When the child woke in the fields her first morning away from home, the cows were already up and the babies swinging eagerly from their mothers’ milk-heavy teats.

The padi fields shone with an early morning greenness, the sun sitting like a giantess’ forgotten ball inside their still waters.

She yawned sleepily and squelched past the curious gaze of the cows, who blinked their large beautiful eyes at her. Past the sugar cane thickets that towered over her, the bamboo groves, the wispy smoke from small peat fires over which the farmers were cooking their morning breakfasts. They always hollered to her and offered to share their meals, so she never went hungry.

She was young and deeply in love with life. And life, in turn, was deeply in love with her.

The child had walked for five days along the Big Road when she came across a gypsy fair. She was fascinated because she had heard much about the gypsies and their fantastic inventions and tricks.

Through the scattered shrills of excitement, she saw a man with two heads, a woman with a third eye in the middle of her forehead that winked and rolled as well as any ordinary eye, dancing serpents, tarot card readers, and acrobats with wonderfully rubbery bodies that could twist and tangle themselves like the snakes they charmed. She took in all the sights from a distance, curious but not overly distracted by them.

In fact, she had just crossed to the edge of the camp and was about to leave the fair behind her, when a bony hand suddenly popped out from a dirty white tent on her right and seized her.

The child struggled to break free, but the wasted hand was surprisingly strong.

A disembodied voice (presumably belonging to the hand) issued from the tent: “Well, well, and look what we’ve got here, squirming like a fish! Isn’t this the Chosen One looking for the City of Dreams?”

“How did you know where I was going?” she demanded, thunderstruck.

“I thought you might like to stop in for a reading with old Tenoch the fortune-teller you know,” said the voice wheedlingly, while the scrawny hand pulled her closer.

“But I have no money for a reading!” cried the child, feeling at once helpless, surprised and bothered by this sudden delay in her journey, even as she could not resist the hand that drew her into the tent like a lamb to its fold.

“That’s alright, Zayoni. There are other ways to repay Tenoch for his advice. Come, my child,” cooed the voice, suddenly gentle and coaxing, as one would use on a reluctant toddler who didn’t want to leave its toys. “You will not regret, I think, listening to what I have to say.”

Inside the tent, the child was led to a chair piled high with rugs and cushions, as though it might have been specially prepared for a very small client. Even if she wanted to escape her strange circumstances, she was mystified by this curious stranger who knew her name and affairs so well.

There was only one pale lamp in the corner of the tent, which cast strange shadows on the things around her. She saw cards and crystals of all shapes and sizes on the table in front, and vats of unknown fluids bubbling in other corners. A sagging bookshelf on her left bore the brunt of ponderous tomes, thick with magic and learning.

But most striking to the child were the foul smells that assaulted her nose, as of rotting animals. When she craned her neck up, she was horrified to find lizards hanging from a beam above, as well as bats and other creatures the Great Dreamer would never have recognised. She could not tell if they were dead or alive.

She turned her scrutiny then to the owner of the gaunt hand and voice. Vaguely, she made out the small, crumpled shape of a wraithlike person, swathed in a voluminous cloak and from whose mouth a very long pipe sprouted. The smoke that curled from its bowl was thick and grey as ash, and strangely aromatic. The scent almost, but not quite banished the putrid stench from the overhanging critters.

The gypsy seemed to the child like an eccentric necromancer presiding over his den of foul brews and spells. She could not see his face at all, which was filled with shadows like the mouth of a dark cave, but she felt that his eyes were fixed intensely on her.

It unsettled her a little not to be able to see his eyes. She liked to look a person in the eyes when she talked to them. The eyes always showed her the heart of a person.

“So you are going to read my cards for me?” she asked eagerly, in spite of herself.

“If you wish,” replied the fortune-teller resignedly.

The child thought she heard him mutter complainingly under his breath, “They are always asking for the cards.”

“What’s that?” she asked sharply.

“Nothing, can’t you see I am preparing to read your cards for you?” he answered hastily.

The old gypsy deftly picked up a stack of cards and began shuffling them with impressive speed. When he had laid out the cards, he pored over them like a soothsayer looking for clues in the entrails of some slaughtered animal, and said nothing for a while.

After all, I do want a sign to show me that I am on the right path, that I am the Chosen One, the child thought to herself as she watched him. Then she thought guiltily about what her mother had told her about seeking only the truths of her heart.

But no matter, she hastened to reassure herself, since this gypsy has presented himself to me unasked, perhaps it is my heart that has summoned him to me, to give me the signs I desire…

Though she did not speak out loud, the gypsy suddenly looked up at her from under his grey knitted brows and said severely, “Signs by themselves are neutral. It is the meaning we choose to give them that is personal.”

“What?” she asked, forgetting in her perplexity that she had been thinking about signs just a while ago.

“Oh nothing, don’t mind an old man’s rambling.”

He bent his head studiously over the cards again, which by now were wreathed so thickly in pipe-smoke, she wondered how he could see at all. Perhaps his eyesight is keener than an owl’s, she thought.

All this time, it had not once occurred to the child to feel frightened of the grim old man hunched over the cards. Then again, not many things could frighten her: she was a true child of the jungle.

“Interesting,” was all he said when he finally looked up from his augury.

“What do the cards say about my journey then? Will I be successful in finding the City of Dreams?” she pressed, anxious to know her destiny.

At first, he hemmed and hawed, and seemed hesitant to speak.

It was only after she urged him a second time that he offered, “The cards suggest a possibility that you will meet with some distractions on your journey that may, um, hold you up a little, shall we say?”

He sounded awkward in the dark, a reluctant bearer of bad news.

“But don’t worry,” he added quickly in response to the child’s crestfallen face, “they will be beautiful distractions. You will enjoy them, and they may even teach you something that will help you in your journey…” The fortune-teller’s voice trailed off into the blackness of the tent, like a serpent slithering into its hole.

A long silence followed, and the child wondered if the reading was perhaps over and she should leave.

She was just preparing to get up when the old man continued coolly, “The problem however, with the world of beautiful distractions, is that it is easy to find that world so sweet, oh too sweet indeed, like a delicious dream you do not wish to awaken from… And then, the deeper you sink, the harder it is to remember your original quest, the easier it is to forget what your heart dreamt of so ardently before. There is only a deep forgetting, like stumbling into a drugged sleep…”

He paused sadly.

“Most people, you know, sleep through life even if they appear to be awake. And eventually, the heart’s dream is buried forever under those distractions. By then it is too late already.”

The child shuddered at the unthinkable prospect of ever forgetting that she was in search of the City of Dreams. She wondered whether this ‘World of Beautiful Distractions’ was an enchanted island she had not yet heard of, ruled perhaps by a sorcerer who cast sleeping spells of amnesia on his luckless victims. She imagined a place strewn with the slumbering bodies of the bewitched, lying on the cold earth patiently awaiting the elixir, or perhaps the kiss that would wake them again to their heart’s desires.

“Now mind you, I only said there is a possibility that you will linger too long in the world of beautiful distractions. I didn’t say you will do so,” came the fortune-teller’s voice again, more sharply now. “And I will give you something to help you find the City of Dreams, should you be distracted along the way.”

“Thank you,” breathed the child gratefully, “that is so kind of you. But please Tenoch, is there any way I can avoid this dreadful World of Beautiful Distractions that you speak of?”

“Well, well,” he answered, kindly enough, “you may or may not even be caught in the world of beautiful distractions, my dear. As I was saying earlier, the cards only reveal a potential of it happening. But as with everything else in life, nothing is guaranteed since you write the story of your future yourself.”

“Then,” said the child, a little relieved, “what are the other potentials of my future? Will I find the City of Dreams eventually? Will I – ” she was going to say, “Will I be the One to cause the City of Dreams to rise up from under the lake again?” but thought the question might sound immodest. She flushed and asked instead, “Will the City of Dreams rise again to the surface of the earth?”

“Did I say anything about reading your future or predicting what will happen, my dear child?” His voice was soft and just a little dangerous.

“But isn’t that what fortune-tellers do?” she cried, slightly distressed. “And didn’t you just tell me a bit of what my future might hold?”

“Might, that’s what I said, not will. That’s the important thing to note,” he declared smugly.

“Then my destiny…?” she asked.

“Destiny?” he echoed, appalled. “Your destiny does not choose you. You choose your destiny, you write your own Life Story in accordance with what gives your heart the greatest joy.”

He pressed the tips of his fingers together and regarded the child gravely.

“Zayoni, Zayoni, you dream and create your own destiny. I can only see the potentials in the present that your soul has created, but I cannot tell which path you will choose to walk. That is for you to decide.”

“But aren’t you a fortune-teller? You should be telling me what the future holds for me!” she persisted stubbornly.

“No one, dear child, not even the Great Dreamer, can predict what exactly the future holds for you. All we can see are the dreams that you yourself have dreamt, and then we can only offer our opinion on where we think you are headed, based on the potentials of the moment… The future, you must know, is always divined from the present.” He began to trace a finger absently on the table.

“But what use is a fortune-teller if they cannot say anything for sure about anyone’s future… and can only guess from one’s present dreams?”

“Ha, you’re a sharp one! Trying to put me out of business, are you?” He laughed. “Let me tell you something that might convince you.”

“Convince me of what?”

“That there really is no fun in peering into the future.”

The child stared at him disbelievingly.

“When I was a young man, I was like you, always anxious to know what was going to happen to me in the future. But I had forgotten to pay attention to my dreams in the present that would create my future. Instead, I spent endless days chanting prayers and spells, pleading desperately with the Great Dreamer to allow me to see my future.

“What happened one night then, while I was chanting my prayers, was really quite remarkable. A genie, yes a real life genie, appeared to me, right there in my room. I was so shocked, I dropped my books and incense immediately, and my heart began knocking like a demon in my chest.

“Then the genie told me that he had come to tell me my future, and that every day, since I had begged so sincerely, he would come to me before I went to sleep, and tell me everything that was going to happen to me the next day.

“I was overjoyed, my dear child! I couldn’t believe my good fortune, and I thanked everything I had ever believed in for sending me the genie.

“True to his word, the genie showed up every night and told me all the delicious details of what would happen to me the day after. You can imagine that I had so much fun surprising everyone with my cleverness! I knew when the pot of porridge was going to drop over the edge of the table and crack, I knew who was going to visit me or write me a letter, I knew who was going to die. I knew everything there was to know.

“This lasted about a month and then, believe it or not, I woke up one day feeling frightfully bored. Life had lost its excitement, its mystery. There was no more sense of discovery. The plot of my life had been spoilt by the genie the night before! All I needed to do was wake up and blandly participate in a life whose twists and turns for the day I already knew. I was letting life happen to me, but I was no longer happening to life! So that day, I made up my mind. If the Great Dreamer had kindly provided me with the gifts of the genie, surely the genie’s gifts could also be taken away?

“That night, when the genie appeared again, I wept piteously and begged him not to tell me anymore what the future held for me. And that, my dear, was the end of the matter. From then on, I learnt to respect the future as something we create.”

The child’s eyes had widened with interest and curiosity. “But who was the genie who appeared to you?”

The fortune-teller pursed his lips and looked slyly at the child. “Ah ha! That’s the strangest part of the story, if anything. Have a guess?”

“A messenger from the Great Dreamer?” she suggested eagerly.

“No. Guess again.”

“A spirit?”

“Not quite.”

“The ghost of your long-dead father?”

“Oh no.”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“He told me he was me.”

“But how could you appear to yourself?”

“It’s a strange world we live in, is it not? The genie, if you like, was my soul. That was who I saw and heard, clear as day, in my room each night.”

“So you banished your own soul when you didn’t want to know your future anymore?” asked the child, deeply shocked.

“No, not banished. I simply asked not to know, that’s all. Like hiding a precious diamond in a box. You know it’s there, but you don’t have to open the box to look at it.”

“And what did the genie, or your soul, look like?”

“Whatever a genie is supposed to look like.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what did your storytellers teach you to believe genies look like?”

“They were said to be huge, strong beings who appear in puffs of smoke.”

“Ah, then that is what a genie will look like, if one appears to you.”

“But I was asking you what your genie looked like!” cried the child in exasperation.

“Never mind what my genie looked like. As I said, genies will look like anything you believe them to look like. See, it’s like your future!” he declared triumphantly, glad for the opportunity to defend his profession. “If you want to see what your future looks like, then you need only look at your present dreams. And if you want to know what a genie looks like, then you need only imagine what a genie might look like, and there you have it! What we think is real is only a picture we have created with our minds.”

“I think I finally see what you mean,” said the child in her wise little way.

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