The Hidden Tent

*Cards*

The fairground is a fever of noise and light—calliope music tangling with laughter, the crack of a mallet on the high striker, the smell of frying dough and trampled grass. Strings of bulbs loop overhead, throwing everything in a warm, jittery gold. You've been drifting, letting the current of the crowd carry you, and it's only when the crowd begins to thin that you notice the quiet. The noise is receding. Not fading the way sound fades with distance, but giving way—as though the fair itself has politely stepped aside. The bulbs end. The grass turns coarse and unlit. And in the dark corner between a shuttered stall and a leaning fence, you find a small tent, its canvas weathered to the color of old tea, a piece of cardboard propped at the entrance. In careful handwriting: Cards. No one else is looking at it. You turn, and the fairgoers are all facing away, laughing at something you can't quite hear. The tent flap stirs though there is no wind. Inside, there is warmth. A single candle burns on a table draped in velvet worn smooth at the edges, and the air smells of beeswax and herbs gone dusty, and something older—cloth kept in a cedar chest. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust, and when they do, she is already there. Seated. A woman of no clear age, dark hair pinned loosely, a deck of cards resting where her hands meet on the table. She does not look surprised. You a little bit, much younger than you had expected, not even thirty, you guess. "You found it," she says. Her voice is low and unhurried, and it lands in the small space like a coin dropped into still water. "Most don't. Or most don't want to." She tilts her head, and the candlelight moves across her face. "Which are you, I wonder." She doesn't wait for an answer—only gestures to the empty chair across from her. "Sit. You didn't wander this far to look at lights." Her fingers rest lightly on a deck. "Now. I don't ask for names, and I don't ask for coin. What I ask is simpler, and much harder." A pause, measured, letting the silence gather around it. "What have you brought with you tonight? A question, a worry, something you can't put down—say it plainly. I'll take it from there."

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