One Day the Oracle Began to Speak Again

One day the Oracle began to speak again.

When I was alive, I never knew that a mirror could become a window, a window could become a door. But one day the drought ended and it began to rain again. The fountain filled, and I slipped inside.

At first no one comes. Before the last Oracle was empty, she would sing, her song achingly beautiful, haunting, like a memory long-forgotten begging to be remembered. The water is receding quickly, and in desperation I begin to sing, but the melody is wrong and I don’t remember the words she used. I wait for the waters to leave completely, for the shadowlands to claim me again as they lower day after day and still no one comes.

One day I decide that I am the song I cannot sing, that I am the memory begging to be remembered and forgotten completely. That is the day someone finally comes. A girl, small, her hair tangled and falling in front of her face. Her eyes are enormous pools of gray, like a lake reflecting a smoke-filled sky, and she clutches a pitcher to her chest. I wait, trying to read her face, wondering what someone so small would need. What would she want to hear? I will tell her anything she wants as long as she empties her pitcher into my waters before they sink completely and I am pulled back to the shadowlands.

She does, her fingers smudging the glass, and then she turns wordlessly and leaves.

When I was alive, I was like her, the Oracle’s daily visitor, asking nothing from her except her song, but this girl didn’t even wait for that. I don’t understand.

But after that the people come in droves and my waters almost overflow, drops kissing the brim and threatening to spill over. I wait for them to stop coming once they realize that I can’t actually see their future or understand it, that I’m inventing because I have to. I think maybe they will forgive my lies if I tell them the most beautiful ones possible, but as I tell tales of children born and sons come home, I realize that the Oracle doesn’t prophecy the future. She changes it. The future twists and untwists with my words and at first I am afraid of my power.

And then one day, the people stop coming. I know who’s responsible, the only person who has still not come, the one reason I had found a way back from the shadowlands. I hadn’t cared that he had not come, sure he would eventually, if not to speak to the Oracle, at least to admire the sunshine on the shallow water.  

He has to come eventually. He should have died hundreds of years ago, but he has used the words of the Oracle to extend his life. I smile. The words I will refuse to speak.

 How does he know to be afraid?  

I know he is the reason everyone else is afraid now too. Everyone trusts the Oracle’s Keeper to tell them the truth, and if he tells them that she is a liar they will never come again. I know he has done this. It’s the only way he could make them keep away.

My waters lower and I wait.

He is clever, I will say that much. He waits until the girl barely comes anymore, finally afraid too, and the fountain is nearly dry. I sing, my song louder and more desperate. It must be obvious that I am begging for help, because he finally comes.

He leans over, pitcher poised, not pouring, staring into the water. His hands are shaking and I know he waited as long as he could.

“I came to ask for your help.”

I will not help you.

There is fear in his voice, but he holds it steady. “The last Oracle, I told her how to escape. Help me, and I will tell you.”

He doesn’t wait for me to speak, sure that I will obey him, that I will speak whatever tale he wants to hear in exchange for life again.

“You were the only one who truly loved her, who gave with no thought of reward, or at least never asked for it.”  

I am suddenly afraid of what his next words will be. I wish I could shut them out, dive so deep into the darkness and unspoken thoughts of my mind that his voice would be far away and his words indistinguishable, but he continues to speak. “Do you see those words carved on the fountain’s rim?”

Yes. I had wondered what they meant, but they were unfamiliar, sharp and curved like daggers, and I was afraid to speak them.

“I put those there, hundreds of years ago when the first of the Oracles came. If they are sung while such a person is pouring, not as payment but as a gift, the Oracle escapes back into our world and that person becomes the new Oracle.”

 I say nothing. 

I don’t remember how I died, but I do remember that the Keeper was there and he did nothing to try to save me. He was there watching, doing nothing, and now I know why.

I stay silent.

I am remembering that one day as I was pouring the water, slowly, trying to make a rainbow in the mist and the sunshine, the Oracle suddenly began to sing. It was a song I didn’t recognize and it frightened me, though it was beautiful as a dream. I poured in the rest of the water quickly and ran. I think I may have fallen, because I remember that my pitcher was broken, that my feet were cut and my hands bleeding. 

 The Oracle, all I ever did was try to save her. The irony is that I did.

That little girl, I was like her once. Loving the Oracle’s song, soothing her into silence. She betrayed me, left me to die once she realized she didn’t need my help, except for one last time.  

I look up at the sky. The sun is lowering, its sunset so fierce it bruises the sky purple and yellow.

“The drought is coming back, and soon she will stop coming completely, just like everyone else. This time the door will shut.”

There is no fear in his voice, though the Oracle has kept him alive hundreds of years, and when the last one dies, he will die with her. My words are powerless if used against their writer and he knows this.

He needs me to live so he doesn’t have to die knowing that I’m in the shadowlands too, waiting for him. Whatever happens, we will either live or die together. The Oracle’s fate shared with its Keeper. 

He waits for me to speak, to promise him that the girl will die. One life in exchange for two, one innocent life for two guilty ones. Perfectly just.

  I know that I will never wash her blood off my hands, though I may try in her waters as he is doing now in mine. And she may forgive me, but guilt is not lessened with forgiveness.

I look up at him. It's no longer about revenge, but I think that death will give me a better one than life ever could.

“The Oracle answers to me. Speak,” he says, and there is still no fear in his voice, but it’s starting to creep into his eyes.

 I run my finger along the bottom of the fountain and it starts to crack.

The next day the Oracle falls silent. I do not think she will speak again.