DUALITY /#Wattys 2021

Chapter 39

Her mother frowned down at a chart. Ridley leaned over and saw that it was Alana's own. The little target symbol sat in the wedge that had the oval with the two circles. Sun in Cancer. Ridley knew that much astrology, at least. Alana had written a bunch of little symbols in red around the outer edge of the wheel.

Her mother looked up. "What?"

Ridley glanced at the floor, crossed her arms over her chest, and took a deep breath. "Mom, please. I already know this is bad."

A tired smile flitted across Alana's face. She cleared a place for Ridley to sit and patted a spot on the bed beside her. She placed her own chart to the side, holding it for a second before setting it down, as if it were sticking to her fingers.

She turned to Ridley, pushing a limp lock of flaxen hair off her forehead. "So, what do you want to know?"

Alana had read Ridley's charts before, usually smiling and with pride. It wasn't every mother who could foresee a big success for her child at such a young age. Tonight would be different. Ridley opened her mouth, then shut it again. Her feet felt glued to the floor.

"Honey, you're not going to tell me anything I don't already know. Let's just talk about it, okay?"

Ridley nodded, her throat constricting. "You said you had been looking at our charts. What made you do that?"

"I started when you were imprisoned in the Guildhall. I wanted to know if I'd ever see you again or not. Instead of you being incarcerated, here I found this great love affair! I couldn't imagine who it could be with. Until I started looking for clues how the raid would go, and I looked up Chi's chart, and here's this new relationship that changes his whole life. He has a love triangle, and you have Venus in your twelfth house—which I never paid attention to before—and there it was."

"What happens?" Ridley took the moment to look away as she asked the question, pulling off her boots so as not to dirty the spread. She slid in beside her mother, tucking her sock feet under the covers. Her mother held up two charts, then closed the book in front of her and settled them on top of it. Ridley recognized her own chart, with the little target symbol all the way over on the left in the wedge with the curly-N symbol. Sun in Leo.

"It's a fated relationship," said Alana, tapping some red-inked symbol with her index finger. "He's waking you up; you're showing him other options for his life. He's going through a very important transit of Uranus opposite the conjunction of his Venus and north node, for about nine months, and that will hit his sun soon."

Astrology gobbeldygook. Ridley fought the impulse to roll her eyes. "Mom, I haven't got a clue what that means."

Her mother continued, tapping the chart again. "This is you. You're the Uranian person bringing new concepts and new ways of looking at things into his life. Whether or not he wants to make the changes is up to him. See here, you can tell this affects an old partnership because an opposition tends to bring in a new person, Uranus is sitting on his south node and that's in seven, which is the house of close partnerships, and Venus and Libra are always about partnerships."

"Mom, I don't understand all that," Ridley said. "All I want to know is—"

"You would understand this, if you'd paid attention all those times I tried to teach you! One day I won't be here to read for you and you're going to need to be able to do this for yourself."

"I'm never going to be able to do this for myself, Mom," said Ridley. "Neither is anybody else. That's why the workingtown of Holstonia has you!" She gave her mother a playful shove on the shoulder, but she swallowed hard; there was no way they could ever go home now. "Had  you." She smiled through her impatience, twisting a fold of the spread in her hands. "And now Chi and I do. But, Mama, what I want to know is—"