I looked out of the window of the train and tried not to think of what that meant. Thoughts only of each other, only of your beloved. I could not let myself think that way, not if I wanted to find Star. I looked at the live oaks and cypresses, some thick with moss, and the tangle of rotted logs and brush beyond. We were approaching New Orleans from the west, skirting the edge of Lake Pontchartrain. Suddenly the image of Captain Woodget came to mind and I remembered that Usoa had said he was living there, somewhere across the lake. I promised myself to try to find him, if and when I could.
We wound through the outskirts and finally stepped off the train well after midnight. Ray had not been to his “town” in over forty years and New Orleans, in the fall of 1904, was no longer anybody’s “town.” It was a wide-open and well-lit city with an international port and a legalized red-light district. However, it didn’t take Ray long to adapt. Within twenty minutes of me telling him I knew only that Unai and Usoa lived somewhere near the Vieux Carré, in a house owned by a man named Antoine Boutrain, we were in the French Quarter and he was asking all the right questions in just the right way, streetwise and elusive, vague and straight to the point. He was a master at it and within another twenty minutes we had a description and an address.
The house was less than two miles away on a street just off St. Charles Avenue. The street was dark and claustrophobic with heavy, overhanging limbs on both sides. “Orange trees,” Ray said. “The Creoles loved ’em.” The house itself was stuccoed brick and set back from the street. It had a wide front door and four sets of long, rectangular windows, floor to ceiling. There was a single gas lamp burning faintly by the front door and in the pale light I could see the house had once been painted yellow, but the bricks were now chipped and weatherworn and the color was mostly a memory. Ray said, “Your move.”
I took a step toward the house and stopped. I was certain I heard singing. I looked at Ray and could tell he had heard nothing. I listened harder and even though there was melody, the singing wasn’t really singing, it was more like breathing. Then it stopped abruptly.
I nodded to Ray and he followed me along a brick path around the house and through a trellised arbor of bougainvillea to an open courtyard. In the middle there was a circular, tiled fountain and pond and lying near it, either unconscious or dead, was the woman Isabelle.
“What the. ” Ray said and started toward her.
“She prefers to fall asleep and wake up in the same place, monsieur.” It was Usoa and she appeared out of the blackness like a ghost. “Most often, that place is her own boudoir, but other times, as is now the case, she finds somewhere else to run from her dreams. We always make sure she is safe and wait for her to wake.”
She turned to me and smiled. From behind me, a shadow moved and another voice said, “Bonsoir, Zianno. Again, you surprise us.”
Unai walked over to Usoa silent and barefoot. Indeed, they were both barefoot and wearing long, beaded tunics made of muslin, which looked to be simple nightshirts, but I knew they were more than that and probably from somewhere I’d never been. Usoa reached into a pocket hidden in the folds of her tunic and then took Ray’s hand, placing the traditional cube of salt in his palm. “Egibizirik bilatu,” she said.
Ray glanced at me, then mumbled, “Uh. well. ”
“You are Ray Ytuarte,” Usoa said softly. “We have heard of you through Eder and we welcome you. I am Usoa Ijitu—”
“And I am Unai Txori,” Unai finished.
I noticed they introduced themselves informally. It was unusual for old ones and their whole demeanor seemed more relaxed. Their names together meant “Gypsy/Bird” and standing there barefoot in muslin tunics they seemed just that.
Ray glanced again at Isabelle, who was snoring peacefully on the ground. Usoa smiled at him. “Damn,” he said.
She turned and took Unai’s hand in hers, then lifted it to her lips and held it there, nodding once.
“We have something to tell you,” Unai said. “You will be the first to know.”
“What is that?” I asked.
He paused for only a moment, then said, “We have decided to cross in the Zeharkatu. For eleven hundred years, we have waited and soon the Wait shall end. Next year, in Spain, there will be a Bitxileiho. It is near our home, our ancestral home, and we will use the circumstances to cross. It is right. It is time.”
My mind raced. I had question after question, but I only asked the first one. “Why now?”
Unai laughed and Usoa kept his hand tight against her lips. He said, “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point.” Usoa looked up and translated. “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.”
He turned her head slightly and kissed her on the lips. I saw the blue diamond in her ear flash in the low light as she turned. Another question I had was being answered. I was envious of their openness and tenderness but realized those very things had made them lose their vigilance. Eder was right — their only thoughts were for each other. They had not lied to me or given me any false indications. They had simply been fooled.
“What about the Fleur-du-Mal?” I asked.
“What about him?” Unai answered. “We are weary of the Fleur-du-Mal, as were Yaldi and Xamurra. He has ’nostalgie de la boue,’ a homesickness for the gutter. We are tired of watching. Besides, you say you have found Opari. The Fleur-du-Mal is irrelevant and obsolete.”
“What if he is stealing children?”
Usoa let go of Unai’s hand and took a step toward me. “He has stolen children before,” she said. “You know that, so why do you ask, Zianno?”
“What if he stole Carolina’s daughter?”
She was standing directly in front of me. She reached up and touched my cheek with her hand. “This is why you come, is it not? This is what has happened?”
I hesitated. I saw so many things in her eyes at once. She looked back at Unai and I followed her. I saw the same things in him. They had survived so long, living with the seed of a powerful, rare, and almost supernatural love, keeping it hidden and suppressed, waiting for the time to let it germinate and live, and then at that moment that same love somehow betrayed them and made them weak, vulnerable. Love, guilt, risk, consequence.
“Yes,” I said.
On the ground, Isabelle groaned and rolled over onto her back, leaving her mouth open and slack. There was saliva running out of the corner of her mouth and the angle of her head made her look as if she was snarling. Everyone looked down at her and for some reason Ray said, “She ain’t no Queen of Hearts, is she?”
Usoa knelt down and gently rolled Isabelle back on her side and replaced a small silk pillow under her head.
“What will he do with her?” I asked.
“If he lets her live, he could do many things. He has in the past,” Usoa said, rising. “But I think this may be personal and, therefore, he may take his time. He is unpredictable, but this is his favorite game of all.”