Page of Swords · Swords · Air

Smith set him alone on a ridge of green and ochre, rucked into waves that stopped moving. He holds a sword upright in both fists, one stacked under the other beneath a plain white crossguard, the grey blade tilting up and away from him toward the card’s top edge. His head is turned the other way, mouth a small closed line, looking off left at nothing we can see. Wind has taken his hair sideways; far off at left a dark tree is combed the same way. Taupe clouds pile up behind him from his shoulders to the horizon, blue hills beyond them on the right. Above, turquoise sky, empty but for a scatter of dark birds. Rose tunic hatched dark, pleated skirt, black belt, gold sleeves and hose, red boots. Waite has him alert, watching for an enemy who has not arrived.

Curiosity is a weapon before anyone has decided what to do with it.

Air’s errand is mind, speech, the question, and this one runs it before he knows what it weighs. Classically the Page of Swords is read as the appetite for finding out: the person who asks the awkward thing, who notices the one sentence that does not match the rest.

Upright, that watchfulness works for him. Quickness, candor, the willingness to look straight at a thing and name it. Nobody has taught him yet what he is not supposed to see.

Reversed, the watching loses its object. Suspicion that finds an enemy in every rustle; cleverness spent on scoring points; talk used as reconnaissance on other people. Same ground, same wind, same blade. Only the thing he was watching for has gone missing.