A pawn with a face

“All hope abandon ye fools who drinketh here” read the sign dangling above the Victorian style mansion that was owned by none other than Hawthorne Valley’s most eccentric, Eden Scarlett.

Although she was a woman of only two names, she was a woman of great wealth. Oil baroness was a slippery and troubling title that she preferred not to be associated with, although sometimes in the early morning shadows, I could have sworn I saw the thick black droplets streaking down the back of her neck, leaving shadowy traces on her ivory skin.

Instead of being pulled into the undertow of her family’s fortune, she preferred to be cast aside by other’s misconceptions, discarded down the sink with the rest of the ice in your drink. “Oil is fine for drains and mixes rather well with ice” she’d laugh, before throwing her small frame into some blunt object and dancing lightly away into the oblivion of a night without memories.

Although rumours swarmed out of the Hawthorne Manior like a hornet nest, ungratefully pissed upon by a lost and disenchanted reveler, the truth was that the best rumours were spun from Scarden herself, as she preferred to be called. Rather, the rumours were discarded pawns and rooks left lying facedown in the garden, in a much higher stakes games that she preferred to play with the brightest and the best of Hawthorne and the surrounding continent. The rumours slowly crawled out of the cracks in the crumbling masonry, sunning themselves in the fading daylight. Before disappearing on their arachnid legs in the prism flashes of blue and gold on the veranda, waiting for the darkness to further swallow them so they could go about their deeds in the cover of night. Like they say, deeds done in the dark of night make for Scarden’s best parties.

Scarden had always favoured me amongst the throngs of entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and artists that frequented her parties. Two of my paintings hung in her great wall that she had commissioned from me back when our faces were younger canvasses. She didn’t have a great eye for art, it was the artists behind the art that had always enchanted her. Art was a puzzle for her to solve, like everything else, and in order to unlock the art, it always became her mission to find the key to the artist if she could not unlock the rosetta stone within the artwork itself.

Scarden and I both loved motorcycles and well-aged whiskey, men of beautiful sea-eyes with cavernous depths, and the ancient forests that crept out behind her estate. It was in this way that I had become somewhat of a confidant over the decade or so that I had known her. I knew it bothered her that I made no great effort to understand her as many intellectuals did, but I knew she would only ever show the pieces of you that she wanted you to see, like the expensive art collection that adorned her halls.

I had been to countless Scarden parties throughout the years, the frantic midsummer feasts where everyone stood in childlike-awe at the heaps of flowers and garlands that adorned the old mansion, with the women in draped ropes and pansies in their hair, each woman more beautiful than the next, their thick curls cascading behind them while they danced softly on the grass. I had been to her parties where warring drug cartels had sat at the tables across from each other and Scarden had brokered a peace treaty between them that stood today. Starlets were rarely invited because Scarden thought they were waning in both depth and intellect once they stepped from behind the screen. There had been Russian philosophers and physicists, who often argued in their own native tongues when the debates became too intense, and they could no longer speak without exposing their emotions in their non-native tongues.

Scarden enjoyed all these types of nights because she could glimpse the raw human emotion and brilliance, while the moths drifted towards the patio lanterns and further away from the luminesce of the full moon.

This night was different, it was the kind of night that your consciousness has experienced sometime before, and your body reaches for the familiarity in anticipation, like your true love, finally coming back home. But your mind can’t remember the place your soul years for, no matter how hard you try. That was the night.

I was late for the party as I had spilled gasoline on myself while I was gassing up my ’87 Harley. It’s an unfortunately ill-suited scent for a former oil-baroness so I returned to the studio to shower. I rubbed fresh citrus over my skin to mask the terrible scent, and let the rinds fall to the bottom of the shower. I watched the water run down the glass, and I knew it was the last time I would experience this exact sensation, I knew somewhere in the aether, an inexorable candle had been lit, which would slowly burn out by the night’s end. Something was about to happen. As I walked out of the studio, I slowly scrolled “you were loved” and on a yellow sticky note and posted it on the inside of the wooden door with a resounding thud. Then I walked out of the studio without looking back, you can never look back.

The theme of this party was ancient tarot cards. I was the fool, and looked the part with my loosely tied toga, and mulled wine tights tucked into my motorcycle boots. As I pushed the heavy iron and oak door aside leading into the Hawthorne Manior, I could hear Scarden’s laughter escaping. “Dearest friend” she drawled, “You need not have dressed like poor romans like the rest of us, everyone knows that the fool is the only number on the deck that doesn’t adopt a roman numeral as it’s guardian”. Scarden stood to embrace me as I walked through the long hallway, the feathers of her costume - the Empress Tarot Card silently embracing me.

There were 22 of us seated in the great hall. Garlands hung from the candlesticks above the table, and the guests were merry and filled with laughter and wine by the time Scarden stood to speak.

“I’m sure many of you have guessed that we will be by shuffling the tarot deck tonight, and learning our fates. If you have guessed this, you are wrong and your dull mind does not excite me. Tonight, you have come to fork in the road poor travelers and revelers. The question I pose to you is this - will you drink from this gold goblet knowing tomorrow, you will have no recollection of this night whatsoever? In fact, your memory of this night will not return to you until years later… and then, it will be too late”. A slow smile spread across her beautiful and childlike face, although those who new Scarden knew there was no innocence there. She had already raised the stakes of the game, if we drank from the goblet, something bad was bound to happen, and we wouldn’t even be able to remember it. It truly begged the question – what was the point of drinking from a goblet, when no benefit could come of it for us. Some would drink the goblet thinking they were proving something to Scarden, but this wasn’t really the test.

As Scarden sat down, I raised the goblet in the air and twenty-one glasses followed. “Cheers, to no Brutuses being in the crowd”, I laughed as we all drank deeply.

I stood at the edge of the widow-walk, atop the fourth floor on the Manor. I suspected I knew some of the ingredients dissolved in the goblet. I could feel the pricks running down my skin, and my thoughts floating loosely through my mind, as though they were chasing the pricks and shivers, darting across my skin.

And then her hands were on my hips, standing closely behind me. She pulled my hips backwards against hers, and I let her. She had done this to me so many times.

I didn’t turn around. I knew better. She had sought me out and had something to tell me. Something I would likely not remember tomorrow, or for the years to come, years blowing by like a calendar, tacked to a crumbling wall of her family’s forgotten mansions to the South.

“Thank you for doing that for me Kat”, she purred against my neck in the fleeting evening light. “I knew the only way everyone would take the drink was if you did the toast. Everyone’s scared of the Empress’ dark powers I think”. I simply nodded, knowing she had more to say. “My love, I need you to turn around and listen to what I’m about to tell you”. This surprised me, and I reflectively turned to look back into her eyes that brimmed with dark green embers. She said simply, “Kat I’m going to go away for a while, and when I say a while, I mean forever. I want you to come with me, but you know it’s not that simple. These games I’ve been playing, I wish I could say they’re what caught up with me, but it’s something else. It’s really something else Kat. I know this will break your heart, but I know you’ll one day understand. But when you understand, the clues I’ve left in the house for you to find me… they will no longer exist.”

I watched her for a minute, my heart was crumbling knowing this would be the last time. The wind blew her hair across her neck like prairie grass waving in the sun. But the sun would be replaced by darkness soon, and I would see nothing. “You know I will search for you”, was all I could muster. “I know”, smiled Scarden, “and so will everyone else”. She reached for my hand and took it in hers softly, “come with me, let’s go say goodbye”. As she led me through the great hall, I looked up at my painting, and saw the roman numerals in the frame shift and rotate, then scurry under the canvass like ants.

Our footsteps on the marble reminded me of a clock, slowly and methodically ticking, counting down the hours until the time runs out. Scarden pulled me quickly into the library and brushed the pieces off the chess board. “The fool and the empress, you know they end up together right?” she whispered. I had so many things to say, my senses were trying to trap all the memories, like children chasing fluttering butterflies with broken nets. “Scarden, I need to remember this. Let me remember this” I begged. And then I woke up