Between Catholics and Voodoo Queens

Ch4: Poor T'cornielle

Rafe and Dinah Broussard had an enormous fig tree outside the baby's room. Pie pans were tied up in its broad, flat leaves to keep birds out of the tree.

It worked for most, but not for me. The shine off the metal wasn't any different from the shine off Mamman Simbi's face. And so I built a nest where I could see the window. My task was simple: any time the shine got too bright, I was to draw the shine off her.

What a birdheaded way to say this!

I was eating the excess shreds of her soul. I eat everything, after all. Don't make me wax poetic over dead, stinky things. Some of the highlights of my simpler life are things humans can't hang with.

Mamman Simbi had brought many special children through their early years. Many of those were mine as well. I was well trained to do the work without her. She was stretched a little thin with Mung Bean and this baby.

I wasn't one for shape-shifting, and liked my look quite well, but I couldn't be a crow in that house.

So, most nights, I snuck in as a rat or mouse. Well, I was a mouse until they got a cat for their infestation (not me). The rat thereafter was because young mousers didn't handle a creature bigger than a squirrel with precision.

I didn't care about the mice, couldn't escape them coming in this close to cane fields. But the rats? There was always a risk that one would bite the girl. I'd never hear the end of it. So any time one of them followed my paths, I killed them myself.

Which is a pain in the ass when you take on the instincts of a male rat around a female at night. They're either in heat or you're wanting to force them into it, and I'm here to kill them. Experiencing a mammal's drive rubbed me the wrong way.

Once I end the threat, I escape for time off as a crow. I have my colony that I rest with outside of breeding season. I need the warmth of my mate and descendants by my side when I'm confused. I don't like confusion, especially uncertainty. My need to control everything warred constantly with my self-existence back then. It's in part because I have Mamman Simbi in my life.

What is the other side of this tidal-locked conundrum?

Sometime in the past few years, my 2nd hen has become too old to have a nesting urge. Looking at her, I realized I wasn't aging like a crow should, although I'm in my 60s. I've outlived captives, and was approaching outliving my mate again. It was a sad thing. I have children that are long dead, but they were children for months, not years. Hatchlings and fledglings are not like the bond of mates, being so brief in my life.

Perhaps this is why so many witches have been accused of cavorting with devils. I'm getting too old to be an animal, and the only human I have any love for is that sex-addled nut of a contract. We are other: her by nature and me by force.

But I do care for her, now that I'm starting to understand those words.

I decided long ago to keep alien thoughts out of my mind as best I could. I spend most of my life as an unwavering crow, think crow thoughts, have crow joys, and take on crow mates.

I am a crow, damn her!

For some reason, my identity is growing weaker the longer I spend away from Mamman Simbi. Is it easier to pretend I'm a crow when I use it as an escape from her? Why not when I'm losing the part of me that is her? I'm out here with a baby who only needs me to survive and nothing more.

I have a mind. It's barely surviving because crows are cunning.

~~~

Mamman Simbi knocked on the pie pans in the tree. It was somewhere late in the 3rd year of my chronic surveillance of baby Broussard.

"I know you're in there, Eclipse! Come out!"

I harrumphed as I jumped from branch to branch until I parted the fig leaves with my head. I mostly doze during the morning these days. It had been about a month since my mate passed, and I was starting to show signs of depression. Not that I knew what it was, but even Simbi's shine didn't dazzle me. "What do you want, woman?"

"Hrmph, it's been too long if you think you can speak to me like that, old boy." She scratched the top of my head gently to not ruffle my feathers.

The contact gave me the sudden urge to be human and shed tears. I almost nipped at her because I didn't want to follow that feeling. It was another torment in a long, unsettling life. "Well, I've been here for ages. I felt abandoned."

"Poor T'corneille," she crooned as she gently lifted me out the tree and back onto her shoulder. "How is Tammy doing?"

It took me about 2 minutes to put together the thought that this baby had a name the whole time. "She's healthy, trimmed, and past the age of smothering in her sleep from excessive soul."

It's not really a chronological age, but a maturity level. Some kids don't reach it until they are closer to 5 or so, but she has. It's simply the ability to handle excess spirit without illness. Breaking out into a sudden and chronic fever is deadly.

A bout would eventually hit her without us there. It's not as likely to kill her, and occasionally checking in would net the same benefits as being here every day. "So I'm being called home?"

"You never left home, silly." She smiled at me, as shiny as ever. "You just chose to never come greet me when you had the spare time."

"Well, I didn't like the cat." More to the point, I was seriously starting to hate T-Beau. That damn minou wasn't a rival any more than a baby would be for its father's.

"You missed Mary's wedding. She had it outdoors."

I shrugged. It was a human gesture, but I didn't have the emotions for it. "Honey died."

"It's still the right season. You planning on..."

"No, and you damn well know why." I hadn't spent years with her lecturing me on the nature of familiars to completely ignore what was going on with me. It was the moments where she forced me to face my misery that made me resent her.

She just nodded and walked me home.