The pillars of creation

Wh an easy but flawlessly precise turn of his wrist, Friedrich Gilder lifted a leaf of gold on the fine hairs of his brush and laid it over. The gold, light enough to float on the gentlest breath of air, drew down onto the wet gesso as if by magic. Leaning over his workbench in concentration, Friedrich used a sheep's-wool pad to carefully rub the freshly gilded surface of the small stylized carving of a bird, checking for any flaws.

Outside, the rain occasionally tink-tink-tinked against the window. Though midday, when the prowling clouds passed bearing fits of rain, it darkened as if to dusk.

From the back room where he worked, Friedrich glanced up, looking out through the doorway into the main room, watching the familiar movements of his wife casting her stones over the Grace. Many years ago he had gilded the lines of her Grace, the eight-sided star within a circle within a square within another circle-after she had properly drawn it all out, of course. The Grace would have been useless had he drawn it. A Grace, to be real, had to be drawn by one with the gift.

He enjoyed doing whatever he could to make the things in her life a little more beautiful. She was what made his life beautiful. He thought that her smile had been gilded by the Creator Himself.

Friedrich saw, too, the woman who had ventured to their home for a telling lean forward expectantly, absorbed in watching the fall of her fate.

If they could really see such things, people would not come to Althea for a telling, yet they always watched intently as the stones rolled from his wife's long slender fingers and out across the board upon which was drawn the Grace.

This woman, middle-aged and widowed, was a pleasant sort, and had been to see Althea twice before, but that had been several years back. As he had concentrated on his own work, he'd absently heard her tell Althea about her several grown children who were married and lived close to her, and that her first grandchild was on the way. Now, though, it was the drop of stones, not a child, that held the woman's interest.

"Again?" she asked. It was not a question so much as astonishment. "They did it again."

Althea said nothing. Friedrich burnished the freshly laid gold as he listened to the familiar sounds of his wife gathering up her stones from the board.

"Do they do that, often?" the woman asked, her wide eyes turning from the Grace to Althea's face. Althea didn't answer. The woman rubbed her knuckles so hard that Friedrich thought the skin might come off. "What does it mean?"

"Hush," Althea murmured as she rattled the stones.

Friedrich had never heard his wife be so uncommunicative with a customer. The stones clacking in Althea's loose fist seemed to have an urgency to their bony knock. The woman rubbed her knuckles, awaiting her destiny.

Again, the seven stones rolled out across the board, come to divulge the holy secrets of the fates.

From where he sat, Friedrich couldn't see the stones fall, but he could hear the familiar sound of their uneven shapes rolling across the board. After all these years, he rarely watched Althea practice her profession, that is, watched the stones themselves. He did, though, despite the years, savor watching Althea. As he looked out, seeing the side of her strong jaw, her hair still mostly a golden sweep down past her jaw, falling like sunlight over her shoulder, he smiled.

The woman gasped. "Again!" As if to make the woman's point, thunder in the distance rolled over the house. "Mistress Althea, what could it mean?" Her voice carried the unmistakable timbre of apprehension.

Althea, on her pillow on the floor, leaning on one arm, her withered legs out to the side, used the arm against the floor to straighten herself. She finally looked at the woman.

"It means, Margery, that you are a woman of strong spirit."

"That's one of those two stones? Me? A strong spirit?"

"That's right," Althea confirmed with a nod.

"And the other, then? It can't be good. Not there. It can only mean the worst.»

"I was about to tell you, that the other stone, which follows with each throw, is also a strong spirit. A man of strong spirit."

Margery peered again at the stones on the board. She rubbed her knuckles. "But, but they both.. " She gestured. "They both keep going… out there. To beyond the outer circle. To the underworld." Her troubled eyes searched Althea's face.

Althea pulled on her knees, drawing her legs before herself to cross them. Though her legs were withered and nearly useless, crossing them before her pillow on the floor helped her sit up straight.

"No, no, my dear. Not at all. Don't you see? This is good. Both strong spirits going through life together, and together ever after. It's the best possible outcome of a telling."

Margery cast another worried look at the board. "Really? Really, Mistress Althea? You think it's good, then, that they keep… doing that?"

"Of course, Margery. Good it is. Two strong spirits joining."