"Descendant of Merlin, my divination told me of your arrival. If my reading is correct… did I say I would guide you forward? My memory isn't bad, yet I don't recall making that promise. Do you know why?" Madam Xanadu toyed with her nails, asking it as if it were nothing.
Thea's heart sank. These thousand-year-old types were all sharp as knives. If Hippolyta could guess, so could Madam Xanadu — weren't time travels supposed to be high, secret, and exquisite? Anyone could piece this together. Where was the secrecy?
Seeing Thea fall silent, Madam Xanadu's amber eyes flicked. "Was it my future self who said that? Future-me sent you to find present-me to guide your magic?"
"Yes, Madam." Thea didn't hesitate — she couldn't even remember exactly how the swamp thing had put it. The creature had been vague; opening her bloodline could count as an initiation, and coming to the person herself could count as guidance. Anything could be argued either way.
Madam Xanadu barely raised an eyebrow. With a lazy expression she scoffed, "Nonsense. A descendant of Merlin — his nonsense runs in the family. Ha." She changed to a more comfortable pose, "Me, make such a solemn promise? You're making that up."
Thea flushed. She'd seen this woman's casualness — in 2008 the future Madam Xanadu would probably say something and forget it five minutes later. If Thea hadn't been paranoid she might have waited until this woman taught her — who knew whether she ever would?
Madam Xanadu lit a feminine cigarette, inhaled, exhaled, and gold light shimmered at her hand. A spread of cards appeared on the table, flipping and shuffling on their own in a rhythm Thea couldn't read. At last they stilled; one bronze card hovered in midair.
Madam Xanadu picked up the deck, studied it, and turned the face toward Thea. The image: an old white-bearded man lecturing. "Initiation? Guidance? Either could fit… The cards suggest I should instruct you. Tell me, did future-me guide you?"
Had future her guided Thea? Thea hesitated. The bloodline opening might be considered an initiation — yet maybe not. Divination only gives a sliver of truth; the rest is guesswork.
She swallowed and decided: better to play along. If the future had indeed pointed her here, admitting it might help.
"No — your future did not guide me," she lied, voice steady as she watched Madam Xanadu closely.
Madam Xanadu was actually startled by the card's reading. She'd come to Crete out of curiosity, sensing something connected to her; she hadn't expected this tangle of futures. For caution's sake she drew two more cards.
The new readings were vaguer, but one fact emerged: Thea was indeed tied to her. Madam Xanadu — who'd hoodwinked people with fortunes for centuries — felt a pulse of unease. Tied how? Relationship by Merlin's blood was one thing; being the key to this guidance was another.
Cards wouldn't talk. Madam Xanadu rested her chin in her hand and thought hard. Matters touching the future were never small; she grew serious.
Finally she looked up. "Descendant of Merlin… I'm busy." She half-turned red saying it, then continued calmly, "I don't have time to personally teach you. But I can give you clues — point you to someone who will."
She didn't wait for Thea's response. With a flick she produced a fan of a dozen cards and laid them face down on the table. "Pick one. Entrust your future to fate. Let the highest power choose your path."
Nonsense, Thea thought. She sneered at the idea of leaving things to fate — if destiny had been set she'd still be drowning her sorrows in some bar in Star City, not time-hopping to 1918 to gamble. Yet Madam Xanadu's tone was unyielding: not accepting apprentices, only offering hints. Maybe choosing a card was the true guidance.
Her clairvoyance still failed here; from the back the dozen cards were indistinguishable. Raking her mind for patterns — family rank, Merlin and the Round Table, the time she'd crossed — she tried numbers and coincidences. None felt decisive. In the end she pointed to the second card from the left.
"Are you sure?" Madam Xanadu asked. Thea nodded. The woman flipped the card.
An infantryman in plain cloth, spear in hand — riddled with arrows, knees pierced, his body peppered with shafts.
Who was this poor sod? Thea blinked, waiting for interpretation.
"A veteran," Madam Xanadu said. "A fallen soldier. Given the Arthurian connection, his family line stretches back to Arthur's time."
Seeing Thea's confusion, Madam Xanadu continued, "This card is new — he died not long ago. Tied to Arthur implies British origin. 'Veteran' suggests low rank: not a general or a king, just a common soldier. Follow those clues. The veteran's descendant will give you the knowledge you need. That's your fate."
It was a needle-in-a-haystack clue. Even in the twenty-first century, with money and networks, finding such a line would be hard. In 1918 it was near-impossible.
Lucky, Thea thought. She'd done groundwork back in Star City — dossier on several notable magicians. She'd studied the family histories that weren't secret. "Soldier, died at the Somme, ties to Arthur" — only one family fit: the Constantines.
Thea's lips twitched. Constantine. A name she'd seen in her research — the very family she'd just been considering.