I had been thinking of Maryn as a guardian angel while she's been gone. A benevolent force that opened her home to me, who saw how broken I was without my having to say anything to her. Now, in this group of people, with whom she has long-standing intimate relationships, I recognize that we are strangers. She is warm and easy with me, but the words from her old friends build an aberrant and not particularly flattering likeness of me. The ghost story plus the naked sleepwalking is too wild against the blank canvas of "the stranger." When their stories are all told, Maryn spends a moment digesting everything, absentmindedly petting the long braid draped over her shoulder. Then turns her gaze to my face.
"Well. You are turning out to be as interesting as I had hoped." She stands and stretches, sending her shoulders one way, her hips the other. "You are all dismissed. I will keep the night watch."
Alice hugs me and leads a rather drunk Guy by the hand through Maryn's house. I make a mental note to ask Alice how his drinking works with his sobriety.
Davis takes a step off the porch in the direction of his railway car and turns to face me. "Lucee Lekki, thank you for the most interesting of days."
Back inside, Maryn has blocked off the front door with a chair and piled it high with metal mixing bowls. She repeats the process at the back door.
"If you try to escape, this will wake us both. And the devil inside of you." She winks at this. "These precautions are for holes in the ground, not La Llorona. The boys, they have it all wrong of course. It's a different sort of story. She's angry yes, that's no mistake. But she has no evil in her. So sleep without fear of malevolent spirits. La Llorona wants to help, but maybe she's not so good with directions."
Maryn's left-hand points right while her right-hand points left, she turns herself around a few times, steadies herself, and walks into a wall. Old school slapstick.
"Good night, Lucee," She plants an informal kiss on my cheek. "Set an alarm, we have a busy day ahead and an early start."
"We do?"
"Of course."
I went to bed wondering what might qualify as a busy day with Maryn. As much as I have bristled at the thought of a psychic reading, or a sweat lodge, or healing ceremony, Maryn might be the right guide for me. She oozes magic. The whole of her crammed so full of knowing that some of it is bound to leak out for the rest of us to see.
YOU ARE READING
Following Fish
ChickLit"The day my husband committed himself to inpatient treatment was the same day my dog died." When your life falls apart, and the pieces are so small and few that you can hold them in one hand, what do you do? Lucee Lekki decides to slip them into her...
