The Challenge Box

by Isobel Bird

  Sherrie gave her a disgusted look. “I’m not the one who threw a giant tantrum over a little mistake,” she said.

  “A little mistake!” exclaimed Kate. She prepared herself for giving Sherrie a piece of her mind. Then she stopped, took a breath, and said, “I think this will work best if we each take a different part of the project. What if I work on the oldest rocks and you can work on the more recent ones?”

  “Whatever,” Sherrie replied, reaching into her backpack and pulling out some eyeliner and a compact. She opened the compact and began to apply the makeup to her eyes.

  “Mostly this is going to be a lot of research and putting clues together,” Kate said. “We basically have to create a profile of Beecher Falls’s history using rocks—or the area that became Beecher Falls, anyway.”

  Sherrie snorted. “First it was dirt, then there was a lot of ice, then there was more dirt,” she said. “What’s so hard about that?”

  Kate put the handout down. “Look,” she said. “I don’t really care whether you help with this or not. If you want, I’ll write the whole thing and we can just put both our names on it.”

  Sherrie snapped the top on her eyeliner and popped it back into her bag. “Right,” she said. “So you can tell Ableman I didn’t do anything? I don’t think so.”

  “I won’t tell her anything,” said Kate. “I just need a good grade on this, and the easier it is to do, the better. So why don’t you just go home and I’ll take care of it?”

  Sherrie regarded her for a minute before speaking. “I’ll stay,” she said. “I need a good grade, too, and I don’t trust you. For all I know, you’ll deliberately write something that’s totally wrong.”

  Kate threw her hands in the air. “Fine,” she said. “In that case, let’s just get to work. We need to find some books about the geography of the Pacific Northwest. Can you do that?”

  “Books,” Sherrie said. “How hard can that be?” She got up and walked away. A minute later she came back. “And just where would these books be?” she asked, as if Kate had hidden them from her.

  “Over there,” Kate answered, pointing her in the right direction.

  Sherrie went off to find some reference books while Kate continued to look at the handouts. She was becoming more and more interested in the photos of the various items that had been trapped between the layers of rock. In addition to the leaves, there were insects and small animals. There was even the impression of a bird skeleton. Kate stared at the photos. What would the area around Beecher Falls have been like all those thousands of years ago? What would it have been like to walk around the forests then?

  She looked out the window. The rain was coming down even harder now. Beyond the buildings of Jasper College she saw the outlines of the mountains that lay beyond the town. She had often hiked in those mountains with her family. Now she wondered who—or what—had walked there before her. What would she see if she could go back a thousand years? Ten thousand years? A million years? What would the land look like?

  She began to daydream, imagining the people who had lived in what was now Beecher Falls. She knew that several American Indian tribes had lived in the area, but that had been fairly recently. What had the earliest inhabitants been like? Recently she had been reading a book about primitive peoples and their ideas of religion, particularly about how the Goddess had been a central figure in many civilizations, even when the people didn’t necessarily have a word to describe her. Kate wondered if the inhabitants of her area had worshipped any kind of goddess. Had they made shrines to her out of rocks or other natural materials? Had they drawn pictures of her with chalk and other pigments on cave walls, as many early peoples had?

  Kate had never really thought about the history of the land she lived on. Now that she did, she found herself creating images of a girl her age, a girl who lived in the forests thousands of years ago. What would her life have been like? Without things like television and cars and grocery stores—or even real houses or clothes—how would she have seen the world? Would she know that there was anything else besides the forests she lived in? Would she understand what the stars were, or what made the moon get bigger and smaller?

  Kate knew from her Wicca studies that the earliest stories about gods and goddesses had been made up to explain natural phenomena like rain and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Would the girl she imagined have been told such stories? Would she have believed them? Hearing such stories now, Kate could appreciate them as legends. But what if she had been alive when they were first told? Would she really have believed in a goddess whose tears made the rain, or whose dancing caused the winds to blow? And as she learned that those things weren’t caused by supernatural beings, that they were just natural occurrences, would she stop believing in the Goddess?

  Isn’t that what really did happen? she asked herself. Didn’t people stop believing in the gods and goddesses as they found out more about how the world worked? Didn’t they become simply stories that people told, laughing at how silly their ancestors were to believe such things? Isn’t that why they were considered myths and legends, and not facts?

  This was something Kate had thought a lot about during her year of studying Wicca. What exactly was the Goddess to her? Did she exist, or was she just a story? Was she simply the personification of nature, or was she something that existed herself? When Kate invited the Goddess into a circle with her, what was she really doing? If someone asked her if the Goddess was real, what would she say? She had once told her brother, Kyle, that she thought of the Goddess as a sort of beehive, a huge entity that was made up of all these other little entities—the bees, or in this case the goddesses who were invoked in magic.

  But that didn’t answer the question of whether or not she actually believed in the Goddess. It was pretty easy for Kate to describe her; it was something else to say whether or not she believed the Goddess existed somewhere. So far it hadn’t really been a problem. No one had asked her flat out about her views of the Goddess. But it was something she herself thought about more and more as the time for initiation grew closer.

  When she had been confirmed in the church she’d grown up in, as a very little girl, she’d been asked several questions about God and his role in her life. Then it had seemed easy to her to believe in God. She saw him as this old man who lived somewhere in the sky, looking down on the world. Every night when she went to sleep she asked God to look after her and her family, and she’d really believed that he was doing it. She’d believed that when she prayed, God heard her.

  Now things didn’t seem so simple. She wished she could just believe that the Goddess—like the vision of God she’d had as a child—was an old woman who sat up in the clouds and watched what was happening down on Earth. But she knew it wasn’t as easy as that. It was difficult for her to put into words exactly how she saw the Goddess, and she didn’t know if it was because how she saw the Goddess was difficult to describe, or if it was because she really didn’t know what she believed. She very much liked the idea of the Goddess existing in physical form, the way she always did in stories. She liked thinking that maybe she could meet the Goddess in person someday. She’d had several very vivid visions of her before, but what would it be like to actually see her or touch her?

  That would make it so much easier to know what I believe, she thought, sighing. Was it this hard for other people? she wondered. Did Sophia and Archer and Thea have these kinds of thoughts? She sometimes wanted to ask them, but she was embarrassed. Everyone else seemed so sure, so confident. She felt like she should be the same way.

  “Here.” Sherrie dropped a stack of books on the table beside Kate. Annoyed at having her thoughts disturbed, Kate looked at the books.

  “Sherrie, these are atlases,” she said. “We need books about the physical geography of this part of the country.”

  Sherrie rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “How am I supposed to know what to look for?” she asked. “You can’t expect me to do everything.”


  Kate stood up and gathered the books together. Her thoughts about the Goddess were going to have to wait. Right now she had to get to work on her science project. “Come on,” she said to Sherrie. “I’ll show you where to look.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “I can’t believe people are up this early,” Cooper said sleepily as she stumbled into the kitchen of Juliet’s house. She was looking out the window, which overlooked the street. There were people everywhere, walking along and talking. It was just after six in the morning.

  Darcy, who was making coffee, laughed. “They aren’t up early,” she said. “They never went to sleep.”

  Cooper sat down at the table. Annie was already there, sipping a mug of tea and eating toast with jam on it. She was just as sleepy as Cooper was, but Juliet had told them that they should get up early because she had a big day planned. Since they had stayed up late the night before, waking up had not been easy. Dinner—at a small restaurant serving gumbo and other traditional New Orleans food—had been amazing. Even better had been the conversation. Annie and Juliet had talked about all kinds of things, asking each other questions and comparing stories. They’d continued the conversation back at the house, reluctantly going to bed only when Annie could barely keep her eyes open any longer. Annie hadn’t even gotten a chance to give Juliet the gifts she’d brought her.

  “Put that down!” Juliet appeared in the kitchen doorway, pointing at Annie and scowling. Annie looked at the piece of toast in her hand, then at Juliet.

  “What?” she said. “Is this the last piece of toast or something? I’m sorry.”

  “No,” Juliet said, laughing. “It’s just that I have something much better in store for you guys. Are you ready to head out?”

  “Sure,” replied Annie, nodding. “Cooper?”

  Cooper, who was resting her weary head on her hand, lifted one hand limply and waved.

  “She’s ready,” Annie told Juliet. “She’s not exactly a morning person.”

  “Let’s go, then,” said Juliet.

  The three of them got up and left the house. As they walked through the streets, Annie tried to take in everything. The city had a totally different look in the morning light than it did at night. While in the evening it blazed with lights and pulsed with energy, in the morning it was like a sleepy child waking up from a nap. The sun dappled the brick buildings with soft, buttery light, and the air was cool. While most of the shops were closed, the little restaurants and cafés were filled with people sitting at tables reading newspapers, drinking coffee, or just enjoying the beauty of the morning.

  They emerged into a square. There they saw people setting up all kinds of booths and stalls. Some were arranging paintings against the wrought-iron fences that ran along parts of the square. Others were putting up card tables and hanging signs that said tarot cards read or fortunes told. They passed people setting out jewelry on blankets and jars of hot sauce on tables. It seemed that everyone had something to sell. One stall contained nothing but strings of brightly colored beads.

  “I see those beads everywhere,” remarked Annie as they passed by. “Everybody seems to be wearing them. Do they mean something?”

  “They’re Mardi Gras beads,” Juliet explained. “It’s traditional to give beads to people as gifts. People collect them all during Mardi Gras, but particularly during the parade. You’ll see.”

  She led them across the square, navigating through the people gathering there. “That’s where we’re going,” she said, pointing to a building at the far side of the square. A line of people stretched along the street outside of it. They crossed the street and joined them.

  “This is Café Du Monde,” Juliet told the girls. “It’s probably the most famous coffee shop in the world.”

  “It must be good if all these people are lined up this early,” Annie said.

  Juliet nodded. “You’re in for a real New Orleans treat,” she said as the line moved forward. “Look at that.”

  Annie and Cooper looked where Juliet was pointing. A man had emerged from the café holding a bag in one hand and a cup in the other. He opened the bag and pulled out what looked sort of like a square doughnut. It was covered in powdered sugar. He took a bite of it and then sipped from the cup.

  “Doughnuts?” Cooper said. “They’re famous for doughnuts?”

  “Not doughnuts,” said Juliet reprovingly. “Beignets. Wait until you try one.”

  The line had entered the shop and they stopped at a counter. Behind the counter were lots of people removing the beignets from the frying vats and rolling them in tubs of powdered sugar. Juliet placed the order, and moments later they left with three bags and three cups. They sat down on a bench in the square and began to eat.

  “This is amazing,” said Annie after taking her first bite of beignet. The dough was crispy and soft at the same time, and the sugar melted in her mouth.

  “It is so not a doughnut,” Cooper said approvingly as she tried hers. “It’s heaven.”

  “I told you,” said Juliet, licking powdered sugar from her fingers. “Now try the coffee.”

  Annie and Cooper sipped at their cups, then looked at one another.

  “And I thought a Starbucks frappuccino was the perfect drink,” remarked Cooper.

  Juliet laughed. “Nothing beats the coffee from Café Du Monde,” she said. “That place was started in 1862. It’s been a fixture of the French Market ever since.”

  “If I lived here I’d gain fifty pounds the first month just from these,” said Annie, starting on her second beignet.

  “I almost did,” Juliet told her. “Now I only have them on special occasions.”

  They sat and ate quietly, watching the people come and go around them. Annie was happier than she’d been in a long time. Being in New Orleans felt like being in a place out of time. It was so different from anywhere else she’d ever been. Plus, she was there with Juliet, and that made it even more special.

  “Okay,” Juliet said when they’d all finished. “Now for the fun.”

  “You mean it gets better?” asked Cooper as she looked sadly at her empty bag.

  “Much better,” answered Juliet. “Let’s go.”

  Once more they started walking. This time Juliet led them away from the busy market and down less-crowded streets. They came to a nondescript building, where she opened a door and ushered them inside. “Welcome to the home of the voodoo queen,” she said mysteriously as they went through.

  They were in what seemed like a big warehouse. Sitting in the middle of the room was a float. The centerpiece was a woman’s head, which rose up from the rear of the float. It was made of chicken wire covered with papier-mâché. The head was only half covered, and at the moment four people were busily applying the strips of paper soaked in a mixture of glue and water to the unfinished half, while two others—a woman and a man—painted the finished side. They were applying color to the head’s cheeks as Cooper and Annie walked up with Juliet.

  “Not bad,” Juliet said to the pair doing the painting.

  The man stood back and looked at the color, which looked like milky coffee. He was tall and thin, with long light brown hair that was tied into a ponytail in back. He had a short beard and wore round gold-rimmed glasses. He was wearing paint-spattered overalls and a light blue T-shirt. “Do you think Marie would approve?” he asked.

  “Definitely,” said Juliet. “Now get down here. I want you to meet my sister.”

  The man jumped down and gave Juliet a kiss. Then he turned to Annie.

  “And you must be the famous Annie,” he said, bowing solemnly.

  Annie laughed. “I guess I am,” she said.

  The man shook her hand. “I’m Andre,” he said. “Juliet has done nothing but talk about you for weeks.” He leaned in and said confidentially, “Just between you and me, it’s very tiresome.”

  Juliet pretended to be horrified. “Just for that, I’m not helping you with this thing,” she said. “You can make the costumes yourself.”

&n
bsp; Andre grimaced. “That would be ugly,” he said. “You know I can’t even make curtains.”

  Juliet turned to the girls. “Andre is my boyfriend,” she said. “And he’s right, he can’t make costumes. But he’s an amazing sculptor.”

  “And actor,” Andre said to her. “Don’t forget actor.”

  “And actor,” Juliet added, rolling her eyes. “Andre is part of the theater group.”

  “Part?” said Andre. “I am the star.”

  “Please,” Juliet said. “You have how many lines in the latest performance? Six?”

  “You’re a cruel woman,” said Andre. “But now tell me—what do you all think of the float?”

  “What is it supposed to be?” Annie asked.

  Andre looked at her, narrowing his eyes. “You really are her sister, aren’t you?” he said. “What is it supposed to be indeed. That,” he said, pointing to the head, “is none other than Marie Laveau herself. The rest of it will be done in black and blue and silver. We’re going to have people dressed in costumes on the float, throwing out silver beads. It’s supposed to capture the essence of voodoo.”

  “Very spooky,” commented Cooper. “This Laveau chick was really something else, huh?”

  Andre looked at Juliet. “Perhaps it’s time for the tour?” he asked.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” said Juliet. “I have to get busy on those costumes. Do you think you can show them around while I do that, or is your presence here totally indispensable?”

  “I think the minions can manage without me,” said Andre. He looked at the people working on the float. “Minions?” he called out. “Can you carry on without me for a while?”

  The people on the float groaned and waved him away. Andre looked at the girls. “I think they’ll be fine,” he said.

  The four of them walked to the door. Back on the street, Juliet said good-bye and, after arranging to meet them all for lunch later, walked back toward the house. Andre took the girls in the other direction.

  “I hope you two aren’t easily spooked,” he said as they walked. “New Orleans is a peculiar place, and a lot of strange things have happened here over the years. Some people say that there are more ghosts and spirits here than anywhere else on earth.”