Episode 5: A Fool Blooms

ext. THE MOON’S MEADOW

Alice and the Pale Horse still stand at the top of a rounded hill beneath the benevolent Moon.

THE MOON
(kindly)
Now, let us read your Card.

This bears explanation- if you’ll permit it. Every being, as the Moon mentioned before, houses a “Card”. Think of it like a crest, a soul, a heart, a battery or whatever other imagery might best serve you. It is a symbol of power, a visual representation of the current of magical power each of us houses. These cards have been arranged into a deck of 78 separate visualizations- what you would traditionally call the Tarot. These cards are separated by their magnitudes of power into two sections- the Major and the Minor Arcana. The Minor Arcana make up four smaller houses into which they are placed- Swords, Wands, Cups and Pentacles. The Major Arcana stand on their own, for that is the heights of their power. Every one of these cards both major and minor also can appear as “reversed”- when their best qualities are either hidden or distorted, like a conscious and a sub-conscious nature.

Perhaps you’ve seen a practitioner of the tarot and had your own cards read. Often this is a mundane experience- because those who practice such acts of scrying often have but a vague impression to the land of Arcana and true Arcane Energy. But occasionally, a practitioner brushes with the true power of the Tarot and it can leave their clients haken to their very core. The cards have the power to lay a soul bare, to strip pretension and cut to the secrets a soul might otherwise hide. Those who catch a true glimpse of the power of Arcana channeled through the 78 chosen of the Ryder-Waite Order often spend the rest of their life searching for just one more taste of that raw clarity- in vain.

Some say a Card is found through one’s zodiac. Others say numerology. Still others say a card is chosen. For Alice- her Card, about to be revealed- is intuitive. It has no bearing on her date of birth or affinity for a number, nor did she consciously choose it. It simply is what she is- because try as Alice might- no matter how many masks or false crowns she might try on- she can never escape being exactly what she is- the Alice.

And now the Alice is to undergo the most difficult- and beautiful- tarot reading one might imagine.

The kindly lunar mother smiles brightly, her shine intensifying. The yellow rays pour from her face, cutting streaks across the purple sky in transit to Alice. When the beams strike Alice they cut straight through her and for a moment we see a negative of Alice, like an x-ray- dark silhouette and pale bones stricken, extended, strained.

On the surrounding meadow the flowers begin to bloom, their petals not giving way to the traditional, expected colors, but to emblems of swords, wands, cups and pentacles. They glow accordingly, auras of red, blue, green and copper dotting the hill.

Still transfixed in the lunar shaft, Alice looks down to her palms, finding a golden zero (0) etched into each one. For the first time since arriving in this strange land, Alice seems surprised.

The lunar beams cease. Alice falls to her knees, gasping. She has forgotten to breathe.

ALICE
(gasping)
What the hell.

An inhale. Alice’s eyes go wide, the flip to pure black. Her chest juts upward, her back arching with an impossible curve- a shock, her muscles twitch, knot and slack. Alice falls to the grass, her back arching upward, ribs cracking. Her hands dart to her throat, clawing, grasping at an invisible catch, the frantic motions of a magician caught in their own trick. Bulges beneath her thin skin- starting in her palms, rapidly speeding down her arms, up to her shoulders and slowly coursing through her neck, past the quivering trachea, each bulge escaping to the base of the skull with a tender gasp.

Alice’s eyes pass a number of colors- from black to green to yellow back to green. She runs her hands up to her face, her fingers tightly grasping around her mouth, which she wills open. As the lips part a green vine spills out from her open mouth, its stalk quickly shooting heavenward. It rises several feet before stopping. At its summit a white carnation blooms in fast motion

The Pale Horse all this time is stoically watching the spectacle, its own eyes flickering between saucer white and inky black. As they transition to a reflective obsidian, the white carnation reflects off the unblinking mirrors.

THE MOON
My, my…

A vapor rises from the blooming carnation which gives way to a shape- a rectangular outline that forms the classic Ryder-Waite depiction of THE FOOL. The image flickers for a moment- before dissipating entirely.

With the dissipation of the image the carnation withers, and as quickly as the plant blooms it begins to die, petals browning and falling, the great vine stalk receding, pulling itself back within Alice until it has disappeared entirely within her mouth, back into the dark depths of her thraot. Alice’s eyes relinquish their weird color and return to their trademark bloodshot cloudiness. Her face, specifically the tender pockets beneath her eyes, are now populated by even more little red dots- gentle eruptions of protesting blood vessels, fairy kisses left by the trauma of the reading. A fruitless ask from her body that she never, ever do that again.

The plant having returned to the place in her throat where every single panic attack she’s ever experienced starts- Alice inhales sharply, her ribs cracking back into place. She sits up, wiping some sweat from her brow. She looks up at the Moon.

ALICE
See? Royalty. Normal people don’t, uh, sprout flowers or make symbols appear on their hands.

Alice stands, sways a bit. She lets out a loud sigh- a habitual, nervous tick that allows for a rapid exchange of air. Her hand instinctively goes to her neck, two fingers searching for a pulse.

ALICE
(quietly)
I always knew I wasn’t normal.

Alice has a collection of tips and tricks for dealing with anxiety. From jogging in place to manically cleaning her kitchen to checking and counting her pulse, every Anxiety Game begins with the tightening of her throat- the soft and gentle whispers of an unseen strangler- and ends in one of two places- a victorious Alice convincing herself that her own body is a goddamn liar and betrayer never to be trusted- or in a hospital bed, resented for troubling doctors with the phantoms no one can treat.

One such trick Alice has when feeling tension is to simply speak her mind- however inappropriate or strange it might be. As such, this often results in rare and frank moments of truthtelling for Alice- which ironically leads to untold anxiety and guilt moments later, and thus the cycle continues. She often curses the deeply unwise Professional Human who once advised her that some tension in her throat was the result of unspoken thoughts and feelings demanding to be released. There ought to be a law against Professional Humans.

The Pale Horse sighs, turning its back on Alice.

THE PALE HORSE
She's useless.

THE MOON
She's a reversed card. But still a Major Arcana. That's not useless.

THE PALE HORSE
(looking up toward the Moon)
The Tower rejected her. You saw her Card. She's no good to me.

ALICE
HEY. I am right here.

THE MOON
(gently, gazing down toward Alice)
Yes. Right. Explanation time. Take a seat, your highness.

ALICE
(delighted to be acknowledged)
THANK YOU.

Alice takes a seat on the grass, cross-legged. The grass parts for her as she does and the flowers, their colors now muted after the intense display of fealty from the card reading, now bow in deference to Alice.

THE MOON
Where to start? Well, everyone has an energy. An arcana.

A series of symbols wash over the Moon- a pentacle, a cup, a sword and a wand. Around Alice, the flowers of the meadow again let off these symbols in soft, colored vapors.

ALICE
Arcana. Cups. Wands. Swords. And...Pentacles? Different types, all magic. Got it.

THE MOON
More or less. Most people have a Minor Arcana- those cups and swords and such that you see. But some special people have a Major Arcana.

ALICE
Check. I'm major special. Continue.

THE MOON
Yes. Well. You are. And...well…

THE PALE HORSE
You're not.

ALICE
I'm not listening to you. Please continue, Miss Moon. What is my Major Arcana then?

THE MOON
The Fool.

The Moon projects the card's image across her own cratered face.

ALICE
(to the Pale Horse)
See? Royalty. Hey. Wait.

THE PALE HORSE
Not just The Fool. You're a reverse fool.

ALICE
So...I'm...smart, actually?

THE PALE HORSE
No, it means your energy is reversed. Simply put- you're blocked from fully accessing it. Because you're useless. A reversed Major Arcana is more useless than a regular Minor Arcana.

ALICE
(making a spinning motion with her hands)
So I'll just...flip myself around.

THE PALE HORSE
(to the Moon, pleading)
Please explain to The Fool that it doesn't work that way.

THE MOON
Turns do happen. But they're...rare. And you have to gain audience with certain cards-

PALE HORSE
Cards means people, after a fashion.

THE MOON
-for a turn to be worked upon you. A Reversed Card turning Upright is a...rare thing.

ALICE
But it can happen-

THE MOON
It's possible, but-

Alice has made up her mind. She stands up.

ALICE
So where's the Tower? That’s where the turns happen, right? Big important place like that. Has to be it.

MOON
(nonplussed)
Oh, this one?

The Moon's waves give way to a dancing image of the burning Tower. It is the exact image we saw in the preceding scene of the Lost Highway.

ALICE
Yup. That one.

THE MOON
(conspiratorially)
You wouldn’t want to go back there. Nasty place. On fire. So much suffering. And it’s hardly the only place one can obtain a turn of their card. There are safer places to go for that sort of thing. You don’t need to go back to the Tower.

ALICE
Interesting if true.

MOON
You saw it yourself. Why wouldn’t it be true?

ALICE
If it was true- HE-
(points at the Plae Horse)
-wouldn’t have nearly killed me to get there.

The Pale Horse has no reply to this, instead snorting in annoyance.

ALICE
(triumphant)
I’m right.

THE MOON
If you don’t tell her about the Tower, or your obsession, then I will. It’s only fair.

A pause. The Pale Horse is not petulant or even unpleasant, but simply withdrawn and prone to secrets. Its preferred mask is silence, taking to heart the old proverb about a fool who doesn’t speak is thought to be wise. It prefers to let others tell its story- perhaps because secretly, it thrills in hearing of itself in the words of others- a rare moment of true attention and affirmation.

THE PALE HORSE
Do as you will. It makes no difference to me.

.END