Illusion

by Martina Boone

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Emerging from the dimness of the woods with Pru, Barrie found the yunwi waiting for her in a solemn row, their upturned faces content and beaming as she approached. They darted away again, but they seemed more distinct than usual, more solid and readable. At least they were clearer to Barrie—Pru still didn’t seem to see them.

  “Sugar, are you sure you’re all right?” Pru gave Barrie another concerned glance as they crossed the lawn. “I need to bring the horses in before it gets too hot, but maybe you should go on back to the house.”

  Barrie shook her head. “I feel wonderful, actually. Like I drank a few pots of coffee but without the caffeine jitters. If only we could bottle that stuff.”

  “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Maybe it’s something to do with the binding?”

  “Just promise me you won’t check out on me like that again,” Pru said, rounding the corner to the front of the house. “Don’t go back into the woods. Maybe my father wasn’t as wrong as you’ve been thinking he was.”

  “He couldn’t have been more wrong,” Barrie said, promising nothing.

  Around the front of the house, the white peacock had his tail fanned out, displaying it for the three peahens who waddled in front of him as he half-turned and moved out of Barrie’s path. Pru set the shotgun down on the front steps leading up to the portico, then crossed to the pasture beyond the oak-lined lane. Accompanied by yunwi, the horses galloped toward them along the fence, with Miranda in the lead. Despite her heavier build, the mare’s long black mane, tail, and feathered Friesian legs gave her the appearance of floating on air, while the gelding bucked and kicked up his heels. They came to the gate, and Miranda arched her neck as she blew against Barrie’s palm.

  Barrie laughed. “Sorry, sweet girl. I didn’t bring you anything.”

  “Here. Try this.” Pru dug into the pocket that didn’t contain gun-shell casings and pulled out a couple of crumbling lumps of sugar.

  Barrie took one. She stood beside Pru, their shoulders touching while Miranda gently lipped the sugar from her palm. The tickle of Miranda’s whiskers, the yunwi milling underfoot, Pru’s acceptance—all of it was humbling. It was Barrie’s responsibility to protect the quiet peace of Watson’s Landing. She was supposed to have answers, but all she managed to find were more questions and confusion.

  She snapped the lead rope onto Miranda’s halter and followed as Pru led Batch away.

  “On the bright side,” Pru called back over the softened thuds of the horses’ hooves, “maybe Obadiah was wrong about the lodestone being buried in the woods, if you didn’t find it. At least that makes his original threat to dig it up less worrisome.”

  “I’m not so sure. There was something. . . . It was hard to isolate with all that energy, but that wouldn’t matter if Obadiah resorted to using a shovel.”

  “Then what’s to stop him from coming over here and taking the lodestone for himself if you refuse to give it to him?”

  “The yunwi didn’t seem able to do much when he was here before, but the Fire Carrier killed Wyatt and Ernesto to protect me. If Obadiah isn’t meant to have it, the stone is safe enough.”

  Pru stopped abruptly at the corner of the stable building. Batch kept walking until the slack in the lead rope ran out, and then he turned over his shoulder and gave Pru a look of resentful resignation.

  “Barrie, there’s something I need to tell you,” Pru said, “and I don’t suppose there’s ever going to be a good time to say it. We didn’t want to worry you any more that night after you’d already been through so much, but the police aren’t certain that Ernesto died in the explosion.”

  Dry-mouthed, Barrie patted Miranda distractedly as the mare suddenly tossed her head. “He did. He must have—his body washed out to sea or got eaten by alligators. That’s what everyone said.”

  Or had they?

  Barrie replayed the conversations—the various times when she had said Ernesto was dead. Had Eight or even Pru and Seven ever definitively said it? She thought of the way Pru went white at the mention of his name. The odd silences.

  Barrie’s internal elevator lurched again, knocking her off-kilter, and she had to start walking to let her body catch up with a rush of memories and adrenaline—Wyatt and Ernesto unloading drugs from the speedboat at the Colesworth dock as she came stumbling out of the woods, Ernesto’s face behind the gun, Ernesto kicking her, he and her uncle, Wyatt, dragging her out onto the boat to take her out to sea and kill her. The boat exploding as she jumped into the river.

  Leading Miranda around Batch, Barrie walked into the duller heat of the stable building with its sweet smells of horse and hay, but even that wasn’t as comforting as usual. The scrolled mahogany door of Miranda’s stall was open, and a trickle of pinewood shavings lay in curls along the wide concrete aisle, rocking lightly in the breeze from an overhead fan.

  Barrie turned Miranda loose in the stall and came back out to stand in the aisle. “Did you ever really believe he was dead?” she asked, carefully watching Pru. “Or did you and Seven and Eight all know from the beginning? I can’t believe that Eight was keeping this secret even when he accused me of betraying him.”

  “We weren’t positive. We still aren’t. Eight spotted him swimming right after the explosion, but by the time Eight had swum across to make sure you were safe, Ernesto was gone. He probably drowned after Eight saw him. He had to have been badly injured, and the police searched and didn’t see any evidence that he’d gone ashore anywhere.”

  Beside Barrie, Miranda scraped her steel shoe impatiently on the ground, but Barrie’s stomach had seized into a knot, and she closed her eyes against another cluster of images: the explosion, the smell of burning fuel, the debris raining onto the water, and the fear . . . so much fear.

  “You’d been through too much already,” Pru said. “You understand, don’t you? None of us knew how strong you were. You didn’t know that yourself. It seemed pointless to worry you until the police had done a thorough search.”

  “Should I be worried? Did the police find anything?” Barrie held her hand out to the yunwi who had gathered around her to offer comfort.

  Batch’s hooves gave a final scrape on the concrete as Pru led him into his stall, and then her voice was muffled by the dividing partition. “Nothing definitive. There’ve been a few rental properties broken into at the edge of town and out on Saint Helena Island, but that could be anyone. The sheriff’s convinced that even if Ernesto did survive, he’d be long gone down to some Quintero Cartel safe house far away from here.”

  Trying, and failing miserably, not to be angry, Barrie stood and watched Miranda snuffle at the flake of hay laid down in the corner. Pru came to stand in the doorway of the stall.

  “Seems to me we’re all trying too hard to take care of one another, and what we ought to be doing is spending more time talking,” Pru said. “It’s like these stalls. There was no need for you to get up so early. I would have come to help if you’d told me you were going to do them.”

  Barrie scanned the stall and took in the clean bedding, the full water bucket, and the grain waiting in the feed bin. The flake of hay Miranda was eating was only just starting to lose its rectangular shape. Everything she and Pru had come out to do for the horses was already done, and a couple of yunwi looked up at her from where they stood pressed against her legs, while others peeked out from both sides of the door behind Pru, their body language mischievous, shy, and proud of themselves all at once. A soundless giggle vibrated in her ears.

  “Thank you,” she said, but then she shook her head because it felt wrong for them to do so much when she was doing so little. “But don’t do this again without me, all right?”

  “Who are you talking to?” Pru asked.

  “It was the yunwi who cleaned the stalls for us, which proves my point from last night. They help without even being asked. The Fire Carrier wouldn’t need to protect his tribe from them, so there has to be another reason why they’re he
re.”

  Leaning against her or with their hands touching hers, the yunwi were clearer than ever, their faces less shadowy. But they were still too shapeless for Barrie to distinguish one from another by features alone. There were expressions that she recognized, though. Individuals that she was coming to know, and she had the impression they were allowing her to come to know them.

  Her heart swelled all over again with the certainty that she had to protect them. They trusted her, and if the Fire Carrier had brought them to Watson Island to keep them safe, then the bargain had to, at least in part, be about keeping them from harm. The world was full of ugly things and dangerous people.

  No matter what else happened, she couldn’t risk having Obadiah break the binding until she knew what would happen to the yunwi, not just in her lifetime but in the future. Who would watch over them and Watson’s Landing in the generations to come?

  Maybe that was another component of the binding. Being able to see the yunwi and feel the land the way she did since being bound, she had come to understand how special this place and the yunwi were, but not everyone would react that way. Without the binding, how many Watson heirs would choose to stay here? Giving someone a choice was always a leap of faith. Barrie had realized that yesterday when Eight had walked away from her.

  She gave Miranda a final pat and closed the stall door with a snick. “Last night, I asked you to question Seven about the Beaufort lodestone, but if you haven’t done it yet, please don’t. I don’t want Eight feeling like I’m feeling now, at least any more than he does already. If Seven told you anything he hasn’t told Eight yet, it would make Eight feel more betrayed.”

  “What about Obadiah?” Pru coiled Batch’s lead rope into three neat loops across her palm.

  “At this point, I’m more convinced than ever that we can’t risk breaking the bindings, so Obadiah will have to find another solution. For all we know, he may already have one, but he’ll never admit it as long as he thinks he can get the lodestones from me. Hopefully, meeting Daphne will give him extra incentive to be forthcoming,” Barrie said, smiling with more certainty than she felt.

  Her confidence had dipped even lower by the time she and Daphne had entered the tunnel some forty minutes later. The lemony beam of Daphne’s flashlight played along the brick walls and long, arched ceiling and swept the niches built to house the oil lanterns that had lit the tunnel back when it had been built as a means of escape off the island. As usual, the darkness of the tunnel and the ghosts of the past closed in around Barrie, along with the sheer volume of earth above her that seemed to press down onto her shoulders. Daphne was silent, and her posture was stiff as they crossed beneath the river. Her expression was impossible to read. She always kept herself so contained that it was as though she had stuffed herself into a box that was too small and she was simultaneously trying to keep herself in and struggling to escape.

  “What do you think of all this? Obadiah and the curse?” Barrie’s voice echoed hollowly off the bricks as they reached the Beaufort side of the tunnel, where the floor began to slope gently upward again.

  “I’m not sure how much I ever believed in all Gramma’s superstitions before. I mean, I knew about the Fire Carrier and the yunwi and the gifts in principle, the way everyone around here knows it. But now that I know that the curse could affect our family, too, I’m worried that I’ll blame it any time something goes wrong. What if I can’t postpone the scholarship, or if Brit doesn’t get into the trial, or if Jackson gets hurt again? I’ll always wonder if that was the curse, and I don’t want to be tempted to use it as an excuse or a justification the way the Colesworths do. I don’t want to become like them.”

  “The fact that you’re asking the question probably means you wouldn’t become like them,” Barrie said, “but I guess we never know the truth of ourselves until we’re tested.”

  The key turned smoothly in the new lock, and Barrie used her shoulder to push open the heavy door, emerging in the small stairwell in the woods between the Beaufort and Colesworth properties. Overhead, through the metal grating camouflaged by leaves and branches, bits of sky hurried past carrying the promise of potential rain.

  After she and Daphne had climbed from the stairwell, Barrie locked the grating and covered it with leaves again before leading Daphne out through the woods to the Colesworth beach. Together, they climbed the path above the fire-scarred dock. Around them, kudzu and wisteria blanketed the hillside, engulfing trees, shrubs, and entire structures. At the top of the rise, Colesworth Place suddenly stretched out, the lawn and outbuildings still dominated by the mansion ruins.

  Near the trees that screened the slave cabins from where the house had been, a row of domed tents had sprung up again overnight like mushrooms, signaling that the archaeologists were back. The brightly colored nylon surfaces strained against the wind that blew off the river, and like the police tape and the sheriff’s car, the tents looked anachronistic against the backdrop that seemed too deeply rooted in the past.

  Arms wrapped around her waist in a self-protective gesture, Daphne stared past the tents to the tiny cabins where entire families had lived, where her own ancestors had lived. “It’s strange to be here,” she said. “To see all this. I’ve never wanted to. A lot of folks were mad about Wyatt restoring these old buildings and charging people to come and look. Others were upset because Cassie and her drama club were putting on Gone with the Wind at night in front of the ruins. I guess everyone’s got opinions, but I always figured it was all about how much power you wanted to give something. I just wasn’t about to help the Colesworths make money from something that never should have happened in the first place.”

  Barrie looked around, trying to see the place through Daphne’s eyes, or Obadiah’s. She couldn’t, but it was all too easy to remember the outrage she had felt the night when the spirits of Alcee and Ann Colesworth had brought the Civil War back to life. The fact that their ghosts seemed to have been laid to rest with the discovery of their daughter’s body down in the hidden room seemed an even more cruel twist of fate, when the spirits of Ayita and Elijah were still chained to the same room where John Colesworth had confined them.

  “Does it bother you that Watson’s Landing was open to tourists?” Barrie couldn’t help asking. “Or about the restaurant? I never even questioned any of this when I first got here. I should have.”

  “Watson’s Landing is about the house and gardens. It’s like any other big house. But this?” Daphne gestured around at the slave cabins, kitchens, and outbuildings that Wyatt had so painstakingly restored. “The Colesworth family is still making money from my family’s suffering. Maybe if Wyatt had put in some exhibits when he’d restored the buildings, or if you could see the mansion and how the Colesworth family lived in contrast to the people who gave them the wealth to live that way . . . Even that wouldn’t be enough.”

  Barrie wasn’t sure how to answer that, wasn’t even sure she had the right to say anything when her own ancestors had owned slaves, too. She held her hand out, and Daphne’s fingers closer around her own.

  “Tell me what Obadiah is like,” Daphne said. “Is he bitter? Or angry? It could have made him both, living through what he did.”

  Barrie scanned the area for him while she considered what to say. “I think he’s tired. Maybe after you’ve seen that much cruelty, tired is all that’s left.”

  • • •

  At the dig site, the archaeologists hadn’t wasted any time. Except for Berg, the students were hauling replacement shovels, trowels, and brushes into the overseer’s cabin, where the headquarters and cleaning tables had been set up. Stephanie, the second in command, was re-covering the big frames with screens for sifting soil, and Andrew Bey, the grad student in charge of the day-to-day work for Dr. Feldman, had already reburied the iron rebar datum in an even larger bed of concrete. Using it as the measuring point, he and Berg had been marking fresh grid lines with twine and flags of orange tape. The perimeter of the buried chamber was still roped
off with yellow tape.

  Spotting Barrie and Daphne, Berg broke away and strode toward them, his footsteps silent, his eyes squinting against the sunlight but missing nothing. Even in his cargo shorts and faded plain blue T-shirt, he had the posture of a soldier, and the sharp attention of a former Marine sniper. Barrie wondered how anyone could ever mistake what he was. What he had been.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get ahold of you,” he said when Barrie had performed the introductions and trotted out her prepared excuse about looking for an earring she had lost.

  “Why?” Barrie asked, more curious than alarmed, until he caught her arm and pulled her aside with a mumbled apology to Daphne.

  When they had some semblance of privacy, he pushed a hand through his white-blond hair as if he didn’t know where to begin. “I’ve been thinking through what happened yesterday,” he finally said, “and things don’t add up. The stolen equipment and the damage at the dig site, that wasn’t a coincidence. Someone wanted to make us leave.”

  “Sure. Ryder and Junior did that.”

  “No one could pull a chunk of rebar and concrete the size of the datum out of the ground and throw it thirty feet without making any noise. Someone had to have drugged the whole dig crew to keep us from all waking up. Someone who could come close enough to dose the water or the coffee. Cassie’s the only person who was out here that night.”

  Barrie forced herself to look at him. To be convincing. “That’s crazy,” she said. “You know Cassie wouldn’t drug you.”

  “Then who?” Berg’s forehead furrowed. “What’s really going on? Cassie called me early last night, asking about finding someone to help her with her flashbacks, and I told her I’d bring some names with me when I came out this morning. Then suddenly, she was out here first thing, trying to convince me to leave and to talk Dr. Feldman and Andrew into postponing the dig. She was barely coherent when I tried to tell her that wasn’t going to happen. We’re a week away from opening up that room. No one’s going to stop now.”