The
City was in crisis. A third sinkhole in the previous two months had
sucked down a building.
The
first two buildings were citizens' homes. Each time during a night of
violent rain, thunder and lightning, the building was gone in
seconds, by a direct lightning-bolt strike.
The
neighbors on either side, safely in their homes, and under cover
from the weather, had not heard anything unusual above the rain,
thunder and lightning.
The
next morning, there was a large calm pool of heavenly blue water
where the home used to be, under a blazing sun in a blue sky. The
neighbors' first response was wonderment. Within minutes the awe
morphed into horror when the fate of the homes' families dawned. It
took hours for information to circulate that in each instance, the
family was not at home when the disaster struck.
There
was, miraculously, no loss of life in either catastrophe.
The
third sinkhole swallowed an abandoned large warehouse near the
border. Everybody wondered, but nobody cared.
Initially,
it was a foregone conclusion everyone easily arrived at that the
obvious cause of the sinkholes was the weather. After all, all three
holes had struck during a storm. This conclusion quickly caused
serious concern about the geology of the ground. If the storm could
trigger geological instability, no building was safe.
The
City hired professional geologists. Within days those rock
scientists' findings made matters worse. Their examinations indicated
that there was a ninety percent probability that the cause of the
sinkholes was the salt mine.
The
salt mine was the only reason the City came into existence one
hundred and thirteen years previously. At that time each was over
fifty miles away from the other. Presently, that distance was a
little over ten miles.
The
Mayor saw hope in the geologists' report. The expansion of the salt
mine in the direction of the City would cease. It was never a secret
over the years that the available subterranean salt deposits in the
area extended in all directions, virtually endlessly. Expansion
towards the City had been favoured only because the shorter distance
to the City lessened mining financial and other costs.
The
majority of the City's two-hundred-thousand persons drew peace of
mind from the Mayor's assurances that not only had mining in the
City's direction been halted immediately, but, as well and
simultaneously, restoration and refurbishing of the subterranean rock
strata had begun.
As
accurate as the rock-solid scientific study might have been in
explaining the mysteries of the sinkholes, the families of the lost
homes had hard evidence to prove it was not science that had saved
their lives and the few possessions they had taken with them when
they had abandoned their homes before the sink holes struck.
What
had saved them was the clairvoyancy of the City's
usually-dismissed-with-ridicule tea-leaves reader. It was because of
the ridicule that the clairvoyant made herself known to her customers
as only TLR.
She
advertised her paid services by only word-of-mouth from satisfied
customers. Every one of her few many-times-repeat customers had been
satisfied by the prophecies every time. Readings were only at night
on the thirteenth of the month, in TLR's home. By candlelight.
In
TLR's kitchen, at her table draped in the finest linen, the customer
drank most of the black tea made by TLR; the customer inverted the
mostly emptied cup on the saucer; after a few long seconds, TLR would
take up the cup to read the customer's future from the random spread
of the leaves on the inside of the cup, the bottom and the sides.
The
future foretold was for significant happinesses and significant
misfortunes for the following consecutive thirteen twenty-four hours.
Most of the time there was no significant future to be told, in which
case a second cup of tea was enjoyed, and the session was over.
Since
TLR's future-telling pastime hobby practice was advertised by
word-of-mouth only, how her across-the-road neighbor came to know
about it, was a mystery. TLR never knew her neighbor knew.
That
neighbor was a zealot in her religion. She, AZRN, was a wealthy
woman, single, living alone. She attended religious celebrative
worship in a Temple downtown, more than once a week. She was adored
and highly respected by all in the congregation for the purity,
depth, and steadfastness of her faith.
Inveterately
holy AZRN suspected TLR of practising witchcraft in her home across
the road. She hated TLR for that. AZRN believed it was her
god-ordained responsibility and sacred duty to put a stop to TLR's
witchery.
AZRN
sought counselling from the religion's authorities in ecclesial
matters. A committee of three authorities, all women by AZRN's
specific, humble request, went to AZRN's home to onsite observe for
themselves.
After
their hours-long investigation, and tea and biscuits, the committee
unanimously approved of AZRN's intolerance of TLR's witchery.
In
support of AZRN's righteous intolerance, the committee unanimously
cited holy scripture that specifically required that intolerance:
"The Lord saith, That soul that turneth after witchcraft, I will
even set my face against that soul."
At
the same time, the committee unanimously and softly and hesitantly
and humbly and in good humor, discouraged AZRN's intention to install
cameras on her porch to provide surveillance of TLR's porch front
door. The committee discretely averred that such resorting to reliance
on mechanical verification would seriously compromise the
intuitive righteousness of AZRN's opposition to sinful witchcraft
being practised by her across-the-road neighbor.
Before
they left, the committee, final authorities in their religion's
ecclesial matters, performed a ritual blessing of AZRN's home and of
AZRN herself.
AZRN
expressed her thanks for the impromptu blessings by her spontaneous
on-the-spot generous cash donations to the Temple and to each one of
the committee.
After
the committee left, AZRN, overwhelmed with a sense of total holy
righteous victory, planned to clandestinely enter TLR's home one
stormy night; to incapacitate TLR; and to set TLR's home on fire
while TLR was incapacitated inside. AZRN, gleefully, had no doubt the
storm would be blamed for the evil clairvoyant's disastrous death.
That
fateful horror-filled terrible night came. The official weather
forecast was for a storm at night. It was the 13th of the month. AZRN
had equipped herself with the appropriate tools to forcibly enter
through the backdoor.
When
she discovered the backdoor was unlocked, she whispered a prayer of
thanks for the sign that her righteous mission was being blessed.
In
the darkness inside the home, while the violent storm outside
steadily increased in violence, AZRN ensconced herself snugly under
that kitchen table still draped in that finest linen, in readiness
for the fatal ambush of the unsuspecting luckless TLR witch.
AZRN
could not have been aware that it was at that very table that all of
TLR's readings of the future had been necromantically conjured up by
leaves of black tea randomly spread, by elementary laws of general
Physics, on the insides of an inverted cup.
What
AZRN could never have known was that TLR had read her own teacup
black tea leaves. TLR had sadly abandoned her home because her leaves
had shewn her that on that night, her home would be the fourth
sinkhole disaster in the City.
That
fourth sinkhole struck cataclysmically by a direct lightning-bolt hit
at midnight, the end of that thirteenth of the month.
Mercifully,
that fourth catastrophe occurred when AZRN had fallen sound asleep,
snoring in, as it were, hymnal concert with the thunder, under that
kitchen table, ever draped in the finest linen.
Contact
Ezra (Unless
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author's name in
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line
of the message we
won't know where to send it.)
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons