She stops, finally, in yet another unremarkable room, and you ready yourself to deliver a tirade of indignation. But when she lights a single taper you subside, overwhelmed by a surge of profound relief – it seems like the first light that you have seen in years.

The flame flickers bravely, barely illuminating the chamber in which you find yourself. You can pick out only the sparest of details. No windows, and only the door at your back, emitting an intermittent draft like a restless sigh. The walls are a dark-hued wood, coarse-grained but smooth. They gleam in the lambent candlelight. You note with relief that there appear to be no cobwebs. It seems that this room alone, out of all that you have passed through so far, is kept meticulously clean.

Your examinations have not given the woman pause. True to form, she swept into the centre of the room without a word. She sits now behind a simple table, overspread with a dark sheet and some colourful squares of paper.

She beckons you over, motioning with one frail hand towards a nearby stool.

Creeping closer, you realize that the squares fanned across the surface of the table are a series of cards. You cannot help but catch your breath - in the capricious brilliance cast by the candle the cards seem to come alive, the images writhing in the play of light. Mesmerized, you sit down.

A moment of silence, of awe and fragile reverie in waxen luminescence. When the woman finally speaks, her voice is like an ancient door creaking open after decades of rime and rust. "You came to me because you do not know who you are," she murmurs.

What can you say? Mutely, you nod. To your surprise, the woman inclines her head in gentle approval. "It is a gift, you know. This uncertainty." She sighs, and her green eyes soften, as if seen through smoked glass. "People are so sure of themselves, these days. Too sure of themselves."

You stare at her, confused. She continues, whispering, and you crane your neck to hear. "How terribly presumptuous it is, to imagine that you know exactly who you are," She says. "To think of oneself as a distinct individual, a unique 'I'... How dare you cut yourself off so absolutely from the rest of the universe?"

She shakes her head slowly, moving as if in pain. "It is so strange, this concept of consciousness. So frail, so limiting so one's existence. Why should one only be aware of the person behind one's own eyes? Why should there be any difference between You and Me?" Brooding, she lifts her hand, and moves one translucent finger towards the candle's trembling flame.

"We are like the flame of this candle, shifting from instant to instant, changing before we even know what we were in the moment before." Without flinching, she passes her finger through the tongue of fire. You cringe slightly, your flesh stinging in singed sympathy. You hope she doesn't notice, but she lifts one eyebrow, a delicate question-mark upon her brow. Suddenly she seems obscurely amused.

"But if you wish... I will tell you your story. Or at least, I will tell you someone's story." You feel like her eyes are smiling when she says, "It might as well be yours."

Abruptly, she gathers the cards together. She shuffles with flicker-fast motions, ordering them and reordering them in mere moments. You lose count of how many passes she makes before the rippling sounds end and she pours the cards onto the table before you in a single fluid motion.

You stare at the fanned deck in front of you. The masks on their backs seem to stare back.

"You wanted to know who this 'you' is," hisses the woman. "So begin. Tell the story."

"Pick the cards..."