The Six-Gun Tarot by R. S. Belcher Page B

had shared meals and tears, silence and laughter. He sat the box upright and stared at it until he drowned in the shadows of the room.
    He got up, lit an oil lamp and brought it and a bottle of Monongahela back to the kitchen table. Outside he heard a wagon rumble by and the whoops of the early crowd at the Paradise Falls. He emptied three fingers from the bottle into a milk-glass mug and drained them quickly. He hid the bottle on the floor under the table as he felt the whiskey warmth stretch through him. His hands stilled, his heart steadied in its palpitations.
    The clasp snapped free with a metallic pop and Auggie opened the box. He lifted the heavy jar out of its velvet fitting and placed it on the table. It was full of a cloudy, greenish fluid. Small particles, disturbed by the movement, drifted in the liquid, like silt. The thing inside the jar bumped awkwardly against the sides. Black strands, like seaweed, drifted lazily, suspended in the filthy soup.
    Auggie noticed that the fluid was getting cloudy again. He’d need to add the chemicals again soon. He opened the small velvet-lined drawer at the base of the case and removed a large silver key. He fitted it into the keyway, at the base of the jar, which was surrounded by a complex maze of clockwork gears and spider-strand wires, like the glittering oiled guts of a music box. He turned the key three times; each time there was the loud groan of springs and gears. He slid the key out and the mechanisms began to spin and hum. The smell of warm brass encircled the room. A dim light filled the murky tank as the thing in the jar shuddered and then held itself erect. Auggie closed his eyes and prayed for God to forgive him once again.
    “Au … gus … tus?” the thing in the jar said. “It … is … you … ja?”
    Her eyes were covered by milky cataracts; they looked greenish through the water and the yellow light. To Auggie they were still the color of virgin sky.
    “ Ja, beloved, it is only me.”
    “I missed you so much. How long were you away? How long was I in the dark?”
    “Not long, my love. It’s only been a day; it’s always just a day. Can’t you remember?”
    Her lips moved, but no air bubbles escaped to the surface of the jar. Her voice came from out of the machine at the base of the tank. It sounded like it was trapped in a tiny box full of wires, echoing, bouncing off the tight walls of steel and brass.
    “ It’s hard to remember time here, darling, ” she said. “I get so lonely away from you, from the light. It’s like some horrible dream that I cannot awake from until you return . I miss you, Augustus, very, very much. You chase the darkness away.”
    The whiskey kept the tears at bay, as it usually did, but he felt the hot poker of guilt dig into his innards and twist. Surely he was a damned man; surely he was lost for his weakness and his selfishness.
    “I love you, Gerta,” he croaked “I miss you too.”
    And then the husband told the wife about his day, like he always did.

The Three of Swords
    He wept for the first billion years. His tears turned to steam.
    The place was like a forge—sticky clumps of this clumsy stuff the Almighty called matter bubbled up out of the alchemy of cosmic fire and wind. Everywhere there was chaos, deafening noise and blinding light—a symphony of hard radiation and the collision of violent young worlds. It was horrible, no order, no peace.
    Eventually it all cooled off in the frigid night, the former home of the Darklings, now a graveyard littered with God’s newly hung stars. Biqa looked up at the ethereal chip of lunar rock hanging in the dark sky and his heart ached for home.
    But he couldn’t go back. Not until this duty was done. God and His attendants had made that very clear to him. He was to stand watch, to guard and to wait.
    So he waited. Time passed and the Earth greened. He waited.
    He came to think that God had created this place as a prison, a punishment for those in the Host who