Chapter Twenty-Two Marie #2
Jon. He was somewhere, skulking about the Quarter, fast under way on his own machinations.
In the months since their meeting in his tomb, Marie had kept her distance from him, and he left her alone—so very, very alone.
She’d thought of running before the labor had come on, but she was in no condition to travel.
The dangers of the road were many, especially for black women.
So she had no choice but to endure until after the child was born, and then and only then—Marie swallowed down the lump in her throat—she would be finished with New Orleans at last.
She crawled across the floor to the little brass bed. She was halfway there when another contraction started. She screamed against the willow bark, the noise muffled against its edges. The agony was unending. Move, Marie, she thought. Move now.
She forced herself to the bed, where, blessedly, she managed to haul herself up onto its sheets. The rest became a fevered blur—wave after wave of blistering agony that made her want to crawl out of her own skin; bucking and writhing against the dampened sheets, sticky from her sweat and tears.
The candlelight flickered. Marie’s vision blurred. She froze, eyes pinned on the wall across the room, where two little black girls, slaves perhaps, stood watching, hand in hand. They put their fingers to their lips. Shhh. And then they vanished.
In her fevered haze, other things appeared to her.
Tricks of the mind. Old Sanite, gray and smiling, rocking on her chair, eyes the white of northern snow.
Her grand-mère, tsking her tongue at Marie’s folly.
Her mother, turning away again, even now.
One face grew into another, then another.
The spirits were having their fun. Monsters and devils, the lot of them.
Marie prayed. She cursed. But none of it seemed to do a lick of good, not when her body seemed determined to tear itself asunder.
Marie bit down so hard on the bark that she cracked it in half.
But none of it mattered. Her daughter must live.
The thought burned like fire in her mind, her kindred element.
She let it give her life, keep her conscious long enough to finish the labor.
She pushed and pushed until at last a wailing cry broke the silence.
Marie reached down and pulled her baby to her breast. All thoughts of spirits and suffering vanished. Because in that moment, staring at her daughter’s perfect face, she had found her purpose at last, the reason for it all. The reason she would gladly suffer again, if it came to it.
She was tiny and pale, but her skin held some color, which Marie knew would deepen beautifully in time. Her eyes were dark and filmy, her head mostly absent of hair apart from a few dark curls. She was wild, even then. She was beautiful. Her daughter at last. Hers.
Despite her happiness, Marie found herself thinking of her mother again.
Although Marguerite Darcantrel had taken off running down that long road to freedom without a look back, sometimes Marie replayed the moment again in her dreams, watching her mother walk backward down that road, back toward her outstretched hand.
As a child she wondered what might have come from that moment.
What kind of mother she might have had, what kind of mother might have protected her.
She would never know. Because she was a mother now, her entire destiny reshaped itself into a single word more powerful than the oldest magic she knew.
Freedom was here with her own daughter. Freedom was this.
“Marie Laveau, I make this promise to you,” Marie cooed to her daughter.
“I will never, ever leave nor forsake you. And you will know only freedom. The kind that will allow you to live beautifully and fully until you are an old, old woman who will pass peacefully in her own bed, in her own house, in her own time, because she lived free.”
Marie pressed a kiss to her head, sealed the vow into her flesh. A little copper star glowed at the center of her forehead, where Marie’s lips had brushed, then vanished. It was the mark of her magic.
It was a promise.
With her daughter swaddled to her back, Marie took to the moonlit roads.
She moved as noiselessly as she could, but even after taking a pain tonic, moving in her state meant her breathing was labored, the sound deafening to her own ears.
Her eyes darted through the dark, bracing for signs of wolves and men, of spirits lingering amongst the withered trees. But it was empty. She kept on.
She’d given her baby a sleeping tincture, just a few drops to keep her quiet. Crying on the run was a dangerous thing, a danger she simply couldn’t afford. But she slept soundly at Marie’s back, her little breaths threaded with unspoken magic.
Where the road forked, officers trotted on horseback, patrolling the routes for runaways and thieves.
Marie slipped into the brush, careful to keep her baby’s head from catching on wayward branches.
Finally, they came to a clearing, where blueberries sprang up in bright patches, the damp grass silver against the moonlight.
“Just where do you think you’re going?”
Marie’s heart fell. Because that was the voice of many black folks’ nightmares. The voice of the Brotherhood’s Grand Wizard.
Marie turned, eyes narrowing. “What do you want, Gailon?”
Gailon stepped forth, leaning on his staff of aged oak. “As tempting as it might be to regale you with my ambitions, we simply haven’t the time, Marie. It is not about what I want at the moment, but what our good mayor intends for you.”
“Corbin,” Marie spat. “You’d work with him? Even if—”
Gailon cut her short with a stilted laugh.
“Child, I would work with the devil if it brought me an inch closer to my goals. With you out of the way, the Voodoos would not have a proper successor, would they? Once that old bitch dies, there will be no Quarter Queen to protect them. Our beloved mayor has set his eyes on your child. Corbin wants returned to him what is rightfully his. A Laveau.”
“My daughter will be owned by no man,” snarled Marie.
“Your hand has been dealt, witch. Come now, and let us make this quick.”
“I have no quarrel with you, Gailon.” Marie glanced about the darkened field. She counted six alchemists. “Nor with the Brotherhood.”
“And truly, we’ve none with you, Marie Laveau. You are but a means to a very profitable end. Come now, and make this easy. For the both of you.”
Fuck that. She would not go quietly. She would not go at all. And she had no intention of making anything remotely easy for a man like Gailon.
At his signal, the alchemists advanced on her.
So be it, Marie thought. She was ready. She had to be.
Two she killed immediately. The fire leapt from her fingers, snaking around their throats like a blazing lasso.
And she pulled with all her might until she saw their heads singed from their necks.
Gailon swung his staff in a low arc, and weeds shot up from the earth, snatching Marie’s ankles.
But she was quicker, singeing them with her fire, then casting a spell upon the wind.
It came sailing through the dark, her little brace of wind, and struck Gailon in the side.
He went flying back and then hit the ground.
Marie heaved, panting from the strain. She was still not yet healed, the exhaustion of her labor only a few hours previous.
It was no matter. In that moment, her hatred for the Brotherhood burned hotter than any flame she could cast, and through its fury she would gather her strength.
Gailon rose, stalking intently toward her.
He made a motion with his hand to his alchemists.
No, his eyes seemed to say, this one is mine.
Because her eyes were trained so closely on Gailon, she did not hear the telltale swing of chains until it was too late. Snap. Something heavy closed around Marie’s neck. A scream tore its way from her throat and out into the wild of the bayou.
And just like that, her magic vanished. Marie clawed at her neck, but she knew it was useless. Aurum. It burned her fingers, but still she pried until her flesh smoked and sizzled.
“Silas,” she hissed.
Silas stepped out from behind her, his face smooth as stone. “Hello, Marie.”
Marie did not pretend to know a man like Silas Favreau, whose eyes held secrets, his impish smile a book without words.
She hadn’t known him still when she’d found him that fateful night with Father Antoine, his face marred by some worry.
But she had thought she’d glimpsed the face of a man who held remorse, who was capable of change.
She was wrong. Now that same face stared coldly down at her, unblinking.
Silas crouched beside Marie, and then he was reaching over her, to her baby bundled at her back.
“No!” Marie clawed and struck out at him, but he swatted her away, as if she were nothing more than a swamp mosquito. “Silas, no!” She reached for him, but Gailon lifted a hand and spoke a word, and her muscles locked, still as stone.
Silas passed her baby into Gailon’s waiting arms. Wild panic and rage made the world spin.
He held her a little out from him, as if she were a wondrous novelty, a delightful curiosity he had never seen before.
Those harrowing sights she’d glimpsed aboard La Lune came flooding back to Marie—those runaway slaves transmuted into beasts, the men in cages made to heel like wild dogs, the experiments all in the name of arcane advancement and craft.
Gailon cradled her daughter in his arms. Marie could no longer talk, but she was screaming on the inside.
Her daughter stirred awake with a cry. The tincture had worn off, Marie thought helplessly.
Her baby was crying. Marie was crying too, breasts aching with milk, the tears streaking down her face like silver streams to nowhere.
She had thought she had known heartbreak before.
But that had been only a small, bitter taste.
The Grand Wizard took one last look at Marie, then turned and swept away into the dark. His alchemists followed after him until only Silas remained.
He crouched beside her, staring at her with those impassive eyes. “I told you, didn’t I, Marie? I warned you. Turn your heart to stone.” He reached out, moving aside a rebellious curl that had tumbled free across her cheek. “And you did not listen.”
He put a hand to Marie’s furrowed brow, murmuring a spell beneath his breath. And then Marie fell away into the darkness of sleep.