Misty saw red. Some of that vengeful blood must have risen from her heart to her eyes. Her jaw clenched too tightly to release even a single breath. The bordello was calling. She was going to march over there and murder Rex Westman, hell or high-water.

But first, she’d need to don a disguise. She’d never get close enough, otherwise. The quilted blanket she’d slept with was still spread upon Yule’s bed. Misty wrapped it around her shoulders and over her head, swaddling herself like a cloaked hag. Ether lent her the ability to close her eyes and view herself from outside her own body, and she deemed the deception sufficient – no one was apt to recognize her now that her tits and ass were covered.

She slumped against the railing and winded down the staircase to Yule’s workshop. On his bench, she found a needle-sharp awl. She clutched it beneath her quilt the way a nun ought bear a crucifix under her habit. Dude whined. Misty stumbled through Yule’s showroom and unlocked the door. She went out into the congested thoroughfare, huddled and swaying. The awl made sweat in her palm.

Bracing against strangers, she pressed head down toward the bordello. The ether made crossing the road an epic task. There were too many voices, sights, and smells. She was overwhelmed. The Earth seemed to revolve beneath her feet, countering whatever progress she made. Like a spelunker whose candle’s blown out, she closed her eyes and felt her way through the crowd. When next she opened them, Misty saw her bare feet – and the planked porch of the Bare beneath them. She went inside.

The joint was packed worse than the road. Sussing her surroundings was a vexing endeavor, complicated by her want to stay disguised. She could only peer out fleetingly to glimpse the parlor for fear she might be caught. There were too many fellers, swilling cider and milling about. She didn’t see Rex Westman any place. She couldn't listen selectively for his voice amongst the din. The ether was still moving inside her; the most religious experience she had ever known – and even miniscule sounds echoed everlasting like whispers in a cathedral.

Despite it all, she could gather that her former whore-sisters and the carnie-folk had been busy. The parlor had been totally rearranged and the poker tables formed a crescent, embracing a freshly-installed plywood stage. The roulette and dice tables had been relegated to the far corner for the night. The performers were carrying trunks onto the stage, and racks of medieval weaponry and torture devices. They raised a black curtain to act as a backdrop. Everywhere, mugs clinked and cider was being gulped; men grinned, licked their lips and wiped the froth from their beards. Everywhere, voices melded, piling on heavier till the murmur was deep as a leviathan's. The piano was an afterthought. Misty was drowning in the din.

Then a voice became clear close by. A woman said, “The madame is not well. She has advised me that your boss will have authority this evening.”

Misty turned about to see a gypsy seated at a table, and Tom Savage across from her.

“It is so,” the Heathen replied. He tapped his finger on the table-top and said, “Tell Tom his cards.”

The gypsy smiled and shuffled her deck.

“Cut it in two.” She stacked the cards upon the table.

Ether-rapt, Misty was their captive. She inched closer. She wasn’t the only one. Gawkers elbowed their way in to watch the Heathen have his fortune read. They ringed the entire table as if it were a parlor game. Misty recognized some of the men. She’d known a few. She hid her face and stood her ground. She wasn’t certain why, but she knew she had to keep that front-row spot. The Tarot was whispering something, for her ears only, but too softly to suss its meaning just yet.

Tom Savage split the deck. The gypsy directed him to shuffle, and he did so clumsily as a poker virgin.

“By handling the deck, it becomes charged with your energies,” the gypsy said.

“Tom does not wish to lose his spirit in a card game.”

The onlookers had a good time with that one. A drunk cuss with mud in his beard hollered, “Silly Heathen, ain’t you heard? Souls’re reside in white men only!” The other fellers laughed. Tom paid no attention.

The gypsy assured him, “The Tarot will only borrow.”

She drew three cards and laid them face-down. She dealt reverently, setting up a hand of mystical blackjack. Turning the first card over, she revealed its elaborate designs. From some place, Misty could hear the mellow monotone of the old drum-circle and Moon Bear's hoarse song; the Heathens' supper-bell. The scent of sage overcame all the ass-cracks and cider-sweaters. She looked around the parlor to sniff out the source of the smell but her eyes came right back to that card.

“It is the past,” the gypsy said. “It tells us about the events which have led you to this time and place. Tom, yours is the Fallen Tower.”

The card was alive.

In the center, a lean turret was stacked brick-upon-brick atop a stone outcropping. The outcropping was smack dab in the middle an endless ocean. Misty drew her hag-disguise tighter to her shoulders. She shuffled nearer and leaned in for a better view. The waves in the ocean pulsated in rhythm with the still-beating drums and Moon Bear's song. She felt the sea breeze despite being wrapped in the blanket. Her teeth chattered.

“You have suffered abuse. A great power has been corrupted and led to ruin. In this position, The Fallen Tower speaks to a tragic history.”

A spark of lightning snaked down from the ceiling and the supper song of the Heathens ended with one loud boom of the big drum.

The bolt struck the card, demolishing the tower's crown amidst a fiery explosion. Misty smelled burning tipis. Bricks tumbled and thudded. Two men were spat from opposite sides of the parapet's apex. They hung upside-down in the space on either side of the crumbling tower. Both men had the same features but were dressed differently. One of them wore a crown and the opulent costume of Old World royalty. His expression was pure terror and his eyes bulged, frozen on that spot below where he would soon splat. The other man was clad in rags. He had a black patch over one eye. His lips turned up at the corners slyly as he plummeted toward the rock. He was ready and willing for the end.

All at once, the card became dull and inanimate. Just an ordinary, still-life drawing of the fallen duo and their wrecked obelisk. The bordello was full of voices again instead of drums. The drunk with mud in his beard was giving Tom a hard time about what the gypsy had called his ‘tragic history’.

“Hey Chief,” he mocked. “Why don’t you cry me a whole fuckin’ river of tears?” He raised his mug to his compatriots. As much as Misty saw Tom react, it was as if the other fellers weren’t even there.

The gypsy said, “Do not fret on the past. Be grateful. It is the past which makes us what we are today. The next card is the present.”

She laid it beside the Fallen Tower. Suddenly Misty heard birds chirping and water trickling. She smelled pine – and a tinge of ether.

The Tarot needed Misty to know.

The card drew her into a forest scene. A path led deeper into the woods. On either side an elm stood prominently in the foreground and drew the card's vertical borders. Misty saw a man strolling along the trail, only a speck at first – coming out from the wilderness. He was closer with every step. Then she could hear his feet padding on the dirt path.

“The Hanged Man,” she heard the gypsy's voice echoing.

The trees in the foreground began to grow while he approached. Their branches stretched across the top edge of the card and entwined with one another. A length of rope slithered down from the limbs and tied itself into a noose. The man came along the path and smiled at the sudden gallows like it was an old friend. He took hold of the rope and lifted his own weight with one hand. He was some sort of acrobat. He spun upside-down and hung himself by the ankle. The curls of his hair unfurled and gold coins fell from his pockets as he dangled. Misty heard the gold falling in the dirt like horse piss.

The Hanged Man's expression was purely serene. He winked and grinned.

“Oh mine fuckin' God,” Misty whispered.

Tom Savage heard her. He looked her plain in the eye. He winked and grinned.

“Oh mine fuckin' God,” she repeated.

There was no denying that familiar wink. It was the wink Smiles on River had given her at their last meeting, before she fled into the woods and never saw him again. Tom Savage was none other than her former savior and closest friend. He was that heathen boy, all grown up.

How had she never seen it before? She reckoned she had blamed the Indians for their own apocalypse. What else should she have reckoned? Even Moon Bear himself had faulted the tribe. He said they'd angered the fathers by adopting the white girl. It had hurt. It still hurt. It was same as her papa abandoning her at the Clackamas, all over again. Misty guessed she’d never seen any of them in the same light since. Prejudice had skewed her lens so that all Indians looked alike. They all looked like the crone.

But none of that was right. It hadn’t been her fault, nor the tribe’s. They weren’t all bad. She weren’t no white germ and they hadn’t done anything to anger the fathers. Rex Westman was the culprit. Rex was the one with their blood on his hands.

And now Smiles on River was working for that cock-sucking, Madame-raping, son of a bitch! How had he become Tom Savage? He wouldn’t stop making eye contact. Misty had to brace against the fellers beside her.

Tom thrust his finger upon the table and said, “Tell us about this.” Misty felt intensely exposed, and she wondered what he expected her to answer, but then the gypsy replied in her stead.

“The Hanged Man is a man who suffers now for knowledge later,” she said. “In this position, it tells us you are denying yourself today for a better tomorrow. It is suffering, but dissimilar from the Fallen Tower. The Hanged Man does so to himself, on his own terms.”

Tom smiled. Misty exhaled.

“Are you ready for the future?” the gypsy asked.

Tom nodded. Misty blinked.

The gypsy showed the final card.

All the fellers in the bordello froze where they were at. They fell silent. Uncannily synchronized, the patrons of the bordello turned as one gray entity to glare at her. They were all dead but not dead. They chanted, a squadron of sickly toads croaking, “e-ther...e-ther...e-ther...”

Then the gypsy announced, “The World!”

Smoke spooled upward from the card's face. Misty caught a whiff of Moon Bear's peace-pipe. A miniature landscape formed on the table-top. Grass and hills rose; vine-wrapped trees climbed. Plopped in the center, the card itself became a shimmering pool. From out of the water an angelic man and woman were born. They were nude and unashamed in their native land. A big cat emerged and paced beside the couple. It purred and shook the pond-water from its mane. A bull came out of the pool. The water dripped from its horns. Plumes of pressurized steam blasted out around its pierced septum. Misty heard an eagle cry out, and then it swooped down to perch in the trees overlooking the tiny, idyllic garden.

“The World is exactly opposite the Fallen Tower of your past. It is the attainment of that which at your onset was beyond your prior notions. The World is to be yours, Tom Savage. The whole world.”