Thirty-One

Inside, the air was close, and it choked us with the heavy scent of rot and mold. And something else—something dark and sticky smelling. It was a scent that reminded me of that first day I’d visited Thisbe’s cabin.

“I think this is it,” I said, coughing on the thickness and dust in the air.

Odane peeled off his top shirt and tore a strip from it, leaving only his white tank covering his chest. “Here,” he said, wrapping the fabric around my face. “Don’t breathe it in.” Handing me the flashlight for a second, he tore another strip from the shirt and tied himself a mask as well. “Come on.”

Slowly, we crept into the deep darkness of the building. It had been a funhouse once, so we had to watch our step or trip over the tracks sunk into the floor that should have carried riders through the darkened rooms.

“Do you see that?” Odane said, pointing to a glow ahead of us.

“I think so,” I whispered.

“I’m not imagining it?”

“Not unless I am, too.”

He looked at me, the whites of his eyes glinting in the light thrown by the flashlight. With a tight nod, he led me forward, carefully stepping along the tracks. When we got to the source of the light—a set of swinging double doors—he put his finger up to where his mouth was under the mask, like he was motioning for me to be quiet. Then he waved us forward, pushing on the door slowly in case it creaked and gave us away, and then suddenly more quickly, and stepped through.

I followed him and stopped dead in my tracks.

The room was empty except for a pile of rags someone had been using for a bed and a rickety metal table, probably used by a mechanic or security guard at one time. But on the floor, laid out like an offering, there was a body wrapped in red string.

“Lucy!” I rushed over to her, but she didn’t stir.

She was burning up with fever beneath the string and trembled at my touch, but she didn’t wake.

The red string—it didn’t seem like nearly enough to hold anyone. I touched a place where it had already rubbed Lucy’s skin raw, and as my hands brushed against the thread, I was in Thisbe’s mind again …

She’d taken the boy from me, so it was only fitting for her to take his place.

I took out the carved figure, the one I’d made for this occasion. The girl was still unconscious when I sliced into her hand and rolled the little doll in her blood. Carefully, I wrapped the wet figure with the red string until the blood was sealed beneath it, and then, happy with my work, I tucked the binding charm into my pocket.

Energy fairly crackled around her, like her body was trying to call back the part of her soul I’d removed. Yes, the girl was exactly what I’d need. Once I found Augustine, we’d be able to live out our lifetimes together with the power her body gave us.

Satisfied, I began wrapping the sleeping girl in the power of the string.

When her body—and all it had to give—was bound up tight, I went over and crouched in front of the man slouched in the corner, until I was eye-level with him. My knees protested as I balanced on the balls of my feet, but I wanted to be close when I said what needed saying. I wanted to see the understanding when it finally lit in the eyes that had been following my every movement for the last few days.

But how to begin?

“When I was a girl,” I started, “the water ran sweet most of the year, as though the roots of the cane had grown deep down into the soil, down to the cool springs under the earth and seasoned them. But come late summer, the water would go rancid and taste of iron and rust, like the land had soaked up all the blood spilled during the harvest. Like the land had judged the sacrifice and found it wanting.

“Those were the hardest months—when the heat flayed you. But in those months, your parched throat wouldn’t accept the water you tried to give it, because during those months, the water tasted of death. Those were the months we buried our dead in a hurry, without the proper rituals or any time at all to mourn. After, when the cane was boiling away and when the fields lay massacred by our blades, that’s when we waited for the new crop of men to arrive and replace the ones who had fallen.

“There was always a new crop—of cane, of men, and even of hope. We hoped that this would be the last season, and still we hoped we would see the next. Most of all, we each hoped that something else might happen.”

I hesitated. Even so many years later, the pain still felt as clear and distilled as the water that used to run from those sweet, sweet springs. But I’d lived with that pain for lifetimes, now. I’d live with it a bit longer.

Lifting the boy’s chin between the sharp nails of my thumb and forefinger, I forced him to look at me. To see me. “When I learned what my mother was, that was the beginning of my something else, and when I saw his face for the first time, that was the end of it,” I said, waiting for that glimmer of understanding in the prisoner’s tired, bloodshot eyes.

The man shifted but never once tried to pull away. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you ought to know. Because I’m giving you a gift.”

“How is any of this a gift?” The words pulsed with anger.

Good. Anger meant strength. Strength meant life. Life was what I needed from him.

I smiled then, not because I felt pleasure at his discomfort, but because I admired the strength I saw before me. “What I’m about to tell you is a gift, because most people don’t have any idea why they have to die.”

I surfaced from the vision, gasping for air and shaking with the intensity of what I’d just seen.

“I was right,” I whispered, as my own anger warred with the memory of her satisfaction. “She has him.”

“Who?” Odane asked.

I looked up at him and forced myself to say the rest. “She has Piers. He was here, too, a little earlier. But she took him somewhere. We were right—she’s going to trade him to Samedi for Augustine.”