Miraculum Read online

  Ruby shook her head.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Never mind. I was able to decipher one of them. Each symbol is a word, you see.”

  “Okay. What’s the word?”

  Samuel frowned.

  “Hila Mtu.”

  “What?”

  Samuel traced his fingers over the page.

  “It roughly translates to a type of trick. But it’s a sort of person as well. A Kivuli Mungu, a shadow god. It’s hard to explain, exactly.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  Ruby took a deep breath and lifted her shoulders.

  “All right, so what is all this?”

  Samuel slammed the book closed.

  “I don’t have the answers, Ruby. I think the symbol is supposed to be some sort of totem. Like a protection charm. The ring around the figure. Maybe that goes with it. I don’t know. You don’t know anything about what your tattoos mean?”

  Ruby shook her head. She had never told Samuel about her time at The Village. She had told no one.

  “No more than you. The woman who gave them to me would never tell me what they meant.”

  “Did she tell you anything? About being protected? Or about what you were supposed to do out in the world with the tattoos?”

  Ruby huffed. He was pushing her too far. She wasn’t going to talk about her time at Vilaj La Nan Pèdi A. When Madame Celeste had performed the binding ritual between them, before the tattooing began, that had been one of the requirements. The Village was a secret and had been for three hundred years. It had to remain that way.

  “You mean, besides not become a Tattooed Lady?”

  Samuel shook his head.

  “Ruby, this is not a joke.”

  “I didn’t think it was. Finding my tattoo in a creepy book like that and all.”

  “Is there anything at all you can think to tell me?”

  Ruby crossed her arms and sighed.

  “The only thing the woman ever said to me about going out into the world was that I had something called an Iku’anga to complete. And no, I don’t know what that means. She never told me anything else. Just kicked me out and sent me back to Pontilliar.”

  “An Iku’anga?”

  Ruby raised her eyebrows.

  “You know what the word means?”

  Samuel rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand and then looked up toward the ceiling of the wagon.

  “It’s sort of like a direction. A task. Something you’ll need to accomplish, but which is intrinsically bound up with who you are. It cannot be separated from you. A more dramatic person might call it a destiny.”

  Samuel rested his hand on The Book of Others and his shoulders dropped.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have shown this to you.”

  Ruby looked up at him.

  “Wait, how long have you known about this?”

  Samuel raised his hands in defense.

  “Only a few days. I promise. I had never seen it in the book before. It’s not the sort of book one just peruses through. There are things in there I haven’t put my eyes on yet. Things I would not want to. I was looking for something else, though, and I found the drawing.”

  Ruby narrowed her eyes.

  “What were you looking for?”

  Samuel started to shake his head, but then changed his mind and met her gaze.

  “I thought Daniel would be in the book. Though I don’t know how or where or why. I don’t think he is just a geek and I don’t think he is a businessman or a banker or any of the other things the rumors have proclaimed him to be. I think he is something else. Something unnatural.”

  Ruby turned away, but the mention of Daniel’s name jarred her. The symbol in the book. And the way Daniel had looked at her tattoo in the geek tent. The arrow to her chest when she’d first seen him, sauntering across the midway in his glittering suit. Ruby understood now. They were all connected, like stars bridging a constellation, like the very constellations she had seen when the world had turned black and the heavens had spiraled above her and, for a moment, Ruby felt a surge inside of her as if taken over by something greater than herself.

  But then she remembered, too, the horror on Daniel’s face when he had ordered her from the tent. None of it mattered. Symbols and feelings, destiny, magic charms and hocus-pocus mojo. The typical carnival fare. There was no point in searching for meaning; it was all just smoke and mirrors in the end. And in the end, she was still left empty and alone. Always alone. As always she would be. Ruby stubbornly shook her head.

  “Daniel is gone.”

  Samuel grabbed her wrist, forcing her to look at him.

  “Is he?”

  “Leave it alone, Samuel. He was strange, you didn’t like him, but now he’s gone. Left. Like people do around here. Those who have any sense, anyway.”

  “I think you are clouded in your judgement of Daniel. I think he made you feel something and it made you vulnerable. Daniel is chimerical.”

  Ruby pushed him away from her and he crashed back into the table, knocking over the carefully stacked pile of books.

  “Maybe Daniel was smart.”

  Samuel began to restack the books. He wouldn’t look at her. Ruby threw her hands up in the air.

  “We’ve had women with three arms, men with four legs, we had a child who looked and walked like a crab. Remember Crab Girl? That was unnatural. Why don’t you look that up in your fancy book?”

  Samuel’s voice was very quiet and he still wouldn’t look at her.

  “I’m not talking about physical natures.”

  Ruby spun in a circle and slapped her hands down on her thighs.

  “And the man who was afraid of the color yellow? The talker? Remember him? Or the clown who tried to legally marry his goat? That clown wasn’t physically unnatural. He was just crazy.”

  “And you think Daniel is just crazy?”

  “I don’t think he’s anything. I think he’s someone who came along, saw what this damn place was all about and got the hell out as fast as he could.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I believe that!”

  Ruby knew she didn’t. But she also knew she couldn’t let Samuel win. She couldn’t let him shame her with the truth: she had let her guard down with Daniel. Just as she had with Hayden. And, just as before, she had been deceived. It made her feel foolish. Degraded. No one could know she had failed yet again. That, once more, she was undeserving of love. Samuel finished arranging the books and stood up. He brushed off the legs of his trousers, even though the floor was spotless.

  “And everything with Jacob and Tom was a coincidence?”

  “Jesus Christ, now we’re back to that.”

  Ruby’s hair was falling down and she yanked the pins out and let it swing down her back. She ran her hands over her head to push the stray strands out of her eyes and then pointed her finger in Samuel’s face.

  “I mean it. Leave it alone, Samuel. Leave it alone, leave me alone. Don’t show me anymore of your secret books, don’t talk to me anymore about your mumbo jumbo. Don’t follow me, don’t give me those looks, don’t ask me to do a thing. I’m sick of it. From all of you. All of you trying to mess with my head.”

  Ruby drew an invisible line between them on the floor of the wagon with the toe of her boot.

  “There’s you and there’s me. Got it?”

  Samuel clasped his hands in front of him and looked down his nose at her.

  “I’m just trying to help you. To protect you.”

  Ruby laughed, hoarsely and cruelly.

  “Oh, because you’re real good at that, aren’t you?”

  She couldn’t read his expression and she didn’t care to. Ruby slammed her hand against the wagon wall on her way out just so she could feel the sting.

  Two months after she had returned to the Star Light, disoriented, uncivilized, a woman now, but more lost than the feral girl who had come down off the mountain, Ruby had discovered the truth. The ven
om of that secret had also been spat at her from the pages of a dusty book.

  Ruby had been cleaning out old baggage trunks, trying to find one she could drill holes in, one that would be suitable for snakes, when she found Pontilliar’s journal. Ruby was not sure she wanted to be a Snake Charmer. She was not sure of anything. Ruby had not seen white faces for three years and here they were, everywhere, gawking at her, contorting in smirks and sneers, hiding behind hands to whisper. Ruby knew that more than her skin had changed since she has last called the Star Light home. She dressed differently now and refused to exchange her worn trousers for skirts. English words felt like gravel in her mouth, so she barely spoke. She wove flowers into her knotted hair when she could find them. Ruby became another kind of Wairua, a wandering ghost with no people at all.

  Pontilliar had been disgusted with her appearance and did not keep his revulsion to himself. He could not bill her as a Tattooed Lady and did not know what to do with her. Ruby had suspected that it would be the case, but made no move to leave the carnival. The Star Light was the only mooring she had left. It was Samuel who suggested the snakes, those creatures whose destines seemed always to coil around her and consume her. Ruby had mutely assented; she would be the Snake Enchantress. She would do her best to put on a show.

  The journal she found was at the bottom of a red steamer trunk, buried underneath the detritus of rotting ledgers and crumbling, misprinted playbills. She fluttered the pages before tossing it aside, but was arrested by a word inked in a scrawling, faded hand. Miranda. It took her a while to decipher the alchemical names, some of the poisons she recognized, others only stood out as glaringly sinister, but gradually she began to understand. There were ounces and dates listed, observations of reactions. And there was a drawing, a crude sketch of a baby, its eyes closed, its toes webbed. A thick arrow pointed toward the child’s feet. There was a question mark. There was the word “Dead.” And following it, “Try Again.”

  Of all people, it had been Samuel who held her tight around the waist as she kicked and thrashed, screaming at Pontilliar, threatening to cut his eyes out. Threatening to murder him where he stood. She flung the journal at Pontilliar’s feet, its pages snapping like the broken wings of a bird, and howled until her throat bled. Throughout the episode, carried out in the dust behind the cookhouse tent as an August twilight descended, Pontilliar had remained calm. He gave Ruby explanations. He gave her rationales. He talked about time passing and water under the bridge. Spilt milk. Pontilliar did not give into shame; he did not apologize.

  Samuel had most likely saved Pontilliar’s life that day, though it took years for Ruby to forgive him for intervening. And for keeping Pontilliar’s secret. When she finally broke free from Samuel, she was too exhausted to do anything but spit at Pontilliar’s feet and announce that she was leaving the Star Light. Pontilliar wished her good luck and Godspeed. Ruby walked in a daze through the labyrinth of tents and found herself in the center of the midway, surrounded by a crowd of townies, startled to see a freak off the bally. A tight circle quickly formed around her, grubby children and gaping mothers. Teenage boys whistling, calling for a free show. A man with a waxed mustache reached his hand out and tried to touch her face. It was slick with tears, but, of course, he wanted only to prod at her tattoos.

  And that was when she had known for sure. There was no place for her in the real world. She had seen it in the faces of the crowd; she was no longer one of them. Her fate was tied to the carnival as surely as the ink was etched into her skin and she could not escape it. The mob around her had turned rough as more hands shot out to touch her and Ruby had begun to push back. She had panicked, but soon rousties were at her side, breaking up the crowd, and Samuel, yet again, had his arm around her waist. She had hated him and she had hated her father, and the Star Light and all the world and herself. But at that moment, she had no more rage to expend. Ruby had let her head drop onto Samuel’s shoulder and had allowed him to lead her away to safety.

  Daniel came forth when he heard the drums. He stood at the edge of the large clearing, back in the shadows of the cypress trees, and watched. As he had watched Jacob step off a little girl’s swing and hang himself. As he had watched Tom, blindly climbing the Ferris Wheel, not knowing why he was doing what he was doing, and certainly not anticipating a high wind with the force of a gale on an otherwise perfectly still night. As he had watched Ruby, her profile lit by the flickering stream of light and dust motes and put his hand over hers in the theater darkness. Ruby. He could have left the Star Light after Tom. He should have. The carnival had already become tedious for him. It was filthy and miserable and, in too many ways, honest. He should have gone back to Chicago, where every woman was devious and every man a cutthroat. Where every moment popped and sizzled and the streets were filled with so much vice that it fell from the air like confetti. But as he had been loping away, determined to put his little dalliance with the Star Light behind him, he had seen her in that field, with the moonlight burnishing her hair and a cigarette held between her fingers just so and her wide eyes that were so devoid of fear, and he had changed his mind. He had encountered a thousand raven-haired tragedies in his time and his travels, some who had inspired a generation of weepy literature and some who had brought kingdoms to their knees. How could this woman be any different? But he had stayed. He had not been able to resist the game, and look where it had gotten him. Seeking answers to questions that only bred more questions. Wasting his time with a swampland crone. All because of what he had felt for a few seconds inside a foul-smelling geek tent. All because of her.

  The drums were increasing in intensity and Daniel turned his attention to the circle that had formed in the ceremonial ground just outside of The Village. He was bored already, but he needed to know more. Had to know more. Daniel lit a cigarette in the darkness and smoked it with his hands in his pockets, leaning against a tree, as he watched the ceremony unfold.

  For the moment, Madame Celeste was nowhere to be seen. A younger woman, lighter-skinned, her hair coming loose from a purple tignon, seemed to be presiding over the rite. The tempo of the drums increased as the woman twirled around a heaping bonfire in the center of the circle, her long hair and skirt swirling around her in a dervish and coming dangerously close to the flames. The circle had been made up only of men, each beating a drum with the palms of both hands, but now a string of women entered the clearing, stamping their bare feet hard into the ground. Each one carried a rattle in one hand and a lit candle in the other. The line of women, shaking the rattles in tempo with the drums, formed an outer circle to the men. The woman in the center hadn’t stopped spinning, but now she slowed and untied a blue cord from around her waist. She held it aloft over her head with both hands and the drums beat even faster. Finally, she threw the cord at a low altar constructed of crumbling bricks and cypress planks and collapsed. The drums and rattles ceased immediately and two of the women broke through the line of men and dragged the woman away. She had fallen too close to the fire and the hem of her skirt had begun to smoke. Daniel rolled his eyes and lit another cigarette.

  In the silence that followed, Madame Celeste appeared in the circle. She looked the same as before, only now she wore a long purple dress and had heavy gold hoops dangling from her ears. She wore a tricorne hat with a plume of heron feathers streaming down the back and carried two bottles of tafia. Daniel smiled to himself. She looked like a damn pirate. Madame Celeste walked slowly around the fire three times in a counterclockwise direction and then took a swig of the raw, sugary rum. She blew it onto the fire and the flames leapt higher. The men began to chant “boudoum, boudoum” and the women behind them echoed with “canga moune.” Madame Celeste hobbled over to the altar and sprinkled tafia at each corner. A man, Daniel recognized him as the man who had blocked his path on the way to the lodge, entered the circle carrying a silver bowl and placed it on the altar. Madame Celeste crossed herself six times and then pulled a burning branch from the flames. She used it to light the liq
uid in the bowl and then she stood behind the altar and the drumming began again. Daniel yawned.

  The ceremony went on for another half hour as each villager brought forth an offering to the bowl. Most brought food, candied fruit twisted up in paper or dishes of rice and vegetables. Each offering was held over the flaming bowl while Madame Celeste made signs and spoke, sometimes screamed, words into the flames. Then the offering was flung to the ground inside the circle, the burning paper sparking through the air and smoldering in the dirt. Some villagers brought bouquets of dried reeds dusted with orris powder and these flamed spectacularly. Three women wearing blue cords around their waists brought a live chicken each to the bowl and Madame Celeste used a golden knife to cut their throats. The birds, still twitching, were thrown to the ground with the rest. After each offering, the villager was free to break from the circle and begin dancing themselves, so that by the end the clearing was filled with men and women whirling around the fire, pounding drums and shaking rattles and trampling the gifts, sometimes still burning, into the ground beneath them.

  More tafia appeared and the men and women raised the bottles to each other’s lips as they danced. When the last offering had been made, Madame Celeste raised both her hands over her head and the villagers suddenly froze and dropped to the ground. The bearded man who had been standing behind the altar with Madame Celeste now procured a wooden box and held it out before her. She dipped her ancient hands into it and pulled out a heavy black snake that when stretched out must have been as long as she was tall. She held it out for the villagers to see and they all began to make a guttural, thrumming noise as Madame Celeste rhythmically twisted her hips, swinging the snake over her head. Daniel liked snakes and he frowned at what he knew was coming. Madame Celeste suddenly gripped the snake behind its head with one hand and took up the golden knife with the other. The snake was writhing and twisting in her hand as its tail kept slipping into the flaming bowl, and then Madame Celeste cut it in half and it was over. She slung both halves of the snake into the clearing and shrieked an unintelligible sound that made Daniel wince. The villagers raised their hands over their heads and cheered, and the drinking and dancing continued. Madame Celeste’s shoulders slumped and she receded away from the flames, back into the swamp.