fine.” Then he grinned. “Who knows—perhaps it’s a stroke of fate. It can’t be worse than this stinking hole.”
Tonio’s mood improved dramatically. He reached for the bottle of wine and the ham and moldy cheese the innkeeper had brought upstairs for them. The magician hadn’t wanted to eat in the taproom. He filled two cups and pushed one toward Johann. “Go on, drink, so you’ll get warm.”
Johann accepted the cup gratefully and took a few sips. Never before had the master offered him wine. The alcohol warmed him up almost instantly, and he felt a lot less miserable. His spirits rose. Cautiously, he glanced at the leather bag holding the books Tonio had brought upstairs with him as usual. The magician noticed the direction of his look and laughed.
“The books won’t leave you alone, will they? You’re a clever lad, even though you’ll never get far with the bagpipe. Who cares! I hate musicians these days. So why don’t we study a little?” He winked at Johann. “Let’s see how you do.”
Tonio reached into the bag and pulled out one of the books. It was a stained, heavy volume, its yellowed pages covered in drawings. The magician opened the book at a page depicting a hand with lines, bumps, and symbols.
“Let us begin with chiromancy,” said Tonio. “It belongs to the arts of divination, the third path of white magic. Of all the different ways of foretelling, it is the easiest to learn.” He gestured at the various lines in the drawing. “See for yourself. No two hands are the same, just as every man has his own fate. The left hand shows your dispositions, and the right hand your future. Look at the Life line, which separates the ball of your thumb from the remaining fingers. It tells you how strong someone is, whether he can expect illness, and how he gets on in life. Each disruption has a particular meaning—sometimes even death. This is the Head line. It stands for your mind, and the Heart line for emotions. They mostly run parallel, and interruptions here can mean a broken heart, but also an impending marriage.”
Johann studied his own hand, for the first time paying attention to the many lines. All together they really did look like a map, like roads in a yet-unknown land.
“And what is this line?” Johann pointed at a fourth line on his right hand, which ran straight down from his middle finger and was broken in many places. Johann had also found it in the drawing, where it was marked with a strange letter.
“Ah, that is a very special line! The Saturn line, or line of Fate. It tells us about our destiny. If you know how to read it, you can see right inside a person!”
Johann cleared his throat. “When I was still a child, you read my hand. You told me I was born on the day of the prophet, and my mother also spoke of that. She said I was chosen by God. What does that mean? Can I read my own hand?”
“You’re taking the second step before the first one, boy.” The master smiled. “I told you before: all in good time. Let us study the art of chiromancy first. It’s important that you find your own way to yourself.”
Without elaborating further, Tonio pointed at several circles and lines underneath the fingers. “Look here. This is the Mount of Venus. And that one is the Mount of Luna, which tells us about a person’s transcendental talents . . .”
The master explained long and patiently. But he didn’t mention the day of the prophet, and Johann soon forgot his question. Too mysterious, too intriguing were the many different aspects of chiromancy. He’d waited so long for the master to show him more than a few cheap tricks—and now he was finally learning one of Tonio’s arcane secrets. How many more of those secrets were written in his books? How much more was there to learn?
“I’d like to try it,” Johann said timidly when the master finished his explanations. “May I read your hand?”
Tonio seemed to hesitate briefly, then he gave Johann a mocking smile. “My hand can’t be read. See for yourself.” He held out his right hand, and to his surprise Johann saw that there were hardly any lines on it. There were calluses and a few scars, but no Head line, Heart line, or Life line.
As if someone had wiped the map clean.
Johann frowned. How was this possible? The