The Tangled Bridge (6 page)

“Right now I just want to know if there are others like our bloodline.”

“Others! Stupid! No, girl, our family is all there is. You still don't see? This is why it is powerful. If others could do what you can it would undermine you. Outside your bloodline, the lumens are the only ones who can tap the briar. That is why they weaken you.”

Chloe leaned forward. “You really want to know? You learn the ways of your devil, yanh? The river devil shows you answers even to stupid questions.”

Madeleine listened, refusing to be fazed. The bargain with Severin was working well but Madeleine knew that if she let her frustration escalate, Severin would come looking for her.

“This is serious, Chloe. There was a murder last night.”

“Listen, Madeleine, you know I can help you. We start with the stupid question, yanh? ‘Are there others,' you ask. So. Tell me, what do you know now?”

“What do I know?”

Chloe said, “Tell me everything in your mind now.”

Madeleine blinked at her, thinking. “I was speaking to Alice, a homeless woman who'd killed a man, but she didn't seem to be in charge of her own body and mind. And—”

“Ah, see! Look how you hold back. You talk about something that does not matter.”

“It does matter! Chloe, I—”

“Listen! It does not matter because you have already given care to this thought. You hold a magnifying glass too long and it only serves to burn the object. You drop it, and look at the rest. Forget this homeless woman.”

“I just don't understand what you're getting at.”

Chloe said, “What is in your mind right now, right here, as we stand in this room?”

Madeleine sighed. Still unclear what Chloe was getting at, she gave it a shot. She stepped outside her thoughts and backward-examined them. So many things there, not the half of which she cared to expose to the likes of Chloe.

Madeleine said, “Alright. I don't like that nurse. I don't like the look on Zenon's face. I heard a clicking noise this morning and I can't get it out of my head. There are dead flies in the window.”

“That's better,” Chloe said, and waved at Oran.

He moved across to the window where the flies were, seeming to be relieved at having a task to fill. Madeleine stepped back.

Chloe said, “You are not telling everything in your mind, Madeleine. I can see there is more that is hidden.”

Madeleine did not meet her gaze.

Chloe said, “But you do not have to. Not this time. You have taken a look yourself.”

Oran was running his finger along the window track. The two living flies were buzzing and bouncing off the window, too sluggish to notice him. He retrieved the last of the dead flies from the sill and then closed a fist around the two that were still bobbing. Madeleine watched, repulsed.

Chloe said, “Now, back to the stupid question, ‘Are there others like your bloodline?' Does it feel the same? Does this question matter to you so much?”

Madeleine threw an exasperated scowl at her. “Yes. It matters!”

But as soon as she'd said it she realized it wasn't so.

Chloe was right. Madeleine was posing a trumped-up question. She wasn't really looking for others like herself, not at this moment. The heart of the matter was something else. It formed a stone of dread in her stomach, and perhaps she'd been trying to deflect focus.

“Throw them away, Oran, and wash your hands,” Chloe said.

He obeyed.

Madeleine said, “It's just that when I found the woman who'd done the killing, she recognized me even though I didn't know her.”

Chloe sagged as if Madeleine had just greatly disappointed her. “You cannot let it go, eh?”

Madeleine said, “And the woman, Alice, said something about using Shalmut next time. Not sure what she meant by that.”

“You are so stubborn.”

“I was with her for a while. I didn't exactly conduct a thorough examination, but aside from slight dissociative tendencies, she didn't show any signs of dementia.”

Chloe waved a hand. “You always talk like a doctor of the mind, Madeleine, but you know nothing. I can help you manage your devil and learn the briar.”

“I've been managing on my own.”

“Ah! So, how long before your river devil takes you so deep into the briar that you don't know where you are anymore? What will you do, hope your man can keep you on a leash?”

Madeleine balled her fists at her sides.

Oran turned away and hesitated, then shuffled toward the doorway and leaned against the wall, his golden orange hair glowing beneath the direct light from the recessed fixture. He looked like he wanted to break from the room.

Madeleine said, “We've worked out a schedule. Severin only comes during certain windows of time, and I give her my full attention when she does. After that, she leaves me alone so I can function in the real world.”

“Oh, you believe that, do you? Tell me, Madeleine, do you really think that river devil will continue to honor your bargain? How long do you have before you're at her mercy?”

Madeleine frowned. “I don't know that I have a choice.”

“Of course you have a choice! You let me help you. I have watched so many generations fall away to madness. The only one who never went mad was him.” Chloe waved at Zenon. “He kept sharp. He let me guide him.”

“He was a murderer. And he tried to kill me, too, if you recall.”

Madeleine looked down at Zenon and saw the lightness had finally disappeared from his eyes. “She took him outside. That nurse who was in here. Took him out for fresh air.”

The old woman said nothing. She coughed, bringing something forward from her lungs, and spat into her paper napkin.

Madeleine said, “I told her not to do it anymore.”

Chloe seemed nonplussed.

Madeleine looked at Zenon and said, “He used to listen to foreign radio stations. Where they spoke in languages he didn't understand. Said it helped him stay sharp.”

“He studied. He learned much. Now it is up to you, Madeleine, you are the last.”

Madeleine flinched, thinking again of little Cooper, but she would never tell Chloe about him.

“I say, you are the last, yanh?” Chloe said, and she was watching with a fixed stare.

Madeleine nodded.

Chloe lowered her voice to a growl. “Bah! A waste. You do not care what happens! Generations of children who squander gifts.”

“I didn't ask for any of this.”

“You didn't ask! You have a gift; it is your duty to use it. You too lazy. You should make babies with that worthless man and bring them to me. I will raise them to be gods.”

“If I ever did have a child, Chloe, you can bet I would keep it far away from you.”

Chloe leaned forward in her chair, eyes bright. Madeleine wondered if the old woman really could live long enough to raise a child. Already, she was supposedly 116 years old. She looked like she'd stopped ageing altogether once she'd reached eighty. Which child of the bramble had helped her do that?

“Listen to me, Madeleine. You listen, girl. You will go mad. I tell you this, you will go mad.”

Madeleine stared, her mouth going dry.

Chloe lowered her voice. “Your river devil plays along with your silly bargain as a way to draw you deeper into the briar. Your body will be an empty shell while your mind flies away. Maybe forever.”

Madeleine could feel tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. She tore her gaze to Zenon. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell. She dared not look at his face.

Chloe said, “You go on and on about something meaningless, one drunk vagrant kills another drunk vagrant. You pretend that is important. That is housecleaning. If you want to keep from going mad, you have one choice. You come and learn with me.”

 

seven

NEW ORLEANS, NOW

BO RAMIREZ FIRST FIGURED
out the clicking thing when he was really young. Couldn't say exactly how old. At that time, he could pretty much find his way by feel and by listening to regular sounds. The air-conditioning blower. Cars passing. Wind in the trees.

Kids at school were either nice to him or mean. Some of them were really mean. Bo couldn't play much with the regular kids because he was a special needs for being blind. That's how he met Ray. The only other one with a physical handicap. Bo would go running on the playground and crash into Ray's wheelchair, and they'd both go butt-over-bean onto the pavement and sometimes even get bloody.

Ray never gave him hell about it, though, as far as Bo could tell, because in the early days Ray couldn't speak, only sign. Bo couldn't sign, only speak. And because Bo was blind he couldn't see what Ray was signing even if he knew sign language, which he didn't. Not at that point anyway. Bo did Braille and he mouth-talked, and that was it. So if Bo crashed into Ray's wheelchair and Ray was hacked off about it, Bo never knew because Ray had no way to chew him out. They got along great.

One day Bo was running on the playground and heard Ray's wheels going, and he grabbed Ray's wheelchair and ran with him. They flew like that for a few seconds until Bo ran them off the pavement into the grass, at which point they crashed, both of them rolling butt-over-bean again. Ray lurped up his lunch and Bo got in trouble. They were best friends from that point on even though they couldn't talk to each other yet.

The clicking discovery seemed like a small thing at first, but really it changed everything.

Bo'd discovered it accidentally one day when he got in trouble. He'd been chasing a cat and crashed into his mom while she was bringing in the groceries; caused her to drop an entire jug of milk and a lettuce. The lettuce was washable but the milk was for spoil. Anyway, his mom stuck his butt in the corner. She'd always told him to slow down because it was dangerous for blind kids to be running around. Said he's liable to break his neck one of these days.

So he was standing in the corner, bored stupid, and he was running his hand along the bumpy wall and making all kinds of noises with his mouth. Farm animal sounds, motor sounds, tick-tock sounds—making clicks. That's when he realized that when he clicked at the wall it sounded different from when he clicked at the middle of the room.

That's all at first. Could just tell when he was standing in front of a wall.

He took to clicking at everything, remembering how the tone of the click sounded different depending on what he was clicking at. His mom said he sounded like a clucking chicken. He could eventually tell the difference between a wall and a curb or a car, and then he could tell the difference between a car and a truck.

The school put all the special needs kids together which meant that older kids, some of them way older, were stuck playing with the littler kids like Bo and Ray. There were about twelve kids altogether, of which most were learning disability. Those kids were all pretty nice. They liked to play hard like Bo did. But some of those kids weren't really learning disability, they were just plain fools who spent all their time huffing paint. And those ones, Oyster and Mako and them, they were older than Bo by about six years.

The paint huffers threw rocks at him on the playground. Told Bo they were playing baseball and he had to use his cane like it was a bat. Bo knew it was just their excuse to pelt him with rocks. Later, they quit pretending there was any game at all and just beat on him, threw rocks, stole his pack, even stole his shoes once, and always they stole his cane. They would steal his cane and break it, steal his cane and smear it with dog shit, or take it from him and beat on him with it. They stole his sunglasses, too. Bo had to wear sunglasses because it looked funny in the place where his eyes ought to be.

Bo missed the sunglasses but didn't care about the canes. Even without the huffers he'd lose a cane here or there or somewhere. He only carried them because his mom made him. Even now she made him carry one, even though the clicks were way better for seeing than the cane.

After Bo and Ray became friends, the bigger boys started beating on Ray, too. Mako seemed like the meanest one but Oyster gave him the mean ideas. Sucker punch the blind kid because he couldn't see you coming. Run up behind the deaf kid in the wheelchair because he couldn't hear you and he couldn't chase you down.

Bo would swing back, and he built up real fast reflexes. Managed to clock Mako or one of the other boys every now and then. But not often.

The clicking, though, was starting to really pay off. He crashed a whole lot less. And he crashed Ray less, too.

One day Mako snuck up behind Ray and smashed him in the face with his backpack so hard Ray's chair went sideways and he fell out. But Bo figured out what was happening with his clicks and he chased Mako and knocked him good in the ear. Mako went down. Bo went down after him. But Mako was so much bigger and he turned it back and rang Bo's bell. And then the other huffers came after him, too. Teacher showed up and put everyone in detention except for Ray. So all in all you couldn't say Bo won the fight because he was pretty much getting his butt handed to him except for one or two good punches, but still, things changed after that. The huffers would still come over and sock Bo or Ray every now and then but it was less often.

After a while, the huffers stopped coming to school. Bo had no idea what they were doing if they weren't going to school, but good riddance. His mom always said every cloud had a silver lining and it was true. Even though the huffers pretty much made his life miserable, Bo had had to be so extra careful when they were around that he'd become an expert at seeing with his clicks. Could run like the wind without crashing into anything, could even chase a soccer ball.

Now and again he'd still come across the huffers. Found out they didn't only leave school, they'd all left home. On purpose! Bo and his mom sometimes had to leave their home and spend the night wherever because his mom's roommate needed some privacy. Bo didn't mind camping out with his mom like that, but guaranteed he'd never do it on purpose.