Miraculum

by Steph Post

  Daniel leaned far over the fire. The smoke curved around him, not touching him, and the flames flared away.

  “…now.”

  Madame Celeste pulled her pipe from her mouth and set it on the floor next to her. She glanced at the sticks on either side of her and then pursed her lips. Her bony knuckles cracked as she folded her hands in the dip of her skirt between her knees. She spat into the fire and then sighed.

  “What do you want to know? How I tattooed her? Why I tattooed her?”

  “I could care less about that.”

  Madame Celeste raised her eyes.

  “You should care.”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “I want to know what the tattoos mean. The one on the woman’s chest. With the eye and the wings. And the others like it. Do they do something, can they do something? What’s their purpose?”

  Madame Celeste cocked her head to the side like a bird and then her mouth opened wide again, exposing her brown teeth, and she laughed until there were tears in her eyes.

  “So, you’ve seen the Eye of Kakarauri. You’ve met her already, haven’t you? The white woman from the mountains. My Wairua. You haven’t just heard of her or sensed her. You’ve met her. I bet you’ve actually touched her, haven’t you?”

  Madame Celeste looked down again at the stick in the dirt next to her and then cut her eyes back at Daniel.

  “Were you surprised?”

  Daniel threw his cigarette into the fire and the flames immediately rose to the ceiling of the lodge, scorching it black. A rush of wind came through the room and circled into a vortex around Daniel and his eyes glowed red. Madame Celeste watched all of this happening around her without fear. A moment later, the flames died down and the wind ceased and Daniel calmly straightened the cuffs of his suit. Madame Celeste grinned.

  “You can kill me, sure. I know about you, Daniel Revont, kin to Bondye and Legba. I know what you can do and I know what you can’t. But if you kill me, you’ll never know about the tattooed one. And try as you might, you can’t just pull the information straight out of my head. Oh, don’t bother, you don’t have to trick me or convince me. I’ll tell you freely. I’ve been waiting years to tell you this.”

  Daniel narrowed his eyes, but kept his temper in check.

  “Go on.”

  “We’ve known about you for a long time. About you coming and taking what wasn’t rightfully yours. About your ambition. Your limitless, fickle appetite. We Manbos are only human, yes, but you are only a trickster. Existing in the twilight between man and god, between here and there, this world and the next. When all others would choose to hide in the heavens or under the sea, you are cursed to be out among the mortals. Forever one of us, but not us. And so I knew about you and when the time was ready, when the moment was right, I received the sign.”

  “What the hell are you babbling about?”

  Madame Celeste grinned.

  “The girl was sent to me by her father. To become a carnival attraction. A stupid, useless girl. What was I to do with her but make her knit trinkets for me to sell to the blind believers in the city? Then she ran away one night and I found her the next morning in a nest of serpents. A hundred of them. She was not dead, she had slipped away, unaware. The snakes had bitten her, but she had not died. She was in the land of Kakarauri. The between world. The twilight. I looked up and the sun went black and there was a roar in my ears from my Manbo ancestors and I knew it was time. I knew she was the one to carry out the Toenga Lespri. I took her home and called her back to this world. And then I did to her what I had not dared to do to another before. I protected her. I opened the door for her, though she may never step through it.”

  “Hogwash.”

  Madame Celeste leaned forward suddenly.

  “And yet, you have been around her and cannot enter her mind. You have touched her and cannot feel her, cannot control her. This is so, or you wouldn’t be here. You would not need to know.”

  Daniel frowned. A strange, anxious feeling had taken hold of him and he fidgeted with his diamond cufflinks.

  “That’s ludicrous. Preposterous. And to what end did you, as you say, protect Ruby? For what purpose?”

  Madame Celeste shook her head.

  “I do not know exactly where her Iku’anga will take her. She does not even know her power. She suspects nothing. I do not know what she will do when she discovers it. And discovers you. But there is a need in this world for her. A need for one us to stand up to one of you. Protecting her was a way of creating a balance, of putting a little weight on our side of the scales, evening things out against the power of the gods. Toenga Lespri.”

  Daniel stood up suddenly. The door behind him blew open and the fire in the bowl extinguished itself. Pale moonlight dimly lit up the lodge.

  “That’s pathetic.”

  Only Madame Celeste’s yellow eyes could be discerned in the gloom.

  “It is true.”

  “You have no idea what you have done, old woman. You have created a pawn and set her down in the middle of a dangerous, dangerous game.”

  “Pawns can become queens.”

  Daniel’s eyes glowed red. His skin began to shimmer and turn silver and his bones began to elongate. They stretched up out of the skin on his face and curved out of the sleeves of his suit. His shoulder bones rose up over his head like an arc of wings and a swirl of dust came around him, drawing his bones out ever farther. The shadow of Daniel’s monstrous skeleton filled the lodge and the wind came roaring through and the dust blasted every surface. When it settled, Daniel’s appearance did as well. He stood up and straightened his cuffs as he leveled his gaze at Madame Celeste, cowering behind the fire, grasping at her sticks in the dirt.

  “Not in my game, you fool. Not in my house, not in my game. You are trying to play with the gods and, my dear Madame Celeste, the gods don’t lose.”

  Ruby dropped the sack of ticket stubs on Samuel’s desk and crossed her arms.

  “I’m not your errand boy, you know.”

  Samuel carefully set the stub of his pencil down and looked up from the ledger in front of him.

  “I would call you a lot of things, Ruby Chole. But I certainly wouldn’t call you an errand boy.”

  “Then why am I collecting stubs for you? Are you just that busy?”

  “Are you?”

  Samuel closed the ledger in front of him and smoothed his palms down the front of it. He gestured for Ruby to sit down, but she remained standing. She still had her arms crossed and her chin jutted forward.

  “Is that it, then?”

  Samuel opened his mouth twice to speak, but bit back his words each time. Finally, he sighed and slumped in his chair.

  “We’re leaving Napoleon tonight, after the last show.”

  Ruby nodded.

  “I heard. The news has already done the rounds. Are we going to be able to set up and open in Alabama tomorrow?”

  “I’m waiting on a telegram from Chandler. We’re hoping to open tomorrow night, ahead of schedule, and he’s trying to make it happen. Monroeville should be a turn out. Better than we’ve had here.”

  “Anything would be better than here.”

  Samuel stood up.

  “Ruby. I need to show you something.”

  Ruby already had her hand on the door handle. She turned halfway around and rolled her eyes. Samuel suddenly banged his fists down onto the desk, shaking it all the way to the floor of the wagon.

  “Goddamnit, Ruby!”

  Ruby froze. Samuel outwardly demonstrated his frustration about once every ten years and cursed even less than that. He seemed to collect himself as he sidled around the desk and his tone was gentler when he approached her.

  “I know you’re upset about Hayden. And I know that you’re upset about Daniel leaving as well.”

  Ruby backed away from him.

  “Whoa, whoa. I’m not upset about Daniel. Who said I was upset about Daniel? January? Jesus Christ, the only thing I’m upset about is eve
rybody being in my business.”

  Samuel leveled her with a steady gaze.

  “Ruby, I’ve known you a long time…”

  Ruby threw her hands up in the air. It was too much, all of it too much, and the last person on earth she wanted to hear it from was Samuel. She remembered when Hayden had left the first time and how Samuel had tried to console her and offer her advice. It had been a disaster and they hadn’t spoken for the remainder of the season. Ruby was already too exhausted to go through that again.

  “Stop worrying about my feelings.”

  Samuel snapped at her.

  “I could care less about your feelings right now. Truly. But I do care about you. And I need to show you something. So put aside your anger and your self-pity and your ridiculous, childish querulousness and come with me.”

  Ruby started to protest, but Samuel had already turned away and was lifting up the knotted tapestry hanging behind his desk. He hooked it to the ceiling, exposing a small door cut into the wall. Ruby watched him with curiosity as he inserted a long, brass key and opened the door. Suddenly, the mystery as to why Samuel’s office seemed so small made sense. Ruby was still frustrated, but there was no way she couldn’t follow him. She ducked through the low door into the hidden back room of the wagon.

  “Be careful, there is not a lot of space.”

  She was immediately confronted with a wall of carnival odds and ends stacked almost to the ceiling and made up of broken chairs, old marquees with peeling paint, rolled up playbills, and the front part of a broken carousel horse. Ruby barely had room to turn around. She looked over to Samuel, but he had disappeared, edging around an upended leather trunk stacked high with folded maps and molding account ledgers. Suddenly, a glow came over the top of the wall in front of her and Ruby realized there was yet another area behind the collection of junk. She followed Samuel’s lead and squeezed into the opening between the trunk and the wall.

  Samuel adjusted the flame of the lamp before sitting on the narrow cot pushed against the back wall of the wagon. The space was immaculate, the bed made with precision, the small table next to it lacquered to a high shine. A tower of books and a collection of carved ivory elephants were lined up exactly along the edge. Ruby turned in wonder and realized that all of the carnival detritus in the front part of the room was backed up against a massive bookcase, rising to the ceiling and spanning almost the entire width of the wagon. She started to reach out and run her hand along the leather spines, but caught herself. The books were lined up to the edge of the shelf perfectly and though many of them looked ancient, not one had a spot of dust or mildew on it. Ruby turned to Samuel, her mouth agape in amazement.

  “What is this place?”

  Samuel moved one of the elephants on the table and then straightened it back. He shrugged.

  “This is my room. This is where I live.”

  “I thought…”

  Samuel smiled sadly.

  “What? That I slept curled up under my desk?”

  Ruby raised her eyebrows.

  “That was the rumor. Ever since you quit Mutumbo.”

  Samuel shook his head and pointed to the books.

  “Those were mine even then. I didn’t have them with me while we traveled, but they were mine. Most of them belonged to my father and many of them were from Sir Richard’s private collection. When my father died, I brought them over here from Brightwall Hall in Suffolk. Fortunately, by then I had a wagon to put them in.”

  He cut his eyes at Ruby.

  “I don’t think it would be wise for others to know about these. Even here, even in a carnival, where freaks are more common than not.”

  Ruby looked back at the books.

  “Why? Half the folks here can’t read, anyway.”

  “Exactly.”

  Ruby sat down next to Samuel on the cot. He sighed.

  “And wouldn’t want to know about someone like me having something like this. Books, words, knowledge, they are power. And people are terrified of power in the hands of someone who looks like me. It just makes things even more complicated.”

  Ruby leaned back on her hands and nodded.

  “All right, I understand. Now what did you want to show me?”

  “This.”

  He pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket, smaller than the giant ring he was known to always have on him. He selected a long, curving key and unlocked a cabinet that had been built into the bottom corner of the bookcase. Samuel had to perform a complicated set of jerks and twists with the key until finally the wooden door popped opened. He looked over his shoulder, not at Ruby, but just as if it were habit, and slid out a large, thick book. He closed the cabinet and locked it before bringing the book over to Ruby and setting it carefully on the table where she could see it. Samuel nodded to her.

  “Look.”

  Ruby stood up and bent over the table. The book was square and bound in a dark red leather cover. There was no writing on the front of it.

  “What am I looking at?”

  Samuel opened the book and began to quickly turn the pages. A sharp, sour smell filled the air. Some of the pages were thicker than others and stained from liquid and colored powders. They crinkled in Samuel’s hands and some pages emitted puffs of talc when he flipped them. Ruby could see that they were filled with bizarre words in strange languages and curious ink drawings.

  She reached out to touch the pages.

  “Wait, what is this? You’re going too fast.”

  Samuel slapped her hand.

  “Don’t. This is not for you to touch and these pages are not for you to see.”

  Ruby frowned.

  “Why do some of the pages look like they’re not made of paper?”

  “Because they are not. Most are made of vellum. Like thin sheets of leather. Buffalo skin mostly. Antelope. A few are human.”

  “You’re joking.”

  Samuel abruptly stopped turning the pages.

  “Let me tell you what this is. This is a Laleritha. Some call it The Book of the Forgotten. I have always known it as The Book of Others. There are three or four that I have heard of existing in the world, though I have never seen them and never will. They are all different. They are collections of a sort. Nothing is replicated. As far as I am aware, this one began in the lost city of Mtakatifu Nyota Mji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.”

  Ruby looked down at the page Samuel had stopped on. One side of it contained a faint map drawn on a brown, fraying piece of cloth. The cloth had been sewn onto the page with thick stiches of horsehair. The other page was inked with crude symbols made mostly out of lines and triangles. Samuel looked down.

  “That is okay for you to see. That doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Is it writing? What does it say?”

  Samuel began to flip through the pages again.

  “It is writing, though I have no idea what it says. Most of this book was put together before written language came to us. Some of the ink is blood, some a mixture derived from plants. Some, I would dare not dwell on the composition. This book has been around for thousands and thousands of years and been through more wars, seen more things, than we will ever be able to imagine. Whole tribes have given their lives to protect it. It is a history. A chronicle. A definition of civilization at each stage.”

  Ruby nodded.

  “Like Herodotus?”

  Samuel shook his head.

  “No. Not like Herodotus. It is not concerned with what can be seen, but rather with what cannot.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to understand.”

  Ruby crossed her arms.

  “Well, how did you get it?”

  Samuel sighed.

  “It has been in my family since before the Europeans ever set foot on our coasts. Before that, I do not know. It has traveled from the Mediterranean to the Cape and back again many times. Now quit asking about the origins of the book and look at this.”

  Samuel flipped another page
and turned the book toward her. It took Ruby a moment to comprehend what she was looking at, but then she gasped.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Now do you see? This is what I had to show you.”

  Ruby covered her mouth with her hands and stared at the pages in front of her. One was inconsequential, filled with tally marks and rows of antlered animals. It was the other page. A crudely drawn human figure, sexless and faceless. Its hands and feet were black and in the middle of the figure was a strange design: a half-lidded eye surrounded by three wings, spiraling in around it and themselves. The figure was circumscribed by a thick oval line and there were other small, strange symbols scrawled across the bottom of the page.

  “Samuel?”

  He put his hand on her shoulder.

  “That symbol. With the eye and the wings. It’s on you, isn’t it?”

  Ruby nodded, still stunned, and undid the top button of her shirt. In the center of her chest, about three inches below the base of her throat, was the symbol from the book. Samuel nodded.

  “I thought so.”

  Ruby quickly buttoned her shirt and pulled her collar tightly closed. She wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head in disbelief.

  “It’s all over me, the eye with the wings. Different versions of it, too, but still the same. I’ve never seen a picture of it anywhere, though. I thought all my tattoos were just nonsense. Crazy things made up.”

  “I don’t think that symbol exists anywhere else, Ruby. I’ve gone through most of my books. There’s no other picture of it. No other description in history that I can find. Only here.”

  Samuel tapped the page.

  “And on you.”

  Ruby turned to him.

  “Well, what does it mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ruby pointed to the bottom of the page.

  “Those markings there. Do you know what they mean?”

  “I recognize them. They are an ancient form of writing. Pictographic, from somewhere in the Kalahari, I believe. I was able to compare them to a drawing of petroglyphs in another book.”