Miraculum Read online

  A small crowd had gathered outside the entrance to the G-top and though Ruby wanted not to care, wanted to stay out of any roustie drama and head straight to the cookhouse for a basin of clean water, she stopped when she saw January at the edge of the circle. She had her hands on her hips and was nodding along with the others, so Ruby sighed and headed over. She had spent the morning in the woods, with the excuse of hunting for snakes, although she didn’t really need to acquire any more. She had just needed to be alone.

  When she came up to stand next to January, she knew from the look she was given that she must appear as dirty and disheveled as she felt. She tried to smooth her tangled hair back and shrugged.

  “Snake hunting.”

  January pursed her lips.

  “Were you hunting snakes or slithering through the dirt yourself?”

  Ruby wiped her face with the side of her hand but figured she’d only made it worse. She put her hands in her pockets. Franklin ducked back inside the tent and a few of the rousties followed him.

  “What’s going on?”

  The rest of the crowd broke up and January turned aside as well. She and Ruby began to walk toward the cookhouse.

  “Franklin just got word from Samuel. We’re heading out tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Hell if I know. I’m not asking questions, though.”

  January stopped for a moment. The blue scarf pinned over her hair was coming loose and she paused to re-tie it. She hadn’t done her makeup yet, though, and Ruby could see the dark circles under her eyes, deep, like bruises. Ruby shook her head.

  “Thank God.”

  “You’re telling me. I thought we weren’t making a dime here before the revival. Yesterday, there might as well have been cobwebs in the girly tent. I always thought that confessing all their sins gave folks leeway to commit more.”

  “Catholics.”

  “What?”

  Ruby shaded her eyes and looked toward the cookhouse. She saw no sign of Daniel.

  “You’re thinking of Catholics. It doesn’t work that way with Bible-thumpers. They get off so much at these revivals that they don’t even need us.”

  “Well, that explains things.”

  January finished with her scarf and they kept walking.

  “So Samuel or Pontilliar didn’t tell you anything about shoving off a day early?”

  Ruby shook her head.

  “I don’t think they’re speaking to me. They’re still riled up about us going into town. About The Rainbow.”

  January grinned and bumped her shoulder into Ruby’s.

  “Well, they can be angry all they want. It was worth it. Although, I got to say, Ruby, you’re running them off faster than I used to. How many hearts are you going to break in a month?”

  Ruby froze.

  “What are you talking about?”

  January touched Ruby’s arm, picking at her shirtsleeve. She was suddenly serious.

  “I’m sorry. That was mean. I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know why I have to turn everything into a joke.”

  “No, what did you mean by that?”

  January sighed. She looked away from Ruby.

  “I just meant Daniel leaving this morning. I’m sorry, that was cruel. I know you two sort of had something there for a minute. At the picture show, I could tell something was going on. And I hoped it was. After Hayden taking off like that, you deserved to have someone paying attention to you. I thought, maybe you two had hit it off.”

  Ruby’s eyes widened.

  “Daniel left this morning?”

  January raised her hand to her mouth.

  “Oh my God, I was right. And you didn’t know he left? Jesus, Ruby, I’m going to hell. I’m going straight to hell.”

  Ruby licked her lips and collected herself. Then she scowled at January, who was watching her anxiously.

  “Quit it. Don’t worry, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. I don’t care if he’s coming or going. I just didn’t know. I guess we’ll have to find another geek. Again.”

  January fidgeted with the lace collar of her dress.

  “He was asking about you, you know. Daniel was.”

  Ruby was silent for a moment and then slowly spoke.

  “What was he asking?”

  “It was sort of odd, really. I only found out he was leaving after he came to me to ask some questions about you.”

  “What sort of questions?”

  “About your tattoos. Where you got them, how you got them. I don’t remember exactly. I don’t know why he was asking. He was just curious, I think.”

  Ruby clenched her fists at her sides.

  “Curious? You think he was just curious?”

  January looked confused.

  “I don’t know. He was just asking.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t tell him anything. I don’t know anything. I told him that if it was that important, he should go talk to Pontilliar. That he was probably the only one who would know, but I didn’t think he knew, either. You’re so damn secretive about it.”

  Ruby wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, creating another smear of dirt. January grabbed her elbow and shook her.

  “Ruby, what is the big deal? What did I do? What’s going on?”

  Ruby stood up straight and threw her shoulders back. Her jaw was set, but she tried to smile at January. It didn’t come out very well.

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Except that he’s gone. That matters. That’s all that matters. We can just forget about him. With any luck, we’ll never see him again.”

  It took Daniel less than a day to find her. Getting to New Orleans was easy, but from there it took some work. He had stood on the corner of Basin and Canal, closed his eyes, raised his head and sent out feelers. He knew this Madame Celeste was real, he could sense traces of her in the cobblestones and the twisted iron railings, but he knew he would have to get out of the city. It took a few hours, but by late afternoon, with the long summer sun slithering through the bald cypress trees and disappearing into the bayou murk, Daniel came upon The Village of the Lost.

  He strolled out of the curtains of Spanish moss, out of the grasping creepers and the peeling cypress knees and the fog of dusk mosquitos, as if he were just stepping out on the sidewalk in front of the Metropolitan Opera. There wasn’t a single scratch on his face or hands, not a tear in his suit, not a scuff of mud on his shoes. His skin was glowing, his black suit was smoldering and his teeth and his nails and his slicked back, pomaded hair glistened in the fading light. The Pedi Moun Ki trailed behind him through the market, gawking at this strange white man sauntering through the center of their lives. Daniel did not even look at them. He put his hands in his pockets and leisurely meandered through The Village, heading for the largest house, marking the end of the road. Unlike the others, it was built up on bricks and had wooden shingles cascading down the slanted roof of the garconniere. An old woman, dark and wrinkled, was hunched into a cane-bottomed rocking chair on the front gallery. She stood up and frowned around the long stem of her pipe as Daniel came up the mud walkway. Her voice was a frog’s croak.

  “I knew you were coming. Tonight. And in the past I knew. And before that I knew and I knew and I knew. I have been waiting for you all this time.”

  Daniel narrowed his eyes. He was standing on the porch steps, looking up at her.

  “Well, Madame Celeste. If I had known that, I might have arrived sooner.”

  The old woman threw back her head and laughed a long and terrifying laugh. Daniel waited patiently until she had finished and stumped her way across the porch to him. She was so small that upon reaching Daniel, standing on the bottom step, their faces were level with one another. He looked into her yellow, watery eyes with unnaturally large, black irises and began to have some idea of who he was dealing with. He smiled, but kept himself from laughing. He needed to humor her because he needed information. She spat at his shoes, but missed.

&
nbsp; “Come with me.”

  She hobbled down the stairs, clenching the pipe between her teeth, but didn’t reach out to Daniel for help and he didn’t extend his hand. She followed the muddy walkway and then turned down a path framed by clumps of palmettos and wax-myrtle, leading Daniel away from the main part of The Village. Madame Celeste walked slowly and deliberately, and Daniel kept an even pace beside her. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back, occasionally looking up into the thick canopy as if he were sightseeing. An extremely tall man with a grizzled beard and a machete stopped them at one point, and the man glowered at Daniel and bared his filed, pointed teeth. Madame Celeste waved her hand and the man begrudgingly stepped aside, allowing Daniel to pass.

  Madame Celeste took him through a thick stand of tupelo and swamp cottonwood, ducking under wide nets of spider webs, until they emerged into a gloomy clearing. A squat, round lodge had been built in the middle, surrounded by a low, intermittent wall of rocks and what appeared to be rib and pelvic bones. The walls of the lodge were paneled with dried rushes and painted with primitive symbols Daniel halfway recognized from centuries before. Strange crosses and spirals, contorted shapes with eyes and teeth swirling fluidly into one another. A large copper bowl filled with smoldering bricks of peat moss guarded the low door and Madame Celeste leaned over it. She pulled out a small leather bag from inside the front of her shirt and dipped her fingers into it, procuring a pinch of what looked to Daniel like sand. She sprinkled it into the bowl and a green flame leapt up, shooting sparks high into the air, and then died down just as suddenly. Daniel watched Madame Celeste with curiosity as she then took out a thin, curving knife and hitched up her long skirt. Her legs were spindly and webbed with brittle skin and her long-toed feet were bare and caked in mud. She flicked the knife just below her ankle bone and then tapped the blood from the knife into the bowl. The flame flared up again and turned blue, then green, and then died back down to a glow. Madame Celeste fixed her skirt and turned to Daniel, still waiting.

  “Tuath De. I know you. Will you come inside with me?”

  Daniel grinned and pointed to the bowl at her feet.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s in the fire?”

  Madame Celeste cackled.

  “No. That wouldn’t be playing fair. Or rather, that wouldn’t be playing at all. And I know you love your games.”

  Daniel nodded and stepped inside the circle of rock and bone. Madame Celeste picked up a torch and dipped it into the bowl, setting it aflame. She pushed open the door to the lodge and disappeared. Daniel ducked low and followed her. The space seemed smaller inside than it had appeared outside and Daniel had to stoop as he watched Madame Celeste lighting the fire in the center of the lodge. The blaze sprung to life, only this fire was made from black alder branches and was surrounded by a ring of sharp antlers, bound together by thin strips of leather and adorned with long, scraggly heron feathers. Once the fire was going, Madame Celeste put out the torch and turned to the door. Daniel watched with interest as she put something into her mouth, chewed vigorously and then spit a stream of white powder across the face of the door. She mumbled something low as she wiped a drip of saliva from her chin.

  The close walls of the lodge were alternately lined with shelves made of raw cypress boards and hung with grotesque masks painted red and black. These Daniel recognized and he smiled. He also recognized the Asons, wooden rattles filled with beads and painted red that hung down in heavy clusters like grapes. The shelves were crammed with jars clouded over with soot and wooden boxes inlaid with Veve calling symbols. Madame Celeste removed three short black sticks from a box on the lowest shelf and then arranged herself on a stool across the fire from Daniel. She drove the sticks into the dirt floor, two beside her and one behind her, and then made a complicated sign that ended by crossing herself. Finally, she appeared to be settled and gestured for Daniel to take the stool opposite her. When he sat, she put her hands on her thighs to brace herself and leaned over the fire.

  “You came to Vilaj La Nan Pèdi A on your black crow wings, this I know. I looked to the heavens and I saw you circling as you searched for me. You’ve found me, yes, but you’re in my realm now.”

  Daniel couldn’t help but smirk.

  “I don’t think you really understand how this works, Madame Celeste. Do you mind?”

  He took out his silver cigarette case and held it up. Madame Celeste leaned back from the fire and glowered at him. Daniel struck a match and lit the cigarette, being careful to put the used match back in his pocket. He inhaled deeply and crossed his legs to the side. He sighed and examined the burning end of the cigarette.

  “You know, it’s become such a habit now. Of course, I can’t feel anything, but I’ve sort of gotten used to it over the past few years. It always seems to make others more comfortable, but I think I’ve taken a liking to it myself. And it’s so much easier than having to pretend to eat. Would you like one?”

  He reached into his pocket for the case, but Madame Celeste had already taken out her pipe. She packed it slowly and then fit the long stem into her the wide gap between her front teeth. She puffed slowly, her yellow eyes glowing above the fire, and scowled at Daniel. They smoked in silence for a moment until Madame Celeste made the first move.

  “All right. You are here. What did you come for?”

  Daniel rested his elbow on his knee and flicked his wrist out.

  “Well, it’s not you, if that’s what you’re thinking. So you can dispense with the chalk lines and gris-gris nonsense. Do you know who I am?”

  Madame Celeste’s eyes burned.

  “I have been waiting for you for longer than you know. Since the trees grew inside out and the snakes shed their skin into their own mouths. My people, my true people, servants of Bondye in the old country, we have been waiting a long time. We have kept the watch. Kept the time.”

  She paused and looked into the fire, studying it.

  “Coyote was the first to leave this land.”

  Daniel puffed on his cigarette.

  “Well, yes. He was never the strongest.”

  “He was one of the oldest. This is his land. My people are only intruders. You, you are only a parasite.”

  The corner of Daniel’s lip curled around his cigarette.

  “Did you just call me a parasite?”

  Madame Celeste was looking deep into the fire now, lost in the hypnotic coil of the flames.

  “Coyote was here, but then his people tired of his tricks. And they tired of the Great Spirit and Grandmother Spider. The old ways. And so Coyote has all but left this world entirely.”

  Daniel ground his cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and put the remainder of it in his pocket. He was getting annoyed.

  “I need to ask you about a girl who came here once.”

  Madame Celeste ignored him.

  “And there was Legba, who came over with Bondye and Oshun on the boats and crept up here through the plantations.”

  Daniel grinned.

  “Yes, and how is Papa Legba? I’ve been looking for him since I heard he came up to America from the southern lands. Did he get scared and pack up his macoute? Run away again to the jungle?”

  Madame Celeste pulled a stick from the fire and held it glowing white hot between the palms of her hands.

  “Iwa Legba. Keeper of the gates to Ginen. Carrier of our destinies. Bridge to the Grand Master and the lemo. Connecting us to our dead. Opening doors. Protecting us from—”

  Daniel held out his hand, interrupting her.

  “Oh, come now. He’s just a trickster. Just like me. Just like Coyote and Loki and Hermes and goddamn Ea if you want to go back that far. I understand that he’s your god and all, but you don’t have to make Legba out to be more than he is. He’ll get a big head. As if he doesn’t have one already.”

  Madame Celeste suddenly bared her teeth.

  “You dare to insult Iwa Legba?”

  Daniel laughed.

  “Of course I do, yo
u ridiculous old crone.”

  Madame Celeste’s shoulders dropped. She pushed the stick back into the fire and sighed. Her voice returned to its sing-song, storyteller lilt.

  “And though Legba acquired the followers of the new Voudou in the Americas, those ways did not last this far above the equator and he has begun to retreat as well. To the islands and the southern wilderness.”

  Daniel leaned forward and nodded.

  “Which is where he belongs.”

  “And now here you are. In Coyote’s place. In Legba’s place. You, who have been around since the beginning. Who should have journeyed to the West long, long ago.”

  “Ah, but I learned. I adapted. When the old ways were being driven out of Britannia by the Romans, I changed. No one had thought the new upstart religion would go anywhere. Christianity. Ha! Odin and Woden said that no one would follow it. A monotheistic ideology? It’ll never spread. It’ll never last. And where would a trickster find a place in such a system? Everyone had overlooked the obvious. Christianity is no more monotheistic than your silly hoodoo cult.”

  Madame Celeste rested her hands on her knees, palms upwards. She spoke around her pipe, still clenched in her teeth.

  “And so we have Light Bringer. The Morning Star, the Wailing Yell. In this part of the world, Devil.”

  Daniel stood up, though he had to keep his head bent to avoid hitting the ceiling of the lodge. He bowed extravagantly.

  “And so you have me.”

  Daniel sat down and took out another cigarette.

  “And this grand country of America. With its cars and lights and restlessness and speed and energy. I love it. Where the old religions are leaving faster than rats on a sinking ship and Christianity reigns supreme. It couldn’t be better. I may never have to retreat and settle in the West.”

  Madame Celeste nodded slowly.

  “But you want to know about the girl?”

  Daniel lit his cigarette.

  “Yes, I do. I think we’ve spent enough time posturing. You really are lovely to talk to, it’s been so long since I’ve spoken to one who keeps the old ways and can chat with the gods. That is something we’re sadly missing over in my neck of the woods. But enough of this. I need to know about the girl you tattooed and I need to know about her right…”