Obscurity, The Eleventh Chapter
In which a scream is heard within the widow's estate.
e last read The Tenth Chapter, in which daughters atoned for the sins of their fathers.
The child moved with the moon woman to a large plantation home down the river. It was beautiful—a castle the likes of which his mother could never have imagined. Large white columns supported the estate as though it were held aloft by the hands of giants, and the slumbering swamp behind it could transport one to any number of adventures.
The child became enveloped by his new surroundings. They became a magical canvas upon which any number of landscapes could be painted—where the Leopard King reigned over the swamp from his green velvet chaise and firefly fairies danced at nightly balls. Giant pink birds of paradise bowed to the child where he walked and a toucan with a damask beak sang for his entertainment.
In life, the child had experienced both sadness and happiness, but he knew no other life than that kind and so he felt both feelings deeply. Sometimes he imagined his mother lived in the reeds, and he could hear her whispering in the wind. The plantation workers joined in his adventures. They told him stories in their own language and sang him songs from their home land. They spoke with his mother as though she were queen of the jungle—the wife of the Leopard King finally returned to her throne.
One of the plantation workers, an old crone who spoke only in riddles, made the boy a makeshift machete from the branches of a tree. “The holy man comes,” she said as her eyes glinted into the mangroves/ “His treasure is in gold and emeralds and rubies, but he has lost it in the swamp, and it sinks beneath the estate.
She at something the boy could not see. “He will come for it,” she said then—a fierce warning to her eye.
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