by Rita Woods
Instead of answering, Louisa gave her a sour look and struggled to her feet. She wobbled a bit, but managed to stay upright. Slowly, she began moving around the barn, stuffing straw into her blouse, down her bloomers. Every so often, she stopped and held on to the wall for support, winded.
Winter watched, fascinated, silently waiting for an explanation. If she’d thought that freeing Louisa from her chains and helping to nurse her back to health would improve the other girl’s disposition, she’d been badly mistaken. Other than their brief barn walks—during which Louisa seemed to barely tolerate her help—Louisa sat in her corner and stared into space. Winter had tried—if they couldn’t be friends now, when could they ever?—but Louisa rebuffed her every effort, answering questions with one or two words or not at all, until she gave it up, resigned to sit in silence. Now Louisa wordlessly made her way around the barn, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to stuff straw down her drawers.
“What the devil,” asked Winter finally, “are you doing?”
“Time to go,” Louisa said.
Winter pressed her lips together but there was no help for it. She began to laugh. Louisa was now nearly as round as she was tall, a human hay bale. Straw jutted from her sleeves, her collar, fell from the hem of her skirt, leaving a prickly trail behind her as she walked.
“You ought to see yourself,” she said. “You’re more scarecrow than human.”
Louisa shot her a murderous look.
“I’m sorry, Louisa, but my … you really should just see yourself. You’re a perfect fright,” said Winter. She took great gulps of the cold air, struggling for control. “And where is it we’re going exactly? To scare the daylights out of some poor birds?” She flapped her arms around her head, then dissolved in another fit of giggles.
Louisa scowled and crossed her arms over her now heavily padded chest. Her blouse made a shushing noise as straw fluttered to the floor around her. Winter snorted, clamping down on a fresh peal of laughter.
“Tonight’s the night,” snapped Louisa, ignoring Winter’s amusement. “We need to—”
A gust of wind rattled the barn, cutting off her words. Winter sat up, suddenly sober.
“Tonight? You want to go tonight?” she asked. Her voice cracked. “In this?”
Louisa turned away and began pulling at a small bundle hidden in one of the horse stalls. They’d been stashing away bits of food for days, a potato here, a biscuit there, hiding it for the time when they’d make their run. Now was that time.
“Bad as it is for us to get around, be worser for them,” said Louisa. She glanced at Winter’s stunned face, and her expression softened—a little. “You best start stuffin’ that straw. Find the driest bits you can. Bunch it tight.”
Winter picked up a handful of the straw and peered at it, bewildered. The older girl stopped bundling their meager foodstuffs and rooted around the back of the horse stall until she found what she was looking for. Waddling over, Louisa yanked out the top of Winter’s blouse and roughly thrust a handful of straw down her chest. Winter yelped. The stalks were rough and bit at the soft skin of her breasts and stomach.
“Ain’t as good as a store-bought overcoat,” said Louisa. “But it’ll cut the wind and buy you a penny’s worth a’ warm. You’ll be glad of it. Even if you do scare off some birds.”
Her lips twitched upward as she turned away. Winter took a deep breath and began to follow Louisa’s example, reluctantly padding herself with straw, filling her clothes to near bursting. She gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the musty smell, the razorlike jabs against her skin.
“Your boyfriend happen to tell you where we at?” asked Louisa, coming to stand near her.
Winter bit back a retort.
“Dix says we’re just north of someplace called Cuyahoga Falls. That mean anything to you?”
Louisa’s mouth puckered at the mention of the boy’s name. She shook her head. “How long we travel? You notice that?”
Winter inhaled through her mouth. “One day … I think.” For some of that time she had been insensible, thrown across the back of Paddy’s horse like an old saddlebag. She twisted her face, trying to remember. She had woken to pain and light, too frightened to register many details.
“From late morning until maybe four. The sun was just falling behind the trees, at our backs. They were going to set up camp for just one day so they could get supplies, then this storm moved in.”
Louisa nodded. “On horseback,” she said, quietly. “Won’t be that far from Remembrance then. Two days walk if we move fast, maybe a bit longer with this weather.”
Winter swallowed hard. A trill of anxiety rippled through her. “We’re leaving now?”
Louisa shook her head. “We gon’ wait ’til the deepest night. Then you gon’ do what you do and I’m-a do what I do.”
Winter frowned and Louisa rolled her eyes.
“I got the gift of readin’ nature. I look at a tree, rub my hand over it a little bit, see how water puddles at the roots, and I can tell you north from south, east from west. Tell you which way the wind comin’ from. Whether a storm just workin’ itself up or blowin’ itself out. I can tell you which berries to eat and which ones gon’ make you shit yourself to death. I got that knowledge in me.”
She picked up a bowl of the brown goo that was their dinner. Frowning, she fished out the hard tack and added it to their food bundle.
“Now you gots a different kinda gift,” she went on, not looking at Winter. “You got a way of gettin’ all up inside a thing and movin’ things that don’t want to be moved.” She brought her eyes up to meet Winter’s. “I recollect you done that to me once.”
It was the most Louisa had ever said to her.
Winter flushed at the memory of their argument up at the hives, her anger at Louisa, the healer falling.
“I—” she began.
Louisa cut her off with a flick of her hand. She looked away. “Don’t matter. Don’t know what you are. Don’t much care. But I know you got somethin’ in you that’s gon’ prove useful in our particular situation. At least it better. You did something to that slaver man, too. Did it worse to him than me. I saw his face, but mostly I saw yours. You made him bleed.” She smiled, a bitter, twisted-looking thing. “You could have killed him. Wish you had.
“We gon’ wait just a bit, ’til night full on,” she said, ignoring Winter’s sounds of protest. “Wind dies down then. Always does. Moon be behind the clouds. Least they ain’t got no dogs.”
Winter hardly heard her. A certainty had begun to fill her up, hard, cruel.
I could have killed him. I could have killed that pattyroller.
And she knew that it was true. And what was worse, she wished she had.
* * *
“Time to go.”
Winter started. She had been dreaming of fried trout and new potatoes. She blinked.
“Time to go,” Louisa said again. She was crouched by the barn door peering through a slit at the wet darkness. She turned her head toward Winter and frowned. “Girl, get yourself on over here.”
It was too dark to read her expression, but the impatience in her voice was clear enough. Heart pounding, Winter scuttled to Louisa’s side.
“No lookout. Guess they didn’t think they needed one with just two broke-down nigger gals chained up in the barn.” Louisa raised an eyebrow and grinned. The ruined side of her face twisted horribly.
“Ready?”
“Wait!” Winter couldn’t breathe. She felt as if she might suffocate. “Just wait.”
Louisa looked at her, waiting.
“What if they do come for us? From Remembrance?” Winter could read the expression on Louisa’s face now. “But what if they do?” she insisted. “Are you sure you know how to get us home? We could end up just be wandering around out there forever.”
Louisa grabbed Winter’s chin and yanked her close. “Ain’t nobody comin’, you twit! Nobody! The only way we gon’ get saved is if we save ourself. Y
ou hearin’ me?”
She pushed Winter … hard … and then they were outside the barn, rain pelting their faces as they pressed against the side. The wind twisted their skirts around their ankles and blew the stink from their bodies up their noses. Winter stood trembling in the shadows, wincing as she caught her own smell.
Dogs? They wouldn’t need dogs to find them, not as bad as they smelled.
She held her face up to the weather and closed her eyes. There was the slow, low-pitched creaking of tree limbs, the shuddering whisper of rain high in the branches, and from somewhere beyond the farmhouse, the clanging of metal against metal. The world smelled fresh, like new mud, damp wood, and snow. And then she smiled. She was free! She felt light enough to sail away on the wind.
Pain ricocheted through her shoulder. She stifled a cry as her eyes snapped open. Louisa stood glowering, her arm cocked back to take another shot at her.
“Wake up!” Louisa hissed, leaning so that her mouth was close to Winter’s ear. “This not the time for your mind to go wanderin’ off!”
Winter glared. Louisa pointed to a skimpy grove of trees on the far side of the property. She nodded and they ran for it, any sound they made disappearing into the lifting storm. A few yards in, Louisa yanked at Winter and pulled her down hard, scanning the open ground they’d just crossed. The darkness was nearly complete and Winter could just make out the whites of Louisa’s eyes.
“This way,” said Louisa. “We got to go east and then north. We got to go this way.”
Winter squinted. She could only barely make out the direction that Louisa was pointing. She squinched her eyes closed, then opened them, but the world was still made all of black: black sky, black trees, black everywhere.
“How…?”
“We got to go. Put as much distance between them pattyrollers and us as we can ’fore daybreak. Storm breakin’.”
Winter saw that it was true. The wind was dying down so that she could clearly hear the sound of rain falling on the leaves above, the trails below. She nodded, though she doubted that Louisa could see it.
They ran, Winter following Louisa as closely as she could, trusting, hoping, that what the herbalist said was true: that she could tell north from south, east from west.
She had no idea how long they ran. The lightness she’d felt when she’d first stepped out of the barn was long gone. Her chest burned. The muscles in her legs were doughy with fatigue, her hands raw from falling again and again. And she could feel the bruise growing in the middle of her forehead from crashing into a tree what seemed like hours before. She thought she might vomit.
“Louisa,” she pleaded. “Louisa … wait!”
When Louisa stopped, Winter barely had time to register the fact before barreling into her, bringing them both to the ground. She lay on top of the older girl, panting, until Louisa pushed her roughly off. Winter rolled on her back and lay sprawled in the mud, too exhausted to move. Straw dug into her body, scraping away at tender places: the backs of her knees, her neck, her armpits.
“Where are we?” she asked finally, when she’d regained her breath. When Louisa didn’t answer, she pushed herself to sitting. “How much longer?”
“Not so much. It’ll be daybreak soon,” said Louisa. “Need to keep putting ground between them and us while we can. Then gotta find a place to hide out.” She jerked her head in the direction they’d just come.
Winter looked around. It still seemed dark night to her. Daybreak felt a long way off. She hurt in a thousand places and her head pounded. Louisa was studying her, her eyes dark in the faint moonlight.
“What you got?” she asked quietly.
Winter frowned. “What?” It was hard to talk. She had never been so tired. And any minute she expected to hear the sound of horses behind them, Colm’s voice raging through the gloom.
“Can you do the thing you do? That hoodoo spell thing?” said Louisa. “Can you do it now? Protect us … or something?”
Winter shook her head slowly, her eyes narrowed.
“They not sayin’ nothin’ to you now?”
“Who?” cried Winter. “Who’re you talking about?”
“The spirits … or ghosts … or God … or whoever it is you get your magic from! They not talkin’? ’Cause let me tell you, girl. Now would be a real good time for y’all to be workin’ up some juju!”
As the world drifted closer to dawn, Louisa’s voice echoed off the trees and the gray mist that was rising from the forest floor. Winter clenched and unclenched her fists, her head swinging back and forth in a silent “no.” That’s not how it works, she wanted to say. A tear ran down her cheek.
She tried to calm herself, to listen, but every twig snap, every leaf rustle caused her to jerk. Her eyes wildly searched the shadows. The only sound she heard clearly was that of her own ragged breathing.
Louisa leaned against a spindly pine. Winter could see the hard set of her mouth—it was getting definitely lighter—the fear, and rage, glittering in her eyes. The herbalist stared at her a long time before turning away. “Not much night left. Can’t afford to waste it.”
She straightened and began to walk again, quickly disappearing into the mist. After a moment, Winter stood and followed.
40
Mother Abigail
The soft ground sucked at her walking stick, slowing her. Still weak from her illness, she tired quickly. Mother Abigail stopped frequently to catch her breath and wait for the spasms in her back and legs to pass. By the time she reached the crest of the ridge high above Remembrance, she was drenched in sweat and pain had wrapped itself around her chest like a steel band. Below her, the trees were disappearing in shadow. It would be dark soon. This time of year, night seemed to fall from the heavens without warning. The sky glowed a deep orange.
Mango!
The sky was the color of mangoes. The thought caught her by surprise.
Mangoes.
She had not thought of mangos since fleeing the fires of Saint-Domingue with Madame Rousse and her baby. The old woman frowned. The new girl, Margot, she had belonged to the Rousse family. Not to the madame but to her … what was it … the granddaughter?
She shivered. There was no such thing as coincidence. It meant something, this girl showing up like this. Coming from the same family from which she’d walked away, the same family that had stolen her boys from her life, appearing at the exact time that the Edge should start to fail. It meant something. But what? The old priestess massaged the ache at the back of her neck. She breathed cold air in through her nose and gazed up at the blushing sky. She was so tired.
She eased herself to the ground and closed her eyes. Even now, all these years later, the thought of her boys was both a sweetness and an agony. But the fruit. Ah … the fruit of Saint-Domingue, that was all sweetness—oranges, limes, coconuts—as if the island had been determined to dilute all the blood spilled on its soil, all the suffering of its slaves, with the sweetness of its own bounty.
Mangoes.
She remembered sucking the juice through a stalk of sugarcane, the stickiness on her lips that lingered long after the fruit had been sucked dry. Laying there, eyes closed, she could almost feel Henri and Claude pressed hard against her, their mouths open wide, like two baby birds as she dribbled the juice onto their tongues. She had been so young. How was it possible that she had ever been that young?
She sat on the crest of the ridge, savoring the memory of that long-ago time, when her limbs had obeyed her, when she could run for hours through the forest, bundles of firewood tied across her shoulders.
Mother Abigail licked her lips and opened her eyes. The yellow and orange sky had been swallowed by deep purple. She struggled to her feet.
She could feel them out there.
All those people of Remembrance.
Trembling in the shadows.
Waiting … waiting for her—the great priestess, Mother Abigail—to tell them what to do, tell them where to go.
“Cowards!” she growle
d. “Mother Abigail protectin’ you all these years. Keepin’ you safe. And still it’s not enough. Never, ever enough!”
She knew that Willie had led his group off to the Canada land. Knew Petal had birthed her twins.
And she knew David Henry was gone, off to search for Winter.
Remembrance was still hers, and she knew every breath it took, every beat of its heart, but this knowing gave her no joy. There was no more joy to be had for her in Remembrance. She had the power of seeing, but her power for doing had shriveled up, her skills laying like a hard brown turd in her gut, taunting her, poisoning her.
“What do you want from me?” she screamed into the darkness. She wasn’t sure who the question was meant for. The ancestors? The settlers?
The priestess stood trembling in the cold and dark, as slowly another memory came to her. A memory from long after she’d left the shores of Saint-Domingue.
* * *
Brown water. Thick, chocolate-colored. So different from the navy-blue water that rolled up onto the sands of Saint-Domingue. She had been tired then, too, so tired. Simona and Josiah had led her from the docks. They had been waiting there for her in New Orleans, waiting as if they knew she was coming. Perhaps they had. They had taken her deep into the marshlands, taught her the Art, filling her heart, her soul with the sounds, the names of the saints, the spirits. Far back in the bayou, where the sun seemed to be strained through tea-colored lace, she was surrounded by the mystery, by the magic. It covered her up, until the world appeared to slide around her, shifting colors and shapes like a child’s kaleidoscope. She studied and she learned because she wanted revenge. For her babies, for her Hercule’s murder at the edge of that fat pig’s coffee grove. She wanted revenge, for herself and for her sister, snatched from a village that grew dimmer in her memory with each passing year.
She studied and learned and plotted. And then she was alone. She left Simona, left Josiah. She didn’t need them anymore. They had nothing left to teach her.
She’d wandered the Crescent City and the nearby river towns for years.
