A Twisted Ladder (78 page)

Severin led her deeper toward the mass. They both seemed disembodied in this strange corner of the briar. She felt Severin’s presence but could not see her, and she could not see her own body. The convoluted lines that comprised the mass were very fine. They stretched much longer in proportion to hair, unless a strand of hair could span the length of Lake Pontchartrain.

Madeleine said, “It looks like . . . wait a minute. Give me the pencil.”

She felt Ethan pressing it into her hand. The sheetrock rested in her physical lap. She drew what she observed. Easy enough, as it was only a matter of scribbling.

“You come from this thing?” she asked Severin.

“Deep inside, yes, truly. I’ll show you.”

Madeleine watched, and the deeper they plunged, the easier it was to determine the individual shapes, though they were impossibly tangled together. So much like the briar itself. But here, each strand thickened to a jumbled mass at one end and frayed splits at the other.

“Keep drawing,” Ethan said from so very far away, but the sound ricocheted all around her.

She jumped, watching. She strained to see better as they closed in on one of them. All around, sparks. Flashes.

“I can’t draw it all, I . . .”

“Do what you can.”

And so she moved the pencil to what she hoped was a clean corner of the sheetrock, though she couldn’t actually see it, and drew the nearest strand. She ran the line down to show the length first. Long and direct, but with miniscule curves along the route. The fanning end where it splayed.

She said, “My God, it’s a . . .”

But then her own voice echoed around her, like Ethan’s had, reverberating through all the tangles and twists and byways. Flashes of light, too. Reflections. She could see Jasmine dozing. She could see Ethan watching her. She realized she was straining so hard that her physical eyes were open, and she was seeing what she would have seen there in the courtyard, but in thousands of fractals. A hologram that extended beyond sight to include sound and touch and other senses, too.

“It’s a neuron. I’m looking at my own neurons inside my brain.”

SHE RETURNED TO PRESENT
awareness. Jasmine was still dozing under the honeysuckle. Ethan was still sitting opposite her at the bistro table. No longer reflections and reverberations, but once more singular shapes and sounds. Severin had curled by her feet.

“You see now that I am we,” the little girl said.

“It’s true,” Madeleine said, rising to her feet and disentangling Severin. “She’s part of me.”

“What, the river?” Ethan said, rising with her and looking at the sheetrock drawing.

“They were neurons. Severin occupies the neurons inside my brain. See there?” Madeleine pointed to the more detailed portion of the drawing, where two neurons joined in a cluster of dendrites.

He looked up, intrigued. “Well, this particular neuron looks an awful lot like the Mississippi River.”

He handed it to her and reached into his pocket. “Here, I’ll show you.”

“You talk to him much so much,” Severin said, scowling.

Madeleine took the tablet from Ethan. He was right about the drawing. The snaking axon could be compared to the path of the great river. And at the end, where the length took a sharp turn and then fanned out in an axon terminal, it bore the same pattern as the Mississippi delta, splayed fingers gripping the ocean floor at Plaque-mines Parish below New Orleans. Ethan was scrolling on his Blackberry.

“I suppose most rivers look like neurons, in a way,” Madeleine said, puzzled.

“Yeah, but your drawing looks
exactly
like the Mississippi. Have a look.” He handed her his Blackberry.

She regarded the display. He’d called up a satellite image of the great river, so that you could see the exact contours of land and water, and even the soft, sandy shallows that rimmed the coastline. She’d seen this before. When she’d journeyed through the briar to find Zenon, she had a sweeping perspective from above.

“You call on me and now you have nothing to say!” Severin cried.

“Look,” Ethan said. “Even at the top. The axon tangles up in an area that looks like the Minnesota wetlands, and the cell body looks like one of the Great Lakes.”

Madeleine panned the satellite image to the top of the river and saw, just as the crude lines in her drawing showed, a field—almost a dendritic field—of reaching, branching water and land that made a sort of synaptic jump to the Great Lakes. From there, more rivers sprouted, the largest of which was the Saint Lawrence, stretching through Quebec. It emptied into a vast estuary that cradled Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Madeleine felt a surge looking at the pattern. Interesting coincidence that the paths in her drawing mimicked these exact waterways; interesting coincidence that these waterways connected the Acadia of the north to the Acadia of the south.

Madeleine turned to Severin. “Which is it? Neurons inside the brain, or the Mississippi and St. Lawrence Rivers?”

“Parts in same! You wish so much to divide! The networks of the mind cannot end at flesh. I am a thing that is you, and we are a thing that is the river. Nothing divides!”

“What is she saying?” Ethan asked.

Madeleine put her hands to her temples. “I don’t know. Sometimes she gets so angry when she can’t have my full attention. She says that it’s all the same, me, her, the brain network, the rivers.”

Ethan thought for a moment. “Humans are made of water.”

Madeleine looked from Ethan to Severin.

“I think we have a lot to learn,” Ethan said.

“I think we do.”

Madeleine examined his face. It had become so familiar to her. The way he looked, the way he smelled, his crooked gait—everything. She’d never leaned on anyone else before in her life like this, and somehow Ethan made it seem as though her burdens were not even burdens.

She said, “And I think . . . I think I’m very lucky. I’m so glad you’re here.”

Ethan smiled at her. “I’m the lucky one.”

He took Madeleine’s hand and pulled her toward him. The late afternoon sunlight played on the honeysuckle, and a light breeze ruffled Jasmine’s fur. Ethan slipped his arm around Madeleine’s waist. She leaned into him.

“You turn away from me!” Severin said, her voice sounding strained and menacing.

Madeleine regarded her. “Severin, I’d like to be alone with Ethan for just a little while.”

“No!”

“If you’ll give me an hour, or better yet, two hours, I promise to give you my undivided attention for the same amount of time.”

Severin’s eyes glinted. “Only us then? None other?”

“Yes. Just you and me.”

Severin seemed to think it over, though her eyes narrowed. Madeleine wondered whether she’d made a mistake in trying to barter. The briar seemed a dangerous place, one where you could get lost, with creatures that waited and whispered. Memories and reflections and endless passages.

Severin said, “Then so. Alone with him for now, and then with me, to find the delights in the thorns.”

Severin turned, looking back toward the French doors, and then she was gone.

Ethan smiled at Madeleine, and put his hand behind her ear. “You’re going to be all right, Madeleine. You know that, don’t you?”

“I think so. You really think neuroplasticity is going to work in managing this?”

“Neuroplasticity, baby.” He kissed her ear. “Neuro-plas-badasssticity.”

Two hours alone with Ethan. Two hours with Severin. And tomorrow she would see Chloe about understanding this strange new world. Maybe they’d look in on Zenon together. She didn’t see it as a matter of obligation, but as a way of honoring her own spirit, and that of the generations that intertwined them.

HAHNVILLE, 1927

I
N THE NURSERY, PATRICE
washed the blood from Ferrar’s shoulder. Her sister’s body lay strapped in the next bed, but Marie-Rose’s consciousness was watching Ferrar. Patrice was not in the briar, so she could only sense her sister, not see her.

“Where is your mother?” Ferrar asked.

Patrice replied, “She left. She’s gone to New Orleans. You’re safe.”

“Will she be back?” Marie-Rose’s voice asked from a distant corner of Patrice’s mind.

Patrice sighed. “I’m afraid she probably will,
’tite
. I don’t think she’ll stop until she’s turned us all into living devils.”

She felt a tremendous anguish coming from Marie-Rose. Living puppet-beasts for Chloe. The possibility was horrifying, and far too real.

Patrice added, “But I think she’ll stay away for now. We just have to be ready in case she finds a way to come back.”

Ferrar was watching Patrice in what must have appeared to be a one-way exchange.

Marie-Rose whispered, as though Ferrar could hear, “Patrice, the river devil don’t like this man none.”

“Mind your grammar. And I know. Just let it alone.”

“But there’s a thing in him that’s leaked into you!”

“Leave it be, Rosie. Go back to your body and I’ll release you.”

The younger sister sighed and climbed back into her physical form. There, she opened her eyes. Patrice untied the straps that kept her in the bed.

“You’re still in the briar,” Patrice told her. “So be careful where you step. If you get to wandering I’ll have to tie you down again.”

Patrice turned to Ferrar. “The doctor should be here soon. Guy and Gilbert went to fetch him.”

And then she paused, looking him over from his blood-shined eye, to the X at his throat, to his bandaged shoulder. “You’ll have a third scar now, I expect.”

“A third mark from Miss Chloe,” he said.

Patrice took a step forward, examining him more closely. She shut her eyes so that she could see better. The river devil was curled over Ferrar’s shoulder, whispering into his ear.

“Scat!” Patrice shouted.

The river devil bared her teeth and rose toward Patrice. Patrice opened her eyes, and the creature vanished from her vision.

“Patrice! You mustn’t provoke her!” Marie-Rose cried.

Patrice turned to Ferrar. “You’ve got to be careful. You’re one of the others. The river devil’s been whispering to you. She’s probably planted some ideas that could get you killed. Some reckless act. Drinking foul water or crossing an old bridge.”

Ferrar heaved himself up onto his good elbow.

Patrice said, “These wrong ideas, they’ll feel like your own. But they’re just whispers. If you watch carefully, you can tell the difference. The river devil isn’t strong enough to do anything to you but whisper.”

She cast a meaningful look toward her sister. “And none of us are going to help her get her way, are we Rosie?”

Marie-Rose watched with wide, terrified blue eyes. Her coarse hair was askew, and she looked like a dark corn husk doll. Patrice knew that the briar’s point-of-view made it difficult to resist what the river devil wanted.

But Marie-Rose whispered, “No ma’am.”

“Thank you for helping me,” Ferrar said.

Marie-Rose looked up at her sister. “Patrice, what if Maman does come back? What’ll we do?”

“Then we’ll have to leave,
’tite
.”