by Rhodi Hawk
Jasmine’s barking had grown furious.
“Leave me alone, Jazz!” they heard Bo say beyond the cabin walls.
Ethan went to the door, stepping out onto the thin porch into the morning glare, not a stitch on him.
“What is it?” Madeleine said.
But Ethan shouted, “Bo! Don’t move!”
“What?” she heard the boy say.
Jasmine continued to rage.
Madeleine was already scrambling out of the sleeping bag and pulling on some shorts and a tee from the canvas tote full of clothes Ethan had packed for her. “What’s going on out there?”
But she saw it. An alligator stood at the foot of the porch steps at the cabin Bo and Ray shared. Madeleine gave a nervous smile. The creatures were really only dangerous when provoked.
Bo clicked, turning his head from side to side. “Shut up, Jazz, I can’t hear’m when you’re hollering like that.”
“Just stay right there, son.” Ethan said, and turned to put on a pair of jeans.
Bo said above Jasmine’s barking, “I got to pee.”
“Wait for Ethan, honey,” Madeleine said.
“What’s out there, a bunch of pigs?”
She laughed into her hand. “A green leather pig. With big teeth.”
“Alligator!”
He clicked like mad. The general lack of concern seemed to calm Jasmine, and she now sounded more like she was talking to it and less like she was threatening it. The alligator lay grinning and motionless. Now dressed, Ethan hopped over the railing and crossed the twelve-foot divide to the boys’ cabin.
But that’s when it sunk in: What’s out there, a bunch of pigs? Bo had said.
Madeleine looked across the yard and saw a second alligator, resting like a fallen oak branch next to a rain barrel.
“Look, there’s another one,” she said, but her mind had already zeroed in on a third beast, over by the other cabin, and then another and another. It seemed alligators were everywhere.
Ethan had taken Jasmine under one arm and was brandishing a huge golf umbrella (“baby blue, you can’t imagine the hell of trying to keep a blind kid and wheelchair-bound deaf kid dry during a cloudburst”) at the alligator that had started all the fuss. The thing didn’t budge. Looked dead, almost.
“Ethan,” Madeleine said, gesturing out toward the yard.
He finally looked up and followed her gaze. She counted thirteen of them. And even as she stared at the lumps of “green leather pigs” strewn about as if they’d fallen from the sky, she finally spotted the real pigs. Wild boar. Five of them. Black and hairy with almond-shaped eyes and tusks that looked like wood. Bo must have spread his clicks across the clearing and spotted them right away, their shapes more easily discernible than the alligators.
Madeleine watched them moving among the trees that were tangled with kudzu vine and poison ivy. Hogs are easy enough to sneak up on when the wind is in your favor because they have such poor eyesight. But between all the barking and shouting they should have scattered. Madeleine pulled her gaze from them, back to Ethan.
“Do me a favor, baby blue,” Ethan said, though his gaze never left the clearing.
He was taking in each creature one by one, and then he lifted his gaze to the treetops. Madeleine looked, too.
Crows. Thousands perched in the branches as though they might have bloomed there.
Closer in, atop the cabin rooftops and roosting along the fractured staircase of the main house were grackles and starlings. No chatter; all stood silent. The only sound was Bo’s incessant clicking and Jasmine’s growl-whine where she stood tucked under Ethan’s elbow.
Madeleine swallowed. “What kind of favor would that be, honey?”
“Would you kindly grab my boots?”
She turned to look at him and stared for half a tick, then swept her gaze over the strange gathering again and went back into the cabin. Ethan’s boots lay at the foot of the sleeping bags, his gray tee-shirt draped over one of them. She grabbed the boots and tossed aside the shirt, then paused. The top of the right boot had been cut down several inches lower than the left. The handle of a pistol rose up over it, and she could smell freshly cut leather from the new holster sewn inside.
Madeleine went back out onto the porch and held them up for Ethan to see. “A few days in the holler and you’ve gone native.”
But as she started down the steps, Ethan said, “Wait!”
“Wait what?”
“Wait for me.”
“Honey.”
“Baby blue, I know you can take care a yourself but just indulge me. Alright?”
She sighed. At the base of the cottage steps and off to the right a bit she saw yet another alligator. Small and vicious-looking. It’s the little ones that are the most aggressive. She hadn’t noticed it earlier but then again they were built to be camouflaged. Or maybe it had just now crept up.
Ethan had left the boys’ cabin and was reaching for her through the stiles of the porch. She handed him the boots.
He said, “Don’t use the steps, alright? Just jump on over the side.”
He put the boots on the boys’ porch while Madeleine climbed up onto the rail, feeling extremely foolish.
“What, you figure a bunch of crows and gators’re about to lay siege upon us?”
She gave a nervous laugh but Ethan was frowning. “Wouldn’t be the strangest thing that happened since this mess started.”
“You gonna shoot them all?”
“I hope I don’t have to shoot any.”
Bo said, “I still gotta pee. Real bad.”
“Just go off the side,” Ethan said.
And when Bo stepped forward, Ethan said, “The other side. Please.”
Bo turned his back to them and wasted no time. Ethan reached up to Madeleine and she put her hands to his shoulders for support and jumped off the porch ledge and down onto the ground.
The moment her feet hit the soft earth, everything started to move.
Madeleine gave a startled cry. The alligators, the birds, the hogs, and all the other things that must have been lying in wait, too, but were hidden, each of them advanced. A bobcat emerged onto the roof of a neighboring cottage. Owls. All moving. All of them. No sound other than the rustling of leather and claws and hooves and wings.
Ethan scooped Madeleine up off her feet and had her over at the boys’ cabin in a solid second, hoisting her onto the porch and climbing up after her.
The creatures went still again.
Madeleine looked at Ethan. They were both out of breath, as though they’d just completed a quarter-mile sprint.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“I didn’t. I was just being careful.”
A single tuft of down swirled in a lazy circle and then landed on the railing. The two alligators that had been nearest were now both resting in the twelve-foot expanse between the cabins. The little one watched with a wide yellow eye, the pupil a thin sliver. The big one all but fell asleep.
Oblivious to the entire incident, probably because he hadn’t been clicking while he was peeing, Bo went back into the cabin and reported the one single alligator to Ray, signing and talking simultaneously.
“Ray needs to pee, too!” Bo called.
“Be right there,” Ethan said, and then quietly to Madeleine, “Any idea what’s going on here?”
“I have a suspicion.”
She stared at the smaller gator, focusing on that slit bisecting its golden eye.
Go back to the swamp, she told it from within her mind, from within its mind.
The creature did not budge. Her suggestion caught no hold.
She turned away from it and focused on a bird instead—an owl that watched from beneath the eaves of the main house. It stared at her as though furious. But the result was the same.
Severin was sitting there by the owl. She looked angry. Vengeful. Probably didn’t like that Madeleine had escaped by finding her way to where Daddy and Marc were—somewhere beyond the shadow river of the b
riar.
Madeleine turned back to Ethan and said, “I can’t pigeon them. They’re already being pigeoned by someone else.”
Ethan turned his gaze away for a moment, then said through clenched teeth, “Can’t we catch a break for one single day?”
Unbidden, the thorns arose from the cracks in the floorboards, lengthening, curling, black and musty. She didn’t try to resist them. Wasn’t going to invite thornflies.
“Ethan, I’ve got to disappear inside for a while.”
“No!” He reached out and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her into him.
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
His arms were strong around her, and she clung to him with all she had. But even as she held his physical body she felt her other self falling away.
He said, “Every time you do this I’m afraid you won’t come back.”
“I’m sorry,” was all she could say.
Because she felt the same fear. A shudder in her throat.
Severin leaped from her perch by the owl, took up next to Madeleine. “We go now.”
A sinking feeling, like Madeleine was receding toward the center of the earth. Her gaze was fixed on Severin though she still clung to Ethan.
She turned back to look at Ethan, but he was no longer there. Taking his place, his arms around her just like Ethan’s had been, was Zenon.
seventy-one
LOUISIANA, NOW
MADELEINE JERKED AWAY FROM Zenon.
“You done made a miraculous recovery there, sis. Last time I saw you ya looked like you’s drunk.”
She saw his devil, Josh, standing there behind him. And beyond that, others. Dozens of them, silvery gray, some of them humanlike, others malformed. Some quite beautiful. Armand was there. And some, like Severin, looked like children. They spoke among themselves in cackles and whispers.
Madeleine had to raise her voice in order to be heard. “What are all those creatures for, Zenon?”
“What, you mean them?” He gestured at the river devils.
“Or them?” He pointed above, as if Terrefleurs lay somewhere up above the briar world.
“Both.”
He shrugged. “Had to get your attention, didn’t I? You been lyin to me. S’posta have killed that lumen kid, but the whole time, he been alive. All along. It changes everything.”
“He’s no threat to you. Just leave us all alone.”
“Them critters up there ain’t done nothin to y’all yet so why you whinin?”
“Yet.”
“Well, they ain’t all assembled. I turned’m loose now they’d just annoy you stupid.”
Madeleine lifted her hands. “What is it you want from me?”
Zenon sat down heavily on a black log, as though all this effort was taxing him. “Well, for starters, some loyalty.”
“Loyalty? What does that even mean?”
“Oh, come on. You know ole Chloe and I got a little bet going. She thinks she can find a way to lord over the briar, and I bet I can beat her to the punch.”
“That’s ridiculous. Chloe’s as good as dead.”
“No, dawlin, ‘good as dead’ don’t mean dead.”
“She’s on life support. Her condition isn’t the same as yours. She’s sick and she’s degenerating and all the machinery in the world can’t keep her brain firing if it wants to quit. So go ahead and bask. You’ve already won.”
“That’s where you wrong. She ain’t lived to a hunnert twenty by acceptin fate. She a perspicacious ole crow. An long as she’s still breathin she’s still schemin.”
He waved toward the cacophony of river devils as he spoke to her. “As you can see, I got my friendlies, but she got hers, too. You gotta choose which side you on.”
“I’d just as soon see you both fail.”
“Don’t work that way, chère. You can only pick one loser.”
He laughed at his own irony. “An that’s sort of like picking who you want to succeed. You are either for me or against me, if you are lukewarm I will spit you out.”
“Playing God now.”
“I am God, long as we’re here. That’s the way it’s gonna be.”
“Briar isn’t the real world! You have your way in here, then so what?”
He smiled, slow and easy like they were discussing the ideal proportion of Bermuda grass and rye for a perfect green turf. That smile filled her with dread. The river devils continued to mill around, all hisses and whispers and snake laughter.
Zenon said, “You’re right. So what? You might as well join my camp.”
Madeleine tried a shrug. But her ire was rising. Thornflies couldn’t be far off. She took notice, identifying the feeling of breath and life in her physical body somewhere in that cabin. She took in the sight of bramble and smell of must, the look of the river devils. With the intense observation, her fury drained. But no, not so much drained as continued its flow—coursing through her but immediately continuing out again. And she observed Zenon. Bitter, curled Zenon. He seemed sunken somehow; wild. Clearly unsteady even though he was no longer on his feet.
“Something’s wrong with you, Zenon. Where’s your body?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, yeah?”
“You were in a hospital for a reason. You can’t just pigeon somebody to hide you and expect to stay alive forever.”
“Can’t I? Ain’t it just a matter of shakin the right tree in the briar? Like our fine Uncle Gaston.”
Madeleine caught the retort in her throat before it could escape: that Gaston couldn’t live forever. He’d found a skill of longevity that stopped him from ageing—it didn’t necessarily keep him alive. He could get sick and die. The healing skill, that was Madeleine’s.
Zenon said, “So you show your loyalty to me, Madeleine. You tell me how you healed yourself.”
“It’s not something I can just show you.”
He shook his head. “Liar, liar.”
She looked at Severin, whose lips were wet and eyes bright. The little beast had practically purred in Chloe’s lap, and now she was all too willing to side with Zenon.
Madeleine turned back to him. “If you’re looking for loyalty from a bunch of river devils you’re just asking for madness. They’re chaos. You’ll never control them for long.”
“Ain’t so hard. ‘Idle hands are the devil’s playthings,’ and to them I’ve become the bigger devil. I give them playthings. You made me that way, chère, when you ruined my body and damned me to the briar. Most of these river devils are simple creatures, bored to distraction. Each gets one single human being, and each knows its human’s weaknesses. But some of them are actually smart and can move beyond the one person.”
He looked over his shoulder at Armand and Josh. “You work with the more evolved of the devils, and gather the rest together in a little harmonic unity.”
Madeleine looked at them, and her gaze settled on Armand. The strange, sparse teeth. Dark skin and deep-voiced French patois as he argued with Josh. It took a moment before Madeleine realized the significance of Armand’s presence. He was Gaston’s river devil. If Armand was here with them now, that meant …
“Gaston…?”
“Yeah, honey.”
She looked. He was sitting with elbows over his knees, hidden in plain sight among all the river devils.
“I tried to get him to lay offa you, did all I could,” Gaston said.
Madeleine asked, “Gaston, did you…?”
Zenon cut in. “Pick sides? Yeah, he did. Picked the losing side, the stupid fuck. Chloe ain’t even briar.”
Madeleine shook her head. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Zenon said, “Ain’t nothin I can do about it because this here uncle of ours is already the walking dead and been that way for years. But you, chère. You got lots to lose. You might just listen to reason.”
And his voice rose:
“For once. In your wasted life!”
The river devils’ chatter fell to a murmur of s’s and t�
�s.
Madeleine felt her heart hammering even though she was disconnected from her body. This was how a person conjured that lunatic way. Other people couldn’t see what was happening in the briar. Back in her body, Madeleine was probably sweating and pacing, maybe even trying to wander, with all those creatures waiting if she took a single step off the porch. Ethan was grappling with it all.
Zenon said, “Alla them here, they help me with the pigeoning. One man handling one pigeon is a piss-poor effort. But together, with all of us working in tandem, in rhythm, in perfect fucking syncopation! Now that, that is something.”
He lifted a hand and pointed at her. “But you?”
She watched him, saying nothing.
He held the gesture as though it could hold her in check. “You outta sync, girl.”
She understood what he was getting at. And she knew she was already trapped.
Zenon lowered his hand. “So let’s think on this a minute. Four people in a old slave cabin at Terrefleurs. A crazy woman—that’s you, chère—and a mooncalf man, and two cripple kids. And all of God’s creatures are gathered for devils’ work. A balance that is downright poetic. We start with little critters. Mice. They come on in a hundred at a time. They bite some and they scratch, but more’n anything else they just give ya the willies with all their … swarmin and scratchin, and the squirmin.
“But the rats’ll come next after mice, and they can actually do some damage. They a lot of rats in them woods, yeah. They bite harder. You wanna know what works to my advantage best?”
Madeleine just stared.
“Them boys. The cripples. Y’all can’t get enough of that lumen stain. That deaf boy can’t move his legs? He’ll have a hell of a time once the rats come. You know how long it’ll take for a pack of … no, let’s call it a plague of rats? How long it’ll take’m to dismantle a wheelchair-bound deaf boy?”
He paused for a moment, looking at her as though he actually expected an answer, then went on. “And after that, whatchoo think next, snakes or spiders? And after them come the birds. Irony is the blind boy can’t get his eyes pecked out by birds. He ain’t got no eyes. But the rest of y’all can. ’Specially you. Blue eyes in black skin. Oughtta be easy for the birds to find, and your mind is stuck in here with me, yeah. Won’t be much use fendin nothin off.”