The Discworld Tarot
The Five of Cups
The Five of Cups: Disappointment.
This card usually shows somebody in deep sorrow. There are five cups, mugs, tankards, et c, in the picture. Two (or three) have been dropped and spilt. Two (or three) are upright and still full. The person doing the grieving is focused on the spilt cups and paying no attention to those which are still full.
Phrases like "don't cry over spilt milk" are appropriate here. Yes, the liquid is spilt and there's no getting it back in the cups. That's life. Yes, it's a setback. But what's been lost? The cups themselves aren't broken, just upset. They can be refilled. You still have two (or perhaps three) full cups. You can move on.
A card for those unlucky in love, or perhaps a guy who gets stuck in the dreaded Friend Zone who realises he ain't gonna get no further – he fills some of her cups, but not all five…
This short grew out of a side-theme in Gap Year Adventures and begins a few years later. Or we come into it a few years later – tying up a loose end from GYA which, while interesting to explore, didn't fit into Strandpiel.
So. The noodle incidents alluded to here may well form part of a successor tale to Gap Year Adventures. I've thought about doing this and exploring the Discworld Canada/USA a bit more. Even sketched out a few incidents. But it all depends on getting the time… just a few glimpses, anyway.
As always: Third version with previously unspotted typos corrected - there are always some - a few clunky bits revised, and new bits added.
Spa Lane, Ankh-Morpork:
It was summer, shortly after the Final Run at the Assassins' Guild School. Nominally this was an informal graduation party for the half-dozen or so students of Rimwards Howondalandian origin who had successfully qualified as fully licenced Assassins. As such it was hosted in the back garden of Doctor Johanna Smith-Rhodes and the braai was in full operation, supplemented by things prepared in her kitchen.
In practice, it was spilling over into the back gardens of both neighbours. Madame Emmanuelle de Lapoignard (who taught Swords and Bladed Weapons and who had two sons at the School) and beyond that, into the garden of Doctor Davinia Bellamy, who taught Botany, who had two sons who were School graduates, and a daughter who was now in the Lower Sixth. All three teachers accepted that the School year was coming to its end, the pupils would in the main be dispersing to all corners of the Disc and many would not be seeing each other again until September, when everyone would be a year or so further on in the next higher Year. And many of the students here – Assassins, now – would not be returning at all, their School years done. It was a farewell as well as a celebration.
The three teachers had agreed, tacitly, that they might as well have open house for the day, for everyone from the School community who wanted to turn up, along with neighbours and friends who might as well join the party. Emmanuelle, whose house and garden was in between those of Johanna and Davinia, had instructed her gardener to take down sections of fence which were temporary constructions anyway, installed with this purpose in mind, and the party now spread over all three gardens, with lots of intermingling. Some things were understood.
In the back garden of Number Fourteen, witch Rebecka Smith-Rhodes stretched lazily on the grass with her lifelong friend Davvie Bellamy. Bekki had returned for a few days from her working life in Howondaland. She had stabled her Pegasus, Boetjie, at the Air Police station at Pseudopolis Yard, and had gratefully crossed the City to her family home. After the relative quiet and the sense of space in Howondaland, where people were spread out sparsely and the largest town of any sort was Bittersfontein – with barely twelve thousand people, if that – Ankh-Morpork was always hard to adjust to again. Even for a girl who had been brought up there. But falling in with old friends like Davvie and Shauna, and reforming the Gang – well, some things really earthed you.
And being in a place where nobody was making demands on a Witch's time – and, in fact, people just saw you as Bekki, or Beccs, or "Hey, you carrotty-haired freckled fecker!" rather than as a witch – and with ample food and drink for the taking: well, that, to Bekki, was heaven.
"I could get used to this." she said to Davvie. They watched the party around them. About a hundred people now, maybe more, most of them Assassins, both teachers and pupils.
"Three cuisines." Davvie agreed. "Barbecue at yours."
"Braai." Bekki corrected her. "Barbecue is Fourecksian. Ons gaan nou om braai. Enjoy the braaivleiss."
"Standing corrected."
"Lying down corrected." Bekki corrected her.
Davvie grinned.
"Quirmian food at Madame's. Morporkian at ours."
They lazily clinked glasses. Davvie, who had raised herself up on her elbows to clink, frowned slightly.
"Watch out." she said. "Big brother alert."
Davinia Bellamy, junior, had grown up with three big brothers. It had given her Baby Sister Privileges in a big way. Davvie, the unexpected fourth born a long time after her brothers, had not been above exploiting this as she grew up. There was, for instance, a twelve year age-gap between her and her brother Tim. A longer gap separated her from Martin and Simon. Davvie had said it wasn't so much having brothers as extra uncles, especially after first Simon and then Martin had met girlfriends and married. It had taken Tim a little longer. Davvie knew their mother had fretted about this.
"Mind if I join you both?" Timothy Bellamy said, diffidently.
"If you must." Davvie said, with a sisterly shrug that was just on the right side of indifferent. Bekki smiled tolerantly. She'd seen the older Bellamy boys as extra uncles too.
Tim grinned, his usual friendly infectious grin, then joined the two girls on the grass. He indicated some of the newly graduated Assassins, pupils of his mother and their two neighbours. They still appeared to be moving in a dream, as if disbelieving their new status.
"Hard to think that was me, once." he said.
Davvie shrugged.
"And your point is, big brother?"
"This time next year, it's you." Tim said. "If you survive your Final Run, that is."
Davvie made an indifferent shrug again. A year is a long time when you're only just coming up to seventeen. Bekki watched them both, wondering what it would be like to have brothers. Oh, there was Manni and Pippi, Auntie Emmie's two sons, who she and Davvie had grown up with. The nearest thing to. But actual brothers who had actual bedrooms in the same house, and the same parents as you, and who turned up for meals more or less on time…
Tim sat, and watched the new Assassins.
"They've got it all to come. Poor buggers." he said, reflectively.
Bekki felt intrigued. She felt she had a notion of what Tim meant. Her mother taught at the School, and every summer she'd seen a new crop of Assassins emerge from Education. If Mum had been one of their main teachers, they tended to arrive about this time of year for a celebratory drink, and a reminder they could now call Mum Johanna. (1)
"What, real life?" Bekki asked. Tim grinned at her. It was a big infectious grin, tinged with the ruefulness that comes with experience.
"Real life." He confirmed. "Tends to come up and punch you in the face, when the euphoria wears off. So you've graduated. You've got the pink slip and the licence. Congratulations, well done. Now what do you intend to do next?"
"Ah…" Bekki said.
She paused for a few moments. Her mental filing cabinet wasn't perfect, but she cross-referenced a few pieces of data gleaned from various places and conversations. A memory of something one of her aunts had said, a contemporary of Tim's at the Guild School…
She gave Tim Bellamy a long, searching, Witch look.
After a few moments, she asked
"So what did you do next?"
Tim smiled slightly.
"I spent a month at home. Just doing not very much at all. Then Mum and Dad started dropping hints. Big ones, in Dad's case. And, er, I said goodbye to somebody. When she went home."
Bekki didn't ask. She knew Tim would tell her in his own time. Besides, she suspected she already knew who the she was.
"Mum had a word with your mum. What my dad said was a full bottle and two glasses' worth of word. Then your mum came round and talked to me. About things. She said this wasn't anything new, and she'd seen it lots of times in new graduates. That once you're in fifth year and on the Black, you spend three years completely focused on one thing, getting to the Final Run and passing. She said she thought it was a failing in the School, that once somebody's graduated, they're out there on their own. Hardly any advice or support. That the problem was, because you get so focused on passing the Run, you don't think at all about what you do afterwards, once you're passed and there's nothing to work for any more. You need a new challenge, something else to do, then."
Tim accepted a drink.
"Thanks. And your mum – and my mum was nodding a lot – said she thought I could use a reason to be somewhere else than Ankh-Morpork for a while. Something to do, something to focus on. Your mum said she had Guild funding to pay for field researchers to go to various parts of the Disc for twelve months. To collect samples to send back. And she knew I probably wasn't going to go on the Guild's Active List. I'd always scored highly in Botany and Natural Science and Wilderness Survival. So why didn't I go somewhere for a year? See life in a different part of the Disc, observe the wildlife, write notes, collect plant samples, send them back to the Guild. She thought I needed to be out of the city for a while."
Tim smiled.
"I'm glad she said "Not Howondaland. You're going to Aceria."
Bekki nodded. Davvie snorted.
"Mum had a reason not to send you to Howondaland?" she asked, already sure she knew the reason why.
Tim nodded. "She said she already had people there. No reason to send me. But there was a need for a field researcher in Aceria. The Guild, she said, did not know as much as it could about Aceria. She didn't talk about the other reason. There was another reason."
Bekki patted his arm.
"So Mum got you a year's work – paid work, I hope? – and got you out of the city for a year."
Tim smiled.
"Full expenses and a salary, yes. Not that there was much opportunity to spend any. So I went out. Through Far Überwald. Zlobenia. Kashncari. And then into Aceria proper. You go out through what they call the Steppe. Then people start calling it The Prairie. But then you're in Aceria. They call it the Great Outdoors for a reason. Lots of space. Big open country. And everywhere you go changes. You can have an immigrant community from Hubsvensska in one valley, cross a ridge, and the next valley speaks Phlegmish. Lots of people there who moved out from the countries around Ankh-Morpork and Überwald. People from Zlobenia and Borogravia who simply didn't want to be fighting a never-ending war. People getting away from poverty and famine. Odd religious sects who are too extreme even for the Omnians. There's even a poem about it, about Aceria – "bring me your poor, your tired and your huddled masses…" which is Aceria for you, or at least the Lower States. Hubwards Aceria is more, you know, longer-settled, with two ethnicities, one that speaks Morporkian and the other one that speaks Quirmian. It's isn't like that at all in the Lower States, although they're moving towards a Federation of some sort, with Morporkian as an official language."
Tim looked reflective.
"One of the things I had to do for the Guild was to get a more accurate picture of who lives where, and what the politics of the place are. Officially, I was there as a field researcher in Natural Studies. Observing animals, collecting seeds and samples. Every so often a Pegasus found me, and delivered mail and supplies from Ankh-Morpork, and took the stuff I'd collected back. As well as my reports on interesting places and people and political trends."
"To keep you occupied after graduating and to find you something useful to do." Bekki said, thoughtfully.
"And to keep your mind off the other thing." Davvie said, with little-sister callousness.
Tim gave her a frown.
"Where was I? Oh yes. Moves for a Continental Congress, they called it. Representatives of every State and Territory getting together and discussing a Not-A-Federation and expressly not some sort of taxation system to pay for it. Talk about the Semi-United States of Aceria, or something. Apparently after General Tacticus died, the oldest States saw their chance and revolted, then kicked out rule by the Ankh-Morporkian Empire. Helped by the Quirmians. Hubwards Aceria stayed loyal, except for the Quirmian bit."
"History." Bekki said. "Lots of places had Wars of Independence against Ankh-Morporkian rule. Old Aceria was the first."
"Like your country." Tim agreed. As if on cue, a burst of song reached them. (2)
De La Rey, De La Rey, sal jy die boere kom lei, De La Rey, De La Rey? Generaal, Generaal, sal jy die Boere kom haal?
"They've got the same sort of songs in parts of Aceria." Tim said. He hummed a song.
"We fired our crossbows, Morporkia kept a'comin, but there wasn't quite so many as there was a while ago…"
His sister nodded, thoughtfully.
"Ankh-Morpork really made itself popular all around the Disc, didn't we?"
"Big Empire." Bekki said. "Lots of people to annoy." She hummed along with the song. People tended to intone these lines with real feeling.
Want my vrou en my kind, lê in 'n kamp en vergaan!
En Morporkia se murg loop oor 'n nasie wat weer op sal staan!
"Indeed." said Tim. He sighed and took a deep breath.
"So I moved around Aceria a lot. Helped out in various places. Got the things the Guild wanted. Sent them back. Got incoming mail from Home from the Pegasus Service people. One day I heard the news from Howondaland."
Tim got another drink.
"It's good to talk to you, Bekki. You listen. Attentively. That's got to be a Witch thing? Thank you. Anyway. I knew your Aunt Mariella wanted to go back after she graduated. Did I say we got to be close? Well…." Tim Bellamy, a man who was basically honest, paused and sighed. He looked crestfallen for an instance. "Maybe we weren't as close as I thought. Or wanted. Or hoped. She and her best friend decided they'd quite like to go travelling together for a year. In any case, Mariella had to do two years National Service, so she had to go home anyway. Maybe I was kidding myself that she wouldn't."
Bekki allowed another little silence for Tim to carry on filling. She gave Davvie a discreet little kick on the ankle to stop her from saying something little-sisterly.
"She and Rivka set off for Howondaland about a week after we all graduated. A big party saw them off at the docks. I was thinking That's it. The end of seven years. What can you expect. She doesn't come from here. She's gone home. We may never even see each other again. To be honest, that's part of the reason why I went into a gloom for a few weeks. It took the shine off graduating. That and the anti-climax. you know, when it's done and all of a sudden there's nothing to do any more."
Bekki had been about four years old at the time. Well, coming up to five. But she'd been a bit tearful too at Tannie Mariella leaving. She understood this.
"And. After you'd been in a bit of a black depression for a few weeks and alarmed your parents. Your mum and my mum got together. And Mum fixed you up with something to do, to get your sense of direction back."
"Saved my life, I think." Tim said. Bekki smiled slightly. Maybe Mum felt responsible. Tim was in love with Auntie Mariella and had been for a while. Intense. Pupils living at the same School for seven years. When she left, and it knocked Tim down, what's the betting Mum paid for it all out of her own pocket? To get his head together again? Knowing Mum, I bet she sold it to the Guild afterwards, and got them to take over paying, once she could demonstrate it was getting results…
"So I'd been about ten months in Aceria." Tim said. "Liking it there. Still do. I'd been hearing about Marella and Rivka and all the loud bangs and screams they were leaving all the way across a continent. It was in the news a lot. Then one day, might have been a year in, I heard about Mariella. And Horst Lensen. I mean. Horst bloody Lensen. The last man you'd have imagined."
Bekki had only ever seen Uncle Horst as the man he'd become, not as the man he'd been before. But she understood that he'd been hard work and difficult to like as a student at the Guild School. That would have been the person Tim would have known. Discovering he had succeeded where he, Tim Bellamy, had abjectly failed as the man who'd got closest to Aunt Mariella… briefly, Bekki considered what an Uncle Tim might have worked out like. Not important, she decided. This is the one Aunt Mariella might have briefly considered. And discarded. I wonder if she'd open up if I were to ask her? When I fly back to Bittersfontein, perhaps…
"Horst wasn't all bad, I suppose." Tim said. "He could do and say some thoughtful and decent things. When nobody was looking. On the quiet. I had plenty of time to think when I was living and working alone in Aceria. It occurred to me that he put on that personality at school as a sort of defence. The loud ignoramus thing. Saved him having to feel anything and think too deeply. Defence, I suppose. And to fit in with the guys he desperately wanted to be a part of and accepted by. Which made him a monumental pain in the ar… bottom… to everyone around him. I suppose being away from the School meant he could drop that, and the real person inside came out. Or something. I just found it really hard to believe Mariella had accepted him. And not me."
"So what did you do?" Bekki asked, after an acceptable length of silence.
Tim shrugged.
"What do you think I did?" he asked. "What any normal guy would do in those circumstances. I got well and drunk."
He grinned.
"I was in Elevensee(3) at the time." He said. Stunningly beautiful place. Strange people. Some of whom are not nice to know. I'd met these two guys called Jim Daniels and Jack Beam. They ran a distillery. Made something almost but not completely like whiskey. I sent a few bottles back for Mum and Johanna. Got drunk. Got into a fight. Some idiot in a saloon said he didn't like my face, tenderloin. What y'all going to do about it? Well, I was wearing pistol crossbows. So was he. Realised what was going to happen, went for the fast draw as Miss Band taught us, drew first, shot him. Fortunately I was pissed. My shot went wide of his body and got him in the hand just as he was drawing. Pinned his hand to the butt of his crossbow. Got me a local reputation. People in Aceria really like that sort of thing, apparently.
"When I woke up the next morning in my cabin in the hills, I wasn't alone. Somebody was there. An Assassin. In black. She was looking down at me with an expression on her face. I realised. The previous night I could have killed somebody just because I was drunk and had a chip on my shoulder about a girl who I thought had thrown me over. Which is not a nice state of mind to be in. Not at all.
"Your mother and Doctor Smith-Rhodes wanted me to come out and check on you." she said. "They're worried about your state of mind. And looking at you, you drunken scruffy filthy disgusting animal, I'm not surprised they're worried."
"Peggy." Davvie said to her brother. "She cared enough to go out and find you."
Tim nodded.
"Peggy Cregan." he agreed. "She applied tough love. Cleaned me up. Straightened me out."
Davvie shook her head.
"If this was a story people would say it's just too neat." she said. "The girl you thought you were in love with sails off to her own country several thousand miles away. You get sent to work in a country a few thousand miles away in the other direction. Deliberately so, I suspect. The girl you're still in love with meets another guy. You respond by getting disgustingly drunk and getting into fights. Which, big brother, is not you. Then the girl from two or three doors down the street, who you've known all your life and never even thought of in that way before, drops everything to go out and clean you up. After a few years, you realise she's the one who's been there for you all along. And having got Mariella out of your head by then, you marry Peggy and come back to Ankh-Morpork."
"Which is exactly how it happened. More or less. Took a few years, though." Tim confessed. "The Guild extended my contract to work in Aceria as a field agent. Several times. Really got to know the country. Peggy joined me on a few long trips. It still took a year or two before the penny dropped. Did I tell you I ran into Mariella and Rivka a few years later? I'd not seen her since we both graduated. Anyway. The Guild had decided to send me to New Pork(4) and set up the bureau there. Chief Assassin in Aceria. There'd never really been one before, you see. Good job. Peggy joined me there.
"Then we got a message to act in support of two Guild operatives who'd been assigned a job by Vetinari. Something to do with stopping and robbing a stagecoach, apparently, Vetinari wanted a convincing bandit raid to steal whatever it was the coach was carrying and to get it back to Ankh-Morpork. You never ask the details and they don't tell you unless it's necessary for the mission.
"It turned out the operatives were Mariella and Rivka.
"I asked what they were doing here. Apparently it was another gap year. Both of them had relatives, especially their mothers, who were seriously putting pressure on them to get married. The mothers could see no reason why they were holding back, especially as Aaron and Horst were such decent young men, and sons-in-law any mother would be delighted to have. That sort of thing. So they'd decided to have one last final fling together as single girls, and do their second big road trip, the one they'd been talking about for years, ever since the Howondalandian one. Across Aceria, this time." (5)
Tim shrugged.
"I helped. But then they had to flee across State borders. I've still got the Wanted poster somewhere, with their faces on and WANTED: DEAD OR DEADER across the bottom. Rivka was really disgusted as to how small the amount of reward money was, as I remember.
"Not much else to tell, really. I realised Mariella was… well, this was the best part of five years later. Somebody I liked, somebody I'm fond of, but just a girl I was at school with who I had a thing for once. It had all faded. I was seeing it in perspective. And later I met Horst again. Nice guy. Changed. I don't begrudge him. Any more."
Tim smiled. It was the old happy Tim Bellamy smile.
"Married Pegs. Eventually. Funny how these things work out. Now I've handed over the New Pork bureau to somebody else, I've got a contract to teach at the Guild School. My mum, your mum, and Pegs, they all wanted me back and they thought I'd been living out in the wilds and risking my neck for far too long, and it was timer for me to do something different, you see. So I'm to manage Outdoor Activities, like wilderness trips and expeditions. Your mum pointed out that it's not as if I don't have proven experience, after all. I'm looking forward to it."
Bekki looked over to where Doctor Davinia Bellamy and her daughter-in-law Peggy were among a group of women in deep conversation. Peggy Bellamy was maturing into the same well-rounded plain homely mumsiness as her mother-in-law, she noted. Pretty much, Bekki noted, a younger edition, a woman designed to the same general blueprint. And Peggy radiated contentment and quiet appreciation of the way her life was working out. As, indeed, did Tim.
Yes. Things did work out for the best. If you let them.
(1) But not all of them. Johanna Smith-Rhodes only extended this invitation to the ones she actually liked.
(2) Wherever there is a braai and South Africans getting together over lekker food and beer. Somebody will put on a Music from Home tape. It's inevitable. And if it's a Bok van Blerk ballad about the little differences of opinion between ruler and ruled around 1900 – 02… everybody sings along. Well, the Afrikaans-speaking ones, anyway.
(3) Think Tennessee, but taken Up To Eleven. as the tales develop, look out for all the tropes. You may even pray for Deliverance.
(4) Originally New DamHamster. Then a game of Cripple Mr Onion between the king of Ankh-Morpork and the Chief Burgher of Sto Kerrig got out of hand, and the King won the Sto Kerrigian colony on the turn of a card. The city was promptly renamed New Ankh-Morpork. In the manner of these things, the Acerians shortened the name to New Pork. The expatriot Kerrigians living there accepted the change of management stoically, but in the manner of their cousins in howondaland, the moment an opportuinty arose to play catch-up, they took it.
(5) They'd decided to have a shared hen-party in Genua, with any woman they knew who could get out there being welcome to attend, the more the merrier, for a few days of unrestrained quaffing (with all that implied). One person among many who turned up was Yenta Goldberg, who Rivka discovered was sitting in the lobby of their hotel waiting for Rivka, in order to remind her there was a good man weaiting in Cenotia for you, schmoopie, and I hope you're inviting me to the wedding. As she said, "A Yenta's work is only done when she sees the girl crush the glass under her foot, as she stands under the canopy next to a good man in a profession, with the rabbi presiding." Genua, a city no stranger to celebration, did recover from the party. Eventually.
The Acerian road-trip might make it onto paper as a sequal to GYA. It needs time!
Notes Dump - as every story needs one.
When I first started playing with the idea of a Discworld take on Canada,Eh, I remembered the line about "Oh Canada, from sea to shining sea", then looked at what was then the Discworld Mapp to see where it went. Or would go. There was a huge unmarked expanse of territory on the Mapp running from the Hub to the sea nearby to Genua. I recalled from Witches Abroad that Genua has a very Lousiana/Mississippi Delta vibe to it, and thought "hmmm". This, I reasoned, was where the Disc's "North America" should go. Canada, mainly, with just maybe a few USA-like places tacked on at the edges.
Then came the Compleat Discworld Atlas. To my delight, the compilers of the CDA inserted a realm called "The Great Outdoors" - exactly where I'd put Aceria. This has a very suspiciously North America, 18th-19th Century vibe about it: the USA, mainly, as it was in the 1800's with mass immigration and Manifest Destiny unfolding. I was very chuffed.
Aceria is a place I plan to revisit a lot - both the "Canada" and the "Semi-United States" parts. After all, I devised Californicatia which has appeared in two tales. Now we have Elevensee and New Pork. Three down, forty-five more of the lower Forty-Eight to go... ("Hawaii" is out in the tropical ocean somewhere - Sumtri? The Brown Islands?) and "Alaska", with its own distinctive tropes to be taken Up to Eleven, would be incorporated into Hubwards Aceria somewhere. But what a vast canvas to paint on with Discworld/Roundworld cross-referents...
I haven't figured out exactly why Mariellla and Rivka have to rob a stagecoach. I do have them grumbling that every time they take a holiday together, the Guild or Vetinari find them a job to do. One idea is that it's carrying a certain metal ore, in carefully measured sub-critical amounts in lead-lined boxes, that a meglomaniacal State governor with big ideas is amassing, to build an explosive-metal bomb to support his plan to Make Aceria Great Again - by having a weapon at his disposal that can, err, trump, any other weapon on the Disc...
Also, the idea of Tim Bellamy - the walking epitome of The Nice Guy - having a life crisis to overcome, and in passing taking an Assassin skill to a place not unlike the Wild West - well, the Wild Widdershins, anyway - and becoming the Discworld equivalent of a gunslinger in the saloon, the fastest draw ever seen with a pistol crossbow. Irresistable. I see a Clint Eastwood parody lurking... the idea of the Man in Black, the Good, the Man With No Name ("Well, actually, it's Tim..." "That don't fit the Legend, amigo. Whoever heard of a crossbowslinger called Tim?") Again, story ideas are forming.
Aceria? From the Latatian "acer", meaning "leaf of the maple tree"...