The Tangled Bridge (46 page)

Slowly, her surroundings came into focus. Spongy moss above and below her, lining the walls of the cave. Somewhere far away Severin was speaking. Madeleine could not discern the words and didn't try, because this was not a river devil's place.

She heard, “Oh.”

Madeleine looked.

Cooper.

Sitting in a corner of the fissure, his toy blocks spread out before him. He was smiling. A gorgeous thing. Eyes bright and round and set wide above his cheeks. He cooed at her.

Madeleine felt a rush of delight. “Oh, little baby. I've been wanting to meet you.”

He reached his hands toward her.

She scooted over to him and pulled him up into her arms, and he nestled into her lap. He slapped at his knees and inspected first her face, then her hands, and then reached toward his blocks. She picked one up and handed it to him. They sat like that for a very long time.

But even as she held him, she felt dismay. Somewhere, on the brink of death, Chloe was watching.

 

fifty-seven

LOUISIANA, NOW

HE WAS SUCH A
little thing. Ghastly to imagine an infant in the briar. Madeleine hadn't known this place existed before last year, and she was in her late twenties.

Little Cooper was falling asleep. She held him close, drinking in that baby smell.

She whispered, “Marc, I don't know how to protect him.”

She felt a lump forming in her throat. Had she just somehow given baby Cooper over to Chloe? This was what Chloe had wanted. That Madeleine come find him in the briar.

The return to sharp-mindedness fueled a new determination. She wasn't going to try to hide anymore, it wasn't working anyway—not for Cooper and Emily, or for herself, or even for Bo.

Cooper was fast asleep now. And then suddenly he was gone. Madeleine's arms fell empty to her sides.

She closed her eyes and drew in her breath. No anxiety, no sadness or fury, just a solid plan. Take the necessary actions. Commit to the death.

*   *   *

SEVERIN WAS WAITING OUTSIDE
the crevasse, ranting, frustrated that she couldn't get inside. Madeleine heard it now, though the river devil had likely been railing the entire time. And as she heard it and resisted the anger, she felt herself slipping from one form of awareness to the next, as though trying to hold onto a dream. And then suddenly she was out of the crevasse and facing Severin again.

Severin regarded her with gleaming eyes. “Such the better. Whole again.”

“Take me back,” Madeleine said.

“Now is not when. You owe a long debt of time in my play. Here you must while. Here with me.”

“Not now. Take us back to my body!”

Severin narrowed her eyes. “A fine thing to believe that you can demand service of me.”

Madeleine felt strange. Almost euphoric. And she was deeper into the briar than she'd ever dared venture. Had she died? The thought was chilling, that she might be damned to this briar world instead of in that cool, quiet place where she'd seen Daddy and Marc.

But in her heart she knew better. She was very much alive. More so than she'd been before she'd rested inside the mossy cave.

She looked to her left and recognized the broad, oily pool within a grotto of thorns. Greenish-gray light. Movement at the far side—a whirlpool. No sign of the thing she'd seen stirring at the surface before.

Severin was looking at her with a gloating smile. Madeleine's instinct was to reprimand her for not bringing them back. To unleash some fury.

But no, she wouldn't be unleashing fury. She'd be cultivating it.

She knew better than to try to manhandle Severin.

And suddenly she sensed the creature. Its nearness was apparent before she even saw it. She turned to look.

The same creature she'd seen before on the eddy's surface, but now it stood just behind her. A devil who had the body of a man but whose four limbs were long like those of a spider. A devil with tar in its body and soul. She knew that it wanted to claim her and that if she allowed that to happen her life would never be the same.

It folded its cagelike arms around her. It happened so fast.

She turned her attention away from it. Inward. And she was gone.

Gone. Slipped away from the creature's grasp.

Daddy and Marc were standing opposite her. The same sensation she'd used to get inside the fissure.

Without a word, Marc, Daddy, and Madeleine looked down. Madeleine's body lay on a pallet in the room below.

The sense of falling, and then Madeleine was back inside, hacking desperately against fluid inside her lungs.

 

fifty-eight

BAYOU BOUILLON, NOW

PATRICE SAT IN FERRAR'S
pirogue as he navigated by electric lantern through the snaking waterways. It had an outboard motor, but the going was still slow. Even if it were light out it would have probably been slow because of the endless twisting passages. The motor hummed beneath her, vibrating her bones, making her body numb. Her mind felt numb, too. She faced away from Ferrar's beam of light and looked out over blackness. The Bible sat on her knees.

They'd left Francois behind in the floating village at Bayou Bouillon. He was badly hurt, having been attacked probably just prior to when Trigger was killed. Patrice and Ferrar found Francois lying on his side with a wound to his right lung where he'd been stabbed in the back.

“Leave me to the ghost. Take the Bible. Leave me to the ghosts.” It's all he got out.

And they did. Patrice and Ferrar obeyed and left him bleeding there in the boardwalk while village dwellers hovered around him. Patrice wondered about him now. He could be cold and dead, like the seven she'd drowned. Like her brother. She ought to grieve at the thought of Francois lying there that way, but Trigger had consumed all her anguish and left nothing but a cauterized numbness in her soul.

She was going to kill her mother. She would offer herself up in exchange for Marie-Rose and Gilbert, wait until the younger ones were safe, and then she would kill her.

The motor throttled back and the boat slowed. Patrice looked over her shoulder. They were close to a stretch of land and Ferrar was shining his light along the shoreline. Gray shapes showed in the beam. Green grass or redbud, it all looked gray in the thin artificial light—all color and life squeezed out, leaving only a combination of black and white, absence and presence.

Ferrar gunned the motor and then cut it dead, tilting it up. The pirogue shot forward like a silent arrow across the water and slid up onto soft sand. Though the motor had stopped, it seemed she could still feel the echoes of its vibrations.

“Are we here already? The mainland?” she asked.

“No. This is a portage point. One of two. We have to cross overland and then set in again.”

“Oh.”

“Wait inside the pirogue, I'll push it up all the way.”

But she was already out and in the water. She felt her dress balloon up around her like a jellyfish. The silt felt soft beneath her toes.

No shoes. Where were her shoes?

Somewhere in Bayou Bouillon.

They hauled the pirogue up onto shore, and then Ferrar lifted it onto a dolly that was waiting in the weeds. The dolly's spoked metal wheels were enormous and it reminded her of an old Civil War cannon she'd once seen. The wheels seemed reluctant to turn but Ferrar knew how to coax them.

They walked in relative darkness. The moon was out but dawdling, and Patrice found her way more by feel of bare feet than anything else. She must not have been wearing shoes much those past six years because her soles were good and rough. Ferrar was barefoot, too. She saw the occasional flash of his soles catching moonlight as he hauled the pirogue ahead of her.

After about twenty minutes they were setting in again. This time Ferrar had to use a pole that was waiting at the set-in side to navigate through the windings.

“Too shallow for a motor,” he explained.

He used no electric light to guide them this time, just the thin moonlight and his own familiarity with these waters. Patrice looked out over a calico expanse of cut grass and water. No bird or cricket or frog sounds. Just the splash of the pole stirring the marsh and Ferrar slapping mosquitoes. Bayou Bouillon was behind them to the south and west, with Terrefleurs somewhere far to the north and New Orleans with its bridge waiting to the east.

Patrice and Ferrar traveled without conversation. She was glad he wasn't trying to fill the silence, that he wasn't trying to console her over Trigger.

*   *   *

ABOUT AN HOUR HAD
gone by in the winding flats with Ferrar guiding the pirogue with pole or paddle, depending on which was necessary, and then they were pulling onto another rise of land.

“This is…”

“The second crossing,” Patrice said, remembering that they had to make two overland crossings before the final waterway to the mainland.

“Yes.”

They pulled together and hauled the pirogue up onto the soft, grass-matted banks. The grass helped give the vessel a little slide.

“A break,” Ferrar said.

He sat down on the trampled foliage. Patrice paused and then sat next to him. In truth she wanted to press on. Find her mother. Execute whatever transaction she must in order to get Gil and Rosie to safety. Seek vengeance for Trig. Maybe even meet her own death. But she realized she was treating poor Ferrar like a pack mule. He hadn't rested once since they'd left Bayou Bouillon.

The moon passed from behind a cloud and the banks seemed to bloom in its pale light. She looked at Ferrar and saw a black trickle running just beyond his brow.

She gasped and reached for his face but then paused, afraid to touch the wound. “You're bleeding.”

He bent his head to the crook of his arm and blotted the blood. From the looks of his shirt, he'd probably been doing that the entire way.

She said, “I'm sorry. You're really hurt.”

He waved a dismissive hand but said, “We have a choice now. We can keep going or stay here until dawn.”

“Let's keep going.”

“Please, listen first. After the last set-in, once we make it to land, we need a way to get to New Orleans.”

“How do you usually get there?”

“I wait at the highway crossing. I know someone who drives a truck through there. He goes to the farms at sunrise and then he carries his load to New Orleans. He will take us, but not until midmorning. We will be exposed while we wait for him—no one out there but farmers and the bootleggers and pirates from the Gulf. So we can wait here or wait there. Here it is safe.”

She listened, thinking very little of safety concerns. Trigger was gone, and she herself was doomed. But it wasn't fair to put Ferrar in any more danger, and she had to keep herself safe, too, if she was going to get Gil and Rosie out of her mother's hands.

“Alright, then. How long do we wait?”

“We can leave about an hour after sunrise. Then by the time we get to the crossroads where the truck picks us up, we'll only have to wait by the road a little while.”

She nodded. Looked around. The moon was already disappearing behind the clouds again and the darkness folded over the beachfront.

And she thought,
No, no, no, no, no. I have to keep moving.

She scrambled to her feet. Ferrar must have taken this as a sign that she was ready to set up camp because he rose and pulled on the boat. Two good yanks and it was up a fair distance from the water. He slapped his neck where a mosquito must have landed.

Patrice folded her arms across her chest and tried not to think of the look in Trigger's eyes when the knife slid into his belly.

“I have this, at least,” Ferrar said.

He was pulling a canvas tarp from the boat and unfolding it over the grass. “You lie down there. If you get chilled, fold it over yourself. I'll be in the woods.”

“No.”

He paused. A vanishing silhouette. She couldn't speak another word for the tightness in her throat. The moon had fully receded behind the clouds and she was glad for it. She didn't want him to see her. She put her hands to her face and covered her eyes.

“Patrice?”

He'd stepped toward her. She was certain he couldn't see that she was crying but maybe he knew anyway. She stood like that for breath after breath, elbows clamped over her chest and hands to her eyes.

He said, “I know it hurts.”

She nodded though he couldn't see her in the darkness, but she was still unable to make herself speak. Her tears flowed in silence. A minute passed, and then another, and the whole while he just stood there, not saying another single word. She cried and shivered. And then finally, she reached out for him. He opened his arms and let her press her head into his chest. He patted her gently on the shoulder. She kept weeping for Trigger. For Gil and Rosie in that horrible imprisoned state.

*   *   *

HE HADN'T KISSED HER
. Hadn't touched her beyond the comforting way he patted her shoulder. They'd finally settled themselves on the canvas tarp and fallen asleep beneath the dark clouds. He hadn't even so much as draped an arm over her although, when Patrice awoke to find him lying there with her, she wished he had. She didn't fall back to sleep.

When the birds began their predawn restlessness she realized he wasn't sleeping either.

And so she said, “You're awake.”

“Yes. We should both be sleeping.”

She was glad he wasn't.

“The mosquitoes were bad all night long. We should have at least built a fire for the sake of the smoke.”

“I'll build one now if you want.”

“No.” Patrice reached out and took his hand.

His breathing paused. She squeezed his fingers. Such a big hand.

Dawn would come soon.

She said, “How many times have you made this voyage, between New Orleans and Bayou Bouillon?”