The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School

She wished her quick pencil strokes could capture the lushness of the thick creamy petals. She longed for a palette that might do justice to the mysterious quality of the diffuse light that shone through the emerald forest.

If only she could uncork herself like a bottle and let the atmosphere pour in, become part of her. In Boston, nature had been kept at bay by concrete edifices and pruned hedgerows and fences. In Brazil the forest was an aggressive presence, spilling exuberantly through ravines and over walls, filling the cracks between rocks, sneaking across man-made pathways that, only the day before, had probably been clear.

The sheer abundance bombarded her senses. Flowers exploded like flames from shadowy places or rocky heights. Tumbling rapids knifed through rock and vegetation, an ice-blue blade slicing a path to the sea. Birds flew in hyacinth or yellow flocks beneath the high canopy formed by the trees.

Yet as overwhelmed as Isadora was with the splendor of the forest, she was gripped by a wistful ache to share her sense of discovery. Aunt Button would have loved this. But Aunt Button was gone. Isadora didn’t know anyone else who would feel this awe and wonder. And that lack diminished it somehow, made it seem less important, less wondrous.

Ryan, she thought.

She shook off the impossible notion before it could depress her. Taking up her pencil again, she completed her drawing of the orchid. Perhaps she would write a chronicle of her days here and publish it. That way, kindred spirits—people totally unknown to her—could read her words and share her wonder.

But how could mere words possibly capture the almost painful thud of ecstasy she felt when she looked up at the dazzling sunlit green of the forest canopy? Words were such inadequate tools to convey her delirious rapture over something so beautiful that her eyes smarted with tears.

She finished sketching and walked on, trying to find a turn of phrase to describe that particular quality of light as it slanted down from impossibly blue skies through a faceted filter of leaves, ferns, mosses, epiphytes. As she hiked uphill, it occurred to her that she should feel winded with exertion, her legs weak from all the activity. But, oddly, that was not the case. She felt more fit and spry than ever before in her life.

Angelica, the maid who had befriended her the first day at Villa do Cielo, had told Isadora that if she climbed high enough she would find a great cataract where the spring was born from the earth. According to local wisdom, the water here was the sweetest and coldest in the mountains. The spring was so prized that the maker of Brazil’s best aguardiente hired water carriers to bring down great casks on their shoulders. Today the path was deserted.

Before long the climb grew steeper and strewn with rocks. The liquid song of the rushing water beckoned her. She rounded a bend in the path, pushed aside the nodding fronds of a banana tree and knew she had almost reached the source.

Wet mossy rocks held a slick clear glow, brighter than diamonds. The trees and flowers growing along the verges swayed with the force of the torrent. The sounds of wind and water created a complex, elusive melody, filling her with a wild pleasure that she felt in every cell of her body.

The sense of imminent discovery held her in its thrall as she climbed on. Yet gradually she became aware of another sound, one nearly masked by the murmur of tumbling water and the rustle of leaves.

She stopped and looked behind her, suddenly apprehensive.

Her mind whirled with images of the dangerous creatures that lived in the rain forest. Vampire bats. Jaguars. Arrow poison frogs. Giant, ill-tempered sloths. Five-hundred-pound gorillas. Snakes that could squeeze the life out of a person.

She stepped off the path, setting her sketchbook down and grabbing a thick length of wood from the ground. Slimy creatures and frantic beetles scattered from the hollow it left in the fecund ground.

As she crouched in the shelter of a bush, her heart pounded painfully in her chest. Sweat trickled down her throat into the neckline of her dress. She wished she had listened to Angelica and gone native for today’s outing. But native garb always reminded her too poignantly of her excursion to the market with Ryan, whom she was trying her best to forget.

The footsteps came closer. She thought of the warnings Angelica had given her when she’d started her forays into the wild. Native tribes lived in the forest; some of them were warlike or merely aggressively inquisitive. Rose had also warned her about the quilombos, bands of fugitive slaves that attacked first and asked questions later.

A shadow slipped over her—huge, forbidding, sinister. She acted without thinking. Using all her the strength, she brought the club crashing down.

Eighteen

And there is even a happiness

That makes the heart afraid.

—Thomas Hood

(1827)

Shaking from fear and exertion, Isadora looked at the stick in her hand, then down at the body on the ground. “Ye powers,” she said, dropping to her knees. “Ryan.”

He moaned, rubbing the back of his head. “I came here thinking you might be in danger,” he said. “But it appears you’re quite capable of defending yourself.”

She dropped the stick, frowning. “Did I hurt you?”

“Am I bleeding?”

Gingerly she moved his hair aside. “I don’t see any blood.”

Bracing his hands behind him, he sat up, adjusting a canvas knapsack on his shoulders. “You got me at the thickest part of my skull,” he said. “I suppose there’s no harm done.”

“I’m ever so sorry.” But as she watched him lever himself to his feet and shake his head as if to clear it, her regret was tinged with wonder. Clubbing a man she believed to be an assailant was such an un-Isadoralike thing to do.

“I like knowing you can defend yourself. But next time, do me a favor and practice on a tree or something.”

She suppressed a smile, feeling equal parts silly and sheepish. “Why would you think I’m in danger?”

A shadow passed over his eyes. They lost their usual sparkle and clarity, and as she often did, she sensed a depth in him he was reluctant to show. “You could get lost in here.”

“I’ve kept to the path.”

He took her hand. “So you have. As long as I’ve come this far, I might as well find this fabled spring or lagoon or whatever it is.”

She felt a subtle thrill at the prospect of taking him on the trek with her. “Perhaps it’s the fountain of youth.”

“Just what I need. To be a boy again.”

“You still are,” she murmured, feeling an unexpected tenderness for him. They started up the path. She glanced at him sideways, liking the feel of her hand in his. “What was it like? Your boyhood?”

“Like any Virginia boyhood, I imagine. A big house, a distant father and an army of tutors.”

“And a staff of slaves,” she interjected. “Did it always strike you as unjust?” she couldn’t resist asking. “When you were younger?”

“No. My father was a cold man, but not a harsh master. He never hired an overseer who was harsh, either. So I didn’t see the ugliest face of slavery when I was coming up. I never saw the flogging and torture. The starvation. The rape.”

She winced.

“The very young don’t often grasp subtle cruelties, and I suppose I was no different.” He took a deep breath, studied a liana hanging over the path, then held it aside for her to pass under. “I guess the first time I understood what slavery really meant was when Journey married Delilah. After the ceremony, they were given an hour of privacy. Then they took Delilah away—she belongs to a neighbor—and I watched them say goodbye. I watched Journey, who was well over six feet tall even then, break down and cry. There’s no way I could watch that and not feel the evil in my heart. So that was when I made up my mind.”

She felt a thickness in her throat. “To set Journey free.”

“Yes.” He walked on, still holding her hand. “How much farther is it, anyway?”

“I’m not certain.” Her nerves buzzed with apprehension. Since the morning after the masque, they had not seen each other. Perhaps he’d forgotten the kiss. She prayed that he had, for it was embarrassing to think of it now, in the harsh light of day. He probably kissed women all the time. She had seen him do so, the very first night she’d met him.

The trees towered like sentinels, their leathery leaves and buttressed trunks giving them the strange look of watchful giants. Slender vines, strong as rope, draped like cables from the abundant foliage. Tiger butterflies flitted from blossom to blossom. Long mosses festooned the branches like the beards of old men. Here and there, secreted in the crook of a tree, dangled another orchid or bromeliad, their aerial roots bristling from blossoms of amazing beauty.

As they neared the top of the climb, a flight of macaws passed over. The colorful birds swooped so close that Isadora could feel the whir of their wings. Toucans and parrots squabbled in the high branches.

But far more splendid than anything she’d seen so far was the waterfall. From a towering bluff of dark wet rock, the cataract hurled itself down into a deep, clear pool. Issuing forth a sound like thunder, the stream crashed with a violence that made her shiver. Yet where the falls plunged into the lagoon, the spray threw up rainbow arcs of light. The pervasive mist formed a layer of glitter, light as air, through the surrounding rocks and trees.

Isadora caught her breath, feeling delirious with pleasure as she inhaled the tingle of the mist in her nostrils.