How awful you are—to ignore a dying girl in the street!
What has happened to you in your life, that you are so numb to the sufferings of others?
You give a guilty look to the first mate, pivot, and jog off the boat and back into town. In minutes, you come upon the block where just minutes ago the girl’s slight form lay broken, ebbing away in the dust.
Her body is gone.
The thoroughfare is busy—horsemen, carriages, pedestrians. You duck and dash between the goings-on, bending toward the dust in searching of evidence—blood, anything—and a passing woman grabs your arm, startling you.
She is old, hunched over, a vermilion scarf wrapped around flowing gray hair, her ears ajangle with earrings. She wears a deep-sea-blue jacket over a white blouse, and a skirt that matches her scarf tumbles past her ankles. She gazes at you a moment with eyes deep and black. “Listen carefully, my flower, because what I’m about to tell you is very important,” she whispers. “It’s something very serious and very happy: your life is going to change completely! And even more: it will change the minute you step out of this room! You can be sure, my little flower, that even your boyfriend will come back and ask you to marry him, he takes it all back! And your boss will tell you that he’s thought about it and isn’t going to fire you!”
As she speaks, you know that her words are deranged, utterly mad–yet a pricking sense begins within you, a small tipsy fizzing.
“And there’s more! You’re about to come into a lot of money brought in the night by a foreign man. Tell me at once!” she cries. “Do you? Do you know any foreigners?” She looks madly at you, her eyes desperate, her fingers digging painfully into your skin.
Will you tell the truth, as you always tell the truth?
Or are a little weirded out by all this and just want to head back to the boat?
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