Chapter Twenty-Six Marie
Chapter Twenty-Six
Marie
When Marie emerged from the Dreadwood, Papa Legba was waiting for her.
He leaned on his cane with one hand, drumming his fingers along the head, his shining copper scales in the other.
She might have mistaken him for one of those old fellows on the corners in the Quarter, heckling passersby for a bit of coin and drink.
But he was no old man—he was an old god, an immortal capable of untold magic.
She would not allow herself to so easily be deceived by another man wearing a mask.
“You are too late, Marie. Fate has been set in motion.”
Too late? Marie drew in a breath. Flickering shadows danced behind Papa, shapeless against the gray mist. All those wandering souls. Marie suppressed a shiver—she wanted out of this strange realm.
“I told you, Marie Laveau, that you would complete my Trial of Spirit. But I never said you’d be the only one.” He paused, testing the silence. “There is another, is there not?”
Marie went very still, terror flooding her belly like cold water. “What have you done to my daughter?”
“No, what have you done, Marie?” he said. “Did you think that it is the will of the loa to see their people subjugated? Suffering endlessly? You intervened where you shouldn’t have. You stopped Jon’s rebellion. So now there will simply have to be another.”
A wave of panic seized Marie. She put a hand to her stomach, steadying the painful lurches. Saints, she was going to be sick. “He was going to sacrifice our child. I couldn’t just—”
“Did you ever think that request of sacrifice might have been a test? That the consequences of your actions and the Conjurer’s might have fortified you both in ways you can’t yet comprehend?
” Papa’s eyes flashed, molten red in the dark.
Marie fell silent, that familiar aching heat crawling over her skin.
He could snatch her soul from her body with only a thought.
What hope did she have to stand against his divinity?
“There will be a war, Marie Laveau. A reckoning. And the gods need their vessels to make it so. But you are far too righteous, Marie. The sun eclipsed by its own light. Jon is far too blinded by his own darkness.” Papa Legba turned red eyes to the sickle moon above.
“Eventually, even the moon is consumed by the night. But the star? The star hangs between the two in perfect symmetry.”
“No.” Marie froze, a look of horror slowly dawning on her face. It was as Jon had promised. The foretold Song of Three.
Papa Legba’s smile stretched as he looked down at the swaying scales in his hand. It was then that Marie noticed a sun and a moon on each side of the scales, and a little golden star hanging in the middle. The scales stopped moving, perfectly balanced at last.
“The gods have chosen you three as our intended trinity. And war you will bring us.”
Marie fell to her knees. She allowed the tears she’d held back for years to finally, finally come.
Her body was racked with the ache of guilt and shame for her part in this, for her sins, but also with the pain she’d endured in turn.
She might serve these loa, she might even lay down her life for them.
But she would not give her daughter’s. She would not.
“I will do anything. Anything. But spare my daughter. Please. I beg of you.”
“You beg for nothing, Marie Laveau. You, who have been given the gift of freedom.” Papa Legba shook his head, those red eyes dimmed. “And that freedom will cost you.”
Papa Legba vanished, leaving Marie utterly alone in this world of darkness and smoke and spirit. Marie did not know how long she waited like that, kneeling and alone, hot tears in her eyes. She could scream, and still nothing might sate the hopelessness she felt.
Had it all been for nothing? Would it have always led to this?
Marie bent her head and wept.
“Come now, Marie. I taught you better than that.”
A hand appeared in front of her. And Marie slowly looked up into the face of Jon the Conjurer. She stared, frozen, tears in her lashes, remembering his last words, the words she heard in her heart and in her nightmares every night. At every mass, in every dark room. I love you.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Jon murmured. His eyes, rich gold, softened.
His face, scarcely touched by time. She wondered how he saw her all these years later.
Was it vanity? Some semblance of old feeling?
Time had changed her—creased her brow in faint lines, threaded the dark of her hair with strands of gray—and most days she thought for the worse.
But here now, with him again, she felt as if she were twenty all over again. Young. Powerful. A terrifying illusion.
“You would take my hand again, Jon?” she asked quietly. “After everything I’ve done? After all this time?”
His answer made her breath hitch. “I would take your hand always, Marie. Always.” His hand was still before her, as it had been many years ago during their dance. “Now, come. I have much to still teach you. And there is still so much you might learn.”
Marie considered his eyes, the peculiar eyes of a harvest moon, the eyes that told her everything with one look: that he had not forgotten her sin, nor his own.
The eyes that said that he might love her still, that after all this time apart, he had never stopped.
She would not ask for his forgiveness. But for their daughter’s sake, she might ask for his help.
And very slowly, she took Jon’s hand once more.