by Diane Butler
By December Mutt had become more obedient to Brandon’s commands. He had stopped his nightly watch on the levee and would bunk down with Brandon in the riverboat Jenny, and he stopped randomly attacking zombies. But Mutt would still carry out his watch of the sugar field during the day although he had moved from the tree to sunlight for the winter’s warmth. If he saw Z’s approach on the highway he would hide in the house along with the residents. But if he saw a zombie come through the sugar field he would still attack those and tear them apart.
***
Roxanne’s progress was slow during the following months and each time she was conscious she would find out new things about herself or her surroundings but her name still eluded her. Shoes could see that the girl was hesitant to drink the tonics and potions that she prepared so she began to explain what they consisted of and their purpose. She thought perhaps the girl feared that she was being poisoned. Not knowing how the girl received her injuries or by whom, Shoes assumed that the girl had been drugged and some part of that memory made her suspicious of the potions that Shoes prepared. “Just Spirit Beans. Makes a nice tonic and I added clover for Vitamin A and C.” Eventually Roxanne could lift her hands to take the cup herself instead of Shoes holding it for her.
“Sorry about the hands,” Shoes said. “Did my best on them but I wanted to get to your back first. Everything was infected and you had a raging fever.” Shoes had been talking as she removed the bandages from Roxanne’s wrists, “It’s not going to be pretty but at least your hands are becoming functional again. Hope you aren’t weak hearted.” Roxanne could only stare at the disfiguration of her wrists. Several deep embedded rows of puckered skin were black and blue with new skin a bright pink. “I tried to push the skin back into place with ointments and binding, but they were pretty raw with nothing for me to work with. Had been like that for a couple of days before I found you and they were already permanently distorted into that shape.” Shoes reached over and put her hand on Roxanne’s knee, “Do you remember being tied up?” Roxanne slowly shook her head, not taking her eyes off her wrists. “The mind hides from what it doesn’t want to remember to protect your sanity. Take it as a good omen that you don’t remember.”
“Bend your fingers for me,” Shoes asked. “Your flexor tendon was damaged in your right hand and you may not have the ability to bend your fingers anymore.” With difficulty Roxanne was able to bend three of her fingers. “Not good, but we’ll work on it.” She looked up at Roxanne, “Do you know how to fight? Can you hold a knife in your left hand?” Roxanne suddenly had two images swiftly cross her vision. One image was of pulling a knife up into someone’s chest cavity and one of smashing someone’s head against metal. Both visions were fragmented and were gone as swiftly as they came. “Yes,” she whispered. “I know how to fight.”
“Well, you’ll be learning all over again. You’ll need to find a new method if we can’t get those fingers to work.” Shoes paused and squinted at the girl, “You do know of how the world is today, do you not? You know of the Sousoon-Pannan that has come back?”
“Sousoon-Pannan?”
“Yes, spirits that are evil and ugly with a body covered in sores. You know that they have come back from the dead?”
“The dead?” Roxanne asked with confusion. “You mean the Zombies?”
Shoes rocked while she sat on the floor, “Ah, yes I have heard of some who call them by that name. Others call them 'Limba' because they have insatiable hunger and eat people. I don’t have a problem with them back here because they cannot get through the swamp but the market place has had problems. I need to make a run since I’m low on everything but I did not want to leave you in this condition. I especially need antibiotics since my herbs are not a cure-all for everything. Almost lost you a couple of times.”
Roxanne looked up, “Antibiotics? There are no antibiotics, no food, no water and no shelter anymore.” This was the longest sentence the girl had managed and Shoes was surprised at the topic which had brought the girl out of her daze. “Black market,” Shoes replied. “Down here in the Bayou we can get anything we want for a price. I don’t ask how they got it or where they got it but we are very resourceful down here.”
Shoes had been suspicious that the girl may not have been a victim and that her attack represented revenge against someone else. She leaned forward so she could see Roxanne’s eyes and body language and asked, “Were you a part of that for someone? The Black Market? Were you a leader’s woman? A leader who is hated and feared, an unjust leader?”
***
Lucky, Morgan and Caleb moved out of their cabins and into the plantation house, along with Brandon moving off of the riverboat and joining the group in the house. Zombies were becoming more prevalent and no one wanted to be separated from the group. It was also becoming too cold and the firewood supply did not allow everyone to have their own hearth. Each person gave up their individual bedroom, including Terry and everyone put a mattress down in the largest bedroom that had a fireplace. They cleared out all the furniture and stacked it on the portico leading up from the grounds as an additional barrier against zombies climbing to the first floor.
Both Brandon and Toby would start their boats at least twice a week to make sure things were running smoothly in case they needed to abandon the plantation quickly. Terry found that the attic was filled with Christmas decorations for holiday functions at the plantation and against everyone’s wishes she decorated the dining room. She seemed oblivious that everyone had lost family members in the ZA and that it brought back memories which caused additional depression after the loss of Roxanne.
Mutt started sleeping with them at night although he slept alone and did not cuddle up with anyone the way he did with Roxanne when they were on the trail. He no longer watched the plantation from the levee at night nor did he sit outside all day to watch the sugar cane field. However, he would make a search of the field twice a day disappearing among the rows each morning and evening before nightfall. He stopped barking and running out to attack zombies and would watch them pass by the plantation while sitting at the windows of the ballroom. Sometimes he would get up and begin to pace the floor when he saw the Z’s as if he wanted to go out and attack or examine them but as soon as the herd passed he would sit back down and wait for the next herd. He friended no one but Brandon always made sure he wasn’t forgotten at meal time.
Shoes was unwrapping the girl’s ankles when the door to her cabin was pushed open and Cowboy dropped a Nutria inside. “Cowboy, I thank you for the beaver, but could you push it inside and close the door? It’s cold outside” Shoes said. “Our guest is awake. Come meet her.”
Roxanne stared at the coyote which she had not seen since one of her short periods of consciousness. She thought it had been a dream and was surprised to see the animal at the door. Her hand automatically went to her hip as if she expected to find a weapon there. The reaction confused her, but then she found that most of her reactions were unexplainable to her. Cowboy nudged the carcass further into the cabin and then turned to close the door with her head. It stood there for a moment then turned its head to look at Roxanne. “Don’t look it in the eye for long girl, or she will see it as a challenge,” Shoes said. Roxanne looked down at the floor where she was sitting but knew that Cowboy was slowly creeping up on her. She looked back up again and the coyote stopped. Regardless of the caution by Shoes, their eyes locked and each could see an understanding between them. Roxanne could feel a memory trying to seep back to her and wanting to remember so badly she slowly put her hand out to Cowboy.
Shoes watched this with curiosity and set the binding aside that she had just removed from Roxanne’s ankles. Cowboy continued to slowly advance to the girl and began to sniff her hand, then further up her arm. The girl began to stroke the coyote’s mane and then leaned forward to let Cowboy lick her face. She suddenly realized that her cheek was still bandaged and turned to Shoes, “I want these off.” At first Shoes did not move, still mesmerized by the scene of Cowboy sitting dow
n next to the girl. “Please?”
Shoes shook herself out of her daze and slid over the floor to Roxanne, “It’s not going to be pretty but I don’t have any mirrors here so you won’t be able to look anyway. Don’t keep mirrors because they are a way for evil spirits to enter the house.” The symbol carved into the girl’s cheek was another reason why Shoes thought that the girl had not been a random victim and could be a leader’s woman. Down one cheek an “S” had been carved to symbolize a scarlet woman.
Roxanne reached up to touch her face and could feel only part of the indentations because of the limited ability that she had in her right hand. The feeling had not come back to those 2 fingers and she had begun to practice picking up items without using those fingers because they could not hold anything without slipping out of her grasp again. She switched to her left hand and could feel that most of her face was deeply scared. “My concern was infection and that was why I was using a poultice,” Shoes said. “Now that the bandages are off I will switch to Bear See Root as a salve and perhaps we can smooth the scars out some.” To take the girls mind off the disfiguration she attempted to change the subject.
“Are you a follower of Artemis?” Shoes asked. The girl continued to touch her face and did not respond but then Cowboy did a strange thing that made Shoes gasp. The coyote leaned over and began to lick the girl’s cheek on the undamaged side, to which the girl turned so Cowboy could do the same to her wounds. The girl winced from the coyote’s rough tongue on the cuts, then she ran her hand across Cowboys face to the back of the ear and both bowed their foreheads together. Shoe’s heart was beating so fast that she thought it would stop as she watched them stay in that position with their foreheads together. She wondered if she had found a priestess of a cult unknown to her.
When she was able to find her voice Shoes managed to whisper the question again. “Are you a follower of Artemis?” They broke apart from their contact and the girl finally turned to look at Shoes as Cowboy lay down with her head on the girl’s leg.
The girl smiled and shook her head as she put her hand on Cowboy’s shoulder, “I don’t know this word, ‘Artemis’.
“Artemis is a goddess of wild animals and the wilderness. You seem to have an affinity with Cowboy. Do you follow the tradition or worship the Artemis goddess?”
Again Roxanne shook her head and continued to pet Cowboy, “I know nothing of this cult. Why the name Cowboy since you know the coyote is a female?”
Shoes shrugged her shoulders, “Just seemed fittin’. I don’t always understand things that come to me. I just know that they should be. Found her caught in a trap and nursed her back to health. Ordinarily a trapped animal will not let you near them, but Cowboy was smart enough to know I was there to help. It was touch and go though, since quite often she wanted to snap my hand off as I was treating her. Once she was able to walk on that leg again she didn’t bother to stick around but she visits me from time to time and brings me presents of gratitude, like the beaver. I have never received the affection that she just gave you. Have you any idea why?”
The girl looked down at the coyote, “There is something familiar there but I can’t grasp it. When Cowboy walks in I come very close to remembering something. Whatever it is, it is not traumatic. It is a good memory but…, but it is still too far away for me to grasp it.”
“Well, you are not from the South,” Shoes said. “You do not have a southern accent from any of the southern states. Doesn’t mean that you have traveled from the north during the year of the Sousson. You could have been in one of the cities on business or vacation and got caught up in it and could not get back home. Can you remember any home, or weather like deep snow or tornadoes that would help to signify a location?”
“Nothing, but I know I can fight. I know of the zombies and of the ZA as we call it, but I can’t remember anything else.”
“We? You said ‘the ZA as we call it’. Who is we?”
The girl put her hand to her head and whispered, “I don’t know.”
Once that the bindings were removed from Roxanne’s ankles she needed to learn to walk again. The Achilles tendon had ruptured in one ankle so the left leg was worse than the right. She had the same deep indentations on her ankles as her wrists with the skin puckered into rows of black which would never go away. She could not walk without holding onto the table or Shoe’s bed frame for support. Shoes was standing next to the wood stove with a bowl in one arm and a spoon in the other, mixing up a poultice to relieve the girls pain after her third attempt of the day. The girl was determined to be able to run again and Shoes was starting to recognize the inner fight and courage that the girl had.
“No one did that to you Girl. You did that to yourself pulling against your restraints. You must have had a lot of strength back then. Perhaps you were able to break loose on your own and managed to push their canoe out into the stream to float downriver. But I didn’t see any broken strands still tied on you so I don’t know if they marked you and purposely sent you downstream as a warning to someone.”
The girls face was white from the agony of trying to walk making the red scar on her face to become more noticeable. She was breathing heavily as she sat down on Shoes bunk and asked, “Why would you think that? Don’t you know everyone around here? And you definitely don’t know me so if there was a new ‘leader’ as you have referred to in the area you would have heard about him.” She looked down at the floor, “I don’t remember anyone. For all I know I have been alone all this time. I only feel a kinship toward Cowboy.” She looked up and smiled, “Maybe you are right about this Artemis. Maybe I traveled with animals and was trapped like one. Or maybe,” she looked down again, “I was trapped by humans that are animals.” She sighed and got off the bed to go to her pallet on the floor so Shoes could put the poultice on. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I will be able to run again and use my hands again to protect myself. I’m using up all your supplies and herbs and I need to start contributing to the household.”
Shoes knelt down to apply the cream and noticed that the Girl’s face was beaded in sweat even though the room was cold and they both had blankets around their shoulders. “I would still like to get to the market for those antibiotics. I don’t think that the infection has fully left your body yet and I have done all that I can. Maybe I can get Cowboy to sit with you while I’m gone and I’d like to find out if there are rumors about a new group in the area. I would like to find a Protector for you too but I don’t know of anyone in the area who I would trade you with.”
“Trade? A Protector?”
“Yes, a man looking for a wife. You need protection and the pickin’s slim what with your hobbled feet and useless hand. You may have been a pretty woman at one time but no one is going to want a woman who is both marked and helpless.”
Roxanne pushed herself up on her elbows to look at Shoes, “I don’t want to be a wife to any man,” she said vehemently. “I will walk and run again. I will learn to fight with my left hand if my right doesn’t work. I want to learn everything that you know about potions and herbs, about the plants and which to eat. I want to learn about the animals in this area, the birds, the alligators, the beaver and their habitats. I will build my own cabin or take over one that has been abandoned and live as you have.” Out of breath and weakened by her exercise she laid back and threw her arm across her eyes.
“Took me a lifetime to learn all the things that you want to learn in a winter” Shoes replied. “It was a way of life for me, passed down from generation to generation and you need to have a gift for some of it. You need to have “the sight” to know what potions or herbs would be useful to someone. I sell or trade my wares for supplies and folks around here know what days to meet me at the marketplace, or if they are desperate they will come deeper into the swamp to find me. Sometimes even I make a wrong turn or miss a channel and need to go back to get my bearings again. I know that you are a determined woman, but you are disillusioned on this one.”
&
nbsp; She finished massaging Roxanne’s legs and realized that the girl had not said anything and was still lying back with her arm across her eyes. She leaned over to touch her arm and felt how clammy it was. Upon removing the girls arm Shoes saw that her face was beaded in sweat and that she had passed out. It gave her a sudden fright and she leaned back on her haunches knowing that the girl was collapsing again.
A sudden draft in the room caused Shoes to turn and see that Cowboy was in the doorway. Surprised that Cowboy should show up just when needed she asked, “The girl called to you, did she?”
***
Shoes bathed the girl with cold water most of the night while Cowboy lay against her as if trying to pass some of her strength to Roxanne. Shoes began to wonder if the girl had some sort of power over animals but did not know how to use it yet. Perhaps she could be useful if Shoes could help her to bring that power out and use it to her advantage. She admitted to herself that the girl made her nervous and could possibly be part human and part Loa or a spirit that was trapped in the human body.
She did not like having to make a special trip to the market in winter with the days short which would cause her to travel part of the way in darkness. Her eyes were not as good as they used to be and she could easily miss a channel. Spirits love the marsh at night and she did not want to be fighting those off too. Lou, the owner of the market will immediately know that something was wrong to see her in winter and she did not like prying questions.