crow language – Mary C Simmons … Art and Word

Chapter 15

Degrees of Freedom
Book 2–The Patua’ Heresy
© 2025 Mary C. Simmons

The Hazja

Andy and Jayzu left the Treehouse, with JoEd riding on Jayzu’s shoulder and Sugarbabe on Andy’s. I smiled at the picture they made. Charlie rides on mine when I am out walking, and has done so for as long as I can remember. He’s been with me my entire life, even if only in my heart—during the time I was imprisoned at Rosencranz and hidden deep in the Graying, though I don’t remember anything about that place.

It’s almost as if I had died and was reborn on Cadeña-l’jadia. Charlie and Andy tell me I’ve been here less than two weeks. But I am much older than two weeks! Charlie told me I was at Rosencranz for more than 20 years! I have no idea about that, but I was shocked to learn that I am 42. I don’t feel any different, so it doesn’t really matter.

Last birthday I remember was my 17^th. Estelle was angry that I dropped out of high school, so I didn’t get a cake or presents or anything like that—except for my father, Casimir—when Estelle wasn’t looking, he said ‘Happy Birthday’ and gave me his traditional wink as he slipped me a $20 bill.

I have Charlie again. I hope we are together forever, Charlie and I. And JoEd. And Rika. And the kreegans. And a Treehouse to live in! What could be more wonderful?

Today, Charlie has some Archive duties, and so he left around the same time as Andy and Jayzu. Charlie is the new Chief Archivist, he told me. Starfire left that position to become Aviar of the Great Corvid Council when the former Aviar, Old Hookbeak, fell off his roost and joined the Continuum. Starfire says we all return to the Continuum when we die.

“We don’t have special places for good corvids and bad corvids,” he says. “We all return to the Continuum—some with consciousness, most without.”

I have no idea how a raven knows this, but these birds are certainly wiser than most of the yoomuns I have encountered.

“What does the Chief Archivist do?” I had asked. I barely knew what an archivist is—something about keeping records.

“The Archivists catalog and store things in the Great Lattice,” Starfire said. “Births , deaths, where bird flu is rampaging and such like. We also keep track of the Patua’—like yourself. And the Captain.”

“What about Jayzu?” I asked. “Isn’t he Patua’?”

“Yes he is,” Charlie said. “But we didn’t know that until he suddenly showed up on Cadeña-l’jadia a few months ago. Surprised us all.”

“Indeed,” Starfire grunted as he readjusted his wings. “Understand that we corvids have kept track of Patua’ for millennia. But once in awhile someone un-attached to our Great Lattice shows up. Which is wonderful in its way.”

“Great Lattice…” I murmured. “Where is that?”

“Everywhere and nowhere,” Starfire said.

“Everyone has a lattice,” JoEd piped up. “It’s how we remember stuff and keep track of things.”

“Do I have a lattice” I asked, looking at the ground and frowning. “Where is it? Why can’t I remember anything before a few days ago? Is everything gone?”

“Yes, you have a lattice,” Charlie said. “We believe it was damaged during your years at Rosencranz.”

“Where is my lattice?”

“Inside your head!” JoEd shouted gleefully.

I stared at the ground, trying to locate my lattice inside my head. I can sense my thoughts, and things around me, but I don’t see a lattice.

“What does it look like?”

“You can’t see your lattice, or even the Great Lattice,” Starfire said. “Unless you are in the Mildornia Trance.”

Mildornia. I made a face. Horrible bitter memory of its taste, and the extremely strange dreams—more like visions. Little reddish purple mouth opening and closing, eating fireflies with colorful electric tails.

Charlie tells me they use mildornia to put the Keepers into an altered state so they can see the Great Lattice that is connected to the lesser Lattices we all have inside our own heads. The Great Lattice is where our histories and memories and learning live—and it never dies. Usually we only remember our own personal histories or learning.

“Which is why the Great Corvid Council established the Mildornia Trance,” Charlie said. “Hundreds and hundreds of years ago. So they can keep all the memories of everyone in one place—the Great Lattice.”

Only the Archivist and the Keepers in the Mildornia Trance can enter the Great Lattice, but no one else can without proper training, or mildornia. But anyone can access their own Lattice—if they eat mildornia.

Charlie and Starfire think I ate just enough mildornia to ‘see’ my own lattice, but not enough to access memories.

“But,” Starfire said, “the visions you describe after eating a single berry resemble both our individual lattices as well as the Great Lattice

“Most of the time,” Charlie said, “memories that are not remembered still exist in our own lattice.

“True,” Starfire said. “We have connected lost memories of some of our species to their individual lattices. I have found records in the Great Lattice that indicate the ancient Patua’ used the Mildornia Trance on themselves. With a little more research into the Great Lattice, I will find the proper dosage of mildornia for yoomuns—for you, Charlotte.”

JoEd has been in Keeper Training, he proudly told me that he will soon go under the Mildornia Trance and enter the Great Lattice. But much as I want to remember what I have forgotten, I have no desire to eat mildornia again—the bitter taste of that one berry remains in my memory.

“We ferment the berries,” Charlie said, as if he knew my thoughts. “Which makes it somewhat more edible.”

“You still puke it up,” JoEd said.

Unhelpful. I hate puking under all circumstances, but the mildornia retching was the worst. Eager to move on, I said: “So, why do you go into the Great Lattice? What do you do there? What do you see?”

“Hmmphhh,’ Starfire grunted. “Everything that has happened since the Beginning is stored in the Great Lattice, such as events of interest among the crows and ravens. Not just on this island, but many things outside that are important. We also record certain events of yoomun activities—history you might say. Things that need to be remembered.”

“Everything?” I asked. “The Great Lattice must be huge.”

“Huge yet can fit inside a raven brain with room to spare,” Starfire said. “The Great Lattice does not need space, as it does not exist in the familiar dimensions of the universe as we know it.”

“How did you ever learn how to do this?” I asked, amazed.

“The ancient Patua’ taught our species many thousands of years ago,” Starfire said. “We alone carry the Great Lattice—after the Patua’ diaspora that sent them all over the Earth. We know of know yoomun who knows the ways of the Mildornia Trance, nor the Great Lattice.”

“So,” I said. “Nothing is ever lost?”

“Nothing is ever lost in memory,” Starfire said. “We have found that memory loss—or dislocations as we call them—are the result of broken filaments within the individual’s lattice. The Great Lattice is another story however—as we emplace data—memories of events, if you will. The Great Lattice does not encompass the memories of any of us—including the Keepers.”

“Filaments?” I said, frowning.

“Your fireflies,” Starfire answered. “These filaments—threads—connect all the pockets of memory—we call them ‘nodes’ together. In this way, memory is quite circular, and one memory is always connected to other memories. In this way, memories can usually be restored by re-routing.”

“We think you have forgotten so much,” Charlie said, “because of broken filaments in your lattice. If the filaments are broken, the nodes are disconnected and un-remembering happens. But we have found that the memory is never gone, it is only unconnected.”

“Under the Mildornia Trance, our Keepers know well how to reattach and restore what is broken or missing,” Starfire said. “This is the first skill they learn.”

My head ached trying to visualize my lattice, with Keepers inside fixing my broken filaments. I imagined the Keepers using some strange tools that emitted blue light, fastening filament to node.

“But first,” Charlie said, “they have to perform filament repair on each other. Only then do we train them on the Great Lattice. See, everyone forgets things—yoomuns, crows, ravens. Like hatching; no one remembers what it was like to peck our way out of our orbs. So the Keepers-in-training re-attach the filaments connected to each others hatchings, so they remember being born into this world. Most everyone, including yoomuns, forget the birth experience.”

“True,” Starfire rumbled. “These are not pleasant memories. Birth is painful.”

A familiar voice…Rika’s… whispered across my mind: Some things you can’t unsee.

Fascinating. Someday maybe I will try it. When I forget the horrible taste of mildornia, and the aftermath of puking and the terrible thirst and the dreams I did not understand. For now, I will consider why I need to remember anything.

Today, I am in a Treehouse with Rika and the kreegans. With a backpack of food that Jayzu brought. I suppose I would like to remember how I know him, butI am more curious about the little cabin that Jayzu said Bruthamax lived in over a hundred years ago.

I fell in love with the cabin as soon as I entered. Charlie had described it perfectly—though he told me I had spent a night here, I don’t remember. Shelving on the wall held a small stack of clothing, some canned food, and a couple dishes. A small table with one chair next to a small wood stove—only one chair for the hermit.

The bed looked like any bed made of medium-sized logs. I flopped down on the mattress, the dried leaves crunching beneath me. I could spend my life here.

But first, food.

I rose and left the cabin, intent on the backpack full of food.

“This should do you for a couple days,” Jayzu had said. “Though I will be back this afternoon with more, so eat as much as you want.”

I dug into the backpack as soon as they left and pulled out the first thing I saw. Cookies! My stomach rumbled and, I ate one straightaway.

“Plenty of room in the cabin, dearie,” Rika said, “for whatever you don’t eat.”

I nodded, another cookie between my teeth as I emptied the rest of the food onto the floor of the deck. I planned on eating everything.

Thirsty, I took a water bottle stuffed into one of the pockets out, wrapped in a leather cord. When I unwound the cord, a strange black object dangled and swayed in front of my face. I stopped its swinging, and gazed at the fine carvings on the oval-shaped thing, depicting a yoomun hand on one side clasping a crow wing on the other.

Familiarity overtook me. All strangest about the object disappeared.

I had one of these long ago. What was it doing in Jayzu’s backpack?

Mesmerized, I turned it over and over in my palm, and it seemed to get very warm. The air around me started to sparkle and swirl as if the sun reflected its light through a million tiny floating crystals. All the crystals began to align and connect, forming vibrating bonds that crackle as they undulate, circling me, the Treehouse, the forest beyond.

Within seconds, the deck disappeared from underneath me, yet something still supports my prone body.

I hear someone screaming a litany of obscenities.

It is me.

Jayzu is gone

The Captain cruised the Waterfront for an hour past the time Jayzu said he’d be back. He called and texted him numerous times with no answer. He sent out Sugarbabe to see if any of the Downtown crows had seen the priest.

He walked the few blocks to St Sophia’s with Sugarbabe riding on his shoulder. He pulled open the gigantic ornate carved door to the Cathedral and stepped inside.

Frankincense hung in the air inside the cool, semi-dark interior. Movement up near the opulently furnished, gold-encrusted altar caught his attention. Someone sweeping the floor looked up when he walked in. The doors were always open during the day for whoever wanted to come and pray or whatever, so the janitor paid no mind to the visitor—not even to the crow on his shoulder which was not an unusual sight in Ledford—and went back to sweeping.

He left the dark cathedral and squinted as the bright sun stung his eyes. He walked around to the back of the cathedral and knocked on the door loudly and repeatedly until someone answered. He explained who he was to the Monsignor’s housekeeper, and asked if Father Manzi was on the premises. She had to go and ask the Monsignor.

“No sir,” she said to the Captain. “He left right after the funeral Mass.”

“Did you see him leave?”

“No, sir,” she said and started to close the door.

“Is Father Thomas Majewski here?” the Captain asked.

She looked sideways for a moment and said, “He just left too. I don’t expect him to return until maybe tomorrow. Shall I tell him you called?”

“No, thank you, Ma’am,” the Captain said and tipped his hat.

He walked to the nearest grocery store in the unlikely event that Jayzu was somehow obliviously grocery shopping for the past two hours. He returned to his boat and called Jayzu again. No answer.

“Jayzu’s done gone,” Sugarbabe said, as she waited for him at the boat. “Not on his own two feet though.”

“What does that mean?” The Captain said and gave the crow a peanut.

“They said he was carried out, like a sack of rocks,” Sugarbabe said, after she beaked the peanut.

“And?” The Captain said as he opened his palm to another peanut, then closed it.

“Ya,” she said. “They carried him out and stuffed him into a blue car. They took him away. Don’t know where.” She nuzzled his closed fist.

He opened his hand and flipped her the peanut.

“Who took him away?”

“Don’t know.” She stared at his hand as if he was concealing a peanut from her. “Men in black.”

The Captain stayed around the Waterfront as long as he could, but as the sun began to kiss the horizon, he started back to the island. River law was such that boating was not allowed after sunset. Might as well not tempt them. He pushed off and headed back.

There was nothing else to do but return to the island and tell Charlie that Jayzu had disappeared. Which could only mean one thing—that someone knows Charlotte is on the island and defenseless. Not that Jayzu could defend her against a police force…

Fortunately, no one can get to the island by water without the Captain—but they’d have to catch him first. He would refuse. Unless they dropped ninjas out of a helicopter, Charlotte would be relatively safe.

But he wouldn’t leave Charlotte alone tonight.

At the moment of sunset, he docked at the Sanctuary when JoEd flew onto the railing of his boat. He’d looked everywhere for Jayzu, he’d told the Captain. No Jayzu, but he did find out some things from Floyd and Willy.

JoEd had met up with the two cousins in the park adjacent to St Sophia’s.

“You guys seen Jayzu?” he had asked them.

“Not recently,” Willy said. “Why?”

“Welp,” JoEd said, “he’s gone missing.”

“What?” Floyd said, looking up from the bag of half-eaten fries he was standing on. “Where’d he go?”

“Dunno,” JoEd said, shrugging his wings. “That’s why I’m asking if you’ve seen him. See, after the Bunya’s death ritual at the church, Jayzu was s’posed to go back to the Waterfront. Me’n the Captain, and Sugarbabe—we waited and waited, but he never showed up. No one knows anything, hardly and he’s just…gone.”

“Like, disappeared without a trace?” Willy said

“Vanished into thin air?” Floyd said.

“Like he evaporated?” Willy said.

“Seems so,” JoEd said. “You guys seen anything lately?”

“Like what?” Willy said. “We see lotsa things.”

“We like to spy on stuff,” Floyd said.

“Who you been spying on?” JoEd asked.

“Welp,” Willy said, “we used to spy on the Bunya until he went and kicked the bucket.”

“Yep,” Floyd said, “then we had to find something else to spy on.”

“So we went to Downtown,” Willy said.

“To the churchyard,” Floyd said.

“Ya,” Willy said. “And guess who we saw?”

“I dunno,” JoEd said, and beaked another French fry. “Tell me.”

The cousins looked at one another and said in unison: “Father Big.”

“Ya, and he’s got a big office with a window right there in the church place.” Floyd said.

“And,” Willy said, “so we hung out on his window spying, same as we did at the Bunya’s house.”

The two crows snickered.

“Father Big,” Floyd said, “he don’t like that. He hates crows.”

They guffawed loudly.

JoEd almost flew away, but stopped when Floyd said, “neither did that other guy—what was his name?”

“Jools,” Willy said.

“Ya, Jools,” Floyd said. “The Bunya’s solicitor, I believe they call him—he hates crows too.”

“Lawyer,” Willy said.

“Oh yeah,” Floyd said. “Attorney at Law, that’s what Jools is. We don’t like him either.”

“Nope,” Willy said. “We spied on Jools a lot. He loves orbs more than anything.”

“Ya,” Willy said, “everyone knows that.”

“And we followed him to the Bunya’s death ritual,” Floyd said, “and when didn’t come out, we naturally flew up to Father Big’s window. And there he was, Jools and Father Big.”

With Sugarbabe on his left shoulder where she always rode, and JoEd on his right, The Captain walked briskly to the Treehouse. They found Charlotte sitting on the deck with several kreegans in her lap. She stroked their feathers in turn with one hand, while the other remained clenched; she was holding something in her fist. She looked up when the Captain came through the hole in the deck with two crows on his shoulders, but said nothing.

Her face betrayed enormous bewildered sadness, and the little ones were unusually quiet. He sat down next to her without speaking, never being the one who broke silence. But JoEd was having none of whatever had enveloped Charlotte and the kreegans.

“Jayzu has disappeared!” JoEd said after leaping off the Captain’s shoulder and planting himself square in her lap.

The displaced kreegans squeaked their displeasure as they scattered, but they didn’t try to reclaim their space. JoEd had seniority, being older. So they went about play -fighting and teasing each other with silly insults.

“You were never hatched,” one of them said to another. “You were just puked up.”

“Ya!” Another kreegan agreed. “With the worms!”

The kreegans exploded with raucous laughter.

Charlotte did not reply to JoEd’s information, but began stroking his feathers as she had the younger kreegans. After several minutes, she turned to the Captain and said:
“Where is my daughter, Andy?”

Father Big

After many years, it seemed, I found myself sitting on a deck in a treehouse with many crows perched around the railing—or in the tree, or flying around dive-bombing unknown objects on the ground. Charlie’s kreegans—I know most of their names—were especially fond of my lap.

I stroked their heads with one hand and held the hazja in the other. I felt its pulsating vibrations generating swirling currents of my life—memories that I had forgotten during my long years at Rosencranz. I remember now why I was there.

My 17^th birthday has faded into to the distant past. I have a daughter older than that.

The hazja might be mine, actually—it was taken from me just before the birth of my daughter. This one is so similar it could be mine, but I don’t know how or why Jayzu had it.

Jayzu. I remember him now, how he came to Rosencranz and spoke with me, in the only language I was willing to speak. The language of the crows—the Patua’. He showed me how to run away to Andy’s boat on the big river, which brought me here.

I have many questions to ask Jayzu. The hazja…

Andy came back from the city without Jayzu. The crows were quite upset, and all spoke at once:

“Where’s Jayzu, Cap’n?” “Why didn’t Jayzu come back?” “When’s he comin’ home?” Where’d he go?” “When’ll he be back?”

Andy told us everything he knew, including that Jayzu had been carried, unconscious to a blue car and taken away.

“And Father Big watched from his window,” Sugarbabe said.

“Who are you talking about?” I asked. “Who is Father Big?”

“It was FatherBig!” Sugarbabe hollered. “Jayzu’s boss!”

I frowned toward her, and then at Charlie. “His boss?”

“Yes,” Charlie said. “Jayzu has a boss he calls Thomas,” Charlie said. “He’s been here to the island—and told Jayzu about you at Rosencranz.”

“Jayzu’s boss knew I was at Rosencranz?” The frown on my face deepened. “How did he know that?”

After a brief silence Charlie said: “Father Big is Father Thomas Majewski, Charlotte. Your brother.”

Dead silence fell. Even the roar river seemed to go quiet as I fully remembered that day Tommy had me dragged off my little island with my arms tied around my back. To Rosencranz. Where my daughter was born.

I shoved the memory back down before I exploded with the anger and terror of that day. If Tommy took Jayzu away today, he could come for me tomorrow.

“Where did Tommy take him?” I asked as calmly as I could through clenched teeth.

No one spoke.

Andy, Sugarbabe, and JoEd stayed overnight on the deck at the Treehouse with me. Charlie and Rika were up in the tree with their kreegans. I felt safe enough during the night. But what would tomorrow bring? Would Jayzu return? Or would Tommy come for me?

Neither possibility could eclipse my need and desire to find my daughter. I remember the day we faced each other, and how she sang the song that I often heard as a child. And then she disappeared. And Jayzu denied she was there…

I want to ask him about that also.

“Andy,” said as we looked up at the stars that winked through the leaves and branches above them. “I need to find my daughter. Will you help me tomorrow?”

“Yes,” he said. “Since we can’t find Jayzu…yes.”

Two scenarios played through his head. Should he bring Jade to the island? Or take Charlotte into the city? Or somewhere else where no one would think to look? Both ideas seemed risky and dangerous.

In any case, he’d need some help, some backup to pull anything off, as he was sure the police would somehow come looking for her on the island. Maybe they’d probably try to arrest him on the river.

Ha! He snorted as he rolled over.

I never get caught.

The Homecoming

Jade stood up from weeding the vegetable garden and pulled her ringing cell phone from her back pocket.

Russ. He’s due back tomorrow.

She smiled and tossed her blonde curls back as she brought the phone to her ear, and said, “Russ! Are you okay? Are you back home? Or still at the airport? Do you need me—”

She heard him laugh at the other end—that familiar warm sound that she’d forgotten. In spite of the many moments she’d spent being angry with Russ for accusing her of hallucinating her mother, she really missed him.

The way he laughed. The way he smelled when she buried her face into his shoulder. She couldn’t wait to see him.

“Almost,” Russ said, his voice sounding happy but tired. “I’m in Miami. Where are you?”

“I’m at the farm,” she said. “They just started the harvest, but if you need me to, I can—”.

“No, that’s ok,” he said, “Our flight lands in a ridiculous 3:23 a.m. tomorrow,” Russ said. Or today, or whatever day it is. Or will be.”

Jade bit her lip, her joy dissipating. Our flight.

“I don’t need you to drive in from the farm. I’ll just take a taxi home. I call you when I wake up back in our own time zone.”

Will she spend the night at our house too?

“Oh, okay,” Jade said, relieved she didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night and drive to the airport. But… “What about Vinnie?” She tried to make her voice sound normal, like Vinnie was his sister, or just some random colleague.

“She’s going home too,” Russ said. “Her wife is picking her up.”

Her wife?

Jade nearly dropped the phone. All that angst…it was hard not to burst out laughing at her foolishness. They chatted for a few more minutes about his flight, the trip, how glad they both were he was on his way home.

“Love you, babe,” Russ said. “See you soon!”

“I can’t wait!” Jade said. “Love you too.”

After they rang off, Jade rolled the words ‘Her wife is picking her up’ around in her head, smiling. “Russ is coming home,” she said to Old Blue WillowB.

Which home? Jade wondered, finally. The farm had completely engulfed her; it was hard to imagine going back to their house in the city suburbs. She couldn’t very well manage a farm from a distance. And she couldn’t just walk away from it like it was a rental or a hotel.

Russ won’t want to live here. And I don’t want to live in the city.

After a light dinner and a cup of hot chocolate on the porch, Jade started to nod. Several episodes of jerking her head up from falling sideways, she yawned, picked up her dishes and went inside. Dishes in the sink could wait til morning, she was too tired to do anything but undress, put on her nightgown and drop into bed.

She fell asleep mere seconds after her head hit the pillow. Her mother’s melancholy voice singing into the wind wove in and out of her dreams. Great Aunt Lizzie’s voice arose and sang with her—the same verse over and over again:

Will you go, Lassie go?

Jade sat up suddenly, switched the lamp on its lowest brightness. Moments later a mist appeared, and hovered for a few seconds within the scent of lavender. Great Aunt Lizzie’s face coalesced from the billowing mist, followed by her willowy body attired in pale green velvet dress, with cream-colored lace at her throat and wrists. She was, as always, the portrait of elegance.

“He’s gone,” Great Aunt Lizzie said, her voice undulating as if she were underwater. “He’s been taken away.”

“What? Who’s gone? Who took him?” Jade swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for her robe.

“Another Father.”

“Alfredo’s father is gone?” Jade said. “What are you talking about?”

“For heaven’s sake, child,” Great Aunt Lizzie said as she leaned toward Jade. “Wake up!”

A sudden gust of chilly wind from Great Aunt Lizzie’s general direction blew Jade’s hair backwards for a few seconds.

“Now, let’s try this again,” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “Jayzu’s gone. He was taken away by someone working for Father Big.”

“Who’s Father Big?” Jade said, yawning as she struggled into her robe.

“Father Thomas Majewski,” Great Aunt Lizzie said.

“What?”

“Yes,” Great Aunt Lizzie, “Uncle Tommy.”

Stunned, Jade really wished she was still asleep and dreaming of a ghost. She sighed. “I need coffee.”

“Tea for me, dear,” Great Aunt Lizzie said.

When they were seated on the porch with their respective tea and coffee—spiked with a dollop of mildornia wine, Jade said: “Now spill it, tell me everything. What happened to Alfredo?”

“As I was saying,” Great Aunt Lizzie said, “After the Bunya’s death sham of a funeral, Jayzu was taken away. In a blue car. They say he was unconscious.”

“Wait, what?” Jade said, frowning. “Someone took him off the island in a blue car?”

“For the love of the universe, wake up!” Great Aunt Lizzie said, and slapped Jade lightly with delicately embroidered silk gloves. “Jayzu went into to the city to officiate Henry Braun’s funeral. He never returned to the island. No knows where he went, except that he was taken away in a blue car.”

“A blue car? Where? By who? What about—” Jade’s eyes grew large. Her chest tightened as her heart beat quickened. “Oh no! My mother. She’s alone!”

“Yes!” Great Aunt Lizzie said, her voice triumphant with a note of exasperation. “Why else would I call you out of a dead sleep?” She put a finger on the rim of her tea cup, swiped off a small spot of mildornia.

“Yes dear. Charlotte is alone,” Great Aunt Lizzie said, and licked her finger. “Except for a few hundred crows, ravens, magpies, and the like. And, to say nothing of insects and the things that scurry on the ground. As well, the Captain is back on the island, so she is not alone by any means.”

“I need to go to her!”

“Indeed you do!” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “But not now. In the morning, when it is light.”

Wuf,” Old Blue said softly.

She woke up with the dog’s cold nose nuzzling her fingers. Still in the rocking chair on the porch, the sky was the color of dawn. Disoriented, she rubbed her face with her hands. I must’ve fallen asleep down here. She stood and picked up the bottle of mildornia wine from the table, the Guardian Angle’s shimmering face appeared for a moment on the label.

Visions of her mother lost and alone, singing into the darkness, with tears rolling down her face intertwined with Great Aunt Lizzie’s animated face on the mildornia wine bottle speaking: “Wake up, child!… Time is running out!”

“I gotta call Kate and Sam,” Jade said, searching around for her cell phone. Not on the table, not in the pocket of her robe, she went inside the house. As she approached the kitchen to look there, she heard it ringing.

Upstairs.

It was Kate.

“Alfredo has vanished.” Kate said. “He was—”

“I know,” Jade said. “I was just about to call you. Tell me what happened—all I know is that he vanished sometime yesterday afternoon.”

“Sugarbabe dropped a note to Sam from the Captain this morning,” Kate said. “Alfredo never came home yesterday from Henry Braun’s funeral. The Captain waited for hours at the Waterfront to take him back to the island, but he never showed up. That’s all we know.”

“So he just disappeared?” Jade frowned.

“Pretty much,” Kate said. “I’ve got my small yet efficient network of spies trying to find out if he anyone saw where he went, and with whom. And if the police were involved.”

“My mother’s alone,” Jade said. “I’ve got to get to the island. Can I get Sam to contact the Captain this morning and take me to the island. I really need to get there!”

“That’s a done deal,” Kate said. “The Captain’ll meet you at Sam’s this afternoon. And, Charlotte’s not exactly alone. Other than usual crows, the Captain usually docks at the island at night. I’m sure he’ll look after her til we find Alfredo.”

“Hopefully, I’ll be there too,” Jade said, “looking after her. Were the police notified? Not that we want the cops sniffing around the island.”

“No,” Kate said. “My aforementioned vast network of spies tells me no one has reported Alfredo missing to the police. Who would tell them?”

“Uncle Tommy, maybe?” Jade asked. She shivered. “Does he have to be my uncle?”

“Looks like it, “Kate said. “But I’ll bet my law license Uncle Tommy is involved in Alfredo’s. He left me a message yesterday that Alfredo had asked for a leave of absence from his duties at St Sophia for a couple weeks. To visit his sick mother.”

“Do you believe that?” Jade said.

“Hell no,” Kate said. “Alfredo’s mother is dead.”

“Do you think he knows where Alfredo is?”

“Without a doubt,” Kate said. “Anyway, the Captain’ll be at Sam’s around 1 o’clock. Come get me, and we’ll go out there together.”

They rang off, and Jade got dressed, threw some clothes and toiletries into a backpack, believing she would be on the island for a day or two at least. She called Mrs Flanagan. “I need to go into Ledford visit some friends and to deal with some estate matters,” she said. “Would you please feed Old Blue and WillowB til I get back??

“Oh course, honey,” Mrs Flanagan said. “Don’t you worry about a thing. We’ll take care of the critters and everything. Bertram and the men’ll be starting the harvest—they’ll look after the place.”

Jade flopped down on the bed next to the sleeping WillowB. “I’m going away, Mr B, but just for a couple days or so. Don’t worry! Mrs Flanagan’ll be by to feed you and Old Blue.”

Willow B lifted his head, his eyes like slits. He yawned, put his head back down and covered his eyes with a paw.

NOT THE END!
-to be continued…Chapter 16 etc in progress.
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Chapter 14

Degrees of Freedom
Book 2–The Patua’ Heresy
© 2025 Mary C. Simmons

Jayzu

In the morning before he was to boat Jayzu to Ledford, the Captain and Charlie watched the sunrise from the Sanctuary. From the cliffs above, they could hear Charlotte singing—the same song she sang every morning as she looked across the river. Not at the sparkling jewel of Downtown upriver, but directly across, where the water gave way to the dense green of a small forest. A small stream, one of many, found its way to the big river and over the years had managed to carve out a swampy entrance to a steep ravine.

Atop the ravine, a person could go to the right and find the ritzy neighborhoods of the well-to-do (such as Henry and Minnie Braun, now known as Gabrielle duBois). To the left miles and miles of cornfields, mostly owned by AgMo, the farm conglomerate eating up the historical family farms. Straight ahead a person would find the highway that led west to more cornfields, or to the east toward the river and the city of Ledford, and cornfields.

Up on the cliffs, Charlotte liked to watch the waterbirds sailing into the swamp across the river to feed. In the mornings as the sun rose, she looked into the distance, beyond the river, beyond the cornfields…and sang. The words drifted down to where the Charlie and the Captain sat, not speaking. The Captain whistled the tune softly as Charlotte sang:

And we’ ll all go together

To pick wild mountain thyme

All around the purple heather,

Will you go, Lassie, go?

Another human might’ve wept at the sweetness of Charlotte’s voice mingling with the melancholy tones of the Captain’s whistling. Charlie did not weep, but sensed the depth of the Captain’s grief. He remembered the day the Captain was dumped on the bank by Sam who somehow managed to navigate the river. Deeply wounded, the crows, and Sam had nursed him back from the death he had raved to embrace.

Charlie and the Captain remained silent for a few minutes after Charlotte had stopped singing.

“Suppose we take Charlotte to the Treehouse,” the Captain said as he chewed on a blade of grass. “She’d be more comfortable there than on these cliffs. Might jog her memory, eh?”

Charlie tilted his head to one side for a moment. “It could. Perhaps just a walk away from the cliffs would help also. She’s not afraid of dark forests. Only her brother.”

“Hmmmph,” the Captain grunted. “What if we arranged Jayzu to show up? He doesn’t look anything like her brother. As long as he’s not wearing his priest costume.”

Charlie nodded and scratched the sand with one foot. “That might just work.”

“We’d be right there with her,” the Captain said, “in case she flips out when she sees him.” He tossed the blade of grass to the ground.

“She might,” Charlie said, “She hasn’t seen Thomas for more than twenty years, so she probably remembers him as someone who looks young, like Jayzu, except fatter and shorter.”

In the end, they decided to ask Charlotte if she’d like to see the Treehouse. She agreed immediately, at which point Charlie said: “The Treehouse was where you spent your first night on the island. I live in that tree also, with my wife Rika and—”

“Kreegans,” I whispered, as visions of baby crows flitted and played on a wooden deck high up in the branches of a tree.

“Yes,” Charlie said. “Kreegans. Mine and Rika’s.”

“Jayzu fixed it all up,” Andy said, “So you’d be comfortable with Charlie nearby. We know Jayzu—he will not harm you.”

“But what if—” I said, sort of wanting to meet this Jayzu, but…fear stopped me. What if this is a trick? What if—it’s really Thomas?”

“I will protect you,” Andy said. “If your brother shows up, I’ll take care of him—though it won’t be necessary.”

“We will not allow anyone—not Jayzu, not your brother—no one—to harm you,” Charlie said.

“Okay,” I said after a long sigh.

It wasn’t that hard—Charlie I had known and trusted my whole life. Andy I knew only at school, though we hardly ever spoke. Except that one time when some of the kids were teasing me and chasing me around the playground flapping there arms and screaming “Caw! Caw! Caw!”

They stole my lunch box and were tossing it between them daring me to get it from them. I was taller than all of them, but I didn’t dare move or make a sound. Just as they started to run away with my lunch box, Andy stepped in from out of nowhere.

“I’ll take that,” he said as he grabbed my lunch box from one of the bullies hand. “Get lost!”

Andy was bigger than all the boys, and most everyone was afraid of him. I was not though—everyone knew I ‘made crow sounds’ but they never knew about Andy. But I did.

“Thank you,” I whispered in the crow language, as the bell rang.

Andy just smiled and tipped his baseball at as we walked toward the building.

Jayzu sat at his table next to the window in his cottage, staring out into the forest. The funeral mass he was supposed to deliver the next day should included a short sermon about Henry Braun’s life in Christ. What could he say that might be positive yet still be the truth? Mrs Braun had told him Henry was an atheist, but he Jesus never pays any attention to such nonsense.

Jayzu did not know much else about Henry, other than his greed and dislike of crows. He searched the Internet with the spotty coverage he had on the island, looking for something, anything…

Henry had not done anything for the poor, nor did he fund hospital expansions, nor purely community-driven projects whose purpose was not to make money. Henry seemed to be completely self-centered.

A breeze blew through the window, ruffling the curtains and causing the hazja to swing at the end of a chain beneath the overhead lamp. He reached for it and held it in his hand. He had found it when he had first come to the island, beneath the bones of Brother Maxmillian Wilder in the hermit’s chapel.

He remembered that Jade had a hazja as well; she had said it belonged to her mother, and that Chloe, the woman who had actually raised Jade told her so. If only she was not afraid of him—he could take it to her. Perhaps it would help her regain the memories she had lost after eating mildornia berries.

Jayzu had been told by the young crows that followed Charlotte nearly everywhere, that she went into his cottage when he escorted Russ and Jade to the inlet where the Captain waited for them. He glanced at the portrait on the wall. What if Charlotte knew that Jade had painted it? but how could she? Unless she overheard them talking…but she would need to understand English for that to happen.

Sighing, he went back to work on his sermon. He wrote Henry’s name on his yellow pad. What did he ever do other than make a ton of money with which he had only enriched himself?

Mrs Braun however had actually given a substantial amount of money to St Sophia’s orphanage fund, as well as the food bank the church ran. With Henry’s money no doubt, so Jayzu could give him credit for that. And for marrying Mrs Braun in the first place. And, he did give his wife a comfortable life…so there was that.

He managed to write a short, sweet, entirely true sermon for Henry’s funeral that mentioned his generosity to his wife. As he re-read it for the second time, a shadow appeared at the window.

“Yo, Jayzu!” JoEd said and hopped onto a chair back facing Jayzu.

“Grawky, JoEd!” Jayzu put his pen and pad down. “Is it time for me to bring backpack of food for Charlotte—to the Treehouse?”

“Yep,” JoEd said. “Fact is, the Captain and Charlotte are waiting for you there.”

Jayzu’s mouth hung open for a few moments. He stood up suddenly, knocking his chair over backwards. “Charlotte wants to see me? She remembers me?” A broad smile bloomed across his face.

JoEd cocked his head to one side. “Well, yes she does, and no she doesn’t.”

Jayzu frowned. “She does but she does not? What does that mean?”

“Just answering your questions, Jayzu,” JoEd said. “Yes she does want to see you. And no she doesn’t remember you.”

Jayzu picked his chair up and set it right. “But she still wants to see me.” He shook his head. “Why?”

“Well see, my zazu and the Captain have told her you are not her her brother,” JoEd said. “And that you don’t even look like him. So she asked what you look like and the Captain told her and they promised her you would never hurt her or tell her brother where she is and she said okay she would meet you.”

JoEd paused to breathe.

“At the Treehouse,” Jayzu said, raising his eyebrows. “I guess that is the best place. She spent a night there, and you and your weebs and zazu live in the tree. Maybe she will remember being there.”

Overjoyed that Charlotte wanted to see him, Jayzu started to bolt out the door.

“Hoy there, Jayzu,” JoEd said, and stuck a wing out—as if he could stop him from leaving. “You need to bring food for Charlotte—membo? And water.”

“Right,” Jayzu said and turned on his heel back into his cottage.

He moved to the kitchen area and began filling a sack with an apple, and chunks of cheese and bread, a few carrots, and water. “I do not have much. I plan to get more food in the city after the Bunya’s funeral.”

Jayzu again started for the door. On impulse, he reached for the fob hanging from the lamp over the table. Jade has one of these—she said it had been her mother’s. Perhaps—

He stuck the hajza in the backpack, slung it over his shoulder and stepped outside. Closing the door behind him, he left his cottage with JoEd on the other shoulder. He could not help quickening his steps in his excitement and hesitation to see Charlotte.

“Slow it down,” JoEd said as Jayzu broke into a jog. He dug his talons into Jayzu’s shoulder, nearly falling off. “We gotta give Charlotte time to be at the Treehouse for a bit before you show up.”

Jayzu slowed to a walk and said: “I just do not want to miss her before I have to go into the city this morning.”

“Not gonna happen,” JoEd said as he regained his balance on Jayzu’s shoulder. “You just gotta chill, man. We got this.”

Before Now

“Seems Charlotte remembers her life before now up until she was taken to Rosencranz.”

I had heard Andy say that to Charlie last night.

Before now.

For the first time I wondered about what was ‘before now’—Charlie says I was at a place called Rosencranz. He says I was there a long time, many years. I don’t remember anything before being here on this island. And I don’t know how old I am.

But what was before now?

Running through the trees with Charlie overhead—like I was flying a kite. Sleeping in a tiny bed in a tiny room. Looking at stars on a rooftop. An odor of Old Spice.

Charlie and Andy both describe in great detail how I got here, with Jayuz’s help—and the repeatedly said it was Jayzu who wanted me out of Rosencranz, but I remember none of that. Charlie thinks I forgot everything before Rosencranz because I ate a mildornia berry a few days ago. I don’t remember doing that either.

Andy and Charlie escorted me to the Treehouse—they said an old hermit named Bruthamax built it and lived in it over a hundred years ago. Charlie told me other stories about Bruthamax—that he and his ancestor Hozey the Great first built a chapel at another place on the island. They said it looked like an upside-side down bird’s nest and that Bruthamax went inside every day to pray.

And then they built the Treehouse…high up in the branches of a gigantic tree, where you had to climb up a sort of spiral staircase to get up to it.

“Jayzu fixed the Treehouse all up for you,” Charlie said as he rode on her shoulder. “Got it all cleaned up and stocked with food—and clothes for you. Matter of fact, what you wear now, Jayzu brought to the Treehouse for you. On the Captain’s boat.”

“For a fact!” Sugarbabe shouted from the Captain’s shoulder. “We hauled everything on the boat, and the Captain helped Jayzu drag it all to the Treehouse. I was there!”

“For me?” I frowned, looking down at my coveralls. “But why, Charlie? Why did he do all that? He doesn’t even know me.”

“Well, he didn’t before he came to the island,” Charlie said. “I told him about you and because you speak Patua’, he visited you at Rosencranz several times because he felt sad that you were there and could not get out. He was the only person you ever spoke to—as you were not speaking the yoomun language even though you lived amongst them.”

The yoomun language. English. I know it well enough, but there is no reason to speak it here—all the crows speak Patua’, as does Andy.

Charlie says he visited me a long time ago at Rosencranz, and he pecked on the window to my room and I tapped back, but I do not remember this.

“But why was I at Rosencranz”

“Some people think that yoomuns who speak the Patua’ have a mental illness, “Charlie said. “So they put you in Rosencranz. That’s why Jayzu wanted to get you out of there. You don’t have mental illness.”

“But Andy speaks Patua’ too!” I said, turning to him. “Why didn’t they ever put you there?”

He glanced at Charlie and then grinned at me. “Probably because they can’t catch me.”

“You can’t catch me!” I hollered over my shoulder at Tommy, who was chasing me.

I could outrun him, being that I was outside almost all the time, running, jumping playing…while Tommy spent his time inside. Our mother forced him to read the Bible for two hours every day and he was always in a really grumpy mood.

I ran and ran, first laughing at them shouting “Stella! Stella!”

I laugh and keep running, but it seems so hard, like I weigh a ton.

The voices got louder, and I ran faster. Faster! Calls of “Stella!” grew angrier. Fasterfasterfaster…Gasping for air. Each breath hurts all the way down.

Suddenly Tommy is on top of me…pinning me. I can’t move.

“I caught her!” he yells.

“No!” I scream, writhing trying to get away.

His big fat hand covers my mouth. I bite it. He lets got, cursing me. But two others dive on top of me and tie me into a shirt so I can’t move my arms. And the stuff a handkerchief in my mouth.

I am on the ground. Charlie’s beak is in my face. I hear someone say: “Charlotte?”

Opening my eyes, I see Charlie on my chest, and Andy kneeling over me. “Charlotte?” he says again and picks up my hand.

“I-umm, yeah,” I mumble and try to move.

“What happened?” Andy asked after helping me to sit up

“Uh…I…Tommy was chasing me!” I cry out and gasp. “He—he—he caught me!” And I burst into tears.

Andy took both my hands and Charlie leapt to my shoulder.

“Well, no one caught anyone,” Andy said. “And your brother, he ain’t here. Just you and me and all these crows!”

He waves his arm overhead. I look up and see hundreds of crows circling overhead underneath the forest canopy, and more on the ground, or perched in trees. All of them watching curiously. I laughed, and my tears stopped, though not the gnawing fear in my stomach. “Tommy really hated crows.”

“We hate him too, MizCharlit,” a young crow piped up.

“Yeah, well, Tommy still ain’t here,” Andy said. He stood up and pulled me to my feet. “And he ain’t gonna be here. Now, we gotta meet Jayzu.”

I felt even more hesitant about meeting Jayzu, though Charlie and Andy have mostly convinced me that Jayzu would not harm me.

“He’s the good guy,” Andy had said. “And he’s not a traitor.”

I had to remind myself that whoever was chasing me a couple days ago was yelling “Charlotte!” And not Stella—as Tommy used to call me.

“That was Jayzu,” Charlie told me, again and again.

We walked in silence, on a hidden path that led through the dense woods. I got lost in the colors and smells and sounds of the forest, as if I was seeing it all on the first day of creation. Flowers of every hue amid a thousand different shades of green and brown waved in a soft breeze. Every once in awhile, the branches overhead allowed pieces of the bluest sky to peep through their leaves.

We came to a small clearing where an old gnarly tree grew, with its branches loaded with golden apples. Andy picked two as we walked by, and handed me one.

“Bruthamax planted this tree,” I said and bit into the apple. I don’t know how I know that but it seems as true as the grass I walk on.

“That is so,” Charlie affirmed as sweet tart juice exploded in my mouth and dribbled down my chin.

I tossed the core into the bushes when I finished and wiped my face with my sleeve. I heard a rustling where the apple core had landed, and imagined a mouse or other small creature taking a chunk off with its tiny hands and nibbling it down, its whiskers quivering.

We walked on, stepping over small streams that streaked through the grass. We stopped at spring that burbled out of a small pool to take a drink. I don’t know if I ever truly experienced the actual taste of pure water until that moment.

“The Treehouse is just ahead,” Charlie said, his voice in my ear.

A few minutes later I suddenly noticed the huge tree in front of us. Looking up, I saw thick branches holding up a platform made of smaller diameter, impossibly straight branches. “This must be the Treehouse!”

“Sure enough!” Andy said. He ducked under the lower branches and ascended the spiraling step, made from intricately cut branches embedded somehow in the trunk, as if the tree had grown them that way.

I followed in sheer delight. “I always dreamed of living in a Treehouse when I was a little girl!”

Charlie waited for us, perched on a railing made of branches stripped of bark. I looked around—a small cabin took up most of the room—the door was ajar. I could see a small table and a chair. And a shelf of pots and plates and cups.

“Is Jayzu here?” I asked, wondering if he was inside, watching.

“Not yet,” a voice from the branches above said.

A crow dropped out of the branches and onto the railing next to Charlie.

“JoEd’s bringing him along,” the crow said.

“Charlotte, meet my wife Rika,” Charlie said. He stretched out both wings. “And our kreegans

Rika extended a wing. I took a step closer to her and brushed my hand across it. “Grawky, Rika!”

Rika gave me the once over, eyeing my every fold, wrinkle and freckle as if I were naked. Before I could ponder whether crows understood the nakedness of yoomuns, her voice echoed through my head

“…there are things you can’t unsee.”

Several more crows dropped out of the branches onto the railing and the deck. “There are our kreegans,” Rika said. “There’s Coalie, Hank, Jenn, Wink,”—she waved a wing at the little ones milling around, causing her to give up name theming for Charlotte.

I laughed at their silliness. “I’ll figure it out, I am sure, Rika!”

“Jayzu! Jayzu!” one of the kreegans cried out, leaping up and down on the railing. “There’s Jayzu! Just came out of the woods…coming across the meadow!”

“Ya!” another said, pointing a wing. “There he is! And JoEd, riding along!”

I wanted to run away. I looked wildly over the edge at the ground below. Too far to jump.

“Don’t,” Andy said as if he had heard my thought. “You’ll break your legs. Or worse.” He took my elbow and steered my to the bench that surrounded the deck.

“Jayzu would never hurt you,” Charlie said, jumping to my side.

“He loves you,” Rika said, her head nodding up and down. “Yesireebob, dearie!”

My mouth drops open. How can this be? Jayzu loves me yet I have no idea who he is.

The kreegans took up their mother’s words and danced around the deck, leaping into the air with each “yesirreebob!”

I smiled in spite of my fears at their antics. Everyone here trusts Jayzu.

My heartbeat quickens as I hear JoEd call out, “Yo! Zazu! Here we are!” Seconds later I watched him flutter to a precise halt on the railing next to Rika.

Heavy footsteps scrape against the tree trunk. I see a head of dark black hair appear through the opening, followed by a slender figure dressed in blue jeans and a t-shirt with a large cartoon of a mouse flying through the air—its red cape flapping behind.

That is not Tommy!

I exhale slowly, not afraid…but who now is Jayzu?

Andy and I stood up, my eyes riveted on Jayzu. Charlie, Rika, and JoEd perched on the railing, while the kreegans raced around the deck squealing and leaping on one another’s back, oblivious to the expectant silence that had bloomed among the yoomuns.

Jayzu took a step toward me. I would’ve taken a step back, but the bench behind my legs prevented me.

“Grawky, Charlotte,” he said, smiling but not moving any closer to me. “I am Jayzu.”

I exhaled the breath I didn’t know I was holding and felt Andy relax ever so slightly.

“Jayzu,” I whispered as a cascade of images flooded my thoughts.

Shattered bits of a broken mirror lying in the grass. Gray stone walls. Clocks, hundreds of clocks. A red rose morphs into blood.

No one else spoke for what seemed like minutes. Suddenly JoEd jumped off the bench and ran toward me. “Jayzu’s brought food!” he said as he skidded to a stop at my feet. “Big Time Food!”

Andy laughed and stepped forward. “Big time food is welcome everywhere!” He turned toward me, took my hand and brought me gently forward. “Charlotte, meet Jayzu.”

I managed a weak smile and stepped toward him. Gazing up at his face, into his black eyes, for an instant, I wanted to fall into the depths of warm affection, as if I were being held. The moment vanished, and I frowned. Tommy has blue eyes.

“I know you and I don’t know you, Jayzu.”

Jayzu smiled and said, “I know you and I don’t know you, Charlotte.”

He didn’t move any closer to me, just returned my gaze. I don’t know how long we stood there as I studied his face, his hands, the shape of his mouth. A shock of white hair streaked through the black on one side of his head. His dark black eyes warm, forgiving…inviting. Disarming.

“I know you aren’t Tommy,” I said, my face breaking into an actual smile. “Thank you.”

Jayzu laughed. “My pleasure.”

Here and Gone

The kreegans broke into Jayzu’s backpack, and pulled out a bag of cookies before their mother flew down upon them, flapping her wings and scolding them as she shooed them away.

Andy picked up the bag and the backpack and set them on the bench. “They ain’t stupid,” he said. “I’d steal Jayzu’s cookies any time.” He grinned as he opened the bag and pulled out a cookie. He sat on the bench and took a bite, then tossed bits to the kreegans, who went crazy over the morsels.

“Now don’t you go teaching them bad manners!” Rika scolded the Captain. She was far from serious so he just winked at her as he tossed more chunks to the deck.

The tension seemed to break as the kreegans jostling over crumbs took all the attention away from Jayzu and Charlotte.

Jayzu supposed he ought to tell her that while he was not her brother Tommy, he fact answered to him as the Provincial Father Superior. His boss. But why ruin this wonderful moment, where Charlotte remembers him a little—a fragile connection he dared not sever with such truths.

There would be no opportunity today to speak with her, and perhaps she was not ready anyway, but he wished he did not have to leave her so soon. But he had to go into the city for Henry Braun’s funeral, and more dreadfully, to actually meet with Charlotte’s actual brother. Thomas.

No way he could tell her that…though again, his omissions tread dangerously close to outright lies. But if Charlotte were not in such…delicate shape…he could tell her everything. But not now. She needed more time.

Relieved that Charlotte remembered him—at least somewhat—gave him hope. The burden on him lightened, though not enough. He still had to lie to Majewski’s face today. No amount of praying at the hermit’s chapel had enlightened him as to how to get out of the dilemma he had created for himself.

No ideas came to him.

He had spent a restless night torturing himself with the things Majewski might know. Assuming he knew everything, what would Majewski do? The worse scenario would be transferring Jayzu to another place in the world, far, far away—and sticking Charlotte into Kafka Memorial. Or invite the police to have him arrested at the cathedral.

Jayzu cursed the circumstance that again, so soon—too soon—after reuniting with Charlotte, he must leave her. But this time he was not at all certain he would return.

When it was time to go, the Captain stood up and said, “We gotta hit the river,” Jayzu.”

Charlotte and Jayzu also stood. He wanted to take her hand and draw her close, hug her deeply and promise he would be back in a couple hours. But she gave him no indication that she wanted that; she just stood rooted to the spot on the deck, hands at her sides.

“Good-bye, Charlotte,” Jayzu said. “I will see you soon.

She nodded—a faint smile on her lips. But she said nothing.

On the river, Jayzu restlessly walked to and fro on the Captain’s boat. He wanted to turn around and go back to the island. He contemplated leaping over the side of the boat, and swimming to the island as Maxmillian Wilder had done.

But Brother Max had courage, while he, Jayzu, was just a coward. Not sticking up for Charlotte in any meaningful legal way, he had chosen the worst possible route to achieve her freedom. While he had few regrets that he had successfully liberated her from Rosencranz, only that he had great fear that the worst possible ending was upon him. And her.

Majewski would send him far away, or perhaps prison—the law does not allow priests to commit capital crimes and get away with it. Then Charlotte would live out her days in a mental institution.

“Captain,” Jayzu said, standing at the boatman’s side. “I have no idea what will happen to me today—but I must meet with my superior who is also—”

“Charlotte’s brother,” the Captain said. “Charlie told me.”

“I see,” Jayzu said and looked out on the river. “I fear he knows where she is, and that I engineered the whole escape—which means the police know too. I also do not know if he or the police know of your involvement with getting Charlotte to the island.”

Jayzu paused to rake his hand through his hair and gaze wildly at the river. “I do not know if I will be returning, so I need—” He stopped, his hands trying to tear his hair out. “That is—Charlotte. I mean I know she barely remembers me. She is in great danger too but she needs to understand. And I need you to hide her. Make sure no one finds her.”

“We’ll take care of Charlotte,” the Captain said. “I will protect her from her brother and the cops.”

“How will you do that?”Jayzu asked, in near despair. Whatever could the Captain do with his puny little boat?

“That is my concern, Jayzu,” he said. “Sam is nearby; as is Kate. And Jade. We will keep her safe and hidden. The less you know, the more you can claim innocence about her whereabouts.”

“But what if—”Jayzu said, “what if after they capture me, the come after you?”

Sugarbabe guffawed.

The Captain grinned.

“I never get caught.”

Into the City

The Captain pulled into the dock at the Waterfront, and Jayzu hopped out. “I should be back here in a couple hours or so,” he said. “Hopefully. I will send you a text when I am on my way back here.”
The Captain said nothing, but tipped his hat and pulled away from the dock.
“Yessirreebob, Jayzu!” Sugarbabe shouted from her perch. “We’ll be right here, and won’t budge til you come back.”
That wasn’t entirely true—the Captain had no intention of being a sitting duck as it were, for the police to nab him—if Jayzu’s fears proved valid.
But Sugarbabe took off almost immediately for the Park—a favorite hangout for the Downtown crows. She always wanted to swoop in, peruse the rubbish bins, and get caught up on all the smack around town. Crows are consummate gossipers. Sugarbabe was the Queen. She’d locate him on the river if he wasn’t at the Waterfront.
Jayzu walked the three blocks to St Sophia’s and entered the building through the back door. Inside, he went down a short hallway to the changing room behind the sacristy. As he placed the basket of wafers in the cupboard, Majewski appeared.
Jayzu’s heartbeat quickened. Adrenaline shot through him like needles. He kept his face impassive—like a corpse.
“Good morning, Alfredo!” Majewski said. “It’s good to catch up with you, finally! I’ve got to catch a plane back to D.C. at noon. I thought after the funeral, we’d chat in the car on the way to the airport. I’ll have coffee and pastries. My driver will bring you back here.”
“Of course,” Alfredo said, his voice dead level, his smile genuine enough.
Feeling panic rise, Alfredo could neither refuse nor protest. I need to get a message to the Captain. The funeral service was to start in a few minutes—he still had to change clothes. There was no time to go outside and look for a crow to carry the message.
Perhaps when the Mass was over…the front steps were always well populated with crows. He could send a quick message to the Captain.
*
Father Manzi put his wallet and cellphone on a cubbyhole marked with his name He donned the priestly garb in preparation the funeral Mass, doubting that Henry had ever darkened the doorway of any church. But that was no matter. God would undoubtedly want him to still officiate Henrys funeral Mass, even had been a saint.
Anxiety had crawled into his being when Majewski had shown up with the plan to ride to the airport with him. Something deep within, older than the Jesuit veneer encasing him in corpse-like calm, sounded an alarm: Do not go.
On the altar, though his thoughts were across the river with Charlotte and the island, Father Manzi was able to perform his priestly duties without paying much attention. One funeral was much like the next. All one really needed to do was mention the name of the particular deceased. Henry Braun. Charlotte’s sad face haunted his every thought, however—her fear and dread almost palpable—during the service he nearly invoked her name instead of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.
Henry Braun’s widow barely heard any of the Mass that Father Manzi said over the closed casket that people assumed held Henry’s body—it didn’t. The one concession she had made to Henry, was to honor his wishes to be cremated, and his ashes placed in the family vault in the Ledford Cemetery.
The Catholic Church frowns on cremation. They frown on eating meat on Friday also, long after anyone knew why. So Henry got his wish to be cremated without her being accused of violating Church doctrine. And she got to force a public Catholic funeral on her atheist husband.
Beyond the revenge satisfaction, it was unimportant to her that Henry have a Catholic funeral. She didn’t care about his immortal soul. Father Manzi saying the Mass didn’t inspire her the way the Mass used to. The shelter that the Church had provided seemed too small somehow.
Henry is gone.
A whole new life lay before her. As if she had been reborn.
Jules Sackman had not entered a house of worship of any denomination since his sister’s wedding forty some years ago. She’d had to convert to marry the man, horrifying both her Catholic mother and his Jewish mother. He could not have cared less. Religions are stupid, including the Jewish one.
At least they weren’t as stupid as the Catholics, though. Celibacy, for instance; the Catholics really shot themselves in the foot on that one. Of all the things they didn’t steal from all the religions before them, how ever did they miss the great interest that healthy humans have in sex? Although lopping off the tip of infant boy’s penis in the name of God could certainly take first place for stupidity.
The celibacy thing, though—the biggest lie in the history of the Catholic Church. Here it was again, right before his very eyes. The big lie. The good Father Manzi and the woman from the nut house. He envisioned them in naked embrace, the priest’s fingers searching out her most private and intimate wet places. Her smiling in insane ecstasy as he touched her. How very disgusting.
The idea of two lonely people finding each other in this vast wilderness of human suffering was utterly repugnant. And it made him angry. Father Manzi illegally taking what had had been denied Jules all his life infuriated him. He fantasized about harming the priest, searching out the most cunning and intricate ways in which to stick it to him.
That was mere sport, however. As much as Father Manzi irritated him, Jules regarded him as a gift from the heaven he did not believe in. Just when it had seemed his financial wherewithal was coming apart. Julia’s gambling debts threatened to consume him. He needed the steady flow of money he’d had with Henry.
But now there was Majewski! Jules already knew what he wanted. Whatever was in that vault was on the back burner, now that the Rosencranz offer had been bested. On the front burner was the old fart’s idea of removing Manzi to some secret place, where the police would not find him.
“Until this all blows over,” Majewski had said.
Jules snickered softly.
Though Majewski has no money of his own; he’s basically the CEO of the North American Jesuits— a significant, powerful position in the Church, and undoubtedly has much control over finances. A perfect scenario for as long as Jules could hold that Manzi over Majewski’s head.
Straight blackmail is so crass, though, Jules thought. You don’t blackmail the Jesuits. You make them pay, willingly, for something they want. Jules needed Majewski to want something from him, to need his help for something.
He wants that island also, Jules mused as he ignored Father Manzi’s attempt to memorialize Henry Braun. Recalling Majewski’s complaints about being unable to reach the island without the person known as the Captain—and that no one but Manzi seemed to know how to contact him, an idea started to form in the fertility of his greed.
Sitting in the splendor of St Sophia Cathedral in downtown Ledford, Jules could not help but be inspired by its opulence. As a non-member, he was neither required nor encouraged to participate in the holy secrets of the Mass, leaving him free to sit back in the pew and ponder the new way in which he might extract large sums of money from the Catholic Church.
*
After the funeral service, Father Manzi stood on the steps of the cathedral and shook hands with a hundred strangers and a few parishioners leaving the funeral. The former Mrs Braun stood next to him, a charming smile plastered on her face as she assured people that she would miss Henry terribly, though she knew he was in a better place.
The chatter was inane.
Gabrielle wanted to take Father Manzi to lunch after the funeral, but he had declined. “I must meet with my superior, Mrs Braun,” Father Manzi said. “But next time I come in, I will take you up on that!”
“Oh, I hope soon, Father,” she said. “But my name is no longer Mrs Braun.”
“Oh?” he had said, his eyebrows went up.
“Yes, I have resumed my maiden name, duBois. And I am no longer Minnie, but officially Gabrielle—which is my middle name.”
“Ah, yes, Gabrielle!” Father Manzi said, nodding. He took her hands in his. “Congratulations! I wish you all happiness in your new life.”
“Thank you, Father,” she said, not wanting to let go of his hand.
But Gabrielle had her duties to glad-hand or hug the few folks that had actually liked Henry. Like that smarmy bastard Jules Sackman, who hovered in her periphery like the hyena he was.
Finally after everyone left, Gabrielle said good-bye to Father Manzi, and got into the back seat of the Bentley. “Take me home, Robert, please.”
The hearse took the empty casket back to the funeral parlor, being that there was no need for a funeral procession to the cemetery. Henry’s ashes already inhabited an urn in the niche in the Braun family vault, next to his ancestors, Henry Braun numbers I, II, III, IV.
Long may they rest.
And so will I. She floated down on the bed and fell asleep.

Chapter 13

Degrees of Freedom
Book 2–The Patua’ Heresy
© 2025 Mary C. Simmons

Old Rosie

“Good morning, Peggy!” Gabrielle said into the phone.

“Gabrielle!” the realtor said. “I was just about to call you—I’ve written up our offer.”

“You’ve written up an offer? Shall I come down to your office and sign it?”

“Yes, but…another offer from another realtor is on its way to me as we speak.”

“Really? Who?”

“You may’ve heard of him. He’s also a lawyer. Jules Sackman.”

Dead silence.

“You know of him?” Peggy said.

“Yes. He was my deceased husband’s attorney,” Gabrielle said. “Emphasis on was. I wonder who he represents?”

Jules. For god’s sake I thought I was rid of him. Gabrielle had not told Peggy McFarland about her former identity as Mrs Henry Braun. It hadn’t seemed relevant. Until now.

“Basically, the Catholic Church,” Peggy said. “A Father Albert Jackson is the person I showed the property to yesterday. He said he represents the Franciscan Order, and that they are interested in the property as a seminary/carpentry school combo.”

“Franciscan, eh?” Gabrielle said. “Who knew they were carpenters?”

Peggy laughed. “Oh, and after I showed this Father Albert the property, Frank Walcott, the caretaker, told me that he’d been there yesterday morning—on his own. He tried to convince Mr Walcott to let him inside—because the woman who had disappeared from the place was his sister.”

“His sister?” Gabrielle said. “Did you believe him?”

“No” Peggy said. ”I did believe he was a priest though. I had been filtering out the curious folk by making them prove they have the financial wherewithal to buy the place, and he did—through Mr Sackman. Everyone and their dog wants to see the old place. I just figured someone wanted to trick Frankie into letting him in the building—he wasn’t supposed to do let anyone in without the State or me authorizing it. And he didn’t, though he said the guy was pretty insistent. And he knew more about the missing woman than was in the papers.”

“How strange,” Gabrielle said. “And Frankie was sure he was the same priest that came back with you?”

“Yes, he was,” said Peggy. “Funny thing about his visit, Frankie said—he was almost completely uninterested in anything in the house but the old vault in the basement.”

“What’s in the vault?” Gabrielle said.

“No one knows,” Peggy said. “It’s been rusted shut for years. Though probably just some old files—but maybe this priest thinks it’s full of old Hobart’s jewels?”

Gabrielle laughed. “I am sure Edith would’ve had it blow-torched open if she suspected that!”

“Agreed!” Peggy said. “But there must be something of great value in that vault—why else would this priest be more interested in old records than the actual building itself—after claiming his order was interested in the property to build a seminary school?

“Jewels?” Gabrielle said. “Or secrets?”

“More likely secrets,” Peggy said, laughing. “The jewels are long gone. Originally it must have held Hobart Rosencranz’s fortune. According to the woman I spoke with at the new Kafka Memorial Hospital, after old Hobart’s death, Rosencranz ceased to be a place where unmarried young women could have their babies in secrecy, Edith turned it into an asylum for mostly Alzheimer’s patients. Decades ago, Rosencranz stored patient records in the vault, until they started using computers to enter and keep all their records.”

“Why on Earth would anyone be interested in old records of unwed teenage mothers?” Gabrielle said, frowning. “How old was he, approximately?”

“Oh, fifties, maybe sixties,” Peggy said.

“Interesting,” Gabrielle said, still frowning. “Well, you know, the Catholic Church has been struggling with some of their priests breaking their vows of celibacy—perhaps this priest has a secret like that to hide. You said his name was Albert Jackson?”

“Yes,” Peggy said. “Father Albert Jackson. Not that it matters. We’ll wait for their offer. And then we’ll counter-offer.”

“Yes,” Gabrielle said. “One that will stop them cold. I don’t want to play bidding wars. Let’s just cut to the chase and get this over with.”

“Fine by me!” Peggy said.

“There’s one thing I need to tell you, though,” Gabrielle said. “I am Henry Braun’s widow.”

Peggy’s eyebrows rose, but she didn’t ask Gabrielle why she changed her name.

“Well now,” Peggy said, sitting back in her chair. “That makes things more interesting indeed. I never thought I’d have a client with the potential to outbid the Pope.”

Gabrielle laughed. “Not exactly true, though I bet I have more money at my personal disposal than this Father Albert does. The Catholic Church can have eternity. I’m taking Rosencranz. Today.”

Peggy laughed. “I love your attitude.”

Gabrielle stopped laughing and tilted her head to one side. “There is one more thing, though.”

“What’s that?” Peggy said.

“I want to remain anonymous throughout the offer/counter offer phase. I do not want Jules Sackman to know who he is bidding against. Is that possible? Does my name need to be on the offer?”

“No,” Peggy said, twirling a pencil back and forth between her fingers before she stuck it behind her ear. “I can see why you would want this kept quiet, being Henry Braun’s widow—thanks for letting me know that. And the fact that Jules Sackman was your deceased husband’s attorney.”

“I really thought I was done with Jules,” Gabrielle said, “I trust him as far as I can throw him, so I fired him. He was extremely unhappy about that. I don’t want him to know what I am doing.”

“Jules Sackman will never see your offer,” Peggy said. “I, as the listing agent, receive and view all offers on behalf of the seller; in this case that’s the State. If I were to receive several offers, I would inform the realtors who wrote them that there was a higher bid, but not who the potential buyer is. Nor what the offer was.”

“I see,” Gabrielle said. “Perfect!”

“However,” Peggy said, “if someone who really wanted to know who made a particular offer, they could find that out, as this is a public property—such things are public information. But that might take some days or even weeks, and in the real estate biz, you can’t be wasting time chasing after things like that. It matters more what the offer was than who made it. At least to realtors.”

“Good,” Gabrielle said. “Let’s make it hard for them to find out who they’re up against. But how does this work? Someone pretends to be me?”

“No,” Peggy said. “We’ll use the ‘straw man’ method, which means someone else’s name is on the offer, and remains on the rest of the contractual documents all the way to the closing. At which time, you pay for the property through the straw man, and it transfers to you.”

“Can I use my attorney as the straw man? I mean, woman?”

“Yes,” Peggy said. “You can use anyone you want. Except for me, of course.”

“One moment, please,” Gabrielle said as she pulled out her cell phone. She took an earring off her phone ear.

“Hello, Kate!” she said. “This is Gabrielle duBois. We’re about to make an offer on the Rosencranz property. We need your help.”

Twenty minutes later, Kate Herron showed up at Peggy’s office.

“Thanks for coming,” Peggy said, shaking Kate’s hand. “Though you didn’t have to drop everything. We could’ve done this with electronic signatures.”

“No problem,” Kate said. “I like getting out of the office, and we’re both Downtown. So, you want to use a ‘straw person’ for your offer?”

“Yes,” Peggy said. “As Gabrielle’s attorney, you seemed like the logical choice. Will you do it?”

“Happy to,” Kate said.

The three women sat down and waited for the offer from Jules Sackman. Peggy ordered coffee and scones. Gabrielle told Kate about the priest that had twice viewed Rosencranz.

“What did he look like?” Kate asked.

“Portly” Peggy said. “Steel gray hair, blue eyes. Wore glasses. Kind of big jowls. Somewhere around 60.”

“I’m wondering if this priest is none other than our own Padre, Thomas Majewski,” Kate said.

Gabrielle’s eyes opened wide. Thomas Majewski! She had not heard nor uttered that name in years. Oh, dear Lord! What if… She set her coffee cup down gently, though her hand shook a little.

“Who’s Thomas Majewski?” Peggy asked.

“Thomas Majewski is Charlotte Steele’s brother,” Kate said. “He sits on the board of the Friends of Wilder Island Conservation Trust. He financed the whole thing—the conservation trust, the fight with Henry Braun.”

“Peggy knows I am the former Mrs Henry Braun,” Gabrielle said quietly. Charlotte Steele’s brother…?

“I see,” Kate said. “But why does he want Rosencranz, I wonder?”

“We were wondering that also,” Peggy said. “He seemed uninterested in anything on the property other than this old vault in the basement.”

‘Hmmm,” Kate said, tapping her chin with a forefinger. “Curiouser and curiouser. Is this priest making the offer through a realtor? Anyone you know?”

“Yes—an attorney with a real estate license,” Peggy said. “Jules Sackman.”

“Well, dammit!’ Kate said. “Both the Padre—if he is the Thomas Majewski of the Conservation Trust—and Jules would recognize my name.”

Thomas Majewski…

“We’ll need to find someone else, then,” Peggy said. “Do you know anyone? A friend perhaps?”

Gabrielle sipped her coffee, and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with the paper napkin. “No. Believe it or not.”

I have no friends. Her eyes stung with tears with that realization. The last friends I had were at Rosencranz. Louisa…Adelaide…

“I’ll ask my answering service person if she’ll do it,” Peggy said.

“I will pay her handsomely,” Gabrielle said, managing a smile.

“So why do you think Thomas Majewski this interested in Rosencranz?” Gabrielle whispered while Peggy was on the phone with her answering service. I need to tell Kate about the Thomas Majewski I knew.

“No idea,” Kate said, leaning closer to Gabrielle. “He complained bitterly to me once over drinks that he spends too much of his time dealing with ‘priests who can’t keep it in their pants’.”

Gabrielle kept her face impassive. Thomas Majewski…couldn’t either.

“I’m curious, tell me more about him,” Gabrielle said.

“Well, as I said, he’s Alfredo’s boss,” Kate said. “They’ve known each other since Alfredo was in graduate school—Majewski was his advisor. Now he’s the Grand Master of the North American Jesuits. I believe his title is Provincial Father Superior. He is in love with Wilder Island. He wants to retire and write books with him about crows and their language. And—”

As Peggy ended her phone conversation, Kate whispered to Gabrielle: “Let’s talk about this after we’re done here.”

Gabrielle nodded.

Peggy sat down and said: “Jeanine McGrath, my answering service lady said she’d be happy to be the straw person. I told her you would be her a thousand dollars.”

“Make it five thousand,” Gabrielle said.

Peggy glanced at her computer screen. “Looks like we have their offer.” She clicked on the email and on the attached file. “Full price, as we expected,” Peggy said, scanning the document after it arrived. “We’ll rise above enough to give them pause.”

“How about $2 million. Cash. As is,” Gabrielle said. “Close in 10 days.”

Peggy’s eyebrows arced upward, and she smiled. “That’ll be hard to beat. I’m not sure the State can close in 10 days, but we can negotiate that.”

Majewski’s cell phone lit up as it rang. Jules.

“There’s been another offer on the Rosencranz property.”

“Who made it?” Majewski said.

“Peggy wouldn’t say,” Jules said. “Generally we don’t reveal that information.”

“Did she tell you what the offer was?” Majewski asked.

“She said the number to beat was $2million. As is. Close in two weeks.”

Majewski’s jaw dropped. “Seriously? That’s double the list price!”

Damn. There’s no way I can squeeze that much cash out of my budget.

“Evidently someone wants the old place more than you do,” said Jules.

“Find out who,” Majewski said.

“We’ll have to wait until the property closes, and the title is transferred. And even then, it could be an LLC. Or another one of those damnable conservation trusts.”

“Can you not find another way?” Majewski asked.

“Nothing legal,” Jules said.

“Find a way,” Majewski said, and hung up the phone.

He stared out the window of his office. On the river, a barge moved at a snail’s pace, ready to dock at the timber mill.

Who else would want that old wreck of a building? Someone like him perhaps? Someone with a secret to hide? Or one to expose?

“Let me take you to lunch to celebrate!” Kate said after leaving Peggy McFarland’s office.

They sat down at the Komodo Dragon Cafe.

“That thing is so creepy!” Gabrielle said, looking up at the gigantic, red stuffed lizard for whom the cafe was named hanging from the ceiling. “I feel like prey. Or tonight’s dinner special.”

Kate laughed. “True, but we’re in the University area. There’s so many eating establishments around, they vie for one another to attract attention. A gigantic, deadly predator reptile hanging from the ceiling hasn’t hurt business for the Commode at all. Plus the food is great.”

“That name th0ugh… ‘The Commode’,” Gabrielle laughed. “Also quite unappetizing. I guess I’m just an old lady.”

“Perhaps you’ve merely outgrown toilet humor,” Kate said with a smirk.

“To Old Rosie!” Gabrielle said, raising her water glass after they’d ordered lunch.

“Congrats on the old hag!” Kate said, raising hers.

“Watch your tongue, young lady!” Gabrielle said, and then laughed. “Please show some respect! Old Rosie’s no spring chicken but she’s still a gem, or will be soon! I plan to make her gorgeous again—restored to her natural beauty!”

“My apologies to Old Rosie,” Kate said, chuckling. “That was quite rude of me!”

“Forgiven,” Gabrielle said. “But you just watch me transform her!”

“I will,” Kate said. She tapped her straw on the table. “I wonder why Thomas Majewski is interested in the vault?”

“Probably he doesn’t want the family name besmirched,” Gabrielle said. I need to tell Kate about my stay at Rosencranz.

“If Charlotte there to have a quote unquote illegitimate baby?” Kate said, “why was she still there for another 20-some years? Was there a psychological issue?”

“No idea,” Gabrielle said. “But what a horrible place to spend your life. Or any time at all.”

The waitperson arrived with their salads.

“I never told you, or anyone else this,” Gabrielle said as she unfolded her napkin. “But I was sent to Rosencranz when I was 15. And pregnant.”

Kate’s mouth dropped open. “You?” Speechless, she could only shake her head.

“It was a nicer place then—not dirty and dilapidated as it is now,” Gabrielle said. “It was quite beautiful, really. Only the girls from wealthy families were sent there to have their babies. We were treated well, fed well, not abused, and our fathers paid dearly for Rosencranz to help us go back to our lives as if this unfortunate incident had never happened.”

“So did you get back to your life?” Kate asked. “What happened to your baby?”

“Dead,” Gabrielle said, her voice choked. “They told me it had been stillborn. I never knew if it was a boy or a girl.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said.

“Thank you,” Gabrielle said. “After I was released from Rosencranz, my father married me off to Henry Braun.”

“Wow,” Kate said. “Grave insult to grievous injury.”

Gabrielle nodded, her eyes stinging.

“You know,” she said, after she composed herself. “There’s something mighty fishy about what happened at Rosencranz. Too many girls had stillborn babies—healthy girls like me, from wealthy families. We were too young and too traumatized to realize that. And, we left supposedly relieved of our shame—no records, no illegitimate baby…so our silence was ensured.”

“I know someone who was supposedly adopted from Rosencranz,” Kate said. “She has no birth certificate.”

“Interesting,” Gabrielle said. “Now even I want to know what is in that vault.”

Packing

Gabrielle started packing up the mansion as soon as she got home from lunch with Kate. Even with a cash offer, the state could not move to close on the sale of Rosencranz in 10 days. They wanted 6 weeks. But Peggy managed to cajole them into 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, Gabrielle confronted the huge task of sorting out the house. She wanted to plow it all into a landfill, but that would be wasteful. Instead she sorted what she wanted to take with her, and what would go to the thrift store in the basement of St Sophia’s. Including all of Henry’s things, except the books.

The mansion would be sold with all its furniture. She wanted to make a clean break from everything of her former life as Minnie Braun. Only a few mementoes would be going with her. And the books—the one thing that Henry had that she had coveted. He had inherited the books of all the Henrys before him, all of whom were very well-read.

Henry of course had never cracked a single one. He just was not interested. The only printed pages he ever read were the daily newspaper—the local Sentinel, as well as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Perhaps she’d build a magnificent public library—the volumes in Henry’s—now her collection—ought not to be merely part of the elegant decor in a rich man’s house. These books should be read! Young people will forget, with the internet and video games. But she, Gabrielle duBois, could collect, store and even lend out these great masterpieces of the human intellect.

Gabrielle took a lunch break out to the patio. She sat down at the table and chairs.

Moments later, two crows showed up and invited themselves to perch side-by-side on one of the adjacent chair backs.

“Good morning, gentlemen!” Gabrielle said.

“Good morning, Milady,” Floyd said with a deep bow. His outstretched wing nearly knocked Willy off his perch. “We hope you had a pleasant night?”

Willy regained his balance and took a deep bow also, being careful to dislodge Floyd as he unfurled his wing dramatically. “It is a pleasure, Miss Gabrielle.”

She tore off two chunks of the cinnamon bun and set them on the table, far enough apart so the two brothers wouldn’t squabble over the same piece.

“And what brings you to my table this beautiful day?” she asked.

“You,” Willy said. He was in between swallowing a bit of his chunk and beaking another.

“Moi?” she said, holding a hand to her breast in mock surprise.

“We see trucks leaving the house with all your stuff,” Willy said. “We hope you aren’t gonna leave without saying good-bye!”

“Truly” Floyd piped up. “That would be catastrophic!”

“Catastrophic?” Gabrielle laughed. “Isn’t that a bit dramatic, even for you Floyd?” She tossed him a chunk of ham. Down in went.

“Just saying we don’t want you to go without telling us where you’re gone to,” Willy said.

“No worries, fellas!” Gabrielle said. “I’ll tell you right now—I will be moving to Rosencranz—though I am renaming the place ‘Old Rose’”

“After the the Ghost of Rosencranz?” Floyd said.

“What ghost?” Willy said. “I’ve never heard of a ghost at Rosencranz.”

“You never listened, cuz,” Floyd said. “In fact—there’s more’n one ghost at Rosen—at Old Rosie. Including Rosie.”

“Whatever,” Willy said, waving a wing at Floyd. He turned to Gabrielle. “You going to live in a dump like that after this?” He waved a wing at the opulent yard, the gigantic Victorian mansion…

“I can’t wait!” Gabrielle said. “Old Rosie and I could really use a complete makeover.”

Up in Smoke?

Majewski moved to a hotel Downtown, on the other side of the river near St Sophia Cathedral. By day he occupied one of the empty offices at St Sophia’s, and conducted his usual business there.

Crows were everywhere. Watching him…

“There really is no need for you to be here,” his secretary in Washington DC had said. “Most everything happens via the internet, so you could be anywhere in the world. And, if there are important documents that need your actual signature, we can fax them, or overnight them.”

He could maintain this remote operation for a couple more weeks, then he’d have to return to Washington. But he planned to be back. Next time, hopefully for good.

The window in his office faced the river, and framed the island. Like a portrait. Ah, Wilder Island. Jewel in the distance, a siren song that beckoned to him, heart, body and soul with visions of living comfortably in a small cottage he built for himself in the cool forests full of birds and no humans, save Alfredo.

But all his efforts to obtain a visit to the island had come to nothing.

“I don’t know how to contact the Captain,” Kate had said. “He just shows up whenever we needed to go to the island, presumably because Alfredo sent him.”

Alfredo. The Gatekeeper. Well, soon he would no longer be in the way. Majewski planned to teach him a lesson in who’s in charge here.

Majewski had been considering removing Manzi from the vicinity until Stella was found—dead or alive. Transferring him to a different geographical location would remove him from the picture, though he’d have to be so far removed from civilizations offerings of mass communication so that he could not be found until the whole Stella mess had blown over.

Majewski had been unable to find a suitable post to transfer Manzi to. He’d given up on the idea of sending Manzi to another parish, as that would not be secretive enough.

A good old-fashioned mission to a remote tribe somewhere without electricity would be perfect. Unfortunately those didn’t exist anymore in the US. Where else? He needed someone familiar with the underbelly of humanity. Sackman was the only person he knew in Ledford that might be sleazy enough.

They’d lost Rosencranz—which was a long-shot anyway. Convincing the bean counters in DC that the Order needed Rosencranz, which would need an additional million or so above the purchase price would be a hard sell. And for what? Not for his bogus story to the realtor about building a carpentry/seminary school.

But Sackman came through on this other matter. He not only knew where to stash Manzi, he would make all the arrangements for his transport and deposit in a remote corner of the Southwest, including a fake identity as an archeologist. Dr Robbins.

Majewski chuckled when he gave Sackman the fake name Manzi would be traveling under. It was an inside joke that only he and Manzi could appreciate. An amusing reference of the other trouble Manzi was in—impersonating a doctor.

He had not told Sackman of his little joke, though perhaps he would find out sooner or later. No one would connect this Dr Robbins to Stella’s disappearance. Though Robbins is an extremely common name, it would be followed by the letters, PhD, and not M.D., as had the other fake Dr Robbins. And just to make sure, Majewski had instructed the driver to spend a few moments covering Manzi’s iconic silver streak with black dye—once he had lost consciousness and was on the plane.

Majewski had Manzi’s cell phone and wallet. No way to contact anyone and no money to find his way back before I send for him.

Sackman had invented an entire scenario—a fake “Foundation” that supposedly employed the fake Dr Robbins. Complete with an old abandoned movie set, which he had dubbed, The Mission.

“And that is where the good Dr Robbins will be sent to study,” Sackman said, grinning. “You see, Dr Robbins specializes in back country archeology, and is known to spend weeks at a time hiking and camping with no contact with the outside world.”

“Excellent,” Majewski said. He put the fingertips of his hands together. “I don’t want him to die out there, is that understood? He needs to be kept in food and water. I plan to bring him back. Eventually.”

“Understood,” Sackman said. “I’ve got a local guy, well, local enough—though Vegas is 100 miles from the Mission. He’s to replenish Manzi’s food and water once a week.”

“For how long did you tell him?”

“I didn’t say,” Jules said. “He’ll stop when I stop sending money. See, I pay him in advance—that’s his signal to make another delivery.” He picked up a letter opener on Majewski’s desk and began to clean his fingernails. “Which by the way, we need to establish a cash line, from you to me, so that I can do what is needed.”

That hyena-like grin covering Sackman’s face Majewski look away.

“I have a special checking account here in Ledford,” Jules said after Majewski did not reply. “You will make cash deposits to it on a certain schedule, and I will make withdrawals with a debit card.”

“I trust this account will have no connection to me?”

“Of course not,” Jules said. “Nor to me.” He handed Majewski a card. “That’s the account number at Ledford National Bank.”

Two crows perched on the windowsill, gazing into the open window at Majewski and Sackman. Majewski wondered how long they’d been there. They hadn’t made a sound, but their stares seemed intentional—as if they recognize him. They all looked alike to him, but maybe they remembered him from his visits to to the island.

Both crows had blue eyes. Maybe they knew Charlie, Manzi’s pet crow.

He reminded himself that many crows in the area had blue eyes. And none could speak or understand English conversation. These thoughts did not entirely erase Majewski’s anxiety. He was sure they’d tell someone something.

Sackman paid them no mind. Most people did not—crows were such a common occurrence all over the city. But try to harm one, and you’ll be truly sorry. That is the real truth behind who and what actually saved the island from Henry Braun. In the end, it was the people who loved their crows and the mysterious legends of the hermit on the island.

Majewski himself had been captivated by Wilder Island ever since his serendipitous discovery that the Jesuit Order owned it. The hermit’s chapel sealed the deal, charming Majewski from the moment he saw it. That was before he knew about the Patua’—the language of the crows. Brother Maxmillian Wilder of his own Order communicated with crows. Like his sister did. And Manzi.

After the Friends of Wilder Island Trust was formed, the Order maintained ownership of the hermit’s chapel, but had deeded the rest of the island to the Friends. He had not known at the time that he would fall in love, finally. For the first time in his life.

But if somehow Manzi didn’t come back, or if he got arrested and jailed, what then? Would his dream to retire on the island and make a study of the Patua’ language go up in smoke?

Maybe not. His own sister speaks the language. Majewski entertained thoughts of visiting her once he had her sent back to the asylum, and using her for his study. She was at least as friendly with the varmints as Manzi was.

Majewski supposed Sackman knew how to play that shell game—hiding assets, fake bank accounts and the like, having been Henry Braun’s attorney for so many years. That very shiftlessness was the reason he’d been hired, after much justifying to God that he knew no other attorneys in Ledford now that Kate had proved to be so very unreliable. And, after all, that his whole aim was to protect one of his own priests.

Majewski trusted that Sackman would carry out his wishes, though he did blanche at the large sum of money he’d demanded. A drop in the bucket next to the budget that he had as Provincial Father Superior—and much less than the cost of buying Rosencranz. A a hundred thousand would vanish into the millions he managed for the Order, especially as he had been required to remain in Ledford for several weeks.

After Manzi’s departure, another problem would still remain: how to get to the island. For that, he’d need to find a way to force the Captain to take him.