by Rita Woods
Mother Abigail had watched as Winter led the girl—Margot—away from the Central Fire and down the trail behind the bakehouse, taking her to one of the empty shelters hidden along a winding path, far back in the trees.
Low to the ground and enclosed on three sides, the half-dozen triangular log shelters were packed with dry straw and heavy quilts, warm and watertight. They were kept ever ready, the straw changed, the quilts aired regularly, the chinking in the logs patched as needed. Despite the signal on the quilt, only one shelter would be occupied tonight, not five. She gripped her walking stick, anger igniting in her gut. At least the blancs had been denied this one.
A shelter just like these had been the first structure in Remembrance, back when the spirits still spoke to Mother Abigail regularly, whispering in her ear that after her journey of a thousand miles, this was the place to create her world.
When … if … the girl decided to stay, she would be moved to one of the whitewashed cottages near the Central Fire.
The excitement of the new arrival had kept people up much later than usual, that and the lingering anxiety that still permeated the settlement, but finally, slowly, everyone had drifted away to their cottages and Remembrance was quiet.
The priestess skirted the Central Fire, now a pile of smoldering embers, and limped toward the baking shed, her knees aching in the damp air. For a long moment, she gazed into the darkness where the shelters were. From where she stood, she couldn’t see them, but she knew the structures were there. Part of Remembrance yet separate, they were a place where runaways’ hearts could settle and heal while they adjusted to the fact that the air they now breathed belonged to them.
She turned and headed back toward her cabin. A deep silence covered Remembrance, but Mother Abigail was restless.
Five. There should have been five. But there had only been the one, and that one so unraveled that it was a wonder she’d made it.
And then there were the dogs.
Mother Abigail ground her teeth, unconsciously quickening her pace.
Quaker Mary’s paper had been right. The new law was making the slavers bold. Making it worth their while to travel this far north. Twice now, in less than a week, they’d come this close to threatening Remembrance. The first time …
Mother Abigail shook her head. No. She wouldn’t think on that. That had been a momentary lapse. The first she’d ever had since coming full into her power back in New Orleans all those years before.
Nothing.
It was nothing.
One lapse in nearly sixty years.
And they had saved Zeus, no? And the girl. She inhaled sharply. No. It was of no consequence.
The old woman pursed her lips and grunted. Sleep would not visit her this night. Slowly, she climbed the path that would take her to the highlands, passing her own cottage on the way, the path gradually narrowing as she neared the top. Remembrance sat in the space between a bank of rolling hills carved out millennia before by moving ice. Even without the Edge, the hilly topography, the thick stands of birch, pine, buckeye, and maple provided some bit of protection.
Merde!
Mother Abigail swore as her knees and shoulders and back and ankles screeched in protest of the climb. She was old. She wasn’t sure how old. Did it matter once so many long years had passed?
She sat, leaning against the large boulder that marked the crest of the highlands, to catch her breath. She pulled a rag from her sleeve to wipe her brow, feeling her heart beating in her ears.
Remembrance was her sanctuary. They’d taken everything else from her: her husband, her children, even her name. Quaker Mary’s paper was nothing to her. They would never take this. She spat into the dirt. Let them come. Let them try. She felt a sharp pain in her head, a rush of dizziness, and closed her eyes, waiting for it to pass.
Where had the time gone? Could it have been so very long ago since she’d worked the coffee fields of Far Water? It felt like just yesterday that she’d hidden in the muddy bayous of Louisiana, learning the Art, the way to listening to the loa—the spirits. How many days had she lain—naked, with only a sheet between her and the rough wooden floor, no food, no water—as Simona prayed and poured hot holy oil over her breasts, her stomach? Until time was simply a river that carried her along. Space a thing to jump between.
And Josiah had been at her side ever since he and Simona had led her away from those New Orleans docks that dreary March morning. Simona was High Babalawa: the highest of priestesses. The blacks of New Orleans revered her, the whites feared her, and all left her alone.
“What art is it you practice?” Abigail had asked in those first few weeks. “Is it vodun?”
Simona had laughed, her eyes disappearing in the deep wrinkles of her face. “Do not think so small,” she said. “I use whatever ‘art’ I need. I call on the wind god of the red man and the spirits of our ancestors. I even talk to the god of the blancs when I need him. Learn, my child.”
And Abigail had learned. She learned everything Simona could teach her, until one day the student was far more powerful than the teacher. She’d left to live on her own, deep in the bayou, wandering the streets of New Orleans at her pleasure, more feared than Simona had ever been. And always Josiah was there, standing in the shadows, watching, waiting.
* * *
At first the pain of pushing space, folding it around itself had been agony. Abigail thought she might die, hoped she might die. Simona instructed her to pray, to ask the loa for help, but even then she was losing her faith. The loa were fickle creatures and God a capricious entity. How else to explain the fact that she was given such great powers, yet she and so many others were still left to the mercy of the blancs? If there truly was a God, would he not have given her the power to strike down these blancs? Would she not still be fishing on a riverbank an ocean away with her sister? No, she could not pray. She and the loa would develop a business arrangement, not unlike the one she would later have with Quaker Mary. She would use the gift they’d given her, but otherwise largely ignore them. They were not her allies.
She started as something moved in the shadows.
“Who is there?”
She waited, but the only answer was the far-off squeaking of bats feeding on the apples rotting up in the orchard. Squinting, she tried to see, but her eyes were as old as the rest of her and showed her nothing but shadows beating against shadows.
“Damn!” she swore again. “Crazy old woman.”
But she wasn’t crazy. She knew that. Something was happening. Something bad both Outside and in Remembrance.
“Tired,” she muttered. “Tired.”
Things were changing. She felt it. She needed to protect Remembrance, to keep it safe, but time was a river and she could feel herself getting close to its end. She moaned. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t know what to do.
Winter.
The girl’s face flashed in her mind and the old priestess’s face softened. She’d found the child curled up like a bug under her mother in the snow, eyes wide open, calm as you please, as if waiting for her. Even then, she’d felt it. That current of power coursing through that little body, generating its own heat. But while it had grown as Winter grew, it remained disordered, sloppy, despite her efforts. She thought of her Easter Egger spewed across her chicken pen and frowned. Josiah said she coddled the girl. Was he right? All she knew was that Winter was not ready to protect Remembrance.
“Manman!”
The priestess shot up with a cry, pain corkscrewing through her head.
“Claude?” she cried.
A small crowd of gens de couleur crossed the narrow street in front of her, the ribbons of their bonnets shimmering in the moonlight, their silk skirts whispering on the brick pavement. The free women of color, beautiful as they moved together, laughing, down the street. A street vendor called out from the alley-way. Her son. Where was her son?
The pain in her head worsened, as if a hot poker were being pushed into her brain, leaving
a trail of fire. She was standing on the pier, waiting for the fish Eva would prepare for dinner.…
No.
She was in Remembrance.
Remembrance?
Was that right?
She gripped her walking stick and hit her forehead with her fist, breathing hard.
“Abigail?”
She jerked, felt something break apart inside her head, and suddenly she knew herself again.
Josiah.
The old man had materialized from the shadows like a phantom.
She stared at him, dazed, sweat rolling between her breasts despite the cold. Trembling, she clenched her walking stick to the point of pain. He stood at her side, watching her, not touching but close enough for her to feel the warmth radiating off his body.
“Ou pé m’, Josiah.” Her voice was raw. “You scared me.”
He said nothing.
She grunted in irritation, inhaling his scent, apples and smoke and damp wool, until her heart began to slow, the pain in her head fading to a low thrum. It had always been this way, for nearly sixty years, him appearing at her side in times of trouble. And there was trouble coming.
“What you think of the new girl?” he asked finally.
She shrugged. “That she new.”
The old man grunted. “She by herself.”
“Wi.”
The two old friends stood in silence, offering up a quiet prayer for those whose road to freedom had led elsewhere, not needing or wanting to dwell on the possible fate of her companions.
“She look starved and halfway to crazy, don’t she?” asked Josiah, breaking the silence.
Mother Abigail smiled bitterly. “Like they all do at first.”
Side by side they looked out over a darkened Remembrance.
“What you doin’ up here, Abigail?” Josiah asked, after a long moment.
“Just ponderin’ on things,” she said, not looking at him.
“Hmm,” was all he said.
She turned. “You got somethin’ to say?”
“Why you send that girl out there tonight?” he asked, his eyes like two raw oysters in the faint light.
“It was time. She gon’ have to do it. Sooner rather than later. Need to learn. It will be her time one day. I gettin’ old. I gettin’ tired.”
“She won’t never be able to control the Edge, Abigail. Not sooner. Not later.”
The priestess bristled. “She powerful.”
“She feral!” Josiah took a deep breath. “She got powers, I grant you that. But she undisciplined. Unfocused. And she got no real idea what Remembrance means. What she gotta do.”
“Winter loves Remembrance.”
“Abigail, she love it the way you love somethin’ that always been there. Don’t even think about it. Just takes it for granted. She ain’t seen that other world outside, not with her own two eyes. Ain’t been branded by it. So she don’t know the things you got to be ready to do to defend what you hold dear. What it cost.” The old man held his face to the night sky and sighed. “You ever tell her the truth? ’Bout why you left New Orleans? The whole truth? How you end up here.”
Her head snapped up. “I tell her the truth. I never lie to her.”
When he said nothing, she turned her back on him and began to work her way back down the hill. She would not talk of that time. Would not speak of that one gruesome week, when the maroons had revolted on the sugar plantations outside New Orleans and the whites, drunk on fear and revenge, had ravaged the city. Chopping off the hands and feet of slaves and free people of color alike, lighting them afire. Lining their heads on pikes at the city gates, a warning. On that cold January day in 1811, she’d turned her back on New Orleans, on the loa, and started walking.
“You want me to tell you everything’s gon’ be alright, Abigail?” He was behind her again, following her. “You want me to lie to you the way you lied to me when that slaver walk through the Edge the other night?”
She whirled on him, nearly losing her balance. “Lied…?”
“Everything is fine,” he said, mocking her.
She growled a warning.
“After you left, after they took Simona, who was it found you in that bayou waitin’ to die?” He was speaking low, his voice hard. “Layin’ up, measurin’ all the wounds the world done put on you? Even after all Simona and I taught you. After all you became. You give up. Layin’ up there waitin’ on death. But then I found you again. You don’t never have to answer to me, but don’t never play me for no fool.”
She laughed, the sound harsh and loud in the darkness. “You didn’t do that for me. You do that for you. My power is your power. You needed me like you needed Simona.”
She laughed again.
“I know the creature you are. Feed off me. Feed off Simona. Until we used up and die.”
He stepped close, hissing. “I used you? And what was you when we found you, eh? A slave standin’ in the mud, screamin’ about her dead babies.”
“You think you made me?” Choking on her outrage, the priestess could barely get the words out. “That what you think? Don’t mistake yourself, Josiah. This power is mine.”
“Not made you. Taught you. And the only thing you knew about power before that was makin’ massa’s dinner.”
She snarled and raised her hand. Unflinching, he grabbed it, and she felt the energy she’d released break apart and flow around him. In that same instant, she felt herself fall, though he still held her, falling into a pit where pain and darkness lived. She felt the heat of him, heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. She tried to pull free but could not. She stumbled, felt herself getting lost and then …
She was free. Tiny lights flickered before her eyes. Swearing, she slumped to the ground. He folded himself up beside her and pulled a pipe from his pocket. He lit it, the tremor in his hands barely noticeable. Long ago, they’d discovered that though neither was strong enough to destroy the other, they could inflict a great deal of pain on each other. They sat in uneasy silence for a long time and then she laid her hand on his thigh. Without comment, Josiah covered it with his own. A truce.
“Tell me what you see.” He sounded slightly breathless. “Or not. But don’t lie to me, Abigail.”
She gripped his hand and told him: how the then was sometimes becoming muddled with the now. How sometimes she lost herself.
But she didn’t tell him everything. Could not even admit it to herself. That sometimes, she even lost Remembrance.
“Then change truly done come,” he said when she was done. He squeezed her hand.
“And so?” she asked.
“So we do what we always done, old girl. We wait and see and then we fight back. Just like we always done.”
21
Winter
She moved along the deer track, pushing her way through the tangle of vines that threaded through the trees, skirting the much easier trails that wound through the settlement. As she climbed over moldering tree trunks, her bare feet sank deep in the thick moss and damp earth. Overhead, branches of maple and birch intertwined, casting shadows everywhere.
In a few minutes, she’d pushed her way into a small opening in the woods. She stopped to catch her breath. She was at the north end of the cemetery, surrounded on three sides by sugar maples. Last season’s sap buckets still hung from the trunks.
Goodwill of the ancestors make the syrup sweeter.
Winter smiled. When she was little, that was what Mother Abigail said to her every sugaring season when they came to collect the sap.
She picked her way through the small graveyard. She liked it here, liked the sense of peace. In summer, honeysuckle and wild rose grew uninhibited around the gravesites, perfuming the air. She stooped and ran a palm lightly over a wooden grave marker, the engraving already worn away. She felt a strong urge to lie down next to the now-unmarked grave, but she was on an errand for Mother Abigail, so with a sigh, she straightened and moved on.
Several hundred yards on, at the other end of
the cemetery, nearly invisible in the trees, were the half-dozen temporary shelters that housed the new arrivals. Far enough away from the center of the settlement that the newly freed didn’t feel overwhelmed, yet close enough that they understood they’d not been abandoned; the structures were small, but sturdy. Winter had taken less than a dozen steps toward the one where the newest runaway lay, when she heard the sound of a struggle coming from inside. Dashing toward it, she bent to look. The girl, Margot, though still asleep, was thrashing wildly, calling for someone, crying out in another language. One arm slammed into the side wall and, alarmed, Winter grabbed for the girl’s hands to prevent her injuring herself.
Margot’s eyes snapped open. She blinked in confusion.
Then. “Veronique?”
“No.” Winter frowned. “Winter. It’s alright. You’re alright. You’re safe now.”
The other girl stopped struggling and confusion was slowly replaced by something else. Disbelief? Anger? She laughed, a harsh, hysterical sound that bounced off the walls of the small shelter. Winter let her go and backed through the opening. Margot followed seconds later and stood, wobbling slightly.
“I know you,” she said. “You were there last night.”
“Not last night,” Winter corrected her. “Three nights ago. You’ve been asleep for three days.”
“Three days?” Margot’s head snapped around. “Impossible!”
Winter shrugged, watching as the other girl took in her surroundings.
“If you’re feeling up to it, we can take a walk down by the creek,” she said. “Get you some fresh clothes. You could wash.” She looked pointedly at the girl’s torn and dirt-caked garments.
Margot glanced down and, even beneath the grime, her embarrassment was obvious. With a nod, she brushed a tangle of hair from her face and took a few steps. She staggered, nearly fell, and Winter leaped to steady her, inhaling sharply when Margot jerked away. The two girls stared at each other a long moment before Margot looked down, lips pressed into a thin line.