The Challenge Box

by Isobel Bird

  “I think we’ll be okay,” said Cooper, giving Annie a knowing look behind Andre’s back.

  “Well, this morning is all about Marie Laveau and voodoo,” Andre said, oblivious to the girls’ amusement. “There are so many stories about Marie that it’s impossible to know what’s true and what isn’t. But what is generally accepted as fact is that she was born in 1794, either in New Orleans or perhaps in Haiti. At any rate, she ended up here, where she was a hairdresser. She was famous for organizing dances, which many people believe were just covers for her real ceremonies—the voodoo rituals. You know what voodoo is, right?”

  “We have a pretty good idea,” Annie told him, not adding that she and Cooper both knew a little about the religion. Also, they had some personal experience with the related religion Santeria, so they understood that basically voodoo was a magical religion based on working with African spirits.

  “Okay,” Andre said, turning down another street. “Well, Marie Laveau was the queen of voodoo in New Orleans. She held rituals at a small cabin on Bayou Saint John, on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. There she and her followers danced, sang, and performed magic.”

  “What kind of magic?” Annie asked. Although she’d read about voodoo rituals, she wondered what exactly people said that Marie Laveau had done.

  “Oh, all kinds of things,” Andre said. “Marie was supposed to have been able to make people fall in love. She made charms for that, and for good luck. And, of course, she made voodoo dolls.”

  Again, Annie and Cooper exchanged glances. They’d had their own run-in with a voodoo doll of sorts, and they knew that their powers were not just the stuff of legends. Annie wondered what Marie Laveau had made happen with hers.

  Andre stopped and pointed to a gate. “This is where Marie Laveau lived for many years,” he said. “The actual house was torn down in the early 1900s, but people still flock here to see the spot. Many claim to see her ghost around here.”

  Annie and Cooper peered through the gate. Without an actual house to look at, it was difficult to really get all that excited about a place where something used to be. Still, Annie felt a sense of something special about the spot. It had a calmness to it, a sense of reverence that she liked.

  “Do you feel her?”

  Annie looked up and saw a young woman standing beside her. She was very beautiful, with cocoa-colored skin that was highlighted by the white dress she wore. Her hair was piled on her head and covered by a white scarf. She looked at Annie with dark, alert eyes and smiled.

  “You can feel her here, can’t you?” she said. “Mam’zelle Marie, I mean. This was her place. Her spirit is here. They can tear down her house, but they cannot get rid of her.”

  Annie nodded. “Do you know a lot about her?” she asked the young woman.

  “This and that,” she replied. “I grew up here. Many times I have seen Mam’zelle walking here. She is not to be feared, not by those who pay her their respects, anyway.” The girl laughed happily. “Enjoy your stay,” she said before turning and walking off.

  “Okay,” Andre said, bringing Annie’s attention back to the moment. “Now it’s time for the really cool part.”

  “Where to?” asked Cooper.

  Andre raised his eyebrows. “The cemetery,” he said.

  Once more they began walking. This time they walked for quite a while, while Andre told them more about Marie Laveau. “Marie lived for many, many years,” he said. “Some say she was well over a hundred. Then one day she walked into her cabin on Bayou Saint John. When she emerged the next morning, she was a young woman again.” He looked at the girls. “Then again, some people say the young woman who came out that morning was simply her daughter, Marie II.”

  They walked until they came to the gates of a cemetery. “Here we are,” Andre said. “Saint Louis Cemetery Number One.” He led the girls to the gates, where he paused. “According to local superstition, you’re supposed to knock three times on the gatepost and ask Saint Peter’s permission to enter,” he told them. “Otherwise he might not let you out again.”

  They each knocked three times. Then Andre said, “Shall we?”

  He stepped inside, followed by Cooper and then Annie. The cemetery was filled with crypts in various stages of decay. Many of the statues were missing parts, and the tombs themselves were worn away to the point that the names on them were unreadable.

  “Because the water table is so high here, they can’t bury people in the ground,” Andre explained as they walked among the crypts. “Everyone has to be up here. And because of the weather, the stone wears away after a while. But I think this place is beautiful, don’t you?”

  “Beautiful and creepy,” Cooper said. “Where are we going?”

  “Right here,” Andre announced, stopping before a tall crypt. In front of it there were several white candles in glass containers, along with a scattering of pennies, several bunches of flowers, and a jar of honey. The front of the tomb was covered in small red Xs in groups of three.

  “This is where Marie is supposedly buried,” Andre said. “Although it may be her daughter who is here and not her. That doesn’t matter to most people, though. It’s become a shrine. People come from all over to leave offerings here and to ask for Marie’s help.”

  “What’s with the Xs?” Cooper asked.

  “You leave your offering for Marie,” Andre explained. “Then you use one of these to make three Xs,” he said, picking up a piece of red brick that was on the ground near the tomb. The girls noticed then that there were numerous pieces of brick there. And judging by the hundreds of rows of Xs, some faded to a ghostly pink and others fresh as blood, many people had stopped by to ask Marie Laveau for help.

  “Is there anything you want to ask her for?” Andre asked after they’d looked at the tomb for a few more minutes.

  Cooper shook her head. “I’m good,” she said.

  Annie looked at the Xs, then at the offerings. “Yes,” she said suddenly.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of change. Selecting three of the shiniest pennies, she laid them at the base of the tomb. Then she picked up a piece of brick and stepped forward. Choosing a fairly clear spot near the top of the crypt’s face, she made three neat Xs. Then she stood there, looking at the tomb.

  I don’t know a lot about you, she thought silently, speaking to Marie Laveau in her mind. I don’t know who or what you really were. But I know magic comes in all forms, and maybe this is just another one of them. Anyway, I want to ask for help with my challenge. I just don’t get it. Maybe this is cheating—asking you for help. But I figure I can’t be any worse off than I am now. So if you have any ideas, I’d appreciate some help. She didn’t know quite what else to say, so she put the brick down.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m done.”

  Neither Andre nor Cooper asked her what she’d asked for Marie’s help with. At the gates they knocked three times again, asked St. Peter’s permission to leave, and then exited. As they passed through the gates Annie turned and looked back through the bars at Marie Laveau’s tomb. As she did she saw a figure dressed in white standing in front of it. The figure bent down, picked something from the ground, and then appeared to simply vanish. Annie stopped.

  “What is it?” asked Cooper.

  Annie watched the area around the crypt for a moment. Surely she’d just seen someone doing the same thing she’d done, making an offering to Marie Laveau. The person must have just stepped behind the crypt. That was it.

  “Nothing,” Annie said. “It was nothing.”

  But as they walked away, she wondered if she went back to the tomb would her pennies still be there.

  CHAPTER 7

  Kate was glad that she’d packed extra socks in her backpack. It was still raining, and beneath the branches of the pine trees there was still snow. Her heavy boots were doing a great job of keeping most of the wetness out, but she knew that she would welcome a change of socks once she got back to the car.

  It
was Sunday afternoon. She had decided to go on a hike in the mountains outside of town. Since the weather was bad, she knew she would probably be all alone out there. But the area was familiar to her, as she had walked there often, and she knew where she was going. She had talked her parents into letting her use one of the cars for the afternoon, and she had dressed herself in rain gear from her dad’s store.

  To her surprise, she and Sherrie had actually gotten quite a bit accomplished on Saturday. After Kate had helped Sherrie find the right books, they had located a lot of maps of the area around Beecher Falls showing how the topography had changed over the years. Kate was intrigued to discover that a lot of the area had actually been a rain forest, with towering trees, lots of ferns, and an abundance of water. That accounted for the leaf impressions that were present in the rock samples she and Sherrie had to work with.

  Kate carried one of the rock samples with her in her pocket. From time to time as she walked she stuck her hand into her jacket and felt it. It reminded her of why she was there. She wanted to get a feel for the land she lived on. She wanted to really look at it, to imagine being a part of it the way someone living there thousands of years ago might have been a part of it. She knew she couldn’t really do that, of course, but she at least wanted to try to capture a little bit of the feeling.

  She was walking in a part of the forest that was thick with evergreen trees. While the branches overhead formed a protective canopy, rain still trickled in, dripping from the branches onto her coat and onto her head. Her coat had a hood, but she preferred not to have it up, as she liked being able to feel and smell the air. As a result, her hair was damp, and it clung to her face in tendrils, which she kept brushing away from her cheeks and her eyes as she walked.

  The ground beneath the trees was covered in plants. While the rain and the cold prevented them from being as thick as they would be in spring and summer, Kate still felt a little bit like she was in a jungle of sorts. There was no actual trail, and she followed a kind of natural path that wove in between the trees. But maybe it was a path, she thought. Maybe there really had been a trail through there at some point, but over the years it had been lost beneath the new layers of pine needles, leaves, and dirt. Maybe she was walking the same path walked by people many, many years ago.

  The trail led her up a hill. It was slow going, as the forest floor was more slippery than it usually was. She held on to trees for support as she climbed higher and higher. Twice she had to climb over fallen logs rather than walk the long way around them. By the time she reached the top of the hill she was tired and more than a little wet. She needed a rest.

  Walking a little farther, she found that the trees opened up into a small clearing. The pine branches still touched overhead, so the clearing was sheltered from the rain, but there was an open area beneath the trees. The ground there was covered with soft moss, and several stones were situated at one end like a natural bench. Kate went over and sat on them.

  Opening her backpack, she took out a thermos of hot chocolate that she’d brought with her. She poured some into the top, which also functioned as a cup, and sipped it. Immediately she felt warmer. She drank half the cup and then set it down on the rock beside her. Then she reached into the backpack again and took out the second of Cooper’s presents. She’d almost opened it first thing that morning, but she’d decided to wait until she was in the forest to do it.

  Now she pulled the paper off to reveal a flat, wide box. Lifting the lid, she discovered that inside the box was a framed photograph. It was of her, Cooper, and Annie at a ritual. It had been a full moon gathering they’d attended with some members of their class. There had been a bonfire, and the picture showed the three girls standing together in front of the fire. They were wearing white, and they had garlands of white flowers on their heads. Making the photograph even more beautiful was the huge, round moon hanging over their heads.

  It was a gorgeous image, and Kate loved it even more because it showed her and her friends taking part in a ritual together. Cooper had put it into a plain wood frame, the simplicity of which set off the photo even more. Kate looked at it and thought of how wonderful that night had been, of how the three of them had really felt like moon goddesses as they’d danced with their friends and celebrated the occasion.

  She put the picture back into her backpack so it wouldn’t get wet and picked up her cup of hot chocolate again. She sipped it slowly, feeling it move down her throat and into her stomach, warming her up more with each swallow. Her feet weren’t as wet as she’d expected them to get, which made her happy. All in all, she was feeling really good. Even having to work with Sherrie wasn’t turning out to be as awful as she’d expected it to, and while the disappointment of missing the trip to New Orleans still stung a little, she was okay with it.

  She gazed up at the trees towering over her. How old were they? she wondered. She knew that the oldest trees in North America were several thousand years old. The trees she was sitting under weren’t nearly that old, but they were pretty old, too. Too bad you guys can’t talk, she thought as she imagined what kind of stories the trees could tell about what they’d seen. Had explorers walked beneath them once, charting land that no one had ever mapped before? Had native people walked among them? She could only imagine.

  She removed the piece of rock from her pocket and looked at it some more. Something else she’d learned in her research was that much of what was now the West Coast of North America had at one time been under the ocean. Some of the rock samples taken from the Beecher Falls area contained remnants of tiny sea creatures, suggesting that where the town lay had not always been dry land. Was the place where Kate was sitting now once part of the ocean floor? Had things like forty-foot prehistoric sharks and enormous fish swum where the trees now grew up to the sky? Thinking about that made her feel a little creeped out, but at the same time it was exciting to imagine that maybe she was sitting where a dinosaur had once walked. Who—or what—would be sitting there two thousand years from now? Would people still live on Earth, or would they be gone, living somewhere in the stars?

  A lot of what they studied in their Wicca class had to do with natural cycles. One of the things Kate was finding interesting about her science project was how it, too, was all about cycles. She was investigating the way the natural world she lived in had evolved. Normally the rituals of witchcraft involved shorter cycles, like the changing of the seasons, the waxing and waning of the moon, or even the life and death of a person. The cycles she was learning about now were much vaster than that. It was hard for her to imagine how long a thousand years was, or ten thousand, or a million. But that’s how long the Earth had been evolving. And it was still evolving. Someday it would all be different.

  Where’s my place in all of that? Kate asked herself. What’s my role in the cycle? That’s what her involvement in Wicca was showing her—was supposed to show her. But while she’d learned a lot about herself during the previous months of study and practice, she still sometimes wondered what it all meant, what it was all leading to.

  She put the rock away and sat, thinking. Her life had changed so much since she’d gotten involved in Wicca. And it was still changing. Yes, the upcoming initiation ceremony was a big deal. But there was a lot after that as well. There was her senior year, and then college. Then she had her whole life to figure out after that. What did she want to be? What did she want to do?

  You can’t even figure out the answer to your challenge, she chided herself. How are you going to figure out your whole life? She knew she was being hard on herself. But there were big decisions she was going to have to make, and soon. Would she be ready for those?

  She looked around the clearing again. It was so peaceful there. It’s like a sanctuary, Kate thought. Like being in church. Many times when she was younger and had been worried about something she would go sit in a church. It didn’t even matter to her which church it was. Sometimes she would go to St. Mary’s, where her family went. Other times she would g
o to another church, but always one with a big sanctuary where it was quiet. There was a big stone church near her house that she sometimes went to because she loved the soaring ceilings and the old wooden pews with their faded velvet cushions. It smelled of incense and candles and old paper in there, and sitting there surrounded by it all gave her a sense of peace.

  That’s how she felt now, as if she were sitting in a place where her worries didn’t seem quite as pressing, where she could just rest and take time to be quiet. Even the question of her challenge didn’t seem like such a big deal there. It was just her and the rain and the forest.

  Suddenly she was struck with an idea. Getting up, she walked to the other side of the clearing, where there were some smaller rocks. She piled a few of them up, making a small mound. Then she searched around for some sticks. These she found easily enough. She also found some fern leaves, which she picked. She took these and the sticks back to where she’d been sitting. Looking in the pocket of her backpack, she found some string among the assorted odds and ends she kept in there. She used it to tie the sticks into the shape of a figure. Then she tied some of the fern leaves around what would have been its waist if it had been a real person. The effect was very primitive, but Kate liked it. It reminded her of some kind of ancient drawing.

  She took her stick figure and stuck it in the top of the mound of stones so that it stood up by itself. It was supposed to be a forest goddess, and it really did look kind of wild, if a little wet and bedraggled. But Kate didn’t care. The whole point had been to create a little shrine to the Goddess, and she’d done that. How long it lasted wasn’t important. What was important was that she had made it. Now the clearing felt even more special to her.

  She crouched in front of her Goddess image for a while. Then she began to sing, softly. “We all come from the Goddess, and to her we shall return like a drop of rain, flowing to the ocean.” It was one of the first chants she’d ever learned, and it was still one of her favorites. It seemed particularly fitting now, as she sat in the clearing with the rain falling. She really was in the Goddess’s house, surrounded by nature, and it felt like home to her.