The Correct Question

A young woman entered the shop with interest, trailed by another who was intensely watching her phone. It looked nothing like any of the other shops they frequented; there were no beaded curtains, no macabre decor, no neon signs in the windows. But this one had just suddenly popped up on her daily newsfeed, and she always wanted to visit a new one. The mass of bells hung in wreathes on the door, some clearly older than others, announced their arrival and a very normal-sounding woman called out that she’d be there in a moment. The cat in the bay window, not even a black one, didn’t react at all. Sure, the shop had all the usual things; rocks and stones of different sizes and cuts, decks of cards wrapped and stacked, velvet bags of who-knew-what waiting in haphazard piles. Books lined the shelves wherever jars of dried plants and flowers weren’t. Everything was glass or cotton or velvet. But there was a feeling to it that was a little too…happy. It felt like one of her mom’s magazines, not hers. There weren’t price tags on anything. 

   “Welcome! Sorry to keep you waiting.” The very normal-sounding voice belonged to a very normal-looking woman who stepped out from a very normal-looking door. The younger girl was not impressed so far. The pentagram ring on her thumb made her look more the part than this hack. The too-short black things she draped herself in had more of the vibe than the soft whites and blue jeans this woman was wearing. The cat was still sleeping. Everything smelled faintly of peppermint. “Tea?” 

   “Um, sure. Thank you.” said a very unimpressed Senna, fiddling with the clasp of her choker, freeing it from her dyed-black hair. Skye hadn’t even looked up from her phone yet. 

The one who greeted them smiled, a weird little sway in her shoulders as if she couldn’t stand straight. She walked a little like she was on a boat when she returned to the kitchen. “Sit anywhere you like, I’ll be right back. The leaves should have steeped long enough by now. Feel free to look around.”

And she disappeared again through the little door to her kitchen. Was that woman really even a witch? A second cat wandered out. Also not black. It didn’t look anything like the one sleeping in the window, either. Where the sleeping one was thin and hairless, this was a younger cat: small but a little fat, orange with bright orange eyes. Though she wanted to pet it, it didn’t seem very interested in her. Finally, though, it got her girlfriend to put down her phone for one minute of her life when it went and sniffed her ankle. Senna, with her pentacle ring and her sodalite bracelet and her own tarot deck in her bag, sat on the sofa, staring around. It looked just like a normal living room. Maybe the living room of someone eccentric, with lots of things to display, but a normal living room nonetheless. White lace curtains. Vases of flowers. Photos and paintings of unrecognizable people on the walls. Most of them looked vaguely like the woman herself. But there were more little moving things than a normal house usually had. Things that ticked and rocked and dripped. A clock to track the planets. Two different pendulums going about their days. They were probably on magnets to look impressive. 

“Here we are, friends,” the diviner pushed the kitchen door open, carrying an English set of silver tea cups. Polished but clearly old. Waiting for guests. “It’s starting to get cold recently, isn’t it?” The tray fit perfectly on the coffee table. Peppermint. Peppermint tea. “Does the cold upset your knee, friend?” 

The young woman looked at her. “My…?” That was right. She was wearing a short skirt that day. The scars from her childhood fall were visible. “Oh. No, not really.”

The woman nodded along, pouring the tea, still swaying. Two sugars in her own cup. One in the girlfriend’s, once again lost in her phone. None in the customer’s. Exactly how they preferred herbal tea. The client pretended to read tea leaves. She’d read incorrectly that she couldn’t add anything extra. “That’s fortunate. So just standing too long, then. Well. I’m pleased you’ve come today, it’s always a pleasant surprise to have a guest. So, what can I do for you?”

“Well,” Senna started, but she didn’t get too far.

“Shouldn’t you know that already?”

The look she received was monumental. 

“Oh come on, Senna, this place is crap. Looks like my aunt’s house. And look at her, she’s straight out of, like, a Marie Claire ad or something.”

The young woman snapped, “don’t be rude.”

“It’s alright, Senna, I get it all the time.” Her face was gentle and the little orange cat jumped up to share the other seat of her sofa, sitting across the table from theirs. She pet it absently, and it seemed pleased. “Of course I know why you’re here, Skye. But the client has to ask the question before we can begin.” 

“We’re going on vacation soon,” she supplied before her girlfriend could interrupt again. “It’s our first time on a cruise, and I’m a little nervous about the water. I wanted to know how it’s going to go.” Senna continued, the girlfriend clearly wanting to get another snide remark out. “I’m a witch, too. I’ve already done my own reading. But I thought it’d be fun to get a second opinion.”

The sway in her shoulders seemed to get a little more erratic. It was still very slight, just enough that it seemed to be some kind of neurological disorder. But it became less back-and-forth and more circular. Hitting all the different corners in a random order. “I understand. May I see your deck, please?” And she held out her hand. 

“My…yeah, sure,” and she dug into her purse to pull it out. Her bag was pretty loose that day, the things inside it pressing out to show their shapes. Commercial readers were masters at noticing detail. She must have seen the outline of the box. It changed hands, and the diviner wasted no time in opening it up, flipping through it. Looking at each card with the sway in her shoulders.

The orange cat laid down beside her.

“What’s your question, friend? The client has to ask the question.” 

“I guess, uh…will everything go okay?”

“Too general. Ask your real question.”

Senna was startled. “Um. I…will the vacation go okay?”

“Your real question, friend.” She stood, taking the deck over to one of her shelves. Setting it in a previously-covered glass bowl that looked to be filled with tiny crystals. She did something strange with her hand and covered the bowl again. As she did so, a third cat peeked out from the banister of the stairs. A fluffy, massive animal that looked suited for the snow. “We’ll let those rest for a moment, then. Is that really what you’re going to go with? ‘Will the vacation go okay?’ Is this the question you’d like to ask?” 

“I…yes. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Will the vacation go okay?”

“A yes or no question. The pendulum is enough. So begins the reading.”

Senna’s eyes moved to the two pendulums, one of which looked like obsidian touching its sand and one that was some misshapen thing of clay over a mirror. But they stayed exactly where they were, and the diviner stood very, very still. It was a little jarring, honestly, to see her still. And then she tipped her shoulders very slightly forward before returning to place. “Yes, the vacation will go well. So ends the reading.”

“Is…Is that it?” Senna’s asked after a moment of silent staring.

“Bullshit,” Skye muttered, nose in her phone.

“Are you unsatisfied with your answer?”

“To be honest, I am, yes. You didn’t…you didn’t do anything.”

The diviner’s eyes glittered. The cat moved down another stair or two as if watching with increasing interest. “Would you rather some pomp and circumstance?”

“A…a little. Yeah.”

“Then I’ll get the stones. Same question, friend?” She crossed the room, stopping to grab her teacup, sipping on it as she rooted one-handed through a drawer in a large, very full curio. A drawstring cotton bag with little things embroidered all over it came back with her to the sofas. 

The young woman nodded, wondering how to ask for her cards back. “Same question, yeah.”

“Have you ever heard of geomancy, friend?” Senna shook her head. “Then, this will be fun.” Inside the drawstring bag, which opened flat into a circle, were an assortment of tiny amethyst crystals. “Lots of pomp, lots of throwing, lots of circumstance.” Serra stared at the cloth the diviner spread on the table. There was a square divided into four numbered squares, little symbols around the edges that looked almost familiar from her own studies but it was as though the embroidery was just a little wrong. “The last thing I need is….” And she rummaged under the table, to a drawer that Serra heard sliding. “Here we are.” She pulled out a pen and a notebook, turning to a blank page prepped with a shield-like shape off-center from the page. “Then are you ready?” Senna nodded, feeling much less like it was a waste of time to drive all the way out there after just seeing it that morning. “So begins the reading.”

This was what she’d wanted. This is what they always wanted. They didn’t care so much about the answer, the diviner knew. They cared about the show. They didn’t want the future. They wanted to be entertained. They wanted to believe it was true because it was taking so much effort to be. Even the girlfriend had her nose in her phone a little less, watching the diviner throw the stones and count them in their squares and mark them with circles on her paper. She explained, of course, as she went. The names of the figures she drew, the odds and evens of the stones and what dots they made and what places they filled. Geomancy always looked nice, and it took the right amount of time, and it was rare enough to be novel. Luckily it hadn’t been planning to rain that day so she could make use of it. The clouds always skewed the reading. While her internal pendulum was the most accurate, the questions starting the moment the client’s bells rang, they always loved having something to take home with them. The fluffy cat was sitting at the bottom of the stairs by the time she finished.

“And there we have it. The neutral Via as our Left Witness, the obviously positive Fortuna Minor as our Right Witness, presided over by Fortuna Major as our Judge. An excellent reading for travel. A pleasant voyage with only small annoyance. The vacation itself overall will go well. The ship will leave port with no problem and everyone on board will have a wonderful time. Minor bouts of seasickness, food poisoning, the usual. Nothing more grotesque than that. Even the weather will cooperate, it smells like sunny days.” The diviner was grinning, and Senna was feeling much better about it. Her cards had given an answer she hadn’t liked. The diviner knew this. They were sad that she’d been angry with them. All they’d done was try to answer the question that they knew she’d meant to ask. But she hadn’t wanted to hear that answer. They deserved the salt bath. They’d said they often took such abuse. “And so ends the reading. Are you satisfied?”

“Very, yeah. Thanks. I feel way better about it now. I’d been really worried about everything and so…thanks for taking the time to redo it, I appreciate it.”

The diviner smiled widely. “Not a problem at all. Then, can I do anything else for you? A charm, another reading…?”

“No, I feel pretty good. Thank you. I…can I have that paper though?”

“Of course!” The diviner stood, rolling the paper, and pulled a pre-cut ribbon from a shelf. The jar next to it seemed to hold something iridescent. Some kind of dead beetle. Beside that looked like a glass box of cicada wings beneath an open jar of what was probably some kind of teeth. The ribbon she tied around the paper was a bright, very pretty violet. The client’s favorite color, though she’d never admit it was anything other than black. “Here you are, friend. Is there anything else you’d like to ask, anything else I can do for you?”

Senna shook her head. “No, thank you. I appreciate you doing it, we kinda just showed up…oh, uh, my cards?”

“I’d like them as payment, actually. Consider it a trade. Do you accept? I have a deck I’ll loan you, but I’d like to keep yours for a few months. Give them a bit of a break, yeah? Come back to retrieve them in the Spring, alright? Once it’s not so hard to drive.” And before Senna could even pretend to question, the diviner was holding out a brand-new deck with an extremely appealing skull design that would match the decorations in their apartment. 

The diviner waved them out, standing on her porch with the English Ivy claiming the banisters and the eggshell sprinkled on the walkway, crunching under both girls’ boots. 

“Drive safely!” She shouted and the SUV roared to life. The client gave a little wave from the passenger seat. The diviner sighed, watching them drive off, her shoulders still. So ended the reading. She went back inside to clean up her stones and the tea and put everything back where it needed to be. From what she could see, she could take her time getting everything cleansed. Another customer’s bell wouldn’t appear on the door for another few hours, and they still hadn’t decided yet. 

“Constance?” The fluffy cat asked from the stairs, looking at her pointedly. “Why didn’t you tell them?”

“You know exactly why,” the diviner replied, setting the tray against her hip. “Where’s Cypress?”

“He already left,” yawned the hairless cat in the window. She hadn’t opened her eyes yet. 

The diviner frowned, checking that a tattoo of a small orange cat had joined the others under her sleeve. “Well that’s a shame, I hadn’t spoken with him in a while.” 

The fluffy cat sat himself down, paws hanging off the final stair in a very un-cat-like manner. “This is why you don’t have repeat customers, Constance. You-” 

“I can only answer what the client asks, you know that. I know that. I can’t answer questions that aren’t asked.”

The cat gave an un-cat-like pout. “You could have given them a heads up at least.”

“I said to drive safe.”

“That wasn’t a hint, that was a pleasantry.”

“Isn’t that what all hints are?”

The cat in the window yawned again, adjusting herself in the sun. “Abacus, you always fuss so loudly. What’s the problem this time?”

“There’s no problem,” Constance answered, pushing open the door to the kitchen to set the tea tray on her counter. “He’s just a bleeding heart.”

“I want you to not lie to your clients.”

“Will ‘the’ vacation go well. Not ‘my’ vacation. ‘The’ vacation will go swimmingly. Like I said, the cruise ship will leave port without a hitch and everyone on board will have a wonderful time. Had she asked about her vacation,” she’d returned to the main room, giving the obsidian pendulum’s base a good shake to erase the name it’d written in the sand, “then they certainly wouldn’t have gotten the Major as the Judge. I told them to drive safe. That’s as much as I can do. They have to ask the correct question. You know what rules I’m bound to, they haven’t changed.” 

The fluffy cat narrowed its green eyes. “Rules can be bent sometimes.”

“Bending rules,” she said, looking at him and patting her arm, “is how you end up in a bag in the river. Isn’t it? Remind me, how many do you have left, Abacus?”

The cat gave a grimace, standing, brushing himself off. “Enough to keep serving for another few hundred years, Constance. You’re the witch, after all.” With a bow, he left an empty spot on the stairs to fill the last empty spot on her arm.

“I’d rather follow every rule than end up on the stake again, wouldn’t you agree?” She didn’t get a verbal answer from the hairless cat that stretched herself out in her basket, but she did get a nod. “Besides, they have the bigger car. 

They’ll survive.”