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aithne[Here it is, the conclusion of Black Angel Crossroads.]
[Usual disclaimers apply: 1832 Louisiana, difficult cultural history, certain realities of race relations and slavery that can't be avoided. Proceed with caution, if you're sensitive.]
Odile made a nest of blankets on the floor for Charlotte, and started figuring out what she wanted to take with her back to Barataria. It was time to admit that she was living there now, she figured, and stop clinging so ferociously to her past. The kays myste would need to come, and the tables they stood on were a matched pair. With a bit of polish, she thought they would fit in just fine.
Everything in this house, from the stove to the smoothness of the floor, had been either a gift or bartered for with the talents of her grandmother, her mother, and herself. Both Odile and her mother had been born here; Grandmere had lived her in happiness with her man for a time, as well. So many hands had helped finish the house, materials coming from those who could scrape them up, work coming from those who had nothing but their hands and their talents and a need to give back in kind what they had been given.
This house was a part of Odile, and she was a part of it. But even without her living here, it could still see some use; it was hidden and protected, and could be used to shelter those who had nowhere else to go, to work ritual that needed to go unseen.
She moved around the house, still limping. She fetched some water when Charlotte next woke and washed her off a bit, apologizing to the baby for the coolness of the water. The baby expressed her dislike of being wiped down with a cold, wet cloth quite vociferously, but quieted down afterwards when Odile gave her a finger to suck on.
Charlotte had just fallen asleep again, and Odile had started hunting through the boxes on her shelves, looking for something she remembered putting away but not exactly where. "I know it's here somewhere," she muttered, pulling yet another wooden box off of the shelf she was searching and lifting the lid to look inside.
There were thumps and creaks as someone--Gabriel, from the sound--climbed the steps to her porch. The door opened, and she turned. Gabriel was in the doorway, and she craned her head to look behind him. "Did Benjamin go home?"
Gabriel nodded. "Yes, he did. He isn't going to say anything to anyone. Less people that know about the baby, the better. Besides, I think he is really feeling bad about Nicole."
"Did he say what he thought he was shooting?" she asked.
"He was about to be lynched by dead people. Anton in particular for failing him. Leroy was there, Durand, Petit. He couldn't stop them with the gun, so he just kept shooting and they kept coming."
"And when the nightmare was broken, he saw what he really shot. I don't blame him, honestly. I knew that Kalfu was messing with us, he was talking to me. Benjamin, he probably didn't," she said.
Gabriel stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. "No, he was focused on you I think the most. He was creative in mine, but I was doubting it as well. Disturbing as it may have been."
She wondered, briefly, what his nightmares had been, and decided not to ask right now. "Well, the things he was showing me were pretty damn horrible," she said. "And he was trying to tell me he'd let you two go if I stayed behind. I told him there wasn't a thing I could trust about him."
He gave her a half a smile. "He tried that with me. I said the same thing."
Odile turned and put the box she was holding back on the shelf, trying to gather her courage. She had some things to say that were probably overdue, but even now, she didn't know if her nerve was going to last her. "Gabriel, about what happened when we broke the hold Kalfu had on the tie between us...I suppose I have some things to say to you."
He went very still, just looking at her, frozen as if he didn't know whether to step forward or back. "Such as?"
"I trust you. Completely. I didn't know that until I needed to open that link between us, and I needed to trust you enough to do so." She breathed out. That hadn't been what she'd meant to say. But it was a start.
Gabriel inclined his head, still staying still. "Thank you, Odile. I trust you too, very much."
Her mouth was dry. Say it, girl. Just come out with it. "And, well. Did you feel what I was sending down the line to you, just before the nightmare broke?"
"Love is what I took it for." There was hope in his eyes and on his face now. "Am I right?"
Say it, Odile. Her voice was very small. "You are." She took a breath. "I love you, Gabriel. I just wanted you to know that for sure."
The look on his face was transcendently happy, and that looked warmed her right down to her toes. "I love you, Odile. But I think you already knew that."
"I did. But it's nice to hear it." She smiled, and opened her arms. "Now, will you come over here and kiss me, please?"
He did, his mouth hot on hers. He pulled her towards her bedroom, and she gladly went with him. The baby stayed asleep, thankfully, and for a small space they simply were one together, without walls. The power flowed easily back and forth between them as they touched and tasted each other.
The euphoria was there too, and for the first time she realized that it was not only his power that was ecstatically happy to be in contact with her, but her power, too, was curling around him like a contented cat, purring. It felt strangely familiar, and Odile realized that she'd had flashes of this feeling before, during ritual when Legba and Erzulie were making love together.
After the nightmare room and what had happened after, it was a much-needed comfort, to be together. Afterwards, lying in each other's arms, Odile murmured, "The baby's name is Charlotte."
"I like it," he said. "So how are we going to raise her? As our daughter or as your sister?"
"I was thinking daughter," she said, considering. "Sister...too many people would be wondering just which parent she and I had in common."
She felt him tense, just a touch, and knew that he was trying to think of a way to ask her something that wouldn't scare her. "Your daughter or our daughter, then?" he asked.
Odile tilted her head. "Would you be willing to claim her?"
"Certainly, I hope to claim many others as well." There was no doubt whatsoever in his voice. Odile wished she were so sure, but she was not the idealist of the two of them. The world had a habit of interfering.
But for now, this was enough. "Ours, then. Goodness knows that a girl who's had Ghede in her is probably going to need as many people looking after her as she can get. I hope she's all right, afterwards. And I hope that Remy really does have in mind to bring Ghede out of her and back to the crossroads."
"I think he will," Gabriel said.
"As soon as Kalfu's gone, we can take her to him, and see. Since I'm standing in as her mother, he might tell me more details." She took a long breath in. "Do you want me to be the one to explain to Benjamin about Elisabeth, speaking of?"
He shook his head. "I think that is a joint job really."
Odile turned over and propped herself up on one elbow, facing Gabriel. "He's had a rough time of it lately. I'm starting to wonder about that. I thought it was because he's the strong one of the three of us, but now I'm less sure."
"Lost his son, nearly died, killed an innocent girl, about to lose his wife. He was the strong one. It's like Kalfu is trying to wear him down." Gabriel was musing aloud now, frowning. "There has to be a purpose, some reason we are missing."
Odile thought and came up empty. "I can't think of it, unless it's meant to make him more likely to side with Elisabeth. And, well, if everything that came before hadn't happened, would he have been able to keep his head in the nightmare room?"
"I wondered about that myself," Gabriel said. "Would he have kept his cool if Anton hadn't died?"
"He hasn't been able to protect any of his children. That has to be affecting him. He might defend Elisabeth more, because she's the last one he thinks has remained untouched."
There was a deep, dawning horror in his voice. "Is it possible that Kalfu is waiting for us to tell him? Will he defend her to the death, because in essence all the bad things that have been happening, though Kalfu's fault, are ours, too? And by us telling him, it will trigger certain events that will make us vulnerable somehow?"
It made sense. Far too much sense. "It might. It very well might. If we can't convince Benjamin that she has a piece of Kalfu in her, he might turn on us. He might kill one or both of us--or force us to kill him. And I can't help but think that we need him."
Gabriel shook his head. "We have, until now. But things have changed between us. And Kalfu now has to come to us."
The battle was always going to be here, she heard Legba's rough voice in her memory say. He hadn't meant around here somewhere. He had meant on her land, in her house, in the center of power that three generations of mambos had created, this crossroads and this poteau-mitan. "We have Charlotte. And to kill Ghede, he has to go through the two of us."
"So if we are right, Elisabeth will come to us."
Or what was living in Elisabeth, stealing her life from her. "Yes. She won't come alone, but I think she'll come."
He chuckled low. "Oh, no, the beast will be with her in one form or another."
"I don't want to kill her, if we don't have to," Odile said. "I think she's not really aware of what she's doing and what she's done. She couldn't be and not react to the ritual I did in the house the other day. But it may come to that. So we have a piece of a loa, and the beast, to deal with."
"I don't want to either, but we will probably have that decision to make." He sounded not resigned now, but resolute.
"We'll see what happens. So, do we stay here and wait, then?" she asked. "This is as defensible a place as any. Three generations of protective magics on this place."
"I think that is best. I know a worker that has given birth about three weeks ago. She was complaining about full breasts and her son not drinking enough to satisfy her. She will probably not mind feeding another. If you stay here to guard, I will go get her."
"Elodie, right? Tall like me?" Gabriel nodded. "I know her, she's been a wet nurse before when some of the younger women had trouble with their milk. I'll stay here. Try not to be seen, all right?" Her tone was more worried than she'd meant it. There was a cold feeling of fear in her stomach.
But Charlotte was hours old now, babies needed to eat, and Odile had no idea when Elisabeth would make her move. Gabriel kissed her forehead. "I will," he said. "Odile, if we both survive, I have a question to ask you."
She raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"
Gabriel chuckled. "You know the one. I am hoping for a favorable answer, but I thought I would give you time to ponder."
Ah. That question. She knew what her answer would be, had known since they returned, but simply smiled and said, "I will think on it, then."
They both dressed now, and Gabriel kissed her and went to find Elodie. Odile, holding Charlotte who was awake now and yelling in hunger, started walking the edges of the land that three generations of mambos had protected.
There were layers of protections in here, and Odile stepped around the property, waking them all. Powerful protections against the dead that walked; even Maman in the corpse would have had to vacate after that was up. There were protections against those who came with evil intentions, protections to confuse foes and clear the minds of friends, and even certain vines became weapons. They would reach out and snag any who came too close--even Odile, if she weren't careful.
She could feel the land preparing itself to be a battleground, coming awake and alive in ways that almost surprised her. Thousands of rituals had been done on this land, this patch of swampy earth she called home, and something of those rituals had sunk into the soil and made itself at home.
All of this she did to the accompaniment of Charlotte crying inconsolably, and her own fear like a distant drumbeat. What if Gabriel did not come back? Would she leave the relative safety of this place to go get him? And if she did not, would she be up to this fight alone?
It was one of the longest hours of Odile's life.
The sun was going down by the time she heard footsteps on the path. Gabriel came through the cypresses, followed by Elodie, who smiled and waved when she saw her. Elodie was about as tall as Odile and she was a beautiful force of nature, a fierce mother who always had a crowd of children around her. She was carrying her latest son in a sling.
It was an unqualified relief to see her. "Elodie, good to see you, how's your little one doing? Gabriel told you about Charlotte?"
Elodie smiled. "Fine, fine, but he's taking after Thibault, so he's not drinking his fair share!" Thibault, Elodie's husband, was a small man with a nervous smile. "Gabriel told me, and I think she knows dinner is here! It will be good to get rid of this." Elodie gestured at her breasts, pressing against the fabric of her shirt. "Mighty sore, and I make a good milk cow, so it seems."
"Well, Charlotte will appreciate it. Come with me, I can settle you inside." Elodie followed her in and settled her son down in blankets at her feet. Charlotte latched on ravenously once Elodie was ensconced in the comfortable chair. Quiet descended, at last.
Odile stepped outside with Gabriel, standing on the front porch with him, listening to insects shrilling and birds singing sunset songs. The light had gone golden, drenching the swamp with honeyed light where it filtered in through the trees. "Glad to see you got back in one piece. How are things on Barataria?"
"Calm so far, but I don't think that is going to last," he said. "It feels unsettled."
"Well, we'll see. I brought up the protections on this place. Don't go too near any vine-looking plants if you can help it, they can't tell friend from foe."
"I understand." He took her hands in his. "Whatever happens, which I think is about now by your eyes, I will always love you."
Eyes? She looked into his green eyes, and was horrified to see the color of stone slipping over them, filming them over. She pulled him into a tight hug. "And I love you, Gabriel. Have for a bit. Couldn't admit it." She could feel the changes happening in her, the mad presence of the beast flaring, coming closer. "It's coming now."
"Where's the journal?" he asked.
"It's in the house, i'll get it," she said. Once inside, she got the book out, and told Elodie, "There's something bad coming. Stay in the house, ignore the sounds coming from outside. If neither Gabriel or I live--" She swallowed. "Take Charlotte to Bon Houngan Remy Sleeps On The River, in New Orleans. He'll know what to do."
Without waiting for a response, Odile went out on the porch, book in her hand. The angel's half-human, half-hawk shriek echoed over the swamp, and the sound of wings came quickly towards them.
It landed with a thump in the yard and hopped toward them, wings outstretched. It shrieked, and Odile saw pointed teeth in its mouth. Odile grabbed Gabriel's hand and said, commanding, "You will stop." She pressed her will down on it, concentrating on taking control.
It growled. "Not today." As it spoke in that voice like grinding stone, it swept one of its wings forward, catching Odile across her chest and flinging her back into her own front door. She felt her headwrap come undone and her hair tumble out, but there was no time to replace it.
Gabriel hauled her to her feet, and hissed, "The journal--"
She nodded. "Stronger together." He opened the power to her, and they stepped into each other's bodies, concentrating on pulling the beast into the journal where it could be trapped and destroyed.
But the beast pounced on them, biting and clawing, and it was difficult to concentrate. I wonder if we could get inside the stone, and fight it there? The thought might have been Odile's, or Gabriel's. There was no telling.
I wonder if we can become stone.
Wondering became a thought and their skin hardened to a white marble, and the beast screamed as it scrabbled at them. They own wings swept forward, battering at hit, and it broke off and away.
They followed, with no more than a thought. Together, the beast and the angel they were wheeled in the fading light of sunset, hitting each other, pulling the beast further and further into the journal. Chips of stone rained down from them, but the accelerated healing that both Odile and Gabriel had made all the difference, and the fight was quickly becoming more and more one-sided.
The power that Gabriel was connected to was dwindling, quickly, as they pulled more and more of it to force the beast into the journal. It would be enough. It had to be enough. If they kept up like this, they were done, but if they lost this fight the world was done.
It felt like the whole world roared through them, and their wing slammed forward, severing one of the beast's wings. They were high up, and their opponent fell like the stone it was, remaining wing beating uselessly against the air. It hit the ground and shattered, and the book in their hands became suddenly almost too hot to hold. The beast was trapped.
The part of them that was Gabriel was nearly exhausted, and they set down on the ground. Like at the house in the swamp. Let it burn, the part of them that was Gabriel whispered.
Agreement from Odile, and they dropped the book on the ground and raised their hands, setting it alight.
The paper and leather was consumed swiftly, and the scream that came from the book was terrible and desperate and hungry. But then, the beast was pulled into the crossroads by hands invisible and strong, and silence descended.
I am sorry, love. I can't hold us together anymore. Gabriel passed out and the two of them separated, Odile catching him as he fell, lowering him to the ground. "We did it," she whispered. "We beat it."
Elisabeth had to be on her way. Odile hauled Gabriel up onto the porch, muttering about him being much heavier than he looked. She laid him down by the door, and opened it to pull him inside.
She stopped, her heart in her throat.
Elodie was in the corner, both babies in her arms, trying to shield them with her body. Elisabeth was standing in the center of the room, revolver pointed at Elodie. Between them, Remy stood, looking taller than she'd ever seen him, an almost palpable feeling of power coming from him. He was wearing his top hat, and the only weapon he bore was his flute, in his left hand.
"Elisabeth," Odile said low.
The woman Odile had known for years glanced over her shoulder quickly, and pulled the trigger. Remy staggered, blood blooming on his colorful shirt, and Odile heard the click as Elisabeth chambered the next round.
Odile ducked low, grabbing her rifle, which was in its usual place by the door. If she was in time--
The revolver fired again, and Remy went down, shot in the head. Blood splattered over Elodie, who was screaming, and Elisabeth's revolver clicked once more.
She had a clear shot at Charlotte.
No.
Without thought, Odile brought her rifle up, and a shot rang out, the kick of the gun shoving back on her shoulder. For a single, terrible moment, Odile thought that maybe she had missed.
Then the left half of Elisabeth's head shredded, and she fell forward, the revolver skidding away from her limp hand. Odile's heart twisted, and she almost sobbed. Out of habit, out of not knowing what else to do, she reloaded the rifle. Her hands, it seemed, were smarter than she was, because as she finished reloading she realized something.
She had not felt the last piece of Kalfu go beyond the crossroads. He was still on this side. But where?
There was a step behind her, and she turned to see Benjamin standing on the porch. He stepped inside, and Odile felt cold. She had just killed Elisabeth, and there was going to be hell to pay. For a moment, all inside the house was quiet, save for Elodie's ragged breathing and the whimpering of the infants. Benjamin just looked, taking in the scene. He cradled a rifle in his arms.
"Benjamin, before you do something rash, I need you to listen to me," Odile started, trying to find words to explain. He is never going to forgive me. Benjamin, I am so sorry.
He looked at her, seemed to look right through her. "You have hit just about everyone around, Odile, but you never did come to this conclusion. What is in the angel was Sobo, so what was in me? Changed at birth by Kalfu. I am the last piece."
Stunned, Odile could do nothing, her body frozen in place. Benjamin swing the rifle to his shoulder smoothly and pivoted, putting a bullet into Gabriel. Odile screamed, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her lungs. She knew Benjamin. She knew his gardes. Her bullets were useless. Worse than useless.
Benjamin gave her a strange smile and swiftly reloaded, and Odile snarled, setting herself. She had to pull those gardes off of him. "Odile, here, love." She looked down, and saw that Gabriel was awake, looking up at her with eyes clear green as spring apples. He motioned to his mouth. "If nothing else works, here." A surprised look came over his face, the thousand-yard stare of the dying, and he went limp, one last breath rattling.
She could not think, for the horror. But Benjamin was almost done reloading, and Odile moved now, swiftly. She interposed herself between Benjamin and Elodie, and raised the rifle. Benjamin grinned and began to move to raise his own.
Odile fired.
The bullet went into Benjamin's mouth, by passing the tough skin garde and hitting the back of his throat. The bullet did not pass out the other side, but it did jerk his head back, catching him off-balance.
A very surprised look came over Benjamin's face then, and he went to one knee. His mouth worked, trying to make words that he no longer had the tongue for, and then fell over onto Elisabeth, his breath rattling out of him.
Odile could almost see the hands that pulled Kalfu out of Benjamin's body, and she definitely could hear the screaming that erupted then, a scream from a throat as big as the world, shaking the windows and hitting Odile like a mule's kick. The hands pulled, fisted, and Kalfu was dragged screaming through the crossroads under Odile's house, through elsewhere, and then into the land of the dead.
The screaming stopped, and silence fell.
The next sound was the rifle falling out of Odile's nerveless grip and clattering on the ground. She forced words past her numb lips. "Elodie, are you and the babies all right?"
Elodie turned around, straightening, both babies in her arms. "I am and so are they. My gods, what has happened?"
Charlotte was reaching out her hands towards Odile. She was too young to be doing it, but from the feeling of power that suddenly stained the air, Odile had an idea that this wasn't really Charlotte. "It's a very long story, Elodie. I'll tell it to you later. For right now..." Odile reached forward and took Charlotte from Elodie's arms, letting her clutch her own son more tightly to her chest. "I think I have some work to do."
Odile looked down at Charlotte, who was wriggling vigorously in her arms. She was reaching out now towards Remy's body, and the flute that lay by his left hand. Odile sat down next to the body of the man who had been her rival, headless of the pool of blood that soaked her skirt. She picked up Remy's wooden flute, noticing for the first time the fine tracing of carvings that spiderwebbed the outside. She offered one end of it to Charlotte.
The baby had a surprisingly strong grip, and took hold of the flute, swinging end that Odile had just let go of to hit Remy lightly on the arm. Remy's eyes flew open, and impossibly, he smiled. "'Tis a beautiful sight to behold," he said, chuckling.
She gaped, then recovered. Ghede must have brought Remy back to life to help. "We need to get Ghede back to the crossroads."
"Ghede doesn't need to get to the crossroads." The bullet in Remy's head emerged from the mess of his forehead, and fell with a small clatter to the floor. His forehead sealed over, and even the white paint returned. He sat up, smiling. "He is already here." The tall man got to his feet, picked up and put on his top hat, and took the flute from Charlotte, who cooed at him. He bent down and patted her on the head. "Nice to have met you, little one. But that was a bit confining in there. This one is so much the better."
Odile finally understood what was going on. "And a good evening to you, Ghede."
"Good evening to you. Such as it may be. Sorry about the...mess."
She looked around, saw bodies, Gabriel lying too still. Pain rose in her, tearing at her insides. She closed her eyes, too tired to fight the pain. "It'll clean up," she said in a soft voice. The presence in the angel was gone, had nowhere to go but the crossroads when the statue had shattered. And she could not even follow Gabriel; if she did, there would be no one to raise Charlotte.
Ghede cleared his throat. She opened her eyes to see him point at Benjamin and Elisabeth. "Those two, well. Best to let them rest. I will take good care of them. That one." He pointed at Gabriel, and she thought she saw a bit of humor light the loa's eyes. "He and you, well, I was never meant to collect you."
"The angel was destroyed," she said. "I can't bring him back. Can you?"
The loa smiled, just a little. "No need. Know of another white boy that brought himself back after three days?"
Odile stared at the loa in Remy's body. "I've heard that story, yes. He'll come back of his own?"
"He loves too strongly. I don't think it will take him that long." He chuckled. "He is not quite human, you see."
Understanding, Odile took a sharp breath in. "Legba's son. Well."
"Erzulie's daughter. Meant to be together, part of the same thing."
That brought her head up right quick. "Me? Erzulie's daughter? How does that work?"
"Erzulie normally borrows a female body to come into existence. Doesn't rightly work to have two females make a baby." Ghede grinned. "So she took advantage of a bad situation. Taking over old Leroy just at the right moment while he was inside your Maman."
She almost laughed. "It's only too bad Leroy never learned what had happened. I'd bet he'd be right surprised to know. And not in a good way, either."
"Oops, and there he is." Gabriel coughed behind her, moaning. "I need to be going. But thanks for your help. I have some things to do. Come outside when you get done talking. Leave you a present." The loa put his flute to his lips and strolled out the door, playing a mischievous tune.
Stunned, it was a moment before Odile could move, and by the time she could Elodie was there, taking Charlotte from her arms. Odile scrabbled over to Gabriel, kneeling beside him, her hands on his shoulders. "Gabriel? You awake?" Behind her, faintly, she heard Elodie go into her bedroom, close the door behind her.
His eyes fluttered open. "Odile?" he said, weakly.
Gratitude and relief flooded her, and she hauled him to a sitting position and into her arms, hugging him hard. Tears were streaming unashamedly down her face. "I thought I'd lost you," she sobbed.
Gabriel buried his face in her tumbled, tangled hair. "Never," he said, and his voice was strong again, and fierce. He pulled away a bit, took her shoulders, and she wiped her eyes. "That question? Here it is. Be my wife?"
Her answer took no thought. "Yes. Of course I will."
Joy was transcendent on his face. "Good. I love you."
"I love you, too." She pulled him close to her again, rubbing her eyes with her free hand. "Ghede took Remy's body."
"That good or bad?" he asked.
"Well, good that he's not living inside Charlotte any more. Otherwise, I'm not sure what he's going to do. He's Ghede. He could get up to just about anything." She smiled. "But it won't be the same sorts of things that Kalfu got up to."
"Kalfu gone?"
She nodded, slowly. "The last of him went past the crossroads. He was hiding in Benjamin the whole time."
A long breath went out of him. "I am sorry, love."
"Me, too. It hurts already, and they're barely gone. But you were closer to both of them than I was," she said.
He raised his head and gave her a small smile. "I know, and I will grieve very soon. But I am currently more happy than sad. Selfish, I know."
"We're both still in shock, too. And you just came back from the dead. Bound to make you a little strange for a bit."
"Thanks for that. It was you, wasn't it?"
Odile shook her head. "No, it wasn't. You came back on your own. The angel is gone, I couldn't use it."
There was a dawning consternation in his eyes. "That's a little strange. Sure Benjamin didn't just miss all the vital parts?"
"You were dead. You're not entirely human, Gabriel." She chuckled. "Ghede mentioned an old story about another white boy who came back again after three days."
It took him a moment or three to respond after she said that. "And Gabriel came unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women," he quoted. "That old Christian religion. Huh. Who would have thought that was real?"
"All stories are real, somewhere." She blew out a breath. "I suppose we just found out where that one was real."
Gabriel smiled. "Took him a long time. Must not have had something so beautiful to wake to."
"Maybe not," she said, and chuckled. "Glad it didn't take you that long. I think I would have fretted myself into having as many holes as my old boots if it did."
He leaned forward, setting his forehead against hers. It was a strange gesture, but a comforting one. "It's over, love. It was painful, and we lost a lot."
"All over but the burying," she said. "Gods, what are we going to tell people?"
"That Benjamin and Elisabeth sacrificed themselves to save us," he said. "It's Ines and Isabelle I am worried about. They lost their brother, and both parents."
She tightened her arms around him. "And neither of them was doing all that well to begin with."
"No they weren't, but they are young, and will survive. At least a part of Benjamin and Elisabeth will live."
A part of the man and the woman who had been so dear to them, and had held such deep and damnable secrets. "We can keep a close eye on them. I think Isabelle will be fine, eventually. I'm more worried about Ines. We're going to have to tell them what happened, some day, I think."
"Some day," he echoed. He had a strange look on his face now. "You know, love. I lied. It hurts now." Gabriel ducked his head, snuggling down and tucking his head under her chin, and turned his face into her shoulder. From the shaking of his shoulders, he was sobbing, but he let no sound escape.
Odile, too, cried, and she was not silent.
After a long time spent crying, they both leaned against each other, exhausted. "Ghede said he'd leave us a gift," Odile said quietly. "Should we go see?"
Gabriel nodded, and the both of them went out her front door and out onto the porch. In the center of the yard stood the black stone angel. When it saw them, it lifted its head and spread its wings in greeting.
Both Odile and Gabriel gaped. When she recovered, Odile said, "Thank you for all your help. Are you staying, or moving on?"
"I am here to protect your family. So I will be here a very long time." The presence's voice was clear and strong.
She shook her head. "I thought you'd have been freed when the statue was broken. Did Ghede call you back?"
"He did, to protect you all and to teach you what I can."
A little lagniappe for the two who had freed him. "Well. I'm glad you could stay." She paused, weighed her question. "So, what are you? Or rather, who?"
"An angel to some, a loa to you, or a part of a loa." The stone face did not move, but Odile swore it was smiling. "Sobo is my master, as well as you two."
"So it's really over? Kalfu is dead?"
The angel drew its wings back again. "Died. Legba, Erzulie, and Sobo pulled what was left of him apart. It will be such a long time before he could ever think to come back together that the sun will be long burnt out."
She let out a breath. "And the beast? Gone for good as well?"
The angel's voice was low, and grave. "That one is truly gone."
Questions rose in her, and now she thought she could stand to hear the answers. "So why do Gabriel and I take the shape of an angel, when we combine?"
"You could have chosen anything but you chose that form, I assume from the angel statue." That was a chuckle in the angel's voice. "It is also the form of the loa, when not quite human. Which is what you are."
Erzulie's daughter. Legba's son. "Both Gabriel and I are part loa, so that makes sense. Do two people with loa parents create one entire loa when they're combined?"
"I would say yes, but it was only done once before with negative results."
Odile frowned. "Benjamin and Elisabeth?"
The stone wings fanned. "No, Benjamin was loa but Elisabeth was human, just controlled. Longer ago, and they put the whole part into the body. It got itself crucified and reborn and died again. We all learn from our mistakes, and the humans took the wrong lesson from it."
Oh. "Well, the story says that was what was supposed to happen."
"Humans also lie, as you know."
Truth, that. "Yes, they do. Well. Now we bury the dead and try to get on with living."
The angel inclined its head. "Change is what they were after. Change is what we hope to get from you, in time."
"What is it we're supposed to change?" Odile asked.
"Look around you. All people are created equal. See it here?"
"Here, yes. The wider world, no." She was looking at the statue, worried. "We're supposed to change that?"
"Change what you can. But that is the hope." The voice of the stone was both grave and hopeful.
She felt daunted, and bewildered. She and Gabriel were supposed to change how the world worked? "Well. I have no idea where to begin."
"You already have."
She felt Gabriel take her hand, and she glanced at him, seeing the seriousness in his green eyes. "I think I understand," she said, to both him and to the presence.
"I think you will." The angel crouched and then hurled itself into the air, winging back to Barataria. Odile felt it settle onto the pedestal, fall back into its usual position, one wing outstretched, one wing curved in. It bowed its head and closed its eyes.
Odile went in to wake Elodie, who had been napping with the babies, and they all walked back to Barataria. On the way back, Odile told Elodie the story, or at least as much of it as she was willing to accept. She promised not to breathe a word to a soul.
Isabelle and Ines were sitting on the veranda, evidently worried that neither of their parents were home and the angel had been gone for a space that evening. Gabriel had requested that Elodie keep Charlotte for a little bit while they went to talk to the girls, so it was just Gabriel and Odile walking past the crossroads, under the angel's gaze.
Isabelle came down the front steps, Ines at her shoulder. "Uncle Gabriel, Mama's been gone for hours, and Daddy--" She stopped, transfixed. "Uncle Gabriel?"
She was staring at the blood that stained Gabriel's white shirt and stiffened the legs of his trousers. Then she started to scream.
Behind her, Ines was a shadow, staring at Odile. She mouthed a word at Odile. Dead?
Odile nodded, and Ines's face crumpled. She took Isabelle's shoulders in her hands, and pulled her close. Both girls clung to each other, sobbing. Maryse was out on the veranda now, and her wails joined the girls' when Gabriel told her what had happened.
Word spread like wildfire, even before Gabriel managed to bring everyone together to officially tell them of Benjamin and Elisabeth's deaths. There were many hands volunteered to go out to Odile's house and fetch the bodies back, and if anyone doubted Gabriel's word that both of them had died defending him, none spoke the suspicion.
They laid the two of them out in the front parlor that night, and buried them the next afternoon.
*****
That was the third week of May. The second week of June, Odile started feeling uncommonly exhausted, and it wasn't just from helping take care of Charlotte. Elodie and her family had moved into the plantation house, to be close by, and there were always hands willing to take Charlotte when she fussed, which was much of the time, or needed to have her diaper changed.
Things remained unsettled; Benjamin and Elisabeth had been much loved, and Ines and Isabelle were both completely shattered by them dying within days of Anton. Odile was still getting used to living in the house, and being with Gabriel.
Right now, though, she had something else on her mind. She was alone in her room, and stood and stretched, thinking about that exhaustion. She'd been napping almost as much as Charlotte did. Was it possible--
She laid a hand on her abdomen, closed her eyes, and concentrated. Then she opened her eyes and went to find Gabriel.
He was in the room he used for an office, which always looked like a blizzard of paper had hit it. She rapped on the frame of the open door, leaning on it and smiling. "Odile, I thought you were asleep," he said, smiling back.
"I was. Gabriel, you know that wedding we mean to have?"
He raised an eyebrow, looking almost worried. "The one you keep putting off?"
Odile rolled her eyes. "I told you, it's too close to the funerals. I think we should have it sometime soon, even too close. Before I start to show, anyway."
Gabriel just stared at her for a moment. "You're pregnant?"
"Pretty sure," she said. "Probably been that way for a month or so."
He lit up, and jumped up out of his chair, hobbling over to her without bothering to grab his cane. Both of them were laughing now, and Odile had tears standing in her eyes. "I love you," Gabriel said, and kissed her soundly.
"Good," she said, teasing. "What? Oh, yes, I love you too, silly man." She kissed him again. "So, next week?"
"Tomorrow?" he countered. "I think Maryse would kill me in my sleep if I told her I was planning a wedding for tonight."
"Sunday," she said. "That gives Maryse some time."
"Done," he said instantly. They went downstairs to tell Maryse that they were getting married in three days' time, listened to her panic about pulling together a feast fit for the occasion, and then slipped off when she started calling for the girl who sometimes helped her to come help her make lists.
They were married that Sunday at the crossroads. Their daughter was born the next January, and they called her Lille, after Odile's Grandmere.
*****
Odile sneezed. "How about that box?" she asked. "Looks like baby clothes from here."
Isabelle peered into it. "I think so," she reported. "I'll set it out with the rest, we can put them to use."
Odile and the twins were working in the storage room on the second floor of the Barataria plantation house. It was a March afternoon and the day had been rainy, though the sun was currently shining with all of its might through a break in the clouds, spilling golden light all over the room and making the dust they were kicking up visible in the air.
Charlotte was sitting on a spread-out blanket, chewing on a carved wooden elephant, and beside her Lille slept in a basket. Odile was keeping half an eye on the babies, but they seemed to be doing all right. "How about this sewing basket? I know both of you have your own."
Ines shook her head. She was still not speaking much, though she was beginning to come out of her shell a little. Strangely, it was she who had been a rock for her sister, who had fallen apart utterly when their parents had died. It was as if the worst imaginable thing had happened to Ines, and once she was through that, nothing else could touch her much. Odile worried about her, but there was little she could do except try to be there for the girl.
Isabelle was peering at the indicated basket. "I like mine better," she said. "We can see who else might want it."
"All right, put it out in the hallway," Odile said. She stepped over to the beautiful wardrobe that she and Gabriel had found the cross the beast had been living in, almost a year ago. Had it been almost a year, truly? The first few days when she'd met him seemed to stretch into years, but the time since had gone by so quickly.
Odile shook her head, and opened the wardrobe door. The scent of cedar wafted out. "This is so beautiful," she murmured. She turned to the girls. "Do you two want us to put this in your room?"
To her surprise, both of the girls' expressions darkened, and Isabelle's eyes filled with tears. Wordless, she turned and nearly ran out of the room, and Odile could hear her feet thudding on down the hall. Charlotte started wailing, and Odile scooped her up to try to quiet her before she woke Lille. Forgetting for a moment that Ines wasn't talking, she asked, "What's wrong with Isabelle?"
"Mother," Ines said in a small voice, and Odile started. "Mother told us about that wardrobe." Her voice was rapidly becoming stronger. "Noemi's father used to lock Mother in that wardrobe when she was bad. And when Noemi was bad, because everything was Mother's fault. For days on end, a few times. She was locked away in the dark and the smell of cedar, thinking she was going to die in there."
Odile turned, looked at the inside of the door of the wardrobe. Charlotte shifted in her arms, whimpering. She saw anew the marks on the inside of it, marks made by a child's fingernails. "Anton used to lock us up in there sometimes and tell us he was going to leave us to die. Mother gave him the worst hiding of his life when she caught him at it," Ines added. She was staring at the wardrobe.
"What do you want me to do with it?" Odile asked, quietly.
The girl's dark gaze locked with her own. "Burn it." Her voice had a hard edge.
"I'll have some of the men carry it out," Odile said.
After the wardrobe was burned, the barrier inside of Ines that had held all of her words behind it broke, as if the wardrobe had been a sticking-place on her tongue. She started talking again, at first only to the immediate family, then shyly to others. She even spoke to Philippe, the boy who had been her lover. What had happened to Ines was a hard weight between them, and they were not destined to lift it; but at least the two of them could be friendly, even if Ines saved all of her smiles for her sister.
It took a long time, but both girls healed. Isabelle married; it took Ines another decade, but she too got married. Both of them chose big, gentle men who bore a passing resemblance to Benjamin. Odile did not comment.
She and Gabriel never told Ines and Isabelle what had happened to their parents. It seemed like too old a wound, and too deep, to open again.
*****
Months flowed into years, and time rolled on. Gabriel and Odile bought up the plantations around Barataria, and miraculously enough the police in New Orleans never did manage to catch on that the owners of those plantations had all died in suspicious circumstances, close together. When they came to ask Gabriel about the carnage at Leroy's place, he shrugged and claimed ignorance.
Charlotte and Lille grew, Lille into the spitting image of the girl Remy's flute had shown Odile, Charlotte into nearly the image of Odile when she'd been young. Both girls became talented mambos. Charlotte was a Ghede celebrant long before she was ever told the story of what had happened at her birth. Lille was a favorite of Sobo, and like her mother powerful in protection. The girls were so close in age and alike in looks that they were often mistaken for twins, and got themselves in and out of more scrapes than Odile really ever liked to think about, remembering another pair of siblings who had run wild.
There were other children, sons and daughters, eight in all. Fortunately, there were many hands to help raise the children, so Odile never actually got up and fled into the swamp as she occasionally threatened. The thought did get her through many a night of little sleep, however.
They were one of the southern terminals of the Underground Railroad, as it came to be known, helping escaped slaves travel north and to freedom, people passed hand to hand, whisper to post, providing shelter and money and food for those who passed through their hands. And when the War Between the States came, they were known to be Union supporters, and when New Orleans fell early in the war, thirty years to the month after Kalfu had fallen, they sent what help to the residents that they could.
And ten years after that, Odile was feeling tired once more, as tired as she'd felt in the early stages of all of her pregnancies. But her childbearing years were far behind her, and she thought she knew what might be coming.
Gabriel had been getting rickety in the last few years, and had fallen three months ago, breaking his weaker left leg and leaving him mostly bed-bound. She went in to see him. She'd left him reading by the windows in their room, but when she came in now she saw that he was sleeping, breathing sonorously.
She stood by his chair, reached out to stroke his hair. "Love. Wake up."
His eyes fluttered open, and he looked up at her. His eyes were still moss green, though his face had become a lot thinner recently. "Odile. I was dreaming about Benjamin again."
"Did he have anything new to say?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Only the usual. It's only my memories of him that speak, after all. How could he have anything new to say?"
"That's between you and the loa," she said with a smile. "Come lie down with me a bit, Gabriel? I'm tired."
"Always." She helped him up and over to the bed, and pulled the counterpane over them both, these bodies that had been through so much and had carried great weights of grief. "I love you," Gabriel murmured into her ear.
Odile turned her head to kiss him. "Mwen ou renmen, Gabriel."
And so they lay there for a little while, and a little while after that it began to rain. And now it comes, Odile thought, unsurprised, and slipped into darkness, Gabriel following behind.
*****
It was very strange to be dead, Odile thought. It felt a lot like being alive, only her knees didn't hurt. She sat up, looking around her. Everything still had color, and she frowned. The world of the dead was gray, this was not, and this was not where she was expecting to be right now.
She was in her own bed, in the house she had lived in for forty years, and Gabriel was sleeping next to her. Puzzled, she looked down at him, and blinked.
It was Gabriel, but there was something odd about him. He looked different. Younger. Almost exactly like he had when he met her.
That was another thing strange. She'd let her hair down when she'd climbed into bed, and now it frothed over her shoulders, dark and thick instead of the white cloud it was normally. Was she just confused? Why didn't she feel like she was dead?
Gabriel woke about then, and sat up, looking around. "Thought we died," he said, and there was a difference in his voice now, too. "Are we dead?"
She looked at her hands. It was still raining outside, drops pattering on the roof. "I don't think so," she said. "That's very--oh."
"What?"
"Ghede." She turned to Gabriel. "He told me that he was never meant to collect either one of us. You came back once before. Maybe our bodies wear out, we slip out of them, and whatever power this is bounces us back into them."
"And younger," he said. "If I don't miss my guess, I'm about the same age as I was when I met you. And my leg doesn't hurt. Odile?"
She eyed him. "Yes?"
Gabriel grinned. "You are still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Care to spend an afternoon in bed with me?"
She laughed in response, pouncing on him, and there followed a session of loving the likes of which neither of them had been up to for a few years, as their aging bodies gradually gave out. They'd had to be more careful with each other; but now strength had returned and desire, banked but never, never extinguished, returned full force.
Then they had to go explain to the family what had happened. In the end, graves were dug for Gabriel and Odile, and it was an open secret on the plantation that though the funeral had been held, the couple who wandered around Barataria hand in hand were the two of them reborn.
It was a peculiar thing, to walk in the summer air and talk, bodies young once more. Those who lived here, including their children, regarded them with a deep awe, almost worship. But neither of them particularly felt like gods, like loa. They were simply Odile and Gabriel, mambo and houngan, children of the loa as all people everywhere are children of their own gods.
Strange thing, though. Less than five months after they were reborn, Gabriel was kicked in the left knee by one of his horses, shattering the kneecap beyond even his garde's ability to heal it. He took up the cane again, and walked with it for the rest of that life, and all the rest to come.
*****
That happened twice more, and then the century turned and it became necessary at last to leave the swamps and the bayous behind. People were beginning to talk, and New Orleans wasn't what it used to be, for both good and ill. Gabriel and Odile had been selling Barataria off piece by piece, some of it to the descendents of those who had once worked for Gabriel, and they finally sold the house and the land it stood on, packed their possessions up, and headed north.
Odile was never able to explain why she had been drawn to a place on the map she'd never heard of, far from the swamps and rivers that she had been born in, but when she closed her eyes and stabbed at a map of the States, her finger landed on, of all places, Iowa. "There," she said, insistent. "That's where we need to be."
So they found themselves in 1912, walking through a graveyard of a small town called Iowa City, in the middle of just about nowhere. It was midsummer, the cicadas droning, and Odile and Gabriel had wandered up Governor Street, looking at the houses.
There was a man on a stool in the middle of the cemetery, staring at an empty pedestal. Curious, Odile and Gabriel wandered up. He was muttering something to himself about a crazy lady. "Look," he said to Odile. He had a thick accent, and she struggled to understand him. "This Feldevert woman, she wants a statue of an angel, but she wants one that will turn black. And such a strange position!" He waved a drawing-board at them, covered with sketches. "One wing up, one wing down, she can't make up her mind, she telegraphs me every week with changes she dreamed. Dreamed! How am I supposed to work like this? So finally, I come here to look at the site, talk her into something nice, maybe in granite."
Odile and Gabriel looked at each other. "Well," Odile said. "I have an idea for you, Mister..."
"Korbel. Where are you from? France?"
Odile smiled. "Not really. Come on, Mister Korbel. We will talk."
*****
In November of 1912, the statue of the Black Angel was installed in the Oakland Cemetery of Iowa City, and immediately became the subject of rumor and speculation. Good and evil deeds were ascribed to it, and almost all who came near it swore that they could feel something in the statue, something ancient, alive, timeless.
It kept its counsel, and if sometimes on moonless nights it might be seen winging high over the houses, an indistinct shape in the darkness, accompanied by a replica of it that was a pure and shining white...well, people would drink, and they would talk.
The civil rights movement happened, and if one had a sharp enough eye in the archives of the Press-Citizen, one might be able to see the same couple, pictured over and over again--one well-built white man with light hair, one multiracial woman with a sharp look about her. But the ages would keep changing, and there is nobody with that eye to see, now.
Gabriel and Odile Rousseau married legally in 1962, a hundred and thirty years after they were first married, in the old brick church at the corner of Clinton and Market. They visit the cemetery and the angel every week, though they live a little farther out of town now, on a small farm where nobody asks questions much. Gabriel never lost that sex drive of his, taking her sometimes in the most awkward situations. Odile only ever minds when they get caught, which is usually about once a year and often by their children, who always flee with anguished screams of, "Mo-therrrrr!" She was also quite happy when birth control came along, tired of spending her thirties and forties constantly pregnant.
They're happy, and living quietly to this day still. They live in safe obscurity in this age that has little room for their kind of magic in it, dwelling in the corners of superstition. They see Remy, or Ghede in Remy's body, on television sometimes. He went to Hollywood, and even got to play himself in a James Bond movie, once. They laughed when they saw it, laughed until tears were rolling down their faces.
If you're ever in Iowa City, go visit the Black Angel. Ask it a question.
If you are very lucky, and it is in an indulgent mood...
Maybe it will answer.
Here ends Black Angel Crossroads.
[Usual disclaimers apply: 1832 Louisiana, difficult cultural history, certain realities of race relations and slavery that can't be avoided. Proceed with caution, if you're sensitive.]
Odile made a nest of blankets on the floor for Charlotte, and started figuring out what she wanted to take with her back to Barataria. It was time to admit that she was living there now, she figured, and stop clinging so ferociously to her past. The kays myste would need to come, and the tables they stood on were a matched pair. With a bit of polish, she thought they would fit in just fine.
Everything in this house, from the stove to the smoothness of the floor, had been either a gift or bartered for with the talents of her grandmother, her mother, and herself. Both Odile and her mother had been born here; Grandmere had lived her in happiness with her man for a time, as well. So many hands had helped finish the house, materials coming from those who could scrape them up, work coming from those who had nothing but their hands and their talents and a need to give back in kind what they had been given.
This house was a part of Odile, and she was a part of it. But even without her living here, it could still see some use; it was hidden and protected, and could be used to shelter those who had nowhere else to go, to work ritual that needed to go unseen.
She moved around the house, still limping. She fetched some water when Charlotte next woke and washed her off a bit, apologizing to the baby for the coolness of the water. The baby expressed her dislike of being wiped down with a cold, wet cloth quite vociferously, but quieted down afterwards when Odile gave her a finger to suck on.
Charlotte had just fallen asleep again, and Odile had started hunting through the boxes on her shelves, looking for something she remembered putting away but not exactly where. "I know it's here somewhere," she muttered, pulling yet another wooden box off of the shelf she was searching and lifting the lid to look inside.
There were thumps and creaks as someone--Gabriel, from the sound--climbed the steps to her porch. The door opened, and she turned. Gabriel was in the doorway, and she craned her head to look behind him. "Did Benjamin go home?"
Gabriel nodded. "Yes, he did. He isn't going to say anything to anyone. Less people that know about the baby, the better. Besides, I think he is really feeling bad about Nicole."
"Did he say what he thought he was shooting?" she asked.
"He was about to be lynched by dead people. Anton in particular for failing him. Leroy was there, Durand, Petit. He couldn't stop them with the gun, so he just kept shooting and they kept coming."
"And when the nightmare was broken, he saw what he really shot. I don't blame him, honestly. I knew that Kalfu was messing with us, he was talking to me. Benjamin, he probably didn't," she said.
Gabriel stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. "No, he was focused on you I think the most. He was creative in mine, but I was doubting it as well. Disturbing as it may have been."
She wondered, briefly, what his nightmares had been, and decided not to ask right now. "Well, the things he was showing me were pretty damn horrible," she said. "And he was trying to tell me he'd let you two go if I stayed behind. I told him there wasn't a thing I could trust about him."
He gave her a half a smile. "He tried that with me. I said the same thing."
Odile turned and put the box she was holding back on the shelf, trying to gather her courage. She had some things to say that were probably overdue, but even now, she didn't know if her nerve was going to last her. "Gabriel, about what happened when we broke the hold Kalfu had on the tie between us...I suppose I have some things to say to you."
He went very still, just looking at her, frozen as if he didn't know whether to step forward or back. "Such as?"
"I trust you. Completely. I didn't know that until I needed to open that link between us, and I needed to trust you enough to do so." She breathed out. That hadn't been what she'd meant to say. But it was a start.
Gabriel inclined his head, still staying still. "Thank you, Odile. I trust you too, very much."
Her mouth was dry. Say it, girl. Just come out with it. "And, well. Did you feel what I was sending down the line to you, just before the nightmare broke?"
"Love is what I took it for." There was hope in his eyes and on his face now. "Am I right?"
Say it, Odile. Her voice was very small. "You are." She took a breath. "I love you, Gabriel. I just wanted you to know that for sure."
The look on his face was transcendently happy, and that looked warmed her right down to her toes. "I love you, Odile. But I think you already knew that."
"I did. But it's nice to hear it." She smiled, and opened her arms. "Now, will you come over here and kiss me, please?"
He did, his mouth hot on hers. He pulled her towards her bedroom, and she gladly went with him. The baby stayed asleep, thankfully, and for a small space they simply were one together, without walls. The power flowed easily back and forth between them as they touched and tasted each other.
The euphoria was there too, and for the first time she realized that it was not only his power that was ecstatically happy to be in contact with her, but her power, too, was curling around him like a contented cat, purring. It felt strangely familiar, and Odile realized that she'd had flashes of this feeling before, during ritual when Legba and Erzulie were making love together.
After the nightmare room and what had happened after, it was a much-needed comfort, to be together. Afterwards, lying in each other's arms, Odile murmured, "The baby's name is Charlotte."
"I like it," he said. "So how are we going to raise her? As our daughter or as your sister?"
"I was thinking daughter," she said, considering. "Sister...too many people would be wondering just which parent she and I had in common."
She felt him tense, just a touch, and knew that he was trying to think of a way to ask her something that wouldn't scare her. "Your daughter or our daughter, then?" he asked.
Odile tilted her head. "Would you be willing to claim her?"
"Certainly, I hope to claim many others as well." There was no doubt whatsoever in his voice. Odile wished she were so sure, but she was not the idealist of the two of them. The world had a habit of interfering.
But for now, this was enough. "Ours, then. Goodness knows that a girl who's had Ghede in her is probably going to need as many people looking after her as she can get. I hope she's all right, afterwards. And I hope that Remy really does have in mind to bring Ghede out of her and back to the crossroads."
"I think he will," Gabriel said.
"As soon as Kalfu's gone, we can take her to him, and see. Since I'm standing in as her mother, he might tell me more details." She took a long breath in. "Do you want me to be the one to explain to Benjamin about Elisabeth, speaking of?"
He shook his head. "I think that is a joint job really."
Odile turned over and propped herself up on one elbow, facing Gabriel. "He's had a rough time of it lately. I'm starting to wonder about that. I thought it was because he's the strong one of the three of us, but now I'm less sure."
"Lost his son, nearly died, killed an innocent girl, about to lose his wife. He was the strong one. It's like Kalfu is trying to wear him down." Gabriel was musing aloud now, frowning. "There has to be a purpose, some reason we are missing."
Odile thought and came up empty. "I can't think of it, unless it's meant to make him more likely to side with Elisabeth. And, well, if everything that came before hadn't happened, would he have been able to keep his head in the nightmare room?"
"I wondered about that myself," Gabriel said. "Would he have kept his cool if Anton hadn't died?"
"He hasn't been able to protect any of his children. That has to be affecting him. He might defend Elisabeth more, because she's the last one he thinks has remained untouched."
There was a deep, dawning horror in his voice. "Is it possible that Kalfu is waiting for us to tell him? Will he defend her to the death, because in essence all the bad things that have been happening, though Kalfu's fault, are ours, too? And by us telling him, it will trigger certain events that will make us vulnerable somehow?"
It made sense. Far too much sense. "It might. It very well might. If we can't convince Benjamin that she has a piece of Kalfu in her, he might turn on us. He might kill one or both of us--or force us to kill him. And I can't help but think that we need him."
Gabriel shook his head. "We have, until now. But things have changed between us. And Kalfu now has to come to us."
The battle was always going to be here, she heard Legba's rough voice in her memory say. He hadn't meant around here somewhere. He had meant on her land, in her house, in the center of power that three generations of mambos had created, this crossroads and this poteau-mitan. "We have Charlotte. And to kill Ghede, he has to go through the two of us."
"So if we are right, Elisabeth will come to us."
Or what was living in Elisabeth, stealing her life from her. "Yes. She won't come alone, but I think she'll come."
He chuckled low. "Oh, no, the beast will be with her in one form or another."
"I don't want to kill her, if we don't have to," Odile said. "I think she's not really aware of what she's doing and what she's done. She couldn't be and not react to the ritual I did in the house the other day. But it may come to that. So we have a piece of a loa, and the beast, to deal with."
"I don't want to either, but we will probably have that decision to make." He sounded not resigned now, but resolute.
"We'll see what happens. So, do we stay here and wait, then?" she asked. "This is as defensible a place as any. Three generations of protective magics on this place."
"I think that is best. I know a worker that has given birth about three weeks ago. She was complaining about full breasts and her son not drinking enough to satisfy her. She will probably not mind feeding another. If you stay here to guard, I will go get her."
"Elodie, right? Tall like me?" Gabriel nodded. "I know her, she's been a wet nurse before when some of the younger women had trouble with their milk. I'll stay here. Try not to be seen, all right?" Her tone was more worried than she'd meant it. There was a cold feeling of fear in her stomach.
But Charlotte was hours old now, babies needed to eat, and Odile had no idea when Elisabeth would make her move. Gabriel kissed her forehead. "I will," he said. "Odile, if we both survive, I have a question to ask you."
She raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"
Gabriel chuckled. "You know the one. I am hoping for a favorable answer, but I thought I would give you time to ponder."
Ah. That question. She knew what her answer would be, had known since they returned, but simply smiled and said, "I will think on it, then."
They both dressed now, and Gabriel kissed her and went to find Elodie. Odile, holding Charlotte who was awake now and yelling in hunger, started walking the edges of the land that three generations of mambos had protected.
There were layers of protections in here, and Odile stepped around the property, waking them all. Powerful protections against the dead that walked; even Maman in the corpse would have had to vacate after that was up. There were protections against those who came with evil intentions, protections to confuse foes and clear the minds of friends, and even certain vines became weapons. They would reach out and snag any who came too close--even Odile, if she weren't careful.
She could feel the land preparing itself to be a battleground, coming awake and alive in ways that almost surprised her. Thousands of rituals had been done on this land, this patch of swampy earth she called home, and something of those rituals had sunk into the soil and made itself at home.
All of this she did to the accompaniment of Charlotte crying inconsolably, and her own fear like a distant drumbeat. What if Gabriel did not come back? Would she leave the relative safety of this place to go get him? And if she did not, would she be up to this fight alone?
It was one of the longest hours of Odile's life.
The sun was going down by the time she heard footsteps on the path. Gabriel came through the cypresses, followed by Elodie, who smiled and waved when she saw her. Elodie was about as tall as Odile and she was a beautiful force of nature, a fierce mother who always had a crowd of children around her. She was carrying her latest son in a sling.
It was an unqualified relief to see her. "Elodie, good to see you, how's your little one doing? Gabriel told you about Charlotte?"
Elodie smiled. "Fine, fine, but he's taking after Thibault, so he's not drinking his fair share!" Thibault, Elodie's husband, was a small man with a nervous smile. "Gabriel told me, and I think she knows dinner is here! It will be good to get rid of this." Elodie gestured at her breasts, pressing against the fabric of her shirt. "Mighty sore, and I make a good milk cow, so it seems."
"Well, Charlotte will appreciate it. Come with me, I can settle you inside." Elodie followed her in and settled her son down in blankets at her feet. Charlotte latched on ravenously once Elodie was ensconced in the comfortable chair. Quiet descended, at last.
Odile stepped outside with Gabriel, standing on the front porch with him, listening to insects shrilling and birds singing sunset songs. The light had gone golden, drenching the swamp with honeyed light where it filtered in through the trees. "Glad to see you got back in one piece. How are things on Barataria?"
"Calm so far, but I don't think that is going to last," he said. "It feels unsettled."
"Well, we'll see. I brought up the protections on this place. Don't go too near any vine-looking plants if you can help it, they can't tell friend from foe."
"I understand." He took her hands in his. "Whatever happens, which I think is about now by your eyes, I will always love you."
Eyes? She looked into his green eyes, and was horrified to see the color of stone slipping over them, filming them over. She pulled him into a tight hug. "And I love you, Gabriel. Have for a bit. Couldn't admit it." She could feel the changes happening in her, the mad presence of the beast flaring, coming closer. "It's coming now."
"Where's the journal?" he asked.
"It's in the house, i'll get it," she said. Once inside, she got the book out, and told Elodie, "There's something bad coming. Stay in the house, ignore the sounds coming from outside. If neither Gabriel or I live--" She swallowed. "Take Charlotte to Bon Houngan Remy Sleeps On The River, in New Orleans. He'll know what to do."
Without waiting for a response, Odile went out on the porch, book in her hand. The angel's half-human, half-hawk shriek echoed over the swamp, and the sound of wings came quickly towards them.
It landed with a thump in the yard and hopped toward them, wings outstretched. It shrieked, and Odile saw pointed teeth in its mouth. Odile grabbed Gabriel's hand and said, commanding, "You will stop." She pressed her will down on it, concentrating on taking control.
It growled. "Not today." As it spoke in that voice like grinding stone, it swept one of its wings forward, catching Odile across her chest and flinging her back into her own front door. She felt her headwrap come undone and her hair tumble out, but there was no time to replace it.
Gabriel hauled her to her feet, and hissed, "The journal--"
She nodded. "Stronger together." He opened the power to her, and they stepped into each other's bodies, concentrating on pulling the beast into the journal where it could be trapped and destroyed.
But the beast pounced on them, biting and clawing, and it was difficult to concentrate. I wonder if we could get inside the stone, and fight it there? The thought might have been Odile's, or Gabriel's. There was no telling.
I wonder if we can become stone.
Wondering became a thought and their skin hardened to a white marble, and the beast screamed as it scrabbled at them. They own wings swept forward, battering at hit, and it broke off and away.
They followed, with no more than a thought. Together, the beast and the angel they were wheeled in the fading light of sunset, hitting each other, pulling the beast further and further into the journal. Chips of stone rained down from them, but the accelerated healing that both Odile and Gabriel had made all the difference, and the fight was quickly becoming more and more one-sided.
The power that Gabriel was connected to was dwindling, quickly, as they pulled more and more of it to force the beast into the journal. It would be enough. It had to be enough. If they kept up like this, they were done, but if they lost this fight the world was done.
It felt like the whole world roared through them, and their wing slammed forward, severing one of the beast's wings. They were high up, and their opponent fell like the stone it was, remaining wing beating uselessly against the air. It hit the ground and shattered, and the book in their hands became suddenly almost too hot to hold. The beast was trapped.
The part of them that was Gabriel was nearly exhausted, and they set down on the ground. Like at the house in the swamp. Let it burn, the part of them that was Gabriel whispered.
Agreement from Odile, and they dropped the book on the ground and raised their hands, setting it alight.
The paper and leather was consumed swiftly, and the scream that came from the book was terrible and desperate and hungry. But then, the beast was pulled into the crossroads by hands invisible and strong, and silence descended.
I am sorry, love. I can't hold us together anymore. Gabriel passed out and the two of them separated, Odile catching him as he fell, lowering him to the ground. "We did it," she whispered. "We beat it."
Elisabeth had to be on her way. Odile hauled Gabriel up onto the porch, muttering about him being much heavier than he looked. She laid him down by the door, and opened it to pull him inside.
She stopped, her heart in her throat.
Elodie was in the corner, both babies in her arms, trying to shield them with her body. Elisabeth was standing in the center of the room, revolver pointed at Elodie. Between them, Remy stood, looking taller than she'd ever seen him, an almost palpable feeling of power coming from him. He was wearing his top hat, and the only weapon he bore was his flute, in his left hand.
"Elisabeth," Odile said low.
The woman Odile had known for years glanced over her shoulder quickly, and pulled the trigger. Remy staggered, blood blooming on his colorful shirt, and Odile heard the click as Elisabeth chambered the next round.
Odile ducked low, grabbing her rifle, which was in its usual place by the door. If she was in time--
The revolver fired again, and Remy went down, shot in the head. Blood splattered over Elodie, who was screaming, and Elisabeth's revolver clicked once more.
She had a clear shot at Charlotte.
No.
Without thought, Odile brought her rifle up, and a shot rang out, the kick of the gun shoving back on her shoulder. For a single, terrible moment, Odile thought that maybe she had missed.
Then the left half of Elisabeth's head shredded, and she fell forward, the revolver skidding away from her limp hand. Odile's heart twisted, and she almost sobbed. Out of habit, out of not knowing what else to do, she reloaded the rifle. Her hands, it seemed, were smarter than she was, because as she finished reloading she realized something.
She had not felt the last piece of Kalfu go beyond the crossroads. He was still on this side. But where?
There was a step behind her, and she turned to see Benjamin standing on the porch. He stepped inside, and Odile felt cold. She had just killed Elisabeth, and there was going to be hell to pay. For a moment, all inside the house was quiet, save for Elodie's ragged breathing and the whimpering of the infants. Benjamin just looked, taking in the scene. He cradled a rifle in his arms.
"Benjamin, before you do something rash, I need you to listen to me," Odile started, trying to find words to explain. He is never going to forgive me. Benjamin, I am so sorry.
He looked at her, seemed to look right through her. "You have hit just about everyone around, Odile, but you never did come to this conclusion. What is in the angel was Sobo, so what was in me? Changed at birth by Kalfu. I am the last piece."
Stunned, Odile could do nothing, her body frozen in place. Benjamin swing the rifle to his shoulder smoothly and pivoted, putting a bullet into Gabriel. Odile screamed, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her lungs. She knew Benjamin. She knew his gardes. Her bullets were useless. Worse than useless.
Benjamin gave her a strange smile and swiftly reloaded, and Odile snarled, setting herself. She had to pull those gardes off of him. "Odile, here, love." She looked down, and saw that Gabriel was awake, looking up at her with eyes clear green as spring apples. He motioned to his mouth. "If nothing else works, here." A surprised look came over his face, the thousand-yard stare of the dying, and he went limp, one last breath rattling.
She could not think, for the horror. But Benjamin was almost done reloading, and Odile moved now, swiftly. She interposed herself between Benjamin and Elodie, and raised the rifle. Benjamin grinned and began to move to raise his own.
Odile fired.
The bullet went into Benjamin's mouth, by passing the tough skin garde and hitting the back of his throat. The bullet did not pass out the other side, but it did jerk his head back, catching him off-balance.
A very surprised look came over Benjamin's face then, and he went to one knee. His mouth worked, trying to make words that he no longer had the tongue for, and then fell over onto Elisabeth, his breath rattling out of him.
Odile could almost see the hands that pulled Kalfu out of Benjamin's body, and she definitely could hear the screaming that erupted then, a scream from a throat as big as the world, shaking the windows and hitting Odile like a mule's kick. The hands pulled, fisted, and Kalfu was dragged screaming through the crossroads under Odile's house, through elsewhere, and then into the land of the dead.
The screaming stopped, and silence fell.
The next sound was the rifle falling out of Odile's nerveless grip and clattering on the ground. She forced words past her numb lips. "Elodie, are you and the babies all right?"
Elodie turned around, straightening, both babies in her arms. "I am and so are they. My gods, what has happened?"
Charlotte was reaching out her hands towards Odile. She was too young to be doing it, but from the feeling of power that suddenly stained the air, Odile had an idea that this wasn't really Charlotte. "It's a very long story, Elodie. I'll tell it to you later. For right now..." Odile reached forward and took Charlotte from Elodie's arms, letting her clutch her own son more tightly to her chest. "I think I have some work to do."
Odile looked down at Charlotte, who was wriggling vigorously in her arms. She was reaching out now towards Remy's body, and the flute that lay by his left hand. Odile sat down next to the body of the man who had been her rival, headless of the pool of blood that soaked her skirt. She picked up Remy's wooden flute, noticing for the first time the fine tracing of carvings that spiderwebbed the outside. She offered one end of it to Charlotte.
The baby had a surprisingly strong grip, and took hold of the flute, swinging end that Odile had just let go of to hit Remy lightly on the arm. Remy's eyes flew open, and impossibly, he smiled. "'Tis a beautiful sight to behold," he said, chuckling.
She gaped, then recovered. Ghede must have brought Remy back to life to help. "We need to get Ghede back to the crossroads."
"Ghede doesn't need to get to the crossroads." The bullet in Remy's head emerged from the mess of his forehead, and fell with a small clatter to the floor. His forehead sealed over, and even the white paint returned. He sat up, smiling. "He is already here." The tall man got to his feet, picked up and put on his top hat, and took the flute from Charlotte, who cooed at him. He bent down and patted her on the head. "Nice to have met you, little one. But that was a bit confining in there. This one is so much the better."
Odile finally understood what was going on. "And a good evening to you, Ghede."
"Good evening to you. Such as it may be. Sorry about the...mess."
She looked around, saw bodies, Gabriel lying too still. Pain rose in her, tearing at her insides. She closed her eyes, too tired to fight the pain. "It'll clean up," she said in a soft voice. The presence in the angel was gone, had nowhere to go but the crossroads when the statue had shattered. And she could not even follow Gabriel; if she did, there would be no one to raise Charlotte.
Ghede cleared his throat. She opened her eyes to see him point at Benjamin and Elisabeth. "Those two, well. Best to let them rest. I will take good care of them. That one." He pointed at Gabriel, and she thought she saw a bit of humor light the loa's eyes. "He and you, well, I was never meant to collect you."
"The angel was destroyed," she said. "I can't bring him back. Can you?"
The loa smiled, just a little. "No need. Know of another white boy that brought himself back after three days?"
Odile stared at the loa in Remy's body. "I've heard that story, yes. He'll come back of his own?"
"He loves too strongly. I don't think it will take him that long." He chuckled. "He is not quite human, you see."
Understanding, Odile took a sharp breath in. "Legba's son. Well."
"Erzulie's daughter. Meant to be together, part of the same thing."
That brought her head up right quick. "Me? Erzulie's daughter? How does that work?"
"Erzulie normally borrows a female body to come into existence. Doesn't rightly work to have two females make a baby." Ghede grinned. "So she took advantage of a bad situation. Taking over old Leroy just at the right moment while he was inside your Maman."
She almost laughed. "It's only too bad Leroy never learned what had happened. I'd bet he'd be right surprised to know. And not in a good way, either."
"Oops, and there he is." Gabriel coughed behind her, moaning. "I need to be going. But thanks for your help. I have some things to do. Come outside when you get done talking. Leave you a present." The loa put his flute to his lips and strolled out the door, playing a mischievous tune.
Stunned, it was a moment before Odile could move, and by the time she could Elodie was there, taking Charlotte from her arms. Odile scrabbled over to Gabriel, kneeling beside him, her hands on his shoulders. "Gabriel? You awake?" Behind her, faintly, she heard Elodie go into her bedroom, close the door behind her.
His eyes fluttered open. "Odile?" he said, weakly.
Gratitude and relief flooded her, and she hauled him to a sitting position and into her arms, hugging him hard. Tears were streaming unashamedly down her face. "I thought I'd lost you," she sobbed.
Gabriel buried his face in her tumbled, tangled hair. "Never," he said, and his voice was strong again, and fierce. He pulled away a bit, took her shoulders, and she wiped her eyes. "That question? Here it is. Be my wife?"
Her answer took no thought. "Yes. Of course I will."
Joy was transcendent on his face. "Good. I love you."
"I love you, too." She pulled him close to her again, rubbing her eyes with her free hand. "Ghede took Remy's body."
"That good or bad?" he asked.
"Well, good that he's not living inside Charlotte any more. Otherwise, I'm not sure what he's going to do. He's Ghede. He could get up to just about anything." She smiled. "But it won't be the same sorts of things that Kalfu got up to."
"Kalfu gone?"
She nodded, slowly. "The last of him went past the crossroads. He was hiding in Benjamin the whole time."
A long breath went out of him. "I am sorry, love."
"Me, too. It hurts already, and they're barely gone. But you were closer to both of them than I was," she said.
He raised his head and gave her a small smile. "I know, and I will grieve very soon. But I am currently more happy than sad. Selfish, I know."
"We're both still in shock, too. And you just came back from the dead. Bound to make you a little strange for a bit."
"Thanks for that. It was you, wasn't it?"
Odile shook her head. "No, it wasn't. You came back on your own. The angel is gone, I couldn't use it."
There was a dawning consternation in his eyes. "That's a little strange. Sure Benjamin didn't just miss all the vital parts?"
"You were dead. You're not entirely human, Gabriel." She chuckled. "Ghede mentioned an old story about another white boy who came back again after three days."
It took him a moment or three to respond after she said that. "And Gabriel came unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women," he quoted. "That old Christian religion. Huh. Who would have thought that was real?"
"All stories are real, somewhere." She blew out a breath. "I suppose we just found out where that one was real."
Gabriel smiled. "Took him a long time. Must not have had something so beautiful to wake to."
"Maybe not," she said, and chuckled. "Glad it didn't take you that long. I think I would have fretted myself into having as many holes as my old boots if it did."
He leaned forward, setting his forehead against hers. It was a strange gesture, but a comforting one. "It's over, love. It was painful, and we lost a lot."
"All over but the burying," she said. "Gods, what are we going to tell people?"
"That Benjamin and Elisabeth sacrificed themselves to save us," he said. "It's Ines and Isabelle I am worried about. They lost their brother, and both parents."
She tightened her arms around him. "And neither of them was doing all that well to begin with."
"No they weren't, but they are young, and will survive. At least a part of Benjamin and Elisabeth will live."
A part of the man and the woman who had been so dear to them, and had held such deep and damnable secrets. "We can keep a close eye on them. I think Isabelle will be fine, eventually. I'm more worried about Ines. We're going to have to tell them what happened, some day, I think."
"Some day," he echoed. He had a strange look on his face now. "You know, love. I lied. It hurts now." Gabriel ducked his head, snuggling down and tucking his head under her chin, and turned his face into her shoulder. From the shaking of his shoulders, he was sobbing, but he let no sound escape.
Odile, too, cried, and she was not silent.
After a long time spent crying, they both leaned against each other, exhausted. "Ghede said he'd leave us a gift," Odile said quietly. "Should we go see?"
Gabriel nodded, and the both of them went out her front door and out onto the porch. In the center of the yard stood the black stone angel. When it saw them, it lifted its head and spread its wings in greeting.
Both Odile and Gabriel gaped. When she recovered, Odile said, "Thank you for all your help. Are you staying, or moving on?"
"I am here to protect your family. So I will be here a very long time." The presence's voice was clear and strong.
She shook her head. "I thought you'd have been freed when the statue was broken. Did Ghede call you back?"
"He did, to protect you all and to teach you what I can."
A little lagniappe for the two who had freed him. "Well. I'm glad you could stay." She paused, weighed her question. "So, what are you? Or rather, who?"
"An angel to some, a loa to you, or a part of a loa." The stone face did not move, but Odile swore it was smiling. "Sobo is my master, as well as you two."
"So it's really over? Kalfu is dead?"
The angel drew its wings back again. "Died. Legba, Erzulie, and Sobo pulled what was left of him apart. It will be such a long time before he could ever think to come back together that the sun will be long burnt out."
She let out a breath. "And the beast? Gone for good as well?"
The angel's voice was low, and grave. "That one is truly gone."
Questions rose in her, and now she thought she could stand to hear the answers. "So why do Gabriel and I take the shape of an angel, when we combine?"
"You could have chosen anything but you chose that form, I assume from the angel statue." That was a chuckle in the angel's voice. "It is also the form of the loa, when not quite human. Which is what you are."
Erzulie's daughter. Legba's son. "Both Gabriel and I are part loa, so that makes sense. Do two people with loa parents create one entire loa when they're combined?"
"I would say yes, but it was only done once before with negative results."
Odile frowned. "Benjamin and Elisabeth?"
The stone wings fanned. "No, Benjamin was loa but Elisabeth was human, just controlled. Longer ago, and they put the whole part into the body. It got itself crucified and reborn and died again. We all learn from our mistakes, and the humans took the wrong lesson from it."
Oh. "Well, the story says that was what was supposed to happen."
"Humans also lie, as you know."
Truth, that. "Yes, they do. Well. Now we bury the dead and try to get on with living."
The angel inclined its head. "Change is what they were after. Change is what we hope to get from you, in time."
"What is it we're supposed to change?" Odile asked.
"Look around you. All people are created equal. See it here?"
"Here, yes. The wider world, no." She was looking at the statue, worried. "We're supposed to change that?"
"Change what you can. But that is the hope." The voice of the stone was both grave and hopeful.
She felt daunted, and bewildered. She and Gabriel were supposed to change how the world worked? "Well. I have no idea where to begin."
"You already have."
She felt Gabriel take her hand, and she glanced at him, seeing the seriousness in his green eyes. "I think I understand," she said, to both him and to the presence.
"I think you will." The angel crouched and then hurled itself into the air, winging back to Barataria. Odile felt it settle onto the pedestal, fall back into its usual position, one wing outstretched, one wing curved in. It bowed its head and closed its eyes.
Odile went in to wake Elodie, who had been napping with the babies, and they all walked back to Barataria. On the way back, Odile told Elodie the story, or at least as much of it as she was willing to accept. She promised not to breathe a word to a soul.
Isabelle and Ines were sitting on the veranda, evidently worried that neither of their parents were home and the angel had been gone for a space that evening. Gabriel had requested that Elodie keep Charlotte for a little bit while they went to talk to the girls, so it was just Gabriel and Odile walking past the crossroads, under the angel's gaze.
Isabelle came down the front steps, Ines at her shoulder. "Uncle Gabriel, Mama's been gone for hours, and Daddy--" She stopped, transfixed. "Uncle Gabriel?"
She was staring at the blood that stained Gabriel's white shirt and stiffened the legs of his trousers. Then she started to scream.
Behind her, Ines was a shadow, staring at Odile. She mouthed a word at Odile. Dead?
Odile nodded, and Ines's face crumpled. She took Isabelle's shoulders in her hands, and pulled her close. Both girls clung to each other, sobbing. Maryse was out on the veranda now, and her wails joined the girls' when Gabriel told her what had happened.
Word spread like wildfire, even before Gabriel managed to bring everyone together to officially tell them of Benjamin and Elisabeth's deaths. There were many hands volunteered to go out to Odile's house and fetch the bodies back, and if anyone doubted Gabriel's word that both of them had died defending him, none spoke the suspicion.
They laid the two of them out in the front parlor that night, and buried them the next afternoon.
*****
That was the third week of May. The second week of June, Odile started feeling uncommonly exhausted, and it wasn't just from helping take care of Charlotte. Elodie and her family had moved into the plantation house, to be close by, and there were always hands willing to take Charlotte when she fussed, which was much of the time, or needed to have her diaper changed.
Things remained unsettled; Benjamin and Elisabeth had been much loved, and Ines and Isabelle were both completely shattered by them dying within days of Anton. Odile was still getting used to living in the house, and being with Gabriel.
Right now, though, she had something else on her mind. She was alone in her room, and stood and stretched, thinking about that exhaustion. She'd been napping almost as much as Charlotte did. Was it possible--
She laid a hand on her abdomen, closed her eyes, and concentrated. Then she opened her eyes and went to find Gabriel.
He was in the room he used for an office, which always looked like a blizzard of paper had hit it. She rapped on the frame of the open door, leaning on it and smiling. "Odile, I thought you were asleep," he said, smiling back.
"I was. Gabriel, you know that wedding we mean to have?"
He raised an eyebrow, looking almost worried. "The one you keep putting off?"
Odile rolled her eyes. "I told you, it's too close to the funerals. I think we should have it sometime soon, even too close. Before I start to show, anyway."
Gabriel just stared at her for a moment. "You're pregnant?"
"Pretty sure," she said. "Probably been that way for a month or so."
He lit up, and jumped up out of his chair, hobbling over to her without bothering to grab his cane. Both of them were laughing now, and Odile had tears standing in her eyes. "I love you," Gabriel said, and kissed her soundly.
"Good," she said, teasing. "What? Oh, yes, I love you too, silly man." She kissed him again. "So, next week?"
"Tomorrow?" he countered. "I think Maryse would kill me in my sleep if I told her I was planning a wedding for tonight."
"Sunday," she said. "That gives Maryse some time."
"Done," he said instantly. They went downstairs to tell Maryse that they were getting married in three days' time, listened to her panic about pulling together a feast fit for the occasion, and then slipped off when she started calling for the girl who sometimes helped her to come help her make lists.
They were married that Sunday at the crossroads. Their daughter was born the next January, and they called her Lille, after Odile's Grandmere.
*****
Odile sneezed. "How about that box?" she asked. "Looks like baby clothes from here."
Isabelle peered into it. "I think so," she reported. "I'll set it out with the rest, we can put them to use."
Odile and the twins were working in the storage room on the second floor of the Barataria plantation house. It was a March afternoon and the day had been rainy, though the sun was currently shining with all of its might through a break in the clouds, spilling golden light all over the room and making the dust they were kicking up visible in the air.
Charlotte was sitting on a spread-out blanket, chewing on a carved wooden elephant, and beside her Lille slept in a basket. Odile was keeping half an eye on the babies, but they seemed to be doing all right. "How about this sewing basket? I know both of you have your own."
Ines shook her head. She was still not speaking much, though she was beginning to come out of her shell a little. Strangely, it was she who had been a rock for her sister, who had fallen apart utterly when their parents had died. It was as if the worst imaginable thing had happened to Ines, and once she was through that, nothing else could touch her much. Odile worried about her, but there was little she could do except try to be there for the girl.
Isabelle was peering at the indicated basket. "I like mine better," she said. "We can see who else might want it."
"All right, put it out in the hallway," Odile said. She stepped over to the beautiful wardrobe that she and Gabriel had found the cross the beast had been living in, almost a year ago. Had it been almost a year, truly? The first few days when she'd met him seemed to stretch into years, but the time since had gone by so quickly.
Odile shook her head, and opened the wardrobe door. The scent of cedar wafted out. "This is so beautiful," she murmured. She turned to the girls. "Do you two want us to put this in your room?"
To her surprise, both of the girls' expressions darkened, and Isabelle's eyes filled with tears. Wordless, she turned and nearly ran out of the room, and Odile could hear her feet thudding on down the hall. Charlotte started wailing, and Odile scooped her up to try to quiet her before she woke Lille. Forgetting for a moment that Ines wasn't talking, she asked, "What's wrong with Isabelle?"
"Mother," Ines said in a small voice, and Odile started. "Mother told us about that wardrobe." Her voice was rapidly becoming stronger. "Noemi's father used to lock Mother in that wardrobe when she was bad. And when Noemi was bad, because everything was Mother's fault. For days on end, a few times. She was locked away in the dark and the smell of cedar, thinking she was going to die in there."
Odile turned, looked at the inside of the door of the wardrobe. Charlotte shifted in her arms, whimpering. She saw anew the marks on the inside of it, marks made by a child's fingernails. "Anton used to lock us up in there sometimes and tell us he was going to leave us to die. Mother gave him the worst hiding of his life when she caught him at it," Ines added. She was staring at the wardrobe.
"What do you want me to do with it?" Odile asked, quietly.
The girl's dark gaze locked with her own. "Burn it." Her voice had a hard edge.
"I'll have some of the men carry it out," Odile said.
After the wardrobe was burned, the barrier inside of Ines that had held all of her words behind it broke, as if the wardrobe had been a sticking-place on her tongue. She started talking again, at first only to the immediate family, then shyly to others. She even spoke to Philippe, the boy who had been her lover. What had happened to Ines was a hard weight between them, and they were not destined to lift it; but at least the two of them could be friendly, even if Ines saved all of her smiles for her sister.
It took a long time, but both girls healed. Isabelle married; it took Ines another decade, but she too got married. Both of them chose big, gentle men who bore a passing resemblance to Benjamin. Odile did not comment.
She and Gabriel never told Ines and Isabelle what had happened to their parents. It seemed like too old a wound, and too deep, to open again.
*****
Months flowed into years, and time rolled on. Gabriel and Odile bought up the plantations around Barataria, and miraculously enough the police in New Orleans never did manage to catch on that the owners of those plantations had all died in suspicious circumstances, close together. When they came to ask Gabriel about the carnage at Leroy's place, he shrugged and claimed ignorance.
Charlotte and Lille grew, Lille into the spitting image of the girl Remy's flute had shown Odile, Charlotte into nearly the image of Odile when she'd been young. Both girls became talented mambos. Charlotte was a Ghede celebrant long before she was ever told the story of what had happened at her birth. Lille was a favorite of Sobo, and like her mother powerful in protection. The girls were so close in age and alike in looks that they were often mistaken for twins, and got themselves in and out of more scrapes than Odile really ever liked to think about, remembering another pair of siblings who had run wild.
There were other children, sons and daughters, eight in all. Fortunately, there were many hands to help raise the children, so Odile never actually got up and fled into the swamp as she occasionally threatened. The thought did get her through many a night of little sleep, however.
They were one of the southern terminals of the Underground Railroad, as it came to be known, helping escaped slaves travel north and to freedom, people passed hand to hand, whisper to post, providing shelter and money and food for those who passed through their hands. And when the War Between the States came, they were known to be Union supporters, and when New Orleans fell early in the war, thirty years to the month after Kalfu had fallen, they sent what help to the residents that they could.
And ten years after that, Odile was feeling tired once more, as tired as she'd felt in the early stages of all of her pregnancies. But her childbearing years were far behind her, and she thought she knew what might be coming.
Gabriel had been getting rickety in the last few years, and had fallen three months ago, breaking his weaker left leg and leaving him mostly bed-bound. She went in to see him. She'd left him reading by the windows in their room, but when she came in now she saw that he was sleeping, breathing sonorously.
She stood by his chair, reached out to stroke his hair. "Love. Wake up."
His eyes fluttered open, and he looked up at her. His eyes were still moss green, though his face had become a lot thinner recently. "Odile. I was dreaming about Benjamin again."
"Did he have anything new to say?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Only the usual. It's only my memories of him that speak, after all. How could he have anything new to say?"
"That's between you and the loa," she said with a smile. "Come lie down with me a bit, Gabriel? I'm tired."
"Always." She helped him up and over to the bed, and pulled the counterpane over them both, these bodies that had been through so much and had carried great weights of grief. "I love you," Gabriel murmured into her ear.
Odile turned her head to kiss him. "Mwen ou renmen, Gabriel."
And so they lay there for a little while, and a little while after that it began to rain. And now it comes, Odile thought, unsurprised, and slipped into darkness, Gabriel following behind.
*****
It was very strange to be dead, Odile thought. It felt a lot like being alive, only her knees didn't hurt. She sat up, looking around her. Everything still had color, and she frowned. The world of the dead was gray, this was not, and this was not where she was expecting to be right now.
She was in her own bed, in the house she had lived in for forty years, and Gabriel was sleeping next to her. Puzzled, she looked down at him, and blinked.
It was Gabriel, but there was something odd about him. He looked different. Younger. Almost exactly like he had when he met her.
That was another thing strange. She'd let her hair down when she'd climbed into bed, and now it frothed over her shoulders, dark and thick instead of the white cloud it was normally. Was she just confused? Why didn't she feel like she was dead?
Gabriel woke about then, and sat up, looking around. "Thought we died," he said, and there was a difference in his voice now, too. "Are we dead?"
She looked at her hands. It was still raining outside, drops pattering on the roof. "I don't think so," she said. "That's very--oh."
"What?"
"Ghede." She turned to Gabriel. "He told me that he was never meant to collect either one of us. You came back once before. Maybe our bodies wear out, we slip out of them, and whatever power this is bounces us back into them."
"And younger," he said. "If I don't miss my guess, I'm about the same age as I was when I met you. And my leg doesn't hurt. Odile?"
She eyed him. "Yes?"
Gabriel grinned. "You are still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Care to spend an afternoon in bed with me?"
She laughed in response, pouncing on him, and there followed a session of loving the likes of which neither of them had been up to for a few years, as their aging bodies gradually gave out. They'd had to be more careful with each other; but now strength had returned and desire, banked but never, never extinguished, returned full force.
Then they had to go explain to the family what had happened. In the end, graves were dug for Gabriel and Odile, and it was an open secret on the plantation that though the funeral had been held, the couple who wandered around Barataria hand in hand were the two of them reborn.
It was a peculiar thing, to walk in the summer air and talk, bodies young once more. Those who lived here, including their children, regarded them with a deep awe, almost worship. But neither of them particularly felt like gods, like loa. They were simply Odile and Gabriel, mambo and houngan, children of the loa as all people everywhere are children of their own gods.
Strange thing, though. Less than five months after they were reborn, Gabriel was kicked in the left knee by one of his horses, shattering the kneecap beyond even his garde's ability to heal it. He took up the cane again, and walked with it for the rest of that life, and all the rest to come.
*****
That happened twice more, and then the century turned and it became necessary at last to leave the swamps and the bayous behind. People were beginning to talk, and New Orleans wasn't what it used to be, for both good and ill. Gabriel and Odile had been selling Barataria off piece by piece, some of it to the descendents of those who had once worked for Gabriel, and they finally sold the house and the land it stood on, packed their possessions up, and headed north.
Odile was never able to explain why she had been drawn to a place on the map she'd never heard of, far from the swamps and rivers that she had been born in, but when she closed her eyes and stabbed at a map of the States, her finger landed on, of all places, Iowa. "There," she said, insistent. "That's where we need to be."
So they found themselves in 1912, walking through a graveyard of a small town called Iowa City, in the middle of just about nowhere. It was midsummer, the cicadas droning, and Odile and Gabriel had wandered up Governor Street, looking at the houses.
There was a man on a stool in the middle of the cemetery, staring at an empty pedestal. Curious, Odile and Gabriel wandered up. He was muttering something to himself about a crazy lady. "Look," he said to Odile. He had a thick accent, and she struggled to understand him. "This Feldevert woman, she wants a statue of an angel, but she wants one that will turn black. And such a strange position!" He waved a drawing-board at them, covered with sketches. "One wing up, one wing down, she can't make up her mind, she telegraphs me every week with changes she dreamed. Dreamed! How am I supposed to work like this? So finally, I come here to look at the site, talk her into something nice, maybe in granite."
Odile and Gabriel looked at each other. "Well," Odile said. "I have an idea for you, Mister..."
"Korbel. Where are you from? France?"
Odile smiled. "Not really. Come on, Mister Korbel. We will talk."
*****
In November of 1912, the statue of the Black Angel was installed in the Oakland Cemetery of Iowa City, and immediately became the subject of rumor and speculation. Good and evil deeds were ascribed to it, and almost all who came near it swore that they could feel something in the statue, something ancient, alive, timeless.
It kept its counsel, and if sometimes on moonless nights it might be seen winging high over the houses, an indistinct shape in the darkness, accompanied by a replica of it that was a pure and shining white...well, people would drink, and they would talk.
The civil rights movement happened, and if one had a sharp enough eye in the archives of the Press-Citizen, one might be able to see the same couple, pictured over and over again--one well-built white man with light hair, one multiracial woman with a sharp look about her. But the ages would keep changing, and there is nobody with that eye to see, now.
Gabriel and Odile Rousseau married legally in 1962, a hundred and thirty years after they were first married, in the old brick church at the corner of Clinton and Market. They visit the cemetery and the angel every week, though they live a little farther out of town now, on a small farm where nobody asks questions much. Gabriel never lost that sex drive of his, taking her sometimes in the most awkward situations. Odile only ever minds when they get caught, which is usually about once a year and often by their children, who always flee with anguished screams of, "Mo-therrrrr!" She was also quite happy when birth control came along, tired of spending her thirties and forties constantly pregnant.
They're happy, and living quietly to this day still. They live in safe obscurity in this age that has little room for their kind of magic in it, dwelling in the corners of superstition. They see Remy, or Ghede in Remy's body, on television sometimes. He went to Hollywood, and even got to play himself in a James Bond movie, once. They laughed when they saw it, laughed until tears were rolling down their faces.
If you're ever in Iowa City, go visit the Black Angel. Ask it a question.
If you are very lucky, and it is in an indulgent mood...
Maybe it will answer.
Here ends Black Angel Crossroads.
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Date: 2007-06-25 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 05:50 am (UTC)I loved the setting idea but I thought that perhaps things worked out a little bit too neatly for the protagonists with the setting in mind. Odile was always worried about the reactions of those around, but I felt that the threat wasn't particularly present. I personally would have preferred some stronger reactions to the fact that Gabriel was treating her as an equal, but mostly everyone seemed to ignore it. That's probably just a personal preference of mine (I like hard-hitting settings). If the setting had been more restrictive of their activities the fact that they outlived it would have had more resonance with me.
The twist at the end surprised me a lot (as you can see from the above!). To be honest, I'm not finding it 100% convincing... I've tried to think back and can't find an instance where something seemed a little bit "off" about Benjamin in hindsight - I like a tiny bit of subtle foreshadowing that only becomes apparent when the twist is revealed (like in Fight Club). I find it a little bit hard to believe that anyone, even a loa, could be that convincing for that long and be able to hide their true nature so well (though maybe that's just my naive hope).
I really did enjoy it. :) The points above are probably pretty specific to my preferences... so take with a grain (or bucket) of salt. :)
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Date: 2007-06-25 04:07 pm (UTC)And I actually do agree about the setting. I think, should I go back and do edits and rewrites, I'm goingto make the setting itself a bit nastier, and let some of those consequences come forward. (I could have done some at the end with it, come to think of it. Ah, well. Rewrites are good. :)
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Date: 2007-06-25 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 01:53 pm (UTC)The foreshadowing bit is my fault really. I waffled back and forth from Elisabeth to Benjamin until the very end. Kris knows my style so well now to keep her guessing, the clues get smaller and subtler. :)
Maybe more red herrings so you think that everybody did it. :)
Thanks for the comments. :)
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Date: 2007-06-28 08:36 pm (UTC)