The Secret Prophecy by Herbie Brennan Page B

turned the bag upside down and tipped the contents onto the table.
    “That it?” Em asked after a moment.
    “That’s it,” Victor said.
    Em stared at the small, battered book, the tattered school jotter, the stub of a pencil, and the bundle of thin twigs held together by two rubber bands. “What is it?”
    “That’s the oldest book in the world, kid,” Victor exclaimed portentously.
    Em frowned. “It’s a paperback.”
    “I don’t mean this actual book, stupid. That’s obviously a copy. I mean the book itself. Oldest book in the world. First written in ancient China around 3500 BC. It’s called the I Ching. ” He pronounced it yee jing.
    “What are the twigs for?” Em asked.
    Victor’s tone became even more scathing. “Those aren’t twigs, my boy. Those are dried yarrow stalks. You need them for the oracle.”
    “So the book’s an oracle? Some sort of fortune-telling? It can tell you the future?” Em was suppressing a grin. If a tattered paperback could tell the future, what was Victor doing in a homeless shelter? All he had to do was bet his boots on the three thirty at Newmarket and walk away with a million.
    “It’s not fortune-telling, and it’s obviously not going to tell you who’ll win the three thirty at Newmarket; otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I?” Victor said as if reading Em’s mind. “But it can guide you on what you should do in a situation to make sure of the best possible outcome.”
    “May I look?” Em asked, intrigued despite himself. The book and his funny bunch of sticks were obviously precious to Victor, judging by the fuss he’d made when they disappeared.
    Victor shrugged and pushed the book across. “Knock yourself out, kid,” he said in a spoof of an American accent.
    Em flipped the first few pages and glanced at a dense, academic introduction—Dad would have loved it!—before opening it at random somewhere toward the middle. Confusingly, the page heading read “61. Chung Fu/Inner Truth” beneath two Chinese characters Em couldn’t understand and above a little diagram made up of broken and unbroken lines. Near the bottom of the page, under a subheading “The Judgment” was what looked like a four-line poem about pigs and fishes. It must have lost something in translation, because it didn’t even come close to rhyming. Or making sense, come to that. “How’s it work?” Em asked curiously as he pushed the book back across the table.
    “You use the yarrow stalks,” Victor told him. “You count them in a special way, and that gives you your hexagram. Then you look it up in the book and that gives you your oracle.”
    Em wished he hadn’t asked. What was a hexagram anyway? “Why don’t you show me?” he suggested.
    “What? Cast you an oracle?” Victor stared at him soberly for a long time, then apparently made up his mind. “Very well.” He started to peel the rubber bands off the yarrow stalks. “What’s your question?”
    Em looked at him blankly.
    “Your question,” Victor repeated. “The oracle answers your questions. No question, no answer.” He absorbed Em’s expression and sighed. “Imagine you’re talking to the spirit of a very wise, very old Chinese sage. Somebody who’s been around, somebody who knows the ropes. Somebody maybe a bit psychic. Now what question do you want him to answer for you?”
    There were so many. Had his dad really been murdered? And if so, why? Who’d arranged to have his mother locked up? When would she get out again? Who broke into their home—twice? But he suspected the oracle wouldn’t give him answers about stuff like that. Victor was watching him impatiently, so he said, “Could I ask something like ‘Is my present situation going to work out okay?’”
    “You can ask anything you like,” Victor told him grumpily. “But you might be better off asking what sort of action you should take to ensure your present situation works out for the best.”
    “All right,” Em said.