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The Wheel of Fortune

Emily Carding’s Tarot of Black Mountain

I was in love with a city, better to say I loved a city – maybe because I was born in it, maybe because it was white – who knows. I met many other cities, some bigger cities, some preattier cities, i met some more mysterious cities – but the white citi was my city. In the White city myself I was white, almost transparent.

Suddenly, my city began loosing it ’s genuine, virgin whitenes and started becoming somehow grayish.

I still loved it, equally as i loved it while it was completely white, though i noticed that myself i developed some dirty white nuances of the gray color. My nails turned into pail gray, my skin began resembling the dark grey color of the feather, which tuckled in by the southern wind stayed on the paved road that once upon a time was white, as a reminder of a big bird who turned gray and flew to the East. The whites of my eyes became dark gray and they were hardly seen, only my hair was still absolutely white. When i noticed the first gray hair in my absolutely white hair, i new that the trickster time won’t wait for me and that i should take off on the journey.

I went to the East, where long time ago sons of Abraham were heading carriyng the gifts. Unfortunately, in the East they didn’t remeber Abraham’s sons. It seemed to me sometimes that for a moment i spotted a precious part of those most valuable, long lost gifts, but usually it would turn out to be just a piece of glass that time has polished.

From the East i returned to the Black Country from where my ancestors long time ago had left for the White City. I believed the Black Country to be totally black and i was amazed when,  unexpectedly, i met there a white spot. The white spot was almost as surprised as i was, she was exhausted by the long awaiting of such a short encounter. During the darkest hour, she colored me into raven-black.

According to the memories of others at that very moment i stopped fearing because the black and white me in that moment was gone, the former-me was replaced by a virgin spot that very slowly, but unstoppably began transforming into a big white circle.

Author’s Note: in ex-Yugoslav languages –Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian – the name of my country, Crna Gora, literally means Black Mountain, while

the capital of Serbia, Beograd literally is the White City from my childhood and from this story…

Copyright © 2008  Lena Ruth Stefanovic
All Rights Reserved

Emily Carding created the magnificent Tarot of Black Mountain, which was published with the book – collection of Tarot inspired short stories “Io Triumpe” published by OKF, Cetinje 2008.

Tarot of Black MountainCopyright © 2008 EmilyCarding All Rights Reserved

image posted with permission