A Feather of Stone #3 (2 page)

“Are you ready for the special circle tonight?” Melita asked, starting to chop tomatoes.

I made a face. “I’m tired—maybe I’ll stay home and sleep.”

“Oh no,
cher
,” she said, looking distressed. “I need you there. It’s a special circle, one that will guarantee a time of plenty for the whole village. You must come. You’re my good luck charm.”

“Who else is going?” I bent down with difficulty and picked up some sewing from the basket. I’d begun making baby dresses, baby hats, baby socks. I carried a girl; I could feel her. Now I was working on a small blanket for the cradle.

“Well, Maman,” said Melita.

I glanced at Maman to see her frowning. She, too, was unsure about this circle of Melita’s.

“Ouida,” Melita cajoled. “You like her. And cousin Sophie. Cousin Luc-Andre. Manon, the smith’s daughter.”

“ That little girl?” Maman asked.

“She wants to take part in more circles,” Melita answered. “Um . . .”

The way she hesitated made me look up. “Who else?”

“Marcel,” she admitted.

I nodded and went back to sewing. Marcel was a dear. He was so anxious about the baby. Had asked me to marry him a thousand times. I cared about him, truly, and knew he would make a good husband. I just didn’t want a husband. He’d been so sure that I’d marry him when I knew I was going to have the baby. But why would I bother marrying when I had Maman and Melita to help me?

“Several others,” Melita said, sweeping the chopped tomatoes into a bowl. “It will be perfect. I’ve been crafting this spell for a long time. I assure you it will bring a long and healthy life to everyone who participates.”

“How can you know that?” Maman asked.

Melita laughed. “I’ve crafted it to be so. Trust me.”

 

At sundown Maman and I walked from our little house to the place Melita had told us about, deep in the woods, not far from the river. I had rested and felt fine and healthy. I couldn’t wait for two months to be past so I could meet my baby girl. Would she have light eyes or dark? Fair skin or warm tan? I looked forward to her fatness, her perfect baby skin. Maman had delivered many babies, and I knew it would be hard, but not horrible. And Melita would help.

“Through here,” Maman murmured, holding back some trailing honeysuckles. Their strong sweetness perfumed the air, filling my lungs with scent. It was hot and humid and our clothes stuck to us, but everything felt fine.

We reached a small clearing, in front of what Melita had described as the biggest oak tree in Louisiana.

“Holy Mother,” Maman breathed, looking at the tree.

I laughed when I saw it—it reached the sky, taller than any tree I’d ever seen. It was so big around that five people holding hands still could not encircle it. It was awe-inspiring, such a monument to how the Mother nourished life. I touched the bark with my palm, almost able to feel the life pulsing under its skin.

“How could I have not known this was here?” Maman said, still gazing at it.

“Petra,” said a voice in greeting. “Cerise.”

It was remarkable, how I felt chills down my back when I heard his voice or knew that he was near.

Maman turned to him with a smile. “Richard,
cher
. How are you? Melita didn’t tell us you were coming.”

I turned slowly, in time to see him take off his hat and brush it against one leg. “Melita is very persuasive,” he said, not looking at me.

“Petra.” Ouida called to her from across the clearing, and, smiling, Maman went to hug her.

I looked into Richard’s dark eyes. “Did Melita tell you what this was about?”

“No. You?”

I shook my head and looked for a place to sit. Finally I just sat on the grass, smoothing out my skirts and arching my back to stretch my stomach muscles. “She said it was about ensuring a time of plenty for the village,” I said. “Long lives for everyone. I didn’t want to come, but she said I was her good luck charm.”

Richard sat next to me. His knee accidentally brushed mine, and a ripple of pleasure shot up my spine. My mind filled with other memories of pleasure with Richard, and I wriggled a bit and smiled at him. He got that very still, intent expression that always meant I was about to feel good.

Then he turned away, his jaw set, and I sighed. He was continuing to be upset about Marcel. Just like Marcel was very upset about him. Sometimes the two of them made me tired—why should it matter if I wanted both of them? Why should I have to choose? I wouldn’t have cared if they’d also wanted to spark some other girl in the village.

I fanned myself with my straw hat and saw that others were arriving. M. Daedalus, the head of our village, was there, and his friend Jules, who’d lived here for ten years now. M. Daedalus had just gotten back from visiting his brother in New Orleans, I remembered hearing. I wondered if he had brought back any fabric for the Chevets’ shop. I’d go look tomorrow.

Melita’s best friend, Axelle, arrived, slim like a snake, even in her full skirts and sun hat. I smiled and waved at her, and she waved back.

“Greetings,” said a voice, and I turned to see Claire Londine stepping through the honeysuckle. She saw me and came to sit down.

“You’re as big as a house,” she told me, shaking her head. “How do you feel?”

“Fine, mostly,” I said.

“I don’t see why you would—” she began, then looked at Richard and stopped.

“I’m going to talk to Daedalus,” Richard said abruptly, and left.

Claire laughed. “He sensed woman talk coming on. I wanted to say, why did you let this happen? It’s so easy to prevent it. Or to stop it, if it comes to that.”

I shrugged. “I decided I’d like to have a baby. I’m going to call her Hélène.”

“But babies are so much work,” Claire said. “ They scream all the time. They never go away.”

“Maman and Melita will help me. And I like babies.”

“Well, I hope you do,” Claire said, stretching her legs out in the sun. Her bare feet and almost six inches of bare leg were visible below her hem, but Claire had always been scandalous. She was nice to me, though, and she’d been in my class at our tiny village school.

“Everyone,” my sister called. “It’s time. Let’s form a circle.”

I stood ungracefully, holding my belly with one hand. It was almost sunset, but at that moment the light winked out, like a snuffed candle. I looked up to see huge, plum-colored clouds sweeping in from the south.

“Storm coming in,” I murmured to Maman. “Maybe we should do this another time.”

Melita heard me. “No,” she said. “ Tonight is the only time I can work this spell—everything is perfect: moon, season, people. I’m sure the storm won’t bother us.”

She quickly drew a large circle that almost filled the clearing, then lit thirteen candles—one for each of us. The wind picked up a bit, an oddly cool, damp wind, but though their flames whipped right and left, the candles stayed lit.

Melita drew the rune
borche
in the air, for new beginnings, birth. I frowned slightly, holding my big stomach. Was that safe? I glanced at Maman. She was watching Melita very solemnly. Maman would stop this or send me away if it wasn’t safe. I tried to relax as we all joined hands.

Marcel couldn’t take his eyes off me, which irritated me. His gaze was like a weight. Unlike that of Richard, who was across the circle, talking in a low voice with Claire. He laughed, and Claire giggled and swung his hand in hers.

We started to move dalmonde, and Melita began chanting. Again I glanced at Maman and again she had her eyes locked on my sister. I didn’t recognize this song—I’d never heard it before, and it didn’t match any of our usual forms. Melita’s voice became stronger and stronger, seeming to fill my chest. It was very strange—not at all like other circles.

Rain began to fall, big, cool drops soaking my shoulders and the top of my stomach. I vaguely wanted to stop, wanted to let go, but as soon as I thought it, the idea was out of my mind, and Melita’s song was filling me again.

My hat flew off as we went faster. I felt awkward, unbalanced, and feared falling, but Jules’s and Ouida’s hands held me up. Then my throat seemed to close. Huge, heavy, powerful magick welled out of the ground as if it would swallow me up. Of course I’d felt magick before. But this was unlike anything I’d ever even dreamed of. This was overwhelming, an enormous wave made of earth and air and water and fire all at once. I was choking, truly afraid now, and still we circled the hissing candles, Melita’s voice filling the air as if it were coming from somewhere else.

Rain poured down. People’s faces blurred, smeared images flashing by. Every face except Melita’s was afraid—some were angry, also. Thunder rolled through us, so deep that it rocked the earth. The sky was white with lightning, again and again turning us into sharp-edged indigo outlines. I was drowning in magick, caught in magick like a spider-web, like pitch. I shook my hands to release them but couldn’t.

“Meli—” I cried, but at that moment, the world seemed to end. A cannon boom of thunder and an unearthly blast of lightning struck at the same moment. The lightning hit Melita directly and I screamed, seeing her dark hair flying out around her ecstatic face. The next second, the lightning imploded in me, shooting through Jules’s hand, searing mine, and racing into Ouida’s hand. We all cried out, and I heard my own scream.

An agonizing, gripping pain seized my belly. Our hands flew apart and I fell to the ground. My stomach felt as though someone had buried an ax in it, and I curled up, gasping.

“Maman!” I cried, sobbing. I held my stomach as though to keep my insides from spilling out, but the pain was too big for my hands, too horrendous to bear.

Then others were around me—Richard, Ouida, and finally, Maman, who knelt quickly on the rain-soaked muddy ground. She smoothed my hair off my forehead, her lips already chanting spells. Her hand gripped mine tightly and I clung to it.

“What’s happening?” I cried. Maman’s strong face filled my eyes, but she muttered spells and didn’t answer.

Another searing wave of pain crested, and I closed my eyes and sobbed, trying to ride it out. I felt a gushing flood beneath my skirt, and then Maman’s hands were pushing it out of the way and rain hit my bare legs. Richard grabbed my other hand. I pressed it against my cheek, ashamed to be crying and looking weak but too panicked and in pain to stop. Maman and I had already rehearsed the calming and concentrating spells I would perform for the baby’s birth, but every one of them fled my mind. All I knew was a dark tide of pain crashing over me, submerging me in its depths.

My stomach was heaving, contracting, and after an eternity, I slowly realized that the pain was less. I felt far away, tired, hardly aware of what was happening.

“Oh goddess, the blood,” I dimly heard Ouida say.

I knew Richard was still holding my hand, but the pressure was faint. I was so glad that the pain had lessened, so glad that I was removed from the horror and fear and agony. I needed to rest. My eyes closed. Rain splashed my eyelids. The storm still rumbled overhead, but the ground beneath me felt safe and nurturing. I relaxed, feeling all the tension leaving my body. Thank the goddess the pain was gone. I felt perfectly well.

Then I was looking down on myself, on Maman and Richard and the others, looking down from a high distance. I saw the rain drenching everyone. Maman held up a tiny, writhing baby, its blood being washed away by the rain. I saw myself, looking peaceful and calm, as if asleep.
My baby, Hélène,
I thought.

I came out of it when I fell backward and hit my head on a rock.

Blinking, I looked up and saw dark, moonless sky and the tops of family crypts.

My head hurt and I put up a hand to rub it, feeling a knot forming on the back of my skull. I sat up. A chunk of a nameplate had fallen off a crypt, who knew how long ago, and I’d whacked my head against it. I didn’t know why I had fallen—if I was dead, why did my head hurt? And my hands?

It took another minute for it to sink in that I wasn’t dead; I wasn’t Cerise. I was me, Clio, in the here and now. My four candles were guttering and almost out. The small bowl of coal was nothing but gray ashes. I looked around quickly, placing myself, then crawled over to my canvas bag and pulled out my watch. It was 4 a.m. I felt shaken and breathless. This time, instead of just seeing the rite happen, I’d been part of it. I’d heard the spell Melita had used, seen the glowing sigils and runes on the ground, the ones we hadn’t seen her write, because she’d put them there before the circle gathered.

I’d felt myself die.

I swallowed, sucking in a shallow, trembling breath, then started to gather my things. I dumped the ashes onto the ground and rubbed them with my toe to make sure they were out. I snuffed the candles and cleaned up the wax that had dripped off.

“Petra would be very displeased if she knew about this.”

The dry, slow voice made me jump about a foot in the air. I hadn’t sensed anyone around me—still didn’t, in fact. Looking around wildly, I finally saw a black shadow sitting on the stoop of a crypt, next to a cement vase holding faded plastic flowers. Daedalus stood and came over to me.

My heart was beating fast—but I put my shoulders back, shook my hair out of my face, and began coolly putting my supplies into my bag.

“You don’t care what Petra thinks? She raised you.” He knelt a few feet away from me, his black clothes blending into the night.

“Why don’t you let me worry about that?” I said. I forced my breathing to slow, kept my face blank.

“Why are you stirring up the past?”

I looked at him. “You saw what I was doing?”

“A bit. Not a lot. It was an ambitious spell. Why were you working it?”

“Why should I tell you?” I stood up, my knees shaky, and shoved my feet into my slides. I began to head for the cemetery gate.

“I could help you.”