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over her shoulder.
    “Bad luck,” she murmured, walking around the table. She stepped inside the open slits of her tent and disappeared inside, leaving me still holding the mirror. I raised my eyebrows at Brooke, who still appeared confused and startled.
    “I thought that was an American superstition,” she said.
    I shrugged. “Well, we are in America...or maybe it’s a Russian thing, too.” I jumped when a blond head popped out of the tent’s opening.
    “Come inside,” the woman ordered, disappearing again behind the flaps.
    Brooke and I exchanged a nervous glance.
    “Quickly,” her low voice called from within. I placed the broken mirror against the base of a tree. Brooke grabbed my hand and then pushed my shoulder, so that I led the way inside the red flaps.
    The first thing I noticed was an overwhelming fragrance. The aroma burned the back of my throat as it traveled into my lungs. The suffocating smell made me cough several times. Soft music floated from the back of the room. It sounded like two guitars, one strumming at a quickened pace, while the other plucked away at a slow melody—a melody reminding me of carnival music, peculiar and intriguing.
    Along the sides of the tent were a few short tabletops holding scented candles of varying sizes and colors. Deep reds, yellows, and orange. They all glowed, offering hallows of dim light to the remaining darkness. Next to the candles, bundles of dark-colored incense burned from within tall, porcelain vases. The combined fumes already made me dizzy.
    In front of us, Alina hovered over a low, square table. “Sit down,” she commanded, lowering herself to the ground and sitting cross-legged. Brooke and I obeyed. We watched her shuffle a black deck of cards, the backsides decorated with tiny, gold flecks and thin lines.
    “We were just admiring your jewelry,” I said, uneasy in the presence of this woman.
    No response. Her long dress was dark today, a blackened-green cascading the length of her body, including her long arms. A faded yellow shawl hung across her shoulders, blending with her pale hair.
    “I’m sorry I broke your mirror,” I apologized again.
    The woman met my eyes. “That is your problem. Not mine,” she stated. She handed me the stack of cards. “Shuffle these seven times. Focus your mind.”
    Brooke’s voice broke the silence, high and innocent. “We di dn’t actually come here for a—”
    Alina jerked her head up at Brooke, silencing her with one look. Brooke closed her mouth, hunching her shoulders and leaning into me.
    “Focus ,” Alina said again, her words directed at me. “Think about your life as it is right now.”
    The cards moved almost involuntarily in my hands, bending and mixing. Without even meaning to, my last year flew through my mind: Last summer here at the lake. Dad’s remarriage. Nick and Clara. My life in Portland, running, always running. My mom’s concerned face flashed through my mind. Here, at the cabin again. Resistance, reluctance. New friendships...
    Alina removed the cards from my hands. I must have finished. She flipped the cards face up onto the red silk that covered the table’s surface, placing them one at a time.
    I counted the colorful cards that she laid out in five r ows. Small and square, they totaled twenty-five. In silence, Alina observed the pictured cards in front of her. I bent down for a closer look. Every card had four different images, with each image aligned along one edge. But the images were cut in half, so that only part of the image was visible. There were half-suns, half-trees, half-mountains, a half-clover...
    “We must see which pictures we can make whole,” Alina said, rotating the cards without moving them from their place. She turned the cards in a clockwise motion, seeing if she could align one image with a matching image of an adjacent card.
    Minutes passed. Five pai rs matched, forming five separate rectangles. In the center of each rectangle was now one solid,