When reading the Allegoricals, the first upturned card represents the perspective from which one should interpret the remaining sequence of cards. But, as any and all would point out, one must first interpret just what that perspective is. So to reveal a bear would be to cast the reading from the perspective of however one would interpret the meaning of a bear. Which raises perhaps the slightly bizarre question: What does a bear mean?

To Hood, a bear, as a bear, should be thoroughly avoided…at all costs…as quite frankly, at least from Hood’s perspective, all bears - although he hasn’t actually had the misfortune of meeting any - are by definition mean, dangerous, and simply out to eat either the food you possess or, if not in possession of any food: you.

This is not a good beginning - Hood has never liked the Allegoricals, believes them to be some strange throwback to a time when people intimated the magical arts but could not themselves perform any: trickery and charlatanism. Hood takes a deep breath and sighs. He does not like partaking in meaningless activities but patience, and a requirement for polite, courteous, civilised behaviour, makes him continue.

The Countess, perhaps noticing Hood’s reluctance, and interpreting its meaning from her perspective, chuckles again to herself. “Please young master, continue, one cannot avoid one’s fate.”

“Why not?” Hood’s voice rasps the shadows.

Hood stares silently across the table, stares into the sockets of the mask that confronts him, and holds that stare for what could be interpreted as an uncomfortable amount of time. Hood will always maintain politeness and civility…up to a point…a point at which he may ‘ripple the waters’ so to speak.

The lantern gutters and the Countess, although her features are hidden, seems for a moment taken aback, her confident body language vanishing momentarily. The question seems to hang between them in the damp air, seems to have been spoken and carried with it a weight of meaning suggestive that the person who asked it knows precisely how to avoid one’s fate should they so wish. Seems to have been spoken as a challenge, not only to the Countess, but to fate itself.

Hood lets his eyes fall back towards the table, and counts out twelve cards from the deck, placing them in a circle. Counts them out nonchalantly, as if nothing has happened. When he has finished, he takes ‘The Bear’ card and places it in the centre of the circle, looking up expectantly at the Countess, who has seemingly regained her composure, if she had ever lost it in the first the place.

“Why not indeed?” she says rhetorically, taking the ashes from the crucible and rubbing them into her hands. She leans forward as if to make a point: “But wisdom would say that to react against one’s fate is the very thing that sets it in motion,” before turning her attention to the table.

With the cards in place, the Countess now picks up a card, seemingly at random, and places it on top of another, and continues to do this until there are four piles of three, each located at the four cardinal points of a compass. Hood lays out the three cards from the west, lays out the three cards from the north and south so that each central card of the three is in line with ‘The Bear’. The three cards from the east he leaves.

“I’m sorry Madam Masque, but I’m not familiar with the Allegoricals,” Madeleine says, having watched everything play out, and feeling, if truth be told, slightly sidelined from what is happening.

“Do not worry dear,” the Countess replies, “The west is the past, the centre the present. Where the north and south are: the winds or forces that are acting upon us. The east the future, dependent upon which forces influence us. All is interpretation, a mirror for the mind to know itself. A means of remembering future things that may or may not be.”

Madeleine stares at the cards.

“Tell me dear, what do you see?”