Cinnamon smiled. “This black-and-white drawing is photographic, like from an old horror movie or a dream. Paris is muddy shadows and ominous specks of light creeping toward the Eiffel Tower, which is dark and dramatic, drop-dead cool, looming against a smoky gray sky that’s so vague ’cause it’s the near edge of infinity.” Klaus and Marie nodded. “That necklace of lights around the lower platform, above the stocky tower-legs, is eerie, winking and signaling to the ones who can read the signs.”
“The lights are flashing. Can you see that?” Klaus let his mouth hang open again.
“Yes,” Marie replied. “We all see it, right?”
“Right,” Cinnamon assured her. As the video-drawing pulsed brighter, her tongue tingled with too many words, coming at the speed of light. “Something weird is about to go down. Over there in the background.”
“I see it.” Klaus pounded a pillow.
“Me too.” Marie bounced up and down. “Whoever cares about the background? The star, the important big shit, is always in the foreground.”
“This is an unruly background.” Klaus pointed at undulating dark shapes.
Marie smacked his finger. “Darkness breaking the rules, not sticking to the script — in my book, that’s a good thing.”
“Did I say unruly was bad?” Klaus said. “My book has the same good things as yours.”
Cinnamon sucked up their excitement. “The weird over in the corner, calling down lightning, is fronting like it’s background as usual for the real picture. It’s whispering, Don’t notice me, don’t notice me. Quiet as it’s kept, the weird is the real story.”
Klaus did eerie sound effects, a door creaking, shoes squeaking, spirits knocking and sighing. Marie added a few high notes from the stratosphere. Cinnamon stroked a bristly patch of black in the lower-left-hand corner. Static zapped her fingertips.
“A few spears of lightning are tickling these big gray hulks. What are they, a forest, factory, sleeping giant? Too big, too lazy to get up out of the storm? I mean, usually, a little lightning ain’t nothing to those ole smug giants. They’re grounded. But here comes the weird from another dimension, and what do sleepy giants know about that? They see what giants expect to see, how everybody does, and that’s why things slip up on us, slip by even, a done deal before we notice. The weird from another dimension in the corner is, is an inside-out black hole, a space between things. That’s what the whole picture is about. The weird from another dimension is controlling that horizontal figure-eight lightning bolt, riding low in the sky just above the weird.”
“Cloud to cloud lightning, caught in the act.” Marie’s eyes were huge enchanted pools again. She was trancing. Klaus was in the zone too.
Cinnamon’s hand hovered over the Eiffel Tower. “The obvious spectacle is those three bright bolts slamming the iron lady’s peak. They got enough megawatts surging from heaven to Earth and back to animate Frankenstein, his bride, and light up a world-class city. It’s nowhere near enough power to wake Daddy up, though. Not yet.” Cinnamon drooped. Why was she talking about Daddy? “I don’t know. Maybe there’s actually a power surge coming from the tower too. Eiffel built his tower for miracle moments like this, and the guy who took the photo must have been a wild obsessed artiste, braving the elements for a beautiful vision, you know? The Wanderer’s a courageous artist too, drawing the iron lady in our world, in our universe, but also in the Wanderer space-place too. It’s a big risk, but he/she went ahead and drew the weird from another dimension in the corner, in the shadows. So we’ve got Eiffel’s power mixing with the photographer’s and Wanderer Taiwo’s…”
“And mixing with our power,” Marie said.
“Amped by our power,” Klaus said.
A rush of that amped power raced along Cinnamon’s nerve network — not only sex, every power thing about them. They were hoodooing each other. “All that energy combined is bolting from the top of the iron lady. Definitely something that Eshu would orchestrate. Ashe, the power to make things be, the energy of the spaces between things… Eshu is trying to let us see what we can’t see in what we always see. What?”
Marie was trembling.
“Am I losing you all?” Cinnamon thought they were right with her.
Marie huffed a ragged breath.
Cinnamon shook her head. “We got this.”
“So keep going.” Klaus put a finger to Marie’s and Cinnamon’s forehead, nose, and lips, then his own. He nodded at Cinnamon. She didn’t know what he was doing, a theatre thing? A German thing? A Klaus thing? Her mouth tingled, from his touch, from all the delicious words and wild ideas too.
“This is blowing me out.” Cinnamon gulped. “So the Wanderer’s painting looks and feels and smells like a hellified electrical storm from 1890-something, but it’s so much more than a memory of a photo. That figure eight lightning bolt twisting between those innocent, fluffy layers of mega storm cloud, that sucker is, wow, it’s uhm, a roller-coaster ride going in and out of the different dimensions, hitting the spaces between things, and then whirl-winding itself back to our side.”
The figure eight lightning bolt lifted up off the page, bursting through three dimensions or even more. Bright as a spotlight, it floated toward them. They gasped and squinted. Thunder cracked. Inner ears ached with the change in pressure. Not acting like a sane person, Marie stuck her right hand through the crossover point of the figure eight. Her hand disappeared up to the wrist. There was no explosion, flash, hiss, whine, or sizzle. Marie opened her mouth and grunted a thin stream of cold fog. Klaus and Cinnamon yelped, staring at the space where Marie’s hand should be. The figure eight bolt was getting brighter and brighter. It went way past too bright. Klaus gripped Marie’s wrist and yanked her hand out. Cinnamon slammed The Chronicles shut. The figure eight got squished into oblivion.
“What the fuck?” Cinnamon dropped The Chronicles on Sekou’s desk. It glowed around the edges. She threw her orca knapsack on top of it. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m, I’m, yeah.” Marie sounded wrong. She pulled her hand away from Klaus.
“You sure?” he said as she inspected herself.
“What demon is not reckless?” Marie quoted the Wanderer.
Cinnamon sucked her teeth long and loud, the way Redwood did. “Please.”
Marie cradled the dimension-traveling hand in her lap. The killer red color drained from her lips. Blood rushed from her extremities to her core. Her teeth chattered against her tongue. Her breath was cold fog, citrusy, limeade stuff, with a twist of ozone. In the home dimension, her exhalation should have been warm CO2.
Waves of cold stung Cinnamon. “You’re an ice cube, your whole body, colder than ice.” Marie shivered agreement.
The front door slammed. It could have been a gunshot. Marie fell out on the floor like a beached sea mammal. Klaus and Cinnamon hauled her onto the bed. She clutched a blanket in trembling hands. Her knuckles were white. Downstairs the elders hooted.
“That boss-man figures if you ain’t got no more sick days you should call in dead,” Redwood said.
Iris tried not to laugh. “Be serious. She could lose her job behind this.” Were they talking about Opal? “What are we going to do?”
“It’s not how deep you fish, it’s how you wiggle the worm.” Aidan was in Georgia-cracker mode. “Hey, we’re home, sugar plum.” He called up from the living room.
“What you all doing up there?” Redwood shouted. “Having a good time?”
Cinnamon didn’t have any spit in her mouth. “Just hanging,” she croaked.
Klaus and Marie had showed up while the elders were out.
“Come on down and say hello,” Iris said. “My old bones refuse to take the stairs.”
“Gal, what you talking ’bout?” Aidan laughed. “You young, sugar.”
Redwood laughed too. “Baby Sister is goin’ cook up some grub for you young sprouts and for us antediluvian relics.”
“I’m not hungry,” Cinnamon yelled. “Marie and Klaus already ate.
”
“Not my dessert.” Iris rattled pots and pans. “There’s music too. Redwood and Wildfire have been rehearsing.” Wildfire was Aidan’s Indian name. “Course, anytime I try to carry a tune, I drop it at the first hint of harmony.”
“If you’re not too busy up there.” What did Redwood think they were doing?
“We’re reading The Chronicles,” Cinnamon yelled. Her voice cracked.
“You OK, honey bunch?” Aidan came up a few stairs.
“Young people stuff,” Redwood whispered, loud for Aidan’s old ears.
“We’ll be down in a minute,” Cinnamon hollered.
Aidan stepped back down. “All right.”
“Crap! Is it always arctic cold in your house?” Marie sounded like her snarky self. Cinnamon was relieved.
“I like cold.” Klaus could wear a tee-shirt in a blizzard. “Usually.”
“Of course you would,” Cinnamon said. “You’re a furnace.”
“Today is eleventh March. It’ll be summer soon, and I’ll be the miserable one.”
“I can’t imagine you feeling miserable about good sunny weather,” Cinnamon said.
“That’s a wicked draft, blowing through the walls.” Marie’s breath was still cold fog. “Don’t you feel it?” She chomped her tongue. Her breath took on a tinge of pink. From blood? She went from shivering to convulsing. Klaus put an arm over Marie’s shoulder and waved at Cinnamon until she slung her arm around Marie’s waist. Klaus eased the blanket out of Marie’s clenched fingers and threw it around the three of them. They huddled silently a long time, frayed nerves firing like crazy.
“Talk to me,” Marie said, thickly. “That might help.”
“I can’t think of anything to say,” Cinnamon said.
“Really?” Klaus didn’t believe her.
“Tell me what’s wrong with your furnace,” Marie suggested.
Cinnamon screwed up her face. “My mom is cheap. She jacks up the thermostat so it can’t ever go over sixty-three degrees. This is hot compared to usual. Opal don’t want to pay for people walking ’round in shorts and underwear. She ain’t got money to burn.”
“Who has money to burn?” Marie said.
“What’s the house like in the summer?” Klaus asked.
“It’s a sauna. The next door neighbors have stinky garbage that sits there, decomposing and farting fumes in our windows. We gotta go on lock-down until the garbage collectors show up.” She should mention something nice. “It’s not that bad. Opal takes it hard, as if stinky garbage is what they think of her. Most of the time it’s fine. We get good cross breezes. The neighbors let Opal do their Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.” Cinnamon chuckled. “Actually, she steals it out the trash.”
Klaus laughed with Cinnamon.
“Are we not going to talk about my hand disappearing?” Marie said.
Klaus frowned. “I thought you wanted chitchat.”
“Me too.” Cinnamon took a deep breath instead of coming out her face at Marie.
“I loathe chitchat,” Marie declared.
“Loathe? Oh shit, excuse me.” Cinnamon shot a desperate glance at Klaus.
“OK,” he said, “so what did disappearing feel like?”
Marie held up her right hand. Black nails glittered now. “Bizarre.”
“Do you think it’s safe?” Klaus blew warm breath at Marie’s icy fingers.
Cinnamon glared at him. “Why? You want to try it too?”
Klaus shrugged.
“It’s probably not safe if I hung out for a long time.” Marie shivered. “How should I know? I don’t even want to believe it happened.”
Cinnamon almost said, You wouldn’t catch me sticking my only right hand in no random hologram of extra-dimensional lightning. “Can you wiggle your fingers?”
Marie did. They worked fine. Her hand looked normal except for the iridescent black fingernails. She huffed out a lukewarm, transparent, normal breath.
The killer whale knapsack tipped off Sekou’s desk, tugging The Chronicles down to the floor. The heavy tome fell open. Pages fluttered in the draft blowing through the walls and settled after the Eiffel Tour image. New words glowed, crisp and clear. The orca grinned. On cue, the Squad crawled in sync over to the open pages. No image drifted up to tempt them.
“What if we read these two chapters to ourselves, not out loud,” Cinnamon said. “No sticking our hands into alien other-dimensional orifices.”
“OK.” Marie said. “Klaus, you with us?”
“Sure, why not.”
They murmured, “What demon is not reckless?” in three-part harmony.
CHRONICLES 18d: Paris Fables —
Masquerade
Bob’s friend, Raymond Abernathy, rented rooms in Montparnasse from an enterprising Frenchman who charged stranded performers most of the money they earned for dank accommodations not far from La Seine. No one tended the orisha of this river. She gave off foul odors and produced sickly fish. Montparnasse was named for the home mountain of the Muses, Greek orisha of storytelling, knowledge, and creativity. The French disavowed pagan spirits, yet artists and scientists poured libation to the Muses. Museums — shrines to the Muses — were scattered around Paris. These were houses for profane spectacle.
Raymond was a forty-nine-year-old performer originally from New York, America. Seven feet three inches tall, possessing a massive head and hands the size of shields, he performed masquerades for carnivals and sideshows the world over. Raymond currently did a giant monster from wildest, darkest Dahomey, a savage Fon warrior who chopped off the heads of his enemies and ate their bodies, raw. Raymond carried enemy bones and heart gristle in a bag around his neck — gris-gris to protect him from evil spirits. Supposedly, these pagan Voodoo rituals made him nzumbe — living dead, insensitive to pain, and almost invincible. Audiences pelted him with rotten fruit and rocks to test this. Raymond bore many scars from previous shows and fresh wounds from the performance we had witnessed.
“Never yelp, no matter how it hurts.” He schooled us in nzumbe masquerade in his front parlor.
Doubt crawled across Kehinde’s skin and put her in a foul mood. I could smell it. “No one shall pelt me.” She spoke precise English. “Here or in America.”
Raymond shook his head. “I don’t know about that.”
Everyone else who’d gotten the fever had died quickly or recuperated. I felt better, but wasn’t fully recovered. Captain Luigi was determined to bring the remnants of his savage troupe to the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the New World by Europeans. Our troupe would head down La Seine tomorrow, en route to canals that fed the Lady Atlantic. La Vérité waited in the North Sea, but not for much longer. Luigi never knowingly brought sickness on board. Who could blame him? Last year cholera ravaged Paris. Luigi had reluctantly decided to abandon me to Paris, so Kehinde planned to stay too, with Somso and Melinga. Luigi threatened her with jail if she didn’t get on the boat in the morning.
“I made no blood oath with you!” she told him. “And my blade is still sharp.”
“Do I have to lock you on the ship?” Luigi replied.
“I’ll make sure she’s on board. Somso too, everybody,” Bob said quickly and saved Luigi’s head. Bob waved his mojo bag at Kehinde. He had an Eshu plan. She relented for the moment.
Leaving us to a farewell celebration with Raymond, Bob and Luigi marched off together to purchase supplies. Somso slept while Melinga nursed. Kehinde fumed, her hand on the cutlass in the folds of her robe. Liam downed a shot of rum with Raymond.
“A sailor could be shipwrecked in a worse bog than Paris,” Liam declared.
“You’ll stay too?” Kehinde lifted her eyebrows.
“You folks can find work here, on stage or off,” Raymond said.
“No. Following Ifa, we head to Chicago,” Kehinde declared.
“Without a boat?” I said. “How?”
“Cheer up!” Raymond grinned. “You’
ll make passage. Dahomey warring with France is headlines. Women like tigers, men fierce as gorillas. Audiences want to see danger, taste fear. At the museums, I’ve played Aborigines, savage Maori chiefs from New Zealand, and Kaffirs from South Africa. Different costumes, same gris-gris.”
“I’ve been to New Zealand, mate.” Liam clenched his fists. “Maori men are brave warriors, not fools. The chiefs have tattoos carved across their faces. You’ve got a naked mug.”
“Why do you do these masquerades?” Kehinde asked.
“I ain’t never wanted to do nothing but step on stage and get the audience roaring.” Raymond laughed. “I could play Frankenstein if he wasn’t white, but a colored monster from New York City just ain’t scary fun.”
“So you decided on a Fon monster?” Kehinde was confused.
Liam downed more rum. “Ah, milady, you think Monsieur Abernathy should do melodrama?”
“What’s your story?” I propped myself up in damp sheets. “Why not tell that?”
Raymond towered over me. “My mother and uncle run with me from slavery in South Carolina to the beggar house up North. Don’t nobody want to see some poor soul shipping hisself to freedom in a box no bigger than a coffin, then when he get to freedom, the fool be emptying slop jars for two-bit whores. When Uncle Jared limp through that story, people do weep; or worse, they turn a deaf ear.”
“This is a New World Story?” Kehinde grimaced.
“But this —” Acting the Fon Warrior, Raymond growled and grunted. “Audiences holler for more. I made that savage lingo up. A white man translates. He leaves out parts too harsh for the ladies.”
Raymond rehearsed chopping off a head and eating a thigh. His eyes bulged from his skull. He stuck his tongue out. Saliva dripped from the tip as he thrust the gris-gris bag in our faces. Liam was disgusted; Kehinde also.
She spoke Yoruba. “The view of the slave is everywhere the same: down toward the feet.” Her face was serene, her voice a honey drip. “Slave cur, what does he know of King Béhanzin’s warrior ahosi?”
“What she saying?” Raymond smiled, always sweet for a lady. “She want more pie?” He offered Kehinde another piece of a fruit dish, still warm from his oven.
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