Gathering Deep

by Lisa Maxwell

  “Houngan,” I corrected.

  “Right. Sorry. Houngan. If Mama Legba doesn’t trust him, I don’t think we should either.”

  I shook my head. “It’s already been arranged.”

  “Well, unarrange it,” she told me. “We can go to Mama Legba and let her know what we found out. She’s got to be willing to help you once she hears what we found here.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I told her, and then I explained what happened—and how Ikenna had my name. “I don’t think backing out is even possible now.”

  Lucy frowned. “I don’t think you should trust him, Chloe.”

  I nodded. Lucy was right—I couldn’t trust Ikenna. I didn’t trust him, but I also didn’t know how else to get the information we needed. There was knowledge buried in the dreams I’d been having, I could feel it. The question was what I was willing to sacrifice for it.

  Sacrifice. I thought of the card I’d drawn just days ago—the man hanging from the tree. He’d put himself through that pain to gain the knowledge and the freedom he wanted, Mama Legba said. How much was I willing to sacrifice to put an end to this once and for all?

  Twenty-Six

  When I came through the line of trees and looked across the clearing toward the cabin, it felt like the whole world was hushed and waiting. Like every plant and insect around knew something was about to happen and they were all still deciding if that something was going to be good. I checked my phone and saw that I was already running late.

  Two people were already waiting in front of the cabin. Odane and Ikenna. Side by side, they looked nearly identical. I hadn’t noticed before how Odane had his father’s build. His shoulders sloped the same way, but Odane was an inch or two taller. And his eyes had Odeana’s intelligence and wit shimmering in them.

  Odane had a large rucksack over his shoulder, and Ikenna was looking over the cabin like he already owned it. When Odane saw me coming across the clearing toward them, he waved.

  “You got yourself quite a place here,” Ikenna said, finally shattering the uneasy quiet. His eerie eyes took in the whole cabin—its rusted roof, the worn shutters, and the rickety steps that had been stained by the rust-colored dust someone had once used to keep intruders out.

  “It’s not mine, so you best come on in before someone sees us out here.” I opened the door and motioned them both into the cabin.

  Odane came first, his jaw tight with caution and his dark eyes taking in everything all at once. “This is Thisbe’s place?” I couldn’t tell what he thought of it from the look on his face.

  Ikenna stepped in behind him, looking distinctly uneasy. “There sure is magic rubbed off on every inch of this place. Dark magic, too.”

  “Supposedly, this is the cabin her father—the man who owned her—gave her after he freed her,” I told them. “The university owns it now, and technically we’re not supposed to be here. Dr. Aimes has been more on edge than usual the last few days, so we need to do this quick and get out before someone from the staff sees us.”

  Ikenna kept looking around, like he didn’t hear a word I’d said.

  “Will this place work or not?” I asked, impatient to get started and nervous all at once.

  Ikenna nodded. “It should do fine. The energy up in here can only make things easier, especially if it’s her energy.”

  “I don’t know who else’s it would be. No one’s ever lived here but her,” I told him.

  Odane was still staring at me, but finally he spoke. “You sure you still want to do this?”

  “What’s done is done,” Ikenna said, taking the rucksack his son was carrying.

  “It ain’t done until it’s over, old man,” Odane countered, his voice low and dangerous. “If Chloe wants to back out, she can.”

  “Maybe she can, and maybe she can’t. But you’re all in now,” his father said, meeting his son’s gaze with a cold resolve.

  “I’m not backing out,” I said, stepping forward to break up the father-son pissing contest. “How’s this gonna work?”

  The two stared at each other for a couple more tense moments, but then Ikenna smiled. “She’s got nerve. You should keep this one.”

  “I’m not his,” I said, glancing over at Odane. I was surprised to see hurt flash across his expression, and for a second, I felt an answering twinge of guilt. “I’m not anybody’s but my own,” I added, trying to ease the offense.

  “Well then,” Ikenna said, and he let out a husky laugh. “Go on and strip down.”

  “Ikenna!” Odane practically growled the word.

  “It’s okay,” I said, trying not to show how nervous I felt. “Strip down how far?”

  “I need some skin for the spell to work,” Ikenna said.

  I slipped my T-shirt over my head, until I was standing in my bra and shorts. I was still wearing more than I’d usually wear to swim in, but I felt exposed nonetheless. “Good enough?” I didn’t look at Odane, but I could feel the heat of his gaze on my skin. I wasn’t sure what to do with that, or with the heat that I could feel rising in my cheeks, so I did my best to ignore both.

  Ikenna glanced at me and gave a short nod. “You’ll do.” He was already opening the rucksack and starting to take out a weird assortment of items. After he made a partial circle of salt on the floor of the cabin, he picked up a narrow brush and a jar of something dark that smelled sour and spicy when he opened it.

  “In the circle,” he said, motioning that I should stand in the center. Then without any other explanation, he began to paint.

  I couldn’t understand what he was saying as he worked, because I’d never heard anything like those words before. Slowly and methodically, he painted a jagged line all the way down across my back. The cool wet of the paint gliding across my skin made goose flesh rise along my arms, then up along my neck, but Ikenna was methodical and he took his time about it, chanting all the while. When he was done, he closed the circle and set the salt aside.

  “The candles, Odane,” Ikenna said gruffly, like Odane should have already known what to do. He set six of the black candles around the perimeter of the circle and then positioned the six white candles between them. “Three and three and three twice more,” he murmured as he lit the candles with a smoldering stick of something that made my eyes burn. It certainly wasn’t sage. “A good number to summon a soul.”

  I took a step toward the salt line, but something pushed against me, holding me back. “I didn’t agree to summon anything,” I said, panic spiking in me. “You said channeling, not summoning.”

  “Settle down, girl.” Ikenna came over and stood across from me, the diamond stud in his ear catching the candlelight in the quickly dimming room. “You want to see into your dreams, you’re talking about seeking the life of the soul. Since the dreams aren’t yours, you need the soul they belong to. You can’t see nothing if you don’t summon it.”

  “But Thisbe isn’t dead,” I said.

  Ikenna gave me a slow smile. “That’s what’s gonna make this interesting.”

  Odane stepped forward. “You sure about this, Chloe?” he asked, his voice tense, worried.

  I nodded, not sure at all that it was the truth. I tried to settle myself back down. I had to do this. If the cards I’d drawn were right, I was destined to do this. Whatever happened, the sacrifice I was making was needed to gain the knowledge I wanted.

  “Go on and stand in the center, still as you can,” Ikenna said. “Close your eyes and think of the place your dreams take you to.”

  I glanced one more time at Odane, but his eyes were on his father, like he was watching to make sure Ikenna didn’t try anything. Satisfied that I was about as safe as a body could be using a bokor to break into dreams that might belong to someone else, I closed my eyes and blocked out the world.

  Immediately, I became more aware of everything around me—the musty, close air. The faint tinge of sulfur hanging in the air from the lit matches. The rough, cool boards of the floor under my feet. The warmth from the candles
that surrounded me.

  All at once, the darkness behind my eyes grew thicker. Then the fizzling strike of another match and the smell of something heavy and sweet filled the air, along with the rasping chants of Ikenna. They pulsed in an unsteady rhythm and increased in volume, rolling through the air, carrying me deeper and deeper into the darkness.

  Deeper and deeper into the night.

  My skin grew cold, and all at once light burst behind my eyes, and I opened them. The cabin had disappeared and we were there—all of us—in the pines. Outside the circle the ground had turned to dirt and moss, but inside the circle the worn floorboards remained.

  I looked at Odane, and he looked back, his eyes wide with the wonder and the fear that I felt.

  “What happened?” I whispered, afraid to disturb the silence.

  Odane opened his mouth to speak but didn’t seem to know what to say. Ikenna laughed. “What happened?” he said with a leering smile. “What do you think happened? It worked. Just like I knew it would.”

  “Why are you both here? How can this be my dream?”

  “This ain’t no dream. I told you, this is a summoning,” Ikenna said, like he was disappointed I didn’t understand what was happening. “You summoned a soul, and she brought her whole past with her.” He gestured to the left, and there was the girl, her toes up to the line of salt, her hands pressed to the air in front of her, as though to some invisible wall she couldn’t penetrate. Her eyes were focused on me, and a smile played on her lips. Hope lit her face.

  I knew that this time, she saw me. This time, her smile was for me.

  With her hand held out the way it was, I knew she was trying to get to me, but I didn’t know if I should let her. She beckoned me, offering her hand, but I didn’t know what she was offering.

  This, after all, was Thisbe, the person who had destroyed so many lives. But now she was also only a girl, still young, with an unlined and almost kind face.

  “Go on,” Ikenna urged. “This is what you wanted, ain’t it?”

  I took a step toward the edge of the salt, but I hesitated.

  “She won’t stay forever,” Ikenna said, excitement lighting his words. “Take what she offers or let her go in peace.”

  I looked to Odane, but the closer I’d stepped to the girl, the more I felt like I was wholly in her orbit. Odane seemed very far away suddenly, his form fuzzy and indistinct, as though I was seeing him through water.

  He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. The only thing left in the world for me was the girl.

  She was still waiting, her hand still pressed to that invisible wall, a small smile soft on her face. She didn’t look dangerous. Nothing about the moment felt dangerous, either.

  I reached out my hand, slowly, because I still wasn’t sure, and when our palms pressed against one another, the world slid away.

  Twenty-Seven

  The pines rose up around me, stretching themselves to the night above like they were trying to catch the stars in their branches. I was alone, but the night wasn’t silent as it had been in my other dreams. I could hear the wind stroking the upper boughs of the trees. Unseen insects rustled around me, and I could feel the balmy warmth of a spring night.

  I was alone, but I wasn’t myself. I had the same feeling as when I’d had the visions of Thisbe—of being in her skin and experiencing her life. But I felt young—so young. The trees seemed so much taller. The night, so much darker.

  A woven basket was looped over my arm, and the swishing of the rough material of my skirts rustled as I walked through the grove, toward the place where the rows of trunks began to thin. On and on I walked, with a feeling of such purpose and determination that I didn’t doubt the pines would end and I would reach my destination. On and on, with a straightness in my spine that I knew didn’t match my years.

  A straightness I had practiced and learned from surviving so long on my own.

  When I broke through the last of the pines, I found myself in the wide-open country, with cane fields on each side of me and the expanse of the cloudless sky dwarfing me beneath its glittering canopy. There was more than enough moonlight to guide my steps as I followed the dirt path that cut between the fields. When I came to the row of shack-like cabins that stood sleeping in the stillness of the night, I took the path that led me well away from them and their slumbering occupants.

  Ignoring the way the stalks of cane rustled in the night air, I turned and went toward the great alley of oaks. I approached them solemnly but without fear, and as I walked beneath their broad arms, I felt myself more at home than anywhere else in my world. Because the trees didn’t look at me with spiteful jealousy burning in their eyes. They didn’t whisper behind closed doors about the motherless girl who the master paid too much attention to. They didn’t ask what could be so wrong with a child that a mother would walk away and leave her behind.

  The trees didn’t pass any judgment at all. They’d seen too much and they would see more still. The oaks would still be standing long after bodies no longer fell in the fields. And when the blood that was spilled on that land had soaked so deep down into the earth that people believed it had been washed away, the oaks would remain still. Steadfast witnesses that blood don’t wash. Blood has to be burnt.

  My mother had taught me that, just as she had brought me to those oaks on so many nights when I was only a small thing. She was the one who had shown me how to carve cords out of the knotty trunks of those trees and to gather the moss that hung from their branches. There’s a power to this place, she’d told me, guiding my hand as I wrapped the moss around the bit of wood. There’s a power inside of you, she’d said as she showed me how to pin my intentions securely by driving an iron needle through the center of the charm.

  Lots of people were desperate enough to walk into the swamp, but everyone knew most didn’t walk out. My mother was different, though. They all said that if anyone could walk out the other side to freedom, it would have been her. Maybe they were right.

  But then again, maybe not.

  They called her a witch and they called her the master’s whore. They looked at me like I’d been the one who made my mother’s choices and, since I was the one left, they hated me for those choices and made me pay for them every day.

  But they needed me, too. They knew I had the same spark of power inside me, just like she did. They knew I could weave a charm or heal a wound or save a wife when the babe wouldn’t come. Or curse an enemy.

  They hated me double for that.

  But I pushed those thoughts away. Protection charms needed strength and truth to work, and those charms were what I traded for the extra food to fill my belly and the extra blankets to keep me through the winter. So I took a small knife from beneath some scraps in my basket and I settled my soul before I made the first cut.

  The hands holding the knife—the hands that felt like they could have been my own—were so small. They were the hands of a child rather than a woman, but that didn’t make them any less skillful. I worked quickly and efficiently, cutting bits of the moss that hung from the trees until my basket was nearly full.

  “What are you doing?” a small voice said from behind me, and I turned, startled to find that I wasn’t alone.

  Standing in the moonlight was a boy who couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve. His pale skin looked sallow, and he was pointing a small knife at me. His young face was stern and cold, and I knew immediately who it was. The oldest son of Jean-Pierre Dutilette was a prince in my world—one who came and did as he pleased, and what he pleased was more often cruel than not.

  “I’m just getting some moss from these here trees,” I said, tucking my own knife into the basket so he wouldn’t see it. If he saw it, I’d have to explain how I came to have such a well-made piece, and I didn’t think that the truth—that my mother had left it with me—would have been worth the breath it took to speak it.

  Panic inched along my skin, but the branches above me rustled quietly, calming me wi
th their very presence.

  “What do you need it for?” he asked, his cold, dark eyes looking at me, judging me like I was no better than dung on the road. Not much more than a decade of days on this earth, and Roman Dutilette had already become what he was going to be.

  I showed him the contents of the basket. “I’m gathering it for Gris-Gris,” I told him.

  The boy’s face creased in a sour expression. “What’s a greegree?” he asked, suspicious.

  So I pulled a small pouch out of the pocket of my apron to show him. “They’re for good luck,” I said, and then quickly added, “and for protection.”

  The boy didn’t relax, but I saw interest light in his eyes. “What kind of protection?”

  “Oh, they help keep the bad spirits away,” I explained, watching the interest grow in his expression. “These trees have been here so long, there’s bound to be some power in the moss that grows from them. I could make you one, if you’d like.”

  Ignoring my offer, he raised his knife like I was some kind of threat.

  He’s scared, I thought. Something’s made him understand that even he can be touched. I tried not to smile as I wondered what it was that had revealed his mortality to him.

  “Who taught you to make them?”

  “My mother did,” I said simply.

  “Who’s your mother?”

  I glanced away. Most that knew her called her by one name without ever knowing her true name, but I wasn’t about to speak either to him. “It doesn’t matter. She’s gone.”

  Slowly he lowered the knife. “My mother’s gone, too. My baby sister killed her.”

  I glanced up from beneath my lashes, watching him for some sign of what he would do next. “I’m sorry,” I told him.

  The boy scowled, but it was clear he didn’t want pity from anyone like me. “Are you sure you’re not out here plotting to kill us?”

  I raised my head, surprised at the meaning of—and

  the venom in—his words. “Why would I do that?” I asked carefully.

  Roman scowled and took a step toward me. “That’s what the maroons did on Saint-Domingue. Père says that Grand-père should have known better than to stay. He said we must be vigilant,” the boy said, raising his small knife toward me again.