by Rita Woods
“What do you think you doin’? Two days ago you couldn’t find your way out the barn, now you Daniel blamin’ Boone?” Louisa huffed breathlessly as Winter led them off the small, rutted trail and deeper into the woods. The land slanted slightly downhill. Vines twined like netting between the trees, tripping them up, slowing them down. Wild thorns tore at their faces until they were scratched and bloody.
She pushed on, using her own sense of the forest and the little bit she’d learned tracking with David Henry. They needed to find him. Something had shifted around them. She didn’t understand it, but they had to get back to Remembrance. Now.
“You gon’ get us killed, girl. We shoulda just stayed—”
“Louisa, just shut up, hear?” Winter spun. “He wouldn’t have wanted us to just sit there if we were in danger. And something felt wrong.”
She whirled on Dix. “You felt it, right?”
He opened his mouth but no words came out.
But Louisa wasn’t done. “So what? We just wander around until we find him or stumble into Remembrance? You couldn’t find Remembrance if you was standin’ barefoot in the middle of the Central Fire.”
“I tell you what! You sit right there and wait. Nobody cares. But I—”
“Shut it already!”
Both girls went silent and turned to face Dix. The boy was leaning against a bent sapling glaring at them. He pounded his forehead with a tied fist.
“Sweet Lord in heaven,” the boy cried. “Y’all don’t have to worry ’bout what to do with me. Just kill me now. Right here! Right where I stand!”
He bent and picked up a thick branch. “Here,” he snapped. “Use this. Just bash my head in. I’ll close my eyes. I’ll even turn my back. Just please put me out my misery ’cause I can’t take not one more single minute of you two blabberin’ on and on. I swear on the graves of my momma and my dear dead sister, I can’t.”
The two girls stared at the branch, then at Dix, who stood breathing hard. Above them, the earliest rising birds began to chirp in the trees. Laughter bubbled up in Winter’s chest. She gritted her teeth, trying to hold it in.
Dix shook the branch in their direction. “Come on. I mean it. I’d do it myself if I could get a good enough hold on this here stick.”
Beside her, Louisa snorted. “White boy gone crazy,” she muttered.
A small laugh escaped, followed by another, until Winter was doubled up with it. She pressed her fists against her mouth, trying to muffle the sound. From the corner of her eye she saw Louisa cover her mouth with her hand. A soft chuckle escaped through the older girl’s fingers and sent Winter into a fresh fit of hysterics until she sank to her knees, too weak to stand.
Dix watched the two girls silently. “Y’all about done?” he asked sourly when Winter finally got a grip on herself.
“Expect so,” said Louisa. Winter grinned and bit down on her bottom lip.
“Y’all won’t be doin’ much laughin’ if Colm and them catch back up with you,” he said quietly. The last of the laughter shriveled and died in Winter’s throat. She glanced at Louisa, who stood watching the white boy, her expression hard.
“Y’all think Frank the one you got to be worried on, but I’m here to tell you it’s Colm. Near as I can tell, the only thing he ever loved in this life besides a silver dollar in his pocket was his brother. The one he always be talkin’ about. The one you all made crazy.”
“We didn’t make his brother crazy,” snapped Winter, but she shuddered at the mention of the slaver. She could see his curly hair and narrow face, his hard black eyes as clearly as if he were standing in front of her. She glanced up. Streaks of gray and orange showed through the trees. Daylight was coming. They had to get moving.
As she turned, Dix reached out to stop her. His hands hovered near her elbow, not quite touching. “Colm’s a fair tracker, but I’m better. How you think I found your boy?”
“You mean David Henry,” interrupted Louisa.
“David Henry,” he agreed, meeting her eyes.
“They didn’t think I was good for much,” he went on. “But I was good for that. I sure can track a thing.” He looked away as he said this. “Cut me loose,” he said after a moment.
“What? No,” cried Louisa. She looked around nervously. “No,” she said again more quietly. Winter said nothing.
“Y’all need to start huntin’ ’stead a runnin’. We gon’ need to stay behind Colm and them,” said Dix. “Cut around ’em when we can. Warn your people. If they get to your place—Remembrance?—first.” He shook his head. “Well, hopefully y’all’s menfolk’s got the stomach for a fight.”
“They won’t find nothing when they get to Remembrance,” snapped Louisa. “The Edge will hold. They won’t get in.”
“They got in the last time,” murmured Winter. Louisa flicked a hand, dismissing her.
“What’s the Edge?” he asked. He looked from one girl to the other, but neither answered.
“Fine,” he said with a sigh. “I’m just tellin’ you. You don’t want to get caught up by them again. Trust me when I say what they done to you before won’t be nothin’ like what’ll happen if they catch y’all a second time.”
“So now you want to help us?” said Winter.
Dix was quiet a long time.
“Don’t know who I’m helpin’ no more, you want to know the truth of it,” he said finally. “You got no idea, you don’t, what it’s like to be hungry like that. So hungry it’s like you got a wild animal runnin’ in your insides. And alone. The nights goin’ on forever.”
“We ain’t got no idea?” snapped Louisa, her eyes wild. “And you ain’t got no idea what it’s like to work from sunup to sundown like an animal. What it’s like to have your baby ripped from your arms and know you ain’t never gon’ see that child again in this life. To be beat near to death ’cause it’s a Tuesday. And we supposed to be feelin’ sorry for you ’cause you was hungry?”
She stepped close and spit in his face.
Winter stared.
Dix raised his head and met her hatred face on. “No,” he said softly. “It was wrong, a sin, sellin’ flesh, but … it seemed at the time like … well, I got no more stomach for it, is all.” He turned to face Winter. “You cut me loose, I’ll help you get back to your people.”
Louisa crossed her arms and glowered at the boy. “Then what?”
“Then I go on my way,” he said.
“Just like that,” said Louisa, rolling her eyes. “All’s forgiven. No harm done? That it? Well, then that makes it alright. Go on then, Winter, cut him loose.”
Winter stepped forward, pulling one of the remaining sharp-edged rocks from her skirt pocket. As she reached for Dix’s wrist, Louisa snatched at her hand.
“Are you out your mind?” she cried. “What you doin’, girl?”
“Cutting him loose,” said Winter. She shook off Louisa’s hand and sawed at the rough rope binding Dix.
“You know this white boy is either gonna run off or lead us right back where we started.”
The forest around them was a misty gray, and Winter saw tears glittering in Louisa’s eyes. She turned to look into Dix’s face. There were deep shadows under his eyes, and the dark bruises near his mouth and around his neck where David Henry had beaten him blended into the older bruises that had not yet faded. He was worse for wear than they were.
“Dix?”
He returned her look and then stepped toward Louisa. She flinched. “I ain’t got much,” he said. “But I got my word and I’m givin’ it to you. I’m-a help y’all get back to your place, to your Remembrance, and then you’re shed of me for good.”
He held out a hand to Louisa, who shrank back, horrified. He dropped his hand and turned back toward Winter.
She ignored it, sniffing at the air. An echo, just the faintest vibration came to her through the trees.
“We need to find your … David Henry,” said Dix.
Winter hesitated.
Dix stepped to her and touched her shou
lder. “He came for you,” he said softly. “He won’t be far off if he’s scopin’ the trail. It’s what I would do. I can find him.”
Winter nodded and, ignoring Louisa, turned to follow Dix back the way they’d come.
48
Mother Abigail
She screamed at the loa until her throat burned, throwing her voice again and again into the sky. This was wrong. Cruel and unforgivable. The loa had broken faith with her … again.
She screamed for everything that had been taken from her: her name, her family, her children. They’d left her with this one thing, her power. And she’d made a home. For herself. And for others like her. And now they’d taken that, too, and there was no answer, not even a murmuring in the trees.
Remembrance.
In the blink of an eye it had become just another small, poor settlement of runaway slaves who would, from now on, be forever looking over their shoulders.
She closed her eyes and could see her powers, smoldering like spent coals, there at the bottom of her soul. She needed to save Remembrance. To save her people.
She gave a bitter laugh. Save her people. She couldn’t even save herself.
She heard someone approach and the laughter died. Squinting, she tried to see, but the moonlight bounced off the drifting fog, confusing her. She saw shapes moving about in the mist. One? Two? Had the loa decided to answer her then? Or perhaps the slavers had come back for a second helping. She ground her teeth.
She wasn’t afraid for herself. She’d lost all there was to lose. But they would steal no one else. She was weak but … yon kaiman avék yon dan ka toujou móde. An alligator with one tooth could still bite.
The priestess’s eyes widened as Margot stepped from the shadows. The new girl. The one who bore the Rousse stench on her. She spit in disgust and turned her back on the girl. Had it been her that brought this terrible luck down on them? There was no such thing as coincidence.
“We have to go,” said the girl. “It is not safe here.”
“Not safe?” The old woman peered into the mist. Were they out there? The loa? Watching? Were they simply creatures created for their amusement? She gave a bitter laugh.
“Where should we go then that is safe, petite?”
What did it matter? Time was rushing past, washing over her like a river, moving her toward the end. And it was right that she should be here, on this very spot when the end came, whatever it was.
“On this very spot,” whispered Mother Abigail. “It started here on this spot.”
“Ce qui?” asked Margot. “What did?”
Mother Abigail turned and peered up at the girl. With her angular, near-white face and strong jaw, her long, softly curling hair, she truly was striking. Not pretty, but handsome. In another time, another place, Mother Abigail could have made her appear in a gown of smooth satin, even created the sounds of New Orleans’s church bells and steamships all around them, if only for a bit. But that time was gone now, and Margot stood before her in a tattered cloak inches too short for her, her dirty hair a tangled knot at the nape of her neck. And the only sound around them was the rustling of the dry grass, the squeal of fruit bats searching the bare trees.
“Remembrance.” The priestess thought she spoke this aloud but she wasn’t sure. The mist and the moonlight were playing tricks on her eyes, and the sounds of the night seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere.
Daylight was coming.
Even as she thought this, the clearing seemed to brighten, to warm. She smelled thick, dark earth, wet leaves and sunlight. A fawn stood just at the edge of the greening grass, and she knew she was seeing the clearing the way it had been on that day so many years before, when she and Josiah had stood on this very spot and created Remembrance, a sanctuary of hope for them, a safe haven for runaway slaves.
“Mother Abigail?”
Margot’s voice seemed to fall from the pale blue sky, and the priestess laughed.
“It’s time,” the priestess whispered. She felt them then, the spirits, the ancestors, sensed how thin the veil really was between past and present, living and dead.
Mother Abigail looked around, taking in everything: the hollow tree, the wild mulberry, trying to memorize every blade of grass, every bush, how the sky touched the horizon, knowing she was seeing it all for the last time.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Mother Abigail?” Margot’s voice was closer, more urgent.
The old priestess closed her eyes, and when she opened them, it was cold and dark again, though not nearly as dark as before, and Margot was standing close, her face pinched in confusion.
“Chére?”
Margot straightened, relieved. “We need to go back to the settlement. It feels … wrong here.” She cast a quick look over her shoulder and shuddered.
Mother Abigail took a deep breath, nearly laughed again. She could still smell the sunshine in her nostrils. But the ti fi was right: the end was coming and it was bringing something with it. The old priestess tried with everything she had left to push her senses out into the breaking dawn, but there were no seams, no spaces for her to bend. The world had become flat, all the hidden places exposed.
She sniffed at the air. The world seemed to ripple, and for the briefest moment, she could see that other time, when Remembrance was new and bright and full of hope. Like a reflection in a pond, she saw that warm, green Remembrance hovering just beneath the gray, icy one where they stood.
The end was coming. For her. Perhaps for Remembrance.
And she had a sense that neither would go gentle.
She motioned to Margot. “Come along, ti fi. I can die as easy by a warm fire as out here in the cold.”
With an apprehensive glance at the old priestess, Margot moved toward the path tucked just beyond the hollow tree, not waiting to see if the priestess followed. Once on the narrow trail, the old woman turned and bowed her head.
“Mèsi,” she whispered. She thanked the spirits of all the slaves that had come to her looking for freedom, for as surely as she had saved them, so had they saved her.
She felt them around her, could see the hundreds of faces that she’d come to know in the more than four decades since she and Josiah had stood staring out over this very clearing. All the saints and loa were there, too. They may have stopped talking to her but they hadn’t abandoned her after all.
She laid a wrinkled hand over her chest and was almost surprised to feel the reluctant thrum of her heart beneath her palm. She stood a moment longer, watching the mist rising into the lightening sky.
“Il es fait,” she said. “Enough.” Squaring her shoulders, she turned to follow Margot back toward the settlement. She stumbled and Margot returned to her side. She took the girl’s arm without complaint.
“Enough,” she murmured. “This life has been enough.”
49
Margot
The narrow path leading back to the center of the settlement was slick and uneven, and the old woman leaned heavily against her. They were forced to stop frequently so Mother Abigail could rest. They were only a few hundred yards up the trail when it became clear that the priestess would never make it back to the center of the settlement. Margot wondered how she’d managed to get so far alone in the first place.
The farther they walked, the more of the old woman’s weight she supported. Feeling the woman’s fragility, Margot tried to hold her gently, but she could do nothing about the swell of sensations bombarding her as she propped up the priestess. She felt a pressure in her head, a wet, sliding sensation, pulses of red and pink. The old woman was bleeding inside her head again, the leak slow but persistent.
Mother Abigail was dying.
Margot felt the effort each step cost the old woman, felt how hard the old woman’s heart was pumping in her chest, every agony mirrored in her own head and heart.
They were close, had passed the cemetery, when the priestess sagged against her. The muscles in Margot’s shoulders seized and she managed, just
barely, to ease the priestess to the ground. Breathless, she rubbed her aching muscles and stared at Mother Abigail.
The old woman lay on the cold ground smiling vaguely into the treetops. In the growing light, her broad face was skeletal. The clarity that she’d shown just a short time before had faded, and her eyes, sunken deep in her face, were dull, blank.
“Madame,” said Margot finally. “We are nearly there. We must go or you will surely catch your death here.” She heard the irony in her own words and winced.
“My death, yes.” And the old woman chuckled, her eyes never leaving the latticework of branches overhead. “Oh, child.”
She laughed again and the sound turned into a wet, sputtering cough. She stared up into the branches. Margot frowned and glanced up. The trees formed a dark pattern against the sky, which had turned the color of an egg, but otherwise there was nothing to see there. She shivered as goosebumps prickled her arms.
The old woman lay motionless.
“Please, you must get up now,” she said, squatting beside her.
She leaned closer, and a loud snore, carried on a wave of sour breath blasted her face.
“Merde! Jesus doux!” she cried, jerking back.
The old woman had fallen asleep.
How was that even possible?
“Mother Abigail, Madame, wake up.” She poked the old woman hard. “Madame!”
But Mother Abigail snorted and rolled onto her side. She could have been in a feather bed, covered in satin quilts. The hair on Margot’s arms stood up and she shivered again.
“Enchantée, bewitched,” Margot whispered. She looked uneasily down the trail in the direction they’d just come. She could just make out the headstones through the trees. She quickly crossed herself.
Ghosts, slavers, it didn’t matter, she had to get the old woman off the ground and back to the settlement. But try as she might, Mother Abigail could not be wakened. Grunting, Margot pulled her as far off the trail as she could. She hesitated, uncertain of leaving the old woman out in the open alone, but she needed help, and surely someone would be up by now. With a final look over her shoulder, she hurried toward the settlement.