The oracle earns a healthy day rate by assuring everyone of their strengths and ignoring their weaknesses entirely

Raoul emerges, looking as if he has just been alerted to the presence of a set of magical stairs laid into the far wall.

“What news of your love?” I ask.

“Love!” he says, taking up an ashtray of wine and gazing dreamily at its speckled surface before sipping from it.

The oracle pokes her head out of the bedroom. She has the look of a physician attempting to discern which between me and Penelope might be the most gravely ill. At last she points at me and goes back in.

The heavy curtains have been drawn over the bedroom windows, giving the room a material lushness thick enough to trap and hold the day’s heat and likewise muting its sound. Anything I say will sink into the curtain and stay there until a maid beats at it with her broom and is shocked by the secrets that drop onto the carpet.

The oracle takes a seat on the bed where, once my eyes adjust to the light, I see she has laid out a handful of bird bones and a crystal skull. She extracts feathers from her bag and deposits them in the center, pressing her palms to them. A fanned tarot deck lies facedown on the dresser. I’m half heartened to find that the room is as empty as it was this morning, no visitors beyond the oracle herself. Still, maybe she will see something I don’t.

She gestures for me to join her on the bed, picking a feather from the pile and extending it like an olive branch. I’m grateful she has not experienced my general ignorance on the topic of rituals and the spiritual practice of paganism, which I’ve always talked about in the same way as a woman who has never been to France tilts her head to describe, from postcard memory, its various historic arches.

She takes the feather back, then places the crystal skull in my hand, looking up as if its weight might register in my eyes. We sit together on the bed.

“You are the daughter of the Sun,” she says. “You have been sent to Earth to give great joy to all people, and from this joy will be founded a religion. After many wanderings in the course of time, you will build temples all over the world.”

“That’s flattering,” I say. She’s clearly trying to win me over. “I’m afraid you’ve got old information.”

“My information is ancient, in truth.”

“Thanks anyway. I do have two questions for you, though. In your opinion, what do you think are the chances that the dead are agonized by thoughts from the living? Or that a dark wish made by an entire population could have some physical effect on its object? That’s all I really want to know.”

She pulls me back down onto the bed, taking me gently by the shoulders as if I’ve been talking in my sleep. She traces my collarbone with one of the feathers. “You are the daughter of the Sun.”

“I am the daughter of Joseph Charles Duncan of Oakland, California, and I’m looking for my children. Their spirits were quite young, six and nearly three, they passed just a few months ago, and so may still be near. I was hoping you would have some information about them.”

She frowns at the door.

“Penelope put you up to this, didn’t she? She wants me to go back to work. She is a wicked one. Don’t go, I’m only joking. Sit here with me, I want to hear my fortune.”

The oracle takes up her glass of champagne and downs it, coughing a little. “Salak woman,” she says.

“You could at least read my tarot, you have the cards right here. Come, I have something for you.” Pressing a piece of folded money into her palm yields no further vision, but when I try to take the money back, she tucks it into her waistband.

“All right,” I say, feigning good nature. “You don’t have to say a thing about the children. But before you go, you could at least tell me what you told Raoul.”

She accepts more champagne from the bottle. “I saw the man on a great stage,” she says. She gazes at her crystal skull before kissing its forehead gently and wrapping it in a cloth.

“Did you see his lover? He seemed to be much relieved.”

She places the wrapped skull in a case and latches it. “I saw many lovers attending him in the wings and many more gazing at him from the assembled crowd.”

“But one in particular? With a certain unique appearance perhaps, some special connection between the two of them?”

Leaning over me, she collects the feathers. “I have built everything I have into my current practice,” she says. “Not everyone understands it, I know. Those who are sensitive enough to understand my skill trust that I will give them everything they need.” She wedges the cards into a small leather pouch that seems ill-suited for the purpose. “They would never suggest I contrive more detail than I’ve already provided. Please remember this is a power I have amassed over many years.” A baby cuddling a crystal skull in her bassinet. “Over time, I’ve found that some believe that my vision exists to present them with what they need, a gown tailored to fit. “People don’t see the value in this skill, because it works against what they wish. They would rather I repeat the story they’re already telling themselves. These people might have more luck with an opinionated washwoman, but they come to me.”

I lie down, as this will obviously take a while.

“And yet they continue to come,” she says. “They want the security of celestial affirmation. And so the cycle continues, the disappointment continues, and my true clients keep coming back.”

She takes my wrist, squeezing the vein in a rhythm to match the rhythm of my blood.

“All these temples will be dedicated to Beauty and Joy because you are the daughter of the Sun,” she says.

She leaves me then, in darkness, but I’m not alone for long.

Perhaps they have been hiding behind the curtains this whole time, though it’s unlike them to keep quiet for long. I feel them as surely as my own weight on the bed. Patrick comes close and holds my face in his hands as Deirdre climbs onto me, pressing into my belly as if she could absorb herself into me. They talk, but I can’t understand them, they speak rapid and backwards. They smell of river stone. The bed is heavy with all the food I had ever fed them: toast and potatoes and strawberries, roast meat, chocolates and cheese and boiled eggs. My own warm milk soaks through the quilt and weighs us down.

Around us, a murmuring rises in the well of darkness. I don’t dare look around the room. They loosen my tunic straps and expose my breast. Pawing at me, they nuzzle like pups, their impossibly cold cheeks warming against me. They nurse in icy silence while I stare past the ceiling, through the rafters and roof, until I find myself floating as thin as air above it, daring not to breathe, not to lose them again.