Gather the Fortunes

by Bryan Camp

  Part Four

  as above, so below

  Epilogue

  Late in the evening on November 2nd, the Feast of All Souls, a black family gathered in St. Louis No. 1 around a small tomb labeled CROCKER. It was the tomb that would one day hold the ashes of Celeste Dorcet and her sister Rosamonde Raines, and already held—as far as anyone in the Raines family knew—the ashes of Rosa’s daughter Renaissance. They’d come because Celeste asked them to, even though there had been bad blood in the family since the untimely death of one of their own. After they’d washed and painted the tomb, laid fresh flowers at its base, they stood there in uncomfortable silence, Celeste constantly checking over her shoulder at the front gate, as if expecting someone else to arrive. Eventually, they were driven indoors by the sudden, gentle downpour that fell from the belly of a winged serpent circling overhead, a being only Celeste would have seen if any of them had looked up. In the spirit of reconciliation, Celeste was invited along to dinner.

  Only when she got home would the former Voodoo Queen of New Orleans find the effigy slipped into her purse, a simple thing made of twigs and twine and hair, once bound together with red yarn, now fused together like petrified wood.

  The family cleaning the grave never saw the other group gathered together to watch them. Even though the second group—a tall, lanky black man in a dark suit; a short white woman with spiky hair in a Legend of Zelda T-shirt and jeans; a dark six-legged horse; a slender Creole man with a wicked grin who wore a stars and moons vest and somehow pulled it off; and a young black woman in a leather jacket with hair as iridescent as a raven’s feather—stood close enough to the family to touch them, in truth they were worlds apart.

  “So, fuck-face,” Regal said to Jude, “tell me again why my girl Sparkles here shouldn’t take her shiny new sword and shove it so far up your tight, puckered asshole that you can shave with it?”

  Jude laughed, a deep honeyed sound. “Because, Queens, like I said, I helped y’all as much as I could.”

  “You told us you was hosting a card game that never actually happened,” Leon said, patient and disappointed all at once. “Your ‘help’ was an illusion. A trick.”

  “Yeah, so I could let Renai steal that little glimpse inside and show her all the creeps she was gonna have to deal with!” Jude said, throwing his hands in the air. “Have y’all forgotten that I’m fucking Trickster now? Hints and misdirection are just how I roll. And, hello? Did we forget that Eris was fuckin’ around with people’s Petwo halves? Y’all really wanna meet my dark side? I needed to stay out of it.” His grin, when it came, was every bit a Trickster’s. “But I really did stall the storm gods for as long as I could.” He gave a wiggle of his eyebrows to show just how he’d accomplished that feat, which told Renai at least a little about why Tlaloc and Guabancex had been fighting so furiously when she’d met them. “Besides, did you really believe I would let a walking pile of cockroaches into my card room?” He pulled an incredulous face. “Really? I’d have to burn it down and start from scratch.”

  Regal started to say more, but Renai put a hand on her arm. “Regal, it’s fine. If the Fortune God of New Orleans can’t admit he was scared, we shouldn’t force him. You know how delicate male egos can be.”

  “Hey, now,” Leon said, while Jude just licked the tip of his finger and pretended to mark off a point on an imaginary scoreboard.

  “Storm-fucker,” Regal said, shaking her head at Jude before turning her back to him, and focusing her attention on Renai. “I can’t believe you got a magic sword and I got a magic ring. This Halloween really was the best D and D adventure ever. St. Christopher really wasn’t mad you took his sword?”

  Renai shrugged. “He was more than happy to give it to me when I told him he should keep the angel’s flaming sword. I bet the angel was pretty pissed when they woke up and it was gone, of course, but when you fall asleep on the job, what do you expect?”

  “And the revolver? Hermes’ staff?” Renai really didn’t like the hunger she saw in Regal’s eyes. She might make jokes about magic items in role-playing games, but the Magician of New Orleans was no stranger to accumulating power. Renai had told them all about the aftermath of her conflict with Cordelia, how she’d gone to find Cur and Kyrie—the six-legged horse was her former motorcycle’s true form—to tell them that she didn’t need backup after all. Cur, bless his heart, hadn’t realized that her turn to the dark side was a trick—more or less—until Kyrie had picked up the flaming sword by the hilt and shoved it, covered in horse spit, into his hands.

  “By the time I went to find the cursed revolver and the caduceus, they were gone,” she said. “I guess maybe Damballah took care of them.”

  Which was a lie, of course. St. Christopher’s blade in the hands of a psychopomp could destroy just about anything. She’d cut the revolver in half and buried the pieces on either end of the Garden of Eden, and she’d thrown Cordelia’s golden apple into the center of Eden’s lake, where she hoped no one would ever find it.

  She had her own plans for the caduceus.

  “Sounds to me like you done earned yourself a rest,” Leon said, nodding at the child’s Essence in her hands, “but by the looks of it, you already back on the job.”

  “This is Ramses St. Cyr,” Renai said bobbing the Essence up and down and cooing at him. “He was destined to die before his first birthday. His mother prayed too hard without caring who listened, willing to make a deal with whoever showed. The child lived, locked away in his own mind, while the demon who took his Fortune also took over his life. So in a way, he lived as much of a life as he was ever going to.” Renai wasn’t sure exactly how Cordelia had gotten Ramses’ name into Plumaj’s book a second time, but finding out was pretty close to the top of her to-do list.

  “So I guess you bringing him to the other side?” Leon asked. He sounded like the idea made him sad.

  “No,” Renai said, asking Kyrie with a touch to bend down, so she could climb onto her back. “I’m bringing him home.”

  Late that night, Renai stood in the bedroom of her older sister, Claire, while she and her partner slept. The jacket’s magic rendered her unseen, unheard, and untouched, yet still she whispered when she asked the spirits she’d assembled there for their permission to unmake them. Once, she’d have tried to force her will on them, and maybe it would have worked, and maybe it wouldn’t have, but she’d have felt a knot within her that she never truly acknowledged grow a little bit tighter. Asking, though, made everything flow together like magic.

  On the dresser before her, she had the coin of Fortune that she’d been carrying around for days—the one Cordelia had intended to use to resurrect Ramses’ corpse with Apep riding inside—wiped clean and free with a little destruction magic; the plump, ripe fig that was almost ten years of Ramses St. Cyr’s unused Voice, brimming with magic and sweetness; the leather bag of Salvatore’s scraps of Essence, his gruff humor and affinity for art and his loyalty and determination; and the infant Essence of Ramses St. Cyr.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks as she unmade them all, her magic always and ever a thing of destruction. As she unmade them, she guided them into their new forms, the coiled braids of Voice and Essence and Fortune that made a living human soul, not Sal or Ramses or the lost spirit or any of them, but some of all of them, with a new chance, a new life. Carrying this delicate, impossible, magical being to her sister, who had the quickened embryo of a new life growing inside of her, waiting for the deity whose job it was to deliver newly forged souls—they weren’t all storks, but many of them were—to the inanimate flesh flowering in the womb. She felt the soul take, felt it the moment he went from a might-be to a will-be. And then Renai left them. Alone.

  In the home of Juliette St. Cyr, she stood over the bed of a woman who hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time in days. A woman who had worries in her mind that would only be confirmed when the police found the body of her son in City Park just after dawn. A woman who had years left to live, a road left to walk t
hat wouldn’t get any easier. A woman who stared up at the ceiling with anxious, sleepless eyes that only thought they’d run out of tears to shed.

  Renai waved the caduceus over Juliette’s face and granted the woman the balm of sleep.

  From her pocket, Renai took a leather pouch filled with ash, a spirit that had once been a hurricane, a spirit who had asked to become this. Gently unwrapping the silk bonnet that Juliette slept in, Renai dumped the ash into her hair, rubbing it in, massaging it into the grieving woman’s scalp. She could feel the spirit entering Juliette’s dreams, granting her a vision of the baby growing in Claire Raines’s belly, the soul of her own child given a second chance. Then the ash spirit whispered to Juliette about gun violence and support groups and the horrifying statistics that her son had just joined. She wasn’t the only mother who had lost a son, the ash spirit told Juliette. Hers wasn’t the only family scarred by violence in this city, day after day, hour after hour.

  There were groups she could join, the ash whispered. This wasn’t a burden she had to carry alone, wasn’t a pain she had to endure. She could use it. What could they do, all those grief-stricken, rage-filled mothers, if they spoke with one voice?

  Together, in her dreams, Juliette and a spirit of ash began to make plans.

  In Regal Constant’s apartment, Renai stood in Regal’s bedroom, embarrassed because neither the Magician of New Orleans nor Leon was sleeping. Far from it. Thankfully, Regal had taken off the brass and iron ring before . . . well, before. Renai picked it up from nightstand, slipped it into her pocket, and left.

  Renaissance Raines watched the seconds tick over toward midnight on her cheap cartoon watch, waiting for the Hallows to end. She stood next to Kyrie, at the foot of Canal Street, cemeteries all around them, leaning against the horse-spirit’s solid, muscular warmth, hoping her presence would be enough to keep the six-legged horse in the world of the living with her, instead of crossing over into the Underworld with the other spirits and shades and Shadows.

  Midnight. A Vietnamese man standing at the streetcar stop vanished as the living world and the Underworld separated. Renai hoped he found his way home, but knew, now, that guiding him there was someone else’s job. She felt the worlds pull apart, and for the first time in five years, she stayed whole. Beside her, Kyrie blew out her lips, a sound that she made when she was frustrated, or amused, or bored. Renai was still learning to tell the difference. She patted Kyrie’s flank in gratitude; she hadn’t commanded the horse-spirit to stay with her, after all. She’d only asked.

  She’d already decided she couldn’t go back to being a psychopomp. Not the way the Thrones ran things. She couldn’t be a part of that system. Couldn’t separate Shadow from Essence knowing what was in store for them. She wasn’t dead, wasn’t exactly alive, wasn’t a ’pomp, certainly wasn’t a god.

  But she wasn’t conflicted anymore, either. She hated parts of this city enough to tear down everything that was wrong with it without a moment of nostalgia or hesitation, and she loved it deeply enough to only tear down the parts that deserved it, and only so something better could grow. She didn’t know what to call that. Gods could only be one thing, kind or malevolent, creative or destructive, but she was capable of both. Like the two sides of a coin.

  She took out Jack Elderflower’s brass and iron ring and drew St. Christopher’s sword. She pressed the ring to the blade, and—hardly using any pressure at all—used the blade to slice through the Seal of Solomon engraved on the metal. Careful, controlled destruction. What was the word for that? she thought. Leon would know; he liked big words as much as she did.

  Spirits began to pour from the broken ring like smoke, lost, wounded, desperate things. Ghosts and djinn and shades and Shadows, they were all lost souls to her. They swirled around her, speaking in that whispering non-voice that she’d learned to listen to.

  Are you her?

  Did you free us?

  Are you her?

  Can you really send me home?

  Are you the one who helps?

  “Yes,” Renai said, smiling. “I’m her. I’m the one who helps.”

  When Death comes, he takes everything: ambitions, charity, shared jokes, secrets. All are lost. And when Death comes, she leaves nothing behind: the slant of your smile, the timbre of your voice, the forgiveness you never got to speak aloud, all are gone. Yama and Odin, Orcus and Erlik, Mara and Mictecacihuatl, and the silence of a heart not beating. They are hunters and trappers, they are beasts and they are raptors, and they are scavengers and they are forces of nature. Death stalks us and chases us and waits for us and is always inside of us. Death is a door and a bridge and a guide and a mouth and a transition and an end. It is the one experience everyone and everything must encounter. Microbes and heroes, the ancient oak and the cicada that leaves a husk clinging to its bark, gods and children and cities and ideas and fathers and mothers and countries and stars and me and you. Everything dies and everything ends and that is all.

  And yet.

  Everywhere Death walks, Life follows. Everything Death takes, Life gives to another.

  She is Asase Yaa. Onuava. Demeter. Coatlicue. Phra Mae Thorani. He is Kokopelli. Makemake. Geb. Lono. They plant the seeds in the earth and children in the womb. They gave birth to the gods and to the first mortals and to the cosmos and to the sea. They give their lives to water the earth, to bring plentiful game to hunt, to keep the sun in the sky. They are the sky. They are the sun. They are the buds of new growth in spring, and after a fire, and after a flood, and in the shadow of a failed nuclear reactor. They are everywhere we swore they couldn’t be, in the exothermic vents of the deep ocean, in the ones and zeroes of information, in the fossil record of Mars. Death can end a life, or lives, or this life, or every life.

  But not Life.

  Just as Death’s promise is always fulfilled, Life’s offer is continually extended.

  But where Death only ever promises an end, Life offers the hope of a new beginning.

  Acknowledgments

  Second books are tough, and this one threatened to tear me in half. What follows is an incomplete list of thanks to all of the family, friends, and kind souls who helped stitch me back together:

  To my editor, John Joseph Adams, for his continued enthusiasm for this world, and for guiding me through the depths of the various drafts of this novel. May your steaks always be on swords.

  To my copy editor, Erin DeWitt; cover artist, Will Staehle; to Michelle Triant, Hannah Harlow, Dani Spencer, Beth Burleigh Fuller, and everyone else at HMH, for all your tireless work.

  To my agent, Seth Fishman, for being able to look forward to the future and focus on the present all at the same time.

  To his assistant Jack Gernert, Anna Worrall, Will Roberts, Rebecca Gardner, Ellen Coughtrey, and everyone else at Gernert for their support in getting these words in front of as many eyes and into as many ears as possible.

  To Michelle and Bryan Camp Sr., Rose Camp, Bryndon Camp, Bryttany and Keith Wogan, Gerri and Ed Merida, Mary Anne Iles, Abigail and Michael Labit, Becky Merida, and Hal Harries, for being a wonderful, supportive family.

  To Bev Marshall, Amanda Boyden, Joseph Boyden, Jim Grimsley, Mary Rosenblum, Stephen Graham Jones, Connie Willis, George R. R. Martin, Gavin Grant, Kelly Link, and Chuck Palahniuk, for all the writing lessons over the years. I drew on your wisdom over and over again while writing this book.

  To Alex Jennings, Alys Arden, Bill Lavender, Bill Loefehlm, Candice Huber, Casey Lefante, Chris Bowes, Danielle Smith, Greg Herren, Henry Griffin, Les Howle, Lish McBride, Nancy Dixon, Neile Graham, Nick Mainieri, Niko Tesvich, Susan Larson, Tawni Waters, Tracie Tate, and Wayne Rupp, for all the imperceptible and irreplaceable ways you’ve all left your mark on me and my work.

  To the Clarion West class of 2012: Alyc Helms, Blythe Woolston, Brenta Blevins, Carlie St. George, Cory Skerry, Georgina Kamsika, Greg Friis West, Helen Marshall, Henry Lien, Indrapramit Das, James Harper, James Herndon, Kim Neville, Laura Friis West, Huw Evans, Nik Houser
, and Sarah Brooks. You’re all editorial voices in my head and stitches in my heart.

  To Michael Thomas, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you constantly pushing me to do better. I am, as always, grateful to be your friend.

  Finally and always, thank you to my wife, Beth Anne. As hard as this book was on me, I know it was even harder on you. You never give up on me, never let me compromise, never waver in your support or your faith in me. I don’t know how you do it, but I’m grateful. Even though this isn’t the book you hoped I’d write next, your presence is on every page. Even though I wrote these words alone, you’re always with me, and always will be.

  Visit hmhbooks.com to find all of the books in the Crescent City series.

  Visit www.hmhbooks.com to find more science fiction and fantasy titles from John Joseph Adams Books.

  About the Author

  Bryan Camp is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and the University of New Orleans MFA program. His first novel, The City of Lost Fortunes, earned starred reviews in Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal, and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal. He lives in New Orleans.

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