THE FIRST THING ABRA NOTICED when she pushed through the door was how bright and ordinary the world was after walking through that deep darkness under that red sky. She held one hand up and shielded her eyes. Ruby held onto her other hand, and when the girl saw what they had walked into, a whole new world with its different sights and smells, its blue sky and puffy white clouds, she clutched Abra’s hand even tighter.
There was the sound of traffic on the other side of the wall that surrounded Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1. There was the smell of summer, the heavy air. There were the trees waving in a gentle breeze.
Abra and Ruby both sat down and leaned back against the door that did not look like a door in the side of Marie Laveau’s tomb. Abra kept hoping she’d feel Leo pushing against the door, calling her name, asking to be let through, but she knew he was gone. She had seen him rise, a movement of light flashing to the sea.
The air smelled of exhaust and heat. The ground was warm, and the sun was at its peak. Everything felt numb compared to the city on the other side of the Passageway. Everything felt like it was standing still. But there was no sense of waiting as there had been in the other city, no sense of in between. Everything was here and now.
Abra glanced around once her eyes had adjusted to the light. That’s when she saw the feet of Mr. Henry.
He was lying on the ground on the other side of the tomb, and only his feet were visible. Abra crawled to him and shook his foot. Ruby was right behind her.
“Mr. Henry? Mr. Henry!”
She saw there was blood on his legs, and when she came around the entire way to his side of the tombstone, she froze. His eyes were closed, all those piercings and tattoos completely still. His mouth was partially open, and a dried line of blood came from his nose. Was he dead?
“Mr. Henry?” Abra said again, crawling up beside him and holding on to his hand.
“You made it,” he whispered, opening his eyes.
“You’re okay!” Abra said.
“I guess being okay is a relative assessment,” Mr. Henry said, groaning and sitting up. He stared at Abra, and she felt like he might be looking inside of her. When he did that—when he looked at her, really looked—she had the sense that he immediately understood all she had gone through. If not the details, the essence.
“Those were long days,” he said.
“We got caught up,” Abra said. “The Tree was . . . hard to find. Beatrice was worse than we thought.”
He nodded. “Leo?”
Abra shook her head in short, jerky motions, and tears slid down her cheeks. Ruby started to cry.
Mr. Henry frowned. “We walk through these doors,” he said. “We walk through doorways that should never have been opened. And then? It is all up in the air, a handful of dust tossed to the wind, and no one knows where the specks will fall.”
“No one?” Abra asked in a whisper.
Mr. Henry smiled at her and shook his head as if remembering something important. “Of course. Someone knows.”
Abra wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe it with all her heart.
“Those were long days,” he said again.
Abra sighed but didn’t say anything.
“I sat by this gravestone right here, in this very spot, for days. Day and night, day and night. It rained one night, and it was a cold rain for the summer, like tiny frozen stars falling from the sky. I waited and waited, and as the days passed I lost hope.”
He laughed, and there was disbelief in the sound.
“Me. Even me! I lost hope.”
He looked at Abra with a confused expression, then he gazed off in the distance as if he saw himself approaching and had no idea who it was.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again. Losing hope is like losing your breath. It’s hard to get it back on your own.”
He looked at Ruby and tilted his head to the side. “Child,” he said. That was it. Just the one word. Child. Then he continued.
“I waited, even without hope, and somehow the hope came back. I wondered if I should go in and find you. I wondered what would become of me if I did. Out of nowhere, Beatrice shot through that door like some terrible thing on fire, knocked me right over. We fought then, and she was weak, but she was also desperate. It was a strange dance of fire and bright light, and I’d imagine the neighbors all around here saw it, and what they saw will feed superstition for generations.”
Mr. Henry chuckled to himself. He held the back of his hand up to his nose, wiped the blood, then looked at his hand.
“What happened to Beatrice?” Abra asked.
“She fell,” Mr. Henry said, and there was no joy in his voice. He pointed a wiry finger at the wall, and Abra saw a depression in the ground similar to the one Mr. Tennin had left after falling.
“What about Koli Naal?” Abra asked.
Mr. Henry shook his head in disgust. “Do you know she sat up on that wall and watched the whole thing happen? She watched us tangle and break stones. Just sat there like a stone herself, and when she saw Beatrice fall, when she saw all was lost, she left. Shoooo! Right up into the sky. Gone.”
Ruby was crying again. Mr. Henry seemed so agitated he couldn’t catch his breath. Abra sat between them, and she felt responsible for everything.
“First things first,” Mr. Henry continued, as if he hadn’t said anything yet, as if he wasn’t sure he would make it and wanted to be certain to tell her the most important bits before he died. “Use the sword to lock and seal the door.”
“What do I do?” Abra asked.
“Push it closed. Lock it with the sword. Run the point of it all along the crack of the door, from the bottom up to the top, along the top, and down the side again.”
“That’s it?” Abra asked.
“That’s it.”
Abra stood to go and seal the door.
Mr. Henry tried to stand but couldn’t, so he leaned against the stone and spoke to them from around the corner.
Abra looked at Mr. Henry and he nodded, so she held up the sword, thrust it into the keyhole, and turned the blade in the door. There was a deep movement, as if the earth’s stomach growled. She pulled the sword out and ran the point of it along the crack that outlined the door. It made a scratching sound and left a bright point of light for an instant where it sealed the rock like a welder’s torch.
All this time Ruby watched quietly, not saying a word. Abra felt her eyes on her. Ruby’s life as she had known it was over. She would never go back to the house on James Street in the Edge of Over There. She would never see her father again, at least not on this side of the water. Maybe never.
The door to the afterlife at the grave of Marie Laveau was sealed. No living person would ever pass that way again.