Phoenix and Ashes

Seated before her, on a massive, square-built throne, was a man. He was dressed in archaic-looking armor, but it was very rich; gold-chased and engraved. He wore a crown and carried the traditional emblems of rule, the orb and scepter. As he looked down at Eleanor from his throne, she understood why the books called the Emperor a ditticult" card. ...

So she began her trial of the Emperor, by showing her own temper and determination.

"Not tonight, I think!" she impudently announced to that stern face, and turning away, summoned true sleep with a wave of her heavily perfumed rose.

21

June 21, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

"I'M NOT GOING TO BOTHER with trying to teach you anything now," Sarah said, as Eleanor finished recounting her latest dream-conquest, the Tarot card of the Lovers. She had conquered the Emperor far more easily than she had thought she would— but then, he was an easy card to understand. Not an easy card to handle, but easy to understand.

Secular power, intensely masculine, warlike, patriarchal... the embodiment, in a way, of all the traits that men found admirable. And, in the inverse—rigid, bound by tradition, unable to change, territorial— all the things that had turned the war into a disaster. His Element was Fire, a fire so fierce that nothing grew on his plain, so in his way he was as much an embodiment, even in proper position of sterility, as the Empress was of fertility ... a curious pairing.

She hadn't had much difficulty with the Hierophant, either—who was to spirituality what the Emperor was to the secular world. Both ruled by law, by conformity, by order. Both concentrated on the obvious sources of control and power, ignoring the ones within—the male counterparts to the High Priestess and the Empress, with all that this implied. Law, infallibility (presumed or actual), an intolerance for the "heretical" and the rebellious—

It had occurred to Eleanor that the world had been run by men of that stamp for some time now, and look where it had gotten everyone. And it had also occurred to her that both the Emperor and the Hierophant would expect softness and conciliation out of a female, not confrontation. The Emperor, given his Empress, would expect manipulation; the Hierophant would expect submission.

So confrontation was what she had given them. She had stood her ground and told them both the truth about what their traits, taken to extreme, had done to the world—truly conquering the cards instead of merging with them—with their own weapons of order, law, and logic. Unable to face her logic, they had faded away, leaving behind the heady taste of secular and sacred power.

But the Lovers—that was another uncomfortable card. Not the least of which because Eleanor had gone through the Hierophant's rigidly designed, mathematically precise temple to find herself in the garden behind it, and there she discovered she was facing the original—and stark naked—Adam and Eve. It was quite a shock to her senses and her sensibilities. She had never seen anyone else naked before.

Much less a man. She had literally leapt back with a yelp, and averted her eyes from the two figures, who appeared not at all uncomfortable with their nude state. Which was odd—because hadn't the Fruit of the Tree made them ashamed? These two were not at all embarrassed.

And yet, there was nothing remotely sexual about them. The Empress had had more sensuality and erotic attraction, fully clothed, than both of the Lovers put together.

Nevertheless, Eleanor hadn't known where to look, and her face had been flaming as red the roses in the Empress's garden.

She should have known this was coming, after all, she had seen the card in Sarah's deck. But somehow it had come as a complete surprise and shock, and she had been so dumbstruck she hadn't known what to do.

The Archangel of the card had stepped in to save her from dying of embarrassment, shooing the two away. They had gone off to sit under the tree with the serpent in it, to immediately begin to quarrel about who had tempted whom, and whose fault it was that everything had gone wrong.

They sounded like a couple of children, and that was when Eleanor understood why they were so devoid of eroticism. They were children. Children without the innocence of the Fool, for they had already learned how to lay blame, to lie, and quarrel.

The Archangel sighed, and shook his head sadly. It was odd; he looked exactly like the Archangel portrayed on the card—which meant, at least to Eleanor's eyes, he didn't look all that much like an angel at all. More like an androgynous man with wings. There was none of the glow, of the majesty, that she would have thought would be the hallmarks of a real angel.