Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia, 1903
Bumping along on Princess, more sober than he cared to be, Aidan watched a fire-haint dash through swamp grass, cross black water, and charge between the bulging knees of cypress trees. The haint’s feet were flames, burning the ground. Its head was smoke, its heart a red-hot coal, its eyes cold blue light. Gaping at the burning figure, Princess stopped so fast Aidan flew over her ears into decaying water lilies and mushy cypress skeletons. The fall should have broke his neck, but he spit muck from his mouth, wiped slime from his eyes, and stood up slow, not a break or a crack anywhere. His banjo and shoulder bag hung from a tree limb that had reached out to catch his precious possessions. Miracles and demons, everywhere he turned, should’ve scared him—just made him sad, made him thirsty. He’d resolved not to drag a jug on this journey no matter what might come out to torment him. He regretted that now.
The haint’s trail of smoke and fire vanished in the distance. A breeze sighed through the grass. Aidan squinted; Princess cocked her ears. The haint was gone. All he could see was shadows chasing each other between the trees.
“I’ll be damned.” He grabbed his things from the obliging limb. “Didn’t want to stick ’round and spook us, huh?” Dizzy, Aidan wobbled back to Princess. The hummock of land quaking beneath his feet threw his balance off. “Feel the ground shifting under us? A sign.” He rubbed Princess’s neck; she whinnied a heehaw against his shoulder. “Maybe that was a lonely haint having a look-see, a nosy fellow wondering what we’re up to.”
Aidan didn’t know what else might spook them, but he wasn’t heading back home, back to Josie. Not yet. Troubling visions followed him everywhere. No escape, ’cept if he crawled into a jug of hooch. “I got medicine to ward off evil spirits.” He clutched his alligator pouch and surveyed the scattering of tree islands, joggling in front of him. “And when a place call to you, you just gotta go.”
Aidan closed his eyes and let the ground rock him. A great, great, great Maskókî Creek ancestor was born on a floating island of peat in the swamp and took the name, Okefenokee or Trembling Earth, at least that’s the tale his daddy told at midsummer harvest, the day of the green corn ceremony. Even far from his first home, way upstate in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Aidan’s daddy made sure people took time to celebrate first fruits, light new fires, and forgive what could be forgiven. Aidan’s mother made Aidan promise to never forget hisself so much that he couldn’t do this too. No surprise wedding, no drunken stupor, no blazing haint would stop him celebrating a new year.
Princess had her nose in Aidan’s armpit, nudging and nipping him. She whinnied in his ear, fearful still. “That ghost ain’t studying us no more.” Aidan rubbed the white feather on her forehead. “See.” He led her to the footsteps of the fire-haint. Purple flowers sprouted from the ashes of burnt weeds. Princess nosed a few and sneezed. Aidan shook his head. “Am I driving you crazy too?” Princess licked his hand as he pressed one of the purple fire-flowers between the middle pages of his journal.
The canoe was where Aidan hid it last year and looked in good shape. Cypress wood took a couple lifetimes to rot. Furry critters scurried into the brush when he turned it right side up. A close inspection revealed no damage. He cleaned it out quick and then stripped down to skin. Princess stomped his soggy clothes into the ground.
“You’re right. We got to clear out the old time. It’s a brand-new year.”
He wiped the swamp from his skin and smeared on a bear grease concoction to protect against chiggers, ticks, and mosquitoes. Donning a clean white shirt and a fine pair of pants, he pulled his hair back and wrapped purple and orange cloth ’round his head to hold it down. Princess grinned at his handsome new get-up and lifted her tail high. In a corral he built a few years ago, she had rain-trough water plus feed and grass for two days, maybe three. If she got desperate, wouldn’t be much trouble to break out and head home. She’d done that before.
“You’ll be all right and I’ll be back soon anyhow.” He held out a green apple. She shrugged pesky flies off her skin, flicked her velvet ears at him, and snorted. “You know you like apples.” She gobbled the fruit from his hand and licked his fingers. He slid the canoe into thick black water and jumped in. The gentle swell of the swampy current rocked him into a good mood before he’d even left the shore. He tuned up his banjo and played. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. An hour slipped by with him floating in his music and going nowhere at all. That suited Princess just fine.
Aidan marveled at the sounds his fingers pulled from the banjo. He didn’t hear melodies in his head like some folks. He felt a song on his tongue or dancing through his hands. Playing a familiar tune was as much a surprise as doing a brand-new one. He recalled being frustrated as a boy, ’cause he could never play anything the same way twice. That didn’t bother him anymore. Each moment had its own good music, and when his fingers found the right tune, the right harmony, nothing else mattered—for a while at least. The music coming to him now was whirlwind and storm clouds.
A voice joined in, bold as a lightning strike. Aidan almost pitched out of the canoe. He damped the banjo strings and tracked laughter coming through the trees to the shore.
“Mr. Aidan Cooper, you running off to somewhere grand?”
Redwood Phipps broke through a curtain of Spanish moss. Her braids were coming undone and her cheeks glistened with sweat. She looked to have grown an inch since he saw her two weeks ago. All legs and getting so pretty she was a danger to herself.
“Dressed up in your Sunday best.” She beamed at him.
He smiled back at her. “How’d you find me?”
“Playing that banjo is as good as leaving a trail.”
“I ain’t played for a while, worried I forgot how.”
“No, sir! And who could miss your rainbow turban.”
“Indeed.” Aidan touched his headdress, embarrassed. How did he look to her?
“I got a strand of your hair.” Redwood unraveled a long black curl. “I conjured you, a boat, and a song with it.”
“Did you now? I got my own magic too, you know.”
“Yeah?” Redwood looked stunned.
He flushed with heat. “I got a new year to welcome, my own good story to tell.”
“I know that,” she said quickly, a child one moment, a grown woman the next. She laid her face against Princess’s neck and stroked the mule’s nose. “To tell you the truth, I’m lost. My brother run off without me, hunting plumes.”
“Egrets getting scarce.” Aidan held his temper. “Babies got no parents.”
“I found this hair back a ways. Heard the music, so I hoped it was you.” She hiked up her skirt and strode through the water toward him, but stopped short of the boat, staring at a silver snake swimming by her feet. “Take me with you.”
“I’ll be gone a couple days.”
“Suits me fine.”
Aidan scanned the shore. Redwood was too old to be horsing ’round with a grown man. What if somebody saw them and spilled their secret? George would be thundering mad if he found out—course he did run off and leave her. Miz Elisa would be glad Aidan had an eye out for her niece. Miz Garnett might rest easier too.
“Please,” Redwood said. “I won’t be no trouble.”
She was always good company, a candle in the dark, the sweet little sister he never had. This surely was no hardship for Aidan. And didn’t he need family to celebrate first corn? He grabbed a low hanging bough and held the boat steady for her.
“Well, get on in, gal, if you coming.”
Aidan’s canoe cut ’cross dark water, overturning shiny green lily pads to reveal purplish-red underbellies. Redwood let her oar hover over a dense mat of swollen bladderworts. Yellow flowers on long stalks grew out from a wheel of feathery inflated leaves. Inside these air bubbles was a trap for bugs who might wander in but would never break out again.
“Look, over there. Parrot pitcher plants coming out the peat moss.” Aidan pointed to bright red flowers hanging like Japanese lanterns over deadly curling leaves—pitchers filled with sweet-smelling poison and shaped like the beak of a bird.
“Oh.” Redwood watched a green-eyed fly slide down to its death.
“Cut open all that pretty and what you goin’ find? Beetle skeletons.”
“Bug-eating poison plants make powerful hoodoo healing.”
Aidan had promised to help her get every root and herb Miz Subie could possibly want—in the swamp and all the way back to Peach Grove. Redwood chuckled to herself. George would come charging into their soggy camp with a sack of bloody bird plumes on his shoulder and a smirk all over his face, but Redwood would be long gone. He wouldn’t be able to track her through water. He wouldn’t get to gloat at her returning to Miz Subie’s empty-handed. He wouldn’t get to say she was cut out for school teaching, not hunting roots for hoodoo spells. Maybe he’d even worry hisself sick for leaving her with an order not to wander far and a promise to return soon.
“This ain’t no sightseeing tour. You gotta earn your passage.” Aidan splashed water on her neck. He eyed the shore, still nervous that someone might catch them. “Paddle, gal.”
“I am.” She splashed water back at him.
Two otters playing in the mud at the riverbank stopped to watch the canoe glide by. They nosed the air and barked. Redwood waved, and the sleek creatures dove into the water, chasing after them.
“They’re sure happy to see us,” she said.
“We’re churning up dinner for ’em,” Aidan replied.
“They on the menu too.” She pointed at gator eyes floating along the far shore.
“Don’t fall out, you look right tasty yourself.”
“You been saying that to me since forever. I’m a grown woman now. Gator think twice ’fore snapping at me.”
Aidan swallowed a laugh. “Grown? And you ain’t scared of nothing, huh?”
“No, sir! Not a bobcat, bear, or gator.”
“Them bobcats and bears probably listen to reason, but there are other wild critters afoot who ain’t so civilized.” Aidan sounded ominous. “You better turn ’round and watch where you going.”
Redwood ducked as they passed under a funky vine that climbed up a bush and crossed a narrow stretch of water to the limb of a giant tupelo tree on the other side. Muted bronze flowers smelled like something dead for a long while. Confused flies buzzed over the blossoms, hunting for a corpse.
“Greenbrier,” Aidan said to her wrinkled-up nose. “I know Miz Subie want that. And some swamp iris root.” He plucked a violet blossom.
They floated through a corridor of tall iris stalks. Most of the flowers had gone by. Only a few flashy trumpets were left.
“The roots be poison if you take too much, but just enough, clean you out real good.” He stuck the flower in her hair.
“That’s Indian medicine.” Redwood turned again and gazed at him. “You certainly look handsome today.”
“Not my usual raggedy self.”
“I’m not making fun.”
Hot blood under his burnished skin made him look even more handsome.
“I’m glad we’re friends,” she said.
“Are you?” His moss-colored eyes looked more watery than usual, weary and sad.
She touched his knee. He flinched, and she drew her hand away. “Whatever’s ailing you is getting worse!” She still didn’t know how to take the trick off him or George. Subie say that would require a mighty spell that ’llowed to kill anyone who worked it.
“I’m getting married again,” he said. “Next week.” The boat wobbled and pitched.
“Really?” She turned away and paddled furiously. “Nobody tells me nothing.”
“Just decided. You the first person I tole, besides her of course.” His paddling barely kept them from ramming a row of tree stumps where a gator lay sunning. “I asked you to celebrate first fruits with me. Never did that with nobody else, ’cept my folks. I’ll even tell you the story Daddy used to tell for the new year, when I was a boy, up north in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
“Next week? Who is she? You ain’t said a word ’bout somebody special.”
“Josie Fields.” Aidan stammered something else Redwood couldn’t understand.
“Josie Fields? That blotchy woman with the orange hair and big tiddies?”
Aidan almost laughed. “Red hair.”
Redwood shook her head. “Miz Subie done help that gal out of trouble twice, but say a third time might mess her up inside, so she give her a love potion.”
Aidan bristled. “You ought not judge Josie for going with different men.”
“You always sticking up for loose women. Why is that?” she asked. Aidan was quiet for a good stretch. Redwood’s arms were getting tired. “I don’t know where I am anymore. How far we got to go?”
“A ways. Loose women ain’t no worse than me. Loving is a good thing.”
Redwood thought on this and forgot her aching muscles. She grinned. Crazy Coop wasn’t just known for his wild drinking. “All right, still Josie ain’t got nothing in her head but … she think darkies bring her good luck.” That caught Aidan’s breath. “How she goin’ make you happy?” Redwood fought a stab of jealousy. Everybody had somebody, ’cept her. “I want you to find a good woman, not just any ole body.”
They passed fields of tall grass speckled with bright splashes of wildflowers. A bear with a star scar on its cheek stood on hind legs scratching its belly and butt. It darted at the water and held up a fish to them. Aidan gurgled at him, doing passable bear talk.
“Don’t you have a heart’s desire?” she said. “Don’t you just want to do something grand? Go out in the world and make a bright destiny?”
Aidan laughed, a bitterroot sound, too much like George. “I don’t think that way no more.”
“Why not? You a white man. Can’t nobody ’round here stop you dreaming, ’cept your own ornery self.” She smacked a vine grabbing for her face. “Well, am I lying?”
Aidan jammed his paddle at dark water, thrusting it from side to side so fast his hands blurred. They raced down the winding stream and careened ’round a curve into a sandbar. The boat rocked and pitched, but didn’t throw them out. Soaked in funky sweat, Aidan wheezed and licked his lips. “You don’t know what you talking ’bout.”
“I know you buying too many jugs and marrying a fool,” Redwood said.
“Spitting at a fire won’t put it out.” He shook his body and closed his eyes. “You can’t think I like how … how…”
“Does Josie know ’bout you?”
“What you mean?”
“She ought to know what she’s getting into.” Redwood smacked the sandbar. “You a magic man, and—”
A cloud of no-see-um blood suckers attacked, buzzing in her nose, ears, and eyes, stinging and chewing at her. She was too mad to ward them off ’cept with flailing arms. The fierce little critters just bit her hands too. If the canoe hadn’t been wedged between some rocks, she would’ve tipped it over fighting and fussing. She glared at Aidan. The no-see-ums weren’t bothering him at all.
“Come on,” he said calmly to her wild hands and choked screams. “We don’t want to be stuck here. Help me.”
Aidan back-paddled and despite her ears, eyes, and throat trying to swell shut, Redwood pushed against the crumbly sandbar. The canoe slid into the flow of the current again. As they moved downstream, the bugs abandoned her and returned to their sand heap. She snorted and dug a tenacious varmint from her nose. After dabbing Miz Subie’s cure-all on the bites and swelling, she paddled silently with Aidan.
The sun dipped below the trees. Redwood caught sight of two otters still trailing them, then thought they might have been floating branches or fish feeding at the surface. She touched bleary eyes and lips. The burning and itching had faded, ’cept for the inside of one nostril. The bag of roots Miz Subie gave her to ward off no-see-ums and stinging demons hung ’round her neck where it should have been earlier. She squeezed it.
“Miz Subie say I could work out an understanding with chiggers, mosquitoes, and whatnot; then I wouldn’t need funky bear grease or nasty herbs,” Redwood said.
“I could use such a fine trick too,” Aidan said.
“Can’t get it to work for myself. Don’t know if I could do it for someone else. I think you gotta work out your own understanding.”
“I suspect that’s true.”
“What you thinking back there all this time?”
His steady stroke slowed. “It’s a new year.” She felt his hot breath against her sweaty neck. “I thought you might could do a spell for me so that tying the knot would go better this time than last.” He gulped more air. “Help get me right.”
“Oh, did you now?”
Aidan drank too much, and that brought on an evil temper. Not in front of Redwood, but she’d heard wild stories of him cussing, busting up furniture, breaking down doors, and punching men to bloody pulp. Say something out of the way to him, no telling what he might do. No woman wanted to stay married to that.
“Miz Subie the one to go to for miracles,” Redwood said.
“That bad, I need a miracle?” Aidan said, mad or hurt or both.
Why was she always throwing dirt in a wound? “I’m just a beginner.”
“Ha! You the one snatching storms.”
“That one time, which don’t mean I can do everything! I caught it with you. Don’t really know how we did that.” She turned ’round. He still looked wounded, despite her offering him credit. She couldn’t stand that. “I’ll do what I can,” she murmured.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Aidan guided the canoe into a side stream that was nothing more than a trickle of mud. She stuck her finger in and touched bottom. Snarled roots scraped at the boat—there was hardly any water to paddle. Aidan had just the right touch though. After half an hour the stream forked into three directions and they came to a hummock that was more sizeable than the mounds of floating grass they’d passed. Perched several feet off the ground in the center of this island was a hut with a cypress log frame and palmetto thatch roof. Guarding the entrance was a tupelo branch strung with colored glass and a stump carved into the head of a bear. All ’cross the island, every color of wildflower greeted them with waves of scent, spicy and sweet. Poles carved in the shape of lightning bolts with tattered flags on top marked the four directions. Two otters barked a welcome and dove in the water.
“They followed us all the way.” So much beauty made Redwood’s heart pound. Tears clouded her eyes as she turned to Aidan. He navigated the boat into a rickety U-shaped pier that crawled out the mud onto more solid ground.
“You know, I’m glad we’re friends too,” he said, cheeks pink with embarrassment.
“Did you do all this?” She wiped her eyes quickly.
“Yes, ma’am.” He was proud. “Been coming here since I was thirteen. Hauled in all the fixings, a bit here, a little there.” He held the boat still, and she stepped ashore, unsteady on her feet.
“Why you hiding such a place in the middle of a dank stream?”
Aidan shrugged, hopped onto the pier, and tied off the canoe. “You hungry? I got a few green apples in my pack.” He strode by her, his banjo buzzing against his back.
“I’ll eat when you eat.” Redwood stopped at the bear head. She touched its nose with her fingers. “Going without food make your spell stronger, right?”
“You don’t have to go hungry, too.”
“I want to start over with you. I’ll do what you do. I’ll help you clear out last year’s dirt. I’ll … Watery crossroads is a good place to begin. Who all we got to forgive?”
“Everything apart from rape and murder.” Aidan shuddered.
“That’s a tall order.”
He set down his things and looked her up and down. She held still, staring back at him, trying to see what was what, trying to see who he really was. Powerful spirits were right at his shoulder, but she couldn’t make out how they looked, whether they brought good signs or ill ones. She reached her storm hand to his heart and touched him before he could back away.
“Let’s not fight no more,” she said.
He eased her hand away from his chest, but kept it clutched in his. “The Master of Breath blows fire through your spirit,” he said and led her toward the hut.
“Mama used to say, ‘You a hoodoo child. You can do a spell to make the world you want.’”
“You sound just like Miz Garnett.” His chest heaved saying her mama’s name.
“You miss her too, don’t you?”
“I got too many people to miss.”
The ground rolled under their feet. They teetered and pitched and got all tangled up in one another. With the earth still quaking, they finally lost balance and fell onto springy moss. Redwood giggled. Aidan was so still and solemn underneath her that she tickled his chin, till laughter rolled through their bellies, till tears flooded their faces. Redwood didn’t know why she was crying. Aidan looked surprised at his tears too. He shook his head, flinging salty drops this way and that, and then he hugged her close.
“Josie tried to hoodoo me into marrying her. I ain’t bound, but I won’t run off.”
“But if Josie be working a trick on you and you don’t really love her—”
“I gotta forgive her and do right like the spirits say, so—”
“So, I gotta forgive everybody for being scared of me and George for leaving me and being mad all the time?”
“Yes,” Aidan replied soberly.
“I guess if you can do right by Josie, well, I’ll try.” Redwood stood up and offered Aidan a hand. The quizzical expression on his face made her feel foolish, but before she could snatch her hand away, he gripped her palm and she pulled him up.
The broom was just raising dust and not cleaning anything. Redwood wanted a bucket of fresh water, a good brush, and some of Miz Subie’s lily of the valley soap. She surveyed the windswept room. Heavy canvas curtains (walls?) were rolled up into the rafters. Wood was arranged like a wheel in a stone fire pit at the center of the hut—a chickee, Aidan called it. Bright new banners at the four directions flapped in a stiff breeze. A storm was coming and blowing dirt over everything again.
“I’m not doing no good here,” she said.
The colored glass on the tupelo branch tinkled sweet music.
“I need to get new bottles for the bottle tree … All the evil spirits they done caught, just busted ’em up.” Aidan was on the roof repairing a hole.
“No good a-tall.”
“What you say?” He jumped down behind her. “Been all alone here the other times,” he said. “It’s … it’s better with you.”
“So tell me that tale your daddy used to tell when you was a boy up in the Blue Ridge Mountains.” Aidan’s stories were almost as good as Uncle Ladd’s, but she always had to coax and plead and beg for any little thing. “No more stalling. You promised.”
Panic painted his cheeks.
“It’s our secret,” Redwood whispered in his ear, “and you know I can keep it.”
Aidan stared at her again as if trying to look through her skin. “I wrote the story down in my journal, how my daddy used to tell it.” He pulled a red leather book from his shoulder bag. “Let me read that to you, so I get it right.”
A TIME BEFORE THIS TIME
Trembling Earth was a mighty warrior, tall like the mountains and wise like a river searching from the deepest forest to the sea. Born on a floating island in a southern swamp, he took the name Okefenokee or Trembling Earth as we say nowadays. Beautiful tattoos told of valor and wisdom from bold youth into full manhood. He wrapped his long hair in a topknot. Arrows thrust this way and that through the silky weave called to mind an osprey’s nest. Trembling Earth’s bow, made from a supple sapling, was taller than most warriors, taller than the pale men who came at him with smoking fire sticks. No warrior, living or in legend, matched his strength or his courage. He shot an arrow up in the mist and it did not return, but flew to the ancestors, proclaiming all was in balance in the world.
For how long?
The day Trembling Earth’s dreamtime and lifetime crossed, the day of his destiny, was midsummer like today, the day of the green corn ceremony, the day to celebrate first fruits, the time to light a new fire and forgive what could be forgiven. Dawn was breaking, the sun a violet promise in the mist as Trembling Earth strode through the houses of his village to the temple dome. The sacred fire was cold from last night, its one cold night of the year. Old debts and grudges were put aside as villagers awaited the new flame.
Bright Spear, a War Chief who hated losing games to Trembling Earth, offered him medicine stones filled with the lightning that had shattered a tree. Bright Spear’s nostrils flared, his lips trembled. They’d caught him lying about his exploits in battle and warping other warriors’ bows before the games. Bright Spear wanted only another chance to fight and defeat real enemies, yet who would ever follow him again in war or even games? Instead of gloating, Trembling Earth gave him healing roots, bitter bark that eased old pain, and his mighty bow. Bright Spear tried not to accept the bow. Trembling Earth insisted. Was it not Bright Spear’s cunning that had saved them in battle many times? Would it not be so again?
Women’s talk and children’s laughter filled the air. Trembling Earth still felt the sting of his rival’s arrow in his thigh. He stumbled and limped as old pain flared. Moon Shadow, the woman he loved, loved another—Silver Fish. Who could deny it? Trembling Earth saw the lovers as he approached the temple mound. He offered them deerskin and precious dyes, then tried to smile on their happiness. They nodded as if his jealousy had never been; as if he had never chased Silver Fish into the sea; as if Moon Shadow had not thrust her body between Trembling Earth’s knife and Silver Fish’s throat. Trembling Earth turned away from the two lovers. That time was gone. No one should let yesterday use up too much of today.
Easy to say, hard to live.
Blue Eagle, the Peace Chief, wore egret feathers, black and blue pearls, and his face was painted ochre and vermilion. Trembling Earth stopped before him. Here was the true challenge of the day, of his life. Peace was the answer to his prayers. To save the people—all that they had been and could become—he must lead them from their beloved land to a new place, far from the pale invaders with their fire sticks and deadly sickness erupting on anyone they touched.
Once, long ago, Blue Eagle sang of finding a new land and making new allies, but these days he feared the War Chiefs who grew stronger with each successful raid on ancient enemies. Blue Eagle had lost his true power. The way of peace was muddy and confused. The people had turned a deaf ear to his song until he changed the tune and sang their fears. Just yesterday, Blue Eagle spoke against joining with foreign villages, against joining with ancient enemies who were not his people and did not speak his tongue, who did not know his dance or remember his ancestors. “A new enemy should not make us forget old ones.” He warned against traveling to distant lands filled with spirits no one would know how to appease. Blue Eagle said, “We should not leave the lush land of our sacred fire.”
Trembling Earth pulled the long arrows from his topknot and laid down his jagged stone knife. He asked all for forgiveness for the many wrongs he had done. He offered forgiveness to those who had wronged him. He gave meat and new corn to any who were hungry. He sang to those whose hearts ached with fear of tomorrow and offered the dream that had come to him whenever the moon faded to a ghostly shadow in the night sky. Many gathered to listen to Trembling Earth. He was a mighty warrior unafraid of death, and he loved the people.
“The battle for tomorrow requires cunning and wisdom,” he said. “In my dream travels, the people crossed the land and the small waters and they gathered with old enemies to forgive what could be forgiven and then together they made a long walk into the grassy water. There they lived together as one free people, istî siminolî, long after the invaders had come and gone.”
Blue Eagle said, “We are undefeated. Why should we run away like cowards?”
“Who do we vanquish? Villages who have few warriors left because they have fallen to the pale men with their fire sticks? And these brave few are covered in boils and pus and can barely run or raise a spear or bend a bow! We are not mighty warriors, only lucky fools who prey on weakness and disease that will come to claim us too.”
Blue Eagle tried to protest, but no words came to him.
Trembling Earth continued, “I will be a War Chief no more. Any who follow me in the last journey of my life, they follow peace.”
Trembling Earth’s mother had been a captive three times. A powerful medicine woman, she had escaped from enemy camps in distant worlds and, running through forests and swamps, always returned to the people. She said, “I will follow my son.”
Silver Fish, the rival he had tried to kill, and Moon Shadow, the woman he once loved more than life, said, “We will follow Trembling Earth.”
Bright Spear turned to the other War Chiefs and said, “We have followed Trembling Earth many times in games and in battles, let us follow him into tomorrow.”
In a village house behind them, a newborn sang his first song.
Blue Eagle asked, “And if that place is the land of the dead?”
“We will die free people,” Trembling Earth replied and lit the sacred fire anew.
“Istî siminolî,” Aidan whispered. The journal trembled in his hands. “Free people.”
Night had fallen in the middle of his tale, and now black clouds rolled over the rising moon and stars. It was too dim in the hut to read. Aidan must have spoken the last words from his heart.
“What a beautiful story, like out of a book.” Redwood was buzzing and tingling, as if lightning flared under her skin. “Istî siminolî.” She repeated Trembling Earth’s phrase. “Freedom always feels good in your mouth.” She could just make out Aidan as he nodded.
“Storying and thinking on the new year is a free feeling,” he said.
“When you’re spinning a yarn, you sound different, somebody else altogether.”
“I get my daddy’s voice in me.”
“Your daddy knew a lot of Indians up in the mountains?” she asked, hoping he’d tell more of where he come from, who his people were: Creek, Cherokee, Seminole?
“Uh, he sure did.” Aidan set the journal down. “Wherever you go in these United States, there are … Indian ancestors afoot, and, well, they come sometimes to talk to us who be living here and now.” He was holding something back, she could smell it, and here she thought they could tell each other anything.
“Wish I could hear that,” she said.
“They talk to everybody.” Aidan tweaked her nose, like she was a little bit, still. “Listen hard enough, underneath a sigh, at the end of a breeze, you catch an echo.”
“Were they wise and true?”
“No more than you or me.”
“But they got that long view.”
“Now they do. Cherokee Will says, ‘We are the ancestors of generations yet unborn.’”
“Yeah, but who ever listen to what he say?” She felt Aidan bristle, so she quickly added, “Couple generations out, nothing but lost souls.”
He snorted. “Do you really believe that?”
“Cherokee Will never let you forget he used to own colored folk. Well, his papa did, when Will was a boy, way back before the war.”
“Before white people stole the land and marched most of the five tribes to death on the way to Oklahoma. So all Cherokee Will got now is memory holding up his spirit.”
Lightning streaked ’cross the sky, and it was suddenly bright as day. Thunder rumbled. Dead stalks rode blasts of wind through the hut. The storm was fixing to roll over them. Aidan quickly unfurled canvas walls from the rafters and tied them off at the floor. He pulled a bedroll from under the rooftop too. The rain could have been a stampede of wild animals charging ’cross the meadow right at them. Redwood bit her fingertip, anticipating the worst. A hefty gust of the storm slammed into the heavy cloth. Buckets of water pounded against the roof, yet not a drip come through onto their heads. After several minutes of ramming in vain, even the wind backed off.
“Dead folk always leave something behind, a trail. They ain’t really lost to you,” Aidan said.
“I know. Like how Mama still come to talk to you sometimes.”
He winced and choked. Took a moment to get his breath in order. When he finally spoke he was hoarse. “Miz Garnett say, Write yourself down, Aidan. Keep good counsel with your ownself. That’s a powerful spell, a hoodoo trick for what ails you.” Without another word, he raced out the hut, ’cross the shallow stream, and disappeared into the high grass meadow—gone before Redwood could blink the dark clear.
“You ain’t goin’ tell me where you going,” she yelled. “Or when you coming back?”
Rain beat against the roof and ran down the canvas walls in a steady rhythm. After ten minutes, not seeing nor hearing any sign of Aidan, Redwood tore off her itchy clothes and darted out into the downpour. The cool water cleared the last of her rash away. It felt so good she laughed out loud. Shivering in the chilly wind and fearful that Aidan might return any moment and catch her naked, she dashed back into the hut.
The darkness was so deep she almost fell in the fire pit groping for her pack. After rubbing her skin with oil, she searched for the clean blouse and skirt she’d stowed for the journey home. The clothes got all tangled up and inside out—enough to make you give up on getting dressed. She was glad Aidan was taking his sweet time out there.
“What’s he goin’ see in the dark?”
Aidan didn’t have to take forever though. She thought of George worrying on her in the middle of this storm. She was high and dry, and he was probably cold and soaked through and mad as the devil cursing heaven. She tucked the blouse in her skirt.
“Serve him right, but I forgive him.”
She oiled and brushed her hair, platting it carefully. After setting the swamp iris in the swirl of a braid, she sat by the stone fire pit to wait for Aidan’s return. Lightning flashed every few moments. In between booming thunder, owls hooted. A cat growled right outside the canvas wall, a big ole panther, not a shy bobcat. Redwood stiffened. Fear crept in the small of her back and slid up her spine. Something bigger still on the other side of the stream gurgled and grunted. Heavy footfalls shook the ground. The island rocked worse than a boat on the sea. She held her breath. The panther fussed and then took off. A bear poked his nose then a claw through the entrance. Might have been a gray scar on his cheek, a twinkling star.
“I know you, bear,” she said. “Go on now and leave me be.” The funky animal stared right at her, waiting on something else. “I thank you for scaring off trouble.”
He loped away and the storm died down. Redwood peered outside, but wasn’t nothing to see ’cept more darkness. She kept looking anyhow. Yellow eyes sitting above her caught a distant light. She heard somebody running and panting. A bright red jewel broke through rainy gloom heading for her.
“Aidan?”
He raced toward the stream with a burning bough in his hand. The torch smoked and sputtered in a cascade of rain. He looked spooky and glorious, a night demon. Redwood’s heart fluttered fast, dragonfly wings in her chest. She swept back the canvas to let him in.
“Is that fire from the sky? From the lightning?”
Aidan nodded and thrust the torch into the wheel of wood in the stone fireplace. After a few moments of sputtering, a blaze for the new year leapt up at him. Redwood dropped down in front of the dancing flames. Aidan sat beside her, soaking wet and shivering. He sang words in a language she didn’t understand and put his arm ’round her. She hummed a harmony to keep his music company.
“Go n-eírí an bóthar leat. Irish talk,” he said. “A prayer my mama used to say.”
“What?”
“May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.” The lilt to his speech was something Redwood only heard him do now and again. It was a good sound and she leaned into it.
“You got a lot of fine voices in you,” she said.
“The trick is to listen to ’em.”
“Go n-eírí an bóthar leat.” Redwood tried the Irish talk. “I feel new and free, like in Okefenokee’s dream.”
“Do you now?” He smiled.
She took a deep breath of him and tasted pain and longing and love. “We should be heading out like the Indian ancestors till we find what we’re looking for.”
He laughed, bitterroot and sweet. “When you want to go?”
“Right now!” she said. Aidan kept laughing, but here was a chance to take the trick off him, before she scared herself out of it. Didn’t she feel power between them? Crossroads power. So for the first time since the family was on the run and Mama went to Glory, Redwood decided to conjure herself somewhere else. This was a spell powerful enough to heal any sick body. Mama said, Time don’t go nowhere. What happened before, what might happen, is always with us, hiding between our heartbeats. Redwood breathed in the fire of a new year—lightning Aidan had snatched from the sky. She leaned her warmth into his chilly fever. He leaned right into her. She hummed a Sea Island melody, crossing their spirits, riding all the roads at once, looking for a place they both might dream of and then they were in—
“Chicago!” a red-bearded white man yelled to a mixed crowd of wide-eyed spectators who stood on a sidewalk that moved on its own. “Where else?”
Aidan blinked in strange light. Strings of electric lightbulbs turned the dark into twilight. A roving searchlight illuminated a dazzling White City. Greek temples, enormous towers, and giant onion-domed castles loomed over him and Redwood. Fountains spit torrents of water into the air. Gondolas glided ’cross a man-made lake ringed by statues of muscular gods, goddesses, and winged fairy creatures. Fireworks exploded ’cross the sky like colorful flowers going to seed. Underneath a rainbow shower of sparks, a colossal plum lightbulb floated in the sky. The flame under its narrow neck was too weak to light the massive bulb head. Watching it sway back and forth, Aidan was dizzy.
“I want to ride the hot-air balloon,” a little boy shouted.
“Ahh.” Aidan squinted till he could make out a large basket below the flame filled with passengers squealing in fright or delight. Dizzy again, he leaned over the water.
Redwood thumped his back. “You all right?” she asked.
“Getting there.”
Gas torches and electric lights glinted in dark, choppy waves, as if thousands of jewels had been tossed in for good luck. Aidan stood up straight and tried to look every which way at once. Redwood was also busy gaping at first one wonder, then the next. Her mouth hung open. She was as surprised as he was.
“I’ll be damned,” he said for both of them.
“Hush your mouth.” A tall, light-skinned colored woman in fancy dress pulled her two daughters close to her.
“Sorry, ma’am.” Aidan clamped his lips shut and eyed the gargantuan wheel turning in the distance behind the woman and her children. The wheel was as big as a mountain. He counted thirty-six coaches hung ’round its outer rim. “What you do, gal? Take us into the future?” He thought of H. G. Wells’s fantastic novel.
“No, this is 1893, ten years behind us. I can’t believe we’re really here.”
“I can.” Aidan was iron certain that he and Redwood were here somewhere and back in his chickee too—a bit of ground fog from the swamp clung to her feet. They were now and then and as real as anybody hearing, smelling, and seeing them would believe. Despite a flicker of irritation, he smiled at Redwood, a powerful medicine woman like her mama. His daddy say that some folks have grace and know how to step into a vision, a dream or—“Just, where exactly is here?”
“The Columbian World Exposition in Chicago!” She grabbed him. “Isn’t it exciting? Don’t be scared.”
He didn’t know how to be scared of what was happening. “You might’ve asked me if I wanted to come.”
“I didn’t leave you in the dark without a word, did I?” She let go of him. “What if you never come back and I was lost in the swamp with panthers and bears afoot?”
“You said nothing scared you. Besides, my bad manners don’t excuse yours.”
“It’s a get-well spell.”
“So I can’t be mad?” Aidan shook his head. “Sweet roots can make bitter medicine.”
“We can’t stay long out our own time. Let’s don’t waste the time we got fighting.”
A group of very dark colored folk, men and women dressed in the wildest fashion Aidan had ever seen, split in two to walk past him and Redwood. They strolled close enough for him to taste their breath. Colorful woven fabrics draped over their bodies swished and billowed. Pounds of beads and hammered gold jewelry hung on their necks, waists, arms, and ankles. Aidan wasn’t sure what their headdresses were made of. Might’ve been their own hair done up in geometrical designs. Talking to one another over his head, they passed little songs of meaning back and forth. These fine ladies and gentlemen could’ve come from out of this world for all he knew. Aidan stifled a gasp, then took a deep breath. They smelled like a field of spices, hot peppers and ginger. He stared at bright eyes and white teeth. Redwood nodded how a civilized person ought to. The foreigners nodded back.
“I bet they’re royalty from Africa, Dahomey or Abyssinia,” Redwood said when they had passed. “They came from their castles in a great ship ’cross the ocean.”
Aidan never imagined royalty in Africa, let alone castles and certainly not ordinary people who looked so grand. “What if they’re regular folk just come to the Fair?”
“You mean same as you and me?” Redwood was thrilled by this notion. She strode ’round him, claiming every inch of her tall bones, taking every breath like a free woman. “Can’t believe your eyes, huh?”
“Of course I do,” Aidan said. Did she think he was just a backwoods cracker with no sense? He spied a bright yellow bead on the ground that must have fallen from a necklace. He scooped it up and stuffed it in his pocket.
“I want to ride the big Ferris Wheel and see from up high what I done heard Mama and Daddy speak of. What do you want to see?”
“Well…” When Doc Johnson told Aidan of traveling to the big Chicago Fair, Aidan had been too drunk to pay much attention.
“Chicago’s the fastest growing city in the country,” a huckster shouted. “A world of tomorrow right here for you today! Step on up to the Hall of Electricity!”
“In there,” Aidan said.
He and Redwood marched with a herd of people into a building that looked to be made of light. Millions of electric bulbs flashed at them, each as bright as the lightning in the Georgia swamp. Marvelous contraptions on every surface of the pavilion buzzed and churned. Singers and musicians had been captured in boxes and on discs, and their music was blared back through gleaming brass horns to eager listeners. Stations were set up to watch moving pictures through peepholes. One counter displayed a row of electric fans. Whirring blades chopped the air into energetic gusts and cooled the hot spectators. Aidan lifted his damp arms up to the strong currents.
“So much, and I ain’t never seen the like,” he said.
She smiled. “I knew if I got you somewhere else.”
“Y’all ain’t seen nothing yet,” a dapper colored man proclaimed, “till you make it to the Midway. Have you been there?”
“Let’s hurry.” Redwood pulled Aidan back through the dazzling lights, past a statue of Benjamin Franklin, and outside again. “’Fore we have to go home.”
“How long is that?” Aidan could have paid Electricity a good long visit.
“Every minute is stolen, a heartbeat snatched from somewhere else.”
He didn’t like the sound of that, but didn’t press her for details. She dashed off, and he followed. They raced through a blur of people from all over the US of A and the whole world, too, sporting fine clothes and cheerful moods. They rushed by pavilions devoted to mines, transportation, and horticulture; past a Women’s Building and a Fine Arts Palace; but despite golden arch doorways, beckoning goddesses, and wondrous machines and inventions defying time and space, they didn’t take a moment to step inside any of these astounding exhibitions. Redwood was hell-bent on the big wheel.
Out the corner of his eye, a faint shadow dogged his heels. Aidan spied ghostly flames licking at the White City and turning its awe-inspiring beauty first angry red and then black and gray. Ashes and soot obscured his view for a moment.
“This whole place burns down, you know.” Redwood read his mind. “We couldn’t go see these fairgrounds in our time, even if we wanted to.”
“That’s a real shame.” Aidan groaned. “So we’re running through a ghost town.” No wonder they couldn’t linger.
A hot-air balloon landed gentle as a feather in front of them. The passengers applauded.
“We’ve reached the Midway Plaisance,” Redwood said.
“Ah, my good chap, the attractions here are very expensive.” A shady man with a slippery accent leaned close to Aidan. The man’s boots were outsize, and his coat was a costume for a minstrel show, one showy patch atop another: stage rags. “Cost two dollars to do a Balloon Ascension. But for one dollar and ten cents you could let your pretty lady sample all the features of Cairo Street.”
“The Ferris Wheel is only fifty cents,” Redwood said. “Course, I don’t have a nickel, but a walk through Egypt…”
“One spin ’round is all you get on the wheel, Cairo’s a whole street of thrills and wonders.” This man was slimier than a slug. He reached for Redwood.
Aidan pulled her away and dug in his pockets. He had four silver dollars and two dimes. “It’s the wheel or Cairo Street. I ain’t got enough for both.”
“Hold your money,” she whispered.
“You goin’ hoodoo your way in?” Aidan smiled.
“It works sometimes at the county fair.”
The slug-man slithered over to several smart-looking white patrons. Aidan and Redwood approached the high wooden gate to Cairo Street. Two guards taking money were ready to holler something at Aidan, but missed that train of thought when a fancy white man, his wife, and seven kids mobbed them. The guards had to do the addition before accepting the man’s ten-dollar gold piece. Redwood caught their roving eyes and fixed them on shiny river-bottom stones called from the mist lurking at her feet. Staring at this wonder, they didn’t blink at Redwood or Aidan striding through the gate toward the Egyptian temple.
“What you say!” he gasped.
The street was jammed. A camel belched and hissed at a dark-skinned boy in its way. Between the animal’s small humps a plump man sat muttering and chewing. “No more rides today,” he said to Aidan’s curious look.
“Outrageous.” A white woman yelled over strange music that Aidan had never heard before. “No prayers, no wedding, not even a camel ride, what did we pay for?”
Jugglers tossed flaming sticks in the air. Snake charmers serenaded their sleepy charges—creatures so big and thick, they could strangle a full-grown bull. Wranglers corralled camels who spat and pissed as a stout fellow in billowing pants gobbled down fire and blew it behind his back to the delight of several little colored boys.
Redwood danced to the odd music. “I feel like I’ve been here, from all the stories I heard from Mama and Daddy.”
“This your first trip, in the flesh?”
“Mm-hmm, with you, Mr. Aidan Cooper, for good luck. A tonic spell.”
Aidan was stunned and touched. “You shouldn’t have.”
Not more than a foot in front of him, three olive-skinned Egyptian gals shook their tiddies and bellies, and scandalized or charmed gawking spectators. The Egyptian ladies wore colorful ballooning skirts and short, flimsy blouses. Strands of beads, coins, and silky rope bounced against their chests. Silver chains clanged below naked belly buttons as they stirred their hips ’round a sultry beat played on hourglass drums. Tambourines and stringed instruments that were close cousins to the banjo filled out the sound and held the mood high. Folks hollered in a dozen languages at rippling bellies and bold behinds. Redwood squealed in delight with ’most everyone else and then mimicked the dance in front of Aidan. He admired her talent in picking up the steps and even more how good she looked shimmy-shaking.
He grinned. “Better watch who you do that for.”
Redwood had her hands on her hips. “Why is that?”
“It’s indecent,” a woman said and stormed away.
Redwood laughed and pulled Aidan closer to the music. The dancers circled them, rippling hand gestures inviting her to join in. She glanced at Aidan, shy for a moment.
“The music’s already in you, gal, nothing to do but step on out,” he said.
She danced with the Egyptian ladies like she was born to the moves. So fearless and powerful—it was quite a spectacle, enough to make your nature rise.
“Last call,” a voice over a loudspeaker proclaimed, and Redwood had Aidan running for the Ferris Wheel. They raced in front of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Pavilion, and Aidan stopped dead in his tracks. He peered in the tent as Redwood dashed on ahead. A trampled feather headdress lay in the dirt, a Lakota war bonnet or some such. An old man swept the feathers away. He looked colored and Indian too. Aidan plucked a feather from the dirt.
The old man paused. “The Chief took a nasty spill, chasing down the wagon train.”
“Is that the show?” Aidan wondered who the old man’s people were, what story he might tell, but he didn’t have the nerve to ask none of that.
“Cowboys and Injuns are all gone for the night, son. Come back tomorrow.”
Aidan didn’t move.
The old man waved him on. “Go on before you lose your friend.”
Each car of the Ferris Wheel held sixty people, old and young, fat and bony, foreigners and native born. It made six stops before doing a spin without stopping. Aidan was almost beyond taking in another wonder of the world. In the car’s close quarters, folks were eyeing him and Redwood. He wasn’t sure why. He paid a silver dollar for the ride—no hoodooing. Colored folk in their car sat right next to white. There were several people who could’ve been anything under the sun. Aidan glowered at a mean-looking Oriental fellow till the man showed all his teeth and turned away.
“Chicago won’t ever be the same,” a man with a German accent spoke right to Aidan. “She is a world city now.”
“Look!” Redwood gripped his arm. “Sitting on top of the world, with fireworks going off.”
Aidan could’ve stuck his hand through the window and touched sparks. White buildings with Greek columns and half-naked gods and goddesses glistened in splashes of color. The crowd below roared, a great beast bragging over a juicy feast.
“This has certainly been a tonic,” Aidan declared. “I feel grand.”
Redwood smirked triumphantly. “What’d I tell you?”
“Sometimes I get so tangled up in … gnarled roots, last year’s bad harvest, or haints spooking through stalks and weeds … I can’t see further than the next row to hoe, and I don’t feel a damn thing other than real bad.” What possessed him to say this out loud? He certainly hadn’t meant to cuss at her.
“I know.” Redwood nodded solemnly. “Me too.”
“You? Naw. You only saying that to keep company with my misery.”
“Well, I know we can get ourselves to the other side of sad.” She had a smile to break even an ornery man’s heart. “Didn’t you say you were feeling grand right now?”
Everybody in the car turned to hear what he would say.
“Can’t deny it.”
She hugged him close and tight, then whispered, “This is our secret. Magic we make together. You can’t tell nobody. Promise.”
“Who’d believe me anyhow?”
The Ferris Wheel spun down and just when Aidan thought to wonder how they’d ever get back home from Chicago, Redwood leaned into him and opened her eyes wide as the sky. Silvery fireworks flashed one last time—a bolt of jagged lightning frozen in inky clouds, like a spark caught in a giant lightbulb. And then they were sitting again in his chickee in the swamp. Aidan wrinkled his nose at ashes floating on the air. Lightning had set dry underbrush ablaze but left the tall pines standing. He stroked the bead and feather in his pocket, relieved to touch proof.
“What you mean, magic we make together?” Aidan had a mountain of questions, but Redwood was so tuckered out, she fell over into his lap. Looking at her droopy eyes, he didn’t have the heart to press her.
“Don’t worry,” she mumbled. “I just need to rest up.”
Despite a rumbling stomach, she only managed a mouthful of beans and a biscuit. She slept through red wolves hollering at each other, a barred owl barking, and a stag crashing in the brush. She slept most of the bumpy canoe ride down creeks swollen from the storm, waking when he stopped to collect the plants she needed for Miz Subie.
“Ain’t you sweet,” she said as he filled her bag.
“Least I can do after such a powerful get-well spell.”
“You believing made it easy. Never stayed away so long, not even with Mama.”
“Now you tell me,” he said. “Maybe we stole too many heartbeats.”
“I’m fine.” She clutched his arm. “And you’re well then?”
He didn’t know ’bout that. “I do feel better than I have for … years. You’re a tonic for my spirit, Miz Redwood, like the balm of Gilead. I’ll be owing you for a while.”
“No. Sing me something good, with that lilt you can do. Then we’re even.”
A verse from an old Irish song his mother used to sing came to him:
Love is a fever that can’t be cured
Woe to him who bears it night and day
For its knot binds tight and it never can be loosed
And my own dear comrade, may you fare well
Redwood’s fingers danced in the air. She murmured nonsense, almost in harmony with his melody, then dropped back to dreams.
As they left the fire forest behind, Aidan spit the smoky taste from his mouth. The sun slid down slow, but the heat wasn’t going nowhere. Seeing Aidan come downstream, Princess brayed and whinnied so loud, they must’ve heard her all over the county. Redwood didn’t rouse till he shook her shoulders hard for a solid minute. Dream-talking, she stumbled out of the boat and Aidan had to heave her onto Princess’s back. He jumped up behind her and Redwood slumped back against his chest. She passed out again, sleeping so deep she barely took a breath. Nothing he did woke her up.
Doc Johnson had gone off to Atlanta. Aidan cussed Doc’s empty house. Miz Subie wasn’t at home when they stopped at her house. What if Redwood didn’t wake up on her own? What if something was really wrong? What if she stole too many heartbeats staying away too long and didn’t want to tell him?
Princess turned down the old oak lane toward his place.
“Whoa, sweetheart, not that way. Ain’t going home yet.” He dismounted and Princess blew her lips at him. “Going to Ladd and Elisa’s. I’ll walk and give you a rest.” Redwood slumped against Princess’s neck, but didn’t fall off. Aidan brushed soggy hair from her face and wiped cold sweat from her neck. She sighed at his gentle touch, a peaceful smile curling on her lips. “We got to carry Miz Redwood to the front door. Don’t think we can trust her sleepwalking on shaky legs.”
Princess butted her nose into his ribs. He pulled the last bit of apple from his pocket. She gobbled it up in a flash. They ambled along, not fast, not slow. Reluctant and anxious, Aidan didn’t relish walking into Ladd and Elisa’s yard, didn’t relish walking into their questions. George would have a burr under his butt, but Aidan hoped somebody would know how to wake Redwood or tell him that sleeping so deep was fine. Course then there was Josie ’round the next bend of his life. Marrying her wouldn’t set the world right, wouldn’t make nobody happy even. Josie was settling for him, and he was a falling-down drunk fool, playacting the man of honor.
With a quarter mile to go, little Iris come dashing for him. George was a few steps behind. “Crazy Coop,” Iris yelled. She turned and slugged her brother. “Didn’t I say they was coming this way?” She jumped into Aidan’s arms. “I knew it, I knew it.”
Aidan swung her high in the air. “You been riding that pig?” he said as she wrapped sticky hands ’round his neck and he got a good whiff of her. The tattered green frock she wore was covered in slop, as if she’d been rolling with the pigs.
“Raccoon got in the pigpen, and I had to get her out ’fore she got hurt,” Iris said.
“Well, of course.” Aidan smiled, despite worry tightening his chest.
“Red!” George tried to rouse his sister to no avail.
“You smell of swamp and sparks in the sky.” Iris squeezed Aidan. “I knew it.”
George was ready to breathe fire. “What’s a matter with her?”
“I don’t know.” Aidan set Iris down. She held on to his hand. “I wish I did.”
George shook Redwood’s shoulder roughly. “She was fine when I … left her.”
“She found me after … you went bird hunting, and then…” Aidan didn’t know what to say. “She just won’t wake up.”
“That was three days ago,” George said.
“What you say?”
“What you been doing all this time?” George shouted, and then the whole family come charging down the road, raising a cloud of dust. Ladd, Elisa, and the five cousins wore sweaty work clothes like they’d just run out the fields. Miz Subie followed at a slower pace, stepping proud with a carved walking staff, like those folks from Africa at the Fair. She wore a green silk head rag, and a blue medicine bag dangled from her waist. Princess brayed at so many strange people rushing for her.
“Whoa, whoa, they’re friendly,” Aidan said. Princess wasn’t convinced. Snatching Redwood from her back, George looked evil as sin. Princess wanted to kick him. She wasn’t the only one. Aidan rubbed her nose to keep them both calm, but it didn’t help.
“They was worried,” Iris whispered to Aidan. “I knew Sister was fine with you.”
“I don’t know that.” George staggered down the road away from Aidan with Redwood’s head bobbing against his shoulder. The five cousins ran after them. Aidan’s heart wrenched, parting from her like this after all they’d been through.
“What did Crazy Coop do to her?” one of the cousins asked. Aidan could never keep their names straight. He always mixed up Becky and Ruby and called Jessie, Tom or Bill, and vice versa.
“Lay her down under that tree.” Subie pointed to a battered old oak. “She need fresh air.”
“So what have you been doing all this time?” Elisa planted herself in front of Aidan, her jaw jutting out like a blade. She pulled a resisting Iris away from him as if he was a poison weed.
“Spit it out. It ain’t goin’ get no easier, the longer you wait.” Ladd was toting a shotgun and an evil look too. He stood up straight to Aidan, no jigging and cooning for once. “You ain’t gone deaf, man. You hear me talking.”
Subie tugged at Ladd’s gun arm. “Give him a chance.”
Ladd marched back and forth, barely holding his temper. Streaks of salt on his dark skin made his lean face resemble a skeleton mask. Aidan glanced over to the cousins. Even Becky and Ruby were grinding their teeth and spitting anger with each breath. They must have all been thinking the worst.
Subie calmed Princess with a few tugs on her ears. “Tell us what you can, Mr. Cooper.” She fixed him in her eye.
“It’s Aidan, ma’am, and we uh…”
Subie nodded. “Traveled a long way, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s it and uh … her heart’s barely beating, just a faint thump every now and then, and…” Aidan had promised not to tell. The Chicago Fair seemed to be a dream or drunken phantasm, and ’cept for a bead and feathers from a Wild West Show, what did he have to show for their adventure? “Stolen heartbeats, don’t you know.”
Subie nodded her head. “I see.” Nobody else did from the scowls on their faces, ’cept for little Iris. Subie dug through her blue medicine bag and pulled out swamp iris root and something Aidan didn’t recognize. “Get me some hot water.” She waved at the cousins. Becky or Ruby hurried off to oblige her.
George settled Redwood down carefully. “I ain’t done nothing but worry since…”
“She ain’t bleeding.” Iris sat in the dirt beside her and babbled away. “She ain’t hurt, I tell you. She goin’ wake up when she done resting.”
“You don’t say.” Elisa put a shawl under Redwood’s head.
Iris touched Redwood’s brow. “She just be tired in her heart spirit. A traveler coming home though.” Iris was a hoodoo, like her sister, like her mama, snatching truth out of nowhere. She spooked folks sometimes, saying things a little child shouldn’t. They’d be more spooked to hear what trick Redwood played.
Ladd stopped stamping back and forth and set the shotgun in the shade. Princess was in a fine mood, nibbling something from Subie’s hand.
George didn’t let up though. “You don’t have no better tale to tell?”
“Lightning set a fire downstream. Maybe she swallowed too much smoke and—” Aidan wanted to say Redwood hoodooed her ownself. He wanted to ask George why he run off and leave his sister alone in the swamp. But he wasn’t feeling his usual Irish temper and couldn’t get any mean, fighting talk out. Same as when he and Redwood were trading words over Cherokee Will in the chickee. He hadn’t mentioned the colored folk who bought and sold each other during slavery times and who were, to this very day, richer than he ever hoped to be on land Indians once roamed. He didn’t have a taste for fighting low with anybody over old history and skin. He just wanted to see Redwood through. This was a new year.
“A little smoke done this to her and not you?” George needed one of Redwood’s tonic spells. Anger was ’bout to bust the veins in his skull. He was powerful built, almost as tall as Aidan and thicker. His muscles looked cut from dark stone. And George wanted to be mad at Aidan or any white man within a hundred miles of his sister. “You just goin’ stand there, staring at me like a damn fool, when I’m asking you a civilized question? My sister gone missing for three days!”
“Three days?” Aidan scratched his jaw. “I reckon I lost a day somewhere.”
“I reckon you goin’ lose some more days if—”
“Hush George,” Ladd said. His nephew fumed, but didn’t finish the threat.
Subie dug in Redwood’s canvas bag. “She found all the roots I asked for and then some. That’s more than a week of work in three days.” She peered at Aidan with her blind eye.
“You know how she is,” Aidan said.
“Redwood got a talent for getting herself into sticky situations,” Ladd said.
Subie listened to Redwood’s breath. “That’s right. She ain’t Mr. Cooper’s fault.”
“The child don’t know better,” Elisa said.
“Child? Redwood’s a grown woman, Aunt.” George snorted. “She better start knowing better.”
“How? She built how she built, and people just take advantage of her good nature.” Elisa glanced sideways at Aidan. “We got to look out for her.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do here,” George said.
“Mr. Cooper ain’t have to bring her back if he meant any harm,” Iris said.
“Red is headstrong and reckless.” Everybody nodded at that. “Something real bad is bound to happen to her. Can’t y’all see that?” George balled his fists. He was sweating and spitting mad over the principle, over all the bad that could have happened to her.
“I ain’t fighting you, George,” Aidan said. They’d been friends once, when they were younger and Aidan was sober. He and George would go off hunting or just drifting in a canoe to anywhere. Before. “She would never forgive either one of us for acting foolish.”
“Redwood or Mama?” Iris said.
“What you talking? You don’t even remember Mama,” George said.
“Yes I do!” Iris stamped her feet. “I do too. Don’t say I don’t.”
Everybody looked awkward and jittery, as if Iris and Aidan too, had called up a haint. Princess walked close to George and licked his fists. George backed away.
“Why you mad at Crazy Coop?” Iris said. “You know he ain’t done nothing to Sis.”
George cooled a bit. “I’m just mad, I guess.”
“You goin’ be a rich man now, all the feathers you sold. You don’t have to be mad at what you ain’t got.” Iris turned away from him and chattered in Redwood’s ear. “I missed you. I sure would’ve liked to take a ride on the big wheel too. I found a baby raccoon, and Uncle Ladd said I could feed her and keep her till she big enough to fend for herself. You gotta hurry on and wake up soon and see her.”
Redwood shifted in the dirt; her fingers grasped at something, and then her eyes fluttered open. She squeezed Iris’s hand. “A raccoon?” she murmured.
“You know the right spell to call a body back, chile,” Subie said.
Redwood’s eyes darted this way and that, and she smiled at everybody hovering over her. George sniffled and snorted like he was swallowing down something nasty. Elisa pressed her fist against her lips, and Ladd patted his wife’s back. The cousins jumped up and down, squealing and cheering till Elisa hushed them.
“Where you been?” Iris asked.
“I was riding a shooting star,” Redwood murmured. She sounded hoarse. “Chasing ’round the world through the night sky.”
“Were you now?” Subie laid wrinkled hands on Redwood’s face and neck.
“Baby Sister talking scared away a haint on my tail.” Redwood stared up at Aidan and set his heart to pounding. “Mostly blue smoke and red fire eyes.”
He nodded at this, and Subie poured a brew down Redwood’s throat before she could say any more. Redwood coughed and sputtered and then closed her eyes again.
“Her heart’s coming on real strong.” Miz Subie shook her walking stick at the whole family. “Ain’t no use y’all standing here wasting daylight. Go on ’bout your business. She goin’ come back full on her time.”
“You know what’s what, Miz Subie.” Ladd signaled everybody to go.
“Thank you, Mr. Cooper, for having an eye out.” Elisa herded the cousins down the dusty road. She halted and turned back to Aidan. “Come by for a proper visit.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” His voice cracked, but he sputtered on, “I surely will.”
“Come on, please. PLEASE.” Iris pulled George toward the shed.
“I’ve seen that pest how many darn times?” he said, following her inside though.
Alone, Subie eyed Aidan, sucked her teeth, and shook her head. “How far you two go to be needing stolen heartbeats?”
Aidan sighed. “I promised Red not to say.”
“Uh-huh,” Subie muttered. “I do like a man who can keep his word, but you need to head on home now.”
“I can’t, not till I know if she—”
“She goin’ be doing fine. And that’s God’s truth.”
“I don’t doubt you, ma’am.” Aidan couldn’t move.
“She need all her power for herself right now.” Subie patted Aidan’s face. “Don’t worry. She’ll sing at your wedding. Go on now.”
Aidan raised an eyebrow at what Subie shouldn’t have known, ’less Josie was talking all over town already. He wanted to ask ’bout that and ’bout Red riding shooting stars, but Miz Subie’s milky eye was twitching and flashing so he heaved hisself onto Princess’s back. He tasted dirt on his tongue; heavy blood pounded against his skull. What desperate future was he riding into? “I’ll be seeing you then.”
Iris scurried from the shed, holding a baby raccoon up to him. “George gotta say she uglier than sin. What you think?”
Aidan leaned down to get a good look. It was a scrawny, mangy creature with a smashed-in face and delicate, hand-like paws. “George got a good eye,” he said, “but she’ll look better after awhile, after you take good care.”
“I’m goin’ call her Cairo, like the street,” Iris said, hugging the creature to her face.
Aidan sat up straight, a chill spooking through him. “That’s a fine name, but I believe Cairo’s a city in Egypt.”
Princess tugged him away. She wanted to get home even if he didn’t.