The Tangled Bridge (44 page)

Ferrar agreed to walk with them to the tree and back. She was relieved to get going and walked quickly so that they had to keep up. She didn't want Francois to find out they were using the willow instead of the bucket. How could she possibly explain why, and even if she did, he wouldn't understand.

Trigger was happy to walk to the willow again, too, if only for an excuse to move. Their bodies wanted to stretch forth, to run, to swim, to move in uninhibited strides—luxuries denied them for six straight years. They would run down the boardwalk just to feel the physical burst of sensation if circumstances were different. The deep twilight provided plenty of camouflage from anyone who might be looking for them. The light level was at that in-between stage that made things more difficult to see even than in full darkness, when torchlight highlighted movement. Now, everything looked black and white like a photograph. They walked silently, listening to the voices of traders and bootleggers all around. Patrice and Trig paused just before the center of the spoke, the heart of the village, while Ferrar advanced and waved them across when no one was looking their way. As she crossed to the other side, Patrice saw Francois seated on a barrel in front of what appeared to be a shop. He was looking the other way, toward a group of men.

Patrice and Trigger followed Ferrar's lead and strode toward the willow, their footfalls silent, the floating boardwalk swaying beneath them.

“Let me check first,” Ferrar whispered as they neared the willow island.

But Patrice shook her head. “No one's out there.”

He looked down at her in surprise, and then seemed to guess that she had a way of knowing whether someone was nearby, just like she could check someone's intentions. This was a new talent that had come from the six years she'd just spent in the briar. She only remembered it now.

She wondered about the younger ones, Gil and Rosie, because Maman would have her believe that their skills hadn't improved at all over the years. Odd, because they'd been in the briar the whole time. But they were under the control of a tar devil. Patrice had been dragged in by one, but not for the entire period because her mother could not administer scratch poisons to her physical body.

Patrice glanced at Trigger. He'd experienced six unencumbered years of briar, too. She resolved to ask him later whether he'd noticed his skills had evolved.

They reached the willow. Ferrar and Trigger waited while Patrice went first, stepping off the wooden boardwalk and onto the island. The sand felt good beneath her shoes, crunching with stones and calcifications, but she tried to walk on the great tree's roots so as to avoid making any sound. She stepped beneath the canopy and it spread over her like a gazebo, lacey and gracious. In a strange way it reminded her of the briar. Sometimes even that could be a beautiful place.

Unlike the bucket, the tree did not smell bad. Patrice finished and returned to the boardwalk, letting Trigger go in after her.

She was now alone with Ferrar. He smiled at her and then looked away. Clearly uncomfortable. She thought about this a moment. Her very existence was a threat to him because of the river devils.

She said, “I'm sorry. I know we put you in danger. Again.”

“I'm used to it by now,” he said.

She nodded. Six years like this for him, going back and forth between New Orleans and this lost little waterlogged village.

It seemed a thousand creatures were speaking from the soft land beyond the floating shanties and the bayou that formed a ring around them. Patrice was grateful for the animal voices. Like putting on a record when a visitor comes calling because you don't know what to say.

She thought about the willow, and asked, “With all those people mooring here tonight, you'd think the willow would be busier.”

“No, there's more than one. This is the commodore's willow. Francois. No one else is allowed to use it. Except for you of course. But no one is supposed to know about you.”

“But they know anyway.”

He shrugged.

“What do you do? I mean, what kind of work do you do when you go to New Orleans”

“I work on the bridge. Same place where you found me.”

“I thought they'd stopped building it.”

“They had. But we've been working on it again for a year now. It's going together fast.”

“What's it like?”

“It's different from farm life. Everything is loud. On the bridge, they run the machinery day and night. The whole thing is made of steel and we hold it together with rivets. All day long, the sound of riveting. People don't talk to each other, they shout. But I love it. I'm high up in the air and I can see all the way up the river. The way it moves along, it's slow and easy.”

“Mmm,” she said, thinking she would like that.

“They say it'll support trains and cars, both.”

Trigger was heading back up the path along the tiny willow island. They fell silent.

Ferrar turned to lead them down the boardwalk, and as he did, for just a single moment, his fingertips touched hers. Just a flash. It might have been an accident or he could have deliberately reached for her hand, then changed his mind. Patrice couldn't tell.

Ferrar strode out a few steps ahead to lead the way, and Patrice buried her smile into her chest. She suddenly felt so electrified that she reached for Trigger's hand and squeezed it tight, just like she used to do when he and Gil were little boys and she'd pretended that she was the one who was their Maman, not Chloe. Trigger grinned at her and squeezed her back. In the last waning glimmer of light, he looked like an even older version of himself, and she caught a sense of what a handsome young man he would soon become.

Ferrar stopped short ahead.

Patrice and Trigger nearly collided with him from behind, and Patrice's fingers slipped from Trig's.

An odd thing. She'd held her brother's hand, and then she'd let go. But maybe because of the darkness, maybe because of another kind of darkness, she wanted to reach for him again.

Francois was standing in the path, glaring at them with the one furious eye. Patrice paused with her brother and Ferrar, thinking at first that Francois was angry that they'd used the willow instead of the bucket. But when she checked in the briar way she sensed others nearby. Off in the direction where they were headed.

Francois whispered something to Ferrar and waved them away from the boardwalk spoke where their shanty stood, pointing instead down another spoke. Ferrar looked hesitant but he gestured for Patrice and Trigger to go with him. This time he put his hand very deliberately at the small of Patrice's back. More a protective gesture than a tender one. Patrice straightened.

“What's happened?” Trigger whispered.

Ferrar whispered back, “Someone's gone down to the shanties where we were. If we ain't gone to the willow they would have found you.”

“Should we be worried?” Patrice asked.

“Hard to tell yet. Could be mischief. Or just be a drunkard getting lost. Happens.”

Behind them, toward the village center and down some of the far spokes, she could hear voices going loud. Some were laughing. They were drinking, too, no doubt. Patrice continued forward with Ferrar and Trigger. The shacks along this boardwalk were not kept as well as the ones where they'd been staying. Patrice sensed something strange ahead. Then she realized: This was the ghosts' boardwalk.

She stole a glimpse of Ferrar. He was looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was behind them, but this boardwalk was quiet.

From somewhere near the town center she heard singing.

Once I built a railroad, now it's done …

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

And she wondered, would she find the ghost version of herself here? And that of Ferrar? Because when she'd seen them before, something about the way they had stood together had escaped her notice. But now, with Ferrar's hand on her back and seeing the way he looked at her, she thought perhaps she understood. It made her feel very strange. Very happy.

She heard them up the way. They were quieter than the revelers. Sober. Female voices, some male, too. Ghosts.

What happened next, happened fast.

From behind, Patrice heard a thwack. A very wrong sound. Very sick.

Had she been walking with true awareness things might have been different.

She looked in time to see Ferrar topple sideways, holding his head. He staggered and then fell into the bayou before Patrice had even registered what was happening.

She should have been paying more attention instead of letting the thoughts run amok. She could have stopped it.

Someone had grabbed her, someone holding a thick length of wood that he'd just used to strike Ferrar down. This, she also had barely registered, because even as she felt her arms getting pinned to her sides, her eyes were locked with Trigger's.

A second man plunged a long knife into Trigger's belly. Just above his navel. And then the man ripped the blade upward between Trigger's ribs.

Patrice thought,
This is not so. It can't be so.

Trigger's eyes looked wild for a single clean moment.

In that wildness, there is life. It must mean that he's not hurt that badly. He's hurt but he's not going to …

The man who was holding him fell away. Patrice wasn't fully aware that she'd reared up and kicked him in the face. But yes, she'd done that. Must have done that.

Trigger looked down. And when he looked up again, his eyes held an apology.

An apology.

He said, “Gil and Rosie…”

The one she'd kicked came up again and butted his shoulder against Trigger. Trigger went into the water.

She was screaming. A vague, peripheral thing. Her sense of sound had momentarily shut itself off. She knew she was screaming because her throat felt it.

The one behind her was still holding her by the arms though she was bucking wildly.

“Get the damn body! One live, one dead, you dumb sonofabitch!”

“No!”

She had to get to him.

“Trigger!”

She had no idea how she got there, but she realized that she was in the water now, too.

“Trigger! Trigger!”

Torchlight illuminated nothing here. The water was black.

“Guy!”

He was gone.

 

fifty-four

LOUISIANA, NOW

GASTON SAID, “YOU HOLD
tight. I'm gonna try to get help.”

Madeleine was in her body and shaking like mad. “Water.”

Her tongue felt like sun-scorched sand. But he was already gone. No Severin, either. And yet Madeleine was not alone. She felt the chill first. Despite the fever burning through her body, the icy void filled her lungs. The serpent was there.

Like when she'd been in the shack, she could see nothing. But this time it stemmed more from sickness and delirium than from a dark room.

“Get away,” she croaked, but she made almost no sound.

She heard it whisper as it eased up along her leg. “Too late for you, Madeleine. You chose death.”

“No. I just chose not to sacrifice that baby.”

“Yes. Instead you wasted time on some meaningless child. You distracted everyone.”

Everyone. Yes. The river devils, and Zenon and Gaston. For once she was the one leading others down rabbit holes. But to what end? Anguish. More chaos.

She felt the creature wind up around her, encircling her—impossible, because she was lying down—but it wrapped around her chest and her neck, its coldness chilling only her spirit and not her flesh. Squeezing the breath from her.

Unable to speak, Madeleine was answering in her mind now. “So kill me, if that's what you've come to do.”

“You know I cannot kill you here. You've killed yourself.”

“Chloe? Are you going to die, too?”

“Already quite far gone.”

“What are you?”

“I am tomorrow.”

Someone gripped her hand and pulled her up.

“Gaston?”

She held fast and let herself be lifted, and as she rose she broke from the serpent. She could hear it hiss and whisper away. It hadn't bitten her this time. Probably was unable to. She blinked, and was able to see again, though dimly.

He was gripping her hand, blue eyes smiling.

“Daddy?”

She was so startled she didn't know whether to cry or squeeze him or slap him upside the head for haunting her from beyond the grave. Feelings not so different from when he was alive.

He said, “You sure you wanna come with me, kitten?”

And the tears won out. She let them flow.

“Is it really you?” she managed to say.

“No, honey. It ain't me. There is no me now. Not sure there ever was.”

“If you're not my father, then who are you?”

“It's just drawin water from the barrel, honey.”

He stood and reached into a rain barrel in the corner, and he pulled out a ladle. Light danced on the wet alloy where moonbeams filtered through cracks in the wall.

He said, “And then holding it in the dram for a while. Pouring it back in. That's all we are. Any one of us.”

She said, “I need you to come back. I don't know how to do this.”

But when he turned, he wasn't her father any more. He was her brother Marc.

“Oh,” she said, and the tears ran afresh.

“You keep my son safe, Maddy, now won't you?”

“Have you seen Cooper?”

“Of course. I need you to look after him. He's special, gonna make all the difference.”

“You mean between the lumens and the briar. Don't tell me you're a crusader, too.”

“You have to understand, honey, our evolution can go one way or th'other. And if it goes the wrong way everyone'll be wiped out.”

“You mean if the lumens survive?”

“No. I mean we ain't supposed to eradicate them. We supposed to serve them.”