The woman who reads tarot cards

Chapter 1: Discovering the root

China, 2005.

"Is she alive?" The man in the hoodie wondered.

"She delivers no pulse," answered the paramedic with his face long.

"God, she seems too young to go!" A senior citizen in her early 70s with round glass with a brown rim exclaimed bitterly.

I stood on the toe to extend my length and peeked into the panicked crowd. The girl was closed with a cloth, but one can describe the pain of her death from the scattered blood.

I walked away with a sigh when I heard a teen girl whisper to her friend, "Oh! She is the woman from the tarot shop around the corner, isn't she?"

I stopped at this comment with my face flushed off the blood. The wind felt chills suddenly that it almost froze my body fluids. A brisk wind flared the cloth, and I noted the face veiled with hair that only the part below the nose was visible. I felt abandoned: my mind with no thoughts and heart with no emotions. There was a rough triangle-shaped birthmark behind the right side ear on the gone girl. The world stayed at the exact moment, and I felt my brawny throat stocked up with ice-cold rocks. I was unable to scarcely believe my shrewd eyes when the paramedic vainly tried embedding the deceased in the corpse bag: It was I undoubtedly lying lifeless, stagnant, and dead. My eyes filled with tears and puzzles; unable to decode the befogged situation, I stood there same as a desolated tree shaken up by a typhoon. Sharp burning pain on the birthmark traveled through my prominent veins, forcibly reminding specific words of my grandmother: If you tragically lose your soul, unearth it the jade plant.

Although I did not understand her words or the depth of it, I aimlessly managed to my house behind which my grandma garden house stood isolated from the rest of the house. It was a small green garage space that my grandmother refurnished into a garden house. None was allowed into the garden house alone, but after her death, followed by my mother. I went in there to water the plants.

My grandmother occupied her last days in the garden house; she believed the plants were her spiritual guides. There were many rare plants of medicinal and ornamental varieties, but the jade in the black vase was her favorite one. It was standing at the center of the place, with a grand gesture of royalty. I carefully shoveled up the soil in the jade pot and noticed a small black color box with a clover sign; I instantly knew it was for me. She used to mention that clover is my spirit symbol.

"You discovered it!" I instantly heard the beloved grandmother.

"Am I dreaming?"

"The dead do not dream. Now, why do you think the women in our family tree died before time?"

"It was the curse that you disclosed before your death."

"Yes, now you need to break the curse." She started sparkling with a beaming smile.

"But why me? Why not you or dear mamma?"

"You will positively receive the ultimate answer yourself from your historical root." She miraculously disappears into thin air.

I unlocked the box and discovered a picture. It was in black and white, distorted and heavily damaged. There was a lady, who is most likely Chinese, sitting next to an Indian man. I scanned it with my bare eyes and realized that the woman looked exactly like me.

I gazed thoughtfully at the picture, and a glittering eye formed on her forehead; it kept progressively developing deeper and suddenly opened, emitting a luminescent light with a screeching sound, sucking me into it. I felt numb and it became bleak. I thrived through the enveloping darkness and silence; perceived a voice, "Will you die for me?"

"Who is that?" I questioned not out of raging curiosity but of genuinely frightening. The familiar words kept echoing in the never-ending darkness. I naturally followed the voice, and it started lightening up. As I advanced farther and farther, the dazzling light began to intensify to a violent burst of eye-blinding sunshine.

"Yu Yan?" A small boy around the age of 15 appeared. He possessed a handsome face but dressed in a particular unapproachable manner.

I woke up on a hay bed with horses around. "You are?"

"Are you still drunk? Get ready for his gracious majesty arrival. He may come anytime soon!"

"His gracious majesty?" I found myself in a shabby Indian skirt; I went out of the horse hoard and looked around to analyze the situation. The clothes that the people wore were different; ladies wore saree. (A piece of cloth wore draped around, originated in India.)

"Vijayan is betrothed! He ran over to me in joy and delivered a piece of paper to me. The date of marriage mentioned in the invitation cover was 12/15/1628.

I felt like an enchanted princess shoved into the castle tower, nowhere to be found, waiting for a rebellious prince to arrive.

"What year is it, and where the hell am I?"

"You are in Tanjore, India; the year is 1628. And I am your King," a noble, masculine voice echoed from a man on a horse.