by Rhodi Hawk
Trigger and Rosie both reacted immediately. They went rigid, their gaze on Patrice. Impish smiles vanished.
Patrice beckoned to them, and they followed her without protest. She led them away from the oil slick. It required far more concentration than she’d ever had to muster before, and the journey back seemed longer than it should have taken, but finally, they were all out.
* * *
“WHO IS HE?” GIL said, looking at the man on the floor.
Trigger almost seemed surprised. “I don’t know. I found Rosie down here in the cellar. I went to get her down, and he came after me. Must have been hiding.”
Patrice said, “What do you mean, get her down?”
“I mean just that. She was up there.”
Trigger was pointing to the ceiling joists that stretched above the sack of red beans where Marie-Rose had been curled up. “If she hadn’t a been makin those sounds I might not’ve seen her. But I looked up and there she was. Grinnin down at me like the Cheshire cat. Only she wudn’t seein me. She was lookin at the sylphs.”
“That explains why I didn’t see her,” Gil said. “Must’ve walked right under where she was hidin.”
Trigger said, “She wudn’t hidin. She’d been stashed up there.”
“By him?” Patrice said, nodding toward the man on the floor.
“Looked that way. He hid Rosie up there. And then when I was trying to get Rosie, he came after me. Threw a sack over my head. But then I got out and he tried to stab me. Not sure what happened after that. Briar.”
The man opened his mouth and closed it again, sending a fresh course of blood over his lips. His throat made a choking sound.
“I think he’s drowning in his own blood,” Gil said, and then looked to Patrice. “What should we do?”
She pulled the stool away from the man’s neck. “Did my mother send you?”
The man’s eyes met hers, but he gave no indication of an answer. He certainly couldn’t speak. And yet it was enough: Patrice had felt what was in his heart and recognized her mother’s presence in it. Her hands went cold. The intention inside this man had been to take the smallest child, and to kill another one. It’s what Maman had sent him to do.
Patrice shook her head, unable to trust what she saw in him. It must be her nerves—she must be reading him wrong. As much as their mother hated them, Patrice couldn’t believe she was capable of murdering one of her own children.
The stranger’s mouth stretched wide and drooled red down his cheek.
Marie-Rose said, “Do something!”
Patrice shook her head. This man had come here with murder in his heart. Still, God would not abide their causing him to suffer, would He?
Gil said, “Maybe we oughtta sit him up.”
Patrice shook her head. “He’ll still die. It’ll just keep him suffering longer.”
“Didn’t Mother once save that boy who couldn’t breathe by cutting into his throat?”
“Yes. That was Ferrar. But I wouldn’t know how to do that.”
She tried to imagine herself cutting into the stranger’s windpipe and found the idea impossible. And he’d likely choke her if she tried it.
Trigger reached down and took the knife from the man’s hand.
“Wait,” Patrice said.
But too late. Trigger thrust it into his heart.
Patrice gave a little cry, and Gil did, too, and they clutched one another. There came a horrible gurgling sound from where the man lay. Marie-Rose stood perfectly still, staring wide-eyed. Patrice grabbed her and pulled her into the huddle.
Trigger said, “There. Now he ain’t sufferin no more.”
Marie-Rose finally opened her mouth and let loose a sob.
Patrice rubbed her back. “Shh. Shh.”
The stranger had already gone still.
Patrice took Rosie by the chin and checked her face. “It’s over, now. Are you alright? Did he hurt you?”
“My neck,” Rosie said.
“We all have that. But I think we’re fine. Whatever was in the scratch, it must not have worked properly or that man would have got us all by now.”
Gil was glaring at Trigger. “You just killed him outright!”
“Well if you’d really gone lookin for Rosie like you’re supposed to!”
“I did come down here! I checked end-to-end!”
Trigger pointed at the dead man on the floor. “So why didn’t he come after you the way he done me?”
Gil paused, his cheeks flaring despite the darkness in the cellar. “Maybe cuz I wasn’t alone. Joseph was helping me look.”
“Joseph,” Trigger said, then nothing more.
The twins were staring at each other, and it seemed the slightest movement might cause them to lunge. Joseph was Gil’s friend who lived in the field workers’ cottages with his parents. After Mother had left Terrefleurs, Gil had started to pal around with Joseph instead of Trigger.
Patrice said, “Trigger, listen. Do you know if anyone saw you down here?”
Trigger kept glaring at his twin, nostrils flared.
Patrice touched his arm and gestured toward the man on the floor. “I mean do you think anyone saw him? Does anybody on the plantation know he’s down here?”
Trigger shook his head. “Naw. I mean, when it happened, I sort of got pulled into the briar so I can’t be sure. But I don’t think no one from Terrefleurs saw.”
“Anyone.”
“What are we going to do?” Marie-Rose asked.
“First we’ll have to bury him where no one will find out,” Patrice said.
“Mama’ll find out,” Rosie said. “That’s what the tar was.”
Trigger was nodding. “It’s why we couldn’t talk in the briar. She used that pool of oil to spy on us in some way. Not sure how. That thing came out of it.”
Patrice picked up the sack from the floor and covered the tiny window facing the back allée. “Well, if she knows she knows. Let’s hope no one else does.”
“Then what?”
Patrice turned to look because she wasn’t sure which of the boys had spoken. It was Trigger, his face hard, fists balled, and he looked like his own tension might cause his thin bones to bust apart.
Patrice said, “Then we leave.”
“Leave?” Rosie said.
Gil was nodding. “Leave Terrefleurs. In six months. Or three. When we’ve saved up.”
“No,” Patrice said. “That plan’s no good now. We have to leave immediately. Today.”
“With no money?”
“Do we have a choice?”
All four children were looking at one another. Checking for signs as to whether this could truly be happening.
Gil said, “Maybe I should stay back. See if I can raise a little money, then join y’all.”
Trigger said, “You stay, we all stay.”
Patrice said, “Nobody’s staying. We have to keep together or we might as well be dead. We leave. All four of us. Today. Pack only what you can carry. Two changes of clothes plus what you’re wearing. Rosie…”
Patrice reached down and took Marie-Rose by the elbows. “You go on up and start packing. Not a word to anyone. Not a word! You understand?”
Marie-Rose was nodding.
Patrice released her. “Go on ahead. Boys, help me with him.”
Marie-Rose ran for the stairs, pulling the dirty hem of her nightclothes to her knees as she ascended.
Patrice leaned over the dead man and closed his eyes as though she might be able to portray some kind of authority in doing a thing like this. Only, her hand was shaking. She motioned for the boys to help her wrap him in sacks and blankets. They had to tie him snug like a trussed hen.
She couldn’t believe Trigger had killed this man.
She couldn’t believe she’d let him.
No; she couldn’t believe she’d left it to him. Trigger was only eleven years old. Patrice should have killed this man herself the moment she saw him lying there on the cellar floor.
She s
aid, “We’ll put him in the eastern well. It’s condemned anyway.”
“We gonna swing for this?” Gil asked.
Trigger said, “Why would y’all swing? I’m the one who done it.”
“We’re all in cahoots.”
Patrice said, “Stop. No one’s going to swing. We put him in the well, then we’ll cover him with sticks and branches.”
“How we supposed to get him in the well with no one seein us? And once he’s in there he’ll stink up the whole plantation! Then everyone’ll know!”
Patrice folded her hands and thought on it a moment, carefully sidestepping her Christian beliefs. No point in wondering what was right in the service of God at this moment. She had to protect her siblings. And anyway she was too newly reborn in Christ to have the faintest idea what God would ordain for a fix like this.
She said, “We take him with us. It’s a two-day journey to New Orleans. Somewhere along the way we’re bound to find a place to put this soul to rest.”
fourteen
NEW ORLEANS, NOW
THE EARLIEST MEMORY MADELEINE could squeeze into focus, the farthest, most distant star of her mind, came from when she was an infant: her first taste of envy.
She could recall that her father had placed her momentarily inside her brother Marc’s crib. Marc had had a wonderful seabird mobile dangling just beyond reach. It had played a tinkling song when her father touched it just so, and the birds flashed and spun in a slow circle. She and Marc watched it and laughed together.
But when her father placed her back in her own crib, she was stuck once again with her own mobile: a bunch of grimacing cartoon animals that neither flashed nor spun nor played music. Nothing, no matter how hard Madeleine had cried or kicked at them, could make them come to life like Marc’s had.
“What’s the matter, kitten?” her father had said.
And she remembered very clearly that she understood his question, but she hadn’t had the language yet to reply. She’d learned to listen and understand well before she’d learned to speak. This made her even more furious.
Her father had given up and left the nursery. Madeleine bellowed in frustration and looked over toward Marc in his crib. He was standing at the bars, grinning at her.
He bounced, bent at his diapered bottom, calling her name: “Ma-dee! Ma-dee!”
She stopped crying and smiled. Then, miraculously, Marc escaped his crib by crawling over the side and lowering himself to the floor before disappearing from her field of vision. That made her laugh so hard it radiated from her belly to her mouth and arms and legs all at once. Every piece of her lurching in jumping jack glee.
Even as Madeleine thought back to it, she realized the hilarity shared the same intensity as the frustration, only one felt good and the other felt bad.
She tried to immerse herself in the memory now, coaxing it to life, distant as it was. The oldest memory she owned.
“So, is this to escape?” Severin said.
“Maybe,” Madeleine replied.
But the simple act of answering Severin caused images of her old nursery to flutter away. Madeleine was in the river devil’s world again.
Severin said, “You use the memory to avoid me, so.”
“You’re out of turn, Severin. You’re supposed to let me live my life. We have a bargain.”
They were resting on a bed of soft green moss that had swirls of red and brown marbling. It wavered beneath them like a waterbed. From far, far above came the hint of sunlight but no actual sun. Madeleine could see only towering cypress that stretched so high she couldn’t find the tops. Black trunks, black limbs, with coils and coils of black, black thorns; pale green leaves and silver falls of Spanish moss.
Something had happened. There’d been a murder, she thought, but no; multiple murders. Under the Huey Long Bridge. The briar had turned itself inside out into the material world, as it liked to do. She tried to think of just what had transpired but it hurt to concentrate. Things were easier here, actually. A thought didn’t need to have a beginning or end. Nothing seemed important. Sometimes she couldn’t quite remember why she was so bent on keeping the briar away.
From the center of the wavering moss meadow, a fountain roared to life.
“What’s that?” Madeleine asked in surprise.
But when Severin answered, it sounded like Ethan’s voice. “You said you wanted to take a bath.”
Madeleine shrank, self-conscious now. “Yes. Right. I do.”
Because she wasn’t really here in the river devil world, not physically. Her body was home, disconnected from her mind, and she was likely still covered in dirt and blood from that thing that had gone down under the Huey Long Bridge. She would have said she wanted a bath, yes, and now Ethan was drawing the water for her while her mind was trapped with Severin.
Was she trapped? Had she tried to leave the briar? She was ashamed to realize she didn’t care to leave it just yet.
The fountain caused the moss to recede to a shimmering gap of water. Madeleine stretched for it, her bath. Steam caressed her face. Her body slipped into the water.
“Ooh, it’s warm.”
The fountain stopped flowing.
Severin sang, “London Bridge is falling down…”
The moss wavered along slow, expanding ripples. Madeleine was wearing a dress. A thin blue summer dress. It floated around her, weightless, like a brilliant cobweb in a breeze. Steam rose from the water and even from her skin, obscuring the cypress. She lowered her head beneath the surface and drew the warm water over her face and hair, her feet bouncing lightly against the silty floor.
When she lifted her head again, Zenon was there.
She scrambled upright.
Severin had wandered off behind the columns of steam. Madeleine could still hear her singing “London Bridge” in that small voice. Zenon was smiling. A genuine, warm, true-blue smile while he gazed at her as though they were long lost friends.
He said, “You sure make a pretty picture, Sis.”
“Get away.”
“Surprised to see me?”
Her breathing hitched. “You killed all those people.”
“Didn’t have to lift a finger. Good thing, too, seeing as I can’t lift any fingers no more.”
“You were going to kill me.”
He snorted, and his expression hardened. “You’re still alive. It’s good training for you.”
Her shoulders were raised just above the surface. She was treading water now, where only moments ago she’d felt the riverbed beneath her feet.
She said, “But what if I hadn’t survived?”
“Well then you’d be dead.”
He reached out and snatched her arms. She jerked backward, sending a wave splashing toward the islands of moss. He held both her wrists with one hand and put the other to her head, and then pushed her down. She kicked at him. The sound of splashing disappeared to a muffled roar in her ears as she fell down into the warm well. And she felt stinging, stinging, stinging.
He pushed her down further, deeper, and then he swam downward and was dragging her with him. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream. They were moving so fast. Light disappeared to shadows. He stopped and held. Her lungs were burning. She fought with everything she had. Her vision began to tilt, then spin.
But beyond the crust of panic, it occurred to her that he was underwater, too. She forced herself to think beyond the desperation.
Stinging, maddening creatures had swarmed her spine and abdomen. She looked down. Their bodies were like curled dragonflies, with luminescent colors and long, delicate wings, but their forelegs ended in dagger-like stingers, and their faces looked near-human but for their enormous eyes. Even as she watched them, their stinging subsided.
She was so fascinated that she realized a substantial period of time had passed—could have been moments, or even an hour. And she realized she was breathing here underwater.
But of course she could breathe. This was a place of the mind. Her body was
not in the bramble. Her body was at home, and Zenon’s body was in the hospital. This was a dream world. Briar.
Zenon was smiling at her again. She actually smiled back.
When he spoke, he did not use his voice. “Training, baby. ‘That which does not kill me’ kinda shit. You just learned something about breathing underwater. You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t ask for any training, Zenon,” she replied with her mind, her smile slipping away.
She could still feel bubbles dislodge from her skin and slide along her body toward the surface. “Let go of me and leave me the hell alone.”
“Why don’t you wise up? I thought you finally got smart when I caught you hunting the lumen.”
“The blind boy? That’s crazy, Zenon! Why would I want to hunt down a little boy?”
“Crazy?” He yanked her forward. “You wanna know about crazy? The hell you think your body’s doing while you’re lounging around here with your river devil?”
Madeleine glared at him. But, she’d already been wondering about that very thing. She was probably acting more and more like her father. Daddy had faded in and out. She’d watched as he’d slipped away, wandering the streets, ranting and railing, sometimes even violent.
Zenon said, “Quit being a princess and figure out what you really are. A warrior. Same as me, yeah.”
“Stop it. I’m nothing like you.”
“Oh yes you are. There ain’t but two types in the world: predator and prey. Those pigeons out there are the prey. The lumens are the prey. You were meant to be a predator, and if you keep denying it you’re just gonna turn into some pee-smellin bag lady.”
“You’re guessing, Zenon, you don’t know any more about this than I do.”
“Except you know I ain’t lyin.”
She was listening, trying to make his words ring false in her heart. The stinging creatures were drifting around, waiting to light.
He said, “Tell you what, I’m a do you a big favor. Gonna give you a chance to get rid of that lumen. Your reward is you don’t lose your mind. That’s the only river devil bargain that actually sticks.”
“I won’t do that. I will never do that.”
“Oh yes you will. But until you do you’ll be spending a lot more time in this here briar hole while your boyfriend slowly gets tired of it all.”
