by Rhodi Hawk
“Stop it!”
He paused, a dangerous smile in his eyes. He clearly enjoyed the game, maybe even as much as his intended prize. She looked at Gaston. He looked so small, defeated; wouldn’t meet her gaze.
She said, “I’ll pass it to you. Just stop, please.”
He raised his brows. “Comin to your senses?”
She licked her lips, breathed hard.
He stepped forward and reached for her. “That didn’t take long. I didn’t think it would.”
But in her heart she knew she could not hand him this ability. Doing so would have a far greater impact than the four human lives trapped in that cabin at Terrefleurs. If she gave him this healing way, he would become unstoppable.
He said, “Hold my hand, chère. Pass it on to me. Go on now.”
She grasped his hand, all of it briar illusion conjured by her brain as a way for her conscious mind to represent things that were occurring. Like watching a blip on a satellite map and knowing it represented an airplane’s progression. But what if she saw what she wanted to see? If the act of holding Zenon’s hand was an illusion, what if she could conjure her own illusion?
It occurred to her that the loveliest thing she could imagine right now was to see Zenon become empty of that cold void. The vacuum might be filled with warm easy strength instead. Was that even possible?
“Go on, now!” His voice was harsher.
She gripped his hands. She thought of Bo and that gentle, mesmerizing golden light that filled him. That was a different kind of healing. She closed her eyes, let the feeling of light relax from her and emanate toward Zenon.
His hands twitched in hers, and she knew he could sense what was happening. She opened her eyes and saw his expression had changed to surprised calm.
A river devil growled.
She looked and saw them staring at her. Gaston, too, was looking at her with tension in his eyes.
“What is this?” Zenon said, and his grip on her hands hardened.
The river devils were growling and arguing, and they started moving. Some came closer but Zenon raised a hand to stop them. They froze. Madeleine watched and tried to maintain calm. He managed them so easily.
Still gripping her with one hand, he looked at her. “That was plumb stupid.”
He wrenched her hand. The effect was so immediate and so overwhelming that she gasped and sank to her knees. And in the same moment she felt the lumen glow vanish from her. In its place came a cold and angry hatred. Bitter and fearful; she felt defensive and at the same time aggressive. She lurched her body away from him but he held her so strongly. Thornflies swarmed. Stinging, stinging. The river devils erupted and attacked one another while at the same time they swiped and bit at her. Madeleine flailed but could not free herself from Zenon. She’d been so stupid to believe she could retrieve him with a single taste of lumen stillness.
But as she fought against him and the river devils in the briar, it occurred to her, if only distantly, that her body was acting out similarly. Somewhere in Terrefleurs.
She made herself stop. Treated the cold void the same as anger or despair or anything else, let it course through and out of her. The thornflies abated. Something was wrong, though. She felt pain and difficulty breathing. Her physical body had taken some kind of hit.
Zenon stopped it. Whatever he was doing. The river devils calmed. Madeleine no longer felt the cold void trying to bore into her.
“Please let go of my hand,” she asked him.
Gaston was on his feet. “What did you do out there in the cabin? You send the plague on them?”
Zenon released Madeleine and she fell to all fours. She was overwhelmed with a sense of grogginess and she had to double her focus just to follow what was happening.
Zenon didn’t seem much better, but he yanked her by the arm and hoisted her to her feet. “There, now neither one of us got time for this bullshit!”
She swayed and pulled her gaze up to him. “The others. Ethan and the boys.”
“Forget it. You’re gonna take me to the place where you got that healing skill.”
“I won’t! Not until I know what’s happened to them!”
“If you don’t then you’re gonna die.”
“It’s not that simple, Zenon! The place where the healing is, it’s almost impossible to get to. You can’t just walk in.”
He snorted. “You managed. Now get your shit together and take me there.”
The truth of it all bathed her in fire. Zenon in that beautiful place. It felt like sacrilege. Zenon, with his bloodlust, sending hordes to come after Madeleine and Ethan and the boys.
This was only the beginning. The truth struck her with an electrifying jolt. If Zenon could terrorize them into doing his bidding, he could terrorize anybody into doing anything.
Or more to the point, he could terrorize everybody.
And with the healing way he’d be able to live forever.
Zenon said, “Don’t be lookin into the future, chère. You’ll just drive yourself mad. All you got to worry about is whatcha gon do right now. Me and these devils, we can just call off all them rodents and reptiles and all the rest. If you or your folks is injured you can fix it. Ain’t that right? Just do what you oughtta’ve done in the first place. Be loyal to your brother. I’m a lot stronger with you than without ya. Any child of the briar makes a fine right-hand man. Or woman.”
He leaned in, his voice low and drawled. “Or child. Yeah, you gotta know that nephew of ours is an important part of all this.”
She cut her eyes away. Little Cooper and his mother Emily never had a chance. By blood, the child was already ensnared in the briar.
“Aw, stop lookin so put out. You just show me about the healin, that’s all. I call it all off and scatter my little soldiers back into the swamp. You even get to keep your stained pals. The lumen’s another story but we’ll take it one step at a time.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You and them can die. I’ll be fine. Ain’t in the best shape ever but alls I gotta do is go call on our nephew.”
She said nothing. He shoved her forward and she stumbled, raising her gaze to Gaston. He just shrugged.
“Go on, call on your river devil,” Zenon said to her.
Madeleine looked and saw that Severin was already glaring at Zenon. Clear from her expression that she, too, was loath to help him this time. But why? The little fiend was always eager to help Chloe or Zenon or anyone else who embraced the chaos.
Madeleine looked at Severin, and Severin looked at Madeleine, and Madeleine could read the look on Severin’s face: fear.
“What?” Madeleine asked her.
But Severin only scowled.
And Madeleine thought, she’s afraid for her life.
But as far as Madeleine knew, river devils didn’t die. They were attached to a human host until—
Until that host died. And then the river devil simply roamed the briar with no real connection to the physical world. Severin didn’t believe Madeleine was going to survive this. And if she didn’t survive, the others wouldn’t either.
Zenon said, “You got about ten seconds before we sick the hordes on ya.”
Madeleine nodded at Severin.
“I don’t think so much…” Severin began.
But Madeleine said, “Just get it over with. Like before.”
“Then you must frame your mind as so!”
Madeleine tried to keep her expression placid. Severin was watching her. And then she took a step. The briar shifted. Madeleine moved alongside her with seven-league strides. And Zenon kept pace, too. Everything flashing by. Traversing islands and cliffs and mossy corners along the shadow river with the ease of a katydid walking over a globe. Some of the other river devils galloped along with them. Gaston did not.
Madeleine let her concentration ricochet all around—the levee, St. Jo’s, Tulane, Terrefleurs, the state of her physical body, the floating village, Gaston’s tree.
They stopped. All w
as quiet. The air was chilled and dank. The river was flowing somewhere nearby, but not here. Not in this grotto.
“This is it?” Zenon asked.
“It’s how you get to it.”
“You messin with me?”
Severin was frowning. “This is the way, so. Like before.”
Madeleine nodded.
Zenon pointed at the black pool. “The fuck’s that, some kind of back-ass therapeutic spring? You tryin to tell me we got to go in there?”
Madeleine turned to look. Watched the surface. It fluttered in wavering planes of light and dark.
She said, “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Zenon grabbed her by the arm. “What are you up to? Where’s the damn skill?”
“I told you. It’s not that simple to get in! This place is a kind of a trap.”
He looked like he was seconds away from losing his temper again, unleashing all those creatures in Terrefleurs onto the little one-room cabin.
She didn’t know how to stop him so she just started babbling: “The way I see it, a long time ago Chloe figured out a way to send spies into the briar. Tar devils. She used them to keep an eye on her children because she herself couldn’t enter the briar. I don’t think she has control over the tar devils anymore. They just sort of wandered off and settled here. I think they’re attracted to the healing source. Moth to flame. And they’ve changed since Chloe created them. Evolved.”
“Evolved how?” He said it through his teeth.
She kept her eyes on his as she spoke though she sensed its advance. It wore a thick black layer of oil that also coated the grotto walls and stalactites and stalagmites and the pool itself, making it nearly impossible to discern one surface from the next. Madeleine and Zenon and the river devils were clean of it and they stood out like beacons.
She said, “They’re less humanlike. And stronger. The way you get around them is the same way you get at the healing source.”
“And how the fuck do you do that?”
He was looking to his left toward the pool, but the thing was coming up on his right. There might have been one coming up on Madeleine, too.
She said, “There’s a bridge.”
“Where is it?”
He realized what was happening. Maybe because one of the tar devils was almost upon her now. They were not fast-moving creatures but in here they were nearly invisible.
He was pointing just beyond her head. “Is that one of those goddamn things? Jesus!”
He yanked her out of the way but seemed to realize it would be pointless. There were three of them as far as Madeleine could tell. Long, spindly limbs. One of them crept on all fours. Its face was discernable only as slick black curves and a maw.
“Where’s the fucking bridge? Where’s the fucking bridge?”
“It’s not physical and it’s not briar, Zenon. It leads in between them.”
She closed her eyes. In her mind she saw a light beam spreading out, the beam itself invisible until it fell on things that reflected it back. That lovely light.
It didn’t matter whether or not she wore a lumen’s stain—now that she’d felt it she could always get it back.
Light reflected upon light. She felt her body somewhere off disconnected from the rest of her, and knew that her body shell was nothing more than tiny particles that mirrored back that illumination. Different parts of her bound together to create a single life. Electrons spinning around a nucleus to create an atom that was comprised more of space than matter.
The tar devils had probably folded Zenon into their pool by now. They would accompany him through the briar like parasites, and borrow his ghost for a while. But that was a distance away. Madeleine was already somewhere else.
seventy-two
LOUISIANA, NOW
ACROSS THE WAY A fjord rose high, slate gray but freshened with green moss. She could see openings amidst the vertical rock striations—crevices like the eyes in peacock feathers; or like nuclei of smooth muscle cells. Behind her lay the cypress swamp with its floating red-and-green carpet of duckweed and black, thorny trees that stretched as high as the fjord.
She stood atop a water crossing with Gaston, and dead below them was the river. That indigo-colored river that flowed through the shadows. All sounds were rushing water, dripping water, gurgling water, and soughing wind.
No river devils at the moment, not even Severin.
Her body was healing even as her other self stood atop that bridge. She had no idea what injuries her body sustained in that cottage, but it didn’t matter. She would be whole again by the time she returned.
She reached for Gaston’s hand. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He said nothing but squeezed her fingers.
She said, “It’s strange, standing here on this bridge. I think maybe I wished it here.”
Gaston nodded. “You probably did.”
“I didn’t realize I could impose my will on the briar like a lucid dream.”
“You can kind of sort of do it in either world, I think. It’s a kind of pigeoning. You wished me here, too, if that’s what you want to call it, and I didn’t even realize it until I was already standing here with you.”
“Where were you a few moments ago?”
“I don’t know. Caught up with a bunch of stinkin, bellowin river devils won’t shut up.” He laughed.
She nodded. “I was in the grotto with Zenon and the tar devils.”
They went quiet for a moment, and then Gaston said, “So if you’re standing here and Zenon’s not, I guess that means he’s … dead?”
“Not dead, not yet. The tar devils got him.”
“Those things is bad, but they ain’t gonna kill’m.”
“No, but I think his physical body’s deteriorated enough to where if someone doesn’t find him and get him to a hospital soon, he very well could die.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good, I guess. Well … shit.”
She raised her eyebrows at him.
He said, “I thought between Zenon and my mother, Zenon was the one who had the best shot at pulling through this.”
“I guess the tide’s turned now.”
She looked at him. “Zenon said that you had chosen sides. Did he mean you helped Chloe?”
Gaston went silent for a long moment, his demeanor heavy, and when he finally spoke his voice was rough and low. “I just want it over. All these damn years. I’d lay down and die if I could, but now … with you … It would have been easier to just disappear again if I hadn’t gotten to know you.”
He stopped himself, frowned.
Madeleine could see that something inside him was changing. She felt it drawing in from the corners of the briar, from the blackest reaches, the tar devil eddies at the river’s edge—the cold wind. He’d drawn it into himself as easily as taking a breath.
He said, “Right. I helped my mother out a bit. Worked the ageing trick.”
Madeleine listened, frowning. “But she’s already in poor shape. Even if you stopped the clock on her ageing again it would only mean she wouldn’t get worse. Not like you healed her.”
“No. You were right to keep that one to yourself, honey. The healin.”
No sarcasm in him, but his manner had lost all warmth. He sounded indifferent.
He said, “Didn’t just stop the ageing. I turned it backward for her. She can be as young as she wants now.”
Madeleine felt her heart drop. “You can do that?”
“Just one step deeper into the same skill.”
Madeleine frowned, thinking. “It still doesn’t necessarily mean she’s made a complete return to health. If she’s had a stroke, or if her kidneys had gone…”
Gaston looked at her. They both knew better. Chloe was old, and that was the only thing wrong with her. Take those aged cells and replace them with fresh pink ones, and any number of maladies could vanish within days.
Gaston said, “Between my mother and Zenon, I figured I’d pick the devil I know. Looked like she was the
underdog anyhow. And I figured because she ain’t really briar, she’s not, she wouldn’t ever get so bad as one of us goin rogue.”
Madeleine closed her eyes and squeezed his hand. “I understand why you did that. It’s just … Cooper. I probably led her straight to him. Now that she knows where he is and if she makes a recovery, she’ll try to get at him.”
Gaston withdrew his hand. “I don’t know that kid, and I ain’t gonna, I won’t. I’m done gettin attached and thinkin I gotta help out.”
He turned from her and walked away, his bare feet silent on the wooden bridge. Of all the places she might conjure in her mind as a way to get away from Zenon, she’d chosen a bridge. A literal translation one half of her brain created in order to accommodate an abstract one that the other half truly understood outside of words.
She didn’t want him to leave yet. “Gaston, wait.”
He paused and turned to her. “Take in the cold, Madeleine, that’s my advice to you. Forget the people and find the cold wind.”
He turned back and continued his walk over the bridge, and she thought she heard him muttering, “It’s too damn long a life to be feeling every pinch and cut.”
She watched him go. He stepped off the bridge and turned toward the black coils of thorns. As he disappeared into the woods she wondered why he’d chosen the black, thorny banks where devils waited, instead of the lush green cliffs on the other side of the shadowed river.
She breathed in deeply and let out the air in a slow stream.
Alone now. Damp air curled up in wisps from the river below. It felt cool and fresh. All around her, the churning water continued its rushing, dripping, constant movement.
And she thought, It never stops. Even in a pond, water keeps moving. It’s drifting amid other molecules, evaporating into the air, floating until it condenses and returns again, is drawn up through the roots of plants and then transpires back out. Always moving. Unless it freezes, pausing the energy stored in the molecular structure before releasing again upon thaw. It’s always moving. It never stops.
seventy-three
BAYOU BOUILLON, 1933
FOR THE FIRST TIME since the long-ago Sunday when the children left Terrefleurs, though it felt like less than a week to Patrice, she opened the Bible and thought to read it. It stuck like its binding glue had gone wet, then had swelled and shrunk so many times over the years that it had sealed all the pages together. A light but firm touch, though, and the first page turned.