by Amy Plum
“How did you die?”
We had been stuck in traffic on the Périphérique for a half hour. Up to now our conversation had consisted of small talk—which meant in the revenants’ case things like how Ambrose and Jules had recently saved people in a tourist bus that drove into the Seine. But I had been wondering this for a while, and sitting in gridlock felt like the perfect time to ask.
“I mean, you told me you died in World War One,” I continued, “but did you die saving one particular person, or was it more the abstract fact that you were defending your countrymen as a soldier?”
“There aren’t any abstracts in becoming a revenant,” Jules replied. “Just fighting in a war doesn’t count. If it did, there’d probably be a lot more of us.”
“So who did you save?”
“A friend of mine. I mean, not exactly a friend, but another artist whose group I hung out with in Paris before the war. Name was Fernand Léger.”
“The Fernand Léger?” I gasped.
“Oh, you’ve heard of him?” There was no hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“Come on, Jules. You know I love art.”
“Well, he wasn’t as famous as the others in his group: Picasso, Braque, Gris.”
“He’s famous enough for me to know him. And wasn’t it his gallery at the Museum of Modern Art that I saw you hanging out in last summer? You know … when you pretended you were someone else because I recognized you from the subway crash?”
Jules grinned at the memory. It was his postmortem appearance that had sent me running back to Jean-Baptiste’s house to apologize to Vincent, only to find him dead on his bed. Which led me to my discovery of what he was. A historic day in the life of Kate Mercier, to be sure.
“Yeah, he’s got an unrecognizable portrait of me hanging in there. Not very flattering. I look like a robot. Actually more like a robot-skeleton. Which is understandable, I guess, since I was dead by the time he painted it.”
“Are you talking about The Card Players?” I asked in awe.
“Yeah. There was a lot of downtime in between fighting. We played a lot of cards. After the war, when I was volant this one time, I overheard him telling someone that the soldier on the right was the one who saved him. But I still can’t see a resemblance for the life of me.” Jules cracked a smile at his own joke.
“How did it happen? I mean the saving bit?”
“Gave him my respirator during a German mustard-gas attack. Once I was down, the enemy came through and shot all of us who were on the ground.”
What an awful way to die, I thought. Although I was horrified, I tried to make my voice sound matter-of-fact so that he would keep on talking. “Why did you do it?”
“I was young and he was an older, established artist. I respected him. Worshipped him, in a way.”
“Even so, how many starstruck kids would give up their life for their hero?”
Jules shrugged. “I’ve talked about it with other revenants. We all feel like in our human life there was something inside us that was almost suicidally philanthropic. It’s the only characteristic we all have in common.”
He was silent after that, leaving me to wonder if I would have what it took to give my life for someone else. I suppose it was something I wouldn’t know until I was there, on the spot—looking death in the face.
Twenty minutes later, we pulled into a parking lot a few blocks away from Le Corbeau.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” Jules asked for the fortieth time.
“Nope,” I said as we got out of the car. Spying a tiny café nearby, I gestured to it and said, “But you can wait for me there.”
“The answer to that command is ‘Non, madame la capitaine.’ Not on your life am I letting you go on some unknown errand—one you obviously don’t want Vincent to know about—on your own. You guilt-tripped me into bringing you here by appealing to my sense of duty in guarding you. Now you’ve got to live with what you asked for.”
We stared each other down for a few seconds. But when I saw he wasn’t going to budge, I nodded, and we began walking in the direction of the shop. It was actually nice to have him along, because I was starting to feel nervous—unsure of how I would handle things when I got there.
From a block away I could see that the lights were on, and my heart started pounding like crazy. The carved raven atop the sign seemed to regard us menacingly as we neared. We came to a stop outside the door, and Jules turned to me with the most incredulous look on his face. “You dragged me halfway across Paris to buy a”—he peered at the window display, and then back at me—“a plaster Virgin Mary?”
“No.”
“Then what?” He glanced back. “A Pope John Paul night-light? Kate, what the hell are we doing here?”
“The question is, ‘What am I doing here?’ and the answer is, ‘It’s none of your business, Jules.’ I’m sorry for dragging you along, but there’s something I need to do. And I would rather you wait out here.”
“What?” Jules shouted.
“I have to talk to the owner about something. If I’m wrong about it, I’ll be back out in a second. If I’m right, it might take a little more time. But it’s something I want to do myself.”
“Kate, I honestly don’t know how Vincent puts up with you. You are … infuriating.”
“But you’ll do what I ask?”
Jules ran his hand through his curls, looking very unhappy. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes. If you’re not out, I’m coming in to get you.” And he stalked off to sit on the step of a boarded-up storefront across the street.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I PUSHED THE DOOR SOFTLY. WHEN IT DIDN’T budge, I put more force into it, practically bursting into the shop when the sticky door finally gave way. I glanced around self-consciously to see a room chock-full of stuff, even more crowded than the window displays. And from the looks of things, I could tell they had put the cheap inventory in the windows—probably to discourage theft—because surrounding me were the most interesting objects I had ever seen outside a museum.
A very old ivory Madonna—the sway in the hip on which she balanced her child following the natural curve of the elephant tusk—sat next to an ornate box—a reliquary—with a realistic metal finger attached to the lid. Old coins with images of saints on them, antique rosaries hanging from every available protrusion, and crucifixes made of precious metals and stones. Although each piece was individually beautiful in its own way, with all of them amassed chaotically together in such a small space, the place felt seriously creepy. Like a tomb stocked with goods for the afterlife.
I stared at the front desk for an entire second before I realized that someone was behind it—staring right back at me. He stood so unnaturally still that when he spoke, I jumped. “Bonjour, mademoiselle. What can I do for you?” he said in a slightly accented French.
My hand flew to my heart. “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I didn’t see you there.”
His head tilted slightly sideways at my words, as if he found the idea of someone being surprised by a speaking statue curious. What a strange man, I thought. With his slicked-back, dyed-black hair and the huge eyes that projected surreally from bottle-thick glasses, he looked like a cartoon version of the store’s avian namesake. Serious creep factor, I decided, shuddering.
“Um … someone told me that I could find a guérisseur here?” I said, my voice coming out embarrassingly timid.
He nodded oddly and stepped from behind the desk to display a skeletal frame dressed in strange, old-fashioned clothes. “My mother is the guérisseur. What ails you?”
I thought of my conversation with the woman in the next-door shop and blurted out, “Migraines.” There was something about this man—about this whole situation—that made me very nervous. If meeting the revenants was like traveling to a strange new country, this made me feel like Neil Armstrong, touching his toe to the virgin surface of the moon.
He nodded in comprehension and lifted a stick-figure arm to gesture toward
a door at the back of the room. “This way, please.”
I wove my way through stacks of old books and waist-high statues of saints, and then followed him up a steep and winding set of stairs. He disappeared through a door on the landing, and then reappeared, waving me inside. “She will see you,” he said.
Upon entering the room, I noticed an elderly woman sitting by a fireplace in a worn green chair, knitting. She glanced up from her work and said, “Come, child,” nodding to an overstuffed armchair facing her own. As I stepped into the room, the man left, closing the door behind him.
“I hear you suffer from migraines. You are young for that type of affliction, but I have cured children as little as five years old. We’ll fix you right up.”
I settled myself in the chair.
“Now tell me about the very first time you experienced this problem,” she said, continuing her knitting.
“Actually, I don’t have migraines,” I said. “I came to talk to you about something else.”
She looked up, curious but not surprised. “Do tell, then.”
“I found this really old manuscript. Immortal Love, it was called. It talked about a guérisseur living in Saint-Ouen who had special abilities regarding … a certain type of being.”
Although I had planned my speech ahead of time, it wasn’t coming out right. Because now that I was here, I wasn’t at all sure of myself. Even though everything seemed to point to this being the right place, honestly … what were the chances that this old lady was the descendant of the healer in the book? After all these years? And out of the thousands of guérisseurs that must exist in France?
The woman’s needles stopped their clicking, and she stared at me, giving me her full attention for the first time. Suddenly I felt extremely foolish. “A certain type of immortal being … called a revenant,” I clarified.
She stared for another second, and then, placing her knitting in a tapestry bag next to her chair, she put her hand on her chest and leaned forward. At first I thought she was having some kind of attack. And then I realized she was laughing.
After a few seconds she stopped to catch her breath. “I’m sorry, dearie. I’m not making fun of you. It’s just that … people think that we guérisseurs are magic, which leads to all sorts of misconceptions. And I know that the shop below must add to my mystique—all the religious artifacts make locals think I’m a witch of some sort. But I’m not. I’m just an old lady whose father passed a simple gift to her: the gift of healing. But that’s all there is to it. I can’t conjure up spirits. I can’t cast evil spells on your enemies. And I don’t know anything about … immortal whatever they are.”
I felt my face redden, not only from shame but from the weeks of pent-up expectation that had been mounting inside me. Which had all just run headfirst into a brick wall. My eyes stung, and I took a deep breath to keep myself from crying. “I am so sorry to have bothered you,” I said, and stood to go. “Um, am I supposed to give you something for your time?” I began fishing in my purse.
“Non,” she said sharply. Then, her voice softening, she said, “All I ask is that you write your name on one of those cards, and place it in the dish. That way I can send you good wishes in my prayers.” She nodded to a stack of index cards on the table next to my chair. I scribbled my name on the card and leaned over to place it in the bowl. And froze.
Painted on the inside of the dish was a pyramid inside a circle. A pyramid surrounded by flames. I spun to see the old woman sitting immobile, staring at me with one eyebrow raised. Waiting.
I thrust my hand inside my shirt, pulled out my pendant, and held the signum out for her to see.
She sat there stunned for a second, and then stood to face me. “Well, if you had shown me that when you arrived, we wouldn’t have had to go through this charade, my dear,” she said, her expression changing from distant and professional to complicit and friendly. “Welcome, little sister.”
It felt like a dozen bees were buzzing around in my head as I sank back down into the chair. I couldn’t believe it: Was this really happening?
“Are you okay, ma puce?” she said, looking worried, bustling over to a sideboard where she poured me a glass of water from a pitcher. She set it on the table next to me and then sat back down.
“Yes!” I said, a little too loudly, my voice sounding strange to my still-ringing ears. “Yes, I’m fine. I just … I’m so surprised that you’re really …” I didn’t know what else to say, so I just shut up and waited.
“Ha! Yes, I am really. Or rather, my family is. Although I’ve never been consulted on the subject of revenants. It’s been a few hundred years since one of us has. So this is quite exciting for me, really.” Her eyes sparkled, as if to prove it. “You must have found both of the books?”
“Um, yes. How did you know?”
“Ah, well, we had a bit of a problem back in the eighteenth century. Some of the baddies—the numa, they’re called—got their hands on one of the books and came to find us. Very nasty occasion, that was. So my ancestor took possession of it and tracked down the nobleman who owned the only other existing copy. They are the ones that did that little bit of ink work on the two manuscripts to make us hard, but not impossible, to find. We do have our purposes,” she clucked proudly. “You don’t happen to have the books with you, do you?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Well, that’s a shame. I would have loved to see them. All I’ve got is a handwritten copy of the text that my ancestor made. We couldn’t exactly keep the originals. That would be a bit counterproductive, wouldn’t it?”
“Um, yes,” I said, working hard to keep my thoughts moving as rapidly as she was throwing out new information.
“So, tell me …” She waited.
“Kate. Kate Mercier.”
“Tell me, Kate Mercier, what have you to ask me?” She spoke the words as if they were a formula she had been told to follow.
“I … I’m in love. With a revenant.”
The woman’s face dropped. “Oh, my dear.”
Her look of pity only bolstered my resolve. “He’s still young: He’s only been a revenant for eighty-five years. So the compulsion to die often is still really strong. I love him. But I’m not strong enough to stay with someone who dies the gruesome deaths they do … over and over again.”
“Very few would be, my dear. Unless you cast all feeling from your heart, it would be a terribly traumatic life for you. And if you were able to succeed in numbing your emotions to that extent, well, you wouldn’t be the same sensitive girl that you are now—the girl that he fell in love with.”
I thanked her silently for understanding. “I’m searching for a way to ease the suffering that comes with his resisting death. So that he can hold out for longer. Perhaps for my lifetime,” I said, but in my mind the words were, Until I die. “I don’t want him to suffer for me.”
“I understand,” she said, sighing. “But I must tell you, I don’t have any kind of mystical cure sitting around. No bottle of healing unguent or potion hidden away in a cupboard. As you remember, the boy in the story never made it to my ancestor in the end. But after the story was passed to us, the gifted ones in my family have, over the ages, written down their thoughts on this and other matters.
“I will have to find my records, Kate, to see what I can come up with. There are things I know about the revenants. Secrets I’ve been given. But none of them would provide a solution to your particular problem. You have chosen a hard path, and I do not envy you that. But I will do my best to find something to ease the suffering—for both of you.”
She stood and walked to the door. “Let’s go downstairs,” she said. I followed her down and into the shop, where we came to an abrupt halt as we took in the scene before us.
Jules stood in the middle of the room, the tip of his drawn sword pressed to the chest of the bottle-glassed man, who looked like he had shrunk a foot under the revenant’s fierce gaze.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talkin
g about,” the man was stuttering. “There’s no one here but me!”
“I know the girl is here, now take me to her!” Jules roared, and pressed harder with the sword, trapping the man against the front desk.
“Jules, stop!” I yelled.
Both men turned, and Jules dropped his sword, slipping it into its sheath as he walked quickly in our direction.
“Kate. Are you okay?” he asked, reaching for me.
“An aura like a forest fire,” said the old woman, staring at Jules. “You are one of them.” And then, slowly, she curtsied as if he were visiting royalty.
“What the—” Jules said, astounded.
The lady stood and held out her hand for Jules to take. “I am Gwenhaël, and this is my son, Bran.” She gestured toward the bug-eyed man, whose hand was clutching his chest as if Jules had actually wounded him.
Jules threw me a What the hell is going on? look, and cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“Is this the boy in question?” the woman asked.
“No,” I answered.
“Well,” she responded, studying Jules’s face as if trying to memorize everything she saw for future reflection. Jules raised his eyebrows and looked at me pointedly.
“We are honored to have your visit, sir,” she said finally, and then turned to me. “As we are to have yours, dear Kate. Give me a week and then come back. That will give me time to go through all my ancestors’ texts. Maybe I will have some information that can help you.”
“Merci, Madame …”
“Just Gwenhaël,” she responded, and patted my hand. “I will see you in a week.”
Keeping a careful distance from Jules, Bran handed me a card with only a telephone number printed on it. “You can call before you come. Save you a trip. Good-bye,” he said, giving us a quick bow and then staring at us with his huge, reflected eyes as we stepped out of the store and into the street.
We had barely taken three steps before Jules turned to me. “Do you plan on telling me what that was about?”
“No,” I responded stubbornly.
“Then you plan on telling Vincent about it?”