TO MISS NEW ORLEANS

Peaches’s heart leaped as Perry appeared. She watched him aim his magic horn at Stagger Lee, then watched him turn away from the demon song as Mama Lisa pointed at Yakumo. “Perry!” She called. “Perry, you gone be—?”

Her voice was lost in the blare of the horn. Music and light filled the air, burning so brightly that Peaches couldn’t tell them apart. Maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe they were the same. She squinted, visored her eyes, and looked toward the ceiling. Yakumo’s blanket of darkness tore and evaporated against the musical onslaught.

“That’s it!” she called. “Put it on ’im!”

Perry didn’t seem to hear. He kept blowing, and a sustained note of magical force poured from his horn. The light brightened further, pulsed, and Peaches felt the sound abrade her skin. She realized then that she had to get everyone out. Their bodies couldn’t handle this.

Peaches locked eyes with Mama Lisa. “Come on!” she shouted. “Everybody! Everybody OUT!”

She had just enough time to wonder where Stagger Lee had gone as the rest of the family fled the room. Only Mama Lisa stayed behind, using her power to hold Fess’s body in suspension. Her glow was brighter than ever, but the strain stood out on her dark face. Her eyes were beginning to redden.

The Mess Around trembled and made a noise Peaches didn’t recognize. Peaches rushed to the keyboard, thinking to play just anything, anything at all, to keep the city from coming apart. She couldn’t tell whether Perry had played another note or whether the Mess Around itself was giving up the ghost. It exploded in a riot of color and force, and Peaches shielded her eyes. She felt wooden splinters pierce her left forearm and opened her mouth to scream.

The other man, the one she didn’t know, shouted at her as he pressed something hard and metallic into her hand.

Hurry! You got to go!

A fizzing noise carried Peaches elsewhere.

Peaches smelled old stone and something like electricity. Magic? Somewhere outside, a storm roared and raged, but the timbre of its voice was different from the storm Peaches had left behind. It was dark in here, but Peaches could still see. The rocky floor was rough, uneven. This place seemed to be at once a cell and a cave.

“Hey!”

The familiar voice turned Peaches’s head, and when she saw her daddy, her heart lurched in her chest.

“Daddy!” she shouted. “He told me you wasn’t real! He told me I wasn’t real!”

Peaches’s father, Renard Two-Times Jackson Lavelle hung against the rough stone wall, his arms and legs spread, suspended as if by manacles. A darkness coiled around him, darker than the dark of their surroundings. It was similar to the shadows of which Yakumo was made, but older and oilier, seething and vibrating at a lower frequency.

Peaches’s daddy craned his neck, staring into the dark. “Babygirl?” he asked. “Zat you?”

“Daddy! Daddy, yes!” Peaches called. She started toward him, but the distance between them lengthened with every step, the way it might have in a nightmare. Peaches didn’t care.

Nightmare, fire, flood, drama—none of it could stop her. “It’s me! I’ma bust you out of here!”

“No! Don’t you come near this place! Don’t you come after me, now, ya heard?”

“Too late,” Peaches called back. “I’m already here.”

“No, you ain’t, and don’t ya come nowhere in the vicinity! Promise me, now!”

“No, Daddy, I—!”

“Promise,” he shouted. “Promise!”

Peaches stopped trying to trudge toward her father. She squared her shoulders and glared at him. “You can’t tell me what to do,” she said. “You may be my daddy, but I’m Peaches damn Lavelle. I go where I wanna, and I do what I do! If I decide to come save you, then damn it, that’s what’s getting done!”

Her daddy sagged in his bonds. His barrel chest deflated, and his knotted arms lost some of their definition. Peaches watched, horrified, as tears spilled from his good eye.

“Please,” he sobbed. “Please don’t. I cain’t let them get you, too.”

“Who, Daddy?” Peaches demanded. “Who they is? The bird-ladies?”

But he was already gone.

Peaches stood in a pool of light shed by a fixture overhead. A cold checkered marble floor spread beneath her bare feet, and plush sofas squatted against walls on either side of the room—if it was a room. It might have been simply a widening of a hallway.

Perry stood at the far edge of the pool of light. Everything behind him was lost in shadow. He was dressed up, like for a church wedding—he wore a fine tuxedo with a royal purple bow tie and cummerbund, and purple patent-leather shoes with spats. He held a softly glowing horn pressed against his wrinkled forehead. He hissed at someone Peaches couldn’t see:

“… or I won’t do it, you heard me?” he said through clenched teeth. “You bring her to me now. Right now. Bring her here and let me know she’s safe. She don’t get saved, nobody—!”

“… Perry…?”

Perry straightened, surprised. “Peaches? Is that really you?”

“Did you bring me here? Just now?”

“The horn brought you,” Perry said. “But I made him do it.”

“How?”

“I… I told him I wouldn’t play him unless I knew you were safe.”

“Me? Because you love me?” Peaches heard herself speak the words and couldn’t read her own tone.

“Yes, but…” Perry crossed the puddle of light to take Peaches’s left hand in his right. “There’s no time. I have to play to get the city back. It’s already half gone. Wild magic is tearing Nola apart.”

“It was—!”

“Mr. Larry,” Perry said. “I know.” He paused for a beat. “Peaches. This is it.”

“What?” she said. “This is what? I got so much to tell you. Like, I thought I was a song, but I’m not but maybe I am, but I’m real, too, and my daddy is real, and you saved us, but I think maybe that hasn’t happened yet.”

“What do you mean?”

Peaches frowned. “I don’t know. In the boneyard, I saw what happened to my daddy. The storm that broke our schooner, it wasn’t just a storm. It was these giant bird-ladies with lightning in they mouths, and after Daddy threw me away, they ate him.”

“They ate him?” Perry said. “But the letters—!”

“I know,” Peaches said. “That’s why I believed Yakumo when he said the letters weren’t real, but I think they were. They are. I think my daddy writing them so I won’t come looking for him. And—and I think your horn missing this.”

She held up the mouthpiece given to her by the man she didn’t know.

Perry swallowed hard. “Damn,” he said sadly. “That’s… damn.”

He began to cry.

“Perry,” Peaches said. “Perry.” She gathered him into her arms.

“How can they ask me?” he sobbed. “How can they ask me for this?”

“For what?”

“I don’t want to die.”

Peaches stiffened. “No,” she said. “Oh, no. Oh, baby.” She cradled Perry gingerly, so as not to break him. “I’m so sorry. I shoulda known.”

“It’s true, isn’t it,” Perry said. “Even with the mouthpiece. If I do this, it’ll kill me.”

“It’s—yes,” Peaches said. That sensation of ice lodged in her chest returned to her again. To lose Perry—for him to die, even in triumph—might destroy her. If she could only—

A thought occurred to her.

“That horn so magic, I don’t know how you can mess with it and survive… When you show up to fight Yakumo, I dunno if you you anymore. But, Perry… if there’s one thing we know from living in Nola, it’s that death ain’t the end. And you, me, Brendy… we ain’t like other folks—or we are, and it’s true for everybody: We have to do what we can do. We have to. Think about all the people who can’t. The people who get in their own way or who don’t get the chances we get.”

“I just want to be with you.”

Peaches pulled back to hold Perry at arm’s length and look him in the eye. “We will be together,” she said. “I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but we will. I promise.”

Perry half smiled, tears still rolling down his cheeks. “I used to be so sorry I wasn’t super like you,” he said. “I didn’t know it was this hard.”

“It’s hard,” Peaches said. “Sometimes it’s real scary, too… but ain’t it cool as hell…?”

He smiled, for real now. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’s cool as hell. I’m finna play a magic trumpet and save everybody. Not even Milo did that.”

“He didn’t,” Peaches said. “Just please remember…” She searched her heart for the words. For a way to put them together as beautifully as Perry himself would. “I love you, and I have always loved you, and you are the joy of my heart.”

She drew Perry close again and kissed him now, a grown-up kiss. Their breath mingled, and the world went away. When it was over, Peaches was crying again.

Perry brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Okay,” he said, and there was steel in his voice. “Okay. Yes. I’m ready.”

Perry didn’t know what he had expected, but he was stunned when he stepped onto the hardwood stage. Nobody announced him. The band didn’t even stop playing. The drums ticked rhythmically along—there were two sets, both at the back of the stage, one on either side.

At first, Perry didn’t recognize the place, but then he recalled coming here before with Brendy and Doctor Professor. It had seemed much smaller then, more enclosed. In here—if Perry was, in any way that mattered, indoors—were stadium seats reaching up and up. He did not see, but sensed that there might be, walls somewhere in the distance. The ceiling was open to the sky—or no. The ceiling was the sky. It existed, but not the same way the ceiling of the Superdome existed, back in the world Perry knew and understood. Almost every seat was occupied.

The drums slowed to an expectant crawl as Perry took in his surroundings. Every so often, the horn section would sort of sigh quietly, waiting to assert itself. High above, the Storm swirled, blotting out the stars and constellations. It was a raging ring of wind and cloud and water, lit now and again by colored lightning flashes. Its noise was loud, but removed from the music, as if Perry sensed it by something other than hearing.

The auditorium seemed to go on forever. Beyond the footlights was a sea of faces—some Perry knew, most he didn’t—but he had encountered each of them before, and even the strangest, the most forgotten of them, tugged at the edges of his memory, saying, Hey! It’s me!

Papa Nguyen from Da Cut, the policeman from the car yard in Nola East, the Pie Lady, Perry’s mother and father, Mama Lisa—even the Moon Lady from Perry’s long-ago dream. Even the goddess Denkine, from his adventure in the Canaries. Perry’s eyes slid over each of them, and the people in between, looking for one face in particular.

All at once, Perry remembered he was holding the Elysian Trumpet, that he was expected to play. A wave of invisible force rolled toward him from the crowd, broke over him, making his skin tingle and sweat. Perry wiped his brow and tried to tell himself he wasn’t afraid.

Oh, you ain’t afraid… that rasping voice whispered from the back of Perry’s mind. You petrified.

Just then, the banjo began to play. Perry cut his eyes stage left and saw a white man with big old sunglasses sitting cross-legged with the instrument over his knee. He strummed confidently and flashed Perry a toothy grin.

Now the trombones groaned into action. Their noise sounded like citrus peel curling behind a zester, or flower petals, beaded with dew, opening to the sun. The elongated notes made Perry’s sweating all the worse. I can’t do this, he thought. I can’t!

He sighted Peaches in the crowd. He didn’t know why it had taken him so long. There she was in the second row, center, sitting between Daddy Deke and what must once have been a P-body. The woman wasn’t a woman anymore. She wasn’t crusted in dried paint; she was an animated graffito, a living cartoon.

Perry implored Peaches with his eyes. Help, he looked. I’m so afraid!

Peaches returned his gaze, steadily and level, and for a moment, Perry feared he had failed to make himself understood. Then he felt a sensation like a door opening in the back of his skull, and Peaches climbed inside him.

Warm up in here, she thought. Then, Damn. That horn hot as hell. No wonder you spooked.

Perry could tell the trombones were stretching, waiting for him to come in. What should he do? Play a solo?

Naw, Peaches thought. That ain’t how this one go. You know the song—sing!

Lord, I’m gwine down to Saint James Infirmary

See my ba-a-a-a-a-a-aby there!

She stretched out on a long white table

So cold, so sweet, red hair!

Aw! Peaches thought. Is that me? Lemme do one! This time, Peaches opened Perry’s mouth and sang in his voice:

Let her go, let her go, God bless her

Wherevah she-e-e-e-e-e may be

In this whole world or any other

She ain’t never find a sweet baby boy like me!

Peaches threw the controls back to Perry, and he sang again.

When I die, put on my straight-leg britches

a box-back coat and my Stetson hat

Put a gold piece on my watch chain

So you can let all them boys know I died standing fast.

Perry lifted the horn to his lips and felt the breath swell inside him. He blew without thinking, but he felt it in his toes. At first, the notes he played followed the melody of the verses he had sung; then, as the breath swelled in him, took on strength, it raged forth like a herd of horses, running in rhythm together, but each one with its own particular gait.

Perry lost track of himself. He felt taller than tall. If he could see himself, he would see starlight shining through him—had the Storm gone? Had it ceased to trouble the air?

No. His feet left the stage as he lifted up and up, into the living Storm. The winds whipped and gusted at Perry, spinning him this way and then that. He kept playing, but any moment now, he knew he’d lose the thread of the song. He shut his eyes, but doing so dizzied him. It—

Perry felt an arm wrap around his shoulders, steady him.

He opened his eyes to see Mr. Casey—or no. Not Mr. Casey. Not quite. This man had a full beard. His hair was more carefully faded at the temples, and his eyes were compounded like those of a fly—or a bee. Just play, he urged. I’ll do the rest.

As Perry played, this new version of Mr. Casey turned from him to face the wall of whirling clouds. They hung in a tunnel. The black clouds, the lightning, the wind pressed against it, fighting to consume them.

A chain of lightning broke through the barrier, flashing at Perry. Mr. Casey stretched out his arms toward it and little black flecks leaped from them to form a living shield. The lightning turned back on itself, and Perry heard the winds howl over his own playing.

Perry watched Mr. Casey and let the music calm him. The man hung in the air, surrounded by a cloud of— They were bees, weren’t they?

Mr. Casey bowed his head, and fireworks bloomed in the tunnel. No. Not fireworks. The lights were colorful, but they didn’t burst and fade. They were graffiti tags. And not just words. Colorful figures appeared—A cow in a pink ten-gallon hat bearing a machine gun who fired into the storm. A neon robot with laser eyes whose fists exploded from his arms to tear holes in the dark clouds.

Lightning struck again and again, but every time it hit a drawing, made it disappear, two more appeared to take its place. How long could Mr. Casey keep this up?

Perry finished a note and glanced below him as he took a breath. What he saw almost made him forget to pick up playing again. A squadron of P-bodies, of living cartoons, rose toward them, each one’s face a glare of concentration.

Perry started blowing again as the first wave of P-bodies poured into the storm. The holes they made in the clouds seemed to open channels that Perry filled with music. He felt rather than heard a growl, a howl of pain. It was working. They were tearing the Storm to shreds.

Perry let the music carry him up past the Storm. Now it lay below him, lit with multicolored flashes. It was both there and not-there. Perry could see through it.

From here, he thought he’d be able to see the whole world, but it wasn’t there. He saw the city and the surrounding area, but it was as if the rest of the world had been masked, divided from it. Perry realized that his memories of leaving the city—of traveling to Houston, to Pensacola, to the East Coast—weren’t from his life in Nola, but from the world before. Before what, though?

Before the split, Mr. Casey’s voice sounded again in his mind. Before the Powers divided New Orleans from itself and hid it from the Enemy.

The explanation created a seam in Perry’s consciousness; it glowed like the light from underneath a door, illuminating Perry’s life, illuminating knowledge Beyond. This was how he learned that the Storm was not the same as the Hanging Judge, the spirit Casey had unwittingly given life with his inherited magic before it fled into Nola to keep from fading away, but also that it was.

He knew now that Casey was kin to him, through the brotherhood of sorcery, yes, but through blood as well. Before Daddy Deke had come to Nola with the horn, he had lived and died in New Orleans, fathered Casey’s grandmother, Charlotte.

The world spun slowly beneath Perry, but while it was greater than him, he was also greater than it. He felt its foundations at his feet, the pressure of its hopes and fears against his heart. Somewhere in time, somewhere impossibly, long ago, but also now, Nola had split off from the world, become hidden on its own plane. Amazed, Perry used his breath to investigate the city he knew and how it had come to be.

He reached down with his musical grasp and found a shining band extending from its other side, off, off, back into the branching of time and the fracturing of place. Casey let go of Perry, grinning wide.

I did it, he said. I did my part. Just like Daddy Deke. And now Perry could see through his cousin, knew he’d willed himself home again.

Perry heard himself playing the opening bars of a song he didn’t know, and at the same time, he was singing:

I’m singing my praise to Miss New Orleans

So beautiful that she gleams.

To eyes from Away, her Carnival is gay

And music runs in her streets.

The gold in her teeth, the flowers in her hair

The pigeons strutting her square

Gardenias bloom and spread their perfume

Crepe myrtles and moss hang shaggily down in the breeze

When I’m away, I yearn everyday

And feel such exquisite loss.

I’m singing my praise to Miss New Orleans

So beautiful that she gleams.

To eyes from Away, her Carnival is gay

And music runs in her streets.

Here, Perry felt the wound. A wound that predated the killing of songs and skycars crashing down. This was the wound that had worried them all for thousands of years. Perry stood astride the river of time and watched the Storm bear down. It swelled the river and Lake Pontchartrain, it bowed the Seventeenth Street Canal and threatened to rip the roof from the Superdome.

Perry played right into the center of the Storm, into its eye. He played Daddy Deke, and his parents, and Jelly Roll Morton Academy. He played the summer days so hot and wet that walking through the city air was like crossing the bed of a boiling sea. He played crepe myrtles, he played crawfish curling in the boil. He played the Ninth Ward, the Seventh Ward, he played Creole Jesus, Lafayette Square, the Jazz Market, and Congo Square.

He shook with the effort of his breath. With the unbroken note of it, pouring through the bell of the horn as he pressed the valves and buzzed his embouchure. He played Mardi Gras and the Indians meeting in ritual combat. He played every pebble in each gravel lot. Every pothole and cobblestone on Felicity Street, the drunks, the church ladies, the aroma of meat pies sizzling in deep fat fryers. He played the palm trees shimmying hello, the sno-ball stands, the scrubby grass, the Mardi Gras ducks, and the kites and blimps of City Park.

A burning halo had settled upon his scalp. It sizzled there without pain. The music left his ears but was still inside his body. He knew he was playing one single high note that reached up and away to infinity. He divided from himself then, possibly because Peaches was still with him, but he couldn’t be sure.

He couldn’t leave the song this way. He had to bring it back. He had to reconcile the two songs together, make them one, and whole.

Gimme six crap-shooting pallbearers

Have a chorus girl sing me a song

A red-hot marching jazz funeral

Now you done heard my story

So if anybody aski-i-i-i-ing…!

Tell ’em I got them Saint James Infirmary blues!

Perry sat between Peaches and Brendy in the audience, holding both their hands. Together, they were a circuit of force—something magic but more than magic. Perry played as the Storm fled the sky.

Stars wheeled untroubled overhead. As the last solo began, Perry tapped his foot, anticipating each note. He watched himself age and grow, his body elongating, filling in, and beginning to wizen. A beard sprang up on his face, turned gray, then white. His hair whitened and thinned, all while holding that same note, and then, when he released it, his body had thinned again and shrunk. His reduced frame swam in his natty dress clothes.

In the second row, Peaches’s hand sought Perry’s. She held it tight, but not tight enough to hurt.

We together, she said, or thought. Perry wasn’t sure which.

Like rum and Coca-Cola, Perry said, or thought.

The band ceased.

The audience held its breath.

Where before they had been individuals, now they were one body, transubstantiated by the performance into a single organism with one thought, one mood, one faith.

Silence descended.

Onstage, Perry lowered the Elysian Trumpet, wavered on his feet, and collapsed.

The music resumed as Perry-in-the-audience and the rest of the crowd followed the band from the concert hall into the street outside. Another Perry raised his trumpet to his lips to play again as a new song began. There were so many of him. The crowd that had been in him, all playing in harmony. Perry—one of him—felt his family, his friends, lay hands on him in turn.

On they walked, buoyed by the sound, rejoicing for Perry’s life.

This was everything. This was all he had ever needed.