No, my child.Sanite shook her head sadly.I want you to be better.She reached out with a withered hand.
But Marie had already turned away.And I will be. A better queen. And a far better mother than you ever were to me. We’re done. Goodbye, Sanite.She could hear the old woman weeping, felt her own heart wrenching at the sound. But she would not look back.
She’d thought the pain of losing Jon then Sanite had been the worst of it in these last months alone. But it was this pain now, the pain of her daughter inching closer to life, that had her screaming.
When the labor first came on, Marie had overturned a table, torn the vials from the shelves as she hunted through her potions and draughts. The pain came in waves, making it hard to think of much else. There was no rest in between the contractions. She felt dizzy, her thoughts muddled and shapeless.
But then she found the willow bark and almost cried from happiness. It was enough to dull the pain so that she might endure it. Another lesson she’d learned fromhim.Marie stuffed it into her mouth and bit down as the next wave worked its way through her body.
Marie had not taken anything that might have lulled her to sleep though. Not when that meant dulling her mind, making her susceptible to her enemies and to…
Jon.He was somewhere, skulking about the Quarter, fast under way on his own machinations. In the months since their meeting in his tomb, Marie had kept her distance from him, and he left her alone—so very, very alone. She’d thought of running before the labor had come on, but she was in no condition to travel. The dangers of the road were many, especially for black women. So she had no choice but to endure until after the child was born, and then and only then—Marie swallowed down the lump in her throat—she would be finished with New Orleans at last.
She crawled across the floor to the little brass bed. She was halfway there when another contraction started. She screamed against the willow bark, the noise muffled against its edges. The agony was unending.Move, Marie,she thought.Move now.
She forced herself to the bed, where, blessedly, she managed tohaul herself up onto its sheets. The rest became a fevered blur—wave after wave of blistering agony that made her want to crawl out of her own skin; bucking and writhing against the dampened sheets, sticky from her sweat and tears.
The candlelight flickered. Marie’s vision blurred. She froze, eyes pinned on the wall across the room, where two little black girls, slaves perhaps, stood watching, hand in hand. They put their fingers to their lips.Shhh.And then they vanished.
In her fevered haze, other things appeared to her. Tricks of the mind. Old Sanite, gray and smiling, rocking on her chair, eyes the white of northern snow. Her grand-mère,tsking her tongue at Marie’s folly. Her mother, turning away again, even now. One face grew into another, then another. The spirits were having their fun. Monsters and devils, the lot of them. Marie prayed. She cursed. But none of it seemed to do a lick of good, not when her body seemed determined to tear itself asunder.
Marie bit down so hard on the bark that she cracked it in half. But none of it mattered. Her daughter must live. The thought burned like fire in her mind, her kindred element. She let it give her life, keep her conscious long enough to finish the labor. She pushed and pushed until at last a wailing cry broke the silence.
Marie reached down and pulled her baby to her breast. All thoughts of spirits and suffering vanished. Because in that moment, staring at her daughter’s perfect face, she had found her purpose at last, the reason for it all. The reason she would gladly suffer again, if it came toit.
She was tiny and pale, but her skin held some color, which Marie knew would deepen beautifully in time. Her eyes were dark and filmy, her head mostly absent of hair apart from a few dark curls. She was wild, even then. She was beautiful. Her daughter at last.Hers.
Despite her happiness, Marie found herself thinking of her mother again. Although Marguerite Darcantrel had taken off running down that long road to freedom without a look back, sometimes Marie replayed the moment again in her dreams, watching her mother walk backward down that road, back toward her outstretched hand. As a child she wondered what might have comefrom that moment. What kind of mother she might have had, what kind of mother might have protected her. She would never know. Because she was a mother now, her entire destiny reshaped itself into a single word more powerful than the oldest magic she knew. Freedom was here with her own daughter. Freedom wasthis.
“Marie Laveau, I make this promise to you,” Marie cooed to her daughter. “I will never, ever leave nor forsake you. And you will know only freedom. The kind that will allow you to live beautifully and fully until you are an old, old woman who will pass peacefully in her own bed, in her own house, in her own time, because she lived free.”
Marie pressed a kiss to her head, sealed the vow into her flesh. A little copper star glowed at the center of her forehead, where Marie’s lips had brushed, then vanished. It was the mark of her magic.
It was a promise.
With her daughter swaddled to her back, Marie took to the moonlit roads. She moved as noiselessly as she could, but even after taking a pain tonic, moving in her state meant her breathing was labored, the sound deafening to her own ears. Her eyes darted through the dark, bracing for signs of wolves and men, of spirits lingering amongst the withered trees. But it was empty. She kepton.
She’d given her baby a sleeping tincture, just a few drops to keep her quiet. Crying on the run was a dangerous thing, a danger she simply couldn’t afford. But she slept soundly at Marie’s back, her little breaths threaded with unspoken magic.
Where the road forked, officers trotted on horseback, patrolling the routes for runaways and thieves. Marie slipped into the brush, careful to keep her baby’s head from catching on wayward branches. Finally, they came to a clearing, where blueberries sprang up in bright patches, the damp grass silver against the moonlight.
“Just where do you think you’re going?”
Marie’s heart fell. Because that was the voice of many black folks’ nightmares. The voice of the Brotherhood’s Grand Wizard.
Marie turned, eyes narrowing. “What do you want, Gailon?”
Gailon stepped forth, leaning on his staff of aged oak. “As tempting as it might be to regale you with my ambitions, we simply haven’t the time, Marie. It is not about what I want at the moment, but what our good mayor intends for you.”
“Corbin,” Marie spat. “You’d work with him? Even if—”
Gailon cut her short with a stilted laugh. “Child, I would work with the devil if it brought me an inch closer to my goals. With you out of the way, the Voodoos would not have a proper successor, would they? Once that old bitch dies, there will be no Quarter Queen to protect them. Our beloved mayor has set his eyes on your child. Corbin wants returned to him what is rightfully his. A Laveau.”
“My daughter will be owned by no man,” snarled Marie.
“Your hand has been dealt, witch. Come now, and let us make this quick.”
“I have no quarrel with you, Gailon.” Marie glanced about the darkened field. She counted six alchemists. “Nor with the Brotherhood.”
