The Tangled Bridge (37 page)

From behind her in the shack, Trigger said, “Me, too.”

They walked along the boardwalk in silence, and when Patrice started to comment on the rows of shanties, Ferrar put a finger over his lips and shushed her. She looked around, uneasy, thinking of the moment in the briar when Trigger and Rosie had shushed because they knew mother was watching somehow. She wondered for whose benefit—or against whose awareness—Ferrar was shushing her right now.

The entire cluster of boardwalk and shanties was floating over water. It seemed like such a precarious place, especially with the past year's floods and the storms that must have blown through over the years. Patrice recalled the day Ferrar had told her of this place. He was lying there wounded, shot by their mother, and he told Patrice and the other children of the places he'd gone to hide along the coast, living like a pirate, running hooch for Maman to sell in New Orleans. It hadn't occurred to Patrice that these hidden coves might harbor other pirates, too.

The horizon had already gone from black to gray. She saw that land was nearby, but it formed a ring around the tiny settlement that was otherwise completely surrounded in water, save for one tiny island just large enough to support a willow tree. That's where Ferrar was leading them now, to that willow. He stopped just shy of it but waved Patrice on. She looked over her shoulder at Ferrar and Trig as she stepped off the boardwalk onto the island. The willow roots snaked into a dome formation atop the soil so that it appeared the tree was clutching the island into existence lest it disintegrate into the water.

She found a suitable place and relieved herself.

After her, Trigger visited the willow, and Patrice stood in silence next to Ferrar.

Little girl,
he'd called her.

*   *   *

PATRICE AND FERRAR AND
Trig were back in that floating shack, standing around the pallet where Francois lay. There was nowhere to sit besides the floor and they were all too stiff after last night to do anything but stand. No one brought up the question of how they might have gotten to Bayou Bouillon from the outskirts of New Orleans, and that was just fine.

“Did you see the thing that took Gil away?” Trigger asked Ferrar.

Patrice looked up. Was it possible that Ferrar might have seen the tar creature?

But Ferrar said, “The thing? It was only a man. Lotta men lookin for trouble just after y'all came. But the one who got your brother, I've seen him before. Missin a hand.”

“Missing a hand. Jacob Chapman? Did he hurt him?” Patrice asked.

“No, just grabbed him and carried him off. I couldn't stop him.”

“Just a flesh-and-blood man,” Patrice said, and looked at Trig.

Trigger was nodding. “It's what I thought. When we first saw the tar devil it had come for Rosie there at Terrefleurs. But the stranger had, too. The Brute. I thought at the time that they were kinda the same. Figured the tar thing was just the stranger's river devil.”

“You're saying they're not related?”

“Well I imagine they're related, but it don't mean they're the same.”

“Doesn't.”

“Lord almighty. It
doesn't
. Just not sure how it figures together.”

Patrice thought about this. “Mother knows if she sends a man after us we can defend ourselves with pigeonry.”

“You can,” Trig said. “For the rest of us it's hit and miss.”

“And now she figured out a way to follow us into the briar.”

Ferrar said, “So she follows y'all in both worlds, at the same time.”

Patrice nodded. “Yes, maybe.”

Trigger said, “And she's getting better at it. I had no trouble whuppin that tar devil that came after Rosie the first time. The second time it was so stealthy I never saw it until it was too late.

“And then when it came for Gil, it was monstrous.”

Patrice thought of all those years of practice. That was probably why she was so much better at pigeonry than her siblings—she'd been doing it for longer because she was older. Now in these months since they'd banished Maman from Terrefleurs, Maman had been perfecting some skills of her own.

They stood in silence for a moment, thinking, and then they heard a voice outside. A man's voice, deep, and … familiar. He sang:

Every night

When the sun goes in

Every night

When the sun goes in

Trigger said what Patrice was thinking: “Francois?”

But Francois was lying on the pallet at their feet.

Every night

When the sun goes in

I hang down my head

And mournful cry

They all three moved for the door at once but Ferrar got there first. He didn't open it. Instead, he blocked it.

He said, “I told you, this place is full of ghosts.”

“What's going on out there?” Trigger asked.

“It's not easy to explain.”

“Let us out,” Patrice said.

She stared at Ferrar, ready to use pigeonry. But his face showed no opposition. No resistance of any kind. He was not holding them there to harm them.

“I ask you to stay inside for a while. People here must keep to themselves. You'll see what I mean in time.”

“What time? How do you know we'll stay here at all? We're not in the briar now so there's no reason. We can go after Rosie and Gil.”

Ferrar looked pained. “I thought you'd been here before because I thought I saw you. There are … reflections.”

“I don't understand.”

“You will. I know this for a fact,
ma chère.
You'll probably understand it better than I do. But right now shouldn't we think of a way to find young Gilbert and Marie-Rose?”

The mention of her siblings caused a fresh burst of pain in her heart. Trigger's posture relented, too. Patrice hesitated but then stepped back from the door. She looked down at Francois on the pallet. He was sleeping. The other voice outside—the one that sounded like Francois, that sang his very song—had moved down the boardwalk and faded.

“Rosie's hidden from us, but we haven't tried looking for Gil,” Patrice said.

Trigger shook his head. “I did. Last night. They're both plumb gone.”

“What about Maman?” Patrice asked. “If we find Maman we'll find Gil and Rosie.”

“I looked for her, too.”

He was quiet for a moment, staring past a gap in the wall where sunlight now penetrated, his jaw muscle tense. “I can think of one other way.”

“What?”

“I can let that tar devil take me to wherever the hell it goes.”

Patrice stared at him, unable to believe he would even suggest it. “No.”

“Just hear me—”

“No!”

Ferrar's hand went to her shoulder. Patrice filled with fury so fast her body quaked. She had to get that idea out of Trigger's head, right now, because once Trig got an idea like that—

“Treesey, we don't have a choice. Gil and Rosie might very well disappear forever. Forever. Are you hearin' me? You think Maman gonna let'm go if she believes she has a prayer's chance in hell of gettin briar skills out of them?”

“Stop it!”

Francois shifted in his sleep, bringing his knees up, and Patrice looked toward the door and thought of Marie-Rose hidden somewhere alone. Did she even know that Gil was there, too? Or did Maman have him taken somewhere else?

Trigger was wearing a look that said he'd already made up his mind. “My flesh-and-blood body stays here the whole time. You can look after me. I'll let the tar thing bring me to where the others are in the briar. Then I'll find a way to get their minds out. You know I can do it.”

Ferrar said to Trigger, “Your papa used to get lost in that place, if I recall. Sometimes for years on end.”

“Yes,” Patrice said.

But Trigger ignored them. “Once we get their minds out we'll know where their bodies are. And then we'll go get'm.”

Ferrar kept his hand on Patrice's shoulder, and it felt that if he were to remove it she might just sink to her knees. She couldn't guess what was to become of Gil and Rosie. Couldn't bear to lose Trigger, too.

Ferrar said, “And how do you know this—tar devil—will come?”

Trigger's face went grim, his gaze steady on the flooring, and his voice retreating to barely above a whisper. “It's here now.”

*   *   *

PATRICE WHEELED, HER HEART
in her throat. She saw nothing. No creature made of tar.

But she was not in the briar. Not since they'd arrived at this place. Quick as she could, she receded.

“Wait, Trig,” she pleaded, but Trigger's ghost was already loosening from his body and stepping forward.

She shut her eyes and dared the thorns to surge around her. The black coils, the eternal briar light.

Her river devil was there, grinning.

It took Patrice a moment, but then she saw the oil slick seeping upward between the floorboards. It smelled like sulphur. Trigger was facing it with his fists clenched. The black oil spread from the cracks to a wider circle, and to Patrice's eye it sullied the pallet where Francois lay. That's when the creature came into view. It entered in the same way the oil did, up from the floorboards as though rising from the bayou.

“Get back, Treese.” Trigger said.

“We have to stay together.”

“Get away from it!”

But Patrice moved fast. She threw herself into it. And then it had her.

 

forty-seven

LOUISIANA, NOW

DESPITE THE BRIAR LIGHT
, Madeleine could no longer see very well. She resisted Gaston as he dragged her deeper into the swamped-out tree hollow, and she paid dearly in thornflies for her struggles. Her body went rigid and felt the sting, sting, stinging.

Gaston was pulling her down to the bottommost trough, which was deeper than it had at first seemed because the narrow gap widened as they slid down the slope to a great underground pool. She slackened and allowed him to pull her along.

He's not trying to kill me
, she told herself.
Otherwise he wouldn't have told me to hold my breath.

Now she was moving with him, not fighting and not being dragged.

He turned upward and they swam in the direction of the surface before making another hard turn into some kind of underwater tunnel. The walls still felt like the wood of the great cypress tree. She swam best she could along with him. The thornflies were following like sucker fish but they did not sting now. In fact, it occurred to her that she could see again. Briar light in the tunnel. Her fit of panic was what had made her vision go.

The path was narrowing again, and Madeleine's strength was waning. How long had they been traveling in this direction? She should have been counting. There were limits to how long she could hold her breath even with the new ability. She should have taken a deep breath before going in.

Sting.

She tensed on the feel of it, and then let the pain pass through her. Her mind emptied itself of the thoughts. She needed to keep swimming, nothing else.

The tunnel opened wider.

Bones. Human remains. Before she knew what was happening she and Gaston were passing through them.
Passing through them.
Not over, not under; through. An ongoing expanse that littered the bottom of this section.

And Madeleine realized she was no longer able to move.

She drifted forward from pure momentum and then stopped. It might have been the lingering effects of the scratch poisons or maybe just good old-fashioned exhaustion, but she couldn't so much as make a grip on the wood that surrounded her. Bubbles crawled from behind her ear and up her cheek. She waited, refusing to let panic grip her, even as she watched Gaston's feet disappear ahead.

But the wood. She looked carefully above where the bones were piled. A relief pattern stood out, what looked like a plus sign with a circle in the upper right corner, and the circle had three dots in it. She recognized it as a hobo symbol but had no idea what it meant. Adjacent, there were carvings of four trees, and at the bottom right a circle with an arrow, which she did recognize as meaning “go this way.”

She looked behind her. More carvings. Even down here. They likely lined the entire passage.

Something hit her shoulder and she jumped. Gaston. He was unable to turn around but he moved his foot toward her hand, and she realized he wanted her to grab hold. She tried unsuccessfully to grasp his ankle, then used both her arms to clamp on and was able to form a strong enough grip. He moved forward down the passage again, dragging Madeleine behind him.

And then they were out, free of the wood without any sense of some kind of opening having been there. Just suddenly in open water. She couldn't tell how far away the surface was. No light above.

The water swirled and pulled them in an unexpected current. Once again, Madeleine saw piles of bones. This time they were bones of all manner of creatures—man, gar, salamander, even molted shells of crustaceans—and unlike inside the tree, these were all cloaked in algae that wavered in the mild current. It covered the bones so completely they wouldn't be discernible at all except for their skulls.

There were curtains of bubbles and she could tell by the way they moved that they were at the base of some kind of whirlpool. Not a strong one—no such thing existed in the rivers and bayous—but a persistent one. The bubbles swirled like thousands of tiny suns in a spiral galaxy.

Gaston had her hooked beneath the armpits now and was pulling her away from the vortex to where the current ran more gently, and then he pulled her up toward the surface.

*   *   *

MADELEINE OPENED HER MOUTH
and took her first breath since having left Gaston's tree. Above were stars and a waning crescent moon. She squinted at them, though her vision was lacking focus. Night sounds. It had been full daylight when they left Gaston's cypress. She remembered the sun dappling the willow outhouse. The journey hadn't been that long.