ll grow to trust.”
“And the second one?”
“A person. You need to find them. They will — the last one says new directions. You need to find someone who will take you in a new direction. He will come quite suddenly when you need him the most, a sunbeam venturing into the thick of your storm. The three symbols are all very masculine. Masculine energy is turbulent and violent — not good for building homes, nations, or dynasties, but excellent for spinning legends out of air. You should remember that.”
It seemed like an awfully vague statement for so much preparation, and it disappointed me like nothing else to learn that Oracles or interpreters didn’t behave like they did on television with the flashing lights and differently-pitched voices, all cloaked in darkness and mystery. No wonder everyone had flocked to the endocrine-drugged raves in the Temple of Yilrega or the local corps of musicians dedicated to Gamgyatsahagia. They’d profiled both on one of the local news stations. Maybe I should have gone there, but they would never have allowed someone as young as me.
“Thank you,” I said.
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