by J. D. Horn
This was madness. May crumpled, falling to her knees. Dream or no, she’d had enough.
“There, there, my dearie. Not to worry.” The Beekeeper waved a gloved hand in the air, and a bottle appeared in it. Her other hand pushed back the bottom of her veil, revealing the same terrible emptiness that had so frightened May the night before. It was a blankness, a void that gave a person’s very soul a sense of vertigo, as if there were a danger of toppling into it and falling forever.
The eternal darkness she sensed within the creature caused her mind to flash on the horror at the turnoff. “Did you kill those men?”
“Only the one,” the Beekeeper responded. “Needed the other alive to tell the tale.” She took another swig. “That bastard used those men to send you a message, so we used them to send him one back.”
She wanted to feel bad that a man had died, but she couldn’t. May began shaking. She wrapped her arms around her chest to help still the trembling.
“You calm yourself.” The woman waved her free hand over the bottle in her other hand. May jolted when she felt the glass in her own hand. “Go on, taste.” May began to refuse, but the Beekeeper carried on. “It is very good rum. It has the pepper’s fire,” she added before returning her focus to the bottle. “No? Your mama and I used to drink until we were both falling down drunk. Falling through each other. Falling through the stars.” A wistful delight sounded in her voice.
“I am not my mother,” May responded, holding the bottle out to her.
The Beekeeper wiggled her gloved fingers, and the bottle was once again in her clasp. “More’s the pity,” she said, then brushed back the veil for another swig. As the veil fell back into place, she jumped to a new train of thought. “She can see me, you know, your little one, even though she isn’t of your blood.” The creature’s tone made it sound like she was contemplating the implications. “But the other two. The ones who should be my daughters. Nothing. I stand directly before them . . .” The Beekeeper was suddenly mere inches away, her veiled face an intimate distance from May’s, her hand waving before May’s eyes. The Beekeeper took a step back, then stood there swaying, “. . .and nothing.”
May trembled. “She’s my grandbaby. Blood or no.” Fear and longing battled in her spirit.
“Well, of course, the heart speaks the truth even when blood itself lies.” The Beekeeper fell back, suddenly several yards away. “But the little one. She’s claiming the others’ magic. Making it hers. This is something that should not be.”
This odd being frightened and soothed her in the same instant, but the need to protect her own pushed her toward the side of caution. May squinted, trying to pin the quivering image in place for inspection. “What . . . are you?”
To May’s amazement, the veiled creature began sashaying from side to side, her feet lifting and landing in a peculiar kind of dance. “I am what I have always been and what you would make of me.” She began to weave a circle around May, brushing up against her, catlike. “Embrace me, and I am the gentlest of mothers. Flee me, and I am the cruelest of predators. Offer me again your da—” She paused playfully on the word, then continued, “—delightful chicory, and you will find out for yourself where I land between those two extremes. Your foolish Prohibition has ended, has it not? For all I have to give you, I do not ask for much in return. Your mother certainly had no trouble finding a suitable offering.”
“My mama told me never to have any dealings with you.”
The creature snorted, her veil puffing out a bit as she did so. She stopped her dancing and took a few heavy old woman steps toward May’s house. May was about to chase after her, intent on stopping her before she could reach the children, but the Beekeeper came to a halt and eased down onto the front steps.
“It’s true, my friend didn’t want us to meet. I promised her that, if possible, I would let you pass through this world without knowing me. That’s why I have stayed in the background, keeping a watchful eye over you but never initiating contact,” she said, then slipped the bottle up beneath her veil. This time she took a long draw from it. “But that son of a whore . . .” She paused. “Maguire,” she offered, raising the bottle in salute. “The worm forced me to break my vow. Just as he forced you to break yours.” She leaned back on the steps, propping herself up on her elbows and splaying her legs in the most unladylike fashion possible on the step below.
“But he ain’t gonna mess with you now.” Pushing herself up a bit, she turned her face to the heavens, as if she were greeting God himself. “He ain’t gonna risk it now that he knows I’m still around.” The veiled face turned back to May. “You’re gonna have to let me teach you the things I taught your mama. And her mama. And her mama before that. Hell, girl, your family and me, we go a long way back.” The Beekeeper held her hand out to May. May felt ill at ease; Maguire had made a very similar statement. Did this creature, too, feel it somehow held ownership of her people?
May took a step or two closer and reached out, willing herself to have the bravery to touch this phantom. Her quivering hand fell back to her side. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid.”
Focused on her guest, and her own trembling, May hadn’t noticed the front door opening. It was the screech of the screen door that alerted her to Jilo’s presence. The little one pushed the door outward, and with one chubby fist in her mouth, stumbled out onto the porch. Her eyes filled with delight at the sight of the Beekeeper.
“Jilo,” May called, but it was too late. The child had already bounded, arms flung wide open, to where the Beekeeper sat.
The creature reached over and scooped the child up into her embrace. “This one,” she said, “she isn’t afraid of magic.” She chuckled as Jilo reached out with her wet fingers and pulled the veil high. “She ain’t afraid of nothing.”
THIRTEEN
The Savannah Morning Star
July 13, 1936
Page A1
Local Luminary Leads Delegation to Berlin Olympics
Distinguished Savannah businessman Sterling Maguire (shown center in above photograph) will lead a group of seven Georgia state dignitaries to the Games of the XI Olympiad that are to be held next month in Berlin. “Before his death, my father grew to be a great admirer of the German chancellor,” Maguire said. “I share my father’s enthusiasm for this dynamic new leader of the German nation. By combining the best thinking of our own American industry with the subversion and removal of the undesirable and decadent elements of society that led to his country’s decline, Chancellor Hitler has single-handedly pulled the German people out of the morass they found themselves in following the Great War. As the German people have learned from great Americans like Henry Ford, so is there much we Americans can learn from great Germans like Adolph Hitler.” When asked about earlier pressures from certain fringe elements to boycott the Berlin Olympic Games, Mr. Maguire stated, “Consider the source. Why would those who would reject the Messiah Himself be any more kindly inclined toward Chancellor Hitler?” The delegation is scheduled to arrive in Berlin a week prior to the commencement of the games to allow for an official tour of the city and the new 100,000-seat stadium. The highlight of the visit will be an opportunity for the delegation to meet with both the chancellor and Minister Hermann Göring.” (Story continues on page A10.)
May took her time cutting the piece from the newspaper, making sure to hold the scissors firmly in hand and to cut precisely along the straight-edge lines she’d drawn as guides. She flipped through the pages to find the article’s conclusion, then repeated the process, although that bit didn’t really have much to add about Maguire. It went on about some new thing called television that was gonna let people miles away from the games watch them just like they were sitting there. Kind of like radio, the article explained, just with moving pictures, too.
She dabbed a bit of paste on the back of each portion of the article and added it to the scrapbook with the other news pieces she’d collected about the Maguires since the last time she’d laid eyes on them, ther
e in the basement of the Pinnacle. Maguire had kept plenty quiet; he must’ve received the Beekeeper’s message loud and clear. May had been watching for news of him in the papers, and she always had an ear open for any talk on the streets. Kids still went missing, but at least none had turned up butchered like the boy she’d buried out back. All the same, May was taking no chances. Sure, she was using her magic on a regular basis now, for the benefit of others as well as herself, but she wasn’t going to accept silence as surrender. May was determined to know her enemy, track his doings, and try to figure out when he might make his next move against her.
“Fletcher Maguire, Industrialist, Humanitarian, Dead at 62” was the first headline to have caught her eye. It had been front-page news only six weeks after she’d helped the father steal his own son’s body. The article alluded to the stroke Fletcher had suffered the night of her mama’s passing. From the way the elder Maguire’s body had looked, May had thought him much older. Maybe it had been a result of her mama’s final attempt to rid the world of him, or maybe it was the hate burning in his soul that had aged him so. She wondered how long it would take his foul spirit to burn through the son’s young flesh.
Some days after the grand obituary stained the front page, a single paragraph, buried toward the back of the Star’s section C—too far back to be of much interest to the whites and not part of section D, which carried most of the colored news—announced that Mrs. Sterling Maguire had traveled to Arizona with the goal of divorcing her estranged husband. Six weeks and one day later, the society page announced Sterling Maguire’s engagement to a blonde Birmingham debutante with a foreign-looking last name.
These more personal items glinted like gold among a pile of other mentions about Sterling Maguire fulfilling some civic duty or other, or mentions of the various businesses in which he owned an interest, a lot of them with names as foreign as his new wife’s.
May examined the man’s fine young features once more before closing the book and sliding it back under her mattress.
FOURTEEN
September 1936
For the first time in months, really since the first night she’d used magic, May dreamed about her mother. In the dream, she was walking behind her mama—recognizable only by the curve of her shoulders and the way she carried herself—but her mama wouldn’t turn back to look at her no matter how she pleaded.
May awoke to a scent of cigar smoke, something she hadn’t smelled in her house since her mother’s passing. She sat up in bed, suddenly alert, fearful that one of the girls had caught something alight. But no, she realized the next moment, this odor could be nothing other than a foul-smelling cheroot. She figured the scent was nothing more than a remnant of the dream.
Specks of dust danced in the air, and it surprised her to see sun streaming in through the window. She hadn’t missed the sunrise more than a few times in her adult life, and perhaps only a few more times than that as a child.
She sure as hell was no longer a child now. Lifting her old carcass out of bed became a bit harder with each passing day. This morning everything hurt. She swung her legs out of bed and rubbed her aching knee, consciously willing relief to it. The Beekeeper had shown her how to channel healing energy from the earth itself into her aching joints, which eased the stiff pressure and allowed her to move as freely as she had twenty or more years ago. The only problem was that the magic’s cure was only temporary. She had to connect with the magic again and again, willing it to rise up from the earth into her muscles and bones, “like sap rising in a tree,” as the Beekeeper had put it. May worried it was like an opium smoker returning to his pipe, and the more she came to depend on magic, the more of herself she’d lose to it.
It was Maguire who’d done it to her. If magic was a trap, a snare into which Maguire had willingly fallen, he’d dragged May in with him. One trap, two souls. May understood her mama better now. Her mama had done her best to protect her from magic, and May would go to her grave doing the same for her girls. At first she doubted she’d ever be capable, but now she was determined to succeed where her mama had failed. She’d take Maguire down before she drew her last breath.
As her feet made contact with the bare wooden floor, she heard the click of a door and watched as her closet door eased open. A warm and bright amber light spilled into the room, but instead of marrying itself with the natural glow of the sun, it swirled around in it like the sheen of oil on water. The angle at which the door had opened blocked the source of the glow from her sight.
Laughter, rough but jovial, sounded from behind the door. Last year, she would have figured she was dreaming. Today, May knew better. She rose to her feet, hoping she could deal with whatever nonsense had slipped into her home before the girls awoke.
She crept up behind the door, using it to shield herself from sight, planning to peek through the crack to see what awaited her. Just before she reached it, she realized how foolish it was to think whoever or whatever stood on the other side of that door didn’t already know she was there, so she stepped into the door frame, clutching the knob as if it could somehow help her maintain one foot in a sane world.
The cramped dark closet she’d always known had given way to a room whose boundaries were larger than those of her entire house, larger, she reckoned, than Savannah itself. The light she’d witnessed shone from a golden chandelier, much grander than anything the Pinnacle had ever boasted. The walls of the grand chamber before her were lined floor to ceiling with mirrors, so the dazzling bulbs, each like a miniature sun, were augmented through reflection. Beneath the chandelier stood a table whose length seemed to run on nearly forever, its far edge disappearing into the horizon, melding into its own reflection.
At the table sat a man—or at least what at first blush appeared to be a man. May was no longer so quick to make assumptions. His back was to her, but he reached up over his head and waved his hand forward, beckoning her.
“Come in, little sister,” he called. In the next instant he was on the opposite side of the table, facing her.
The man, jet haired and as handsome as any matinee idol, was dressed in a worn smoking jacket. He sat in his chair reversed, with one arm draped across its back. On the table before him sat a battered top hat with a band dyed a shocking shade of red and a wicked-looking knife with a long curved blade. He lowered his head, gazing at her with a playful, mischievous look in his midnight-blue eyes. His long, elegant fingers held one of the cigars May had smelled. The other was tucked neatly between the lips of the Beekeeper, who hovered near the man, her feet not touching the ground.
“Ah, now the party can begin,” the Beekeeper said, chewing the words out from around the cheroot. Her hand held an empty decanter, which she raised as if to toast May’s arrival. Regarding it with disappointment, she pushed it away and reached into nothingness to retrieve another dust-covered bottle. “Do come join us, dearie.”
May cast her eyes toward where the floor should be, but there was nothing but an endless depth. Stars twinkled within the sea of blackness, so she cast her eyes upward, rationalizing that its surface was so well polished, it reflected the overhead sky. That supposition was quickly dashed when she saw that the stars above did not align with those below. She tested the surface’s solidity, tapping it with her toe before trusting it to support her weight. When it didn’t fall out from under her, she took another step inside, pulling the door almost closed behind her, unwilling to let go of the knob in case the floor changed its mind and decided to swallow her whole.
“It’s only familiarity that makes you so sure the floor beneath you will hold you up. This”—the Beekeeper wiggled her gloved fingers over the yawning chasm beneath her—“is energy.” She pointed over May’s shoulder to the world that lay beyond the now halfway-open door, “Just as all that is energy. Now stop trying my patience, child. Come.”
May did as she was told, releasing the faceted glass knob and taking another step out into a seeming nothingness. The surface beneath her feet felt more solid
as her confidence in its solidity grew.
“Yes,” the Beekeeper said, reaching out her hand, which May gladly caught hold of. In that instant, the world beneath her gave way, and she, too, was floating. Her grasp tightened on the Beekeeper’s glove. “Do not worry, child,” the Beekeeper said with a laugh. “This world is just as solid and real as the dream you know beyond the door.” She pulled her hand from May’s hold, and May realized that while she didn’t feel a surface beneath her, she wasn’t tumbling through an eternal darkness. The world around her was sufficient to provide her with the support she needed.
How is this possible? May posed the question silently to herself.
“I don’t know,” the man said, then lifted his cigar to his lips. He took a puff, and as he blew it out, he raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “How is anything possible? It just is. We just are. You just are.” He paused. “I have missed our sunrise meetings,” he said, his lips pulling into a pout. She would have remembered this man, but before she could ask him what he meant, he stood and pulled her into a tight embrace. His lips brushed against her ear, the sensation causing her heart to leap and fanning a fire she had thought long extinguished.
“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” he whispered. Without releasing her, he stepped back, eyeing her from head to toe and back up again.
“Lester?” the name came to her, though she couldn’t bring herself to believe this flesh-and-blood man could be the rooster who’d greeted her so many mornings on her way to work.
“As good a name as any,” he said. “I’ve been called many worse.” He winked at her, then let her go and returned to his seat next to the Beekeeper. “Come, little sister. Sit. Join us.” He motioned with a flourish of his hand toward the chair across from his own.
