Gathering Deep

by Lisa Maxwell

  “I’m not plotting anything,” I told him, keeping my eyes down even though hate rose inside of me, hot and sweet and sharp as the blade in my basket.

  Show them what they expect you to be, my mother had taught me. And they’ll never see what you truly are.

  The boy seemed satisfied enough. “You better leave all that here. You’re not one of ours, and even if you were, you didn’t ask to take any of it. These trees belong to me and my father.”

  This time, I raised my eyes to meet his and let him see the hate simmering there. Because I knew the truth. These trees didn’t belong to anyone but themselves, and they never would.

  But he either didn’t understand or he didn’t care. “Go on,” he said, stepping even closer with his knife.

  I thought about running with the basket. He was younger then me, after all, smaller and most likely not used to wandering at night. I might even be able to get away. But if he caught me … Even though I didn’t belong to him or his family, it would be bad.

  Without much choice, I left the basket—knife and all—on the ground.

  “And that other thing you showed me, too,” he demanded.

  “Why do you want this old thing?” I asked, clutching the small silken pouch of the Gris-Gris in my apron pocket. “I said I’d make you one of your own. A newer one would have more power,” I lied.

  “I want that one,” he said, as though that solved the matter.

  And didn’t it? He wanted it, so he’d taken it. Because what was I doing but trespassing and stealing from my betters?

  Clenching my teeth to keep myself from speaking, I pulled the Gris-Gris from my apron pocket again. Before I handed it over, I took a moment to run my thumb across the lumpy stitches my mother had made long before I’d been born. Then I tossed it into the basket.

  “Now git,” he said. “Go on now, or I’ll have to tell your master what you were out here doing.”

  I didn’t say anything else, but it took everything I had to keep the anger from spilling out of me. I felt the wind pick up as it rustled through the trees, echoing my fury at being treated so badly by this boy. He was no better than I was, and definitely not more powerful, but he had the world at his command. The trees rustled, their branches swaying as my fury at my own impotence wrapped around me like a noose.

  Someday, I thought, keeping my back straight and my steps slow and deliberate as I walked away. Someday my heart beat in return.

  On I walked, away from the oaks and through another strand of woods, and as I walked, I felt myself changing. The plaits in my hair grew thicker, and my body softer even as my own bone-deep knowledge about who and what I was grew unyielding as iron with each step.

  It felt as though my journey across the field was a journey of years, and by the time I mounted the steps to Thisbe’s cabin, I knew I was a different girl in a different time.

  This time, there was no shadowy figure waiting on the porch, but when I went inside, I stepped into a new piece of Thisbe’s life. The world tilted, and Augustine was sitting across from me, our dinner half uneaten on the table before us.

  His face was older than I remembered it looking in my other dreams. Already, it was beginning to show the wear of years of labor. It was a handsome face, though. Still blessed with a wide, soft mouth, with intensely dark eyes.

  He was looking at me with such devotion …

  No. He wasn’t really looking at me, I reminded myself. He was looking at her, but we were one in the same. I was the girl.

  I was Thisbe.

  And I was angry. My anger spiraled up from deep within, and even though I could sense how it sprang mostly from fear and from love, I couldn’t manage to stop it from burning brighter and brighter. Her—our—veins thrummed with the heat of it.

  “You don’t have to be the one to lead them,” I said.

  My anger swirled through the room like electricity. I felt it brush against my skin like a housecat waiting to be stroked.

  Augustine either ignored the anger or didn’t sense it. He smiled at me, all charm and confidence. “They can’t catch me. I have means to tell a man’s intentions.”

  “You have means,” Thisbe mocked. “Your spells and Gris-Gris can’t keep you safe from a bullet.”

  The intensity that had lit his face dimmed. “It won’t come to that.”

  He stepped toward me, and I knew what would happen next. He would take me in his arms, and I would melt like beeswax in July.

  So I stepped back, refusing to let this routine play out once again, and his face went dark. But I wasn’t afraid of him. I’d never been afraid of him, not even when he’d taken the gap-toothed brother of the overseer and beat him bloody when the man had tried to have his way with me. Not even then.

  “It’s a fool’s mission, Augustine. You can’t stop all of them.”

  “I can try,” he said, and then his face went serious. “You’re free, Thisbe. You can walk away from here. Start over.”

  “Only if you walk away with me,” I said, refusing to turn away from him.

  He shook his head, like what I was asking was impossible.

  “You think I would leave without you?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch and volume. “You think I would move on and leave you behind after you bought my freedom with your sweat?”

  “You know as well as I do that you were the one who convinced your master to let you go. My sweat might have provided the coin to buy your papers, but your powers got you your freedom and all of this,” he said, gesturing to the room we were sitting in.

  I couldn’t seem to hold back the small smile that curved at her mouth. “Because I learned a long time ago how to persuade … ” But the smile faltered. “Everyone but you, it seems.”

  “You know I’ll come back when it’s over.”

  “When will that be? When you’ve burned down every plantation? They’ll build another. When they burn you?” I asked, my voice—her voice—breaking.

  “I’m asking you to trust me in this.”

  “And I’m asking you to stop. To come away with me now before this goes any further. Before it’s too late for us to have a life in this world.”

  He stared at me for a long, long moment, not blinking, his face unreadable. Taking my measure, slow and steady.

  I knew what his answer would be before he said it:

  “I’m leaving in the morning, before daybreak,” he said, placing his fork next to his plate. “That doesn’t give us much time.”

  I flinched as I received the words, but still, I wouldn’t let myself go to him.

  “I’ll always come back to you, Thisbe. Always. You believe me in that at least?”

  I nodded, but in that moment, I hated him for it. And I hated myself for letting him wrap me up in his life only to leave me behind.

  His voice was soft and low when he spoke again. It was the voice he’d used to tempt, the voice he used when he wanted agreement without a fight. “Thisbe—”

  I stood abruptly from the table. “More wine?”

  He frowned. “Yes, please,” he said finally, as though he understood the wine to be some sort of peace offering.

  My thoughts raced as I went to fetch the pitcher. If he went, he would die. It was as simple as that. All those stories of the revolution in Saint-Domingue were nothing but tales. There, the maroons had outnumbered the whites on a small island. The plantation owners hadn’t believed defeat was possible, and so they’d not realized the danger until it was too late. But the men in this place, the men who owned this land, would have learned from those mistakes.

  Yet still Augustine was blind to the risk. He insisted on plotting and planning. On putting himself into more danger than this life already held. Because he thought no one would suspect him. Because he had been loaned out for work on neighboring plantations for years, and because he had loaned himself out for just as long, he thought he could trust those he spoke to.

  Because he wanted to walk through this life like a man, and how could I blame him for t
hat?

  But people will turn on anyone if they’re scared or desperate enough. Even a cat only had so many lives. A man had far fewer, even a man such as he.

  I could let him go. I knew well enough that what was between us wasn’t bound to the bodies we wore in this life.

  But I wanted those bodies. Even as worn and tired as mine often felt, it was the only one I knew, the only one that Augustine had ever known me in. And the wanting I felt, the urgent need for us to be together in these bodies, to be with him in this life was so powerful, I could barely breathe past it.

  Resolved to save him, I slid a small vial out of my apron.

  Resolved to save them all from their folly, I put some of the powder into his cup before pouring the wine over it.

  The valerian and poppy worked quickly. Not more than a few minutes later, his eyes grew soft, his speech slurred.

  “Why don’t you come lay yourself down for a spell,” I crooned, leading him to the bed. Then I set about preparing the things that would be needed—the knife and the red candle, and the small star-shaped man I’d cut from the great oaks.

  With a strange sense of déjà vu, I went through the motions I’d seen in that first vision—the bits of hair and wax, the blood and thread. Until the charm was complete and Augustine would have no choice but to stay by my side. Where he’d be safe. Where we could be together. Where he couldn’t lead anyone else on a fool’s mission.

  When I was done, I pressed a kiss to his lips, satisfied that they were bound by the charm for as long as I lived.

  I stayed with him for a while, watching him sleep, but when a rough knock came at the door, I scurried to the front of her home in time to see Roman come through the door.

  The girl’s fear clawed at me. Roman couldn’t find Augustine here, not helpless as he was under the power of the draught I’d given him. “Get out of my house,” I demanded.

  Roman simply smiled. “Now, now. Is that any way to treat a guest?”

  “A guest is someone you’ve invited,” I spat. “This isn’t your property, and neither am I. Get out.”

  “But it’s my property that I’m looking for,” he said, making himself at home. “Where’s Augustine?”

  “I’m not his keeper,” I said stiffly, keeping myself positioned in the doorway between Roman and the sleeping form of Augustine.

  “No, of course not.” Roman gave a smirk. “That would be me.” Then his expression went tight, serious. “I need to speak to him.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” I lied again.

  Roman cocked his head, as though he was amused. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be back soon enough.” He took another step toward Thisbe.

  “Get out,” I said again. “You don’t have any rights here.” I knew it was a feeble statement in the face of my reality, but I held myself as still and straight and fearless as I could.

  He took me roughly by the arm and gave me a sharp jerk as he spoke. “I’d like to see you try and prove that,” he said, taking up the challenge. He leaned in until I could smell the reek of onions and stale beer on his breath. Then a slow smile crept across his thin lips and he leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine.

  Anger flashed through me, hot and wild, and all at once, Roman surged back. He released my arm to reach for his own throat, his eyes wide with panic and fear.

  “You’d best be leaving, Monsieur Roman,” I said pleasantly enough. Inside of me, the anger pulsed dark and satisfying, even as I felt the panic of what I’d done. Of what I was revealing to him.

  Roman’s eyes were furious, but his lips were already starting to go blue around the edges.

  “Be angry as you’d like, but until you cross back over that threshold, you won’t have a breath of air to call your own,” I told him, forcing myself to exude a practiced calm.

  He struggled for a few moments longer before he shot me a look of such hate, even I flinched somewhere deep inside her skin. Then he backed through the door, one staggering step at a time, until he’d crossed completely over the threshold of the house and was standing on the porch. Only then did he take a long, gasping breath.

  “You think because you have some papers, you’re safe? You think a parlor trick like that will save you?” he seethed. “I’ll kill you.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” I said. I folded my arms across my bosom as much to steady myself from the overwhelming feeling of the power that surged through me as to show my defiance. “You can’t touch me.”

  Still gasping for air, Roman smiled, a horrible twist of his mouth. “You have no idea what I could do to you.”

  Despite his words, I saw fear in his eyes, and something about the uncertainty lurking in those cold, blue irises eased something in me. I laughed then, because the power that I’d let loose was still curling around me as comforting as a warm blanket, secure and heavy and mine. And I knew he could never touch me.

  “Tell Augustine I’m looking for him when you see him,” Roman said, and there was something in his voice that made me go still. Something in the look he gave me made all that confidence I’d had just a second before drain away, leaving me cold.

  “If you touch him—” I warned.

  But Roman was already walking away.

  I watched to make sure he was gone for good before I shut the door against the world outside and pressed my back against it. Just moments before I’d felt so secure, so calm in the power I’d taken to hand, but now, that knowledge left me cold and unsettled.

  In the back room, Augustine slept on, still and peaceful, and I curled up next to him, resting my head against his strong shoulder and pulling the covers over us both.

  In the morning, when the sun woke me, I turned over to find him gone. And the knowledge of that loss came crashing down on me, pressing me into myself until I couldn’t hardly breathe.

  Twenty-Eight

  My eyes flew open, and all at once I was back in the empty cabin, but I’d collapsed on the floor and the girl was standing over me. She was inside the circle with me now, and her face flickered from the young girl who gathered moss to my mother to a wrinkled old version of my mother back to the girl my age. Over and over, the surface of her face cycled through the versions of Thisbe as the girl’s mouth made the shape of angry words I couldn’t hear.

  She wasn’t touching me, but I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.

  I was stuck there in that circle, somewhere between consciousness and sleep, between living and dying. And that feeling of being so stuck, so trapped and immovable, was about the most excruciating thing I’d ever felt. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t die. I couldn’t even feel myself be.

  For a moment, I thought about letting go. I thought about giving up and surrendering myself back to the soul I’d summoned. Something about the girl’s expression told me she wanted me to let go, to let her back into myself. Maybe because she had more she wanted to show me.

  Maybe because she just wanted more.

  But in the distance, I heard someone calling my name, calling me back to myself. That distant voice was enough to pin me to this world until Ikenna could break the circle.

  As soon as the salt line was broken, the candles snuffed themselves out and the girl disappeared. I finally pulled air into my burning lungs, but even then, it took me a while to come back to myself. Even then, I couldn’t help but feel that something had changed within me from what I’d just experienced. Something still felt like it was gathering deep inside me, something that had maybe always been there. But it had grown stronger when I’d accepted the girl and let her in.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with that feeling, but it scared me. Ikenna had seen another power layered over my own, and part of me worried that the experience of walking in Thisbe’s skin had helped to give that other power more strength than it otherwise would have had. I wondered if I’d ever be able to shake free of it.

  Still, I was too weak to do much more about that fear than lie on the floor curled up into myself until Odane knelt beside me
and made me look him in the eye. Little by little I calmed myself until I could breathe almost normally. Then, in halting breaths, I told them what had happened, what I’d seen.

  “What do you mean, he was gone?” Odane asked.

  “I don’t know,” I told them. “Maybe he realized what she’d done or maybe the spell went wrong. But when she woke in the morning, he was gone, and she was devastated by it. It felt like she was breaking in two when she found out he’d left her anyway, and it was the pain of that, I think, that brought me back.”

  “Sure didn’t seem like you were coming back,” Ikenna said, still pacing the boards. “I ain’t never seen nothing like that. You lit up like a glow worm when you touched that there girl’s soul … ” His voice trailed off. “Power filled up this room like the fourth of Ju-ly, and we could hardly get close to the circle. For a minute there, neither one of us thought we’d be able to stop her.”

  “You couldn’t get to me?” I asked.

  Odane shook his head. “For a while there, it felt like the whole place would go up in flames at any moment.”

  For a minute or two, I hadn’t been sure I’d get back either, but I didn’t tell them that. “She must have realized I was slipping away,” I told them, “and tried to grab on again. She almost got me, too. She didn’t want to let me go,” I realized, shuddering.

  “Seemed like she got stronger the longer you were with her,” Ikenna said. “Strong enough that she managed to cross through the circle.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “More than an hour,” Odane told me.

  “An hour?” It had felt more like a couple of minutes.

  Ikenna was shifting nervously, gathering up his supplies, spreading the salt so no trace of a circle remained. “We best be going, son.”

  Odane looked at him, the frown he’d been wearing turning to confusion. “Best be going where?”

  “Anywhere that’s not here,” Ikenna said, packing the last of his stuff into the rucksack and hoisting it over his shoulder as he moved toward the door.