A Soothsayers Curse

There’s an old, familiar silence as I lose myself in thought. The darkness creeping across the sky feels far away as stars begin to pierce the heavens. A barn owl calls somewhere above. I look out over the moonlit lake.

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’ll go.

All I know is—I ran.

They used to call me Soothsayer. Interpreter of what is to come. They came from far and wide to hear my visions. And in the process, they forgot how to live. I couldn’t stop their self-destruction. The gift turned out to be a curse.

They came in droves. Believers with trembling prayers. Skeptics too hollow to hope. I could only give them what I saw. It was never enough.

A war waged in my mind. A flood rose in my heart. And then—

He stepped out from the chaos.

Not to ask what the future held, but to tell me what had already come to pass. He spoke of his life and the dangers he’d faced. He asked me what my life was like. And I realized—I didn’t have an answer.

He told me that if I stayed, I’d only ever watch the people I wanted to help die.

He told me to run.

I didn’t. Not at first.

The next day, a man stood up from the crowd. He claimed I had given him false hope. That even with my visions, he still lost his wife. The crowd turned on me, drinking in his grief like wine.

Hate grows when it’s fed.

I had never seen that man before in my life.

My voice drowned in their fury. Words became venom in their mouths, and it soaked the earth.

They threatened to hang me.

And then he was there—the man from before—pulling me from the crowd.

We ran.

He lifted me onto a snow-white horse.

“Ride,” he shouted over the screams. “Ride—and don’t you dare look back.”

He struck the horse’s flank and I was gone.

We rode for what felt like days, though it could’ve been only hours. The horse led me to a meadow, deep in the forest. At its center sat a well.

An old man perched on the stone rim. His coat was black as burnt paper, his hair silver as starlight. One eye was missing.

“A gift?” he said, his voice smooth as velvet. “No. That’s no gift.”

He pointed to my forehead.

“That’s a curse.”

I stared at him—and saw nothing. My sight, my visions—they didn’t work on him.

“It’s time you started living,” he said.

“I’ve been living,” I whispered.

He smiled, slow and sad.

“No, little one. You’ve been surviving. Have you ever stood at the peak of a mountain? Watched the sky reach back?”

“No.”

“Have you ever searched for hope for yourself?”

“How?”

“Hope is strange. Some people carry it like a torch. Others lock it away, thinking it’ll be safer in the dark. But let me tell you something—”

He leaned closer.

“It wasn’t hope that was left in Pandora’s box.”

He handed me his cloak.

“Now run. Run until your legs forget how.”

I ran. I ran until I collapsed on the shores of this lake.

I looked down at my shaking hands and wondered how much more of this life I could take. If this was life, why did people choose it? Why did I feel safer in the center of a crowd that hated me, than out here in the quiet?

I looked up—and saw a dock.

A small boat waited, swaying gently.

I walked to the end of the dock and lay there for a while, listening to the lapping water.

And I remembered.

I remembered the ones I couldn’t save. But then—I remembered the ones I did. I remembered how love could bring someone to their knees. I remembered strangers giving the last of what they had to someone who needed it more.

I remembered moments that felt like fairytales.

And for the first time, I felt alive.

I stepped into the boat. Untied it from the dock.

I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t even know where I’ll begin.

But I hope.

For the first time—I hope I’ll take shore on safer ground.