Circle of Secrets (3 page)

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

W
HAT IS THAT?”
I
ASK, SHOVING BACK MY CHAIR.
“I
T’S LIKE
the entire world turned into the sky.”

Mirage points to the back door. “Go on out. Door’s unlocked.”

In two seconds, I’m standing on the back porch — which is more stable than the front porch — and I just look and look and look.

A giant tree grows up from the center of the yard, the top of it reaching the sky. And it’s filled with dozens and dozens and dozens of blue bottles. Every single branch, big and little, higher than a cypress and lower than a weed, has a blue bottle stuck on it.

A pillar of sunlight pierces straight down through the
storm clouds, almost like a spotlight. The light catches all those hundreds of bottles, throwing a blue tinge of color over everything in the yard. The tomato plants in the garden look blue, the lawn chairs, a set of old tires, fishing nets stacked against the exterior of the house, a wobbly card table off to one side of the porch cluttered with work tools, and an old chipped ceramic fountain, filled with rainwater. Even the water in the fountain is puddled into a soft, pretty blue.

Mirage’s whole yard is surrounded by cypress trees and hanging with curtains of moss, and the blue glow of all those bottles makes it look just like a fairyland. Never seen anything like it in my whole life.

“It’s a blue bottle tree,” Mirage says, coming up behind me.

I start laughing, even though I don’t want to act happy around her. The name Blue Bottle Tree is so obvious. And perfect.

“Go look, Shelby,” she says, leaning against the porch railing and wrapping her arms around herself like she’s cold.

I jump down the steps and walk closer to the tree.

Raindrops are running down the sides of the bottles, dripping off the ends. There’s a plinking noise as all that rain drip, drip, drips onto the bottles below, like the tree is creating its own magical rain shower.

I throw a look over my shoulder. “Who made the tree that way? Where’d all those bottles come from?”

Mirage’s face looks sort of red and splotchy, but maybe it’s just the light from the clouds and the rain. She clears her throat. “My daddy was the one started it when he and my mamma got married and moved out here. We been adding bottles ever since I was a girl. One a your
grand-mère’s
favorite things to do was collectin’ blue bottles at garage sales and on the side a the road.”

“I don’t remember ever seeing it before.”

Mirage shoves her hands deep into her pockets and sways on the top step of the porch, and I notice that she doesn’t come any closer. “You haven’t been out here since you were real little.”

“You really grew up way out here?”

“Yep, spent my whole childhood here, fishin’, gardenin’, trappin’.”

A thought suddenly occurs to me. “How do I get to school?”

“Used to be a school boat came for all us kids when I was growing up, but there are more roads in Bayou Bridge now, although I’ll have to take you to school by boat.”

“Oh. Boats make me seasick, you know.”

“Hmm,” she murmurs. “Glad you didn’t get sick coming out here today.”

Without looking at her, I say, “I could stay back at my house in New Iberia, you know. Then you don’t have to boat me to school. I can take care of myself while Grandmother Phoebe is in the hospital.”

I feel Mirage give me a quick glance. “I’m sure you’re real capable, Shelby Jayne, but eleven-year-old girls can’t stay alone in a house for weeks at a time. Against the law, for one thing. You’d get lonely, for another. And you can’t drive to the store to get groceries. Besides, I don’t mind rowing you. Grew up surrounded by water, as you can see.”

It occurs to me for the first time in my life that I know almost nothing about my own mamma before she married my daddy, and I’m not sure I want to know more. Even if I do like her silver heron earrings and that blue bottle tree. I’d forgotten that she used to wear unusual jewelry. Grandmother Phoebe would call it costume jewelry. That the only proper jewelry was a string of pearls or modest gold studs, if a woman had to wear it at all.

“Can I call Grandmother Phoebe tonight and see how she’s doing?”

“You can call her and your daddy anytime you want.”

I wish she wasn’t trying to be so nice. I wish I could yell at
her. I’ve spent a lot of time the last year wishing I had a different mamma. That Grandmother Phoebe was my real mamma. That I didn’t have to think about Mirage out here in the swamp, staying away on purpose.

I didn’t want to think about the good memories all mixed up with the bad. Like her leaving right before my birthday last year — after she promised to make me a castle cake for finally turning double digits — ten. I stuck the picture I’d been saving from the cake-decorating magazine under my pillow and cried. A castle cake with a moat and a drawbridge and gold candies to make it look fancy. She’d promised to take me to lunch with LizAnn and her mamma on a special outing to Lafayette, too.

Instead, I got a plain white cake in a square pan with vanilla ice cream.

Grandmother Phoebe doesn’t like to bake, and that year Daddy said he didn’t have the energy. Later, he apologized for giving me a terrible birthday, but I remember how he sat in the chair every night and moped and didn’t talk to no one.

I’ll bet Daddy bribed Mirage to take me while he was over there by Russia and Grandmother Phoebe was having her hip surgery and rehabilitation.

That’s what all that money in the white envelope was for.

We stand there, me under the tree and Mirage still on the porch, and don’t say a word.

I listen to the drip, drip, drip of rain plinking on all those blue bottles hanging from a hundred branches. I shield my eyes and squint into the sunlight to see the very top of the tree.

Something brushes against my legs and I almost jump right out of my clothes. “It’s a alligator!” I scream, running toward the tree. I wonder how fast I can shimmy up the trunk even if it means I might break a few bottles on the way up. I can practically feel that gator ready to chomp on my toes.

“Shelby Jayne,” Mirage calls. “It’s okay!”

I hit the bark of the trunk and look for a place to stick my foot. “Can gators climb trees?” Another stupid question, but it just pops out of my mouth.

“Shelby, stop running, it’s only Miss Silla Wheezy.”

Gripping the stringy bark of the tree, I steal a quick glance backward. A pure white cat slinks around Mirage’s ankles. Her swirly purple skirt poofs out like a parachute as she crouches down to stroke the cat.

“Miss Silla Wheezy is a funny name,” I say, my heart still pounding.

“She’s real old now, but when she was a baby she was a
silly kitty, bumping into things and sliding on the floors when she got to running too fast.”

A second cat, this one all black except for a tiny white patch on its throat, lifts its head from the bottom of a turned-over wheelbarrow under the eaves of the house.

“That’s Mister Possum Boudreaux and he’s taking shelter in the barrow because rain puts him in a sour mood.”

I’ve always liked cats, but Grandmother Phoebe does not. No pets allowed in her house and that is for certain.

“So why do people put blue bottles onto a tree anyway?” I ask. “It’s kinda strange.”

“The tradition comes from the African people long time ago. Folks believe the blue bottles will trap bad spirits floatin’ around their yard and keep ’em from comin’ into the house. The blue bottles hold the bad spirits inside so they can’t get out.”

“What kind of bad spirits?”

“Oh, things like imps or fairies or haunts, gremlins and critters that’ll play tricks on you, bring bad luck or evil into your life or your house. Maybe even ghosts.”

I look at her and swallow hard.
Ghosts?

“Nowadays, folks mostly make blue bottle trees for fun, to decorate their yards.”

Inside the house, the phone begins to ring.

“Expect that’s your daddy on the phone, Shelby Jayne. Me, I’m also expectin’ company so I gots to get ready for ’em.”

My stomach gives a little twist at the thought of other people, strangers I don’t know, here with us. “What company?”

“Not really company, more like a customer, if you want to call it that. Except I don’t charge and I don’t get paid. It ain’t right and I wouldn’t want it.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Someone’s comin’ who wants some healin’.”

“Do they make an appointment?”

“Not usually, but sometimes I just get a feelin’ come over me. Sooner than later, someone’s at the door. Rain seems to bring folks, too.”

The phone keeps on ringing as I back away from the trunk of the tree.

“You get the phone, Shelby Jayne, and I’ll get the door.”

Mirage bounds up the porch steps as I take one last look into the blue bottle tree.

A dizzying array of light- and dark- and medium-colored blue bottles reaches up to the sky. My eyes go cross-eyed, with all kind a blue as far as I can see. I want to get a blanket and sit under it, although the ground is sopping wet now.

Then I see something very peculiar. One of the bottles has something inside. Maybe it’s just a trick of the light and the rain. I figure it’s a bug or some dirt, a rock, maybe, but the closer I look I’d swear there’s a
piece of paper
inside there. Like a
note.
Like in a movie when a bottle washes in from the ocean with a note that turns out to be a map for a treasure hunt.

The telephone stops ringing. “Shoot!”

I do want to talk to my daddy. I wonder if he’s already in New Orleans checking in for his flight. I’m surprised that much time has already gone by. He’ll probably call right back, but that means I only have a few seconds.

Stretching as tall as I can, I grab the branch overhead and pull it down, my arm practically popping a tendon, it’s so high up. My toes are cramping by the time I slip the blue bottle off the branch and peek inside. Sure enough, there’s something in there.

I put my eye to the opening, and then shake it. A piece of paper, all folded up, is inside that bottle, but the neck is so narrow, it’s tricky.

I angle the bottle this way and that, slipping that paper all over the place.

The phone starts to ring for the second time.

Holding my breath, I slowly tilt the bottle just so and the
note slips down right through the mouth. I grasp the end with my fingers and pop it out. The phone stops ringing and I hurry to stick the blue bottle back onto its branch fast as I can.

My heart’s beating so loud I can hear it in my ears.

“Shelby Jayne!” Mirage calls from the screen door. “It’s your daddy!”

“Coming!” I gulp as my heart keeps whopping inside my eardrums like an echo. I want to read that note bad, but I want to talk to my daddy just as bad. Maybe he’s decided he’ll miss me so much he’s gonna come and get me. I mean,
going
to come and get me.

I’m trying to remember all those words Grandmother Phoebe taught me to swap out for better ones, but here in the swamp it’s harder than I thought it would be. It’s like all my growing-up language got programmed into my brain permanently and I’m short-circuiting.

The shadow of Mirage’s figure moves away from the door. I keep my back to her and quickly unfold the paper.

There are words, written on yellowing notebook paper, fading like it’s old.

Don’t forget! Tonight’s the night!
Come to the bridge — and hurry!

A note in a bottle! How strange, and exciting. My head fills with a bunch of questions. What does the note mean, and who’s it for, hanging up in that bottle in the tree?

The lettering is partly squiggly, partly printed, like someone writing in a hurry. I shiver with the mysteriousness of it, and the knowledge that blue bottle trees are meant to trap evil gremlins or imps or fairies.

I fold up the note again, stuff it into the pocket of my jeans, and run for the porch, darting around Miss Silla Wheezy and Mister Possum Boudreaux.

An ancient, green, rotary dial phone is off the hook and lying on the yellow tablecloth. A long cord runs along the floor and up the wall, like a phone out of an old movie.

Mirage already answered it and left the receiver on the table for me. I can tell she’s with someone in the front room. She really does have a customer.

Instead of talking in the kitchen where they can hear me, I grab the phone and slip around the corner of the hall, using every inch of that twisty old-fashioned telephone cord. I go into the bedroom Mirage stuffed my suitcases in and perch on the edge of the patchwork quilt. “Hello?”

“Shelby, you there?” My daddy sounds happy, relaxed, and I get a funny tickle in my throat. He’s supposed to miss me dreadfully, and tell me he’s coming straight back to get
me. Instead he asks, “Are you getting settled at your mother’s house?”

“Um, sort of.” I glance at the unopened suitcases and the box of books and school stuff still sitting on the floor.

“Bet you had some of Mirage’s famous chicken-and-sausage gumbo, huh?”

“Nah. Crawfish,” I tell him, half lying to make him feel sorry for me.

Mirage and the visitors drift into the kitchen. I want to spy on them something fierce. Will she make her customer drink potions out of a cauldron? Or wave a wand over their head? I can’t seem to concentrate on my conversation with Daddy.

“What did you say, honey? The connection suddenly went full of static.”

“Crawfish,” I say. “I said crawfish.”

He gives a laugh. “Crawfish is probably easier to come by out there than boudin,
shar.”

“I guess.” I bend over to look for critters or bugs hiding under the bed. All I see are dust balls of crud.

“What I mean, Shelby, is that Mirage sets traps below the water in the mud and hauls some up every couple days. Easy eating.”

“How do you know all that?” And why was my daddy
talking about
her
and not
me?
I thought they hated each other.

“She and I used to go fishing all the time. We lived at that house when we first got married and had you; we moved in with Grandmother Phoebe when we decided we better go to college. And, then, well, we just never left.”