by Rhodi Hawk
Patrice and Rosie were singing. Awfully. They tried to find the proper key but their voices were seesawing in erratic directions. The soft-curled woman, though her river devil had relinquished interest in the girls for the moment, was sneering at their tone.
Then, somewhere nearby—much nearer than at the warehouse—the clock tolled once for the half-hour. Full and round. Patrice moved her attention to the sound and matched its key, the same as the song, and she sang out from the bottom of her belly. Rosie fell in after her and was finally on key, too. The sound was lovely and innocent even to Patrice’s own ears. The song was pretty.
And its effect was immediate. People slowed in the streets, and their devils seemed drowsy.
“Look, how sweet!” someone was saying.
“If you tilt them do their eyes close?”
Laughter.
The soft-curled woman settled down, too, and shooed the girls forward so they might stroll while singing, caroler-style.
Patrice stepped forward and felt like she was walking among a pack of wild dogs that she hoped wouldn’t catch her scent. To slip attention would be to draw the chaos from all those river devils. So very many of them. She glanced at her sister. Rosie had an expression that hung somewhere between fear and outrage, a very Marie-Rose kind of quality that made her intimidating beyond her size to just about anyone but her siblings. Her painted cupid’s bow lips were now pouring out that song as though they could blow brimstone to ice.
Hutch was now moving through the crowd, looking theatrically interested in the girls’ song. But that wasn’t right. Patrice had seen his face when he’d listened the first time, when he was truly curious. This was different—he was grinning and gesturing at the girls. His devil was whispering.
Someone was buying a sheet of music from the soft-curled lady.
Someone else was moving through the crowd. One of the men from the warehouse—that fat one who’d run his fingers up Patrice’s spine when she’d inquired about Ferrar. He was watching Patrice and Rosie but again, his attention was elsewhere.
Where?
The soft-curled woman led the girls forward. They’d now gone through the song three times. The plan was that they would sing it five times, then move down several blocks and begin again.
It disturbed Patrice that Hutch and the other man from the warehouse were following along. Also, the soft-curled woman had only sold three copies of the sheet music. Were they going to be able to sell enough to pay the girls and still make a profit?
With all these thoughts, her attention was wavering. The river devils seemed to grow restless. And the thorns arose, too.
Patrice looked to her left and saw water was now coursing down the cobbled streets. She caught her breath in mid-phrase, and her voice stumbled back to the melody.
That water wasn’t real.
This was the thorn world overlaying God’s world. This was the shadow river, coming to swallow her into the briar.
And on the other side of the river, a pool of tar, and a tar creature watching. It moved as though anxious to get to Patrice and Rosie but it couldn’t seem to cross the water.
Patrice focused her attention back to the song. Each note as an individual piece, the feel of it in her throat, the lyrics as separate words with separate meanings.
But it wasn’t working.
She intensified her focus. So much so that each fraction of a second seemed to pass with the slightest hesitation between them. It should have helped keep the briar away, but it did not. Not this time.
Rosie was gripping the music so that it steamed limp in her hands. Patrice knew she must be experiencing the same thing.
The briar river coursed by at no more than six inches deep. Patrice could still see the cobblestones in distorted glimpses beneath the flow. The water made a lapping, rushing sound, and another sound came, too. A song. Different from the one the girls sang, and it made it near impossible to cling to the refrain of one and listen to the other.
But she had to listen. She heard the other song in her bones.
What she heard was Francois’ song. And Francois was singing it.
* * *
PATRICE COULDN’T SAY WHEN the girls had stopped singing. It might have been Rosie who first let the song fall off so she could listen to Francois’ voice. Or maybe Patrice had been the first. The soft-curled woman was railing at them though to Patrice she was now just a distant finch. The briar had filled in so quickly that it seemed impossible to keep track of anything from the material world. But now that they were immersed in the briar, at least the devils were no longer outraged by them. They counted them as among their own here.
Patrice forced herself to try to follow what was happening. Keeping focus was suddenly so difficult.
Trigger had emerged from some side street and his hand was in someone else’s pocket.
Gil had shown up, too, and was reaching toward a man leaning against a lamppost.
The man turned to look at him. “You want to find that hick with the blood-shined eye? You go on over to the bridge. That’s where alla them end up.”
The sound of Francois’ voice grew stronger.
Rosie gawked at a shimmering fairylike creature. A sylph.
Patrice was suddenly aware of the soft-curled woman grabbing her by the arm.
“You leave her alone!” Rosie said, and the soft-curled woman let go.
“All of you, leave us alone.” This time it was Trigger talking.
Patrice looked and saw that Hutch and Simms were turning and striding away. So was the fat man from the warehouse, and the soft-curled woman. Trig and Rosie and Gil were frowning as they watched them go.
The four LeBlanc children weren’t as upset as they were last night, and their pigeonry was more effective.
And on the heels of that thought Patrice remembered that this was a sin.
“Don’t do pigeonry,” she said to them.
What a dull, naïve idea to which she’d clung. She decided to let it go. Now, here. Setting the resolution adrift.
And then she was immediately distracted by the river that now flowed past her ankles. And then by Francois’ singing. Her attention leapt from one thing to the next. The sylph was most compelling. It spread its wings and flirted with the children like it wanted to be chased. Marie-Rose stepped forward.
“Don’t follow it, Rosie! You’ll get lost! You can’t tell what’s briar and what’s not.”
Patrice’s river devil moved toward her from the shadows, walking slowly. “It goes to see your Francois. To hear his song. Don’t you long to hear it, too?”
Rosie looked back at the devil. “Francois?”
“Don’t talk to it,” Patrice said.
Rosie said, “But Francois. If he’s here we should go see him.”
“He isn’t really here. You’ll only see echoes of him. He left us to attend to the stranger, remember?”
“Even so, we ought to check on him.”
“Only if we all stay together. No one wander, you hear?”
She could still see people everywhere, only now they were the shadows and the devils were the flesh.
“Trigger!” Patrice called.
He was striding after the sylph. He paused and looked back.
“Come on,” Rosie said.
Patrice looked for Gil. He was moving in her direction but looking back at the man who’d been leaning against the pole. Rosie was trying to catch up with Trigger and the sylph.
“Alright, we can follow it!” Patrice said to no one because no one was listening.
Why was it so compelling to follow that ridiculous sylph? Like sitting in church and realizing your soul might be teetering between hellfire and salvation, but really all you care about is that right now you have to pee.
Concentration was so exhausting. Gil caught up to her and they fell into step together without a word. They followed along and allowed the sylph to do the concentrating for them. For all of them. Patrice’s shoes splashed in the street that was now
the river.
They turned the corner and saw him.
Francois, lying on his back on the raft. The dead stranger lay at his side. The raft drifted down the shadow river, turning gently. It ground against the cobblestones for a moment and then coasted forward. Something else, too, a shining black shape about the size of a dog that at first Patrice thought might be a river devil. Maybe that tar creature.
Next to Francois, the dead stranger lay with deep streaked cavities where his eyes had been. The black shape moved over him, and Patrice finally saw the long, crooked neck—a vulture.
Shops and hotels and homes lined the streets. Shadow people and their river devils were looking down from their curling wrought-iron balconies. Patrice couldn’t tell the thorns from the metal.
“Francois!” Marie-Rose called.
Francois turned his head to the side to look at Rosie. He was still singing in his deep, slow voice.
“Francois!” Rosie cried again, and she splashed into the river toward him, going slower as the river dragged deeper, her dress bunched in her fists.
Trigger splashed in, too. He overtook Rosie and went surging toward the raft.
The vulture raised its beak from the dead stranger. And then it leaned over Francois. Bending to his face. Craning its neck.
“Stop!” Patrice shrieked.
Trigger took off his hat and flung it at the bird. It turned its filthy beak and stared at Trigger, canting its head to the side as though it might be half-blind. Trigger made it to the raft just as the vulture stretched its wings and took to the air.
Francois had his hand over his eye. Patrice and Gil splashed toward the raft.
“Francois! What’s happened?” Rosie cried.
Francois turned his head back to face the sky. He lay on his back, knees bent, the left one swaying a little. Hand to eye. Hand over the eye where that filthy bird had bent over him. He went back to singing that slow, mournful song he’d been singing yesterday when the children had bade him farewell in that remote bayou.
Patrice covered her mouth, horrified.
“He’s gone daft,” Trigger said.
The sylph dipped and turned around, drawing their gazes, beckoning them to follow. And strangely, Patrice nearly did just that, so fickle was her attention now. Gil was taking a few steps toward it.
Patrice gathered her wits. “We have to get Francois off this raft.”
They each pulled on Francois but could not make him move. Francois remained on his back. The raft kept floating. They could not slow it much; just make it turn a little, or rock. Francois kept singing. His hand was over his eye and a black stream ran down his cheek.
“It’s cuz he ain’t here, he’s not really,” Trigger said.
Gil looked at him. “You’re right. He must still be out on that damn bayou. He’s not really here and we’re not really there.”
“But that vulture, you swatted it away,” Patrice said.
Trigger shook his head. “I scared it. Just because it saw me doesn’t mean I was there. It flew off on its own.”
“A whisper!”
Patrice’s river devil. She looked to see it moving toward them through the water.
A sense of futility swept over Patrice. She wasn’t sure if it came from her own being or whether the river devil had somehow caused it. The children stopped walking with the raft and it drifted down the dark, mottled river over the cobblestones, Francois still singing that awful song.
“We’ve got to get back to him,” Patrice said.
“How?”
No one replied.
If they didn’t find their way to Francois soon, get him off that bayou, he would surely die. Patrice looked and saw that her river devil had moved through the water and was by her side, its lips peeled back to a sneer.
“You think yourself different from me. Here you’re the same. Really, always you are the same.”
Patrice refused to look at the hated thing but she could see Guy and Gilbert were stealing glances. Hard to blame them. Ignoring these creatures seemed pointless. In the real world, to look upon a devil was to inflame it and undermine it. But once the briar set in, the devil demanded attention.
Patrice straightened. “Where’s Rosie?”
Guy and Gilbert turned.
Patrice looked to either side, then spun in a circle. “Rosie? Rosie!”
The buildings cast their silhouettes over the water. River devils were creeping up walls of thorns, or bending around their human counterparts. The sun curled away behind a cloud. Marie-Rose was not there.
thirty-five
NEW ORLEANS, 1927
TRIG TOUCHED PATRICE’S SHOULDER. “I’ll track Rosie and bring’er back, don’t worry.”
Patrice liked to believe it, that he could find Rosie. He’d learned tracking from the hunters at Terrefleurs and could find a footprint beneath a crush of pine needles or a tuft of rabbit fur hidden in the cotton bolls. He’d once tracked a jay to its nest because Tatie Bernadette claimed it had stolen a needle. The nest held a coin, a piece of glass, an acorn cap, and lots of dried vine, but no needle—Tatie later found that when she stepped on it on the gallery. Trig knew the droppings of all the animals, wild or domestic. But in the briar, Trigger’s talent took on a new quality. He could divide the scent of briar must from that of a river devil or even his siblings. And then, once he located what he wanted, he could bend the space between the here and there to take a closer look.
River devils could find things in a similar way.
Patrice stumbled after Trig as he moved from the river’s center to its outer edge, which was lined with buildings. To the children’s eyes the flow splashed up and into shops and residences. But in daylight reality they knew there was no water there.
The river devil ran her clawlike nails lightly down Patrice’s scalp, and Patrice resisted the urge to wheel around and swat it away. That would have been the same as talking to it. Patrice steeled herself and kept after Trig, feeling graceless and numb with panic. Her feet were stuttering on the cobbled street beneath the river. She kept thinking how Marie-Rose wouldn’t have chased the sylph with Francois lying there like that.
Something was stinging her leg—tiny winged briar insects clinging to her stockings. She slapped her thigh but more of them surged up from the rushing water.
“Easy,” Gil said, taking her arm and helping her over the submerged cobblestones and toward the water’s edge.
As soon as he said it she knew he was speaking the truth: Easy. She had to keep her mind and heart easy. The children might be trapped in the briar for now, but all the skills they’d learned that kept them from getting lost in it still applied—that peaceful core she’d seen in Ferrar one day several months ago. That’s where the power was.
The insects drifted away.
Gil said, “Trig’ll find her, Treese.”
She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “I saw you talking to that man on the street. Earlier, when Rosie and I were singing.”
Gil’s face clouded.
Patrice said, “You knew him?”
Gil shook his head and tried to stride forward but Patrice took his arm. “And I saw Trigger with his hand in someone else’s pocket!”
Gil scowled at her. “Well if you already saw and you already know then what are you asking!”
“You were pickpocketing!”
“What! You think Simms makes money from the dang sheet music? Come on, Treese! You still tryin to make a hundred dollars from sellin eggs!”
She stared at him.
Gil said, “You were their sylphs, you and Rosie. Sweet baby dolls to distract the folks while we—”
“Stop it. Just stop.”
She put her hands to her head and tried to squeeze away the thoughts. The insects returned to her legs, arching their long, slender abdomens to insert their stingers. Useless to slap them. That just attracted more.
She said, “How could you do a thing like that? We left Terrefleurs to get away from evil like—”<
br />
“We are evil, Treese! We walk with devils! Bible says God saves man from them, but He never protected us. We are not man.”
She shook her head. It hurt to hear him speak that way, the hopelessness in it.
He jammed a finger in the direction of Patrice’s river devil. “That thing was right. We are them.”
“We’re more than that! And we don’t have to listen to their sickness unless we want to.”
“Is that so? Well here’s God’s own truth: If Trig and I don’t make enough money for Simms he’s gonna sell off you and Rosie by the hour.”
“Sell off…?”
“It’s why we sent them away. Pigeoned all of’m. At first, when he told us we had to pick some pockets to earn our keep, we were so mad we couldn’t pigeon’m. Then after y’all started singing it got easier.”
She couldn’t conceive of what he meant by “sell off.” Slavery? But the awareness was already there, even though it hadn’t yet formed its shape—something to do with the way Simms had sized her up in Rosie’s gown, the fellow in the warehouse who’d kissed her and made her mouth bleed. They’d all been laughing at her and leering at the same time. She felt stupid and naïve, aware they had something particular in mind that she ought to understand, and yet she was still unsure.
“Gil, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Simms can’t sell us to anyone. Not for an hour, not for a second. We’d never stand for it.”
“Oh, yeah? What about last night when they stole Papa’s automobile? We weren’t going to stand for it then. Only reason we escaped with our necks is because we got lucky.”
“God stepped in.”
Gil looked miserable. “How can you believe that, Treese? How do you know? Just because Tatie Bernadette believes? And the reverend?”
“Because I feel it.”
She swallowed, groping in her mind for a stronger argument to back up this statement, but there was nothing more compelling to say than that. She did feel it. What else was there?
