by Unknown
A single deep, red rose caught my eye from its hiding spot tucked under some larger leaves in the back corner of the garden. The precious flower called to me like it was specifically created for me. Destiny. By examining it, I could tell that its petals had opened several days prior from its bud and hadn’t yet begun to wilt. It was so simple, yet it was as elegant as a princess in her court. Solitary in its existence and higher in stature than anything else in its vicinity. I reached over to pluck the rose up and pricked my index finger on one of the long, harsh thorns dotting the stems of the plant. Pulling my finger back, the tiniest drop of blood had begun to well up from the injury. I popped my finger into my mouth, sucking up the metallic tasting liquid until it quit bleeding. Determined to claim the flower for myself, I gripped it just below the receptacle and pulled with a slight twist, popping it off just below my fingers. Lifting it to my nose, I inhaled deeply. The scent was the sweetest and most aromatic I had ever experienced. Perhaps, I could press it into a book and keep it forever as a fond memory of this place. I set it on the ground next to me so I could return my attentions to Mama’s herbal teachings and garden tending.
Mama continued to teach me all of the different herbs and plants like which ones worked well together. I had a decent sized bundle collected that, according to her teachings, would be helpful to repel malevolent spirits and energies. She pulled a small bit of cloth from her pocket on the front of her dress and some cord and handed them to me.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Ya gonna make a gris-gris,” she said it so nonchalantly that I couldn’t help but smirk.
I had heard of gris-gris before but I had never made one. The thought at the front of my mind was saying that I didn’t think that they actually worked. Regardless, I did as the woman asked and packed the herbs tightly into the cloth before tying the cord around its top to close it up.
Showing Mama the gris-gris I asked, “Is this all right?”
She looked it over and chuckled at my attempt. Untying my gris-gris and correcting it, she handed me her not yet made one for me to try again. I made three more gris-gris before I had a successful one that passed inspection at the first look over before moving on with our herbal lesson.
After Mama had taught me about how to properly dry the plants, she turned to me and reached up to lay her hands on my shoulders and said, “Now, try again.”
I instinctively knew that she was talking about clearing my mind for casting with Rhys. In that moment, I also knew that Mama wasn’t just tending to her garden in the clearing while I’d been trying to work with Rhys. She had known I would need an outlet and decided to turn it into a beneficial exercise with knowledge that would help me. The old woman always knew significantly more than she would let on. I glanced over at Rhys, who was lounging on a blanket, munching on an apple while waiting for me to return to my studies. Shoving his legs over to make room, I sat down and faced him. Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I tried to visualize what I wanted. I needed a completely clear mind for any hope of a successful incantation. After a few more moments, I still had nothing. In a last ditch effort, I tried to focus on my own body, releasing tension one muscle at a time until I was completely relaxed. The birds chirping and bugs zipping by stopped for a moment and everything became eerily silent. Then it came. My body filled with the warm tingle of my magic that I had only felt once before, at least I thought so. The nagging voice in the back of my mind was telling me that this was a mildly familiar feeling but I was sure that I had no memory of creating magic before. I could do no more than to chalk it all up to being a weird experience of déjà vu. It started in my chest and radiated outwards. It kept building in my head like a euphoric pressure just waiting for an escape route. Picking up the rose, I focused on remaining an empty vessel so the magic could freely flow. It worked. I was a blank canvas inside waiting for the magic to piece together a masterpiece.
“Kache,” I whispered to the rose daintily perched within my two cupped hands. It was just barely audible. I wasn’t sure how I knew the words. I did know that it was a language I’d never spoken, yet was seemingly fluent in. The two times now that I’d used it, it came out of the darkness within me, along with whatever magic I possessed; I thought the two went hand-in-hand like the words were just a part of how the magic worked or its way of manifesting itself in the physical world.
The rose was nestled there in my palms for a moment and I had begun to think nothing was going to happen, that it hadn’t worked, when there was the faintest of flickers within the rose before it remained solid. I concentrated harder on what I wanted it to do.
“Kache,” I said a bit louder and more forceful. It had confidence behind it while I kept an intense focus on making the rose disappear before me.
The seconds ticked away and then the rose began to fade. There were no flickers this time. No indecision. It just faded until it was transparent and I could see my own palms. Then, the colors faded away, leaving my hands empty of the flower to the naked eye. There was no trace of the vanishing rose, not even the weight of it pressing down into my hands, everything had just evaporated into thin air. My eyes shot to Rhys, who was watching me engrossed in what he was seeing. Without a single doubt in my mind, my face was beaming and I was so excited that I had accomplished something! I had made a rose disappear without any assistance from another person. It was such a small and insignificant accomplishment but I felt powerful! For the first time in my life, I felt like I was powerful and could take matters into my own hands and right some wrongs in the world. My brief high was brought to a halt when I realized how dangerous these powers could be. They could easily become addictive and I could see where other people had gone to such extreme lengths to gain as much of it as they could. I was feeling unstoppable with a tiny concealment spell and there was no telling what would happen if I ever allowed myself to indulge and let loose of those desires to become all powerful.
“Look into your mind, go to the other plane and we will see what we find there,” Rhys said, appearing increasingly enraptured.
I did as he asked. It took me several moments before I stepped into the clearing of the other plane, as Rhys liked to call it. To me, it seemed more like a sixth sense. Kneeling across from Rhys, I peered down into my hands and found that they too were empty. The rose wasn’t there either. Something was wrong, it was only supposed to be an illusion. The rose should have been there when I crossed over to the astral side. Wide eyed, Rhys kept looking back and forth between me and my hands, his mouth moving like a fish out of water. Did that mean…? I rushed back into my physical body and opened my eyes. After a second he opened his as well and shot to his feet. He began rapidly pacing, five or six steps one way then turning around and heading the opposite way. All the while, he was mumbling to himself. It went on for several minutes and occasionally he would stop and regard me like he was about to say something but he wouldn’t and would go back to his incessant pacing. I was sick of it.
“Does this mean what I think it means?” I asked.
“I guess that sort of depends on what you think it means. Now tell me, what did you say when you made it disappear?” His sharp focus was hanging on whatever words would next spill from my lips.
“Kache,” I said simply, as I recalled the old creole word for concealment.
“That’s it? You’re sure you didn’t say anything else at all?”
I shook my head. I knew I hadn’t, but this line of questioning was starting to make me think that there was something wrong. Rhys turned on his heel and ambled towards Mama, who was sitting on a worn out stump just enjoying the swamp around her. I could see his mouth moving, however he was talking to her in hushed tones so that I couldn’t make out any of what was said. He was such an expressive speaker, constantly moving his hands about in exaggerated gestures as he carried on with the conversation. I knew they were talking about me and the vanishing rose. My suspicions were confirmed when Mama gazed directly at me, cocked her head
to a tilt and then proceeded to laugh hysterically until she had to wipe the tears away. Once she’d calmed, she was not anywhere near as quiet as Rhys had been.
“I told ya! More powerful than any of us could ever hope to be,” she said. I recalled her mentioning how Rhys could alter, not only what was seen in the physical world, but in the other plane within the mind too. Would he become resentful of me? Some men hated strong women and I was desperately hoping this wasn’t the case with him. Rhys was grim as he walked back towards me, shaking his head and running his hands through his hair. I thought it was a habit when he became stressed, exasperated, or was just plain dumbfounded. Mama hobbled to her feet and took several moments to straighten herself and loosen up before following in his wake over to me, chuckling the whole way.
“Do you recall our first exercise in concealment and concentration to reach the plane within your mind?” he asked me. I nodded once so he could go on with his explanation. “Well, you did exactly what I did then, sort of.”
“Yeah, I kind of already figured that out,” I said, as if it should be completely obvious to everyone that that was exactly what had happened.
“All right, hot shot, shrink your head a little bit and listen to me.” Mama was standing hunch backed, squinting absently into the forest. I don’t think she was really there with us at that moment.
Rolling my eyes dramatically at Rhys, I popped my hip out to the side and crossed my arms like a petulant teenager who thought she owned the world. I was fairly certain that, anything he was about to say, was going to suck badly.
“And?” I urged him on; he was keeping me on pins and needles waiting like that.
“And… you took it a bit to the extreme.”
“Okay, so what does that mean? I made it invisible in both worlds?”
“Well, actually, it didn’t just become invisible, it is completely gone.”
How could that be? I just wanted it concealed and to vanish, not disappear forever.
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“Ya know when a really strong man is rough housin’ with someone smaller than him and that person gets hurt badly but it was entirely unintentional? That is sort of like what happened just now with you. Ya don’t know your own strength and went a bit overboard.” Mama finally piped up and began contributing to the conversation which was a very good thing because the way Rhys looked said that he didn’t know anything about what she was saying and was just as shocked as I was.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that happening before,” said Rhys.
“Well, that’s probably because it hasn’t happened in two hundred years.” Mama’s eyes were gleaming with excitement.
My stomach dropped at the mention of time passed since someone like her, a powerful priestess, had been around. Only one person stood out in my mind that could have wielded that kind of magic.
“Marie Laveau?” I asked Mama.
She nodded. “Can you teach me how to reign it in and not go completely overboard next time?”
She nodded again. “Yes I can, but it’ll-”
I cut her off by finishing the rest of the sentence that I knew was coming. It was like this woman’s catch phrase. “Take lots of focus and dedication, absolutely no distractions,” I said, laughing and shooting a quick glance to where Rhys stood taking in our exchange. The old woman smiled at my antics. This was going to be a long road to mastery, but I was going to have to hit warp speed. Time was quickly running out for Angie and the blissfully ignorant people of New Orleans.
Chapter TEN
It’s a Dreamer’s World
Later that evening, I was on the verge of falling asleep as I listened to Mama prattle on about one loa or another. My attention span has long since passed and I hadn’t followed much of what she had said, since. No further progress had been made towards tempering my magical strength, however Mama had stayed true to her word. There was a lot of focus on the history of the practice and the Voodoo practitioners and leaders before us. Those had to be mastered before we could move forward to a real application of knowledge. Frankly, there were too many to remember with the exception of my own direct line of ancestry.
I yawned loudly. The sun was dipping lower in the sky. It would be dark soon. Mosquitos buzzed by my ears, regularly reminding me to consciously avoid peaking at the areas of open skin. If I did, I was sure I would end up scratching myself raw.
“Child, ya listening? Ya still with me?” Mama hollered, snapping me out of my distracted reverie.
I nodded, rubbing my eyes, hoping to wake myself up a bit more out of fear of pissing Mama off.
“Well, that about wraps up da history of da voodoo priests and priestesses as we know it,” Mama exclaimed.
I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I was so glad that this personal form of torture was over. History hadn’t been my strong suit in high school and so it would seem that that had not changed at all even through college.
“Now, do we move on to spells and hexes?” I said, my voice full of hope.
“No, now we move on to da history of da Loas.”
I groaned loudly, disappointed in this turn of events.
“Is there a list that I could just read over? Like a list of names and what they preside over.” My stomach began to protest its prolonged emptiness loud enough to be heard all over the clearing.
“No, child, I’m afraid that there isn’t.”
Climbing to my feet, I stood tall and stretched, trying to relax and relieve all of the spots that had grown stiff and tight from such a long time seated in a single position. My joints popped and creaked before I turned to Mama. She was engrossed with one of her dusty books that she held within her hands. She flipped through the pages like she was looking for something specific.
“I will be right back.”
She waved her hand at me. I turned and briskly made my way into the house to grab a bowl of the reheated gumbo. Scanning over the kitchen, I noticed that there were freshly baked biscuits laid out on the counter to cool. I snatched up two of them and made my way back outside to Mama. If I had to sit through another history lesson, I certainly wouldn’t be doing it on an empty stomach. Settling back on the large blanket sprawled out in the clearing, I tore into the food.
Mama set the book she was holding down on the blanket in front of me, open to a very worn page.
“Before we learn about da Loas, you must understand that there are different families of Loas like da Ghede, da Petro, and da Rada,” Mama said, pointing to the page that lay open. “Da Petro are sort of a grey area within voodoo, not all good but not all bad. Da Rada are benevolent. Da Ghede are much darker, carnal and sexual in nature. They are da Loas of da dead.”
I flipped the page and examined the ink drawing of what I assumed was Loas of the Ghede family dancing naked around a fire while sacrifices were being made. The caption beneath read, Ghede. Mama continued to explain the various roles of more than a dozen different Loas and how they all formed a family much like Greek mythology and the Olympic gods. The most memorable of which was Papa Legba. He was the Loa that bridged the gap between the gods and all of humanity and every ritual began with a prayer to Legba to open the gates to contact any other Loa.
After another hour and a half, we retired into the house. I was completely exhausted and made my way through the house towards my room, pausing by the couch to say good night to Rhys, but he wasn’t there. I hadn’t seen him outside in a while and had been sure that he had come inside with nothing better to do for the time being. However, it seemed that he hadn’t been inside in quite some time.
“Mama? Where did Rhys go?” I asked loudly so she could hear me in the other room.
“Da boy had some business to take care of.”
She didn’t say any more than that, letting me know that the conversation on the topic was over. I was almost too tired to care that he wasn’t there with me, although the pangs of worry kept me from moving towards my door. Mama’s silhouette darkened the doorway.<
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“Don’t worry ‘bout him. He’s a big boy and can take care of himself.” She was right, however it didn’t ease my mind much. I made my way to my room, and kicked the door shut behind me. I flung myself down on the bed and wondered where Rhys had gone. Had he gone back to New Orleans for more news? Was he going to try and take on whatever was happening by himself? I fell asleep like that. Laying fully clothed on my bed, I fell into a fitful sleep almost instantly.
Everything was dark. I stood in the clearing behind the house completely alone, or so I thought. My heart was urging me to find Rhys, for some reason I didn’t move from my spot to begin my search for him. The moon was high and full overhead, illuminating the clearing around me, but it wasn’t nearly bright enough to penetrate the pitch black of the swamp. Not being able to see what was lurking just outside of the light barrier set me on edge. My tiny neck hairs started to rise. I was on high alert, searching left and right.
Something was there.
I was sure of it. I twisted around to check behind me, and found nothing there, not even the house. Where had it gone? Was this a dream? It had to be; houses didn’t just disappear. I vaguely remembered falling asleep on my bed.
I couldn’t hear anything beyond my own breathing, but I could feel something. Something was moving beyond my line of sight. Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm myself. If I were to face off with it, I needed to be sharp and keep my wits about me.
“Maya Thibodeau,” a deep reverberating voice, thick with an exotic accent I couldn’t place, boomed through the clearing. It came from no specific location that I could pin point. I spun trying to find whoever was out there. “I have heard so much ‘bout you. ‘Tis my pleasure to finally meet you.” The deep voice came from behind me and I whirled towards the sound.