The Oracle – Debts

It was evening, and all day there had been a steady stream of visitors with questions that varied from the inane to the life-changing. Watson thought the old woman must be exhausted but her eyes were still bird bright and once she had eaten the soup he heated in the modern kitchen hidden in the holy caverns she seemed fine.
“Do you feel it, Watson?”
“Feel what?”
“A certain unease in the air.”
“No. But I wouldn’t. I’m not an oracle.”
“And you believe I am?” She cackled with unsuppressed mirth.
When he first arrived her combativeness rendered him speechless, but he had learned better.
“Sometimes you are a true oracle. Others you are as fake as a television evangelist.”
“A fair answer.”
She sat in silence for quite some time and he wondered if she had finished talking for the day. He was about to leave her in peace when she held up a black-nailed hand.
“I used to be married, you know. But it was on the skids by the time I came here. The bastard thought he’d shoved all his debt onto me. Until I disappeared, then his creditors moved their attention back to him. He wound up without a pot to piss in.”
“Did he ever find you?”
“Eventually. By which time he’d found a wealthy widow to leech on. But he still wanted revenge. Came up here with a flick knife and a bad attitude. But a sawn-off trumps a tidgy knife and he had to run away with his tail between his legs.”
She laughed her wheezing laugh.
“And the best of it? His wealthy ‘wife’ wasn’t happy about bigamy. She bought him from me and now he does what he’s told. Or else…”
She lapsed into a doze and her young ghost writer felt a moment of pity for a mere man who tangled with the pile of rags and malice that comprised the oracle at her worst. He was wondering why he tolerated her when the bell on the pathway rang a single sharp note. Picking up the remains of their shared meal he hiked to his usual viewpoint.
The sunset was staining the mountain almost blood red, and for a moment he thought the hair of the woman who climbed wearily onto the plateau was a trick of that light. But it wasn’t. The woman was every teenager’s wet dream from the red polish on her toenails to the scarlet curls that tumbled down her back.
She looked at the oracle and smiled a slow, mean smile.
“You don’t look all that much to me.”
“I could say the same about you. If I was interested enough.”
The redhead hissed. “You should care, old woman. I owe you a bad turn and I always pay my debts.”
“I don’t remember doing anything to any painted Jezebel. But I’m getting old and forgetful. Remind me.”
“You cost me a soft billet and a nice farm. Now I’m stuck with a passenger and nobody wanting to step up to the plate.”
“Do you say the the father of what’s in your belly refuses to acknowledge it?”
The redhead opened her mouth, but whatever she had been going to say was interrupted by a groan from the mountain and a gentle undulation of the earth where she stood. She squeaked and twisted her hands together. Looking at the oracle, she made a sort of mewing noise and her face paled until the circles of rouge on her cheeks stood out like paint on a circus doll.
The oracle spoke and her voice filled the air with the sound of flapping wings.
“Come out of your concealment cowardly creature. Lest the mountain grind you to dust.”
The man who crawled over the edge of the escarpment wore a sharp suit and held a pistol in one hand.
“Take your wife and the child in her belly and go. While you still have the option. You came to cheat and lie your way into a comfortable fortune. But you chose the wrong town. Begone.”
“Old bitch,” he screamed. “Breathe your last.”
But he couldn’t squeeze the trigger, his hand shook too much. Something in the oracle’s basilisk gaze broke what little courage he had and he turned and ran, dropping the pistol as he went.
The redhead looked at his retreating figure and spat on the ground.
“Spineless cretin.”
The oracle laughed. “You got his number now, right enough.”
“Yup. That’n isn’t gonna be any manner of use to anyone. I reckon I’ll do better on my own.” She showed her teeth. “I guess I owe you a good turn now, old mother.”
“Let’s call it quits then. And if you ever need a job there’s always a mountain looking for an oracle with the balls to run a long con.”
The redhead laughed and turned away. At the top of the path she turned her head.
“Maybe one day.”

Jane Jago