Chapter 4

 

Early morning walks around the plantation had become something of a ritual for me—it was a great way to clear my mind. The smell of dew and the sound of birds singing their morning songs reminded me that there was peace of a sort always underlying the chaos that was my life. Ashely and I lived alone—well, with Isabelle—on my family’s ancestral plantation. We had nearly a hundred acres. Used to be more, but my grandfather sold off most of it as New Orleans grew. The old slave quarters were still intact. As a little girl, Isabelle actually grew up there. At least until she and her sister were sold off.

You’d think she’d have reason to hold a grudge. I mean, I know I didn’t do any of that shit. But what was old history to me was still a memory for her. I wouldn’t blame her, frankly, if she hated me for it. But she didn’t. Isabelle, for all her faults, was an incredibly forgiving spirit.

A cool breeze blew through my hair. It smelled of spring wildflowers. A cornucopia of pinks, oranges, and yellows beautified our fields. Long blades of grass tickled my shins as I strolled leisurely past the slave quarters and toward the back end of our property.

I think we should do it, Isabelle said. We should go to the Academy.

I sighed. This was going to be difficult. This was her life, too. I had to remember that. I had to let her have a say, an equal say, in most decisions we made. It was only right. But still, it was hard not to imagine that I was in charge, that I always had the final say. I mean, it was my body. But she didn’t ask for this “arrangement” any more than I did.

“I don’t know… I mean, your sister practiced Voodoo. It led her down a dark path.”

Her resentment led her down the path of the Bokors. That’s why she became a Caplata. She wanted revenge. Voodoo wasn’t the problem.

“It just doesn’t feel right,” I said. “I mean, your magica is pure. This stuff… I don’t know.”

You think it’s tainted? Isabelle asked.

I paused a moment, unsure how to respond.

It’s a whole worldview… something my ancestors brought with them on the slave ships. It’s no more or less pure than any other kind of magic.

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “I guess I’ve just seen too many movies.”

Not all of the Loa are the same. Not all of them are evil.

“If not exactly demons, then what are they? Gods?”

Not gods either. More like human beings than gods, really. Sometimes they can be generous. Other times selfish. You know, just like people.

“Well, you know enough as it is. Why do I need this school?”

I don’t know much at all, Isabelle said. I just know enough about it to realize that most of the stereotypes about Voodoo are not true. I was never a Mambo.

“A Mambo?”

A priestess… it’s what my sister was trying to become, before she let her anger and passion take her down a different path.

I took a deep breath—we needed to talk about this, but frankly, I was eager to change the subject. “Wanna take a ride on a Treant?”

Isabelle laughed. You realize, the trees do not exist for our amusement.

“They don’t,” I said. “But you know they enjoy it too… even the trees like to have fun. No one wants to be a stick in the mud all of the time.”

I’ll make you a deal, Isabelle said. We will evoke a Treant… if you promise to take this whole Academy thing seriously. If you’ll consider it.

“You know what,” I said. “Roger will be here in a bit. I’ll do you one better. Let’s run it by him. If he thinks we should go, we go. If not, we don’t.”

Fair enough, Isabelle said. But you have to let me speak. He needs to hear my side, too.

“Deal,” I said. I felt Isabelle open my access to her magica. I only needed a little. As impressive as it was, animating a Treant was a fairly simple spell. We just needed to let the magica touch the tree’s essence, then we could speak to it, ask it to come to life.

Releasing a little magica, we animated our favorite oak. As it came to life, the tree’s limbs cracked and popped, echoing back to us from a distance. After it lowered one if its branches, I straddled it and gripped a limb that protruded from the branch in front of where I mounted it. Quickly, the tree lifted us into the air. I don’t know exactly how high we were… but we were high enough, on this oak, to get a good view of the whole plantation. So long as the spell was active, Isabelle was able to communicate directly with the tree. I couldn’t always understand what she was saying. It wasn’t a language they used to communicate. It was more like an impression, a sixth sense of a sort. As the oak managed to pull its last root from the soil, it started moving ahead briskly. Its roots danced beneath it in a way that seemed random but, somehow, coordinated. You’d think they’d get all tangled, the way the tree moved them. But they never did. As the oak moved across the fields, the cool wind struck my cheeks and sent my long hair blowing behind me.

“Woohooo!” I shouted. It was pure exhilaration. Better than any roller coaster. Flying across the plantation as if I had wings, I never felt more connected, more alive. It was a kind of living that most people never experience. And it was addicting… not in a bad way. It gave me a sort of clarity that I never had when I was trudging through life on my own two feet. Isabelle felt it too. As much as we disagreed about… everything, at these moments we felt connected, like we actually belonged together.

I looked out toward our home on the other side of the property, as Roger’s rusted-out Jeep pulled up to the house.

Should we go and greet him? Isabelle asked.

“Ashley is down there… and I suspect she wants a few private moments to ‘greet’ him in her own way.”

Isabelle giggled. The Shaman had been something of a mentor for us for years, but this newfound “fling” between him and Ashley… well, it made her happy enough that it was worth assuming the awkward position of the third wheel whenever he came over.

Roger Thundershield… I still chuckled every time I thought about it. What kind of parents choose a name like Roger to accompany a last name like Thundershield? All the cool points he scored with his last name were immediately countered by the plainness of his first.

We gave them a good five minutes, enjoying our ride on ol’ Oakey for a while before reluctantly making our way inside. The way I looked at it, no matter what they were “doing,” five minutes was more than enough time. For most guys, anyway.

As I stepped inside, I spotted the two cuddling on my grandma’s century-old couch. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable piece of furniture in the mansion, but for some reason, that’s where Ashley and Roger always ended up.

I was halfway disappointed that I hadn’t walked in and interrupted them mid-tryst. I looked forward to the possibility of them, awkwardly, attempting to straighten out their clothes while pretending that nothing had been going on.

Instead, it appeared that they were deep in “conversation.” Nothing too exciting about that.

“How’s it going, Thunder-thighs?” I asked. He didn’t have large thighs. If anything, he was totally leaned out. Still, it was my custom to greet the Choctaw Shaman with some kind of half-witted play on his name.

“Where there’s thunder,” Roger said, with a half grin, “there’s lightning.”

“I don’t know about that,” I admitted. “Ashley, care to comment?”

My sister rolled her eyes. “We were just talking about your invitation.”

“Can you believe it?” I asked Roger as I scrambled through my mind searching for a good reason to reject the invitation. “I mean, can you imagine, a white girl living on a plantation—and a Catholic one at that—learning Voodoo?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Roger asked.

“Well, I mean… wasn’t Voodoo a part of slave culture?”

“Your point?” Roger asked.

“Wouldn’t it be offensive if a privileged white girl shows up… trying to force her way into it all?”

“Well, what does Isabelle think?”

I hesitated a moment. I’d agreed to let Roger know her point of view. “She thinks I should go.”

“So, you’re seriously going to play the cultural appropriation card… when a girl who used to be a slave herself says it’s totally cool?”

“She might be okay with it, but she doesn’t have a Twitter account. The trolls on there are brutal about that kind of thing.”

“And in this case, they’d be wrong,” Roger said. “Not to mention, are you really going to let trolls control the decisions you make?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They invited you, Annabelle. If they were half as worried about your whiteness as you are, they’d never have asked you to join.”

“You’re missing the point,” I said.

“No,” Roger said, staring at me intently. “You are missing the point. Why do white folks think that all the stuff they came up with should be for ‘everybody’ because it’s all so stinking great… like you do us a great charity by finding us jobs, giving us welfare programs… but things that came from indigenous culture or African culture… well, that stuff is just fine… for dark people.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, folding my arms. “But I see your point.”

“They are wanting to share something with you… something powerful. And by turning them down, you’re basically saying ‘How cute, but that shit isn’t good enough for me.’”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying…”

“Using social justice lingo to dismiss what’s really bothering you isn’t only unfair to the whole idea of social justice. You aren’t being fair to yourself, either.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Yes you do,” Roger interrupted. “You can’t disassociate the Loa at the Academy, or the priests and priestesses there, from the Loa and the Caplata who attacked you.”

I sighed. “Well… maybe you’re right. Can you blame a girl for being a little hesitant?”

“As long as I’ve known you,” Roger said, “you aren’t known for taking big, moral stands on things. That is, unless doing so helps you avoid something you’re afraid of.”

“That’s not entirely true,” I said.

“Come on, Annabelle,” Ashley said. “That’s been your MO for years.”

“Even so,” I protested. “Just because I may or may not take a stand for the right or wrong reasons doesn’t mean that the stand I’m taking is wrong.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s right, either,” Roger said.

I wanted to object to the notion that fear, rather than a well-thought-out ethical worldview, was the basis of my reluctance to accept this invitation. Yes, it was a bastardized brand of Voodoo… but it was Voodoo no less that had attacked our family. A Loa was involved when my parents were nearly zombified. They recovered physically. But mentally? After several years of trying to take care of them ourselves, our parents checked themselves in to an assisted living facility a year ago today. They said that they refused to be a “burden” on our futures. It also meant that Ashley and I had our family’s antebellum plantation to ourselves.

Isabelle had been oddly quiet during this entire exchange. She probably figured Roger had said enough… and for whatever reason, when he spoke, I tended to listen. I mean, who wouldn’t listen to someone with a name like Thundershield?

I was glad Isabelle didn’t speak up. It probably would have made it feel like I was being ganged up on, which usually results in me shouting “fuck y’all” and storming out on a determined course to do my own thing.

I sighed.

“I’ll consider it,” I said, turning toward my sister. “But it still doesn’t feel right doing this without you.”

Ashley exchanged glances with Roger. “Should we tell her?” Ashley asked him.

Roger nodded.

“No… don’t say it,” I said.

“Don’t say what?” Roger asked.

“You two are not getting married,” I insisted. “You just started snogging. A good year of constant snogging is a requirement before a proposal.”

Roger laughed. “Isn’t that backwards? I mean, you went to the Catholic school… aren’t you supposed to get married before the ‘snogging’ starts?”

I huffed.

“We aren’t getting married,” Ashley said, intent to defuse my objection. “I’m going to the reservation for a while.”

“You can’t live on the reservation. You don’t have any Native in you.”

“Not at the moment,” Ashley said.

I cocked my head sideways.

“But I did have a good six inches of Native in me on that couch you’re sitting on a few minutes ago.”

I leapt to my feet. “You’re disgusting!”

Ashley laughed. “I’m just joking. We didn’t do it… not yet anyway. Not today.”

Roger’s jaw was practically lying on the floor. This clearly wasn’t the sort of banter he was accustomed to. It was, however, precisely the kind of tit for tat that I relished in.

“What you two do is your business,” I said. “Just don’t tell me about it. I already have visions of you and Thunder-schlong in my head that I’d like to get rid of.”

Roger was speechless. Damn, it was fun watching him squirm. Ashley relished in it, too.

“I’m not moving to the reservation,” Ashley said. “Not permanently. I’m going there on a retreat. It’s the next step in my training as a Shaman.”

“Shaman?” I asked. “Isn’t that kind of sexist? I mean, wouldn’t Shawoman be more appropriate?”

“Shaperson,” Roger interjected.

“Seriously?” I asked. “That just sounds—”

“Dumb?” Roger asked.

“Yeah… kind of like when they tried to change the Nicene Creed at my school to say ‘who for us human beings and our salvation…’ You know, since ‘who for us men’ was gendered language.”

“No it isn’t,” Roger said. “It means mankind. Besides, ‘man’ is in human, too.”

“Why not womankind?” I asked.

“Because that would exclude dudes,” Roger said. “And when you say ‘human beings’ in the Nicene Creed, doesn’t that exclude the little green men from other planets?”

I laughed. “It does sort of sound a bit speciesist. I wouldn’t want to offend any Martians. Maybe if we changed it to ‘who for us hominids’?”

“Still speciesist,” Roger said. “Why wouldn’t God want to save kittens?”

“Maybe because no one wants to deal with litter tracks all over the pearly steps in heaven,” I conjectured.

“You’re avoiding the subject,” Roger said. “Ashley is coming to the reservation to commune with the spirits, to learn her true path as a Shaman.”

“Sha-entity,” I said, feeling proud of myself that I’d come up with the most inclusive term possible.

“Sha-whatever,” Roger retorted.

I was somewhat put off by the fact that his term was more inclusive than mine. I mean, “sha-whatever” could even include inanimate objects. “Entity” presumed a bias toward conscious subjects.

I rolled my eyes before shifting my gaze toward Ashley. “So you’re going to be snogg… I mean, communing with the ‘spirits’ on the res… while I’m going by myself to learn Voodoo?”

Not by yourself, Isabelle insisted poignantly.

I cleared my throat. “I mean, Isabelle and I are going to be learning Voodoo.”

“She corrected you again, didn’t she?” Ashley asked, a half grin forming from only one side of her mouth.

I nodded.

“If this Kalfu character really is determined to collect Isabelle, then it makes sense you’d go,” Roger said.

“How does that make sense?” I asked. “Go right into the heart of Voodoo land so he can come after me without the inconvenience of looking for me?”

Roger shrugged. “But the Loa who invited you, this Oggie character, seemed trustworthy?”

“Well, he seemed to have an interest in recruiting me to fight some battle. I’m not sure that protecting me is his primary motivation.”

“But if he thinks he needs you, for whatever reason, he also has an interest in protecting you.”

“Think of it like any other paranormal investigation,” Ashley said. “Only this time, you are your own client. And you already know the kind of entity you’re dealing with.”

“But I still don’t have a clue how to deal with a Loa. They aren’t exactly demons, even if they might pretend to be at times.”

“Precisely,” Roger said. “Hence the convenience of this Academy.”