Behind The Mask

Chapter 36

I look up at the big house with the red door in front of me, double checking that I have the correct address.

"Come Albert," I say to the little body on the leach next to me. Like he has been doing since we've found each other, he looks up as if he understands exactly what I am thinking.

Albert falls into the walk right next to me, marching up to the door.

"She'd better like dogs," I mumble as I push the button that rings the bell deep inside the house.

After a few minutes the door opens, showing an elderly woman, brushing back her long blonde hair.

"Brody I presume?" she asks letting me step in. "And this creature over here... He must be your familiar?"

"Uhm... Yes," I answer, not knowing what she means, or rather what else to say.

"Yes, I can feel it," she says, crouching down and stroking his head. "He was a lost soul. He waited for you for a long time. He walked many miles to find your energy."

"I adopted him two days ago. Had him vet checked and everything," I answer, still not quite knowing what else to say.

"I sense it. He was following your energy for weeks before you found him... Or rather, he found you," she says as she gets up from the floor, reaching her hand out to me.

For a moment I can't help comparing her a little bit to my grandmother. All the rings and bangles on her fingers and arms, squeezing them, making them look shorter than what they really are.

"Llaluna," she says as I take her hand. "I thank the Goddess for bringing you to my door today. Merry the meet."

"Nice to meet you," I mumble, but she has already drawn her hand from mine, walking into the house, beckoning for me to follow her into its depths.

I follow her down a long hallway, and then into a room at the right, and my eyes immediately feel like they want to explode, not knowing where to focus.

From the ceiling hangs many hooks, and from all of them are hanging bells, dreamcatchers, and suncatchers, making the room sparkle in the light coming from the window. Through the rainbows of colour that shines against the white washed walls, I can make out a small round table in the center of the room, with crystals and stones of all shapes, colours and sizes packed around it, until it reaches the wall. Right behind the table where Llaluna takes her seat is a statue of a woman, standing tall as a person, dressed in purple robes and a crown with moon phases around her head.

"I see you are admiring our Goddess," she says. "She is here to watch over us, and guide the witches long gone to me, so that I may see your past, present, and future more clearly."

I take a seat, starting to wonder whether it was maybe a mistake coming here, and above that, whether this lady is completely cooked in her head, but I say nothing as I sit down and pick up Albert to sit on my lap. Within a second he has already gotten comfortable and fallen asleep.

"Shuffle," she says as she holds out a deck of cards to me, which I take in my hands, looking at the back of them that seem to be golden symbols against a blue background. "Just shuffle them until you are ready to give them back. The spirit guides will tell you when to stop."

Again I wonder if she is completely insane, and yet I start shuffling the cards which glide from my one hand to the other. I try to clear my mind, wondering if she will eventually tell me to stop shuffling, when I get a shiver down my spine which immediately makes me stop shuffling.

Llaluna looks at me knowingly as she takes the deck of cards from my hands.

"Now, remember that the Tarot is an ancient system, of which many parts are still unknown. The first thing you need to remember is that the future is not an exact science. You do however need to know that the past is the most important part of any reading. The further we look into the past, the farther we can see into the future," she says as she starts drawing cards and packing them in a formation.