Phoenix and Ashes

Eleanor marched straight up to the foot of her throne, stood before the embodiment of the card, hands on her hips, and scowled. "I don't like you," she announced.

Her only answer for a moment was a slow, lazy smile. "And why would that be, child?" the Empress purred.

"Because you're like her," Eleanor replied, allowing her bitterness to show. "Everything is a weapon or a tool to get what she wants with her. Things that should just be, she has to twist and shape and use. Beauty, wit—" she blushed "—the—the sensual things. They're all weapons to get power! And that's what she's teaching her daughters. There's never enough power over people for her!"

"Ah, now you see," the Empress replied, with a knowing nod. "I am power, little Fool, I am a ruler. Above and before all else, I am a ruler, and everything that comes into my hand is, indeed, to be used, whether my aspect is reversed or proper. And if you are to pass, little Fool, you must acknowledge that you understand what power is, and does, not just to those around you, but to you, yourself, inside."

Gritting her teeth, Eleanor acknowledged that with a curt nod. "Power can be open or hidden, but that doesn't stop it from affecting you." Eleanor agreed angrily. "In fact, the power that is probably the strongest is the power that no one sees or realizes is there. And when you control that sort of power, you can control anything else you wish to."

"And that one day, if you master your magic, you, too, will be the Empress—" the card persisted. "And you, too, will know that all that comes into your hand will be a tool."

"But I can choose not to use the tools!" Eleanor all but shouted. "I can choose not to manipulate!"

"And that, too, is manipulation. Life is manipulation." The Empress smiled her slow, sweet smile. "Think, pretty Fool. You must manipulate or be manipulated, and choosing not to choose is still a choice."

"Then I choose to do as little as I may!" she responded. "Only enough to keep others from manipulating me!"

The Empress nodded. "What else am I? Remember, that what is within me is within you." When Eleanor was not forthcoming, she laughed. "Oh come now. That beautiful man? You would have to be stone, which I know you are not."

As the Empress's words stung and dug at her, Eleanor had felt herself blushing more and more hotly, and when the woman finished her sentence, it was with fury and bitterness that she allowed her temper to burst out.

"Yes, curse you!" she cried. "I do fancy him, and I have as much chance of being more than a kind of pet or mascot to him as I have of flying his aeroplane!"

She waited, hot with embarrassment and anger, daring the Empress to say anything—

"I am power," the woman said, with a secret little smile. "There are many sorts of power."

"Like Lilith's?" Eleanor countered. "Using your body to get what you want?"

"Ah, now, you have your mythology mixed." The Empress laughed. "Lilith's offense was that she would not obey Adam, for she was created his equal, from the same clay and on the same day as he. For that she was banished, and God created subservient Eve from Adam's own flesh. Or so," she finished, with a chuckle, "the myth would tell us. And yes, there is power to be found in providing something that someone wants, isn't there? And if someone wants something very badly, it becomes a weapon in your hand."

"It's a weapon I'd be ashamed to us," Eleanor replied, and then wondered—ashamed because it's underhanded, or because I'm afraid?

"And if you could have the way of using the weapons of the senses as your stepmother does?" the Empress persisted. "If you knew by using them, you could have the young man for yourself, taking him away from your stepsisters?"

She lifted her chin and stared. "I wouldn't," she said shortly—but then, flushed again, and dropped her chin, and with a sick feeling, admitted, "Or—maybe I would. But I wouldn't do it to make him my slave the way she would!"

"Ah!"The Empress stood up, a beatific smile on her face taking the place of the too-knowing expression. "There you are, my dear! That is what you needed to see! That it is how we use the tools we are given, not the tools themselves, nor even the fact that we use them, that makes all the difference. Passion reversed is manipulation that leads to slavery. Passion proper is freedom. But both are passion—"

She took one blood-red rose from the bouquet she held, and extended it to Eleanor. "I am as much Passion—Fire—as I am the Fertility of Earth," the Empress continued. "It does not do to forget that. Pass on, little Fool and seek the next stage of your growing."

Eleanor took the rose, and the moment she did so, the landscape around her changed.

She was no longer in a garden.

Instead, she was on a vast and empty plain. In the distance were mountains; dividing the mountains from the plain was a powerful, swiftly-moving river.