Swamp Witch The End
"Je fais appel à vous, hoodoo loa, me libérer du Jura. Prenez cette effigie et envoyer mon frère loin de moi et Noir Abre. Son mal n'est pas mon mal et de son sang peut être la mienne, mais prends le mien qui est pur et bannir son mal. Béni soit."
(I appeal to you, hoodoo loa, release me from Jura. Take this effigy and send my brother far away from me and Abre Noir. His evil is not my evil and his blood may be mine but take mine which is pure and banish his bad. Blessed be.)
These were the words that Mercy had uttered when she made the effigy of sack clothe and Spanish Moss. She had Henri weave a small boat of the marsh reeds and taken the hoodoo doll that resembled Jura and smeared with a drop of her own blood...a twin's blood. She set the mojo or hex in the seaward stream of the bayou and with apologies and prayers to the Powers That Be she sent the curse on its way.
She had done it on her return from New Orleans with Henri. Picking up her horse at a friend's house in Abre Noir, she had seen Henri on his way back to the oyster boat and had given into his appeal for a camping frige and the propane stove...no cell phone though.
Now, two weeks later, as she sat on the camp's south facing deck, she watched the sun descend over the heads of the live oaks and cypress trees. She gloried in the cool breeze that wafted off the Pearl River and gloried in her happiness. Jura was gone from Abre Noir, headed for the oil fields in Texas. He had left his "bokor" girlfriend unsatisfied and she had found another. Her "foille a deaux" was gone and she slept now in peace.
She felt her grandmere's presence in the camp that she had bought back from the buyer Jura sold it to. She and her grandmere were home once again. Mercy could almost hear the little wicker rocker moving gently to the taps of her manual typewriter as she wrote her stories of Honey Island Swamp and its strange mysteries.
Tonight she heard the soft call of a whipper-o-will and the rush of the egret wings as the flock rose into the rosemary sky. Probably startled by an alligator, the great white cranes would find a safer spot to feed and rest just as she had.