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Chapter 11 The Bayou

Bri

As the sun rose golden beyond the thick canopy of Spanish moss-laden cypress, the nocturnal creatures laid down to rest. I spent that day pushing the small boat around fallen logs and trees through thick patches of marsh grass, lilies, and duckweed in the shallows and paddling through deeper channels. The familiar sounds of my bustling home in The Big Easy were gone now as the buzzing of insects and the drone of cicadas filled my ears, the occasional calls of birds sounding off in the distance. Telltale disturbances disrupted the murky expanse of the stagnant waters as gators, frogs, and slithering things moved within its depths.

It was impossible to know what exactly lay beneath the dark brown water below, it was void of light. The biggest gator ever recorded was a behemoth of 19 feet. That one must have inherited some prehistoric DNA. My father used to tell me stories about all his dramatic encounters as a boy growing up in Cajun country, and though I'm sure there were many exaggerations, none of his encounters boasted a gator of more than 12 or 14 feet. I hadn’t seen any big boys yet. Nothing over 4 or 5 feet anyway. I knew they were out there, along with the water moccasins and many other species including rattle snakes slithering about. Not to mention the mosquitos were like dive bombers, causing me to keep my hood up and the hoodie on despite the heat and humidity.

My father had told me some wild stories about monsters that walked like men but had the claws and head of a wolf. He said they were the protectors of the swamp, of the vast expanse of the bayou. Creatures of magic and nature combined and binded into the soul of a man and a wolf, cursed and blessed in the same breath. He also had stories of old Creole witches who still lived in shacks deep in the vast depth of the swamp.

I closed my eyes. Whatv was I going to do? My anxiety rose, breathing in and out, the girl came to me again, singing a sweet fluid ballad in some old tongue as her hands dug into rich soil tilling it as a round-faced blonde woman worked beside her singing along. Each time the small trowel turned over the earth, her hands dug in, loosening the soil. The feel of the earth in our bare hands, under our nails, the smell of it, was grounding. My weary head rested against the oar in my hands, its paddle braced against the bottom of the boat. The girl rose, dusting off her hands, our eyes landing on a small greenhouse and a water hose. As she walked past the greenhouse I got a glimpse of her, her features instantly burned into my mind as the memory stood stone still. Her eyes were my eyes and not just in shape or color, but the light in them shined even brighter than my own. Her face was my face, younger, fuller, and sun-kissed, each angle and curve of it was the same as mine. Her hair though, a little lighter and bleached by the sunlight, the thick waves of it could be my own. In another place. Another time. Another life?

The memory started to fade as time moved forward and the girl’s attention went elsewhere. Was this a past lifetime? I didn’t think that was the case, the woman's clothes looked modern. It was startling and reassuring at the same time. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I was thankful to the girl for being my saving grace once again. She calmed the chaos of my magic and anxiety, giving me enough respite to hold it at bay. Eventually, I knew the power I had unleashed to cloak myself would catch up to me. The cost of using my gift was weathering the acclimation as the power grew within me. It was only a matter of time.

As the sun rose high in the sky I couldn’t appreciate the unique, eerie beauty of the place. The pounding in my head was an incessant monster in my mind. Eating the apple I brought only resulted in vomiting. Little fish came to the surface to eat it up. Gross. I had to ration the water I had brought because I didn’t know when I would find a place to stop, find a hideaway, some abandoned little cabin untouched by the many years of change in this eerily beautiful place. It was late afternoon when the wet sticky evidence of the war within myself seeped out of my nose. With no options, I said a prayer to the goddess, tucked away the oars and poll, and curled into a fetal position at the bottom of the boat, not trusting that I wouldn’t keel over when I lost consciousness and tip the vessel.

It happened as the patches of light coming through the trees turned to the reds and oranges of the setting sun, I became lost to the time and place of this world only to awake in the dominion of my mind where I’d have to brace my very being, as the new strength within me sought to rebalance the human body unfit to hold it. Within me it was like the door that had clicked open when I cast the cloaking spell had triggered a volcano to erupted, and now molten lava coursed through the far reaches of my mind, pouring into my veins. I willed it to cool and reforge so that my mind could contain its tumultuous power.

Time and physical senses were lost as the battle raged like ice and fire, light and darkness, something wrought of goodness and tempted by the depths of the proverbial hell. Mentally and physically that lava of power began to reform and settle within the vessel of me. It finally started, the slow process of cooling, replacing the mindscapes of my psyche as it consumed the large gates and historic architecture of my past, swallowing them up as most of them sunk below the depths of the swamp that emerged around its center, creating a moat covered in duckweed and lilies that seemed to bare teeth. Bioluminescent cypress, laden with glowing moss erupted out of the black water as sentinels to guard what lay within, roots fused into the inky depths ready to pull the power of the darkness that resided inside the confines of my being.

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