Chapter 26: Ch 20 [Qc]

Wednesday. Leah is beginning to know the names better, having studied the order carefully, though unsure still of the pronunciation.

The third wrestling class went well. Leah feels her discovery of this gym was very fortuitous, given the condition of her body. And how interesting to find a combat style based on the premise that one must not injure one’s opponent! She’d never expected to find a leisure-combat style, with rules based on a point system rather than who survives and who doesn’t. She hopes to bring the concept back, to introduce the sport, if she can find the venue for it back in her own world – or, indeed, a way back to her own world.

On that front, she has made little progress. She has her new library card, to better be able to study this world. However, the library’s section on magic – while a frightening and shocking discovery – quickly turned to laughable disappointment when Leah found the books to be full of moon worship and healing crystals. To be fair, for all she knows crystals may play a role in the creation of healing draughts, though she’d only ever encountered the one, many years ago.

She had found only one book that seemed to be helpful; it was written about the religious practices of an ex-slave population, and how they had been re-interpreted over the years into a sort of magic. If nothing else, she figures, it will broaden her knowledge of this world, and maybe help clarify some issues of its history.

Work has continued its usual pace, with busy late nights and peaceful walks home through the glaring artificial light of the street lamps. Electric, she’d heard someone say. A lot of things seem to be “electric” here. It’s on her list of things to read about.

“Newbie’s taking wrestling classes,” Red says that night, the other woman’s first day at work after the weekend.

“Why?” one of the other girls asks – Amber, Leah thinks, although she’s also realizing that the girls all use fake names while working. She’s busy trying to pull up a pair of horizontally striped stockings and clipping them to a pair of shorts so small they barely count as outerwear.

Leah shrugs. “Trying to build up muscle, seemed like a fun way to do it.”

“Isn’t it pricey as hell?”

“Nothing else to spend money on.”

Amber laughs, then turns to fix her hair into a strict bun. Leah is familiar with this routine; the first half of the night the bun will remain in, but when things start to get active Amber will unleash it mid-dance in a dramatic wave of long, wavy blonde hair.

Leah smothers painful memories of Kimry.

“You don’t go shopping? Go see movies? Play videogames?”

Leah hums noncommittally and continues counting how many bottles of each type they have in stock.

“Well good for you,” another girl puts in – Di’menye? Leah can’t figure out how it would be spelled, but it sounds lovely to her ear. The girl’s stage name is Bri, however. The darkest-skinned girl on staff, but even then not darker than Vivitha at her palest. “I do my dance classes for this job, and if it weren’t for the job I probably wouldn’t be doing them. It makes me feel self-conscious about my chest.” She rubs a hand over her flat front, the tiny contraption on – a push-up bra, Leah has heard it called – doing its best to give the illusion of breasts. Bri sighs and applies a bit more contouring makeup to help boost the illusion.

“Jen, have you seen the pastie tape?” Amber asks

Leah looks up at the almost-familiar name, but Red is the one who answers.

“Sorry, needed some for the costume, here you go,” she says, passing it back. “Think it will stay on through the night?”

Amber looks over the leather vest barely containing Jen’s chest. “Pfft, you’re gonna sweat so much in that thing. You still using that cheap deo?”

“I got an antiperspirant from the brand you recommended, and no joke, I applied it everywhere. I have antiperspirant under my boobs, on my ribs, on my nips…”

The girls laugh and continue to get ready, and Leah, finished her inventory, leaves to go set up the front counter.

The boss is counting up the drawer, shuffling the money into neat piles by colour – by value, Leah has learned, but she is too distracted by the bright colours to think of the math. The boss doesn’t talk with her, focused on the job. The bartender for the evening arrives: Michel, a youngish man in a crisp uniform that clings to his body. That much attention paid to one’s body is a little bit of an effeminate trait, in Leah’s opinion, but she’s grown to understand that there are different gender standards in this world. He gives her a quick smile and hello.

Then, the night is underway. She is running bottles from the storeroom to the front, stacking glasses, cleaning bathrooms, fetching large containers of dish soap up from the underground storage area – a dark labyrinth of stale air and endless boxes, and more than a little intimidating. Its existence is essential, however, for concealing the “backstage” element, as the others put it.

“It needs to look effortless,” is said very often, both of the girls and of the bar itself. Leah can understand somewhat; maintaining the illusion that there is no dirt and sweat in this establishment, only entertainment and enjoyment. It exhausts her less than working with the five, in many ways, and to more or less the same degree as working with the touring troupe. She reflects again on her old riding coach, and how very much he reminds her of the wrestling teacher.

Well, why though? Just because of the language barrier and her accent? She speaks way more Volsti – English, whatever – than he did. Even their teaching methods…she’s so cautious and careful, while he was the one who used to trick me into doing jumps I wasn’t confident about yet, just to prove that I was good enough to do them.

I wonder if maybe I’m just desperate to make connections that aren’t really there.

The day ends, her seventh day working there, and during the cleanup she finds herself well-habituated to things. Even cleaning the bathrooms no longer intimidates her, once she understood the basics of how the tubes and levers all functioned together.

“You ever work at a bar before?” the bartender asks her, as they finish a final wipe-down of the counter, above and below and down to the floor, obsessively neat but easily repetitive.

“First time,” Leah says, scrubbing at dirt scuffs from people’s shoes. “Didn’t expect most of this.”

He laughs. “Nah, it’s never what you think it’s gonna be.”

“You?”

“Hm?”

“Is this the only place you’ve worked?”

“Well, I did my time in fast food, in high school. Did an internship during my cegep, for an accounting firm, but nothing came of it.”

“Accounting?”

“What, can’t see me as an accountant?” He adjusts his bright blue bowtie and sits up a little straighter, then goes back to scrubbing at rings on the bar.

What’s an accountant? “So this is not the job you wanted?”

He shrugs, but his face falls a bit. “It’s fun, more so than I expected. And I really like it. I’ll stay here for a while, probably even after I finish uni, but I am going to be looking for a job in my degree eventually.”

“Good.”

He gives a confused and expectant look.

“It’s easy to get trapped in a job that you need, and forget about the work that you want. I was stuck, once, before. Thought I had to stay there for everyone’s sake. Getting out saved me, literally.”

His expression becomes even more curious. Leah realises he will keep asking, now that she’s given this much, and tries to think of ways to get out of it. Suddenly his eyes widen. “Oh, right!”

“Huh?”

“Being a woman, in the Middle East.”

Huh? “Yes? Yes. Morocco…” She tries to make it sound sad, like she knows what the word means.

“I just figured, ‘cause you’re white…”

Hrnnggggg – nope! Confused again. “What?”

He blanches. “Well – ”

She panics, realizing she might be about to blow her cover, and she clings to the one fact about Morocco she knows that people in this city know. “No, it’s not a colour thing…it’s a gay thing.”

His jaw drops. She watches his expression, hoping Mary was right about this place.

He closes his mouth and goes back to cleaning. “Okay, makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. I mean, there aren’t a lot of women who choose to work the bar in places like this, even though it’s good for business to have women behind the bar, and the only guys they trust enough to work politely alongside the dancers are gay, so I guess a lesbian is…best of both worlds? Does that make sense?”

Leah laughs and shrugs. “I just needed money, and got lucky walking in here.” He joins the laughter. They continue on with tidying for a bit, until Leah pipes up. “You know, Morocco…”

“If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay.”

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“No, I just…Morocco’s in the northwest of Africa. It’s not the Middle East.”

He pauses, then truly laughs at himself, and Leah joins in.

*

At home, she showers and settles in to bed, planning out her next day. Washing clothes. Buying food. Exploring the park. Reading at the library.

She feels helpless. She struggles with the feeling, knowing that there’s nothing she can do. There is no magic in this world, or if there is it is carefully hidden. She is stuck.

She tries to count the days until Jeno’s wedding, when the five will likely be leaving Valerin for good. She brings Kimry’s face to mind, but it blurs – they’d known each other for too short a time, and she’d never been good at faces.

Leah sighs into the pillow, and then sleeps.

*

Leah finishes washing her clothing, in the sink, with the little bottle of soap next to the tap. She wrings them out and spreads them over the counters to dry. There is barely enough space to get it done, but she only wears a few outfits out of the plethora in the closet – most are either too revealing or too garish for her to comfortably wear.

She leaves the apartment, nods politely to the landlady as they pass in the hallway – the landlady avoids eye-contact but nods back – and walks out to the nearby grocery mart.

While Mary had had a point about the bulk store, Leah is too accustomed to foraging fresh food to ever happily subsist on a dried-food diet outside of winter scarcity. This, being the peak of summer, is the time for fresh produce.

True, it is much more expensive, but I have a job here. I feel confident in my budget. She grins to herself goofily. I have a budget! I get to control my own finances! Gods, this is a welcome change.

She buys a bagful of vegetables and fruit, keeping only to the ones she recognises. I’ll be brave and try a papaya or a pear, someday, but at this price I’d better stick to what I know.

Passing back out through the parking area, habituated now to the presence of vehicles, she picks up a newspaper from the ground and reads as she walks to the park. The articles are all in the other language spoken here, but the pictures fascinate her, and the number-games at the end. She never finishes them, as they never provide the rules, but she is interested just looking at the little squares.

The very end has bright boxes with tiny text, stacked in columns. Sometimes she can guess at words she sees frequently – Journalier, for journals? Équipe, for equipment? Appelez, for apples? She can’t know for sure, but she hopes to maybe pick something up from frequent reading.

On the last page of today’s paper is a larger box, pink and orange and hard to read. There are two things about it that catch her eye. One is the address, on the same road as her apartment. The other is the large symbol of a hand, surrounded by beams of light and geometric shapes. It’s the sort of imagery she’s seen in the occult section of the library, and is even vaguely similar to the sort of thing the priests of Nent sometimes do during services. She tries to interpret the writing, but finds no familiar words.

She tears off the page and discards the rest. She walks back to the apartment, quickly dumping the food in the cold box, then continues back out and down the street, watching the numbers slowly ascend. After six long blocks, she finds that the buildings have changed character, from tall and bland faces of solid stone, to shorter, more unique brick structures with out-jutting windows and balconies, metal staircases winding precariously up to their second and third stories.

She finds the correct building address, and sees that the second floor door shares the same hand symbol. She tucks the paper under her arm, and goes up. The door opens at the slightest push, and an oddly echoing and diffused bell sound rings out into the bright interior.

First impressions: Welleslass. Second impressions: Welleslass, as recreated by someone who had only heard about Welleslass. Third impressions: garish.

Some sort of incense is burning, rich and thick in the air. Bright cloths hang from the walls and ceiling, or drape over tables displaying boxes of gemstones and thin metal chains, jars with incense sticks and others with feathers, metal bowls with flower motifs on the inside. A number of large Algic drums with animals painted on the skins and feathers hanging from them hang from one wall, and in the front window is a flock of small hoops with string carefully knotted through the centres to form spider-web patterns, beads twinkling at the corners. A bowed instrument plays hauntingly throughout the store.

“Bonjour, hi.”

Leah turns, and is struck again by an impression of Welleslass. The woman standing before her is older, sixty at least, and has the same southern-Welleslassi look that Kain has, down to the long black braid and the almond eyes.

“Hello,” Leah says, hesitantly, eyes still darting.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” The accent is unfamiliar, but not impossible to parse.

“Um, well, it sounds silly…I mean, it’s…” Leah stumbles and stops. “Have you got anything, books, on…magic?”

“What kind of magic?”

Leah hadn’t expected to be taken seriously. “Um. I’m looking for…recovery. Healing? Understanding.”

The woman laughs. “Aren’t we all, hah.” She waves Leah over to a table near the back. She shows her a variety of items, and instructs her in their various uses: dried herbs, in little paper bags, that seem more suited to seasoning than the supernatural; something or other about “chakras,” without any explanation of what those are; quartz crystals, among others; crystal pendulums on shining chains, that apparently can answer your questions.

“I’d like one of the pendulums,” Leah says, both sincerely and to stop the never-ending descriptions. “And, if you have anything about…memories?”

The woman frowns in thought. “Understanding the past?”

Leah considers. “Yes. I suppose that is a good way of putting it.”

“We could do a reading?” It’s phrased as an offer, but Leah can’t understand. The woman sees her confusion, and gestures to the page tucked under Leah’s arm. “You saw the ad, yes? Palm and tarot readings, divinations to know the future and the past?”

Leah’s eyes widen – this sounds nothing like the magic she knows and has been taught to fear and respect, but at least the woman is speaking with conviction. Also, she recognises the word “divination” as one that the old hedge-wizard used to bandy about to the Valerids during the few meetings he attended, at the beginning.

Leah nods eagerly. “Yes, that.”

“Which one would you like?”

Leah blanks on their names. “The uhh…the second one.”

The woman guides her to a back room, separated by a beaded curtain, and sits her down at a table.

Leah watches in fascination as the woman takes out two sets of cards, one large and one small. She shuffles them one at a time, and puts them in two piles on the little cloth-draped table.

“What sort of reading would you like?” she asks. “A simple one, a romance one, a seven-point reading?”

“A simple one.”

“Full deck, or only the major arcana?”

Leah shakes her head blankly. “Full deck I guess.”

The woman puts aside the smaller stack. She reshuffles the remaining deck, then spreads them in a fan shape over the table. “Pick three.”

Leah picks, and the woman does a few more motions with the cards, setting aside the rest of the pack, arranging the three in sequence.

Leah is still at this point expecting playing cards – acorns, arrows, leaves, and hooks – but instead a vivid picture is revealed on the other side.

7 Swords – Justice – 8 Swords, all right side up. The woman considers them carefully, muttering in an unrecognisable language, then explains them thusly:

“Seven Swords: You were lying, and the lie got too heavy. You thought it was better to be alone where people can’t know your deception. But one can’t just wish one’s problems away, close one’s eyes and pretend they’re gone.

“Justice: Something in your life needs addressing. Use facts to find the solution. Always strive for balance, whatever adjustments may be necessary to achieve it. If there is a lie, come clean about it.

“Eight Swords: There will be upheavals and difficult situations that you will be afraid to conquer, and corners that your own decisions will trap you into. They are not as insurmountable as they look. Very likely, if and when you come clean about the lie, it will not make things immediately better, but in the long run, you will prevail.

“In sum: You ran away from something, and now you’re alone. Something from your past is currently coming to light, and your current priority ought to be coming to terms with it, in a way that is fair to everyone involved. This might make you feel trapped in an uncomfortable situation, without any recourse, but things look darkest before the dawn.”

Leah remains sitting in silence, staring at the cards, trying to process the avalanche of information. “Thank you,” she says finally, awkwardly, “That was very…interesting. Insightful.”

The woman gives her a piece of paper with the cards written down, so that she can take it with her and reflect on it. Leah pays for the reading and the pendant – amethyst, with a fade from purple to clear, on a satiny cord.

She leaves the store and breathes in the city air, uncertain of what she has just been told. Certainly it is different from how she has heard people using divinations; they are usually much more precise and short-term. Unsure whether she just paid for a true magical service – which would be a crime, in some parts of Volst – or was taken in by a swindler – likelier, given her history – she decides not to return to the strange little shop and to give it no further thought.

She heads home to rest for a bit, eats her lunch pensively, reads, and prepares for her next shift at work.

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