The Fool walked across the rocky plain towards the plateau with the figure on top. The cobbled road would appear once in a while from beneath the sand. He saw giant black birds lazily soaring on the thermals above the plateau. The heat started beating down on him. This was not a hospitable place.
As he got closer he could see that the black birds were condors. They were huge, with wingspans up to seven feet. They were so big that their shadows would take a full second – or maybe it was a minute – to pass over the Fool. He was worried that the giant birds wouldn’t wait for him to pass out from heat exhaustion before trying to feast on his entrails.
The slope up the plateau was covered in scree. Little lizards darted in and out of holes in the porous cliffside. The Fool found a little path that went up to the top of the mesa. Standing in the middle of the caprock was a woman in flowing black clothes. She wore an eyeless mask tied around her head. In one hand was a sharp executioner’s axe, and in the other a fulcrum scale. Condors were standing all around her.
You again, Justice said as the fool approached. You keep showing up here.
The Fool shrugged, but he realized that Justice was blind. So he said, I don’t know what I’m doing here or why I don’t remember the other times I’ve come.
She clucked her tongue at his response. You seem to seek the truth, but then you forget to look, she said to him. This made sense to the Fool, since he had this unquenchable thirst to wander, but for no reason. He kept thinking that he would see what he was looking for when he saw it.
You won’t look for the clues, Justice said. You have to look on both sides to really know the truth. You can’t be blind to one side of the story because it makes you uncomfortable. You must dwell in the argument to know what is right.
Justice seemed patient with the Fool as she tutored him in law and ethics. The condors soared around the plateau. While these birds were huge, they seemed to fly like they just found out they could fly. They’d glide around in circles and try to take a thermal for as long as they could before starting to drop in altitude. When they walked around Justice, they turned their heads back and forth to make sure they used both eyes on the Fool. This made him feel uncomfortable, and when he slept, he would wonder if the condors would try to eat him. He would wake up whole every morning.
Sometimes the Hierophant will have the Chariot bring me someone who has broken a law, said Justice. The ride over here is almost punishment enough, but I listen to their case. If I can’t seem to get a verdict, I consult the Priestess. She knows of duality and making a decision. I only know what to put on the scale to find the balance.
Feelings are not true, said Justice. They might be a perfectly fine way to react to something, but making a decision on how to react – that takes reason. The Fool had a hard time with feeling, so he knew that wouldn’t be a problem. He ducked emotions. Justice said, Staying away from feeling will also make reason harder to find.
They watched a giant sandstorm move across the desert. Luckily, it wasn’t going towards them. The wall of sand was so big that there was lightning. The wind was picking up on the mesa where they were, but they could tell that the wind blowing the sandstorm was much stronger. It looked like it was eating everything in its path.
After the storm passed, the temperature got uncomfortably hot. The Fool broke out in a dripping sweat. Justice seemed unfazed in her flowing black robe.
Fairness is my concern, she said one day. The problem, and you will find out soon enough, is that nothing is fair. I do my part to balance the scales. Everyone here does that, but I do it with an axe. But Justice never let the Fool watch her execute anyone. All he knew was that sometimes the condors went crazy and then got really lazy for the next day.
It had been a hundred years – or maybe it was an hour – but the Fool wanted to move on. Justice knew it was time too, and pointed to a mountain way off in the distance. That is where you must go, Justice said. You will need to ride the wind, so we will wait for the right moment.
As they waited, Justice thought about the Fool: all the times he had been there before. He never learned to listen and break down the facts to process them. He just wanted to walk around empty-headed.
She had been there when they made him. They had used her axe to carve the runes into his bones. These runes were to make the Fool a powerful tool to help people when the universe stacked up against them. He was supposed to bring balance to mankind, but he refused, and decided to be a wanderer instead. Now the Fool didn’t even remember his purpose.
Justice handed the Fool a giant net and said, Hold it out. A twister came ripping through and pulled the Fool right off the ground and he began to spin around in the tornado of sand. It was going fast, and the Fool felt sick and scared. He was using a net to ride a tornado – hopefully, somewhere.
Justice watched the Fool ride the tornado across the desert towards the mountain. The old man will take care of him, she thought. Next time the Fool stands on this rock, I am going to behead him.