The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) Read online

  THE HIEROPHANT

  Arcana • Book I

  Madeline Claire Franklin

  Copyright © 2013 Madeline Claire Franklin

  Kindle Edition

  E-book cover designed by Madeline Claire Franklin

  License Notes

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  For my parents,

  who have always followed their hearts.

  Your example, love, and support have been

  invaluable.

  hi· ero· phant noun ˈhī-(ə-)rə-ˌfant, hī-ˈer-ə-fənt

  From ancient Greek hieros “sacred” + phainein “to reveal” or “to bring to light”

  1: A person who interprets and explains sacred mysteries or occult knowledge

  2: A person who brings laymen into the presence of that which is deemed holy

  3: The fifth card in the trump suit, or Major Arcana, of the traditional tarot deck

  — 1 —

  My mother always said that there are worlds beyond the one we know—a world for demons, a world for angels, a world for the dead. When the village is covered in snow like this, it’s easy to imagine I’ve slipped out of the world for humans, into some frozen place beyond.

  White blankets everything: the skeletal trees hovering over headstones, the dimly lit houses beyond the wrought iron fence. A wide stretch of endless cloud forms a gray dome overhead, so low in the sky that it’s stifling.

  I shiver as I pass through the cemetery gates, boots crunching with each step. During the long winters in Buffalo, the sun can be gone for weeks at a time. Days blend together like soldiers marching past, and everything is subdued, muted. Without real sunlight to break apart the shades of gray, it’s easy to imagine I’m a ghost. It’s easy to wander through the cemetery on my way to school and feel a kinship with the dead.

  But one of my kin does rest here, in this cemetery. And I suppose, someday, I will too.

  I brush the snow off of my mother’s headstone and sit for a while, pretending. Remembering.

  How’s school, Hun?

  “Terrible, Mom. You know that,” I mutter. My voice sounds alien and flat, muffled by the freshly fallen snow.

  It’s been almost three years, but I can still imagine my mother’s worried frown.

  I sigh into the morning cold and a puff of white escapes me. I didn’t come here to complain about high school. I didn’t even come here to mourn my mother’s death. There have been other things on my mind lately.

  I stare at the snow and try to imagine her face as I speak to her, but I have no idea how Karanina would react to this if she were still alive. “Do you remember when you were sick?” I whisper, mouth suddenly dry. “When…the tumor…put so much pressure on your brain, you started seeing things?”

  Yes.

  The word comes quick to my mind, but I hesitate, pull back from my imagination and scold myself for this ridiculous game. I’m seventeen years old—too old to be entertaining fantasies, to play inside my head in some imaginary world where the dead speak to me.

  The dead speak to us all the time, my mother had said when she was alive, lighting a votive beneath her own mother’s portrait: a lanky woman in embroidered skirts, with a patchwork scarf restraining thick, red hair that fell to the middle of her back—the same hair my mother had inherited, and now me. Some of us hear them more clearly than others, but we all hear them. More often than not, though, we mistake their voices for our own.

  I close my eyes and place my hand beside me, on top of the frozen headstone. My fingers curl around the polished granite, feel along the engraved border where sparse flowers entwine in an elegant tangle. I hold on to the memory for as long as I can, but my grip is too tight, and it slips through my fingers.

  Ana, my mother seems to say, and I feel it like a hum inside my chest.

  I open my eyes and realize my fingers have pressed too hard and for too long against the engravings on the headstone, and I pry them loose, sticking my hands into my pockets, remembering why I’ve come.

  “I’m seeing things, too.”

  The sound of my admission sinks into the frozen earth beneath my feet, as if I have never uttered it aloud. But I did. I have. And now it’s real.

  So you are.

  It’s not the response I would have expected from my mother, but it comes with the quick confidence of the dead, who no longer have need for dramatic pauses. I imagine the figures I’ve seen on gray winter nights, the shadows lurking within shadows, eyes shining at me like gleaming twin blades.

  “Did you see them, too?”

  Silence.

  Fresh snowflakes have begun to fall, catching on my lashes, melting on my cheeks like tears.

  I look down at my feet, heart stammering. The snow shimmers on the ground, and I imagine the struggling spring grass underneath—the dirt beneath that—and somewhere deep below that, a coffin, a corpse, my mother…

  But no. My mother is not down there. Down there is a body, a collection of cells, decomposing, returning to the earth, nurturing flowers and trees and weeds and worms and life.

  I shift off of the headstone and lower my knees to the snow, staring at the granite slab, the marker for the place where my mother’s body lies. I touch its polished surface with my palm, and whisper: “Can you hear me?” But the stone doesn’t respond. Nothing in the cemetery responds.

  And yet I can’t shrug the feeling that I’m not really alone.

  “I keep trying to remember the stories you used to tell me when I was little,” I admit with a tremble in my voice, fingers tracing the frozen lines that delineate my mother’s name from stone. “About how demons used to slip into our world and try to capture humans, and how the angels sent soldiers to protect us. Was that how it went? Because…if what I’m seeing are really those same demons, the Sura you told me about… maybe those stories can tell me how to make them go away.” I frown, tucking my fingers back into the warmth of my coat sleeves, crossing my arms over my chest. “I guess, maybe, it’s you who I think would have the answers. But you’re gone. And I have so many questions.”

  I swallow the hollow feeling in my gut, the buzzing in my veins that has been ever-present of late, as if I’m perpetually rounding a corner, and will never be adequately prepared for what I’m about to see.

  “I told Kyla when it first started happening, but she doesn’t know any more than I do. I—I haven’t told Dad. I’m afraid he’ll think I’ve finally lost my mind.” I laugh, but it sounds so sad that I clear my throat and pretend it never happened. “I tried to track down members of your clan, but there’s no trace of them. Because, the thing is, I’ve been seeing more and more of these…things lately. Shadows. They’re getting closer and closer, and I don’t know what they want. I don’t know what to do, Mom.”

  The wind howls, and I strain to listen. My heart begs for her voice, real or imagined.

  Still, the grave has nothing to say. But beneath my mother’s silence, I hear the unmistakable crunch of boots in snow.

  I whip around to face the sound, praying that it’s not one of the Sura, creeping out in daylight to surprise me on my way to school. What I see instead is a man, watching through the loose curtain of falling snow, just behind the wrought iron fence. Whoever he is, his face is obscured by shadows beneath the hood of his black wool coat. He doesn’t look away when I catch sight of him.

  I want to disappear, to come out from under this s
tranger’s gaze, and yet my heart—my heart—it aches with a cool burn, like suddenly breathing in icy winter air after choking half to death. I clutch the front of my coat, bracing my fist to my heart.

  And then, my heart stops.

  As if on cue, the man’s shoulders hunch. He steadies himself on the fence as his other hand draws up to his sternum, pressing there to smother the pain. The world spins. My blood slows, heart frozen, too busy twisting, pulling, aching. It’s not fluttering, not bashful or sweet—it’s a messy, visceral kind of feeling, like a hand reaching inside of my chest cavity, up behind the bones and ligaments, a slippery grip on my heart. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t even call for help—

  And then it’s over. My heart beats, solid, strong. Normal.

  But I can feel that I am changed.

  I look up at the man again, breath short, fists clutching my jacket and pressing against my chest. The world is so calm, the snow so soft and silent as it falls, that it seems to deny what’s just happened to us. And the man, he’s still watching me, reaching to pull back his hood—

  But I can’t. If I see him, then he has a face—he’ll be real—too real. I can’t. I’m not ready. Whatever has passed between us is too intimate for me to process just yet—too intimate for me to accept it was shared with a total stranger.

  Instead, I jump to my feet and run across the cemetery to the gates, to my car, away from my mother’s silent grave and the man without a face, who has wound his way around my heart, whether I like it, or he likes it, or not.

  — 2 —

  By my second period study hall, the snow has stopped falling, but the wind is still thrashing, summoning drifts that are taller than I am, high against the windows. Kyla and I grab breakfast in the cafeteria; as usual, she sprinkles way too much cinnamon sugar on her toast and I burn my tongue on hot black coffee. We sit down at an unclaimed table to watch the wind form an unseasonal winterscape outside the window.

  We have a few minutes before Kyla’s senior class friends will come in, late, and try to claim her as one of their friends, instead of mine—as if she can’t be both—as if she wasn’t mine first, before she skipped eighth grade.

  “I know we say this every year,” Kyla says. “But I cannot believe it’s snowing on the first day of spring.”

  I nod absent-mindedly, rotating the styrofoam cup in my hands, debating whether I should tell her about the man in the cemetery, or if I imagined the whole thing? In retrospect, the whole event seems impossible. Ludicrous. Imagined.

  “I know. When is global warming going to kick in around here?” I try smiling a little, hoping she won’t see how distracted I am.

  When she hesitates, I’m almost certain it didn’t work—but it turns out Kyla has her mind on other things. “So…are you going to the spring formal?” she asks, twisting a bleached-blonde dreadlock between her fingers as she speaks.

  “I thought you had a date,” I tease, a crooked smile slipping out.

  “Ha ha. Yes, I do. Vanessa and I already have our corsages ordered.” She beams. “But are you going?” Her cool voice belies the hope in her dark eyes.

  My heart twists itself into knots. I look around, as if I’m subconsciously searching for an escape route, and sigh. “I—I don’t think so, Ky.”

  Kyla bites her lip, and I know she’s going to argue with me about it. But there are two reasons why I never go to school dances anymore, and Kyla, as my best friend since diapers, knows them: one, I hate shopping for dresses because I’m freakishly tall, and two, I was at the homecoming dance when I found out the cancer ravaging my mother’s brain had finally won.

  I know it’s stupid, but any time I think about being at a school dance I can’t help but also think of those paralyzing moments in the same heartbeat: the unreality, the too-reality, the gut-punch certainty of knowing how powerless I really am. My mother had just gone into hospice care a few days earlier—I had visited her the night before the dance. She had insisted, between the waves of delirium and fantastic hallucinations, that I go to the dance. That she would still be there. That there was more time.

  “It’s my senior year, A,” Kyla says finally, crossing her arms. “You promised you would go to some of the dances with me. I miss having an accomplice at these things. School dances are lame without you. And besides.” She frowns. “I don’t think your mother would approve of you avoiding something just because you associate it with her death.” Her frown becomes a pout.

  I stare at her, at her red-brown eyes, and her badass dreads, and her enviable glowing bronze skin. If I was one of the sadly mistaken men at our school, just the pout of her lips would be enough to have me wrapped around Kyla’s finger. But I’m not, and I’m fairly certain I’m straight as an arrow, so Kyla’s exquisite Indian beauty has no real effect on me, other than making me sometimes envious. Still, it’s Kyla—the only girl in the world with the right to say what she has just said to me.

  And besides, she’s right.

  “Okay,” I agree. “I’ll go.”

  Her eyes light up. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Good. I’m gonna find you a date.”

  I laugh, despite myself. “Ky, the dance isn’t for another month. I’ve got plenty of time to find a date before I need to call in reinforcements.”

  “Girl, you haven’t been on a date since last spring. You’re in no shape to find a date on your own.”

  I could point out to her that I haven’t wanted to date since last spring, but she would only use that as a launching point to tell me to come out of my shell. “So, just because I haven’t felt the need lately to validate my existence by attaching a boy to my arm, I’m not capable of finding myself a date for the dance?”

  “Yes.” Kyla’s brow furrows. “And why is that? You were picking up guys left and right when you worked at that music shop last summer, and then—poof—nothing. What’s up?”

  “Left and right? I had like three dates.” I chuckle, and shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe since my last growth spurt put me past five-foot-twelve I can’t find a guy that I don’t have to bend down for in order to get a kiss goodnight. Or maybe I’m just taking things more seriously. And nothing is less serious than dating in high school.”

  “You know, sometimes your whole wise-beyond-your-years thing just isn’t that fun,” Kyla points out, rolling her eyes.

  “Tell me about it.” I sip my coffee.

  “Well, you’d better rustle up a date—I don’t want you using the lack of one as an excuse not to go. Do whatever you have to—cast a spell, or wear flats, or watch the boy’s basketball team practice. They’re a tall bunch—”

  “Ky, don’t worry about it. Date or not, I’m going. And I’d rather go stag with you and Vanessa than with anyone from the basketball team. Anyone from this whole school, really.”

  She rolls her eyes again, and then an idea lights up her eyes. “Hey, have you seen the fresh meat? I saw him registering in the main office this morning. Andy’s going to be showing him around school tomorrow. I think he’s foreign, I’m not sure, he kind of has an accent. Also, he’s taaaall.”

  I shake my head, reading her mind. “No, and I’m not going to ask him to go to the stupid dance with me, either.”

  “I thought you wanted to meet someone new!”

  “Yeah, but I’m not going to latch onto the first new guy I see!” I laugh.

  “Well, you have to act fast. Fresh meat gets eaten up pretty quickly around here.”

  “Listen, maybe in your world it’s as simple as going after what you want and taking it, but I will never be even half as confident or as outgoing as you are.” I laugh again. “No matter how much you push me out of my shell. You might as well accept that.”

  Kyla sighs. “I love you for exactly who you are, A, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you be anything less than the most awesome version of you.” She smiles at me, mischievous.

  I wonder what her version of me looks like, and smile back.
<
br />   — 3 —

  Third period, English. I manage to get participation points by joining in on a discussion about a book I haven’t read yet. It’s a debate about the idea of fate—something I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about the past few years.

  When I’m called on to give my opinion, I argue against the idea of it. “If a thing exists then it can be observed—maybe by humans, maybe by machines, but by something, somehow, even if we haven’t done it yet. So if the future is written, it can be read. That means it can be predicted. If it’s predictable, it can be changed. So then it’s not really set in stone.”

  “Is that what you’re doing with your tarot cards all day? Changing the future?” asks Andy Pavlovic, Kyla’s senior friend and president of the student council. He seems genuinely curious, but I don’t trust him. No one has ever brought up my tarot cards without trying to mock me.

  Mrs. Quince looks at me with eyebrows raised, eager for my response.

  I swallow my instinct to recoil from the attention. “Tarot doesn’t predict the future. It’s a system of images—archetypes—that let you tap into elements of the human psyche that sometimes escape our conscious minds. They provide insight into situations and problems and they give us possible outcomes, if we continue on a certain path or choose another. But they don’t predict the future.”

  “Of course they don’t,” Andy laughs. “They’re just fancy playing cards. But can you predict the future, using them?”

  I swallow, feeling the oppressive pressure of every single eyeball in that classroom. The humming in my veins returns, making me feel like something has caught fire deep in my bones. My palms grow damp, but I muster a crooked grin. “Why, are you interested in having your fortune told?”

  He wiggles his eyebrows. “Maybe.”

  The other kids laugh, and I’m not sure if they’re laughing with him or at me.