Andriano_Beast_Trump

      Having no desire to be institutionalized, Phil kept his suspicion to himself. If he was right, the spell could be very dangerous, and perhaps he should try it first with less dangerous beasts, but the lure of the dragon was too much for him, and he was convinced that Draco would not be like the faithful dog Sirius and run to his master. He also felt confident that if he buried the beast back in the deck, no one would get hurt.

     I saw him trying the spell that August night, when I was fifteen. At the time, lurking infatuated in the bushes, I had no idea what he was doing. I only found out a few years later when I sought him out again at Lake George, where we finally became lovers. I am quite sure that turning the sun card upside down did the trick. I have no idea why Draco took so much time to descend into the atmosphere. Who knows what distance, physical or metaphysical, the dragon traveled--- from the moment he was summoned to the moment he fell into the lake? All I know for sure is what I saw. It certainly wasn’t Champ.
How could it be? Eddie saw it too, from the boat. He thought he saw a Perseid, but it was the fiery dragon crossing the sky and falling into the lake. A baby dragon, like I always said. I saw it attack my brother’s fish, I saw it well before I got that concussion. Then it must have bolted for the rocky beach, grazing Mark as it tried its wings, then running up the hill as its last moment of reality burned away. That caused the brush-fire—my father saw the smoldering remains before he came to our rescue.
   When we were falling in love in Lake George a few years later, I finally asked Phil bluntly what he’d been doing that night we saw him dealing and mumbling. He told me all, and I told him what I had seen.
     “I knew it worked!” he said. “All those Champ sightings on the lake just after my spell. I ran around all that day laughing to myself Champ my ass, Champ my ass! That was my dragon you all saw. Little Draco. I thought of telling you, but, well, I didn’t see you again that summer, then I went off to college.”
   “That’s okay. I never believed it was Champ. I never doubted what I saw.”
    "A baby dragon. I wonder why it was so little? I guess because I was a neophyte, just a baby magus. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing. I mumbled and fumbled. That's probably also why it fell into the lake, instead of making a beeline for me."
    "But how is it possible, Phil?"
    "Who knows? I think it's the powerful result of conflicting forces, one created by a woman, the other by a man.”

Veronica’s was the more powerful because Giordano had made an erroneous assumption. He thought that the Beast is Other, discontinuous from the human, capable of being expelled. Veronica tried to show him, the last night they were together, that the beast cannot be expelled because it is part of who we are. He also thought that beasts are lower than humans on the ladder of being, that if people did not expel their own beasts their metempsychosis would be down the ladder---they would be reincarnated in their next life as "lower beasts." If a man acted like a pig, he ran a good chance of returning as one. Justice cosmic if not poetic. As a courtesan Veronica had learned there is no such ladder, only a tree with tangled branches. Many men were more brutal than all brutes, many beasts more humane than most humans.
It was a summer night, and Scorpius loomed over the lagoon. Veronica dealt, she chanted, and a scorpion the size of a lobster appeared on the beach and crawled toward them, bursting into flames as they retreated from it. Then she pointed to the southern sky to show him that Scorpius was still there, hooking its stinger on a distant Venice chimney. “The beast remains, and there is the link,” she said, pointing to the horizon, where the stars of the scorpion's tail hovered over the rooftops.

    “Eddie was right, you do take after your grandfather,” I said with a smile. “Do you still have the cards?”
    "Yes. But after I was almost run down by a centaur, I decided to put them in the attic."
    "A centaur?"

"I unloosed Sagittarius. That was stupid, I know, but I couldn’t help myself. The power you feel when it happens, it’s addictive. It’s always best to do it in a field. That night I decided to try an experiment. I wondered what would happen if I lifted the Devil off the World-card but didn’t bury it in the deck. Maybe the beast wouldn’t burn up. The centaur came at me with hooves thundering and bow drawn. Holding the card in front of me like a shield, I wanted to see if the man-horse would slow down. He began to, and was soon close enough for me to see his bearded face. I thought he looked like Grandpa, which calmed me a bit, but his bow was still drawn. I lost my nerve and buried the card, then ran in the opposite direction. I tripped and fell in the tall grass, and he jumped right over me, leaping several feet in the air as he burst into flames. I got out of there as quick as I could and called the fire department to report a brushfire."

A few years later, at our wedding reception, I drank too much and told Eddie, Robert, and my brother Mark that Phil had corroborated my story of the little dragon in the lake. Since they all thought we were both insane, I decided it would be a good idea to prove them wrong. That was my first mistake, I guess. After our honeymoon, I asked Phil if he had ever thought of filming his spells.
    "I tried once," he said. "Nothing came out. There was nothing on the film, except me. I don't think phantasms can be photographed."
    Then I said the words that I will always regret. "Maybe we should try again, with our new camcorder."
    "It's too dangerous, Charlie. I wouldn't want to put you at risk."
    "It's just that it would be great to have proof. Isn't there a harmless beast you can unloose?"
    "Sure. There's a puppy low in the sky, Canis minor."
    "Perfect," I said. "How harmful can a puppy be?"
    "Why don't we just invite your brother and my cousins to a demonstration? And we'll also have the camcorder ready."
    "Great. Let's do it! This weekend."
    "All right, but first let me do one practice spell, tomorrow."
    I was teaching a class that evening, and when I got home I saw a note from Phil saying he'd gone out to the country to practice, he would be back no later than eleven. Soon after midnight I called the police. Even before the state troopers showed up at my door, I felt he was never coming back. They told me it appeared that my husband had been mauled by a large animal.
    They made me identify the body. Horrid blue streaks, they had to be from claws, over his pale chest. I asked the police if any tarot cards or a black cloth were found in the field. "Yes ma'm, there were cards scattered about in the vicinity of the body. The cloth was found underneath him."
    I learned a few days later what the autopsy revealed. The lacerations on his chest and abdomen were almost certainly from a large cat, probably a mountain lion. I burst into tears as the medical examiner tried to console me. "It's all my fault," I cried. "He would never have tried it again if not for me. It's all my fault." The M.E. kept assuring me that it couldn't be, it was just one of those freak accidents, "nobody's fault, ma'm, nobody's fault."
     I keep trying not to picture Phil kneeling in the tall grass flattened by the black cloth. Dealing and chanting. But when the beast came, why didn't he run? What would be the point, with a lion coming right for you? A very disturbed lion, like one just let out of a cage. Phil must have stood up and confronted it, tried to calm it down as it approached. He never turned and ran. No lacerations on his back at all.
    When they gave me Phil's effects, they warned me about the bloodstain on the cloth, so I didn't even look at it then. Instead, I looked through what was left of his tarot deck for the devil card, but could not find it.
     The next day I saw an article in the paper, only a page away from Phil's obituary. A lion had been seen in the woods not far from here. Cougars have not been spotted in these parts in decades, but they inhabited the mountains near here once, so it was at least possible. But of the several people who saw it, two claimed that it sported a prominent mane. Shots were fired, but no dead lion was found. Pictures were taken, but nothing definite was discernible. Zoos and circuses were contacted, but no escaped lion was reported.
    One night about a week after Phil's death, I spent a long time staring at the stars, until I noticed the constellation with the inverted question mark and remembered a romantic night when Phil had pointed there.
   "You see that?" he asked, tracing the lion's head. "That's Leo."

    I just wish I knew why Phil didn't bury the devil back in the deck. Maybe he tried, frantically tried as the great cat approached, and it slipped out of his trembling hand. But where is it? Maybe the claw of the lion picked it up, took it into the woods. When I looked again through what was left of Grandpa Nolano's cards, I came across the Strength card, which happened to be upside down, with the lion on top. I tore the card to shreds and then burned them all in my fireplace.
    And on the black silk cloth, with its fading constellations, as I dangled it over the fire, I just made Leo out, and saw that it was stained with my husband's blood.
    I should never have encouraged him. Maybe it would make more sense if I were a Leo, I thought as I watched the cloth go up in flames.
    Since then, I've managed to take some of the guilt-load off my back. It wasn't all my fault. Phil must not have taken precautions, after all. He was careless, and what was he thinking? Why Leo of all constellations? He must have convinced himself that if phantasms can't be photographed, they must not have substance. He was obviously wrong--didn't he ever see Mark's scar from the dragon? And he should have known because Veronica knew--it was her spell and she had to know--they are corporeal. They have teeth. They have claws.
Look around you. They are still triumphant.

Click on the card to return to chapter 1

The End