Tag: Remembrance

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opens in a new windowRemembrance…It’s a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy…if you can make it there.

Ohio, present day. An elderly woman who is more than she seems warns against rising racism as a young woman grapples with her life.

Haiti, 1791, on the brink of revolution. When the slave Abigail is forced from her children to take her mistress to safety, she discovers New Orleans has its own powers.

1857 New Orleans—a city of unrest: Following tragedy, house girl Margot is sold just before her 18th birthday and her promised freedom. Desperate, she escapes and chases a whisper…. Remembrance.

opens in a new windowRemembrance by Rita Woods will be available on January 21. Please enjoy the following excerpt and read excerpts from Gaelle, Margot, and Abigal opens in a new windowhere,  opens in a new windowhere, and opens in a new windowhere!

Winter

1852

Winter woke with a start, heart tripping wildly in her chest. The night had been filled with vaguely remembered nightmares: snarling dogs, screaming children, fire. It clung to her still, mixing with the sweat on her skin, chilling her. She kicked free of her blankets and sat up, feeling jittery and out of sorts.

Crawling from her bedding, she splashed cold water from the basin on her face, in her armpits, pausing for a moment to stare at the reflection that rippled on the water’s surface. Broad face, the color of a pine cone, hair tangled wildly about her head. She tugged at it, trying to separate the matted strands, but it was useless. With a sigh, she pushed one finger into the bowl of soda powder and quickly brushed her teeth, then pulled the cloak from the peg near the door. Wrapping it around her shoulders, she stepped into the cold fall morning.

It was barely an hour past dawn and Remembrance was already buzzing with activity. From the highlands far up in the hills that ringed the settlement, the mournful lowing of cows drifted down to her through the trees, punctuated by the high pitched ringing of Thomas’s hammer as he worked the metal in his smithy.

Remembrance.

To Winter, it was simply the place she’d grown up, the only home she’d ever known. But to everyone else who lived here, down to the last man, woman, and child, it was a place of sanctuary. A place where people like her—colored people—could live in peace and safety.

Remembrance.

A place within a place.

Spoken of with a pride mixed with disbelief. A place that should not exist, yet did. A place created by some sort of poorly understood magic. Created by Mother Abigail. Priestess. Practitioner of vodun.

Instinctively, Winter turned to look up the wide, worn trail that led to the highlands. Mother Abigail’s cabin lay nearly at the summit of one of the highest hills, just below the wide, flat clearing where the men worked a few acres of crops and their small herd of sheep and cattle grazed. The priestess’s cabin was no different than all the others in Remembrance, a simple structure of rough wood planks and river stone.

Something’s coming—something big. Something terrible.

The thought came out of nowhere, like a slap in the face, and Winter inhaled sharply as a shiver snaked up her spine. The nightmares seemed to have followed her into the daylight. Clutching her cloak, she sniffed at the air. There was an uncomfortable sensation in the center of her gut, as if the settlement was just the smallest bit off-balance.

With a soft grunt, Winter stepped onto the path, following it as it sloped gently downhill, away from Mother Abigail’s cabin. The air was clean, crisp, the trees glowing scarlet and gold in the muted sunlight. The damp earth felt wonderfully cold beneath her bare feet. She waded into a mound of leaves, inhaling the scent of forest and earth, just as Will, the blacksmith’s younger son, passed her, heading toward the highlands. The boy grinned, shaking his head at the sight of her standing shin-deep in wet leaves. By the time she reached the trailhead and entered the clearing for the Central Fire, the feeling of foreboding was fading.

A handful of women still hovered near the fire circle. They nodded but didn’t speak as they quickly rearranged the firewood near the canning shed before disappearing, laughing, down a narrow path through the woods. It was washday, and most of the women of Remembrance would spend it down at the creek washing the bed linens and clothes.

It was peculiar to be alone at the Central Fire, the massive fire circle that marked the very core of Remembrance. It was where the settlers gathered for meals and fellowship, for announcements and celebrations, but the effort it took to keep Remembrance running smoothly, the urgency of chores to be done, especially now, in preparation against the coming winter, had scattered the settlers to their tasks. Everyone had their job to do in Remembrance. Everyone except her.

Despite the fact that she had been in Remembrance longer than anyone aside from Mother Abigail, despite the fact that Remembrance was her only home, somehow she drifted just outside the beating heart of the settlement, circling round and round but never quite absorbed into its soul.

The ex-slaves, the men and women who had managed to find their way to the safety of Remembrance, were polite, but distant. Because she belonged to Mother Abigail? Because she was not one of them?

She had not been born here, in this place that should not even exist. She had been born out there, in the world, like them. Mother Abigail told her the story every day on the anniversary of her finding.

Her mother, her real mother—a woman whose name she would never know—had placed her in a basket and covered her with a woolen shawl, and then she had run. Run from one of those bad places Winter only knew as names in other people’s stories. Her nameless mother had looked not much older than Winter was now. Had she run from Kentucky? From Alabama? Perhaps one of those island plantations that grew rice off the coast of South Carolina. All Mother Abigail could tell her was that her mother had run, made it all the way to Remembrance, made it almost to freedom.

Except . . .

Except a freak late-spring storm had roared in off the lake. Birds froze solid to tree limbs. The sky filled with snow thunder. Mother Abigail had found them there, on the other side of the Edge, that thin boundary separating Remembrance from the outside world. Her mother was wrapped around the basket, giving her baby the last, the only thing, she had to offer—her body’s dying warmth.

“Named you Winter,” said Mother Abigail every time she told the story. “And you been mine ever since.”

Winter glanced up at the lightening sky. She was one of them. Even if she couldn’t remember the horror, the fear. The Outside had taken something from her, too.

Winter’s stomach rumbled and she moved inside the ring of logs surrounding the massive Central Fire. There, at the fire’s edge, she found a skillet of fried apples and potatoes, still warm. She fixed herself a plate and plopped down on the log nearest the fire.

Something’s coming.

She jerked and shoved the thought away, leaning closer to the fire. The sharp October wind cooled her back, while the fire toasted her face. At a sharp noise, her head shot up, but it was only Belle, gathering ash into a pail on the far side of the fire circle. The woman glanced at Winter, her face expressionless, before picking up the battered pail and heading back down the path that led to the wash hut at the creek’s edge, leaving her alone once again.

Winter gulped down the rest of her breakfast and stood. The heat from the fire had become almost uncomfortable. She took a step back and stared into the flames. Unease settled around her again. After washing her plate, she turned and wandered aimlessly toward one of the paths leading away from the circle. Briefly, she considered joining the other women at the creek but quickly dismissed that idea. Whenever she was around, they were tense, laughing awkwardly, shooting her looks from the side of their eyes.

And their scrutiny made her clumsy, inattentive. The clothes she was washing drifted downstream. The biscuits she was baking would refuse to rise. Once, while stirring lye for soap, she’d even managed to catch the hem of her shift on fire. No. She didn’t want to be around them any more than they wanted her around.

She found herself at the clearing, a flat open space filled with knee-high grass, turning from green to yellow in the deepening fall. Sinking down, she lay on her back and stared up at the sky. Clouds moved overhead and the sun disappeared behind them for a moment, taking the illusion of heat with them. Winter shivered. This was considered the boundary to Remembrance and almost no one came out this far. But she knew this was an illusion, knew that you could walk for days and days and never leave Remembrance, never see a soul who had not been allowed in, never be Outside. Only when Mother Abigail willed it, only when she dropped the Edge, would they become one with the rest of the world.

Winter had asked Mother Abigail to explain it to her once, how it was possible, and the old priestess had laid a faded handkerchief on her lap.

“See,” she said, smoothing it flat, “this is the world for everybody else.”

Then carefully, she had folded it, pleating it so that it had folded on itself like an accordion.

“But this how the world really is.” She ran a wrinkled finger inside one of the pleats. “I just bent space a tiny bit and made us this place here. Inside a’ one a’ these folds.”

“World there. And another world. And another yet.” She stroked the parallel folds. “Us? We here. And folks only see what they expectin’ to see. So they don’t really see.”

“But how, Mother Abigail?” she’d asked. “How do you fold up space like that?”

The old woman frowned and then she laughed. “How does that ol’man Willie wiggle his ears? Just something I can do.”

But there was more to it than that. Even as a little girl Winter had known that. She lay in the grass, watching the clouds slowly move across the sky. The cold seeped through her cloak and then her cotton shift, but still she lay there. A flock of geese cut across the sky, their discordant honking drifting down to her.

Mother Abigail would surely be looking for her, but for now she felt calm and at peace.

The grass rustled in the wind. And something else. She felt it. A slight crackling on her skin: sharp, unpleasant. She sat up. A dozen yards away, the clearing disappeared in a line of thick trees. A tall mulberry, its branches already bare after the first frost, marked the beginning of the forest. She was alone, and yet . . .

Something had changed, she could feel it. The skin on the back of her neck, between her shoulder blades, felt hot, as if she were standing directly in front of the Central Fire once again. The ground beneath her feet seemed to sag, as if some great weight were settling there beside her. There was no one in the clearing with her that she could see, but all her senses sounded an alarm. Something was wrong. She didn’t know what, but she knew she needed to leave. She needed to get back to the settlement. She stood just as the mulberry began to shake violently. A man burst from the forest into the clearing, and Winter cried out, stumbling backward. He fell once, then fell again. Rising to one knee, he stared at her, his eyes wild, terrified.

“Help me!” he croaked.

She stood, frozen, horrified, and then Mother Abigail was there. And Josiah, her constant companion, as always, never far behind. They went to the man, the priestess wrapping one strong arm around his waist lest he fall again. Together, Josiah and Mother Abigail half dragged, half carried the man back across the grass to where Winter still stood, too shocked to move.

The man looked to be in his early twenties, five or six years older than she was. He had skin the color of a hickory nut, and curly black hair that hung past his shoulders. His bottom lip was swollen and there was blood caked near his left temple.

Winter understood immediately that he was a runaway. But how was that possible? No one just appeared in Remembrance. Mother Abigail had to lower the Edge, to flatten out the folds that separated the spaces between worlds. She was about to ask, when she felt the clearing shift again, felt the painful crackling down her back. Her hair stood on end, sparking with energy, and she knew without touching it that it would be hot to the touch.

“Hey there, Zeus.”

They all spun toward the voice. From the corner of her eye she saw Mother Abigail stagger and nearly drop the runaway, who moaned softly. She gawked as a white man emerged from the trees. Though she had never seen one before, either a white man or a slave tracker, she knew him instantly for what he was. And in spite of her fear, she was curious.

The man wasn’t in fact, white at all, but a sort of grayish pink. His black hair looked greasy and hung limply in his eyes. The tip of his thin nose was red and pockmarked. Except for the gun that he carried loosely in his arms, there was nothing scary about him, and yet, she sensed the runaway’s terror. And Mother Abigail’s tension.

“How you holdin’ up there, Zeus?” asked the white man. His tone was calm, friendly.

“Kinda poorly, Master Clay,” said the runaway through his swollen lips.

“Zeus, you got to come on with me now, you hear?” The rifle rested in the crook of the slaver’s arm, the barrel pointed toward the ground. “You got the Gilliams all in a lather, boy. And frankly, I think you rather hurt their feelin’s runnin’ off like that. Come on back with me now. I hear tell they hardly ever beat their niggers. You might even get away with just a good, stern talking to.”

He smiled, but his eyes were hard beneath the lank hair.

Mother Abigail shifted the weight of the slave against Josiah and took a step toward the slaver.

“Get yourself away from here, you white Satan,” she snapped. “You’ll not be takin’ anyone from here. Not for no beatin’, not for no talkin’ to. This man has his freedom on him now. He belongs only to his own self. You can take that back to the Gilliams.”

The white man stiffened and his mouth dropped open as he glanced at the other three Negroes in the clearing. He shifted his gun, and Winter could see the muscles working in his jaw. He turned his attention back to Mother Abigail, his pale eyes narrowed, flashing rage.

“Look, Auntie . . . ,” he began.

“I ain’t your auntie,” snarled the old woman. “My name is Mother Abigail. You’ll need to be rememberin’ that.”

Clay shook his head and brought the barrel of the gun up slightly. “Ma’am—” He stopped short.

The air around them had begun to warm, and from the corner of her eye Winter could see the far end of the clearing warp slightly, lose its shape. She looked from Mother Abigail to the white man and back again. The slaver could feel the shifting around them, too. She could see it in his eyes. He didn’t know what it was yet, but if he didn’t leave soon, he would. And it would be bad for him.

“Ma’am,” Clay began again, “ain’t got no truck with y’all. I just come for Zeus. He ain’t got no right to steal hisself, and I been paid to bring him back.”

He glanced at Winter and she saw him hesitate. She saw something else as well, the dawning of fear, the look of a man beginning to realize that he doesn’t know quite what he’s walked into.

It was hot in the clearing now and Winter was sweating under her wool cloak. A searing wind had begun to blow across the yellowed grass, bending the blades. The runaway had recovered himself a bit and looked around in confusion. The slaver cleared his throat, a soft sound that Winter seemed to hear more in her brain than in her ears.

“Zeus, you come along peaceful,” he said, his voice just the tiniest bit higher than before. “You know the law says I can drag your friends along, too, if they cause a ruckus, but they really ain’t none a’ my business.”

Zeus took a hesitant step forward, but Josiah seized hold of his tattered shirt, holding him back. The slaver grunted his displeasure, and the thin veneer of civility evaporated.

“Enough of this now,” he snapped, and moved to reach for Zeus, but Mother Abigail stepped in front of him, blocking his way.

“Heed me,” said the priestess. “You can leave this place a whole man or broken, but you will leave.”

Winter bit her lip. Go. Just go, she silently pleaded. Go now, before it’s too late. The priestess could bring up the Edge if she wanted, there was no reason to keep talking to this slaver man. He had to realize that he was no real threat to them. He had to feel that. Maybe Mother Abigail would just let him go.

But she wouldn’t. Not now. Rage had hold of her. Winter felt it, they could all feel it, pulsing off the priestess in waves as Mother Abigail’s fury, her hatred of this slave catcher, twisted and warped, transforming from emotion into pure energy. If the slaver didn’t run, run now, then the Gilliams and Zeus would be the last thing on his mind.

The heat in the clearing had become nearly unbearable. Sweat rolled between Winter’s shoulder blades, pasting her cloak against her back. The air stung her throat, her nose. The slaver’s eyes swung between Mother Abigail and Josiah, then back again, sweat beading on his lip. He took a step back and Winter saw him raise his gun.

Beside her, Zeus was trembling, and Winter grabbed his hand before he could bolt. She could sense his heart racing and held on tight.

When Mother Abigail’s powers were unleashed like this, it was best to stand very still. It was better to be nowhere near her, but there was no hope for that now. All they could do was hold still and hold on. Overhead came a crash, like thunder. The sky had turned flat and gray as a dinner plate. Hot, superheated air whipped the gentle wind into a swirling gale. It lashed the high grass, and a cloud of Ohio dirt rose up and engulfed the slaver in a tornado of rich black soil, scouring his skin. He cried out, dropping his gun as he fell back. For a moment he seemed to disappear and the world spun around them. Winter gritted her teeth, fought for balance.

The slaver was there, farther into the trees, then gone. For a split second she saw him again, standing in a bright clearing, the winds calm, the sun shining. His mouth was open in a silent scream and he seemed not to see them from where he stood, trapped in the folds of time and space. Lost.

Mother Abigail raised her hands.

“No, Abigail!” cried Josiah. He lunged for the priestess and there was another clap of thunder. The ground pitched, throwing them all to the ground.

And then . . . silence.

Mother Abigail whirled toward Josiah, eyes blazing.

“You let him make you lose the thread like that, Abigail?” he asked, calmly returning her gaze. “You one of one. He just one of many.”

The old woman was breathing hard. Winter got slowly to her knees. It was cooling off again. The wind a normal wind now. She tasted grit in her mouth. She glanced at the slaver. He sat, legs akimbo, in the dirt. His face was bloodied and scraped, his dark hair gray now, coated with dirt. He stared at them, unseeing.

“One less,” said Mother Abigail, her voice hard, staring with disgust at the white man at her feet. “Don’t need to kill him. Just need to lose him. Remembrance not the only world I know how to make.”

She laughed grimly, and the sound made the hairs stand up on the back of Winter’s neck. Josiah pulled his pipe from his shirt pocket.

“You lose him, another one just take his place,” he said, tapping tobacco into his palm.

Mother Abigail said nothing for a long moment, then she grunted and bent over the prostrate slaver. Winter tensed.

But the old priestess peered into Clay’s blank face. “Ou se kaka, blanc,” she whispered. “Remember this place and never come here again. Remember my name.”

The slaver flinched and tried to scrabble away. Mother Abigail straightened.

“Get the boy,” said Mother Abigail, pointing at Zeus, who still lay trembling on the ground.

She raised her arms, seemed to falter for a moment, then suddenly the air was fresh and cool. The slaver was gone, as if he had never existed. Once again, Winter felt the familiar hum against her skin. The Edge had been restored. They were back in Remembrance: safe, separate.

Without a word, Mother Abigail turned to follow the trail that would lead them to the center of the settlement, as Josiah helped Zeus to his feet. Winter, her heart still beating wildly, turned to follow. At the trailhead she turned to look back at the clearing. From somewhere deep in her head, she thought she heard the slaver scream.

Copyright © 2020 by Rita Woods

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opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window

opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window

opens in a new windowRemembrance…It’s a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy…if you can make it there.

Ohio, present day. An elderly woman who is more than she seems warns against rising racism as a young woman grapples with her life.

Haiti, 1791, on the brink of revolution. When the slave Abigail is forced from her children to take her mistress to safety, she discovers New Orleans has its own powers.

1857 New Orleans—a city of unrest: Following tragedy, house girl Margot is sold just before her 18th birthday and her promised freedom. Desperate, she escapes and chases a whisper…. Remembrance.

opens in a new windowRemembrance by Rita Woods will be available on January 21. Please enjoy the following excerpt and read excerpts from Gaelle and Margot opens in a new windowhere and opens in a new windowhere!

Abigail

Haiti
1791

Nearly a half mile up, through thick stands of banana and coconut trees, so high that sometimes, especially in the rainy season, it was covered in dense clouds, was her place, her secret place.

The air was clean here, free from the smoke and stench of the coffee camps. But the air was also thinner, and she was forced every so often to stop and catch her breath. High above, in the bright tree canopy, she heard the screech of an island parrot and smiled.

“Se bon,” she murmured. “The bird of luck.”

She climbed faster, pushing herself. She wanted to have time in her secret place before the sun set. It was Sunday, and the Code Noir—The Black Codes—decreed that slaves must not work on Sundays, but the royal commissioner was far away, in Cap-Français, and the colonies across the seas were mad for their coffee.

“Lajan avan lwa.” Abigail spit into the trees. “Money always over the law.”

Still, Monsieur Rousse was better than most of the other planters, the ones who worked their slaves to death because it was cheaper to replace one than to rest one. On Eau Lointaine Far Water—slaves only worked the groves for two hours on Sundays and were given an extra ration of pork and raw cane on that day. Far Water slaves were not whipped, and Thierry Rousse believed it was a sin to sell a child away from its mother before the age of twelve. The master even freed the old ones—the ones wrung dry from all the years of forced labor in the brutal sun of Saint-Domingue’s coffee fields—“so that they could spend their last years knowing the grace of French citizenship.”

The other planters thought Monsieur Rousse a fool. They predicted that one day his nègres would cut his throat while he slept. Rousse merely smiled. “I am a good Catholic,” he told them; “God will protect me.” He was a good Catholic and he held to the Code Noir as closely as his profits would allow.

Abigail pressed on, her legs aching, her heart fluttering in her chest like the jeweled hummingbirds that flitted in the shadows.

Suddenly, the forest opened up and she was there: at her secret place.

She was standing on a wide ledge of stone, a break in the dense blanket of trees that covered the cliffs surrounding her. High above, the mountain continued up and up, vanishing into the clouds, while below, the forest ran downhill, all the way to the sea. Hibiscus flowed down the mountainside, swaying in the thin air, like pink and white silks.

Abigail flung herself to the ground and fanned the sweat from her face with a palm leaf, before pulling a small coco vert from her skirt pocket. Slicing open the top, she threw back her head and drank, openmouthed, the coconut water warm and sweet.

Far below, rimming the edge of the jungle, she could just make out the red roofs of Cap-Français and, just beyond, the small, pale dots scattered on the surface of the sea that she knew were ships.

The sea.

She hated it. Hated the sight of it, its warm, salty smell like the breath of a great beast. Abigail squinted. The water was so blue that it seemed to swallow all the light of the sky.

When the blancs, the whites, had come for her, when they’d snatched her from the banks of the shallow river that ran near her village, she couldn’t have understood then, would never have believed, that there could be so much water in the whole of the world, and that on the other side of that huge water was a world so foreign, so far away, that she would never see her family again.

Ama, her second sister, had been collecting reeds on the riverbank with her that day, and they’d both been taken and thrown into the same dark place on a ship to cross the never-ending water. Ama never spoke another word. She sat rocking back and forth in the stinking darkness, silent, arms wrapped around her long legs. On a cool, windless night, when the blancs brought them out of the dark place to throw salty water on their skin and make them walk back and forth, yelling at them in their strange language, Ama had jerked away and clamored to the top of a railing. At the last minute she turned and smiled at Abigail. And then she was gone. As if she had never been in the world at all.

A sob escaped from somewhere deep inside, and Abigail began to punch herself in the face, her fists striking her cheeks, her eyes, harder and harder until that memory and all memories that came before, were beaten back into that dark, unreachable part of her soul. There was no “before.” There was only this place of sky and water and trees, this place of endless work, this place in which there were a hundred ways to die a horrible death.

And now Hercule was gone.

Eleven days and more. He had come to her that Sunday, come to see her and their sons. Hercule. Her blessing from the gods. Her piece of dry land in this cursed place. Henri and Claude had tumbled like monkeys between their father’s feet, laughing, as he’d tried to show them how to shape wood with heat and water. He was a cooper, the best on the island, and it gave him a freedom few other slaves enjoyed. But his sons were only five and too restless to pay attention, so Hercule had finally given up and tossed coconut shells for them to chase while she fried the plaintains and the bit of fish he’d brought.

She gnashed her teeth. She should have known. When it had come time to leave, he’d held her face a little too long, stared too hard into her eyes.

Hercule’s master came racing into Far Water three days later, tumbling from his horse, yelling for the master.

Monsieur Rousse had been having dinner and he came to the door, shirtsleeves undone. Abigail saw it all from the door of the cookhouse. She gripped a bag of rice so tightly that it ripped, the white grain spilling into the dirt at her feet.

“That boy has run off,” bellowed Monsieur Quennelle. “I told you, things are out of hand. We must crack down now, or it will be our ruin.”

Monsieur Rousse spoke softly, too softly for her to hear. He leaned into the sweating Quennelle, his dinner napkin still in his hand.

“You’re a fool, Rousse! The nègres are arming themselves against us, and that Hercule is with them.”

Abigail cried out, and the two planters turned just as her knees buckled. Hercule’s master was a big man, fat and soft as a maggot. He stormed toward her, yanking her roughly from the ground.

“You are his épouse, no? His wife?” He shook her. “Where did he go? What did he tell you?”

In the next instant, her master was there. “Assez!”

Quennelle shook her harder and she gritted her teeth against the pain, forcing herself not to yank away, not to slap his doughy face.

“This woman knows something,” he cried. “They all know something. We are French men, non? Should we let these animals simply turn on us like rabid dogs? Have you forgotten that fils de chienne Macandel in ’fifty-eight? The women and children he slaughtered in their beds? Or do you think your kindness, your extra bit of porc, will protect you and your pretty white wife?” He spit.

“I said, enough!” Rousse grabbed Quennelle and spun him around. “This girl is my property and, as far as I know, has done nothing to warrant this rough handling.”

The fat planter glared at him. Rousse returned the look, then shook his head before turning toward Abigail, who stood trembling, clutching her throbbing arm in one hand, the shredded rice sack in the other.

“Do you know anything about Hercule, Abigail?” he asked. His voice was firm but gentle.

Abigail shook her head. “Non, Monsieur.”

Rousse nodded and started to turn away.

“But . . .”

He stopped, waiting.

“He would not just run off, Monsieur.”

“Ha!” cried Quennelle.

Abigail stiffened. She was a large woman, tall, broad through the shoulders, and muscular from years of hard labor. She glared at Hercule’s master, defiant. He would not touch her again, not with Monsieur Rousse standing there.

“He would not just run off, Monsieur. Not without a word.” She spoke the words in French, not Creole, speaking slowly to make sure the words were right. “He is husband to me, father to my sons.”

“Husband.” Quennelle spit again in the damp earth. “As if that means a thing to a nègre.” He stomped back toward the house.

Abigail dug her nails into the soft meat of her palms to keep from throwing herself on his back and sinking her teeth into the fat, sweaty neck.

Thierry Rousse watched him go in silence. He sighed.

“Abigail . . . ,” he began finally.

“I swear on the Virgin that I know nothing,” said Abigail. Her voice shook, all defiance gone.

Her master worried the dinner napkin between his fingers for a moment, then patted her lightly on the shoulder. Ça ira. It will be alright.”

He sighed again, then turned to follow after his uninvited guest.

But it wasn’t going to be alright. Eleven days and now the sun was preparing to set on yet another one. And still no word of Hercule. He had gone to join the rebels. She was sure of it.

There were more of them every day, slaves running into the mountains, deserting the coffee and indigo fields, fleeing the sugar plantations. There were rumors, murmurings in the slave quarters, in the cookhouses, behind the laundry sheds. Slaves exchanging furtive glances as they picked coffee cherries from the trees: the mountains have claimed another, they whispered.

Abigail slid down on the ledge and closed her eyes.

Maroons.

They were called maroons: those slaves who escaped into the wilds of the forests high above the plantations. They crept down from the mountains like smoke—raiding the plantations, stealing food, weapons, even white enfants, to turn them into slaves, it was said, or maybe to hurl them into the sea as an offering to the orisha, the gods. Abigail had heard both.

And now Hercule was one of them, Abigail felt that as surely as she felt the breeze on her skin. Hercule had become a maroon.

She lay there on the ledge and held herself still. Her grandmother had been an honored priestess of their people and, more times than Abigail could count, had forced her to lie silent in the grass and listen. “The world will tell you secrets. But you must be still and ready to hear.”

It was a lesson Abigail had had little patience for. But now as she lay on her little wedge of rock, she tried. She closed her eyes, stared at the dark space behind her lids, focusing. From where she lay, the distant sea was silent, its voice lost in the trees far below, but she could hear monkeys arguing in the treetops, the wind rustling the palm branches. Somewhere above her, a coconut fell to the ground, and she felt the vibration beneath her hands.

She stared at that dark place and felt the air moving around her skin, felt the roughness of her shift, the grains of dirt beneath her back, felt the humming of the earth, its energy.

Then she was no longer on a rocky ledge high over Cap-Français. She was moving, sliding through space, the air around her warm then cool, as she passed in and out of shadow.

Hercule.

She felt something fold inside herself, and the world bloomed like a flower, its many petals each a perfect world in itself. In one, she saw a huge bird made of metal roar through the blue sky over where she lay; in another, a glass box with people singing inside. The images confused her but she forced herself to lay still, watching but not feeling, the way her grandmother had taught her.

Suddenly, her breath caught in her throat.

Hercule.

There. Imperfect. As if through dust-streaked glass. But there. Her Hercule. His skin the blue-black of a coffee bean, his lips full and soft. His face seemed thinner, bruised. But his eyes . . .

Abigail gasped and for a moment felt herself spiraling away from him, hurtling toward a crack in the universe, toward one of those other worlds, and she struggled to calm herself, to see but not feel.

Hercule’s eyes . . .

They were hard, cruel. Where was the laughter that she knew? Where was the kindness? This Hercule was not her Hercule. This Hercule was a stranger.

“Kiyes ou ye,” she whispered. “My heart. Kisa ou ap fe? What are you doing out here?”

Hercule’s head shot up and he frowned. He seemed to search the trees, the shadows around him.

“My love,” she whispered. Her husband caressed his throat, the last place she had touched her lips before he’d run down the mountain trail, away from her. She reached for him, even as she knew that she would feel nothing beneath her hand. And then the world exploded, throwing her out of that seam between worlds, slamming her back onto her high mountain ledge.

Abigail lurched upward. “Hercule!”

She sat blinking in the lowering sun, confused. A thick column of black smoke rose from the hills above Cap-Français, appearing like a feather on the mountain’s cap of green. As she watched, a pinpoint of bright orange formed at its base, growing wider inside the trees with each passing second.

The sun was setting over the city there at the edge of the sea, and at first the orange glow seemed to be just a reflection of the sunset. And then she saw that it was not.

“Bondye,” Abigail cried. “My God.”

Fire. Saint-Domingue was on fire.

Another explosion rocked the countryside. She felt it in her teeth. Whirling, she began to race back down through the jungle, back toward Far Water. Back to her children.

Copyright © 2020 by Rita Woods

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opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window

opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window

opens in a new windowRemembrance…It’s a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy…if you can make it there.

Ohio, present day. An elderly woman who is more than she seems warns against rising racism as a young woman grapples with her life.

Haiti, 1791, on the brink of revolution. When the slave Abigail is forced from her children to take her mistress to safety, she discovers New Orleans has its own powers.

1857 New Orleans—a city of unrest: Following tragedy, house girl Margot is sold just before her 18th birthday and her promised freedom. Desperate, she escapes and chases a whisper…. Remembrance.

opens in a new windowRemembrance by Rita Woods will be available on January 21. Please enjoy the following excerpt and read an excerpt from Gaelle’s point of view opens in a new windowhere!

Margot

Far Water, Louisiana
1857

Far Water sat on the far eastern edge of the vast Atchafalaya Basin, wedged on a narrow spit of land between seemingly endless miles of swamp and marshland. The estate was far enough away from the poisonous air of the city for safety, yet still close enough should James Hannigan have the need to rush back and attend to his business empire.

The big house was invisible from the main road. Perched at the end of a long, curving drive, it appeared suddenly to visitors—with its heavy stone walls, tall, white pillars, and ornate shutters—rising like a massive wedding cake between the trees.

Catherine Hannigan had filled Far Water’s rooms with crystal chandeliers and heavy velvet tapestries. The windows and doors were trimmed in gold leaf. The bureaus and cabinets overflowed with silver. Far Water was as grand in every way as the Prytania Street mansion back in the city, thirty-five miles to the northeast. During the long, hot months of summer, the Hannigans entertained often. Those who made the trek from their plantations along the great River Road that ran beside the Mississippi or from their mansions in New Orleans or Baton Rouge, were feted like the cotton, coffee, sugar, cattle, slave-holding royalty that they were.

Margot was on her hands and knees in the foyer, giving the floor of the great hall a final scrubbing before the family arrived. The marble glowed in the sunlight streaming through the tall windows on either side of the front door.

“You missed a spot.”

Margot jerked, nearly overturning the water pail. She hadn’t heard Veronique come down the stairs.

“What are you doing?” she asked over her shoulder, dabbing at the spilled water.

Veronique shrugged.

Margot rolled her eyes. “Well, what are you supposed to be doing?”

Her sister didn’t answer and Margot sat back on her heels to look at her. Veronique sat with her tiny hands clenched in her lap, her lips pinched tight.

“What is wrong with you?”

Veronique reached up and began to worry the scarf knotted on her head. Grandmere had tied it there just this morning, and already most of her pale, thick curls had worked themselves free.

“Is something bad going to happen, Margot?” she asked finally.

Margot inhaled sharply through her nose. “What are you talking about, goose?” She forced a smile.

“Grandmere. I woke up. Really late. And she was gone.”

Margot looked away.Sunlight danced on the gleaming marble steps.

“Mar?”

She sighed. “Yes, chére. She went out last night.”

“Then something bad is going to happen.”

“Perhaps not, Vee.”

Veronique fixed her with a look and Margot felt a chill spiral up her spine. She remembered the fear she’d felt hours before out by the creek with Grandmere, and she searched her memory for a time, any time, when Grandmere had wandered in the world of the spirits and the words they’d whispered in her ear had been anything other than a warning of something terrible to come. She shivered.

“Remember the flood?” asked Veronique.

Margot nodded. She’d been ten, Veronique had just turned six—but she remembered clearly how they’d woken to find Grandmere gone, the tiny room off the kitchen they all shared, filled with flickering candles, the door to the outside wide open. Mistress Catherine had been frantic. She hadn’t believed for a moment that the old woman had run away. Fortuna Rousse would die before she abandoned her granddaughters. And what reason would she have to leave? Weren’t she and her girls treated just like family? Girard had finally found her, wandering Magazine Street in the dead of the night, her white hair wild around her face. She said she would speak only to Master Hannigan. She never shared what passed between her and her master, but James Hannigan had, suddenly and without explanation, moved a large share of his stored cotton out of his warehouses in the business district. Two days later, a levee broke upriver. Water roared down the Mississippi, flooding the district. The stench of the muddy river lay over their neighborhood for weeks, nearly paralyzing the city. But while the other white businessmen wandered the sodden Garden District with pale, pinched faces, stunned, bankrupt, the Hannigans were little more than inconvenienced by the flood. At Christmas that year, Mistress Catherine had slipped three gold coins in Grandmere’s apron pocket.

And that had been a good thing, yes? Money in Grandmere’s pocket? The Hannigan’s fortune spared? Except that James Hannigan had become oddly distant after that, watching Grandmere from across the rooms, his expression wary, fearful.

“And the fever?” Veronique went on. A cloud seemed to pass across the golden floor. Margot nodded, her mouth dry.

“I remember,” she murmured.

1853. Just four years before, winter had seemed to last forever, cold rain lashing the muddy streets of New Orleans. A dank fog hovered over the rooftops, the stink of raw sewage choking every breath.

Then suddenly, without warning, it was blazing hot, the fog burned away. The city had been joyous. People poured into the streets to warm up and dry out, everyone’s spirits high in anticipation of Mardi Gras.

Everyone except Grandmere.

Once again, she began to wander. One night, then two. Fortuna Rousse moved through the house as if in a daze, lips moving in silent prayer. The bread she baked was thick and tasteless, her stews thin and bland. Margot struggled to get up earlier and earlier every day, trying to cover for her grandmother, while Veronique drifted behind her, anxious and silent.

And then, the Sunday before Mardi Gras, Grandmere had stalked into the dining room and slammed a platter of fish onto the table. Catherine Hannigan’s brother, his wife, and their seventeen-year-old son were visiting from Natchez. They’d been discussing plans to have the mistress’s nephew start in James Hannigan’s business. They all stared in silence as the platter skidded across the tablecloth.

“New Orleans will be filled with death,” declared Grandmere. She fixed her eyes on her master. “Get the mistress and the little ones to Far Water. Now.”

The whites said nothing. Margot gripped a pitcher of iced wine and glanced at her master. Master Hannigan’s Adam’s apple bobbed wildly above his silk collar. Time seemed to stretch, then warp, like hot taffy. Margot saw her sister trembling in the doorway, a basket of biscuits in her hand. She shook her head, warning her to stay quiet.

Finally, Catherine Hannigan laughed. A short, quivery bark. “Fortuna is so superstitious. You know these Louisiana Negroes.” Her voice was shrill, pleading, as she addressed her guests. “But she makes the best beignets and biscuits in all New Orleans.”

“Mistress,” said Grandmere turning toward her. “It is the fever. It will come this year. . . .”

“Some fever or another comes every year to this maddening city.” James Hannigan had found his voice at last. He rose slowly from his chair and Margot read danger in his eyes. She was certain her grandmother saw it, too, and yet . . .

“This will be like no fever before, or after,” insisted Grandmere, her voice hard. “This will become a city of ghosts before it ends.”

“Fortuna . . .” Hannigan growled a warning.

From the doorway, Veronique whimpered, so softly that only Margot heard. James Hannigan was a bear of a man, quick to laugh and quicker to anger. He brooked no nonsense: not from his employees, not from his wife and children, and certainly not from his slaves.

Margot stood frozen, staring at the table, shoulders hunched, waiting for the explosion. The fish lay partially off the platter, its dead eyes glazed, as if plotting its escape across the sea of lace and cutlery.

“You will all die,” said Grandmere, her voice flat. “Corpses will float in the street like—”

“Enough,” roared Hannigan. A fist came down on the table, sending a crystal glass crashing to the floor. “Enough of your voodoo, black magic, witchcraft! Get the hell out of here, old woman, before you make me forget you belong to my wife and not to me.”

“James!” His wife was on her feet, her normally pale face as red as her hair.

Grandmere turned and left the dining room without another word, pulling Veronique with her. Margot would have followed except that she had taken root to the spot, heart racing, hands welded to the wine pitcher. Hannigan stood glowering at the door for a long moment, then he turned his great, bearlike head and caught Margot’s eye. He blinked slowly, then visibly shook himself.

“Bring me some a’ that wine, Margot,” he called to her. He plopped in his chair and laughed. “Damn Louisiana negroes. Superstitious as hell with their curses and their ghosts.”

“James,” said his wife weakly, sinking back into her seat, her face still flushed.

Her brother and his wife sat wide-eyed and pale. Their son, Alain, looked amused. Margot managed to pour the wine without spilling it.

Hannigan raised his glass. “Ain’t no saffron scourge can ever get James Hannigan.” He drank from the glass and smacked his lips. “And I’m staying right here in New Orleans all summer long just to prove my point.”

But he hadn’t.

Catherine Rousse Hannigan may have been quiet, and skittish as a rabbit, but she believed to her core in what she called Grandmere’s visions. She had made her husband’s life a nightmare of tears and pleading and slammed doors. The entire Hannigan family was at Far Water by Easter.

By the end of that summer, fourteen thousand souls had succumbed to yellow fever, including seventeen-year-old Alain Rousse. James Hannigan would never again allow Grandmere in the same room with him.

Now, remembering, Margot tugged nervously at her hair.

“Do you remember . . . ?” began Veronique.

“Enough, oie,” cried Margot. She’d had enough remembering. Each memory twisted the knot in her stomach tighter. “You’re a goose. With all this foolishness. And if Grandmere catches you lazing about on these stairs . . .”

A movement on the landing above them caught her eye. They both looked up, and there stood their grandmother, silent, wreathed in light from the round, landing window.

“I am almost done here, Grandmere,” said Margot pulling the pail closer. “And Vee was just . . .”

She stopped abruptly. Grandmere was not looking at them. Her attention was riveted elsewhere. The old woman descended the stairs, stepping absently over her youngest granddaughter.

“Grandmere?”

Their grandmother strode across the still-damp marble floor as if she hadn’t heard, and flung open the front door.

“Come,” she snapped.

Frowning, Margot glanced at her sister, who shrugged.

The two girls sprinted after their grandmother, who stood at the edge of the wide porch staring down the drive.

“Grandmere?” Veronique reached a hand toward her grandmother, then pulled it back.

The old woman was trembling. Margot followed her gaze, but except for a wild pheasant pecking in the dirt, the drive was empty. She felt her sister’s hand clutching the back of her blouse.

“It comes,” whispered Fortuna Rousse. “It comes now.”

“Grandmere. Come in,” pleaded Margot. A blade of fear pressed itself between her shoulder blades. Sunlight poured onto the porch, and yet she felt frozen to the bone. “There is nothing out here. Come in now. I will put on fresh coffee.”

“Shush,” said Grandmere.

The three slaves stood in silence, waiting, time having seemed to slow to a standstill in the thick bayou air.

Margot couldn’t bear it, the stillness, the crushing sense of dread. The beating of her own heart. She opened her mouth to say those words, to say that there was work to be done, to ask what they were doing standing there like statues in the sun. But before she could speak, she felt Veronique stiffen beside her, saw Grandmere step from the porch, her hands clasped tight over her heart.

And now, Margot could feel it—through the soles of her feet—the faintest vibration. Could feel it before she could hear it.

Horses. Moving fast.

Someone was coming.

Veronique fumbled for her hand and Margot grabbed it, holding tight.

“Mère Vierge,” whispered Grandmere. “Sweet Virgin, help us.”

And then, Catherine Hannigan’s barouche hove into view.

Girard, James Hannigan’s groom, valet, jack-of-all-trades, sat high in the driver’s seat, his waistcoat flying wild behind him, his caramel-colored face gray with road dust. They could just barely make out the huddled figures behind him. The large carriage swung wide, and Grandmere crossed herself, muttering a prayer, as one of the back wheels caught in the gravel that marked the edge of the drive, skidding into the sloping grass on the far side. The horses, eyes wild, heads thrown back, seemed to stumble as the barouche pitched crazily from side to side. For a moment, it looked as if Girard might be hurled from his seat, as if the carriage itself might go over. But Girard fought for control, and until the horses finally regained their footing, and dragged the carriage back onto to the drive.

“Miss Fortuna! Miss Fortuna!”

Margot heard the desperation in Girard’s voice as he screamed for her grandmother. Yanking hard on the reins, he stopped the carriage less than a foot from the old woman, before tumbling from the seat.

“Miss Fortuna, hurry.”

Grandmere shot her granddaughters a look, a silent command to follow. Veronique moved to her side, but Margot stood fixed at the edge of the porch, staring openmouthed at the barouche. As wide and long as a boat, the black metal carriage gleamed in the sun. It had been imported all the way from Paris as a gift from James Hannigan to his wife. Catherine Hannigan rode it to the theater, to the balls, to her grandmother’s house in the Vieux Carré. It was fancy and expensive and completely unsuited for the rutted, unpaved country roads that ran between Far Water and New Orleans.

“Margot, allez!”

Her grandmother’s voice yanked her from the porch and she hurried forward. Three feet away, she skidded to a stop once again. The oldest Hannigan child, thirteen-year-old Marie, was already standing in the drive. Thin and pale, eyes pinched closed, her mouth open in a silent scream. Inside the carriage, ten-year-old Lily lay sprawled, half on, half off the forward facing seat, her lavender silk dress covered in black vomit. She had soiled herself as well—Margot could smell it from where she stood—but the girl was beyond caring. Her blue eyes were open and she stared unblinking, unseeing at the hot, blue sky.

But it was the sight of the mistress that froze Margot in her tracks. Catherine Hannigan had clearly gone mad. She was crouched on the floor of the barouche, her skirt up past her knees, legs spread wide, as if preparing to give birth. Her red hair was tangled, stray tendrils plastered against her forehead. Her blue eyes, so like her daughter’s, were wide, crazed. She was shrieking, making high pitched, unintelligible sounds. In her arms was her youngest child, Alexander. He was wrapped, head to toe, in a pink coverlet, but one hand had come free, and Margot could see that his skin was the color of cooked butter.

“Miss Catherine, give him to me,” Grandmere was saying. “You got to give the boy to me now.”

Catherine Hannigan drew back her teeth and snarled, spit flying from her chapped lips. Margot flinched. Her grandmother did not.

“Come, mistress,” pleaded Grandmere. “It’s going to be alright now. But I got to take that baby. Let me take him so I can tend to him, oui?”

The white woman blinked and seemed to see the old slave woman for the first time.

“Fortuna,” she whimpered. She grabbed Grandmere’s wrist. “Save my baby. Save my son.”

“I make no promises, mistress. But you give him to me and I swear I try.”

“No!” Catherine Hannigan screamed.

The word ricocheted off the house, the trees, fracturing the air. Veronique cried out. Marie Hannigan gripped the barouche and silently shook.

“No,” screeched the mistress again. “You will promise me. You save my baby. You can do that. I know you can do that. Don’t think I don’t know what you are. Don’t think I don’t know what you can do. You save my baby. Do you hear me? You save my baby or else.”

Bile rose in Margot’s throat and she locked eyes with her sister.

“Mistress,” said their grandmother, her voice still calm. “You give me le petit.”

The white woman clutched the bundle that was her son to her chest, the yellowed hand flopping limply against her thigh, then, with a sob, finally released the child to Grandmere’s waiting arms.

Grandmere whirled from the carriage, her face hard, the dying boy pressed against her.

“Put the carriage away and take . . . Miss Lily to the root cellar,” she commanded Girard.

“Veronique, you get the mistress and Miss Marie into the house and cooled down. Margot come with me now. I need you.”

Margot tasted the bile once again climbing into her throat. Her grandmother turned to look at her.

“Ma petite,” she said. “You come now. We must try and save this baby’s life. Before it is too late.”

With a last look at the dead girl in the carriage, Margot followed her grandmother into the house.

Copyright © 2020 by Rita Woods

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opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window

opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window opens in a new window

opens in a new windowRemembrance…It’s a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy…if you can make it there.

Ohio, present day. An elderly woman who is more than she seems warns against rising racism as a young woman grapples with her life.

Haiti, 1791, on the brink of revolution. When the slave Abigail is forced from her children to take her mistress to safety, she discovers New Orleans has its own powers.

1857 New Orleans—a city of unrest: Following tragedy, house girl Margot is sold just before her 18th birthday and her promised freedom. Desperate, she escapes and chases a whisper…. Remembrance.

opens in a new windowRemembrance by Rita Woods will be available on January 21. Please enjoy the following excerpt!

Gaelle

Current Day

“How do I look?”

Gaelle glanced up from the mayi moulen she was spooning into Rose’s mouth. Her grandmother stood fidgeting in the kitchen doorway. Grann always looked beautiful, but this morning she looked especially stunning, the emerald green of her suit shimmering against her dark skin. She pulled at the buttons that ran down the front of the jacket.

“Grann, yo sispann,” cried Gaelle. “You look lovely. You will get the job.”

Her grandmother gave her jacket another tug. “I don’t know. Maybe I am too old, wi?”

Gaelle sucked her teeth. “You? Old? Don’t be silly.” She swatted her sister’s hand. “Rose, stop. You’re making a mess.”

There was the faint rumble of thunder.

Grann looked up and sighed. “I’m going then.”

Another rumble, this one much louder, rattled the tiny house. Gaelle felt it in her teeth. A teacup crashed to the floor. She felt the chair vibrate beneath her. And then a roar cracked the morning into a million pieces, drowning out all other sound. Gaelle leaped to her feet, reaching across the table for her sister.

“Grann?”

But her grandmother was staring up at the pale blue sky where just moments before there’d been ceiling.

“Grann,” she screamed.

They locked eyes, and then her grandmother vanished beneath a mountain of wood and plaster and dust as the world ripped itself apart.

Gaelle jerked awake, gasping for breath, arms flailing, reaching for Grann.

A dream.

The same dream she’d had countless times in the more than ten years since the earthquake had destroyed her family, her island. She lay rigid under the covers, waiting for the shaking to stop, the tears rolling unheeded into her ears.

Taking a quivery breath, she turned her head and glanced at the clock: 5 a.m. The terror, the devastation of Haiti was a long time ago. A lifetime. And she had to get to work.

She moved mechanically around her apartment, turning on the coffee, ironing her scrubs. The apartment was small. The owner called it a carriage house, but it was really little more than a converted garage at the back of a decaying mansion in the middle of a long block of decaying mansions, most of which sat empty, or were occupied by squatters. She grabbed her travel mug and headed for the car, her mind thankfully blank. There was nothing in her past except pain.

It took barely a quarter of an hour to reach the Stillwater Care Facility where she worked, the streets nearly empty in the winter predawn. Stepping from her car, she stood for a moment, breathing deeply. She imagined the cold air traveling down to her lungs, layering her insides with a glaze of ice crystals, shimmering in the darkness, purifying her.

Everyone thought she was crazy. Her sister thought she was crazy; Rose said she would never live in a cold place again. But the dead of winter was Gaelle’s favorite time of year. The world seemed to slow down, to grow quieter, coating everything in a layer of snow and ice, so that even the ugliest parts of Cleveland acquired a certain beauty. She held her face to the sky and felt the snowflakes melt on her lips. Smiling, she walked into work.

“You lose somethin’ in there?”

Gaelle started. She turned to find Toya peeling off her thick bubble coat and stuffing it into her locker. Toya Fairfield was another nurse’s aide who worked the same shift. She’d been at Stillwater even longer than Gaelle. They’d become good friends.

“You standin’ there starin’ in that locker like you expectin’ a genie to come poppin’ out.”

“No.” she smiled. “No genie.”

“Well, if one does, then I got dibs on at least one wish. You feel me?”

“And what would you do with your one wish?”

“Girl, I’d wish for three more wishes, that’s what.”

Gaelle laughed lightly. It was what Toya always wished for.

“And what about you, Miss Thang? What would you wish for?”

She shrugged and closed her locker. She would wish for Grann. She would wish for her and Rose to be together again. She would wish for Haiti to be made whole. But wishes were for children. They held no real power.

“A million dollars,” she said. “I would wish for a million dollars.”

“I heard that. Holy Christ! It’s cold as a polar bear’s butt out there,” cried Toya, kicking off her boots. “I’m freakin’ freezing. Quick. Do that thing you do.”

She thrust her hands into Gaelle’s.

Gaelle gripped her fingers and squeezed. She closed her eyes and felt a prickle of heat start in her elbows and flow down her arms into her hands, felt the hard coldness of her friend’s hands lessen, then disappear. She opened her eyes as Toya sighed contentedly.

“Damn, girl! You’re just a little walking furnace.” She slipped her badge over her head. “Should probably get your thyroid checked out or something, but appreciate if you’d wait until this weather’s over. You better than a space heater.”

Gaelle held up her hands. “No thyroid, just my superpower.”

“Well, it ain’t a bad superpower to have in the middle of December, that’s for darn sure.” Toya opened the lounge door into the hallway. “By the way, you get the old lady again today.”

“I do not mind.”

“Yeah, I know you don’t. You and her got some weird kinda thing going on.”

Gaelle grinned and stepped into the still-quiet nursing home hall.

From where she stood in the doorway, the old woman was barely visible, the barest suggestion of a person-shaped lump tangled in the blankets on the bed in the darkened room. The television was on and shadows flickered across the ceiling and walls.

Twice, the director of nursing had tried to switch from the twenty-four-hour news station to something she deemed more suitable, something more cheerful for a geriatric nursing home resident: Dancing with the Stars, or one of those Real Housewives shows, but both times, the old woman had bolted upright in her chair as if suddenly electrified, eyes blazing in her cadaverous face, shrieking and cursing until the windows rattled and the terrified assistant had gone running from the room. After the second time, the DON decided to leave her alone. Now, solemn voices intoned from the television speakers all through the day and all through the night about earthquakes and fires and drought, about the opioid crisis and far-flung wars.

From the corner of her eye, Gaelle saw Toya coming down the hall toward her, pushing the med cart ahead of her.

“Seriously, Guy, what is with you and that old lady?” she asked, stopping beside her.

“I do not know. I just feel . . .” She shrugged and pointed to her heart. “I feel a connection.”

She turned and looked at her friend. “Do you not ever look at her and think: There is something . . . ?”

“Yeah,” responded the other aide. She tugged at her straining scrub top. “There’s somethin’ alright. Somethin’ freaky. All this time and still don’t nobody know nothin’ about her. Where she came from. Who she is. Nothin’. She just sits in that chair not sayin’ a word, news playin’ twenty-four/seven. She gives me the heebie-jeebies for real, girl. Like she came back from the dead or somethin’.”

“Not well is not dead,” said Gaelle, something she’d heard her grandmother say.

“What? What does that even mean?” Toya rolled her eyes. “Girl, you as peculiar as she is. Why’n’t you go on now and hang out with your weird, not-dead friend. I got meds to pass.”

Gaelle chuckled and turned back to the darkened room as the aide rolled her cart down the brightly lit hallway. Toya wasn’t the only one who thought her attachment to the old woman was odd. Everybody did. The rest of the aides did the bare minimum required: changed her sheets, gave her the pill at night to help her sleep, cut the food on her tray into the tiny pieces she barely touched. Gaelle was the only one who lingered. She massaged the old gnarled hands, rubbed oil into her cracked feet. Even she didn’t understand it, her affinity for this mysterious elder, but she understood that some questions had no answers. Their spirits were linked in some way, and so she accepted that as the beginning of it, and the end.

Plus, it gave her an odd measure of comfort to offer the old woman this bit of extra care. She was most likely someone’s grandmother, someone’s great-grandmother, yes? Maybe out there, somewhere, there were people who loved her, missed her.

She stepped into the room.

“Bonjou, Manman.”

She often spoke to the old woman in her native Creole. Except when Rose was home from school, she almost never spoke it any other time. It felt too personal, a thing she wanted to keep just for herself. But here, in this room, there were no odd looks, no personal questions she didn’t want to answer.

She glanced at the television. Onscreen, something was burning. People were marching in the streets. People that looked like her, like the old woman, in every shade of brown. Their mouths were open. They were shouting, their eyes wild, and she was thankful the sound was muted. A swastika flashed on the screen. A line of white men marched side by side, their arms locked, except for the one on the end who waved a Confederate flag high overhead. Something curdled in the pit of her stomach—so much evil in the world. She turned away, blocking the images with her body.

“Come now, Manman. That is not something to watch on an empty stomach, wi?” She pulled a chair close to the bed and began spooning applesauce into the woman’s mouth, softly humming a lullaby. When she couldn’t cajole the woman to take another bite, she pushed the tray aside and pulled a fresh nightgown from the drawer and gently eased her into it. She took her time. It was like dressing a kitten: tiny bones under soft, loose skin. There were rumors that the woman was well over a hundred, and that wasn’t hard to believe. She looked every bit of it. She had simply appeared one day in their lobby two years before, bald, skinny, her clothes in rags, pale healed burn scars crisscrossing her arms.

Gaelle glanced at the clock above the door. As much as Toya fussed at her about all the time she spent in here, Gaelle knew her friend would cover for her until she was through. Carefully, she rolled the nearly weightless old woman from the bed into the chair.

“What will you do today then, Manman?” she asked.

She didn’t expect an answer and she didn’t get one, but deep down she was sure the woman could hear her.

“Perhaps you go to the activity room later, wi? It is movie day. You get out. You meet your neighbors. Watch something nice. Not these bagay led?” She jerked her head toward the screen.

The old woman’s eyes never left the television.

Sighing, Gaelle shook her head and began stripping the bed. Fresh linen sat neatly folded on the bedside table. As she yanked back the blanket, something clattered to the floor and she bent to retrieve it.

“Ki sa nan syel la?”

What in the heavens? It was the remote. Or what was left of it. The entire controller was flattened, misshapen, the buttons fused into a single white mess in the center, as if the whole thing had somehow been melted, then put back together badly. She stared at, turning it over and over in her hands.

“What happened here?” She looked up and inhaled sharply. The old woman was staring at her, her red-rimmed eyes glittering under the fluorescent lights.

The hair on Gaelle’s neck stood on end. She felt a surge of fear, an inexplicable sense that this frail, ancient woman was dangerous. They stared at each other for a long moment and she felt her heart pounding in her ears.

“Well,” she said, finally. She bit her bottom lip. “You know you’re going to have to pay for this now, wi?”

She gave a shaky laugh and dropped the remote into the pocket of her scrubs. The director of nursing was not going to be happy. She reached to straighten the old woman’s collar.

“Okay, Manman . . .”

She never saw the old woman move. The clawlike hand clamped around her wrist and Gaelle was yanked forward and off her feet before she even realized what was happening, only barely managing to not fall directly on top of the woman. She blinked, stunned. Their faces were mere inches from each other’s, and this close, the sense of danger seemed even greater. She felt a roiling in her gut, as if she might throw up.

“Manman, bondye,” she hissed and leaped to her feet. She tried to pull free, but the woman’s hand held her like a vice clamp, belying both her size and her age.

The old woman held fast, her eyes locked onto hers. Gaelle felt a sudden pain in her head and once again she fought the urge to vomit.

“Kite’m ale!”

Something changed in the room. The air suddenly smelled of rain, of freshly mowed grass. As if someone had left a window open somewhere. Except that it was winter and a hard crust of ice covered any grass for miles. The pain in her head grew worse.

“Let go, Manman; I do not want to hurt you.” The bones in her wrist felt like they might break.

She felt something shift deep inside her and cried out in pain, instinctively grabbing the woman’s hand with her free hand. There was a sharp, whitehot pulse in her shoulder, then heat, but not the gentle prickle she’d felt earlier in the lounge with Toya. This was a blowtorch firing up, igniting her arm, her hand. The old woman’s eyes widened, first in surprise and then in pain.

And then Gaelle was free.

Gripping her wrist, she staggered backward until she touched the wall behind her. She stared down at her hand. It looked unchanged, yet she still felt the hard thrum of heat echoing in her fingertips. She locked eyes with the old woman. Next to her, police cars rolled across the television screen, sirens blaring.

“What are you?” she whispered.

The old woman opened her mouth in a silent, toothless laugh, and then the world went black.

Copyright © 2020 by Rita Woods

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