by Unknown
“That I can’t answer. Sometimes da universe just works in mysterious ways. I think it was always going to be your destiny to do this.”
“Please don’t tell me there is also some kind of ancient foretold prophecy about all of this because I’ve read that book and I know how it ends which is never good for the hero.”
Mama burst out laughing. Tears streamed down her face as she cackled and fought for each breath. I was sure she was either going to pass out from oxygen deprivation or pee her pants. Neither happened though. It took a few moments but she eventually calmed down enough to talk to me. Rhys had chuckled a bit too. I’d heard it, but remained stoic faced and in the door way when I turned to peek at him, any traces of laughter were gone as he continued to polish off his bowl of grits.
“Matter of fact, there is, though I’m afraid you ain’t ready to hear it just yet. Only time will tell.”
I couldn’t help that I rolled my eyes. Of course there was some stupid prophecy. As if my life wasn’t already mimicking one of those fantasy books I always tried to avoid. It probably rambled on about the impending doom to face all of mankind too. The surreal feeling lingered, the one that whispers that you’ll wake up at any moment and all of this will have been a bad dream. The world itself just didn’t make sense anymore.
“So, what will my training start with today? Am I going to summon someone? Hex someone? Ooo, am I going to make a voodoo doll of Brad and kill it?” I said eagerly. I was kidding, well, mostly joking, if I was honest, I had no idea what voodoo entailed. Mama appeared horrified at the notion. Her slack jawed expression and raised eyebrows gave her away.
“Most certainly not! First of all, that ain’t how voodoo dolls work. And the rest of that is all very advanced magic. It takes some folks years to master that kind of control! Nope, not today, missy. Today you’re working on history,” she said with some finality.
“Why does history have anything to do with what we are trying to accomplish?” This whole thing seemed like it was dragging on and pointless. History wouldn’t bring Angie back and history wouldn’t put the asshole that took her in the ground. My magic could though. Vengeful thoughts filled me briefly before I was interrupted by Mama Yansa’s explanation.
“Everything. History has been known to repeat itself and the mysteries we seek to discover could have truths hidden in da past just waiting to be dug up with some fresh eyes.”
“We need to push forward though! They have Angie and her time is running out! I need to be able to kick this guy’s magical ass at his own game.”
“First, you learn da history. Then we will see what you can do from there. You will have to work very hard before we can gauge how much you’re capable of, to begin with. Remember, you must open yourself up to da guidance of da spirits and da Loas. They won’t steer you wrong,” Mama said adamantly. She wasn’t going to budge on the history idea, I could just tell. I was beginning to see where Rhys’s stubborn streak came from.
“Fine. A compromise then?” I had to at least try to get things moving in the right direction.
“I’m listening.”
“I’ll learn the history and work on opening myself up to guidance, but I want to learn to wield this magic, too. I need to learn all of this fast.” Worry laced my words.
Mama seemed to contemplating the idea while she remained quiet for a couple of minutes. I was beginning to feel uneasy that she would shoot down my idea. Rhys was the one that broke the silence.
“I don’t see why not. It’s a good idea to multi task and kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I’d be willing to put in the extra time to work with her, if you have no objections,” he said to Mama.
Yeah, I bet he would be willing to put in the extra time with me. Alone and likely without clothes. Especially when he kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eyes like he was trying to communicate something secret, yet important all at once. I didn’t want to read too much into it, it seemed like Rhys was making up a reason that he could find to work with me. Maybe? She let out a deep breath and threw her arms up in the air slightly.
“I suppose that’ll have to do. You’re going to have to work extra hard day and night. Complete dedication. Nothing less.”
Rhys slid his gaze over to me as Mama turned her attention back to her bowl of grits. His devilish smile crept across his face when I met his gaze. His lips curled up at the edges and made his dimples visible. I squeezed my thighs together under the table, remembering his deft capabilities. The man had no shame to be sitting there watching me like that in front of Mama when she could easily see those looks. We were going to get caught if we kept going on like this. I was going to have to talk to him and tell him that we would need to keep it professional. While he could help me a lot with learning all of those things and getting Angie back, any kind of involvement beyond that could complicate things. I didn’t want him to be unwilling to help me. Although, my gut told me to make the leap of faith with Rhys. My mind was overruling that notion. Right then, we just had to be logical and not let intuition over run my mind.
“I will, I promise, Mama.” Peering back and forth between Rhys and Mama I asked, “So, when do we get started?”
Mama opened her mouth to answer and was cut off abruptly by Rhys. “As soon as breakfast is over and cleaned up.”
Breakfast was polished off in what seemed like record time. I was in a hurry to get on with my voodoo education. I was even quite a bit surprised by just how excited I was by that idea. It was something that had never even remotely been on my radar. If anything, it was teaching me that life had always been and always would be entirely unpredictable.
Rhys had disappeared outside while I was still eating, leaving me to believe that he had to have been some kind of military person in a past life with the speed and precision with which he demolished his meal. It couldn’t be good for him.
Clearing off my plate with a speedy but thorough washing, I made my way out the door. Clouds were gathering overhead. It wouldn’t be immediately, but there was a storm coming. I could feel it in the air, electricity crawling over my skin in anticipation. Stepping off of the front porch, I searched around, trying to find Rhys without any luck. The only obvious sounds were birds and insects going about their morning. Where could he have gone? I remembered him going outside, however nothing beyond it. Not seeing any other option, I made my way around the corner of the building and headed in the direction of the clearing behind the house.
And Voila!
There he sat in the middle of the clearing with a large blanket spread out and a hefty stack of ancient books. My feet couldn’t bring themselves to move forwards towards him after what had happened the day before with the Bacalou attacking me in that very clearing. The feeling that another one was out there, watching me and waiting for its chance to strike refused to be shaken off. My gut was telling me something was wrong. Searching was fruitless, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Rhys calmly sat there, watching me, as if to see what I would decide to do. I took a step back. I couldn’t help it. This just wasn’t right, things weren’t adding up and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that seemed out of sorts. There it was!
There was something strange going on with Rhys. He sat there, unblinking, yet observing me all the same. He was off, lacking the animation that I had become so used to.
“Ya feel it, don’t ya, child?” Mama whispered into my ear from behind me, heating my neck with her breath. I whirled around with a jolt, only to find that there was no one standing there. I was sure that I’d heard her voice whispering into my ear. The fine hairs on my arm stood on end, alert. Gazing back at Rhys, I noticed that he hadn’t moved.
Not even an inch.
“Mama?” I said softly.
Nothing.
“Who’s there?”
I could feel something sharing the space with me, but I couldn’t see anyone. Panic was beginning to rise and clog my throat. Was another one of those spirits out there toying with me? The soun
d of my own blood rushing through my veins as my heart began to race filled my ears. I clenched my eyes closed, trying to decide what to do.
Mama had said that I needed to learn to open my mind and body to the Spirits’ guidance around me. Maybe that was what I needed to do, open myself. But how did I do that? I hadn’t even been aware of it fully when they spoke through me before when I had been attacked. I had to try something, so I sat down where I stood, right at the back corner of the house and took the deepest and slowest breath that I could manage to calm myself.
Looking into myself, my mind seemed like it was full of fog, nothing was clear. As soon as I thought I had something I could grasp onto, it slipped away into the heavy mists of my mind. I imagined one of those commercial fans. I flicked it on trying to clear out the dense clouds cluttering everything. And it worked! Everything started to move and the fog began to dissipate. After a few seconds, all that remained was an exact replica of the clearing before me with Rhys sitting on the blanket with the same stack of books.
“Very good! Ya learnin’ quickly, Maya. That will help ya in da comin’ days.” Mama’s voice echoed through the clearing.
I didn’t see anything unusual while I searched.
Movement caught the corner of my peripheral vision and I spun my head to see what it was. Mama emerged from behind the thickly wooded brush near the water’s edge. How was that possible? She sounded like the was right there behind me before.
“What exactly did I do?” Confusion was bogging down my mind.
“Ya opened your mind to the Other. Ya reached out to see everything that was really there and to see past da things that aren’t.”
I’m not sure why I did it, but at that moment I peeked back at Rhys’s spot on the blanket to discover that he was no longer there.
“Where did he go? Rhys, he just...he disappeared,” I stammered.
“But was he ever really there to start with?”
What the hell? I wasn’t sure what was happening, however I wasn’t in the mood for mind games. At least Rhys, for the most part, was a straight shooter.
“What do you mean? Of course he was here! He was sitting right there!” My voice began to climb in volume showing my discomfort.
“What makes ya so sure it was him that you were seeing?” Mama challenged.
“I know what he looks like. I know him and the man that was sitting just there in this very clearing with me was Rhys!”
“Ya do not know him. Ya may have talked and discussed something ya both have in common, but ya do not know him. Not really.” Mama didn’t sound angry, she sounded very adamant, almost like she was warning me off of him. “Ya cannot always trust what ya see in front of ya with your eyes. Look deeper. Was it really him?” Mama continued, as if her cryptic message had never been spoken.
Was she right? Was it not really him? I wanted to believe that it was. although I had to admit that something had felt…off. Wrong.
Thinking back, he had lacked his usual smirk and his eyes seemed dead. Like he wasn’t really there. Oh my god! How had I not seen it? How had I just sat there and gone on without questioning what was before me? I’d assumed that it had been another Bacalou or something more sinister that was waiting for me in the shadows of the swamp. The truth dawned on me. Mama was right! He hadn’t even been there.
“Where is Rhys?” I asked. He had to be close by, or so I hoped.
“Close by. It only works if da caster is close by.”
I slammed down the walls within my mind. This was too much all at once and I needed at least a small amount of clarity. I opened my eyes and scanned the clearing. Rhys was still absent, but Mama was standing exactly where she had been in my mind. Her eyes slowly opened and a smile crept across her face, several of her empty spaces showed where teeth should have been as her lips drew taught, curling back with her grin. I took a step towards the woods to begin my search for the missing party to our little crash course in the practice of voodoo, however, I was stopped at the sound of Mama’s tongue clucking in disapproval. My head swiveled in her direction, one eyebrow furrowed and the other raised with questions.
“Ya need to focus,” Mama said harshly. “Not be worrying about what some man is doing. Men are a distraction you cannot afford right now.”
I squared my shoulders and faced her head on, I knew she was right and I had made my feelings obvious by my display, even so, I wasn’t ready to admit that to her or anyone else for that matter.
“How?” I demanded.
“It’s all a trick of the mind. An illusion.”
Beyond Mama, Rhys stepped out of the large tree a short distance behind her. Right out of it! Not jumped down from a branch or opened a hidden door but walked out of the tree like a ghost through a wall. My jaw hung loose, and I found myself unable to form any kind of coherent thought to attempt to explain what I’d just witnessed. He crossed the ten feet or so, to stand beside Mama. Truthfully, I felt insanely out of my depth and rather moronic by the amount of times I’d been rendered entirely speechless in the last week alone. My cheeks heated with frustration. These people had shown me what magic could do and what I was capable of and yet, I was so easily floored by every new feat that was performed before me.
“An illusion?” My voice had found a way to make itself heard before I could even command it to do so.
“Manipulating your surroundings to make a person’s mind see something that isn’t really there,” Rhys explained.
“Would I have seen something else? With my eyes open, I mean?”
“Yes, that’s the trick. And only the strongest practitioners are capable of, not only tricking the eyes, but being able to trick the mind,” Rhys said
“Ya see, da mind sees da truth in da world around us. With some practice, ya can trick da mind into seeing what ya want it to too,” Mama added.
“And how could you do that with the tree?” I inquired.
“An incantation for concealment. It makes me one with the tree I guess you could say, but capable of still being myself and still being able to control what is going on around me. You must remember, however, that there are ways around these things. They can be undone by someone with the power, knowledge, and experience to do so.” The seriousness in Rhys’s tone elicited what spewed from my mouth next.
“Teach me both how to cast them and how to make them unravel.” I was sure of one thing, that I was ready for this. Ready to accept my destiny and take on the unknown.
After several long hours of Rhys trying to aid me into getting into the right mindset, we were still stuck where we’d started. I couldn’t get my mind to shut off and zone out like I would need to. The spark buried in me wanted to be unleashed. Mama had long since abandoned us to our work. Her attention span seemed to rival that of a fidgety five year old. If we weren’t making solid progress, she would just give up trying and move on to other things that caught her interest more. She was collecting various plants from a small patch of growth on the other side of the clearing. It was like a garden but completely uncontained and I was fairly certain it had never been pruned in all of its existence. With the exception of the cabin, the garden was much like that space, untouched and unaltered by man. A real natural beauty.
Rhys noticed my attention to what Mama was doing and gave me a very pointed stare.
“You won’t ever be able to focus and accomplish this if you don’t disengage from all of the surrounding distractions.”
I knew he was right, although even I was getting sick of sitting there and failing repeatedly. I needed something different because this obviously wasn’t working for me. As I looked back and forth between the two, I made my wishes silently known. Rhys understood. He huffed out a deep breath and lifted his hand, gesturing for me to go ahead and join Mama. Maybe I could learn something else and take my mind off of the task of clearing it. A change in the mental scenery for a few moments was vital if I was going to ever get it right. Scrambling to my feet, once permission had been given, I darted across the space
and plopped down next to Mama.
“Do ya know what this one here is?” Mama said, pointing to a plant with eight white petals and a yellow center. I didn’t have the slightest clue.
Shaking my head, I answered, “No, what is it?”
“Bloodroot, this is one ya will want to know very well. It’ll help ya. Bloodroot helps repel negative energies, evil spirits and what have ya. Elder does too, powerful stuff, that is.” Reaching further into the herb garden, she pulled out a long stemmed plant with clusters of yellow flowers on the tips and placed it on the cloth she had laid beside us.
“This here is cowslip. Its got some strong healing properties, this is one ya should keep on your person all da time,” she said gesturing to the yellow flowered plant she had plucked up from the dirt and laid out.
Once, back during my sophomore year in college, I’d taken a plant identification class. We’d spent hours hiking around state parks and even through a few city parks finding various plants. Some of the plants in her garden were familiar. Actually, most were. But not once had anyone in any classes mentioned that they had healing properties and never that they had repulsive properties to negative energy for obvious reasons. Despite my background, this was the first time hearing the holistic properties or the extraordinary ones, either.
We went on like that for another hour or two, talking about dozens of different plants and what they can do given the right set of circumstances. I learned that lavender was perfect for love spells, nettle helped remove curses, and belladonna was a near undetectable poison that can kill, but in very, and I mean very, small doses it helped to aid in astral projection. Astral projection happens to be very similar to what Rhys did in sending his likeness into the clearing as a decoy. After everything Mama had taught me, I was fairly certain I would never need to visit a doctor or a pharmacy again. Instead, I could simply visit her garden. My brain had sucked up the information she was providing like a plant to water after several weeks of drought and I didn’t know I could learn so much at once, it seemed whatever Mama was doing to teach me was working. What had ultimately appeared to be an unkempt plot of wildflowers at first had turned out to be very organized and contained hundreds of different plants for various rituals or potions. It blew my mind to think of everything that could be done with it.