by Libba Bray
Some of the children looked a little scared, and Memphis wondered how honest he should be here. Wasn’t that how fairy tales worked? You told just enough of the terrible truth—There are cruel people. Not all parents love you. The world isn’t fair by a long shot.—and you dressed it up in ogres and brave princesses and giants. Mostly, you reminded people that the evils of the world had to be fought. Even if you weren’t sure you’d win. You still had to go into the monster’s den. You had to face your fears. You still had to stand up to the monster. So he told the children sitting outside the tents in the mud of the Mississippi about that trickster god, the King of Crows, who would stop at nothing till he ate up the country, and then the whole world, unless he was stopped by people being brave.
“The ghosts are here. Walking around this country. You got to be looking for ’em, all right? Look for the little things—birds that fly up and take off real sudden. A sound that makes the back of your neck prickle up, or a cold fog that rises out of nowhere.”
The children had gone stone quiet. Memphis was struck anew by the power of story. Before he had wanted to write himself, before his weekly visits to the 135th Street Library, there had been his mother telling him about François Mackandal and the Maroons up in the hills, plotting rebellion. All those stories about her homeland, a place Memphis had never seen but felt he had because of her stories. She’d instilled a resistance in him with every word.
“Would you bargain with the King of Crows?” Memphis asked.
“No!” the children answered, a thunderous cry.
“Well, now. I don’t think the King of Crows is gonna get a lick of sleep tonight. I think he heard that cry all the way in the land of the dead. And he knows that the Voice of Tomorrow is coming for him.”
“You need to be careful with that Voice of Tomorrow stuff,” Bill scolded later as they lay on the cold, damp ground and tried to get some sleep.
“Why? Why shouldn’t they know? They need to be able to protect themselves. Can’t do that if they don’t know the truth.”
“Because the wrong person might hear.”
Sometimes, Bill got under Memphis’s skin with his nagging. “Who’d be looking for us in a refugee camp on a levee in Greenville, Mississippi?”
“These Shadow Men, they got eyes ever’where. The Red Cross. National Guard. The police and the Klan. Those Fitter Families folks hunting for Diviners. Yeah, they looking for us all right. Jake Marlowe needs us. The King of Crows wants us.”
“Why hasn’t the King of Crows just taken us, then?” Henry wondered.
“Don’t know. He’s got some plan at work. Toying with us for fun,” Bill said.
“Maybe he’s afraid of us and what we can do,” Memphis said.
“I wouldn’t bet money on that,” Bill said.
Memphis couldn’t sleep. He left the tent and sat with a view of the mighty Mississippi and the other overflowing river—the tent city stretching out for miles. He wondered what difficulties Isaiah and Theta and the others were facing, wherever they were.
“I just wanna see my brother and my girl again. I just want them to be safe. That’s all I’m asking,” Memphis said, praying to a god he wasn’t sure he believed in anymore. A god he wasn’t sure believed in him, either.
SPELLS
When all the people had gone home and the fairground lights were dimmed, the circus folk gathered in the cook tent for their supper. Soon, the roustabouts would yank up the pegs and bring the Big Top down in a puddle of canvas. Then everything would be loaded onto the trains for transport to the next town.
Doc Hamilton was enjoying generous swigs from his bottle of “Gentlemen’s Elixir” and was on his way to being quite drunk. Polly looked on disapprovingly.
“Want some?”
“Some of us have to keep our wits about us,” she said in English that carried a Romanian accent. Bella rested his bald head on her shoulder. “I can’t perform tricks if I’m not in best shape. If I’m not—what is it you say, Samuel?”
“Pushing on all sixes,” Sam said.
“Yes. On the sixes,” Polly echoed.
“Suit yourself,” Doc Hamilton said, upending the flask.
At the table, Johnny finished counting the money. He smiled, his bright teeth shining out from all that fur. “One thousand dollars. Not bad.”
Everyone applauded. Some banged the table in celebration.
Johnny dropped the fat green stack into Zarilda’s open cigar box and she held it aloft for a moment, triumphant. “They said vaudeville would bury us. Then they said it was the picture shows. Now everybody and his dog’s got a radio—Ma and Pa and kiddies gathered around the old squawk box ever’ night. But they still come out to see us. When the circus rolls into town, folks line up and down the roadways, cheering and clapping. You know why?”
Zarilda took a moment to look around the table with a showman’s instinct for suspense.
“Because we are the dream makers!” she said, rippling her fingers through the air as if spreading fairy dust. “We show ’em wonders! No matter what troubles they carry from home, no matter what heartbreaks hide inside their rib cages, for a time under our tent, they can have wonder again. They can believe that all things are possible. We”—and here Zarilda paused again—“we make the impossible possible.”
The moon rose like the answer to a forgotten prayer. Stars glittered in a velvety sky. It had been a long day, and a good one. Everyone drifted toward bed and sleep and dreams. Theta tucked Isaiah into his berth on the train.
Isaiah worried the edge of his blanket. “Do you suppose Memphis misses me?”
Theta carefully lifted the blanket free of Isaiah’s fingers and pulled it up to his quivering chin. “I’m sure of it.”
“You think he’s all right, wherever he is?”
“I’m sure of that, too,” she lied. On impulse, she kissed Isaiah’s forehead. “Get some sleep, Ice Man.”
Isaiah turned on his side and shut his eyes. “Only Memphis calls me that.”
“Well, now I call you that, too. Just until he gets back.”
Theta stepped off the train and into the night. The fairgrounds clanged with the noise of the circus coming apart. Already the Big Top, the cook tent, and all of the seating had been disassembled and loaded onto the first line of railroad cars to make the trip to the next town ahead of the performers. They were a dreamlike city rolling through the dark of night past slumbering towns full of people with jobs and houses and ordinary lives. People who had no notion of the danger awaiting them. Was Memphis in one of those towns they passed by? Could he be lost in the throngs of happy, flag-waving spectators gathered along the sides of the roads as the circus paraded through? And where was Henry? Theta missed them both so much. Tonight, it weighed heavily on her.
How could so much change happen in such a short amount of time? It didn’t even feel like the same world. Now Henry was somewhere out there in this vast country, and maybe he was safe, but maybe he was facing somebody who’d figured him to be a boy who liked other boys and who didn’t like it one bit. Somebody who thought he had the right to teach Henry a lesson. Maybe that person would feel like he had to prove to himself or his friends that he wasn’t as small and powerless as he felt inside. Theta shuddered thinking about what harm could come to the two boys she loved the most. She wondered if she would be able to cultivate her own power in time to do whatever was required to stop catastrophe.
Theta wandered past the darkened sideshow wagons painted with the image of a snake-draped, scaly woman with a forked tongue. Near the animal cages, she bumped into Johnny the Wolf Boy. “Just making sure my friends are all right,” he said, nodding toward the tiger, lions, elephants, and horses.
“What’s the word? I thought we were getting out of here?” she asked.
“The flood’s really causing trouble. The railroad fellas are taking us on a different route, but it looks like we’re here till dawn at least. I don’t know if I can even sleep without the feel of the rails under
me,” Johnny said, grinning. “Good night to you, Miss Theta.”
“’Night, Johnny.”
Back in her compartment, Theta took out Miss Addie’s spell book, hoping it would be of help. There were long lists of plants and their uses, most of it folk medicine, which Theta found very interesting. There were instructions for calling the corners, with an underlined note to “know your intent. Search your heart.” And there were spells, of course.
But the book was also Miss Addie’s diary. Theta skimmed the first page, then turned to the very last entry, a quirk of hers that used to drive Henry crazy. “How can you read the last page of a book first?” he’d say in mock-outrage. “I hate suspense,” she’d answer. Miss Addie’s last entry had been dated July 1864: It is finished.
The door to the compartment blew open. Theta yelped.
“Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you,” Evie said, traipsing in.
“Were you with Sam?” Theta asked.
Evie smiled. “Mm-hmm.” Her hair was a mess and her lips were chapped.
Theta stroked her thumb across her own lips, wishing Memphis were there to bruise them with fevered kissing. She ached with missing him.
Evie slipped out of her dress, leaving it in a heap on the floor. She was such a slob. If Theta had ever left her things out of order, Mrs. Bowers or Roy would’ve hit her for it.
“You just gonna leave that there for the maid?” Theta said pointedly.
Evie picked up the dress with two fingers and laid it across her trunk. Stifling a yawn, she crawled into bed, burrowing under the covers. She nodded at the book on Theta’s bed. “Whatcha doing?”
Theta sighed. “Trying to make sense outta Miss Addie’s spell book and diary.”
“Anything useful, like how to turn men into frogs?”
Theta flipped onto her side to face Evie, resting her face on her fist. “Mostly there’s beaucoup about plants and herbs-avous.”
“Well,” Evie said, facing Theta. “I suppose you could always make a witchy meat loaf.” They shared a giggle. Evie lost her fizz. “That seems like a joke Mabel would’ve made.”
“Yeah,” Theta said sadly.
Evie propped herself up. “I was thinking—”
“Always dangerous.”
“Zarilda says she can talk to spirits. What if…”
“Don’t, Evil. Let it alone.”
“But what if she’s not okay, Theta?”
“If something weren’t jake, don’t you think she’d appear to you first?”
Evie played with the edge of her quilt. What she didn’t tell Theta was that after Mabel had died, Evie had stolen Mabel’s coat from her closet. It was an impulsive act. Evie had been desperate for a physical remembrance of her best friend, and Mabel would never wear the coat again. The first night, Evie had curled up with the coat, crying. But she couldn’t resist leaning into its secrets for long. As the coat’s memories performed their striptease of moments small and fleeting, of feelings that seemed outsized comparatively, Evie searched for the moment that would absolve her. Here was Mabel’s passion for the labor fight. Here was her unrequited crush on Jericho. Here was her irritation over having to attend a strike with her parents when there was something wonderful on the radio. It had made Evie smile to know that even Mabel could tire of doing good. But other glimpses of Mabel’s private life had needled under Evie’s skin: Mabel turning her face this way and that, up and down, trying to find the angle that suited her best, the one that allowed her to believe for just a moment that she was a narrow idea of beautiful. Something bitter and surprising had crept in: Mabel’s envy. She had often felt left out. She’d wanted to have Diviner powers like the others, something of her own to make her feel special. She had both loved and resented Evie—and she was angry with Evie for interfering in her life by talking to Arthur. There had been no time to make up. As far as Evie knew, Mabel had died still angry with her, and that ghost haunted Evie more than any of the others.
What happened after that day was lost. Mabel had not worn this coat to the exhibition. Her motivations and feelings on that day were not available for anyone to know. In life, she’d been an open book. In death, she’d become a painful mystery.
“We fought, you know. About Arthur,” Evie said at last.
“You were right about him.”
“Our last words to each other were cross. It haunts me, Theta. I wish I could undo it.”
“Aw, Evil. Why’re you doing this to yourself? Mabel loved you. She knew you loved her.”
Evie didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It was making her unbearably sad. “Did Miss Addie really raise Elijah from the dead?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah. And it didn’t go so well,” Theta said firmly.
Evie put her hands up in innocence. “I’m no necromancer. I swear.”
“I saw him, you know.”
Evie made a face. “How did he… look?”
“Not… good.”
“Well. That was very descriptive, Miss Knight. Thank you.”
“I ain’t the poet. I leave that to Memphis.” Theta thought back to being trapped in the basement with Miss Addie. The slow shuffle of Elijah’s dead feet against the floor. It made her shudder still. “The way he kept coming after her… it reminded me of Roy.”
Evie heard the worry lurking there. “Theta…” she began, searching for a delicate way to phrase what she needed to say. “I know how much you love Miss Addie. But what if she isn’t under the King of Crows’s power? What if she’s just lost inside her mind because she’s very old?”
“No. He’s got her. I’m sure of it.”
“But the doctor said—”
“To hell with what the doctor said! Sometimes a girl just knows. My gut says that rat in the hat has Miss Addie.”
“You made a rhyme.”
“Wasn’t intentional. Or the point.”
“Theta. I don’t know much about witches. But I believe in you. And your gut.”
Theta was touched by this. She’d never really had a close girlfriend before—Roy had been too jealous. And she felt a little guilty that it took Mabel’s death for her to get closer to Evie. She knew how broken up Evie was about losing Mabel.
Theta held up her pinkie and reached across the narrow space between their beds. “Hey. Pals-ski?”
The last time Evie had done a pinkie swear was with Mabel. “Pals-ski,” Evie said quietly. She hooked her little finger through Theta’s and pulled. “I’ll leave you to it. But if you do happen to come across a spell for turning men into frogs”—Evie yawned—“do let me know. Never know when it might come in handy.”
“’Night, Evil,” Theta said, and she could swear Evie was already out.
Theta picked up Miss Addie’s diary again, flipping to a random page.
June 2, 1864
I ache for Elijah so much it is as if someone had taken an ax and cleaved me in two. Mother says if I do not eat, she’ll force the porridge into my mouth. She may try all she likes. I will not have it.
“Dear Sister,” Lillian said. “You must live on. What would Elijah say if he could see you thus? Let us work the spell of forgetting to ease your pain.”
But I do not want to forget. I do not want to lose what little I have left of him. My Elijah. My one true love.
Theta teared up. Miss Addie had put into words her own feelings exactly. Being away from Memphis was like losing half of herself. Missing Henry was an ache deep in the heart. Not knowing if they were alive or dead or in danger made it that much worse.
She decided to go back and start at the beginning. As she read, she found that the diary was a small window into history, both the country’s and Miss Addie’s. Theta learned that Miss Addie had been from a modestly well-to-do family. In addition to her sister, Lillian, she’d had two brothers, a mother, and a father. They lived in a fine redbrick house named Rose Manor for its prized roses. There were stables and tobacco fields, and there had been servants.
No.
There had been slaves.
Theta loved Miss Addie, but this new knowledge was deeply upsetting. The Miss Addie she knew was kind and concerned for the well-being of others. She was descended from ancestors who had, themselves, been persecuted and hung during the Salem Witch Trials. How could that be the same person speaking so casually of owning other human beings? Someone like Miss Addie might’ve owned Memphis’s grandparents. And Elijah, Addie’s great love, had been fighting for the Confederacy when he was killed. Theta had seen him herself. He’d come up out of the grave, out of the stinking past, rotting inside that uniform—dead, but still he kept coming. Theta closed the diary, feeling troubled and unsure. Beside her sat Miss Addie’s spell book, which was full of information that could help in the fight against the dead. But should she follow the advice of a person who had taken part in something she found so awful?
Adelaide Proctor had lived a long life after the war. She’d left her home and moved to New York City. She’d done missionary work for those in need. Maybe she had come to see how wrong she and her family had been. Or maybe, deep down, Miss Addie still held fast to those terrible beliefs. Theta didn’t know, because they’d never talked about it. And now she knew this. She wished she didn’t, but she did.
Theta was resolved to save Miss Addie from the King of Crows. Once she did, though, they would need to have a talk. She forced herself to keep reading:
June 28, 1864
The old cunning folk talk of the man in the tall hat. They say he can grant wishes if you are willing to seek him and offer a bargain.
July 1, 1864
I am resolved. I shall leave my wish for him in the hollow of the old elm and seal it with a thumbprint of my blood. I will make a pact.
Theta’s heart beat faster. For the next few pages, there was talk of the war raging on and the names of men killed, but nothing of Elijah or the man in the hat. And then, finally:
July 7, 1864
Tonight. So mote it be.
Theta’s hands trembled as she turned the page.
I have met the man in the hat. I fear to commit to words what transpired. In truth, I am uncertain, myself. It all seems as a dream. He has promised me the return of my love. And in return, I have pledged myself to him. I have forfeited my power and, I fear, my mortal soul. Yet, Elijah shall live again. We shall live out our lives together forever, nevermore to be divided. I shall be his wife and we will be happy.