Elle was standing beside the trunk of the limousine, watching and occasionally sniffing the damp air, while the driver unloaded her meager luggage, a single suitcase and a tote bag. Stepping onto the grounds of Vieilles Chantantes Elle felt herself a woman transformed, but she always did when she came there. It was in the very fabric that made up the land. Her eyes took in the large house, the oaks and banana trees, the gardens that stretched out behind the house where rice fields would have once had filled her field of vision. The moist air enveloped her, relaxing skin that had been chilled by the air-conditioned comfort of the car. She stepped into Vee’s embrace and felt the immediate energy of the woman who held her.
“Is anybody else here?” Elle asked.
“No, no, they won’t be here for a while,” Vee told her, kissing her friend on one cheek, then the other. She linked their arms together and motioned for Colette to take the waiting bags while leading Elle into the house. “I have you in the blue room,” she murmured.
“You spoil me,” Elle told her, unable to hide her satisfied smile.
“I hope so. Come in and have something to drink. Relax.” Vee turned to Elle in the darkened, spacious hallway. Colette was already on her way up to the rooms on the second floor, her tread on the rich oriental carpets making no sound whatsoever. “You look wonderful. I like the red hair,” Vee complimented, touching Elle’s auburn curls.
“I took your advice,” Elle admitted.
“It looks wonderful. You look wonderful.” Vee kissed Elle’s cheeks again, then led her through the cool house and out onto the verandah that spanned the length of the building. A table was set with iced glasses, a fresh pitcher of cold tea, and a small plate of paper thin baguette slices spread with fragrant, delicate cheese. Vee settled Elle onto a cushioned, wicker chair and then sat across the small table from her.
“You’re about to combust, Vee.”
“I’m excited,” Genevičve admitted, finally able to vent some of the tense anticipation she’d been holding in. Now that Elle was here and the others were on their way Genevičve felt comfortable letting down some of her natural barriers. “They’re close. They’re so close now.”
“Well, they’re in New Orleans, hon,” Elle drawled slowly, her smile deepening. It was always amusing to see Genevičve excited. For as long as she’d known the woman, those moments were rare. Even in her most agitated state, Vee remained cool.
“But they’re close,” Vee reaffirmed, her hand reaching across the wicker table to hold Elle’s. “Maybe tonight...”
“No, not tonight, Vee. Tomorrow,” Elle assured her. “You’re jumping the gun, girl. The shows start tomorrow.”
“You’ll see. They’ll come tonight when I call, and then you’ll see,” Vee said.
It wasn’t until that moment that Elle understood Vee wasn’t referring to the concerts that she and her friends would be attending during the course of the next five days. Vee was talking about the wolves. In fact, she and Vee weren’t even having the same converstation.
Elle settled back in her chair and looked out at the vista of fields before her eyes. It must have been magnificent in its day, the straight rows of rice that had grown there. Over the hundred or more years that the fields had lain fallow, gentle rises and slopes had built themselves where it had been flat and flooded. The waters of the nearby river and streams had continued their regular seasons of deluge, moving the untilled soil around at will. And the tangled foliage of the swamps and forests had encroached on the land as well, moving ever closer to hem in the broad yard.
Several buildings still stood to the left, rows of small, whitewashed cabins of varying sizes. One had been the original kitchen for the large plantation house. Another had been the smokehouse, and yet another had been part of a chicken run. Farther in the distance and nestling at the foot of a portion of the woods, had been the homes; slave cabins. All of these structures were still maintained, but none of them with the same purposes they had been built for. Vee’s family had once attempted to make the house into something of a retreat for artists. The plan had floundered and the slave cabins that still remained standing were equipped as guest houses, never used, but always ready as if people were about to descend. As she watched from the relative seclusion of the porch she saw two young women emerge from the farthest building laughing and carrying buckets, rags, and a vacuum.
“Are you expecting more guests than the usual crew?” Elle asked, sipping her tea.
“Maybe,” Vee said. Her eyes were enigmatic slits, the crystal green of the irises glinting in the dull light of the afternoon.
“I’m sensing magic afoot,” Elle teased, but the laugh that accompanied her statement was dry. There was always magic afoot if Genevičve was involved. During the years they were together at college she had been a participant in more than one of Vee’s ‘bone dances’. At first they had seemed like the usual gathering of friends getting high, getting drunk, and dancing around the spacious rooms of Vee’s luxurious apartment while listening to music. It wasn’t until their junior year that Elle realized there was a certain order to these supposedly spontaneous gatherings. They occured during certain phases of the moon. They never involved men. It had taken up until senior year for Elle to understand the significance of the bones.
There were bones everywhere. They were so commonplace around Vee’s apartment that she hadn’t ever noticed them. Wishbones in a jar on the kitchen counter, what she had thought were tiny dream catchers attached to the blinds had revealed themselves on closer inspection to be fetishes made of feathers and crossed bones. They were even sewed into some of Vee’s clothing, making subtle rises in the hems of skirts or blouses. The pattern was repeated again and again throughout the apartment, in the patterns of Vee’s clothing, in the tooled silver cross she wore around her neck.
Bones.
Bone dancing.
Elle had first shrugged it off as a New Orleans thing, something from Vee’s ‘swamp past’ that she and their friends teased the woman about. But the pattern was played out over and over again until Elle admitted to herself that there was some deep reason for it, yet she was afraid to confront Vee directly about it’s true meaning. She had alluded to it several times, only to have Vee just laugh it off, say it was her ‘totem’ and go about just being Vee.
So when Elle saw the enigmatic expression on Vee’s face, she knew enough to understand that something was up. She should have known it anyway, what with all the talk of wolves living in the swamps and haunting Vee’s dreams she had been hearing for weeks. It couldn’t be anything less than magic.
Vee rocked in her chair, her foot making the floorboard beneath it creak out a quiet rhythm. She had turned her eyes from Elle’s to stare out at the rolling green of the old rice fields and beyond to the encroaching tangle of swamp wood that made up the surrounding ‘forest’. They slept now. If she closed her eyes she could see the furry knot of animal bodies curling and pulsing around each other. That’s all it took now, closing her eyes. They were with her night and day, on the edge of her consciousness at all times.
“Don’t zone out on me, Vee,” Elle said, patting the entranced women on the hand.
“I’m here.”
“Yeah, but you’re ‘there’, too.” The two women shared a glance, then broke into relaxed laughter.
“I think you know me too well,” Vee said.
‘I don’t think I know you at all,’ Elle thought to herself, but she said nothing, just smiled into her glass.
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After check-in at the hotel, the Backstreet Boys headed straight to the venue. It was like so many other venues: large, cold, and imminently forgettable. They piled out of the bus and allowed themselves to be led like sheep through the twisting annals of the Sports Arena until they came to the area that was designated for their personal use.
“You have sound check in half an hour, then wardrobe, a meet and greet, then the show. There’s radio tomorrow, another meet and greet, and...” the voice of their road manager droned on and on.
A.J. collapsed on a convenient sofa. It was leather and it made squeaking noises as he tried to make himself comfortable. He wanted to sleep, undisturbed, for twenty minutes. Just twenty minutes in oblivion and he would feel better. Right now he didn’t know where the energy to perform was going to come from. He couldn’t think straight.
Howie shoved A.J.’s feet aside and sat on one end of the couch. He, too, wanted sleep. His mind was a jumble and his only intent was to close his eyes for a few minutes to see if he could catch a quick nap. Easy enough, he could sleep on a bed of nails if necessary. But it wasn’t so easy with A.J.’s feet kicking him. He shoved them out of the way again, and then again, but finally gave up the third time two size eleven Nikes punched into his leg. Howie got up, then noticed that the others, stage manager and road manager included, were staring at the sofa, staring at A.J. as he twitched in his sleep, tears running from the corners of his eyes.
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“Alexandre?” The voice was silken, jarring him into wakefulness. A.J. opened his eyes to a place he didn’t recognize. He looked up from where he lay, seeing the sun light filtering through the branches of the live oaks, heavy with Spanish moss. The air around him was moist and warm.
A shadow passed over him and he saw a pair of green eyes smiling at him from above.
“Vi-vi?”
“You fell asleep out here; your father’s going to have your hide.” Soft voice, rich and deep and feminine.
A.J. raised himself up, dazed. He felt that he should be afraid, but instead found himself in a state of languor and sleepiness the likes of which he hadn’t felt in weeks.
“I’m so tired, Vi-vi,” he said. A.J. only recognized the tone of his voice. The words were foreign; French, or something like French; he didn’t know or understand. And Vi-vi, he didn’t know who Vi-vi was, he didn’t know anyone named Vi-vi, yet he felt that he did know this person who hiked up her long, full skirts and sat on the mossy turf beside him.
“I know. Rest for a while, then you have to go back.”
Smooth fingers drew his head down until it rested in the bunched material of the cotton skirts. Those fingers soothed him, stroked his forehead, while that voice, that creamy voice lulled him into some semi-conscious haze. And in that moment, A.J. knew everything. He knew that he was Alexandre and Vi-vi was his companion, his friend, his playmate from childhood and the only confidant he had ever had. He knew he was home, at Vieilles Chantantes, dozing beneath the ancient trees that gave the place its name, the giant oaks, the singing old women that whispered their songs when the breeze blew up from the river.
Smells of the river and fields assaulted him. Rich smells of mud and growth mingled with the pungent fragrance of domesticated animals, of chickens and cows, of horses. There was wetness in the air, wetness in the ground beneath him.
This was his home. The rice fields, the pastures, the bayou, swamps, and river were his home.
A.J. felt this knowledge taking him over, confusing him. He tried to pull himself from his dream, but the dream, though disturbing in its vividness, was comforting, too. Vi-vi, this Vivienne, was his as much as the land and all the land held. He opened his eyes, not knowing what to expect, and was met by the vision of Vivienne’s clear green eyes smiling down at him from her fine boned face.
“Close your eyes,” she told him in her perfect Creole French.
So he closed his eyes and lost himself in the heat of the day and the heat of her fingers.
“Vi-vi, he’s making me leave,” he heard himself saying. It was his voice, but not his language, yet it was the only language he knew.
“I know, Michie.”
She sighed. The trees sighed. It seemed the very earth around them sighed, and A.J. felt himself begin to cry, felt his tears mingle with the perspiration on his face. Again, he struggled to wake but couldn’t.
“Why does my father hate me so much?” he murmured.
“That, I don’t know, Michie,” she whispered back, and she stroked his tight, wild curls with her fingers until his tears stopped and he slept.
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Vee opened her eyes. She had been dozing in the high heat of the afternoon, sleeping in her chair on the porch. Elle had gone inside to nap, her northern constitution in need of artificial cool, but Vee much preferred the blanketing warmth of the soggy air outside.
Her mind’s eye still held her dream, the vision of deep brown eyes so filled with sadness that it made her heart ache. It was a different dream, the ‘other’ dream that she had yet to share with anyone, not even Françoise. This was her private dream that was playing out slowly to some conclusion she knew she could neither control nor stop. It was unfolding to her in its own time, at its own pace, and no amount of coaxing, no sacrifices to the Ancestors, would bring her closer to the end.
There were only two things she was sure of: that her dreams were intertwined, that the wolves were a part of her dream of plantation life, and that the sad, brown eyes of the young man who slept in her lap belonged to Alex McLean.
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© 2002 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2002 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
