Madeleine is dumbfounded, looking at the cards before her. To the west: ‘The Spider’, ‘The Beggar’, and ‘The Library’. To the north: ‘The Window’, ‘The Crow’, and ‘The Waves’. To the South: ‘The Fox’, ‘The Harp’ and ‘The Cliffs’.

“Why has the future not been revealed?” Madeleine asks, confused by and pointing to the hidden cards to the east.

“The future is not shown until a choice is made,” replies the Countess.

“And what choice is that?”

“Four of the cards can be moved. The young master must decide whether to move one or two or none of those cards, replacing them or filling in the spaces about ‘The Bear’ with two from the deck. Only once that has been done are the cards to the east turned.”

“But the cards to the east, those that represent the future, they are already determined.”

“Indeed.”

“So how will altering anything change anything?”

“Again, I cannot disagree, but let me ask you: would knowing the future influence the decisions made in the present?”

“Yes, but wouldn’t that then change the future?”

“What if the events of the future were as immutable as the past?”

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“Then nothing will come of any change at all.”

“Except perhaps to change us, to change how we meet the changeless. But if we react to the future then that in-itself is not a change made within ourselves, but a change imposed upon us, a succumbing to fate.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Hmm. I can explain the form but you must grasp the essence. Perhaps you should leave your understanding behind, and embrace instead your intuition.”

“I..”

The Countess holds up a hand - a gesture to stop Madeleine’s questioning. “Patience, my dear, patience…Sometimes only the answers we obtain for ourselves provide us with any meaningful resolution.”

As the Countess finishes speaking, Hood slides ‘The Cliffs’ up next to ‘The Bear’ and drawing from the initial deck, replaces it with ‘The Bell Tower”, the revealing of which causes him to snort out a dry laugh before continuing: sliding ‘The Fox’ up next to ‘The Bear’ and drawing the next card, which as he places it down, sends a ripple of consternation through him, for there looking just like Hy-Jinx is ‘The Jester’.

The Countess, noticing Hood’s reaction smiles to herself, a smile hidden by the mask she wears. “So, it appears that they speak to you.”

Hood stares at the cards before him, half wanting to ignore them as meaningless, half wanting to allow his mind to drink meaning from them. He finds himself paralysed between these opposing poles; just staring.

“Note, my dear,” the Countess speaks again to Madeleine, continuing her instruction, ”that we now have nine cards and twelve threads of power. Each thread defined by a set of three cards with the central card of each set governed by the opposing pull of the adjacent ones, with four of the twelve threads running through the central governing card.” As she talks she indicates the meaning with her fingers, tracing lines above the cards. She looks expectantly at Hood. “Perhaps, it is time to reveal the future?”

Hood picks up the final three cards to the east, turning them over one at a time, laying them out in sequence: ‘The Grave Diggers’, ‘The Crowd’ and the ‘Hooded Man’.