Young Writers Society

Vanessa frowned more and tried to remember something – anything – about prophecies or prophets, but nothing clear came to mind. The only thing that she remembered clearly was going to the carnival and watching Madame Housini make strange fortunes – for a price, of course.

Though, Vanessa might not have even remembered Madame Housini, of course, had it not been for Cyril, her brother.

Cyril, for whatever reason, had found Madame Housini’s fortunes hilariously laughable and wildly inaccurate. But, unwilling to just laugh about her and leave it alone, Cyril made it his special mission in exposing her as the carnie fraud that she was. Though Madame Housini, ever the consummate professional, ignored his attempts to expose her and just continued on with her fortune telling, Cyril hounded her with a persistence that would have been terrifying, had he not only been thirteen at the time. Vanessa found her brother’s obsession with the woman a bit odd, but nothing too alarming, given how awkward and gangling he was at the time.

Still, everything changed when Madame Housini took a brief break.

When Cyril found out that Madame Housini was gone for an hour at her usual post at the carnival to host a special seance for the carnival managers and their friends, he couldn’t resist. Taking Vanessa to serve as a guard to watch this insane prank – Cyril even lent her his giant hunting knife, just in case, though Vanessa thoroughly insisted she didn’t need it – Cyril snuck into her tent and put on some of her extra clothes so that he looked like a tall Madame Housini. Then he went out where she usually sat and pretended to be her.

For about twenty minutes, Cyril was happy to pose as Madame Housini in all her carnie corniness and mislead all the poor souls that came to her tent for advice as a mere prank. Vanessa even started to relax, thinking that this was a mere harmless stunt that her brother had engaged in – a rarity even then. But then Cyril got bored. So, still dressed up as Madame Housini, he made his way to the tent where the real Madame Housini and all the carnival managers were.

And how to explain the scene? Madame Housini had just gotten everyone in the tent to calm down and take deep breaths so that they were in a trance-like state. The candles on the table had melted low and there was an eerie sense in the room, as if something special were about to happen. Even Vanessa, peering from behind the tent flap, could feel a profound, palpable sense of … something. Impending doom, perhaps? She couldn’t explain it. She felt as if there had been a curtain drawn back and that perhaps there was magic – real magic – coming. If she closed her eyes, she could even imagine the whispers and moans of hundreds of corpses, stirring in the ground.

But then her brother – why did it always have to be her brother – jumped into the tent, dressed as Madame Housini. Throwing his voice so that it was eerily like Madame Housini, Cyril leapt onto the table and pointed to Madame Housini, yelling, “I have seen your future, and your future spells D-O-O-M!!!”

Then he kicked the candles on the table, which promptly lit the tablecloth on fire.

What happened then was utter chaos. As soon as the tablecloth burst into flames, Vanessa – who had been hiding near the curtain, watching the entire scene unfold, gave a bloodcurdling scream. Madame Housini, upon seeing her likeness yell at her about her doom and hearing a bloodcurdling scream in the background, promptly panicked and ran around screaming. The carnival managers, upon waking up from their trance and seeing everything on fire while two Madame Housinis were staring at each other, panicked more.

Already, there was trouble. But then – just as he always did – Cyril made it worse.

As soon as he saw how much chaos he had created, he guessed that, if he were caught, he would be in a lot of trouble. So he decided that he would keep up his pretense of Madame Housini more, until he could figure out a way to escape. So he began running around, screaming like Madame Housini. Which meant that there were two Madame Housinis running around screaming. This was already bad enough. But what Cyril didn’t know at the time was that, when he kicked the candle over, not only had he lit the tablecloth on fire, but he also had lit one of the petticoats he wore while he was impersonating Madame Housini.

Which meant that his entire skirt became to flame brilliantly.

Now, most normal people would think, “Oh no, my dress is on fire! I should put it out!”

But not Cyril.

According to him – and Vanessa knew this was his line of reasoning because he sheepishly told her this after the entire event took place – he panicked upon seeing the dress on fire, not because the skirt was on fire, but rather because, if his skirt was on fire, that meant he would be easily recognizable as the Madame Housini imposter. And so, what was her brilliant brother’s absolutely brilliant solution to the entire problem?

He threw a lit candle at the real Madame Housini’s skirt so that her skirt caught on fire too.

At this point, Vanessa didn’t think that things could get worse, but then they did because Madame Housini, realizing that her dress was on fire, decided to put out the fire… by throwing herself on the floor and rolling on the floor until the fire went away.

Normally, this probably would have been an effective way to put out a fire. After all, when Vanessa was a child, she had been taught to stop, drop, and roll if ever her clothes caught on fire. Had Madame Housini been on a tile floor… or a brick floor… or even a dirt floor… the crisis might have been entirely averted.

But this meeting was held in a large tent that had been previously used to house elephants in… and the floor was lined with straw.

To this day, Vanessa was still amazed how quickly everything lit up in flames. In her mind, she knew that a tent with a straw floor was probably not the safest idea and that it would probably burst into flames fairly quickly if everything else were to burst into flames. And yet, even she was overwhelmed by how fast everything was set aflame.

And, seeing everything in flames, that’s when Vanessa stepped in. Using Cyril’s hunting knife that he gave her in the beginning, she ripped holes in the flaming tent so that everyone could escape. Then, finding Cyril, still acting the part of Madame Housini in the chaos, she grabbed his arm and hissed in his ear, “Get out now!”

Cyril, happy to have an excuse to flee the scene, left quickly, while Vanessa grabbed everyone else and pulled them out, along with other bystanders who saw the scene and began to help. As a fire brigade began to form, Vanessa cleared her throat and yelled, “Please! I am a healer! Does anyone need any healing assistance?”

And that was when Vanessa’s healing career officially began.