I sipped the tea and hoped to find the right words to say as it curled around my tongue. “It’s kinda hard to be excited for finding a scenario that fits the clues given, when you have already plainly admitted to feeding me false information before.”
Malphas tented his fingers before his face and subtly smiled. “Understandable.”
“So as thrilling as this chapter in the saga may be, and no matter how much I want to believe you’re telling me a truth this time, I can’t trust the findings. I can’t trust you.” I dared to stare him in the face. I wanted a hundred uninterrupted evenings to study the changes made to his appearance, to see if I could discover the face under the masks.
“Then you have learned the first lesson after all.”
His quip and accompanying stare disarmed mine and I dropped my glance with feeling something akin to shame. He was quick to press his advantage.
“Tell me. Why do you not ‘roll’ with Dionysus anymore? There was a period in your life when he was more present than your shadow.”
“That period is over. I have changed. He let me go because my path only traveled through his territories.” Though, to be honest, I was never truly his. It wasn’t so much him letting go of me, but me recognizing where that boundary was.
“And tell me another thing.” His voice had all the humor of a disciplinarian dragging out the interrogation of a guilty pupil. “Despite all the publicly known information about [Rummer John], information that explicitly delineates which bloodlines and outsiders may have access to him with any private connection, why do you still claim to ‘sit at his table’ with impunity and in defiance of those edicts?”
I slapped the table with annoyance. “Because Rummer John told me to sit there, and he has defended me from others who would remove me if given the chance. But note ye by what name I call him. My impertinence does have a price.”
He sighed and caused certain things to come into view on the table. “I have given you symbols and a name. You have researched them with what little resources you have available. You have found a story that fits them all in the context they were given. Now you have to make a choice, [Blackjack]. Do you ask someone else to delineate your reality for you in accordance with what they believe to be right for themselves, or do you construct your own with the supports you have been given, flawed as they may be.”
I know he’s lying. I just don’t know how he is lying, how much is really the truth, and in what measure is that truth, truthful. But his question is more important than which layers of myth are more allegory than others. I kept silent longer than I was comfortable and took a breath to speak idle words to fill the space.
He points a finger and my mouth closes. “Do not answer now. The moon is not yet at its fullest.”
He closes his eyes and the dream ends.