by Rita Woods
Behind her, Remembrance was invisible through the treetops; in front, the sheer stone-studded hill rolled out in a carpet of greens and reds and golds—all the way to the distant river—silver in the afternoon light.
High and inaccessible, except for the steep and rocky trail she’d just climbed, it was the perfect place for the reclusive healer and her gardens.
“What you doin’ up here?”
Winter whirled. “Christmas!”
The herbalist had come up silently behind her and stood a few feet away, clutching an herb-laden basket. She stood glaring at Winter. The herbalist was older than Winter by a few years. She was thin to the point of gauntness, most likely the result of the ghastly injury that deformed the left side of her face and made it difficult for her to eat much except soft foods.
“Mother Abigail wanted me to come find you,” said Winter evenly.
“You found me then.”
Winter rolled her eyes as Louisa turned away and headed toward a small shack half hidden in the vegetation, the place she lived and worked, far from everything except her beloved flowers and bees. Winter followed, keeping a wide distance between them. Louisa was not above hurling things at people when she was in a snit, which was most of the time, as far as Winter could tell.
“Well, I got the impression she wanted to see you. She wants to know if you have everything ready for the exchange.”
The herbalist spun around and Winter tensed, prepared to duck.
“She wants to know if I’m ready? I ever not been?”
Winter inhaled sharply, trying to hold her temper in check.
“Louisa.” Winter made her voice like spring sap, slow and sickening sweet. “She’s not doubting that you’re ready. She says the outsiders have some special requests, that’s all.”
“Special requests. Special requests,” muttered Louisa, hitching her herb basket tighter against her side. “Do I look like a mercantile? Do I?” She bent to examine a rosehip.
“Ask me, shouldn’t be havin’ nothin’ t’all to do with them devils. Remembrance makes its own way. That’s what I say,” she mumbled.
Winter threw her arms up, exasperated, keeping a wary eye on Louisa’s basket.
“Sweet baby Jesus, girl,” she snapped. “I’m just bringin’ the message. The rest? That’s something between you and Mother Abigail.”
“Got the message,” replied Louisa flatly.
“Fine!” Winter turned to leave, the herbalist’s hatefulness churning in her stomach. How could anyone be so full of poison?
“You know,” she said, turning back. “If you treated people halfway as good as you treat your stupid flowers, maybe you wouldn’t be by yourself all the time. Maybe you’d even have friends.”
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with bein’ alone, ’specially if the choice is sufferin’ a fool,” Louisa spit. “As for friends? You be marching around Remembrance like you the queen of the ball, grinnin’ so wide it’s a wonder your face don’t split plain in two.”
She smiled then and the effect was unnerving.
“And somehow,” Louisa went on, her eyes glittering, “I don’t see no crowds of folks fallin’ all over theyselves tryin’ to be your friend.”
Winter reared back, Louisa’s words like a slap in the face. She blinked back tears.
“You know,” she said, taking a step toward Louisa, who stood smiling dangerously at her, “you might be the nastiest person I ever met. Remembrance did just fine before we dragged your half-dead carcass in here. You’d think you’d be the tiniest bit appreciative. But no! You think ’cause you can take sickness out of folks, that gives you the right to just flash your hind parts in everybody’s face. You think you’re so special! What I just don’t understand is how you manage to heal folks when you don’t even like them!
“Well, you’re not special!” Winter snarled, the words nearly choking her. “You’re just evil!”
Louisa laughed, a harsh, broken sound. “Naw,” she said. “I ain’t nothin’ special. Not like Mother Abigail’s precious Winter. The girl who’s gone look after all us po’, pitiful slave folks after Mother Abigail gone.”
She shifted the basket. “What I just don’t understand is, how you s’posed to take care of us folks when can’t nobody even let you near the cook fire ’cause you most likely to set your fool self on fire?”
“Femèl chein,” snapped Winter. “Bitch!”
They stood inches from each other, breathing hard. Winter trembled with rage, fighting the urge to launch herself at Louisa, to slap her damaged face.
When Louisa had first arrived in Remembrance, her face broken, barely able to speak, barely alive, Winter had pitied her. But no more!
Louisa, who was inches taller, stood unmoving in front of Winter, the undamaged side of her dark face fixed in an expression of loathing, her eyes challenging.
Winter felt the other girl’s hatred crash against her, washing over her in waves. She wanted to push the other girl aside, to slap that hateful expression off her face. How dare she speak to her like that? This deformed nobody that they had dragged across the Edge. She would have been dead if it hadn’t been for them. And this was the gratitude she showed?
Winter narrowed her eyes. She stretched her fingers wide and felt heat flow from her hands up into her arms, her neck. That scar on Louisa’s face. She could see inside the puckered skin, the spaces in between. The bits there, spinning slow, sluggish, not quite dead but not living tissue either. It was ugly. She was ugly. And she hated her. Her fingers were warm, a painful crackling at their tips.
“You don’t know me! I am special!” she hissed.
Louisa blurred in front of her. Beneath that scar, where her jawbone should have been holding her face together, were jagged pieces of bone, pieces missing like an old puzzle. And they were spinning, spinning. Her tongue, that hateful tongue, spitting venom.
Louisa’s expression changed, the bitter smile slipping into something like bewilderment. There was no sound in the garden now. The bees were silent, the wind still. Winter’s skin felt singed with a fire she couldn’t see. She smelled fire in her nose, heard nothing but the roaring in her ears.
She hated her. Louisa didn’t know. She did have friends. How dare she? She was special and she would show her.
She tasted blood in her mouth, coppery like a penny. Louisa’s terror.
And then the healer screamed, a low-pitched, guttural sound, and suddenly Mother Abigail’s chickens flashed in Winter’s head. The blood splattered across the pen. She had an image of Louisa torn apart like the little gray Easter Egger. Horrified, she spun away, wrapping her arms around herself.
“No,” she cried.
Pain spiraled through the top of her head, an agonizing pain that left her breathless, staggered her. And in that very instant, Louisa was flung backward, as if slapped by a giant hand, the basket and its contents flying in an arc high over her head.
“No,” moaned Winter again through gritted teeth.
She felt sick and bent, hands on knees, breathing hard, waiting for the heat, the feeling of everything spinning around her, to bleed off. Waiting to feel like herself. Louisa lay sprawled on the ground a few feet away.
“Louisa!” she whispered, hoarse.
Louisa jerked. Her eyes blazed in her damaged face. “You … you are a foul, unnatural thing … a … an abomination! You will never be Mother Abigail!” The girl scrambled to her feet and disappeared into the trees without another word.
Winter stared after her, her body still pulsating, hot.
Unnatural?
She threw back her head and screamed.
Louisa had called her unnatural. The word echoed in her head.
Was there anything natural in Remembrance?
She had wanted Louisa gone and the power had come, unbidden, rising up and catching fire inside her, as if it had a mind of its own. The desire, the need to see inside the spaces, to move them, nearly uncontrollable.
She could still feel that ins
tant, that fraction of a moment when she’d had a sense of Louisa coming apart, of being ripped to pieces and shredded like Mother Abigail’s chicken. Bile rose in her throat at the image, and she swallowed hard, forcing it down.
“I wouldn’t have hurt her. Not really,” she whispered. She took a shaky breath. “I just wanted her to shut up. I wouldn’t have hurt her.”
She closed her eyes. She would leave this place, run so far even Mother Abigail wouldn’t find her. She wondered if Canada was like Ohio. She would live in a city. She had never seen a city. She tried to imagine a place where colored people were free to walk the streets with whites, where they could go to the market together. To real schools. She would get a dress shop, with big windows made of actual glass to let in the sun. Ribbons and lace of every color would line the walls like a rainbow, and white women and colored women would come in together to have her make their fancy dresses. People would clamor for her beautiful things, the way they did for Louisa’s honey. And she would be normal. Like everybody else.
There was rustling in the trees below her.
“Louisa?” She straightened.
Was she coming back up?
“Go on, now,” she called. “Just leave it be, alright? Just go on and see what Mother Abigail wants.”
She sighed; shame and fatigue crept up her spine. Even so, she would never apologize to Louisa. Never. Not after the vile things she’d said.
The rustling grew louder, seeming to be coming from the grove of buckeyes, downhill from the hives. Winter frowned. The only real way up to the summit was the path Louisa had just taken. Beyond the buckeyes and the hives was a rocky, murderously steep incline, nearly impossible to climb. Besides that, it was unlikely anyone would dare be around Louisa’s bees without her permission. Winter moved warily toward the grove.
“Hello,” she called softly. “Y’all better get on out of there. Louisa’ll skin you alive if you mess with her bees.”
There was no answer. She was about to call out again when she heard voices. Male voices. The accents strange and fluid. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she froze where she stood. She’d heard voices that sounded like these just the week before. They were the voices of white men, the same kind of voices as that slave tracker.
There was more thrashing on the downhill side of the buckeye grove, and still she couldn’t move. The voices faded in and out, sometimes seeming to come from just inside the shadow of the trees, then dropping to the faintest of whispers. Words came to her. Something about spineless preachers … about a horse. There was laughter followed by long silence.
For a moment, Winter thought she had imagined it. It was her nerves, her guilt over what had just happened with Louisa. It wasn’t possible. Slavers in Remembrance? Again?
A shot rang out from beyond the trees. The paralysis that had locked her in place shattered, and with a cry, she whirled and raced down the path toward the settlement, oblivious to the sharp stones grinding into her bare feet or the branches tearing at her face.
There were white men in Remembrance!
25
Margot
She turned her back on Mother Abigail and Josiah and walked down the path toward the Central Fire, back straight, each step deliberate. The old woman had terrified her, they both had, but she would never let them see. She rounded a curve, out of sight of the cabin, and doubled over, gasping for breath.
What was this place? Who were these people? That man with his ghost eyes? That old woman?
Babalawa.
The word popped into her mind. A high priestess of vodun. The stories Grandmere told of a priestess that would come from across the ocean and free all the slaves. Who had the power to drive men mad and make them disappear where they stood.
At the thought of Grandmere, she sank to the ground with a sob. It had been a mistake. They should have stayed on that miserable farm in Kentucky. Maybe then Veronique would still be alive. Maybe the farmer would have kept them both together, even after his wife died. He would have needed even more help with his repellent litter of dim children, oui?
She covered her face with her hands, weeping softly.
“You alright?”
Margot looked up, startled. Two identical, dimpled, brown-sugar faces stared down at her. She swiped at her face and tried to smile.
“Yes,” she said. “I am well, thank you.”
The little girls exchanged a look.
“You’re pretty. Where you come from?”
“New Orleans,” she answered without thinking. It was at least the second time that day she’d been asked the question.
The girls seemed to be thinking this over.
“Is that far away?” asked one finally.
Margot nodded, matching her serious expression to theirs. “Yes,” she said. “Very far.”
The girls nodded solemnly.
“You are twins,” said Margot. She felt foolish as soon as the words were out. Of course they were twins. They were like peas in a pod, impossible to tell apart. The sisters exchanged another look and rolled their eyes.
“Of course,” said the twin that hadn’t yet spoken.
“What’s your name?” asked her sister.
“Margot. What is yours?”
“I’m Esther and this is Hannah. We’re six.”
Nervously, Margot brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. Children made her uneasy. She felt big and awkward around them, unsure of how to talk to them. Back home—in Louisiana, she corrected herself—she had treated the Hannigan children like smaller, occasionally cantankerous adults. She began to edge her way around the twins.
“You talk funny,” said Hannah.
Margot stopped and looked down at the two small girls. “Do I?”
Two brown heads nodded in unison.
Margot smiled. “Where I … where I come from, everyone speaks like I do. Shall I teach you a little French?”
Hannah grinned.
“How old are you?” Esther interrupted.
“Esther!” admonished her sister. “That’s rude.”
Esther crossed her arms across her thin chest. “I don’t understand why it ain’t rude to ask where somebody from, but is rude to ask how old they are.”
“You not supposed to ask grown-ups, that’s all,” muttered Hannah, sounding unsure.
“She ain’t no grown-up,” declared Esther peering intently up into Margot’s face. “She just … bigger.”
Margot laughed, startling herself. It was something Veronique might have said. The tightness uncoiled in her chest, and she inhaled deeply for the first time all day.
“I am twenty,” she answered.
“Wanna see my doll?” asked Esther. She thrust something into Margot’s hands. It was about the size of her hand and as thick around, carved into the general shape of a torso with a head—no arms, no legs—nothing like the fine porcelain dolls with their painted faces and silken hair that Catherine Hannigan had had shipped to her from Paris.
“Winter made her clothes,” said Hannah proudly.
Margot had been about to hand the doll back, but at that, she pulled it close and examined it more thoroughly. The material was common, not silk or taffeta, but it had been pieced together cleverly and adorned with bright ribbon. The tiny stitches were expertly done, she noted with surprise, something she would not have expected from the excitable Winter. She nodded her approval and handed the doll back.
“Elle est très belle,” said Margot. “She is very beautiful.”
“No she ain’t,” said Esther sadly. “She just a big ol’ hunk a’ wood. But Momma say one day, she gonna get us a real live baby doll. With real hair. And a face.”
Margot laughed again at the girl’s honesty. She hoped that it was true.
“We can show you everything,” said Esther. “Come on.”
She opened her mouth to protest. She just wanted to get as far away from Mother Abigail and Josiah as she could. She wanted to find her shelter, curl up in a ball and hide.
Until she could figure a way out. But the girls had already grabbed her hands, one on each side, and were dragging her down the trail. As they pulled her along, they pointed out all the important places in Remembrance.
“That’s the baking house. They make bread there.”
“Up that way is where they keep the cows.”
“Everybody lives up there,” said Esther. “Well, not you yet.”
Margot followed her gaze and saw tiny cottages climbing neatly up the hillside like stair steps.
“And we learn out letters right by that tree. I can write my name.”
Halfway down the trail, they ran across an old man screaming obscenities at a goat who brayed at him from the safety of the trees.
“That’s Sir Galahad,” said Hannah, giggling. “He’s crazy for his goats. David Henry says he likes ’em better than people.”
“David Henry?” asked Margot.
“He’s nice,” answered Hannah.
“Hannah loves him,” said her sister.
“I do not,” screamed Hannah.
“She wants to marry him when she grows up.”
Hannah looked stricken, then grabbed for her sister, who went racing off down the trail screaming with delight, leaving Margot alone once again. She stood a long moment in the sudden quiet, pain throbbing dully in her chest, missing her own sister desperately. She blinked back the tears that were threatening to fall again and kept walking.
She came out into a wide open area, a circle of stones surrounding a massive firepit, sanded logs grouped together and clearly meant for sitting. The Central Fire. Winter had mentioned it and Margot vaguely remembered it from that first night. They’d given her something to drink here, soup she thought.
People milled about: stacking wood, peeling vegetables, raking debris from around the circle, coming and going from the many trails that fed into the open area by the Central Fire. They acknowledged her with a smile, a nod, but no one approached her. She leaned to peer into a pot that was steaming over one of the smaller fires. A giant hog’s head floated in a broth. Bile rose in her throat and she backed away, pulling her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. The sun was bright but gave little warmth. She shivered. The old witch was right. She was weak. The muscles in her legs trembled and she ached with fatigue.