The Contestants Ch. 01

Gareth's new status cast a small reflection on Anna as well. Since it was a well-known fact that she was Gareth's favorite, she found that also she was treated with respect and that people noticed her and suddenly found it worthwhile to engage in conversation with her although she was still very young.

Even so, Anna was lonely. She understood that childhood was over and that she would never again have this total access to Gareth's person she had indulged in for so many years. However wonderful it was when he was around and focused only on her, these occasions grew rare. She also realized that it was inevitable that the nature of their relationship must change when they stopped being children. Although they were still young, he was a man now and she was a young woman, and she was well aware of that neither Conaill nor Eavan looked upon them as a pair for the future.

To silence the anguished voices in her head and heart, which kept asking what was to become of her in the future, Anna dived into intense studies, and that brought her in better contact with Ibn Ben Akbar, who was in charge of the Library. Ibn, who had patiently guided her through her early learning sessions, now found that he enjoyed her company as well. Anna was intelligent and a quick learner and when challenged with her outpour of questions and her endless curiosity, Ibn went out of his way to find the most interesting material for her to read.

It looked as if he almost waited for her to come into the Library in the mornings, and he would greet her with one of his perfect bows and say, "Good morning Milady, look what I've found for you today!"

Ibn had had trouble with what to call Anna. He knew that she wasn't of royal blood, yet that she was Eavan's Chosen and therefore belonged to the royal family. He had started by calling her "My gracious young lady" but soon found it much too long and cumbersome to utter whenever he addressed her. Later on he shortened his phrase to "My gracious lady" and when that also sounded awkward, it was brought down to "My lady," which was finally polished off into the title he presently used — "Milady."

"Why can't you just call me Anna?" she had asked him once. He had looked appalled at her and rolled his eyes. "Oh Milady, that would NEVER do!"

Now when Anna was seventeen years old and just shortly before the time she renewed her contact with Celia, she stumbled upon a vital piece of information in the Library that would forever change her life. She found out that Ibn was the Keeper of the Ledger. She had of course known about the existence of the Ledger for a long time, everyone in the palace did, but she had always thought that Conaill kept it himself. The Ledger was a continuous daily record of everything that happened in Inis. Nobody knew for how long it had been updated, how many volumes it contained or indeed where it was kept. Anna happened to come to the Library early one morning; she entered very silently and without making her presence known. She saw Ibn from afar at his desk, and he had an enormous book in front of him in which he wrote quickly and ardently. When he became aware of her, he rose and greeted her in his usual fashion. However, he closed the book at the same time and lifted it up, evidently to store it away. Curious as she was, she had to ask about the book, and he explained calmly and patiently that he was updating the Ledger. Anna didn't dwell on the subject at that moment, but later on in the day when she had finished her studies, she started to think about the incident. "So the Ledger was kept in the Library!" In an instant, it dawned upon her that the detailed record of her own entry into Inis must be found in one of these books, dated some seventeen years earlier.

The knowledge entered as a fever in her blood. She knew then that she had to get hold of this information. She didn't yet know how to go about it, but she would never rest until she had found out the truth.

If only she had had Gareth's skills in magic, then it would have been easy for her to immobilize Ibn just long enough to get hold of the book. Yet, Anna didn't want to involve Gareth in this particular enterprise. She had to solve the issue herself. All magic she could perform on her own account consisted in entering and leaving Inis. Almost all persons of Inis descent could perform at least some basic magic, but not everyone had the powers of Conaill and Gareth. She knew that Ibn, like herself, was a human when he was brought to Inis a long time ago. Therefore, he would not be skilled in magic, and he would also be vulnerable to almost any kind of magic directed against him.

At this point in her reasoning, Anna came to think of Voodoo. She had heard a lot about this strange, fascinating, and possibly black magic when roaming around New Orleans on her now frequent errands in that city. If other humans could procure this knowledge and become powerful sorcerers, it wouldn't be impossible for her to reach that goal either.

Without further ado Anna then started the project "Seducing Ibn."

At seventeen, Anna was already a very beautiful young woman with an abundance of golden hair and intense blue eyes. She was also very charming, and when she concentrated, focusing her attentions to obtain a goal, she could be alarmingly persuasive and seductive. It was all yet very unintentional, but one could tell that she would master this particular skill of magic very soon.

Anna began to pay special attention to Ibn, trying to figure out what he liked. She found that black Arabian coffee in the morning, for example, was such an item. He couldn't divine how she had managed to obtain this luxury, and she didn't inform him about her visits to the new coffee houses in New Orleans where it was supplied. Most likely it was brought there in exchange for some favor by one of the pirates, who regularly visited the city. Anna started to ask questions, and she had Ibn tell her all he knew about Voodoo in New Orleans. In particular, she wanted to know about the persons that practiced Voodoo and where they could be found. She managed to get Ibn to bring her the best books on the subject that the Library could offer, but after reading all of them she realized that she had to meet a living sorcerer and that she had to practice further on live subjects. She would never perfect her skills otherwise. It was true enough that her small efforts until now had yielded results, but it was all going too slow. Among other pieces of information that Ibn supplied her with, he told her Celia's story. Anna knew then instantly that she had found the perfect link to the secret world of Voodoo in New Orleans. She remembered in a flash how she had stumbled into Celia eight years ago when trying out her first crude experiments in Voodoo. That chance meeting would now provide her with the only introduction she needed.

**********

The next time Celia and Anna met was down by the river where the women regularly did their washing. Celia didn't recognize Anna at first, not until she looked into her vivid blue eyes. Anna was dressed in a plain sun-bleached cotton dress and her hair was braided. She toiled together with the other women with her clothes, and she and Celia worked side by side for a while before anyone spoke.

"We can't meet here," Celia whispered at last.

"I know," Anna answered in an equally low voice, "I came to find out if you know of a better meeting place."

"You will come tomorrow night to Jeanne La Villiere. She lives in the Bayou Saint Jean in a houseboat, and you'll have to go there all by yourself," Celia murmured before they parted. Anna nodded.

If Anna had experienced trouble finding her way out into the bayou in the night, she didn't mention it. When Celia arrived, Anna was waiting on the shore where she had moored her boat. They could see the houseboat in the distance.

"I'll talk to her first," Celia said, and they started their silent march along the shoreline. When they were within hearing distance from the boat Celia called out, and a young colored boy appeared on deck. Celia talked rapidly for a while to him in the local patois, and he finally lowered a gangway for them to come onboard. He took them to the other side of the deck, near the opening to the quarters below, and they stopped in front of an old colored woman sitting there.

"Bonne Nuit Jeanne," Celia greeted her. "Voilà la jeune fille."

Celia indicated Anna, who stood quiet and passive behind her. Jeanne La Villiere looked from one to the other for a long time before speaking. Then she turned to Celia addressing her in fluent English with just a hint of a French accent.

"You have nothing to fear from her," Jeanne said. "She has not come to use your secret against you. She certainly knows your secret, I cannot tell how just yet, but I will find that out. She has an aura of power around her that I do not recognize."

Then Jeanne turned to Anna, "Child, why are you here? What can I do for you?"

"I have come to learn the art of Voodoo," Anna answered in a low voice. "Where I am living, I badly need this skill, which might mean the difference between surviving or not."

The old woman smiled a little and looked intently at her. "I will agree on that you may find it hard to disclose anything about your whereabouts this first evening. I understand that you are scared, but if we are to work together, you will have to let me know all about you. There is no other way it can be done."

Anna blushed because she felt that Jeanne was reading her thoughts, and then she drew a deep breath.

"Since this idea was mine from the start and since there is no turning back, I might as well tell you now."

Both Anna and Celia sat down on the deck in front of Jeanne, and Anna started to tell her story to the two women. Only once did Jeanne show a reaction and that happened when Anna mentioned Conaill's name. Jeanne knitted her brows, and a fleeting air of apprehension clouded her face for an instant. When Anna had finished, they were all silent for a while. At last Jeanne sighed loudly.

"The power of Conaill the Inis King is beyond me to match. However, what I can teach you will be of use to you in a confrontation with any other person. Your trouble isn't starting or ending with him I hope?"

"No, no," Anna hastened to answer, "he doesn't care about me. We hardly see each other. What I want the most is to get hold of the Ledger in the Library so that I can learn about what happened to me when I came to Inis. I wasn't born there so I must have been brought there. I want to know who my mother is."

At that moment, she felt the sweat on her forehead turn icy, and she wondered with dread why it was so.

"The path to the full learning in this skill is long, and you will not pick it up in a matter of days. Are you prepared to undergo this arduous training?" Jeanne asked, and Anna nodded silently.

However, Anna added after a moment's hesitation, "There is something I wonder if you could do for me right away, something I need to learn very quickly. I need to be able to veil my thoughts and to cloud my path so as to keep people from reading my mind and see where I'm going."

The old woman smiled again. "I cannot teach you that in a hurry, but I understand why you might need this protection so I will put a spell on you myself."

Jeanne rose from her chair and approached Anna. She put her bony hand on Anna's forehead and started to chant in a foreign language. Anna didn't understand a word of what was said, but the rhythm of the chant made her drowsy, and soon she fell down on the deck. How long she lay there she didn't know, but she came to her senses when Jeanne called out her name in a loud voice, and Anna sat up feeling strangely refreshed; thus ended her first lesson in the art of Voodoo.

**********

Jeanne La Villiere might have reckoned with Conaill but certainly not with Gareth. His powers weren't known to her yet.

A short while after Anna's first visit to Jeanne, Anna ran into Gareth one evening when she came back to the palace. He seemed to have been waiting for her because he caught her in the dark, narrow stairs leading up to her rooms. No one else was around. Anna hadn't counted on meeting anyone, and he scared her violently.

"Come with me," he said soothingly, but he took a firm hold of her arm, "I want to talk to you."

She followed him in silence to the part of the palace he now occupied. Once inside his rooms, he sat her down in front of the fireplace and locked the door behind them.

"Why is it that you haven't told me anything about these nightly excursions of yours?" he asked in a deceptively soft voice, and for the first time in her life Anna felt a chill travel her spine when confronting him, and she divined what it would be like to have him as an adversary.

"I'm evidently not supposed to read your thoughts or know where you're going because part of that information is very unclear," he continued.

When she still remained silent looking down at the floor, he shook her lightly by the shoulders as if to bring her out of her numbness.

"Don't you understand that I'm worried about you?" he asked.

"Yes, I understand that," she whispered at last, "but this has nothing to do with you. This concerns something I want to find out and that I desperately need to know."

"Everything that concerns you also concerns me don't you realize that?" he went on with a slight note of irritation in his voice as if talking to an especially stubborn child. She sighed resigned as tears started to well up in her eyes, and she lifted her face towards him and looked directly at him.

"You have been so far away lately and been occupied with so many new things that I doubted that there was room for me anymore in your life," she said. "Apart from that I have always felt at a disadvantage among the Inis people here. They all have endless skills and possibilities, and I have nothing to match. I simply need to learn some magic to manage my life here; that is the matter in a nutshell."

"You still haven't told me what it is that you need to know so desperately," he broke off.

"I want to know where I come from, I want to know who my parents were and why I ended up here at all," she answered at last, and a note of bitterness crept into her voice.

"Sister," he said softly, using the old endearment for the first time in twelve years, "don't you think that we want you here when we have fought so hard to keep you safe and tried our best to shield you from any danger?"

She thought in agony that she could take his anger so much better than his compassion, and she started to cry in earnest although she didn't want to. He caressed her cheek with infinite tenderness and wiped her tears away.

"This much I know about your coming here," he said. "Your mother wished that you hadn't been born and abandoned you, and as is custom in such cases, the changelings took you and brought you here. They brought you to Father, who is at liberty to decide what will happen to any foreign person who enters Inis. He can decide about life and death in such cases, and if the person is to live, he will also decide in what form. Most humans are turned into changelings, who are destined work here or become soldiers in the army. However, Mother pleaded with Father not to turn you into a changeling, and in the end he gave in. She took you in her care and secured you with long life and your human form."

"Did Conaill want to turn me into a changeling?" she cried out.

"It's nothing to be upset about," he interrupted, "that is what the King of Inis has to do when a child is brought to him. That is what I have to do when I become King. Don't blame him, blame your mother. Or don't blame anyone until you know the full reasons behind her act."

At last Anna quieted down and regained her composure. Nevertheless, she turned to Gareth and pleaded, "Don't keep me from going to Jeanne. It means a lot to me, and I promise that I will not shield my thoughts from you and I will let you know when I intend to visit her, please Gareth please!" He promised then that he wouldn't stop her as long as she told him when she was going.

**********

Jeanne La Villiere had been right when she predicted that it would take time for Anna to learn the art of Voodoo. It took five years before Anna managed to put a distant spell on a person for the first time not needing to be in personal contact, not needing the help of personification through a doll, but merely by her words and thoughts. She felt a great exhilaration when she had succeeded. Jeanne was getting very old and frail now, and Anna counted herself lucky to have been able to benefit from seeing her at all for such a long time. During the years, she had also grown very close to Celia, and she knew that her feelings were returned. In Celia, she found the mother she had been seeking her whole life. Celia could provide shelter, confidence, and comfort all at the same time.

Anna would have wanted to tell Gareth all about what she had accomplished, but she had to wait because both Gareth and Conaill were heavily occupied for the moment because of the great unrest in the world outside Inis. In the world Beyond The Border, the year was 1814, and in Europe the Napoleonic wars were raging over the continent — Napoleon himself exiled to Elba — and in America the British fleet was heading towards New Orleans.

Anna couldn't wait though to practice her new skills on what she had intended them for in the first place: to get access to the Ledger. She started to practice magic on Ibn little by little. First, she wanted to see if he would respond at all. She made him forget his keys on the table one day, and she kept him from locking certain bookcases when he left one evening. She was indeed very successful and decided to try something more daring, so she persuaded him to show her where the Ledgers were kept and by what system they were stored. Finally, she made him unaware of her presence and followed him unnoticed when he locked up the Ledgers for the day.

At last, Anna felt ready to try to get hold of the book she needed, and she made Ibn leave the Library without his keys and without having locked away the Ledger in question. Then she withdrew to the most secret corner of the Library where she could have a light burning without being seen from the outside. She had to leaf through the old pages with Ibn's tight and fluent handwriting until she reached August of 1792. There she found the entry she was seeking.

"The woman Marie de Beauvoir (in the margin Ibn had put her address with small letters) had wished death on her child, a girl, and the Head Guard brought it to Conaill," Ibn wrote. "Marie de Beauvoir regretted her wish almost immediately and tried desperately to persuade Conaill to give her back her child. He granted her the customary chance to cross the Border alive, but when she felt her own life endangered and with time running out — she had been given twelve hours for the task — she failed and gave up as if in a stupor. (Ibn had underlined the word). Conaill brought the girl to the castle, but when the Head Guard was to take it down to the changelings, Eavan entered the hall where all the councils were held. She said that she had heard about the girl and that she wanted to see her. No one dared contradict Eavan, and she went to Conaill and took the baby. Later Eavan told Conaill that she wanted to keep the girl. Eavan and Conaill argued heatedly about the issue, but in the end Eavan had her will. To give the girl a long life equal to that of an Inis born, Eavan pierced her nipples and let the girl suckle her blood, and she called her Anna (again Ibn had underlined the word) since this name was embroidered on the baby's clothes."

That was the whole entry. Anna let the book rest in her lap and stared out into the darkness wondering what tragedy that was hidden beneath the meager words. This didn't answer why her mother Marie de Beauvoir — a mother who had given her a full name — had found it necessary to wish her dead in the first place. Anna took note of the address. Of course, she wouldn't know if Marie still lived there, but she had to start somewhere. She put the Ledger away and locked it up, and later she slipped the keys back to Ibn. The next morning he would go about his business without noticing that anything different had taken place the previous evening.