Free The Girl Who Walked on Air by Emma Carroll

met Miss Lilly’s gaze. Her eyes were so dark there was no telling their colour. I didn’t want this strangeness. It belonged in Miss Lilly’s world. All I wanted was to live with Jasper and Pip, and be part of the circus. Now it seemed even that was too much to ask for.
    ‘Perhaps the cards hold the answers to your problems,’ she said.
    ‘No, ta,’ I said, shifting uneasily. ‘Not a reading. Not tonight.’
    But Miss Lilly had already placed a cloth-wrapped bundle on the table. She shook out her hands as if she’d just washed them. Ever so slowly, she peeled back the cloth. I watched, nervously at first, then I felt myself being drawn in.
    Beneath the cloth was Miss Lilly’s tarot deck. Face down they looked like normal cards, curled at the corners and with a dark swirly pattern on their backs.
    ‘Take them,’ Miss Lilly instructed.
    I wiped my hands on my skirts, for my palms were sweating. As I picked up the cards, a tingling spread up my arm.
    ‘Ask them what you want to know.’
    I drew a breath to speak but Miss Lilly cut in. ‘Don’t say it out loud. Say it in your head.’
    So I did.
    I handed the cards back to her. She shut her eyes and her lips moved silently. When she opened her eyes again, they were pools of black. She dealt the cards quickly, laying one on top of another in the centre of the table. Around them, she placed four more. Then down the right-hand side, she laid out a final four cards. These were all face down. The others were face up.
    ‘Are you ready?’ she said.
    I swallowed. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’
    Miss Lilly reached for the centre card and held it towards me. The picture was of a man with a knapsack, stepping off a cliff top.
    ‘The fool,’ she said.
    ‘Huh,’ I slouched back in my seat. ‘Might’ve guessed that one. Louie Reynolds: the great big idiot.’
    ‘That’s not what it means,’ said Miss Lilly.
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘It means you are young and naïve, but that adventure awaits you.’
    I sat forward.
    ‘But,’ Miss Lilly raised her finger in warning, ‘you must choose the right path.’
    Easier said than done . I sat back again.
    The next card lay at right angles to the first. Miss Lilly peered at it. Her mouth twitched.
    ‘It’s bad, ain’t it?’ I said.
    ‘This card is your obstacle.’ She showed me. On it was a dark shape with leering eyes, standing over a woman. ‘The devil.’
    I shivered. ‘Which means evil, surely?’
    ‘In a way. It means you’re miserable, and you’re suffering.’
    My heart filled up with Jasper and Pip, and how I wanted to be a showstopper so much it hurt. ‘Yes.’ I bit back tears. ‘That does fit well.’
    The next card was at Miss Lilly’s twelve o’clock. Her gaze swept over it, then she turned it so I could see too. ‘Your goal,’ she said. ‘The wheel of fortune.’
    The card showed a yellow cartwheel spinning towards a cliff edge. Cliffs again. It was a good job I wasn’t scared of heights.
    ‘This is your destiny card. Your fortune.’
    I laughed hotly. ‘ My fortune? My luck? It’s bleeding lousy. I don’t need a card to tell me that.’
    I got up.
    ‘No,’ she said, pulling me down again. ‘You must see all the cards, otherwise your reading is incomplete.’
    I tried to shrug her off. ‘I have to get going, Miss Lilly. I’ve been here long enough.’
    But she held me firm. ‘Stay,’ she said.
    So I stayed, fidgeting nervously in my seat. It was flimflam really, this tarot lark. And any time now Mr Chipchase would find me here.
    Miss Lilly took another card. Turning it over, her face suddenly darkened.
    ‘The tower.’
    The way she said it made me more uneasy.
    ‘Your past,’ she said, and pushed the card towards me.
    But I couldn’t seem to look at it, gazing instead at Miss Lilly and wondering why her eyes shone with tears.
    ‘You must look,’ she said gently. ‘You must face your past.’
    My heart began to pound.
    My past.
    Two words that made me clench up inside. That made me hurt