Juniper's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Juniper watched the dog's hands shake as she backed away from the table. The fourth cup of tea sat between them, still warm. The grey cat tilted her head and studied the leaves settling at the bottom. There it was again — the spiral, clear as ever, forming in the moss-glazed ceramic. "Show me what you know," Juniper said. She pushed the cup toward the dog. The dog stared at it, then at the log, then back at Juniper. "I don't read tea leaves," she said. "I read maps. Old ones." She pulled a folded paper from her stack and spread it flat. There, in the corner, drawn in faded ink — the same spiral. "It marked plague sites," the dog said. "Places where the sickness started fifty years ago." Juniper looked at her cup, then at the map, then at her log with its careful columns. The spiral wasn't a fortune. It was a warning she'd been recording without knowing what it meant. She picked up her pen and added a thirteenth entry: spiral matches historical marker. Then she closed the log. Mastering tasseography meant learning what the leaves were trying to say — even when the answer wasn't in any book.