Dani Ch. 01

Yverette walked across the room to her daughter Yvette's bedroom with the moonlight streaming through the open window, watching the gentle sway of the white lace curtains moving in the light night breeze. Well, Yverette didn't actually walk; ghosts dont have a corporal mass to press against the polished wood of the floor, nor even the beautiful Marian Dorn art deco rug that covered much of the floor of Yvette's bedroom. Sometimes Yverette missed the feel of the world on her hands and feet, the solid feeling of being part of something that she could not feel anymore.

She looked down at the brown, tan and white rug that she and Donald had picked out for the nursery when Yvette was still inside her. A smile claimed her face, for choosing that wonderful impressionist vision of water and earth had been one of Yverette and Donald's best married memories. They bought it during their one trip to Paris. Donald, now there was a pretty problem if ever there was one. How did one's ghost deal with the still present desire for the mate one was in love with?

Yverette stood over her daughter Yvette's crib and stared at the cherubic face of her daughter. The child's auburn hair, so like her mother's hair that it would have brought tears to Yverette's eyes, was she able to have tears. She reached down to cover Yvette's exposed shoulder and found herself being angry that her long thin fingers simply passed through the blanket, instead of moving the coverlet.

"Think you silly ghost, concentrate now." Yverette concentrated on her grandmother's lessons for corporal manifestation, using her mental and emotional energy to create a simulation of the corporal hand she once had. Then, slowly she watched her fingers manifest themselves, then her hand and slowly from that hand upward her arm and finally her entire body became, real. All that effort, but the smile that moving Yvette's blanket to cover her shoulder and watching her daughter snuggle into the blanket and make that small sighing noise of hers was worth the effort. As soon as she stopped concentrating, she vanished again and her frown returned.

"Vous etes trouble` ma petite fille," Yverette heard the musical sound of her grandmother's beautiful Cajun French from the doorway. Grandmother Marie's ghost walked up to the side of her granddaughter and stood at the side of the crib. "She truly is a beautiful child, my dear, I understand why you wish to be here so often, but there are other things that you must do, other duties that you must discharge Mon Cher."

Yverette rose to her full five-foot four-inch height and looked slightly up into her grandmother's eyes. Yverette was dressed in the ball gown she preferred in life, and the one that Donald had chosen to have her interred in. It was a Madam Sophia design, a white and gold sleeveless gown whose pearl, sequin, and rhinestone studded bodice hugged her tightly, moving smoothly over her body and becoming an underskirt in several sections. Descending from her hips was a chiffon overskirt of white organdy reaching the tops of her feet. She had looked stunning in it at her wedding dinner.

Her light auburn hair fell naturally to her shoulders with a slight under-curl at the ends, her eyes and face held simple traces of makeup, as she had normally worn her cosmetics in life. Of all the aspects of Yverette that were so like herself in life, her eyes were the most expressive as a ghost. If there were one thing Yverette wanted most, it was for her husband and daughter to see her one more time. So that they could see that she wasn't totally gone, that she was here, in their house, sharing as much of their life as she could.

"Oui, Grand-mere, I know. I just wish I had been here, in this time and place, sooner; it took me two months to find my way back to the house. Now, when I look at New Orleans, I see it as it is, I see the things I know easily, but at first, when I awoke, everything was different and wrong." Her perceptions were as if life was truly one of those oh so interesting paintings from the Spanish artist Salvador Dali. Where objects could be seen and known for what they were, but somehow their places were without perspective, or the objects could manifest attributes impossible in life. She laughed a little at the memory of those paintings and her relationship to them now.

Her grandmother smiled and reached out her left hand to stroke Yverette's auburn hair, as she had done when Yverette was a little girl. "It is always that way, Mon Cher. Our minds remember what things were like with a living reference point. But all the layers of time that we pass through interfere with that single reality. So it takes time to readjust to our new perspective and re-anchor in the present. Come; let us walk to the place where you were killed. You have yet to absorb all of your energy from there and it is dangerous to leave parts of yourself loose like that. We can return to little Yvette's bedroom before dawn and let you watch her awaken, you always love that."

"Oui, grand mere although you know that I do hate going to that place where HE struck me with his automobile and ended my life so abruptly."

"I know, but you know you can't hate ... if you carry hate in your heart you will never be able to leave this plane and move on."

"Grand mere, is that why you are here? Did you hate?

Marie laughed with her tinkling sweet laugh, "no daughter of my soul, I had to stay here for you, as your task was going to be the hardest one of all of us, someone who knew you had to stay to help you and to complete your task. Come now, we should be going." The two ghosts glided silently down the stairs and out through the front door. It was convenient that they didn't have to open doors and cause any distress to those who were sleeping in the house in the night.

As they glided down the boulevard moving from the Garden District, where their house was located to the French Quarter where Yverette had been killed, they conversed casually, often describing the people they were passing or the places where each of them either singly or collectively had enjoyed life. Finally they reached the corner of Dauphine St and Saint Louis St. Standing there, on the northeast corner of that intersection both of the ghosts could discern the energy specter left by the sudden death of Yverette.

"Now go, Mon Cher. I will stand here and watch out for you, you know I can't get too near your energy specter or I might absorb some of it." As Yverette started across the street Marie called energy to herself and began to weave a spell of protection over the entire intersection, a safe haven for Yverette to absorb her energy and prevent it from being stolen by another.

Yverette smiled at her grandmother and silently walked over and stood in the center of the specter; standing completely still she opened her intelligence, her thoughts and mind to the energy that surrounded her. Marie could watch the energy swirling around Yverette and clapped her hands in front of her as she had done when a debutante in the 1880s. Had Yverette watched, she would have laughed at the young woman impression her usually stately grandmother was making of herself as she willed Yverette to finish absorbing her energy.

As Yverette worked her magic Marie thought that life for all of the Devereau family. It wasn't easy to be a witch and soon the difficulties of raising young Yvette would manifest themselves. Poor Donald didn't yet know what he had lying in the crib in his house. It had been a bit of a shock, when Yverette announced that she was in love with Donald, the entire family had taken it hard that she was in love with a human. Witches so seldom acted intimately with humans but, as ever Yverette had been headstrong and forced the family to conform to her desires and not she conforming to theirs. It was going to be difficult trying to help a human raise a witch. But that was the task at hand and any day now, Yvette would begin to manifest her powers, and there are few things more difficult than trying to control a toddler witch.

Finally, after watching Yverette and Donald's interactions the family had been forced to agree that the two creatures were in love and that no one was going to make Yverette as happy as Donald would. Still there had been many conversations between Yverette, her mother Marie, and the other members of her family about how she was going to broach the subject that she was a witch to her much too human husband.

Yverette had always simply told them that she would tell Donald, when the time was right and when he was ready to understand the realities of life instead of the human perception of it he had. Unfortunately, Yverette's death had occurred before that conversation had occurred and now Marie knew that Gladys would have to be the one to take up that mantle and, with luck, raise a second generation to her potential as a witch. Yvette would need that, and poor Donald would have to accept both the reality of his daughter and his place in her life.