by Anne Groß
Quidico turned to his grandmother and spoke in a language that wasn’t quite Portuguese, or quite Spanish. At first it seemed as though they were arguing, but then Avó made a decisive gesture and Quidico snapped his mouth shut mid-sentence.
Avó pointed to Elise, then patted the bench beside her. Elise sat.
The violinist put his instrument back to his shoulder and started to play a modal melody. The guitarist returned to his percussive strumming. Conversations were picked up where they’d been left.
The old woman straightened, each vertebra rolling backwards to return to a stacked column, and fixed her cataract filmed eyes on Elise’s green ones. With one arthritic finger she reached towards Elise and touched her bodice right over the emerald, pushing in so that the gem pressed painfully against her flesh. “Dame,” she hissed. “Give.”
“No! You can’t have it!” Elise recoiled. She stood to leave, unnerved, but Avó grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down while gesturing with her other hand.
They glared at each other for a moment until the old woman started cackling. “Calma, Elise. Calma.” She turned to her grandson and they spoke briefly together in their strange language.
“My avó says you are from a distant land. I told her you were from England, but she thinks you are not English. Is this true?”
“I’m American,” Elise said.
Quidico nodded. “So you do not believe in American independence then. Why would you not? The Americans seem like a proud people, like the Romani people.”
“What? They’re totally proud. Of course I believe in independence. Fuck the British colonialists.” Elise couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth.
“Then why are you here following the English Army?”
The question was a sensible one, and Elise struggled to find a sensible answer. “I got married,” she said lamely.
“Avó says you are lying. Avó says if you are here instead of in your husband’s bed, your marriage is meaningless.”
Elise held up her hand to show her wedding ring, and the old woman guffawed. Quidico leered. “There are many kinds of marriages,” he said. “Very few have the weight that deserves a ring and yet I always see one on every woman’s finger who calls herself a wife, whether or not she deserves that title. Why is that? I’ve been married three times. Three times I’ve had to ask that my ring be returned to me.”
“That’s a really boring story,” Elise yawned.
Quidico frowned. He tried to pierce her with his golden eyes. “The marriages did not deserve—”
Elise interrupted with a deep sigh. “I get it. Three marriages, none of them worthy of a ring. Look: I’m here following the English Army because I’m stuck. That’s all.”
Grandmother and grandson conferred again. “My avó wishes to know if you would like her help to become unstuck.”
Elise hesitated. The old woman leaned forward, her hips popped as she bent at the waist. “You want to go home?” she asked hoarsely in English. She flicked her fingers over Elise’s shoulder, as though home was just there, back at the beach.
“You sly little lady, you speak Spanish?” Elise grinned. Now she was getting somewhere. “Where did you learn?”
“I learned the language of the stars. That is the first language. All others are easy.”
“Language of the stars? What’s that? Astrology or something? I’m a Taurus.”
Avó made a dismissive gesture. “Astrology is for amateurs. I’m speaking of the language spoken throughout universes and the places between. That’s the only language that means anything. Perhaps someday you too will learn. I’ve a feeling you may.”
“Between what?”
“You’ve been there. Do not tell me you do not understand.” She rolled her weight onto her right hip and started untucking her blouse from her skirt and in the process released gas.
“Ugh! Avó!” cried Quidico.
She cackled, revealing the same tiny front teeth as her grandson. “I’ve something to show you Elise Dubois Ferrington, don’t turn away. It is something you did to me in the between space.” She lifted her blouse and revealed an enormous red welt on her side, the edges of which were already turning a vibrant shade of purple.
Quidico gasped and reached protectively towards his grandmother. “When did she do this?” He turned to Elise, face blackened by anger. “I’ll kill you, you button thief. I’ll lay out your intestines for the gulls and your eyes for the ants.”
“I didn’t do that! I swear I didn’t touch her!”
There was a flurry of conversation between grandmother and grandson in their language, and then Quidico turned back to Elise with a grudging bow. Avó smiled. “You do not remember flicking an emerald beetle away? Foolish woman.”
“That was you in my dream?” Elise suspected that she was being conned, but she was having a harder time discerning what was real.
She was too tired for this. Suddenly she wished she’d gone back with Thomas. She could be smoking a pipe, listening to the company’s music and eating Mrs. Gillihan’s familiar food. She tried to stand, but again the old woman grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down onto the bench. She was surprisingly strong.
Avó drew a circle in the air and gave Elise a significant look, completely baffling her. Then she turned back to her grandson and spoke urgently to him. He looked surprised at first, and the rapidity of their conversation increased. The woman’s arthritic index finger punctuated the air between them as more circles were drawn. Then Quidico smiled and nodded, finally understanding something.
“Avó says she can help you. She says you’re to find your way back.”
“That’s just where I’d like to go—I’m really tired and I’d love to get back to camp.”
“No, you misunderstand me. She wants to help you return to your home.” He too drew a circle in the air. “She says that while everyone else rides the waves like driftwood towards shore, you’ve skipped over the waves like a flat stone thrown into the sea. You’ve jumped backwards.”
Elise felt as though she could barely breathe. How did this strange woman know? “Yes, that’s it exactly,” she said, burning with hope. “I was cut loose. I bounced once, in Paris, I think, and then I landed in London. I want to ride the waves again. I want to be driftwood.”
The woman’s smile was slow to develop. She lifted one hand and made a circle with her thumb and index finger. Then with her other hand she pierced the circle rhythmically with a finger before pointing first at her grandson’s crotch, then at Elise’s stomach.
“My grandmother says—”
Elise stopped him with a hand in the air. “That doesn’t need translating.”
“With you, a woman who skips the waves, I could sire a powerful future. We would have a beautiful, strong child with fire in his soul. The bloodline would be strong.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Elise studied his face. He wasn’t kidding. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, buddy.” Again, Elise stood to leave, but the man caught her elbow and held her back. He leaned his head to the side and knitted his dark brows in an attempt to convince her with a soulful look.
It might have been the music, or the firelight in his long, wild hair, but Elise found him to be appealing in his own strange way, notwithstanding the tiny front teeth. The last time she’d had an orgasm was with Richard in front of the door to the Quiet Woman’s cesspool. It couldn’t possibly get worse than that. Since having a second husband was out of the question, any other proposal could be heard for exactly what it was: a business proposal. The old crone again pointed at Elise’s stomach, then pointed at her grandson before pumping her left fist with her index finger. “Please stop doing that, Avó,”
A bark of laughter from the old woman quickly turned into a violent fit of coughing. Elise was all but forgotten as the devoted Quidico knelt by his grandmother’s side and took her thin hands into his own strong ones while she struggled to find her breath. Finally, she closed her eyes and nodded. T
he fit was over and she patted Quidico’s cheek affectionately in thanks before turning back to Elise. “You want go home. Home to the future?” Her voice was a strangely coarse accented English. Again she drew a circle in the air.
Grandmother and grandson stared at her as if it was a normal question and they were awaiting a normal answer. “Yes!” Elise cried. “Yes!”
Avó stretched flat all the wrinkles on her lips in a smile. “Your future is already the past,” she said. “Do you think time stopped marching forward just because you traveled here? I felt the tear in time two months ago, maybe three. Many of us felt it. But you can’t go back. What was once your present is now the past to those you left behind.” She drew another circle to illustrate her point.
“There’s got to be a work-around. If I was thrown back to a specific day, why can’t I go forward to a specific day, my present?”
“There is no such thing as a ‘present time.’ Not even for me,” Avó continued, “there is only ever future, and past. Time is like walking. You may look forward at the path ahead, or look behind you at the root you tripped over. But the ground under and between your feet can never be seen if you’re walking—it’s always shifting, always moving. There is no ‘work-around.’” She flipped her hand in a dismissive gesture.
“But once the present becomes past, then it’s there for all eternity. It’s etched. Right?” Elise was beginning to feel panicky.
Avó shrugged again. “Why would you think any moment is etched? Moments shift in meaning all the time. Nothing is etched.”
“Facts are facts. Things happen in time. You and I: we’re talking on a specific date at a specific time. Nothing can change that.”
“It all depends upon which layer you reside in. Who is to say you haven’t traveled through layers?”
“Layers?” Elise blinked in confusion. “Which is it? Circles or layers?” She didn’t know why she bothered to ask, either choice was an equally muddy explanation. She tried another tack. “Just send me back to when I left. How many ways can I say this?”
“You want me to throw you forward at a moving target? It’s not possible.”
“What if you’re wrong? What if the whole universe stopped when I left it?” Elise jumped up off the bench. “That’s it! The universe stopped and is waiting for me to return.”
“Did it really?”
“You can’t say for sure that it didn’t. You don’t know.”
“That’s a very self-centered thought. Do you really think you have that much power over the universe?”
“If it didn’t stop, then there are two futures, the one I left, and the one I’m about to experience now. That can’t be right.”
The old woman started chuckling. “Only two futures? You limit yourself, my dear. And how do you know that the future you left is the correct one? Again I must point out your self-centered thoughts. Could it not be that what you think of as your present time is actually someone else’s past, like my own present is the far past to you?”
Elise threw up her arms in exasperation. “If you complicate everything, I’ll never get back!”
“Precisely.”
“Fuck!”
“Of course, there is also the possibility that you are now two people, one here, and one there.”
“WHAT?”
“I’m merely making a conjecture. There’s no need to yell. Sit down.”
Elise sat.
“The future must be a very beautiful place. You seem anxious to return. Tell me, do people still die in war in the future?”
“Yes.”
“Yes? Oh, that’s too bad. Still fighting over borders, no doubt. The Romani people have no borders.” She sat, thoughtful, before continuing. “And tell me, are people still starving in your future?”
Elise didn’t like where this was going. “Yes.”
“Yes? Oh that’s dreadful,” she shook her head and clucked disapprovingly. “And what about stealing, do people still steal in your future?”
Elise nodded, feeling uncomfortable under the woman’s piercing gaze.
“How far did you travel?”
“About two hundred years or so.” Elise thought of her world, so different from where she was now, and began to feel depressed. She came from a place where the most popular novels and TV shows were about apocalyptic end-times, and most of the plotlines were plausible.
“In a few days there will be a new moon,” Avó said. “This will be the perfect time for the type of magic that may return you to your home. On that night, you must come and find me. Our caravan will be close—moving armies make good customers so we follow. Come to me on the new moon and make a baby with my grandson, and I will send you forward two hundred years where you will raise my great granddaughter to be a leader of men. In return, you will give me the emerald scarab.”
Quidico threw his shoulders back and placed a hand on his hip as Elise flicked her eyes up and down his body, assessing her situation. His posture sagged slightly when he heard Elise’s deep sigh of resignation.
“So, what if you accidentally send me to the ‘80s?”
“The 1880s?”
“The 1980s.”
“That is a possibility. In fact, I’m fairly sure the society of women I belong to will not be happy with me for this very reason. It is a dangerous spell. But I do this as a favor to you. I like you. I want you to be happy, and I want my progeny to live into the future.”
“Fine. Quidico and I will make a baby on the night of the new moon. But he doesn’t get a fourth wife if your spell doesn’t work.”
“Of course not.” The old woman was almost too quick to agree.
Elise thought of her IUD and wondered if a spell would counteract it. There could be some validity to the old gypsy’s claims if she could enter her dreams as a bug, but Elise was doubtful. Biology was biology. Magic was magic. “Do we shake on it, or something?”
“And the emerald?”
“I’ll be keeping that. A baby’s already one hell of an ask.”
THE ARMY MARCHES
It was late when Elise left the Romani caravan. She wandered back to camp by the light of the stars with her head full of hope of returning to Tucson. The next morning however, after being roused early from the hole she’d dug for herself in the sand, her mood was less optimistic. Once she shook the sleep from her brain and figured out where she was, the memory of the strange deal she had made with Avó left her feeling headachy and regretful, like she had a bad hangover.
She missed the days when she could drag herself out of bed with her eyes still in slits and shuffle to the kitchen to make a hot cup of coffee. Now, coffee wasn’t even a remote possibility. Tea, a sorry second for any caffeine addict, was available to those few who could find the coin to set aside for it, but rare, and never in the mornings.
With the entire army preparing to march, Elise searched for Amanda, hoping to walk with her and share the burden of carrying Edwina. She felt her heart sink when she couldn’t find the young mother with the other women.
“Mrs. Gillihan says you sent Mrs. Collins back to the Valiant,” Elise said, chasing down the surgeon as he gathered his equipment in the low light of a rising sun. “Why would you do that?”
“Oh good, you’re here,” George Russell said. “Take up that pack, if you please. I tried not to pack it too heavily for you.”
Elise shoved her own little bag of herbs into the top of the pack and swung it onto her back. It wasn’t terrible. “Why did you send her back to the ship?”
“I believe I told you there’s a fever sweeping through the ranks, did I not?” Russell continued about his business of organizing supplies into wicker panniers to be slung over mules. “Those who have fallen sick and cannot march have been sent back to the Valiant. Mrs. Collins volunteered to nurse them to health.”
“You confined a new mother and baby on board a ship full of sick and dying people?”
The young surgeon stopped what he was doing and faced Elise. “Why are you so c
oncerned about Mrs. Collins? She didn’t want to be with the company any longer. She’s frightened of O’Brian, and well she should be after what happened yesterday morning. Her own husband thought she’d be safer back aboard the ship. It’s for the best.”
“I’ll trade. Take her off and put me on. She and Collins could transfer to a different company to get away from O’Brian.”
“I don’t understand. I thought you did not wish to return to the Valiant. I sent her because you insisted on staying here. There’s no pleasing you, is there?”
“Amanda is safer on land than she is on that ship. She’ll be exposed to contagion.”
“You’ve got it all wrong again, Mrs. Ferrington. It’s the miasmas in this dreadful country that are making the men sick. There’s nothing on the Valiant that’s dangerous. I’m doing her a favor, quite likely saving her life.”
Elise felt like weeping. She felt like screaming. Instead, she just hung her head and walked away.
For the first mile of the army’s march south, the sand massaged the arches of Elise’s feet, ground down the hard calluses that had formed from months without shoes, and worked away dirt that had all but tattooed the cracks in her heels. While the other women she marched with complained about the itching sand that got up in their bloomers, Elise reveled in her freedom. After the long confinement on the ship, a stroll on the beach was heaven, at least for the first few miles.
No one had anticipated the long miles the army would be forced to march, especially not the women. None of the wives had seen a map. No one had discussed the game plan with them. They only knew that they were headed south towards the enemy.
The army had insisted that the women who followed be stout and robust, but the ability to endure long distances was much different from the ability to haul water or scrub linen. Slowly, they began to fall behind. They stopped to nurse babies, they took off their shoes to shake out the sand or wandered into the tall beach grass to deal with private matters. Some went to find the supply carts to beg for a lift from the implacable drivers, if not for themselves, then for their weary children. The ever industrious Mrs. Gillihan, however, disappeared into the underbrush to forage for food for the evening camp.