All the Fortunes Are Bad

In the Night Market, you can find your future. Some nights, when the moon is full, fortune tellers will lay out their black blankets and their star-charts and they will call out to you or singsong the fortunes of babies born in this hour, at this time, on this day. And while the fortunes of infants were always sweet as chai, it seemed to me that my own fortunes got worse the older I became.

When I was ten, I went to the Night Market on one of these occasions with my girlfriend, Atia. I call her my girlfriend, but the truth is that she was a year older than me and, when she held my hand so that I did not get lost in a crowd, I blushed. But I never pulled away. I had saved up several copper pennies to have our fortunes read together.

The old man at the least expensive of the fortune telling stalls was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. He had no books, but he had an impressive beard. It was forked down the middle and lay on the ground, to either side of his narrow chest. Little beads of dark glass glittered in it. He looked very authentic and so I stopped there.

Atia tugged at my arm. “Come on, Ishil. There’s a woman down there that has a crowd. Look, she’s got a whole book of star-charts! Nobody’s even talking to Grandfather here.” But I liked the look of him. Besides, he was sitting up, looking at us. It felt rude to just walk by.

“I’ll tell you your fortune, son. But only if you’ll lick my cigarette closed for me. My lips are dry.” He set no other price. Instead, he looked up at the sky for awhile, then asked me, “You were born in the dusk, when the first stars appeared? Yes. You had that look.” He rolled his cigarette skillfully, a tiny twist of tobacco in the yellowing paper, and offered it to me to lick and press down.

“You’re ten, yes? Born three months ago. A winter birth, an early dusk.. Mm, that explains the ears.” He reached out to touch my ear, which I admit was a bit juglike. Atia slapped his hand. “Rude!” she scolded him, half-stepping in front of me. He smiled.

“Ask him if I’m right, little lioness. Ask.”

“He’s right!” My voice was squeaking. Atia huffed.

“Except about your ears,” she told me. “You just need to grow into them a bit.” She was always saying things like that, always protecting me. She squeezed my hand and said, “Alright. He can tell yours, but I want mine from a woman.” Her voice sounded like incense smells when she said things like that, hinting at worlds I was only able to glimpse.

“You will indeed grow into those ears, winterborn. Come back here in five years, when I return, and I will see you as a young man.” He must have seen my face flush, for he laughed now, rusty and unpracticed. “Patience. But in the meantime, I will say this, and you will heed me. You will love your first woman before we meet again, but she will break your heart without ever knowing.” Just the word love set my cheeks blazing. Atia rolled her eyes, unimpressed.

“What teenager doesn’t fall in love ten times a week? My sisters do it all the time,” she retorted.

After a pause, the old man finally got round to lighting his cigarette. He stood up, wandered to a torch, leaned dangerously close, and puffed it to life. Inhaling on the cheap tobacco, he turns toward me and blew a thin stream of smoke into my face. It was aimed, as precise as a bolt from the heavens, diffusing only slightly before it hit my eyes and caused them to tear up.

As Atia looked on, the old man laid his hand on my head, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Alright,” he said softly. “I’d wanted to avoid this, but your friend here is persistent. Your death, young man, will come at the hand of a very angry woman. It’s quite clear, I’m afraid. Come back in five years, and I will be able to tell you more.”

For once, Atia said absolutely nothing. I left the old man’s shabby stall and took her hand, quite boldly, to draw her toward the popular woman further down the row. My mind was whirling. Did this mean my mother would kill me? Atia? Some woman I had yet to meet? I resolved, with great solemnity, to be sure to do my chores.

Atia’s fortune was quite pleasant. She was going to have many children, and marry a nice man who would treat her kindly.

Five years later, I returned to the fortune teller’s area of the Night Market. I was not seeking out the old man, nor had I really given his prophecy much thought. A third of my life had passed since we last spoke. I had grown taller, even muscular. My face seemed to fit my ears. Atia and I had begun, some nights, to do more than hold hands. I loved her.

She hadn’t broken my heart.

I returned to the Night Market, quite simply, because I still loved it. Vendors were selling everything from pepper-spiced crickets to true damascene silk. Merchants haggled with one another over bulk deals, and with customers over small retail affairs. And of course, there was the row of fortune tellers. They came and went, these astrologers and tarot readers, bone-tossers and tea-drinkers. A few were more or less constant — the pleasant woman that Atia had spoken to so many years before was still there, and even remembered us both. She would smile and wave as I wandered past, but I never asked her to read my fortune. I didn’t need sweet lies.

“Hey. Kid. You came back.” I didn’t really recognize the voice; five years for me had turned me into a young man. Five years for him had — well, I suppose he went further along the road he had already been on, as well. His beard was ragged now, though some glints of glass still glitter. It took me a minute, but then — then I remembered.

“You’re the old man! You told me Atia would break my heart,” I challenged him. I was proud of the fact that I could remember. And proud of the fact that he was wrong.

“No. I told you a woman would break your heart, and she’d never even know she did it. It was a safe bet but, I admit, just a guess. The real prophecy is that you would be here again, when I came back, five years later.”

That took me aback.

“You’re saying you came back here to see me? And you knew I’d be here?”

“No. You need to learn to listen, Kid. I came back here because I had to be here. I just knew that you would be, too. Your stars told me, winterborn. You’ve come to learn.” The old man was rolling a cigarette as he spoke; he drew his fixings from a beaded leather pouch that hung around his neck. Down the way, other fortune tellers were casting him occasional, unwelcoming, glances. The regulars seemed quite displeased.

“What is it I’m going to learn, then, Grandfather?”

“Oh, well. That’s easy enough. I can tell you that now.” He hacked a cough, then licked his own cigarette closed, idly twisting one end. “All fortunes end badly, winterborn. All fortunes do. The true ones, anyway.” He winked one marble-gray eye at me.

“You’re saying that all these others are liars? None of them tell ugly fortunes.”

“All liars. Kinder to lie. Oh, some of them can glance up at the sky and read the truth written there, boy, but the star-charts? All for show. You either know, or you don’t.” I was starting to understand, now. He was crazy. Humoring him was the polite thing to do.

“Oh yes? Well, I suppose you can see everything when you glance upward?”

“Certainly. All the things that matter. Intersections. The space between the stars. The coldnesses that touch your life. Congratulations, winterborn. I’ve come to give it all to you.” I wasn’t laughing anymore. And neither was he. The cigarette was lit, apparently, though I didn’t remember any flame. He blew smoke in my face, as accurate as a dart, and I felt my eyes burn and fill with tears. He leaned forward, then, and flicked my forehead lightly.

“Look up. Look up, winterborn.” And I did.

It was as though the stars were speaking to one another, casting words across space. It wasn’t quite a web of connections, and it wasn’t quite a whisper. I’ve never found a way to describe it. I imagine that it is similar to the way some people can hear the color blue.

I saw terrible, terrible things. Beautiful things, too, but they always came at the middle of the story. When I looked back at the old man, I felt as though I had aged a century. I’d seen my own star, seen its journey across the sky. I’d seen Atia leave me, despairing at the way I told the truth, and I’d seen her marry a nice young guardsman. He’d treat her kindly. Eventually, many years from now, she had a stroke and died. My heart broke. The old man watched me, smoke curling out in spirals from his cigarette.

“All the fortunes end badly,” he said again. And I understood. There was a script for us to follow now.

“You are looking for an apprentice,” I told him. I’d meant to ask it, but he nodded anyway.

“Sorry, winterborn. You’re hired., but I’ve already taught you everything I know. When you decide to start lying go and talk to the woman down the way. ” And that, too, was written in our stars. “You’ll make money for a time.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I know.”