by Rita Woods
The ground slid beneath her feet and something sharp punctured her heel.
“Wait,” she cried out hoarsely. “Louisa, wait! Please!”
She sank to her knees. The fire in her chest burned away her breath. She just wanted to be home, to be sitting by the Central Fire.
The weight of her exhaustion pushed her down until she rolled forward, her forehead resting on the cold ground, her fingers digging into the soil. She sobbed softly. Louisa squatted down beside her. The other girl said nothing, and finally Winter turned her face so that she was looking up at her. Louisa was gazing out into the dark woods.
Around them were the night sounds of the forest, a sound that until now Winter had loved: the rustling in the forest understory, the hoot of an owl, the distant call of a coyote, all sounds that should have made her feel safe but had now turned into the background noise of her own personal hell.
“This is when you decide,” said Louisa finally. Her voice was barely audible.
Winter whimpered. Her tears were cold on her face. It hurt to breathe. “Decide what?” She was so tired.
“What you is,” said Louisa. “How your life gets run out.”
Winter forced herself slowly upright. The world spun and she swallowed, tasting vomit in the back of her throat. “What in the devil’s name’re you talking about, Louisa?” she asked listlessly.
Louisa turned her head. In the moonlight the scars on her face seemed to glow. “Whatever you was before don’t matter, girl. You a slave now. Until you reach Remembrance, you a slave. A runaway slave. So now you got to decide.”
She turned back to stare up into the trees. “I know it feels like you dyin’. Like you can’t take not one more single step. But when you a runaway you already done made the decision that you can live with dyin’. Only thing left to decide is whether you gonna die a slave or free. If we manage to get to Remembrance, that just be butter on the biscuit.”
“I don’t…” Winter shook her head. “What’re you saying? That when you ran that first time you didn’t actually expect to get to freedom?”
Louisa shrugged, not looking at her. “I learned a long time ago not to expect nothin’. That part almost always out my hands. Just mattered what I accepted.”
She stood. “And I accepted I might die, but I wasn’t dyin’ no slave. That’s what I decided.”
Kneeling there, Winter smelled the filth on herself—the rotting hay and old sweat, the stink of the barn—felt pain through every muscle of her body. She wanted to be brave, she did. She wanted to scream out: I will die before I am a slave!
But she didn’t feel brave. Or strong. Or sure of anything … especially death. She wanted a warm bath, warm food, and warm clothes. She wanted to be sitting by the fire listening to Old Peter play his harmonica while Sir Galahad chased his stupid goats through the settlement. She wanted to sleep on a real straw mattress with a brick to heat her toes.
Louisa was watching her. Slowly, she dragged herself to her feet, wincing at the sore spot on her heel. She roughly swiped at her tears. She wasn’t brave enough to accept her own death and she wasn’t brave enough to stay in the woods alone. She got up from the ground only because she couldn’t think of anything else to do. With another whimper, she fell in behind Louisa, who nodded and began to move, once again, down a forest trail that only she could see.
They hadn’t gone far when Winter thought she heard something. She grabbed at Louisa’s skirt.
“What now, girl?”
Winter shook her head, listening. High above them, tree branches creaked in the faint wind.
“What?” whispered Louisa. “What is it?”
Winter held up her hand and shook her head again. There was something … someone … out there. “I … don’t know. I thought … I thought I heard…”
She began to walk quickly, forcing Louisa to follow her now, throwing worried glances over her shoulders. “Let’s just go.”
There!
There it was again. Winter stopped short and Louisa crashed into her.
“What is it, Winter?” Winter heard panic in Louisa’s voice.
There was something—someone—moving in the woods, coming toward them, coming fast. Whipping her head around, she searched for some place to hide.
“You hear something out there?” cried Louisa. “Is it—” She spun toward a sound, the question cut off. Slowly, she began to back toward a deep shadow, pulling Winter with her.
The two girls crouched between the raised roots of an oak and listened, barely daring to breathe. As they waited, straining to hear, to see, time stretched, slowed. The only sounds were the normal night sounds of the forest.
“It was just an animal,” Louisa whispered into Winter’s ear. “It could have just been an animal, couldn’t it?”
Winter nodded. But it hadn’t been an animal. She was absolutely sure of that. She stood. Her throat hurt. She had no spit to swallow.
“Let’s just go!” she murmured again.
She stepped away from the oak and the woods exploded. A figure as dark as the shadows themselves dropped down from the trees, raining rainwater and leaves and small branches on their heads. Louisa, a few steps behind Winter, let out a strangled scream and then was silent. In the moonlight, Winter could see a man on top of Louisa, holding her down. Pinned, Louisa wrestled in desperate silence with her attacker. With a snarl, Winter launched herself at the man, landing squarely on his back. He flicked her off as easily as if she were a tick on a dog. She landed painfully on her side. Gritting her teeth, she whirled, preparing to attack again … and froze.
There, kneeling with his hand over Louisa’s mouth, his brown face illuminated by moonlight, was David Henry. The two girls gaped at him as he stood, breathing heavily.
“Doggone! What’d I even come out here lookin’ for y’all for? Y’all act like y’all can take care of yourselves.” He grinned.
Winter looked down at Louisa, who was sitting on the ground, her eyes as round as skillets, staring up at David Henry. When David Henry winked at Winter, something inside her chest ripped open, some fragile thing that had been holding her together through the whole terrible ordeal. She flung herself at him, nearly knocking him off his feet.
“You came for us,” she sobbed. And she held on to him as tightly as she could, afraid that if she let go, even for a single minute, she would be back in the middle of the nightmare again. “You came. I knew someone would come for us. I knew it!”
“Course I came, li’l bit,” he said into the tangle of her hair. “Come on, girl, turn me loose. You a bit ripe. Come on now. Time to go home.” He laughed, then stopped.
She felt him tense against her, heard Louisa’s sharp intake of breath, and she knew, knew with every cell, every hair, every drop of blood that flowed in her veins they weren’t going home.
In slow motion, David Henry pried her arms from his neck and stepped away from her, his hands held loosely away from his sides.
She swallowed hard. If she didn’t turn—if she stayed just like this—it would be alright. Everything will be alright.
But she did turn, the motion painful, as if her bones were breaking, though she imagined it was probably just her heart.
In the moonlight, Dix’s gaunt, white face shone pale and smooth as candle wax. But Winter noticed only the gun, the gun pointed directly at David Henry’s heart.
Gaelle
Gaelle glanced at her watch, her hands still shaking after the bizarre confrontation with the old man in the parking lot. His words had made no sense.
She was so much more than what?
He didn’t know her. Shouldn’t have even known her name. And the power he spoke of? Once again she felt a prickle of heat between her shoulder blades. Everything about him seemed wrong. Crazy stalker, as Toya would say. He seemed to know things about her. He spoke Creole.
And … it hadn’t just been the effect of the lights. He had looked younger.
She ground her teeth and tried to put him out of her min
d. He wasn’t dangerous … she didn’t think … but the DON would be in in a few hours and Gaelle would tell her about what had happened, have security walk her to her car for the next few days.
She glanced up and frowned. The facility was eerily quiet, even for shift change. Usually nurses and aides huddled at the front desk or the work stations at the end of the hall getting signed out, going over the day’s assignments, joking with each other, but there was no one.
The hair stood up on the back of Gaelle’s neck, and she hurried toward the staff lounge, peeling her coat off as she went. Was there a meeting she’d forgotten? Could they all be in there?
She passed Winter’s room and out of force of habit she glanced in. She cried out in surprise, skidding to a stop, her coat falling unheeded to the floor.
The television was turned to the news station as usual, the faded comforter crumpled in the chair.
But the old woman was gone.
Despite the fact that Winter had never moved a single foot without assistance, Gaelle quickly searched the small room, but the old woman had vanished.
She dashed into the hall. There was an alarm near every door that automatically locked the facility down and blared an ear-piercing sound to alert everyone that a resident was missing.
As she reached to push the button, she heard a commotion coming from the staff lounge. A low, distressed sound. She hurried toward it. The door was ajar and she pushed it open, inhaling in surprise. The entire day shift and most of the night shift were crowded around the few tables. A tiny nurse who only worked part-time, named Mae, stood in the corner scrolling frantically through her phone, as everyone stared expectantly at her.
“That’s all there is. I just can’t believe it,” said Mae. “It’s so horrible. Someone should…”
She looked up, her eyes widening as she caught sight of Gaelle. “Oh,” she said.
The others turned and stared at her in silence, exchanging nervous glances, and her heart thudded hard in her chest.
“What is it?” she asked, the old woman forgotten for the moment.
“Have you spoken to Toya?” asked Mae.
She glanced around the lounge, realizing for the first time that her friend was not there. She stood frozen, not answering, as Mae slowly made her way across the room to her.
Gaelle was still holding her keys in her hand and she gripped them hard, feeling them bite into the soft skin of her palm. Mae held the phone out to her.
There on the screen was Kevin, Toya’s youngest son, wearing a broad smile and the gold-and-burgundy Cleveland Cavalier jersey he never took off. She shook her head, confused. Why was there a picture of Kevin on Mae’s phone?
“Gaelle, something happened.”
She looked up, frowning, still not understanding. Her coworkers stared fixedly at the floor. A few wiped away tears.
“I do not…”
“He was … shot, Gaelle.”
“What?”
“He went out to warm up the car for Toya, and someone … shot him. They killed him.”
“No,” she screamed. There was a roaring sound in her head. “That is not the truth. No.”
She thrust the phone back into Mae’s chest.
“Ou se manti,” she cried. “You lie! God would not do this.”
Josiah’s words echoed in her head, mocking her. There is no god.
She spun and raced down the hall. She couldn’t tell if the howling was only in her head or not. She didn’t care. As she passed the front door she punched the alarm and the sound braided itself into her own agonized wail.
In the car, she gripped the steering wheel, holding on even as it went from cold to warm and then to hot. She held on as the windows fogged with heat, then cracked. She held on and she screamed.
The world would not take another thing from her.
45
Margot
Margot stepped from her little lean-to out into the night. Remembrance was quiet, but the world seemed filled with ghosts. She couldn’t sleep. It was the coldest it had been in days and the air felt heavy.
Three days. It had been three days since David Henry had slipped away with a promise to bring Winter and Louisa back, and more than a week since the five slavers had burst through the Edge bringing fear and death with them into the settlement. One of the slavers and his horse had died for their efforts. Margot had seen the bodies. Both were unmarked. The loss of the horse had been a waste; it had been a fine bay. Not so the slaver. The men had taken the dead pattyroller’s body deep into the woods and buried it in a shallow grave, paying him more respect than Margot felt he deserved.
She clenched her cloak tightly and moved aimlessly around the settlement. The Central Fire had burned low but the aromas from dinner still drifted above it. Lighting one of the lanterns that sat at the fire’s edge, she straightened and squinted into the shadows ringing the clearing. The small settler’s cottages were all but invisible in the darkness. She felt completely alone in the world.
Earlier, she had checked on the newborn twins, who Petal had named Delilah and Aron. It hadn’t been necessary to go to the cottage to do that. Their bodies were linked, would stay that way for the next few days. She could sense every breath they took, feel the beating of their tiny hearts beneath her ribs, but she had wanted to see them, to look into their bright, innocent eyes. And because Petal made her smile. If I had two more tits, I could rent myself out, Petal had said as soon as Margot had stepped into the cottage.
Now she stood quietly, feeling the isolation, trying it on for size. The night grew bigger, heavier, cutting off her wind. She shuddered and began to move again, skirting around the Central Fire and the bakehouse. She inhaled as the aroma of beans and butter wafted over her. The night nearly overwhelmed the lantern light and she stumbled once, then again. She was so preoccupied with keeping her footing, and with thoughts of David Henry, that it was only when she tripped over the knobby roots of the hollow tree and fell to her knees that she realized that she had walked all the way to the clearing.
Margot scooted toward the tree and leaned her back against it, feeling the worn bark through her cloak. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest and she reached to pull the lantern close, relieved that it had not gone out when she fell. She’d not been here, to this place, since the day she’d arrived in Remembrance.
She drew slow breaths in through her nose, and the damp air stung as it filled her nose. She rubbed the space between her eyebrows.
Her life had changed, then changed again since that night they’d fled that rocky tobacco farm. A lifetime ago.
“Veronique,” she whispered into the stillness.
She dropped her head to her chest and sobbed. She missed her sister. Her sister and so many other things. The smell of chicory roasting in the yard. The whistle of the boats moving up the muddy Mississippi. The clip-clop of horse hooves on cobblestone, and Grandmere’s low-pitched hum as she beat the flour for morning beignets.
All those things she ached for, and more, but she had picked through her memories so many times that they’d grown hazy, leaving her not with joy but with a terrible stinging in her soul.
Mon couer est brisé. My heart is broken!
She sat like that for a long time, until the pain died down a little and the muscles in her legs began to knot up. Slowly, Margot became aware of a sense of wrongness around her, something that had nothing to do with her sad memories. She raised her head and frowned, concentrating, struggling to find the source of her unease.
It was so quiet.
That was it: the quiet, the complete, unnatural silence of the clearing and the surrounding woods. There was no rustling of mice beneath the leaves, no owls high in the trees, even the wind was still as death.
Swallowing a growing sense of alarm, she got slowly to her feet and scanned the tree line before her. She saw nothing, heard nothing, and yet …
Margot picked up her lantern, and as she did so, her wrist brushed against something hard in the pocket of her skirt.
Hands shaking, she felt around until her fingers touched the knife David Henry had given her just before disappearing into the countryside in search of Winter and Louisa. Her fingers closed around the cool, rough hilt, and some of her anxiety leached away. She didn’t think the slavers would be foolish enough to return to Remembrance. Hadn’t she said so to David Henry? Petal?
But if they are so stupid, then let them come! Imbeciles! I will be happy to stick them like the cochons they are.
Somewhere in the darkness, unseen, were David Henry’s men, full of rage and armed, watching, waiting. She hoped.
Margot listened, every fiber tensed and ready, some part of her almost hoping that the slave catchers had returned. But the forest remained eerily still. Finally, sagging with exhaustion, she relaxed her grip on the knife and raised the lantern again. It would be morning soon, and though she doubted that she would sleep at all, she longed for the thick coverings, the straw mattress of her lean-to. The woods were spooking her, scraping at her already raw nerves.
Je suis imbécile. What was it I was thinking, to come out here in the dead of night?
The moon came from behind the clouds, turning the clearing a deep gold. Thick mist floated just above the dry grass, which seemed to glow in the moonlight.
She had just turned away, just begun the trek back to the settlement, determined that if she couldn’t sleep, then at least she would force herself to stay in the lean-to until dawn, when something moved at the corner of her eye. She froze, the lantern held waist-high.
Margot stared across the clearing, squinting into the mist. There was nothing, just the silence.
Nothing! There is nothing there, you goose. Just fantômes. Nothing but the ghosts that live in your heart.
But it was more than ghosts. Something very real was moving around out there in the moonlit mist. Stepping off the narrow track that would take her back into the heart of Remembrance, Margot doused her lantern with one swift movement, then pressed herself into the shadows.