Four and Twenty Blackbirds

"Eliza, who's your friend in Florida?"

She stopped squirming and gnashing her teeth against the rag. Her eyes shrank to tiny, mean slits, and she slowly shook her head back and forth.

"Okay," I said, "that'll work. I'll just ask yes-or-no questions and you can shake your head. That'll work fine."

At that, she threw her nose into the air and stared at the ceiling. I might have expected as much, but her refusal did not daunt me. I could get a knee-jerk reaction out of her, and that was something. It was more than "nothing."

I decided it was safe to act on my assumption that her correspondent was male. "Tell me, Tatie. Your friend in Florida. You've known him for a very long time, haven't you? We found some stuff in your room that tells us you've known him for fifty years, if you've known him a day."

Her eyes didn't release their death grip on the ceiling, but she didn't huff as though I'd said something stupid and wrong. Her hands had instantly gone into hard-knotted fists where they were strapped to the armrests, and it was not because she was tied inhumanely.

"Is he a family member?"

Nothing. Not even a twitch at the corner of an eye.

"This swamp water he's sending you, it's some kind of medicine?" She continued her steadfast policy of nonreaction, so I wiggled the cork loose and smelled at it again, squinting down the neck of the bottle. "I have a hard time believing that. And you take this regularly?"

"It's for her rheumatism," Harry reiterated without enthusiasm. Eliza pivoted her head just enough to glare over at him instead of the ceiling, then permitted herself a half nod.

"I don't buy that. Not for a second."

"This conversation cannot go anywhere, Eden. She's not going to tell us anything." My coconspirator was growing tired of the games, or possibly just tired. Lord knew I was beat like an old rug. I would have given anything to lie down in the big bed upstairs they'd assigned me earlier, and go to sleep as I ought to have.

But there were bigger things at stake than circles under our eyes. "Eliza, what would you do if I threw this out? Flushed it down the toilet? Would you care?"

Her head jiggled ever so slightly, signifying the negative.

"Not at all?"

She did it again, more firmly. Harry was wrong. Whatever the vial contained, it was important enough to Eliza that she wanted me to think it was useless. If it had really been something ordinary, she would have left her eyes on the ceiling and kept her head stationary.

"All right, then, maybe I'll just dump it down the sink in the kitchen." I left her immediate vision and walked towards the door.

Eliza shrugged, and by all appearances was unconcerned. She didn't even try to see what I was doing. Either she knew I wasn't going to do it, or she knew she could easily get more. Or I supposed she might be bluffing. Perhaps it ran in the family. I hesitated. Or maybe Harry was right and the foul-smelling stuff was inconsequential. Hmmm. So many possibilities. There might be a way to tell.

I returned to Eliza and stood before her again. Her eyes were tilted skyward once more, and they did not come down to meet me. "Herbal stuff. Folk medicine, huh? Then I bet it doesn't have anything more interesting in it than saw palmetto and mud. Maybe I'll just take a drink of it myself."

That got her attention, but she didn't seem sure how to react. She was reluctant to give too much away; she refused to struggle against the bonds or try to call out, but she clearly had something on her mind. She brought her eyes off the ceiling and looked at me again.

"Well?" I held my breath and put the bottle to my lips.

"Urngh—" she grunted. "Urngh urgh."

I stopped, and pulled the gag out of her mouth with two careful fingers. The rag was soaked with drool and I didn't want to touch it. "Yes?"

She didn't start screaming again, which was a relief; in fact, she didn't say anything at all.

"Well?" I waggled the bottle before her. She blinked, but kept quiet. I'm not sure what I wanted her to say, but whatever my expectations, she disappointed them. "All right then, bottoms up."

She gasped as I poured a mouthful of the stuff past my teeth.

I would have gasped too if it wouldn't have meant spewing the brew all over the place. Eliza's herbal medicine tasted as vile as it smelled. I swallowed with force so quick that it made my throat hurt—but the pain was more tolerable than the taste so I couldn't complain. The stuff burned going down, boiling all the way to my stomach where it simmered and stewed.

"What on earth is in this shit?" I asked, more as a rhetorical statement than a genuine question.

Despite the limited progress I'd made in Eliza's interrogation, Harry was not happy. "You shouldn't have done that. She probably doesn't know what's in it any more than I do, and it might be . . . bad for you."

"Oh, please," I wiped my tongue around my molars, trying to scrape away the fetid flavor. "Anything a woman her age regularly drinks can't possibly be that harmful. See? No ill effects. It's disgusting, but I'm sure it's harmless." For emphasis, I threw my head back and took another deep, hearty swallow—this time taking care to plug my nose to dull the assault on my taste buds. To my surprise, this second swill left the bottle close to empty. Hard to believe I'd ingested so much of it. Hard to believe anybody could.

Eliza finally broke her silence. Her voice was strange, soft, and unhappy. "You shouldn't drink that."

"Why? Is Harry right? Will it hurt me? I know you don't care, so be sure to try a different approach when you answer."

"No. I don't care if you choke on it. Look at yourself, guzzling down a sick old woman's medicine that you stole from her cabinet. I need that to live, and you don't need it at all. You're young and strong, and you are killing me with every drop you drink."

"That's not much of a deterrent. If anything that makes me want to hunt down every bit of it you've got in the house and run it down the sink." I wiped at my mouth with one of the napkins that had not been used to plug Eliza's mouth. I couldn't have downed another sip if they'd held a gun to my head. How she'd been drinking it in such quantities for years astounded me. "You've got a lot of faith in this stuff."

"It's strong medicine. I need it."

"But you can get more. Harry said you get a new shipment about twice a month."

"I don't know if I'll last until the next one comes." She was afraid. I saw it in her eyes, in her floppy jowls, and her quivering mouth. I looked down and saw there was enough "medicine" left for maybe another smallish dose. I looked up at Eliza.

In that moment, she and I understood each other for the first time. We both understood that I had leverage.

"You really do need this, don't you? Or at least you think you do."

"Yes, I do need it."

"Then tell me where you get it from, and I'll leave you the last bit."

"You already know. I get it from a friend in Florida."

"Who?"

"No one you know." As she made her curt replies, she was watching me intently. Even in her fear, she was curious. She was expecting something, but what? What could the stuff possibly do to me? My stomach was sloshing and queasy, and burned in a place or two where the liquid rolled against it, but I did not feel any different.

Not better, not . . . worse.

"Satisfy my curiosity." My voice came louder than I meant for it to. "Who lives in Highlands Hammock?"

She balked, or stalled. God. We wererelated. We used all the same tricks. I wondered if I was so transparent when I tried to manipulate people. Surely not, or I'd never have gotten anywhere in life. "No one lives there. It's just a swamp. It's a park. Nobody could live there, even if they wanted to."

"Maybe it's an alligator that sends you this medicine, then. Or a musk . . . rat." I wanted to be cocky, but it was coming out wrong. I almost giggled. "A muskrat. I don't even know what one looks like. They're something like possums, I bet, but they live where it's wet. I guess. I don't know. . . ." I let it trail off.

With one hand, I reached behind me and pulled out one of the dining room chairs. I meant to take it casually, but instead I dropped onto it like a stone. My legs were going numb, and after them my arms and hands.

"Eden? Eden?" I dimly saw Harry rush to my side and take the bottle from my hand, but I didn't feel his touch on my shoulder or the pressure of his fingers moving mine. I only saw Eliza's wicked blue eyes, though they were not regarding me with triumph. They were still sad, and a touch angry.

"What . . . is . . . this?" My tongue felt like Silly Putty. I couldn't maneuver it around my palate. I was weakening by the moment; but I desperately assured myself that I must not be dying, or else Eliza would be laughing some horrid laugh. My fright forced the words together faster when I repeated them a second time. "What is this?"

Surely I was right. I could not be dying, for in those frigid eyes I saw only resentment when she replied. "My magic."

And then the room went dark.

Completely black.

Eliza was gone, and Harry was gone, and though the long table and the chairs and the plates and silverware had never been cleared away, all of these things were gone.

My stomach had stopped hurting, though, and that was nice. I could breathe again, and that was nice too. I could still taste the concoction in the back of my mouth, clinging to my tonsils and refusing to slide down all the way, and that was not so nice. But I was no longer afraid.

Not at first.

Not until I began to see that although Harry and Eliza were no longer with me, I was not alone in this new darkness. Beside me, behind me, around me, and above me, there was movement. The fast kisses of displaced air tickled the hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck until they all stood at attention, waiting to be touched. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">