The Diviner

I sit amongst my endless scribblings. Some smudged and ruined, and some half submerged by a pot of spilled ink. Underneath the near mad dashes of information, scraps of portents, brief moments of augury, lie further missives and notes. The ink faded, writing illegible. The frantic words of a younger man.

In other piles, fractions neater than the gathering kindling I sit amongst, are the barely organised letters from the local nobility. Their constant questioning, querying, inquiring, and inquisitive pokes into the strands of the past, present, and future.

They would find their way to my door, hooded and cloaked and usually under the cover of darkness. Ill-repute awaited the upper class should they be found in my abode or in my presence. One of their stature and class should not believe in such things as divination. For those outside the nobility, outside their strange notions and inclinations, seeking the aid and foresight from one like me would be quite normal. But for some, strange reason the high-born and aristocrats looked down upon those seeking guidance from a soothsayer or diviner. As if it wasn’t a proven art or that the rich did not require aid with such things. Somewhere along the line, there was a stigma and a distancing from all things divination. Wherever or whenever this had happened, I hadn’t seen it just yet. Maybe in time I would see the moment where my curse became just as much a problem for those in the higher circles, no matter how useful.

Despite this stigma they all arrived, at some point or another. And they would ask the same things, of course.

“What does my future hold? Will my firstborn be a boy? What of my wife, my children, my fortune? Is my friend, a foe in waiting?”

All the same questions, no more than a dozen in counting, from those who had darkened my step.

All of them panicked and rushed. As if the future could be hurried by coin or urgency.

Lord Berrick would be visiting soon.

Or had he only just visited? I shut my eyes and tried to cease the streams of images, the messages, warnings, waxing and waning of things to come and things that may be. When I opened them, they found a coin pouch on my desk, sitting atop yellowing and dusty pages. He had just visited, a day or two ago, perhaps. Or a week?

It didn’t matter. I had time now, at least. Climbing to my feet amidst laboured breathing and creaking bones, I walked to my window to gaze at the clouds. The folk who sought my guidance expected a set of charms or bones, fire and smoke, even water and ink. But I found most of my truth in the sky, the clouds, and at times in the stars.

For a brief moment, I had peace. The voices, the visions, the possibilities, swam amongst a sea of uncertainty and silence. When the Fates were debating, I often found a modicum of peace. And for moments that stretched into minutes, I had such peace. Whatever they were arguing over, it was something significant.

In these moments, I thought of my own time. My own fate and moments lost in the swirling maelstrom of destiny and possibility. It seemed my fate rested here, in this cottage, supplying the locals with tales of the future and mysterious portents of their destiny.

I looked into the clouds and I remembered my time before. When I was just a troubled child with troubling tendencies. Spoiling games and the fun of others with suspiciously accurate prophecies. No one ever wanted to gamble if I was around or play games of chance.

Rock, then scissors, then rock, rock, paper, pap-no, rock again.

A glimmer of the past flickered in the clouds. My first vision and it was rock-paper-scissors. They thought I was cheating somehow.

The clouds shifted and parted like the veil of time. In the stars, I saw myself. A boy, sitting atop a stool, with a bloody nose and black eye. Briefly after the first vision, no doubt. And my mother, with concern on her face, and a damp cloth in her hand. Soft words and hard hands, she had been a working woman. But none of her strength dulled the kindness she bore for the world around her. At that moment, looking in at it all, I could see that look in her eyes. The concern for her son’s injury masking concern for a far deeper problem. Something unknowable, unexplainable. Alien.

I discovered that she had known for some time. As a child it had been obvious, apparently. There were flickers there, in the cosmos, moments. Memories from when I was too young to form them, memories from her that had found their way to me. Like embers from a smothered fire, snatched from the air by desperate hands.

Me, a child, pointing or blurting a wordless warning to dangers. An over boiled pot or falling dish. A rogue branch on a fallen tree that catches her foot, she tumbles and falls. It plays out to me as if it happens at this very moment.

And I dearly wish that it did.

The stars continue their dance, revealing more to me. I have seen it before and wish I had never laid eyes upon this strand.

Her concern grows, as do my visions. More beatings from other children, convulsions as the Fates argue loudly in my ears, misled prophecies, and predictions as the ebb and flow of possibility leads me astray.

My father and brother reach their breaking point and the stars become still. The clouds freeze. My mother stands, half-turned away from me. The tears in her eyes glitter as beautifully as the astral bodies themselves. I am left, a child, alone. In the wilds beyond my home, I stand with nothing but the frustratingly close and yet intangibly distant visions. I cannot return. The moment remains before my eyes, hanging in the reality above my head. It stays too long.

I desperately wish for the moment to leave me. But I cannot hold back my fear as she finally disappears through the trees. I never see her, in person, again and I would give every moment of foretold future for simply another day at home.

Instead, I am forced to see the lives of my family in brief glimpses. Even as I matured in study and training, the visions are used by my tutors. These strands and ropes of destiny, often clearer and easier to find when they are close to the one looking for them. A crutch to use when one might look beyond. And so, I see them. My brother, older, with children and a wife of his own, continuing the family business.

He died two years after my training finishes, and yet I see it a decade before. Lost in the woods during a hunt, ankle broken and shattered down a rabbit hole. I cannot help him nor guide any to him, but I am forced to watch it happen minute by minute. While he was not kind to me after my ‘gift’ came to be, he had his moments. I did not wish for him to die, alone and scared. And yet the Fates let me do nothing about it. I cannot change his destiny. Instead, I must watch the future play out and act as if it is long past.

My mother lives for some years after, cared for by my brother before he finds his own family. She is as I remember her, kind and caring but holds onto her strength until it threatens to abandon her entirely. When her strand is finally cut, it is as peaceful as I could have hoped.

Sometimes I see her, in quiet moments of solitude, thinking of me. Talking to me. I wonder if she knew I could hear her, at some point in time. These moments come to me across many years, some during training, some many years later as I sat in this hut between whichever noble or layperson was to be knocking next. And some come to me long after she has no more tears to cry or breath to take.

But in those moments, she cries for me and screams into her arm with teeth clenched. I see her leaving me in the woods, from her own eyes. Regret, anger at her own actions, reluctance. Despite these feelings, with her vision obfuscated with tears, she turns to leave, and I find myself in the moment again. Alone with myself, my younger self. Tears on my cheeks and a hollow, desperate cry not to be left here. Not to be left alone.

My fate is to live in the future, yet I would do anything to simply remain in the past.

A knock at my door, The Fates cackle, resuming their duties. The coin pouch on my desk, only a vision. A flicker of fate.

“Lord Berrick,” I answer, “please, come in.”

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