Shadows Out of Time

By the end of the reading, everyone had relaxed. I was accepted. I read Starla next. She was the house astrologer. It was a relationship reading, of course. I told her to be on the lookout for a Sagittarius man. I wasn’t surprised when she asked my sign after that. Knowing how Gemini energy sets Virgoan teeth on edge, I told her I was a Triple Gemini. That killed the predatory gleam in her eye. When Starla was called to the floor for a horoscope reading, she didn’t bother coming back to read me in return.

Business was slow until the dinner hour had passed. Soon, customers began trickling in. The hostess took their order on a yellow tablet, marked down the corresponding Zodiacal glyph, and handed the slip to an available reader. Most slips read “Tea.” “Tea-Astrology” combinations were common too. Traditional Tarot was not popular in arch-traditional Kingsport, Massachusetts. But there were a few. I took them all.

My first floor reading was routine. I could tell by looking at the tall brunette that she had come over an infidelity question. I didn’t need to read her cards to know her fears were justified, either.

I broke it to her gently. She took it well. Only one tear. The rest was therapy.

That first night, I relied on my cards and my natural psychic ability. When I took my first tea reading, I intended to use the leaves as props. At Capricorn, a woman in her fifties sat stonily, hardly saying a word as I intoned, “I feel you come to me with a deep concern over one issue.”

Tight-lipped, she nodded. The cagey type. Her demeanor said: Prove to me you’re psychic. Show me that you can read me.

Ignoring the leaves, I rested my eyes on her age-spotted wrist, and focused my mind. I got it instantly. A flash-insight, like a camera shutter clicking.

“There is diabetes in your family,” I said.

“There is,” she admitted.

“But you don’t have it.”

“No.”

“But you are at risk for the disease.”

She leaned forward, her voice softly urgent. “I know I am. What do I do?”

Not being a medical intuitive, I had no idea. People think just because you can pull information out of thin air, you can call up miracles, too. In desperation, my gaze went to the tea leaves. One shaggy clump reminded me of a swimmer. As the image formed, the tiny brown figure seemed to actually…move. It was uncanny. In the past, Tarot card images had mutated before my eyes, but this was different. The little pseudo-figure was actually swimming, in place.

“You need to swim,” I suggested.

“I’ve been told that,” she said. “It’s excellent exercise.”

“Swimming will keep you healthy.”

Her walls dropped. The rest of the reading was a breeze.

Reading after reading, the tea leaves showed me things I never dreamed possible outside of Tarot. Almost alive in their psychic animation, they did all the work for me. With each reading, I found my palms sweating with a growing excitement. I had never been so clairvoyant. I was something more. I was transpsychic. I got exact dates. I could hear the dead whisper in my ear. My confidence grew. Everything I had heard about Kingsport tea was true.

The floor shut down promptly at 9:30. I cashed in my slips, and when no one was looking, palmed a china cup whose leaves still clung to its interior.

That evening in my studio apartment, I brewed water and recycled the leaves. I drank down to the dregs, performed the ritual of the three turns, then looked deep into the cup. I was seeking the secret of Kingsport tea, whose occult powers I had been hearing of from other readers for so long that its promise had drawn me to this quaint coastal town like a dark Siren’s summoning.

I saw the ship again. A three-masted Clipper ship of olden days. It lay at the precise bottom of the cup, perfect as a cameo. As I turned the cup around, searching out associated images, the multiple sails seemed to crack and luff in a wind. Another clump of tea formed a shuddery full moon split by a wisp of cloud. The Blue Moon. I wondered: Could Kingsport tea be a century old? Could they have preserved sufficient quantities of the black stuff for so long that well into the 21st Century they were still drawing on that 19th Century Siamese store?

I was destined to find out. I could feel it in my bones. And deep in my marrow I felt an unaccustomed chill. Maybe it was that chill, or perhaps I so lusted for the secret of Kingsport tea that I wanted to be a part of it, and it a part of me. But I swallowed those bitter dregs whole.

That night, I dreamed of tea Clippers and dark, alien seas. And a blue moon filling with red blood. It dripped down in crimson lunar drops to stain mainsails and jennys, and coat the deck under my soles until my feet slipped as if on wet snow. I was trying to get off, but my feet kept slip-sliding out from under me. I remember screaming that it was my own blood seeping down with the gory moonlight.