Four and Twenty Blackbirds

My fingers went numb, and then weak. The gun slid loose and clattered to the wood floor. I did not hear or feel it fall. "I'm not—I'm not yours. I'm not."



He cocked his head and smiled without showing any teeth. "Come now. You know better than that. Say my name, girl." A pair of drawstring pants were pulled tight around his narrow waist, and the shirt that was tucked into them was gray and threadbare with age. His feet were naked except for grime, and his once smooth skin had gone ashy and dull. I remembered, someplace in the back of my mind, the letters from this place—one to Pine Breeze. Eliza must have been here to visit, at least once or twice, though it was hard to imagine her in such a place.



"It's not possible," I breathed.



"Say my name. He's awake now." He pointed down at the body, now quivering with fright and straining halfheartedly against the ropes. "Say it, and let him see that you were right all along. Won't that feel good, now? Won't it be right to show him he was wrong? After all he's put you through, I wonder why you aren't throwing it in his face."



He stepped aside and I saw Malachi's face, gagged by a dirty rag, eyes bugging out of his skull as he stared up at the man who'd bound him. I looked back and forth between them, unable to move or act or think straight.



"Avery." It barely came out. Surely I hadn't said that aloud. It could not be true. It could not.But Malachi knew, more certainly than I did. I could see it in the bulging veins at his temples and the paralyzed jerking of his hands.



"Say it so he can hear it. You say my name, and you tell him you were right."



"Avery." There. It was out, and loud enough to be heard. Malachi closed his buggy eyes and tears of frustration welled out from the cracks. "You can't be. That's not possible." Even as I contradicted him, I knew it was pointless.



"And you can't be my long-lost baby, but that's so too."



I faltered, realizing I wasn't holding the gun. I felt around for it, but didn't find it. I didn't even look down at the floor. I couldn't look anywhere at all except at him, and it didn't seem important, somehow. I'd walked in with a gun, and now it was gone. Not in my hands. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered except to see him some more, and to hear him talk. "You're wrong," I argued again, maybe just to hear him speak.



"Now, why would you fuss, when you know it's a fact? You're my child—I know it, you know it, the women know it—" and here he gestured at the door, as if he'd known all along they were there. "Even the spirit at the hospital, this boy's momma, she knew it. She smelled it on you right away."



"Wha—what?"



"You know that place—that place where you were born. That angry old bitch knew by your smell that you must be mine, but that's not why she tried to scare you so bad. Malachi, when's your momma gonna give up and go to rest? All the folks she hates are dead. I'd send her on myself if she'd listen."



Malachi mumbled a furiously garbled answer, but I didn't understand or care. The air inside the shack was so heavy I could feel it pressing down against my skin; I could have taken a handful of it and squeezed it into some shape. Or perhaps it was just the smell of the evil herbs churning and boiling as the night approached. The night—yes, the night was approaching. I only had until sundown.



Maybe until sundown.



Hang on, Lulu, I prayed, trying to pull my thoughts together into something coherent enough to be useful.



"What are you talking about? That thing—that thing that talked to me at Pine Breeze? You sent it there?" Just stringing the words together was almost more than I could do. What was he doing to me? Was it magic, or hypnotism, or simply a very difficult truth that pressed so heavy on my sanity? "Did you send that monster after me, to chase me off?"



"Aw, don't talk about this boy's momma that way. It ain't right, or polite." He reached down and actually scratched Malachi's head, almost with affection. "And I didn't send her there after you, no way, no how. I raised her, that's a fact; but I only meant to ask her some questions. I only wanted to know about you—the rest of your kin—and she knew better than anyone. She seemed the one to ask, and I wasn't about to let her being dead stop me.



"I didn't know she'd take off like that, though. I didn't know she'd be so wild and strong! She just took straight off, she did, and I couldn't snatch her back no matter what I tried. So I just let her go on and get lost. I didn't know she'd go back to that hospital, and I sure didn't know that nutty old woman would still be hunting after your momma."



"You must be . . . you must be twenty . . . or thirty years . . . older than Eliza." My next question was so huge I could only ask it in one word. "How?" Even at his advanced age, Avery was half a head taller than me and I sensed no weakness about him. Except for his appearance, there was nothing in his demeanor, posture, or attitude to suggest he was any older than I was.



"Twenty-seven years older, at my best count. I was around your age or thereabouts when she came along. So I'm old. What does that mean against forever? Against what's going to happen tonight?Eliza's old too, but she's old 'cause I let her be. An' if she wants to cooperate some more, she can live to be older still."



I looked quickly at the woodburning stove. Several pots bubbled with different colored brews. "Her medicine," I said, and, glancing a bit to the left, I added, "And that damned book," almost wanting to laugh at all the effort we'd wasted searching three states off the mark.



"She wouldn't have lasted this long without me—without my formula. It ain't perfect, as you can see by my old bones and her bent little body, but it's been working well enough. Tonight, when John comes back, he'll show me how to fix it. And once it's fixed . . ." He waved one long hand and let my imagination fill in the rest.



"How many people need to die for you to live forever?" Malachi was looking pointedly back and forth between me and something on the floor. Trying to tell me something. What? Oh yes. Beside me. The gun. He was trying to remind me that I had a gun, but I couldn't hang on to the thought without concentrating, and it was hard to concentrate when Avery was talking.



"You won't stop me," he said, and with each word my confused focus wavered, then came together enough to remember the firearm again.



From the corner of my eye I saw it there, about two feet south of my right hand. Squat, grab, fire. How fast could I do it? Better be quick. The little ray of light that had fallen in through the curtains was fading and my aunt was dying.



"Like hell I won't."



"You won't," he said with enough of that intimidating confidence to frighten me. He stepped forward in two long strides. Where had he gotten that? Where had he been hiding that knife, that huge knife big enough to be a machete?



He smiled, and this time I saw his teeth, as jaundiced as his eyes. "You won't even try to stop me, my baby. In fact, you're going to give me . . . a hand."



A sudden understanding of the threat jolted me free of my stupor; I dropped to a crouch and grabbed the gun. Too late—he was too close. He stomped one huge foot down on my wrist before I could pull the trigger, and I no longer had any doubt that he was as strong as he sounded, and a hundred times stronger than he looked.



I shrieked and tried to yank myself out from under him. With a mighty heave I pulled away, and his balance faltered, but that move cost me the gun; I had to leave it beside his foot to extricate myself.



Avery ignored the gun and brought the knife down right where my arm had been. The blade stuck into the wood, but not so hard that he couldn't retrieve it. He held it aloft again, and we circled each other like fighting dogs. I was still on the floor, in a crablike backwards crawl trying to get away from him, but I had nowhere to go. He was now between me and the door, and the only window was beside it.



"I don't want to kill you," he insisted, knife securely poised in his grip, loudly contradicting his words.



"I don't believe you."



"All I need is your right hand—no, not even that if you'll hold still. I need your fourth finger—and that's all. That's all I need to use your power. And it's mine to take. I gave it to you."



"No part of my body is yours to take. You stay the hell away from me."



He lunged forward and I scrambled backwards, knocking into the wall and sliding along it until we opposed each other once more. "But I need your power, child. I can either take it from your hand, or I can kill you—it's up to you. To kill you would return it to me just as surely, but you've got to believe I'd rather see you alive."



"But I don't believe it. And I swear to God that if you touch me, I'll feed you your heart."



Avery laughed, and the knife turned in his fist. "No, my pretty one. You don't want my power. And if you kill me, you'll take it whether you want it or not. That's another reason you've got to let me have my way."



"Forget it. And I don't need your power. I just need you to leave us alone."



"Have it your way, then. I'll still have it my way too." He dove for me again.



I scrambled back to the left, towards the stove, and as he bore down on me I reached up, feeling madly about for anything I could use as a weapon. I seized on a handle, and without looking up to see what it was I flipped it forward. A small pot, filled with a smelly, boiling liquid, sailed over my head and caught Avery in the side of the face. He reeled away, catching himself against the far wall and wiping at the dark, hot liquid.



Something about the way he recovered himself, eyes narrowing and shoulders stiffening, made me cringe. Now I'd made him angry. I expected him to make some battle cry or villainous threat, but he did neither. Instead he charged forward again, and this time he caught me by the shoulder before I could dart a hasty evasion.