Chapter Sixteen Marie
Chapter Sixteen
Marie
Marie clung to her side of the rowboat, searching the faceless dark. As their boat sailed along, mist rose from the black waters below in silvery folds, swallowing everything in its path in slow, greedy gulps. Everything but her fear.
Truth be told, the moment they’d pushed off from the wharf, Marie had felt a seed of dread growing in her belly, a feeling that now quietly blossomed into the unshakable panic that they were, in fact, going the wrong way.
But if Jon shared her fear, he didn’t feel inclined to say.
He sat beside her, his legs languidly crossed, dressed in a sharp black suit and matching frock coat, a gentleman’s top hat perched on his head.
He studied her with that self-assured tilt of a grin that made another, darker feeling grow inside of her.
Marie caught his eye, then quickly glanced away, embarrassed at how easily he made her flush, the way her heart fluttered fast as a canary.
Three weeks had passed since she’d started her lessons with the Conjurer.
Always strictly by midnight. Always alone.
But tonight was different. The hour wasn’t quite midnight, and they were far from alone now.
They were joined by the tide-turner Nonc Croc—Uncle Croc, as the Cajun boatmen knew to call him—who was kneeling at the stern, one hand holding a small brass harmonica to his mouth while he played a few woeful notes, the other plunged into the inky water, his fingers guiding their boat along with his magical coaxing.
The old man had strange, wintry blue eyes set into the weathered lines of his brown face, and he wore a braided cord of hemp around his neck that dangled with jagged seashells, pearl fragments, and carved driftwood beads, each piece an offering to the water loa all tide-turners served—La Sirene, the devastatingly beautiful silver-tailed goddess, and Agwe, loa of the ocean, patron of fishermen and sailors.
Marie tugged at the long black-latticed veil over her face.
The veil’s thin fabric did nothing to keep the water’s spray from her cheeks, the subtle hiss from La Sirene that something was amiss in her waters.
Through its netting she glimpsed the moon in a gauzy blur, glowing and full, a lone white eye peering down at them from a starless sky.
Although Jon hadn’t explained himself when he handed her the long black gown and matching veil, Marie found something painfully familiar about the cool silk that clung to her, forming a strange second skin that felt heavier than it should.
They were mourning garments, the costume one might expect of a grief-stricken widow.
It was a part she had played before, after all.
As Nonc Croc steered them away from the Quarter, red and green and gold lights shone in the distance, cutting through the fog like flames dancing on their wicks.
As their rowboat drew nearer, Marie could hear music, and if she strained hard enough, she could make out the barest traces of other sounds beneath those bright notes.
A peal of maddening laughter. The dull echo of what might have been a scream in the dark.
“Where are we going, Jon? Is this supposed to be another lesson?” demanded Marie. She hadn’t meant to sound so wary, but she found his silence made her more uneasy than the shadowy waters that surrounded them.
“No lessons,” said Jon as his gaze slid toward her. For a moment, that spark of mirth dimmed, a golden candle snuffed out. He was utterly serious. “Only a story. And you, my lovely student, will decide how it ends.”
Jon’s voice was low and rhythmic as he began to speak over the rolling fog.
“They say the ancient Greeks had many a god stranger than ours, hungrier than ours,” began Jon.
“When a band of slaves ran away into the wilderness, they stumbled upon a tall man dancing right over a bed of ivy and bloodied animal skins, the glittering white bone of a bull’s head pulled over his face.
The slaves froze, seeing too late that this was no man at all.
At least no mortal one. He was the one they called the mad god Dionysus, lord of ritual and theater.
The mad god was eager for a show.” His gaze found Marie’s, held it steadfast in the dark, his eyes bright as torches. “And one does not refuse the gods.”
Nonc Croc stopped playing. Even he was listening. The only sound that remained was the soft creaking of their boat as it cut across the river’s face.
“ ‘Fear not, mortals,’ ” continued Jon, “Dionysus declared as he rose to meet them at once, arms wide open as if they were very old friends reunited at last. ‘For I am as gracious as the gods come. I seek only to be entertained.’ Overjoyed to be embraced so easily by the divine, the men desperately entreated Dionysus to lift their chains. And free them he did.”
The story sprang from his tongue like a dark spell, conjured before them in the air like smoke.
But Marie heard something else simmering beneath his words, something crueler.
Jon wasn’t just telling a story of violence.
He was remembering one. “One man let out a bloodcurdling howl, a sound that could wake the dead. Another grew teeth as long as a wolf’s fangs.
One by one, the men shredded the clothes from their bodies and tore the chains from their feet and hands.
As free as Dionysus had promised. But when Dionysus held up his mirror, laughing all the while, they saw only their own reflections as they were.
As men. Confused, they looked amongst themselves, seeing only yellow-eyed beasts, deformed beyond all recognition.
Driven mad, the men ripped one another limb from limb as Dionysus eagerly clapped along, pleased at last.”
Marie suppressed a shiver. What an odd story, and what terrible gods the Greeks served. “So, what were they in the end? Beasts or men?”
Jon considered her question in silence. For a moment, his expression was dark, frustratingly unreadable.
Then it was gone, and the corners of his eyes crinkled pleasantly as his lips crooked into that wry grin she’d come to relish.
“Who could say? Suppose it’s just as well, ’cause the truth is, love, folks are what they believe they are. ”
Jon’s story made it easy to imagine that Nonc Croc was not a tide-turner at all, that the mist-laden Mississippi River had transfigured into the dour, shuddering waters of the River Styx, that her guide was now the silent ferryman who carried them across the threshold of the living into the barren dark of the underworld.
But it was not the shores of the underworld their rowboat slowly approached.
It was a steamboat.
They called her La Danse de la Lune—La Lune, as she was known to most in the city.
She was the boat that glided down the river by day but whose magic truly danced only at night.
It was less a steamboat, Marie had heard, and more a glorious theater cast adrift, a nest of decadence so wild that not even the likes of the French Quarter could contain her.
Her body rose silently from the still black waters like a great-bellied beast, glistening and wide.
The steamboat’s three decks were gracefully layered, each tier encircled by golden railings strung with spherical ornaments that burned with a strange alchemical light, the color pulsing between red, green, and gold.
Twin smokestacks jutted from the crown, gently breathing ashen plumes against the night.
At the prow was the figurehead of a maiden in a wreathed headdress angled out over the dark water, a carving of the moon in her hands.
The moon glowed a dark, smoldering red, and she held it tenderly to her chest, as if cradling her own bleeding heart.
They reached the rear of the steamboat, where the paddle wheel turned noiselessly, lapping at the bluish-black water beneath.
Nonc Croc’s fingers glided through the air, and a strip of the river rose, as if being conducted.
It churned and spun, forming itself into a foaming staircase to the steamboat’s second deck.
He waved them on. “Get on, now. Only goin’ to wait ’til half past the hour.
Not a second more, y’all hear?” When Jon cast him a look, the tide-turner blanched, his grin turning lopsided.
“No trouble, Conjurer-man. No trouble at all.”
Nonc Croc started back up on his harmonica.
Marie heard it still even after she ascended the churning staircase onto the steamboat’s second deck, the notes chasing her from the roiling mist. At the last step, Jon hoisted her onto the steamboat’s second landing.
Marie gripped the golden railing, then slowly lifted her eyes to Jon’s waiting face.
In one perfect movement, he slid on a mask: a dark, sleek thing shaped into the taut lines of a panther’s face.
Marie felt the veil gently lift from her face, acutely aware of Jon’s eyes on her.
He allowed his gaze to linger for a moment longer, then slowly pulled the veil back down.
He offered his arm, and together they made their way across the barren deck.
There was a dim pulse of music on the wind that grew louder and louder as they approached a set of gold-plated doors guarded by a bald white man draped in a deep wine-colored garment that folded over his shoulder.
As they neared, Jon suddenly squeezed Marie’s hand, the barest of touches.
Lightning coursed through her. “You should know one thing,” he whispered under his breath.
She saw the tawny glint of his eyes behind the panther mask, the only tell that it was him at all.
“The moment we cross that threshold, we will be in…different territory. Our magic will not be highest here. Remember that.”