The tarot cards whisper over each other in his hands as he shuffles. He knows the design on the back by heart, could recognize its vines and swirls and birds anywhere. In the strange newness surrounding him, they’re a constant.
He picks a card off the top of the deck. Two of swords: a decision. Another. Five of wands: challenges. Another. The fool: a dreamer, new beginnings.
He’s eighteen, took his first plane east yesterday, and now for the first time he’s on a train, covered in enchantments to hide his eyes, shuffling his tarot deck nervously. The train rumbles through cities and along highways. It’s headed toward his future, away from everything he knows. His bright blue eyes glance around the train car, out the window, back to the other passengers, never resting long. He meets the gaze of a businessman sitting across the aisle. The boy seems normal, except for the way that it’s hard to keep your eyes on him for long. Half an hour later, when the businessman gets off the train, he won’t be able to describe the boy’s face if he’s asked.
Suddenly the boy gets up, walking quickly to the bathroom at the end of the car. He knocks, then opens the door and shuts himself inside. He looks at himself in the mirror and pushes up his sleeves to pass his palms over his skin. In the path of his hands, the don’t-see-me spells slough off like snake skin. Beneath them are eyes, all over his skin. An eye in the center of his forehead, eyes ringing his neck like strange jewelry, eyes staring out of his torso when he pulls his shirt up as if making sure they’re still there. He stares at his reflection with all his eyes, then takes a deep breath and relaxes. He’s been wearing the glamours all day, carefully cast and recast in bathrooms like this.
He uses the toilet and then washes his hands. For a few minutes, he stands in the grimy, cramped bathroom, making eye contact with himself in the mirror, carefully stilling his mind.
One more deep breath, and he runs his hands over his skin again, murmuring the incantation, eyes disappearing under his touch. He’s putting himself back together, pulling his sweatshirt down to cover his hips and its sleeves down to cover his hands, when someone bangs on the door. He flinches hard, checks one more time in the mirror, and leaves.
It’s dusk when the train reaches his destination. He stands on the brightly lit platform staring at transit system maps, trying to connect street names and train lines with the address on the slip of paper in his hand. Someone bumps into him, and he practically jumps away.
He finds a bus, mostly full of tired-looking people who barely look twice at him. The bus lets him off at the closest cross street he could find, and he starts walking, halfway sure he knows where he’s going.
Finally, there it is: a storefront with plants in the windows, and above, a window with small neon signs saying TAROT READINGS. PSYCHIC. Beside the plant-filled window is a door with the address and “M. Silver & co, Psychics” written on it in curling gold letters. He raises a hand to knock and suddenly the door swings open.
A woman wearing slouchy harem pants and big hoop earrings answers the door. Her skin is dark brown, and her eyebrows and hair are colored bright purple.
“Well, come in. You’re here for a fortune?” She’s brisk, but not unkind.
“Uh no, I-,” he starts, but she’s already walking up the stairs.
She leads the way up the stairs, old wood creaking under her feet, through a short corridor, and into a large room that smells of incense, herbs, and candles burning. There’s a table and some comfortable, worn-looking armchairs. The rug on the wood floor is covered in an intricate design.
Someone clears their throat beside him. The woman is still standing there. She looks trustable, but he’s not sure.
He clears his throat, and says nervously, “My name is Will. I’m not here for a fortune. Elena sent me from the School, she said to talk to Maggie. I’m psychic, and I wanted to see if I could apprentice here, kind of.”
She looks skeptical. “I’m Maggie.”
He nods. She looks at him, considering, then nods.
“Alright.” She sits at the table, motions him to the seat across from her, and asks, “you have your own cards or you need to borrow some?”
He pulls out his deck- his favorite, the Aquarian deck his mom got him for his 13th birthday- and she looks faintly approving.
She calls to the other room. “Stella! C’mere!”
Stella comes in and the first thing Will notices about her is her Afro, hovering cloud-like on her head. She sits down at the table, and Maggie does introductions. Then she asks Stella if Will can read for her.
Stella says sure, and Will lays out cards. It starts as a simple spread, three cards that he lays out and explains. He looks at maggie and she makes a small gesture like “go on.” So he keeps laying cards, interpreting as he goes- cards to represent her mom (distant), maggie (like a sister), how she has trouble curbing her impulses. The past, the future. Her conflicts, her strengths.
Cards are scattered across the table, and Stella starts to look uncomfortably like what he’s saying is true. He stops, looks at Maggie, and she nods.
“You can stay here, figure out what’s going on. We need some help in the plant shop downstairs anyway. Do you know herbs?”
A grin spreads across his face. For a second, in his mind’s eyes he sees his mother, showing him plants. “Honey, this is clover. This is yarrow. This is basil. And you know what this is?”
Little Will shakes his head.
“It’s you! It’s Sweet William, and you’re my sweet William. That’s the flower I named you for.”
He shakes himself out of the memory, still smiling, and says, “Yeah. I know some.”
Maggie gives him a place to sleep- it’s basically a couch in an alcove, but it works- and tries to give him a crash course in the geography and history of the city. He tries to pay attention, but he can’t fit it all together in his mind, so Maggie finally pushes him out the door with a map, his phone, and instructions to call if he gets lost.
He finds a subway station entrance and heads down the stairs. At the turnstiles, he stops, confused. They all take cards, and he doesn’t have one. He has maybe three dollars in his pocket. A man bumps into him, not expecting an obstacle. The man looks up, huffs in an annoyed fashion, and shoves his way past.
Will finds the turnstiles take dollars as well, and eventually gets onto a train. The train car is stuffed full of people, and Will stands in the packed aisle, holding onto a strap to stay balanced. Somebody bumps into him from behind, pushing a sharp elbow right into one of the eyes on his back.
“Ow! My eye!” It’s reflexive and it falls out of his mouth, no thought to secrecy. A second later, he realizes what he said and ducks his head, blushing. He does a mental check that his glamors are all in place, and they are. It’s just my stupid mouth that isn’t used to secrecy, he thinks angrily. Come on, four school years among freaks like you and you forget that you ever had to hide?
The man beside him gives him an odd look when they make eye contact, but aside from that Will can see no reaction from the people around him. It’s like they didn’t even hear him. It’s like he’s barely even here.
He exits the subway with the rush of people at the next stop and takes the stairs up. On the street level, there are cars passing and shops open and people walking on the sidewalk. Will has no idea where he is. He stands on the edge of the sidewalk, out of people’s way, and thinks about what to do. No one looks twice at him. No one says anything. At this rate, he’d even welcome a greeting from a door-to-door evangelist, but no helpful duo of Mormon men in white button downs on bicycles appears. People were a lot more friendly back home.
He gets back on the subway, finds his way back to Maggie’s. When she asks how it went, he laughs and says navigation might take some practice.
—–
Will’s first reading is for a mousy-looking older woman who sits at the reading table clutching the top of her purse with both hands. Will worries she’s going to ask about a dead husband, but no: she’s single, and she wants to know how to find what she’s missing. Will has her shuffle and hold the cards, then takes them back and starts laying them out. The cards say she’s lonely. Good with her hands, but she doesn’t have anybody to make things for. For her future, there’s a possibility of friendship. Will tells her these things, but she’s not satisfied.
“So you know about me now. What do you think I should do?” She leans forward in her chair, determined.
Will thinks. “Have you tried finding a knitting group? Or maybe volunteering? There are organizations that make blankets for refugees….”
Something in her shoulders relaxes. “Do you think…?”
“Of course. You need a community. You need something to do.” Will tries to add confidence he’s not sure he feels. What if he’s doing this wrong?
Maggie sits at the table but doesn’t talk during the reading, and after Will sees the lady to the door he returns to the table. “So did I do alright?”
She smiles. “Sometimes they want advice, you know? Not just their reading, they want a person to help with their problems. It can be hard to tell what they want. You did well.”
The plant shop, of course, was easy from the start. Once he figures out how Maggie organizes things, he can help people find anything. Some of them want specialty herbs, some want plants with magic uses, and some just want a potted geranium to brighten a room. He has shifts in the plant shop with Maggie most days, though she often leaves for readings. He helps with readings, and starts to give them on his own without Maggie there. And in the evenings, he wanders. He heads out into the city, spends days walking through downtown, and figures out the subway system. One night, he walks past a tattoo shop tucked beside an alley, and decides on an impulse to get his ears pierced. It’s a rash decision, but it costs about $20 and he likes the glitter of the small square rhinestone studs. It’s something: something to say, I am here. I’m not just part of the scenery.
But most importantly, he finds every park within a two mile radius of Maggie’s shop. There’s no real forests like the ones back home, but it’ll do. His favorite park is more overgrown, with a couple of bridges covered in graffiti over shallow, mostly dry creekbeds.
There’s nobody here in the depths of the park; but he’s here, eyes staring out of a hedge. He’s invisible. All he can do is watch. There are animals scurrying around: rabbits, squirrels, stray cats. No one’s here, but he still hides. He thinks maybe he’ll hide forever. The world has even more eyes than he does, and they have cameras, which are scarier.
He wants to go home. There’s nowhere here to wander in cutoff shorts and nothing else, not even glamors, like he did at home. School was full of strangers but at least they were trustworthy, all strange like him. He doesn’t know who to trust in this cold city full of skyscrapers. But he has a sense that somewhere, there’s someone like him. There’s a small nudge in the back of his mind that says, “there’s someone out there. Find them.” In his line of work, this isn’t something he’ll just dismiss.
So it’s time to take a risk. This would be easier with Craigslist or something, but internet magic has never been his strong suit. So he researches, scouts areas, buys supplies, and begins. On walls and bridges in parks and quiet streets, he paints. Symbols, arrows, and sigils: all calls to anyone who recognizes them. He signs them with a simple eye symbol and a W.
The messages aren’t the important part. What’s important is that the paint is imbued with his magic, and he hopes someone will answer his call. For weeks, he goes out at night to paint, then repaint after the sandblasters come through. He always looks for replies, for someone who sees him. His messages get more and more elaborate, turning into self-portraits of a sort. He paints clouds of eyes floating above scrying bowls of still water; tarot cards showing the Fool covered in blue eyes or Death eyes closed or the Lovers staring into each others’ eyes; Janus with one eye closed and one eye open.
He’s not sure who he’s waiting for, or what he wants them to say back. But he’s been having premonitions. There’s somebody out there, somebody who feels young and magical and overwhelmed like him.
One night, he’s out at the Ninth Street bridge, tired and alone. All he paints is a single eye. He’s adding white highlights to the pupil, finishing up, when a bird appears on top of the guardrail. It stares at him suspiciously. He nods to it, and goes back to work.
“Hey.” Its voice is low, but more human than croak.
“Hey,” he replies cautiously.
The bird looks at him, still suspicious. “Who are you?”
“I’m Will.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m painting.”
“Where do you live?”
He names the neighborhood around Maggie’s shop. The raven nods, pauses.
“Why are you laying magic in your paint?”
“Because I want to be seen.”
“By who?”
“Others like me.”
“Like what?”
“Magic.”
“Prove it.”
He pushes his sleeve up and passes a hand over his arm, removing the glamors. The bird startles, and as fast as breathing it shifts bird-cat-dog-bird-girl. She’s thin and dark-haired, wearing an olive-colored jacket covered in patches. She sits on the bridge, eyes wide, staring at him. He stares back, mildly astonished.
The girl recovers from her shock first. “My name is Rowan. I, uh, I gotta go.” She turns into the raven again and quickly disappears into the sky.
Will watches her go, wide-eyed. He stares at the sky for a minute or so, then turns back to his painting and signs it W before stuffing his paint cans in his backpack and heading to the subway station to get back to Maggie’s.
A week later, he sees her again, in Maggie’s neighborhood. She’s with a grungy-looking guy, and she approaches Will before he can decide if it’s a good idea to say hi or not.
“Hey.” She pauses. “I’m- sorry, I was… abrupt, last time. This is Xavier. Are you going somewhere?”
“I was just going to the library. You guys can come along, I mean, if you want to,” Will says nervously.
The subway ride is a little awkward. It’s crowded and Will has no idea what to say. (“Hi, you’re magical and I’m magical, let’s make a club”? Everyone in the subway car will think he’s on drugs.)
When they get off the subway near the library, Will finally has something to say. “So what’s it like being a raven?”
Rowan laughs at him. “It’s pretty great. You don’t have to worry about anything when you’re a two-pound ball of feathers.”
“Ro, you’re an omen of death whenever you’re a bird. You make other people worry,” Xavier says wryly.
Rowan pouts exaggeratedly. “Come on, I’m not scary. Am I scary, Will?”
“Ha, a little bit. You just kind of swoop in.”
Rowan and Xavier stay the whole time that Will is at the library, making jokes and smalltalk. He feels like maybe, just maybe, they could become his friends.
—–
The phone rings loud in Maggie’s ear, and then someone picks up. “Hello? You’ve reached Siobhan or other people who hang around here, who do you want?”
“Hey, Siobhan,” she says into the phone.
“Oh, hey Mags. How’s the new kid doing?”
“He… He’s alright. He’s so young, but he Sees so well. He cooks and he uses herbs I hadn’t even heard of. And he wears glamors all the time. I’m not sure what he’s hiding. I gave him his cut of profits from his first month here, and he went and got his ears pierced at some shady shop-”
Speak of the devil. Will swings around the corner. “It wasn’t that shady!”
Maggie covers the receiver. “Hey, Will.”
“Sorry to eavesdrop, but you’re talking about me, so…..” He pauses. “You wanna know what I’m hiding?” He sounds angry, or at least very determined.
“Will, you don’t have to tell me things if you don’t want to.”
He ignores her, staring to the left of her face. He brushes his shaggy bangs off his forehead, and she sees something on his skin as they fall back into place.
“Will? What’s-”
He runs his hands over his arms, and where his palms pass, eyes appear, blue and blinking. He looks at her with all his eyes. It’s quite a lot of eye contact.
There’s a long pause.
“Siobhan, I will call you back,” Maggie says into the phone. She hangs up. “So I guess I’m not surprised you See so well, with all these.”
“Yeah, it comes with the territory.” He smiles. “I’ve got ‘em mostly all over, but you’ll have to take my word for it.”
She nods. “Does Stella know? Does anybody?”
He lets out a short bark of laughter. “Nobody knows here. I’ve been hiding from normal people since I was born. I spent a lot of time alone in the woods as a kid. It was the only time I didn’t have to cover up. At school I was safe, but that couldn’t last.”
“You’re as safe here as I can make it. You don’t have to wear glamors all the time. Stella can handle it.”
He nods. “Thanks for…. being so calm, I guess.”
“Kid, do you think I’ve never seen somebody strange? In my line of work? Don’t worry about it,” she says wryly.
The next day, he’s looking over the herb section for plants that aren’t doing well when Maggie appears beside him. “Do you want to read for people without your glamors on?”
He looks at her incredulously. As far as he’s concerned, he might as well read for someone while he’s naked. “Uh, I don’t know…”
“It’s just a thought. Having a third eye could give you psychic cred. They don’t need to know you also have a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth….”
“I’ll think about it, Maggie.”
That afternoon, he’s minding his own business, reading a book at the store counter when she walks past and says, “I mean, who would believe an old lady who said her psychic had a third eye?”
He laughs, and she continues walking toward the back of the store.
“Fine, you’ve made your point,” he calls after her. “I’ll think about it.” What would it be like to read for someone who could see all your eyes? Would they take your words with more weight? Would they pay attention to anything but your eyes? Can’t say “my eyes are up here” to that, can you?….. What if they tell somebody? He shakes himself out of the spiral of thoughts and turns back to his book until his shift is over.
In the evening, over supper, he waits for a lull in the conversation and says, “I think I’d like to read for someone without my glamors.”
Maggie looks at him proudly and softly, and says, “You’ll know who to start with.” That’s true. He will.
The person to start with walks through the door a few days later. He’s an older man, stooped, and he speaks with a faint, smooth Italian accent. Something in Will’s stomach tells him it’s alright. He tells the man to come in, and as he leads the man upstairs, Will takes off his glamors. He turns at the top of the stairs and gestures his guest into the reading room. The man sees all his eyes, and pauses. He reaches out as if to touch the eye in the center of Will’s forehead, then withdraws his hand.
He says quietly, “You are a real one. The eyes, they are beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
They go into the room, and as Will reads the cards and then scrys for the man, he feels full of light. It’s bouncing off his insides, and must be shining out of all his eyes. He pushes up his sleeves, and for once he doesn’t worry that someone will see him. In this room, he is the seer, and he is also seen.
That night, he calls his mom for the first time since leaving the School.
“Hi, mom?”
“Will, honey, how are you? How is the big city?” She sounds excited through her worry.
“The city is… big. I’m making friends, though. I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier.”
“It’s alright. You must have needed time to settle in. How is my grown-up professional psychic doing in his new job?” she teases gently.
“I’m doing well, Mom. I think it’s going to be okay.”