Under cover of purple shadows

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. This was my cue that I had one hour to move as quickly as I could.

I took over the elixir business from my mother, just as she had inherited it from hers. There were no restrictions in place when my grandmama Zula started the shop all those decades ago, so she didn’t have to wait for cloud cover like my mama Adelaide did, and she certainly didn’t have to sneak through the streets like I do. When Zula opened Fontenot’s, she mostly sold ingredients and balms, but there were one or two potions that no one else could get quite right until you got far past the bayou, and those were where our fortune really came from. Zula sold elixirs for healing and affection from the old Marigny spot for years until she moved into the Quarter. That’s when the trouble began.

As Zula moved Fontenot’s closer to the square, her notoriety only grew. Some suspected her to be the new incarnation of the old voodoo queen who was rumored to still be lingering around St. Ann Street. This disconcerted Zula’s neighbors, the bishops at St. Louis Cathedral, who rallied the parish and mandated that Zula cease operations upon pain of imprisonment. Fontenot’s temporarily shuttered until Adelaide re-opened it as an alteration shop.

I came up in the shop with my mama, learning how to mend clothes and develop my own dress patterns in the hopes that I’d encounter an adventurous client willing to take a chance on my novice designs. One evening when I was eighteen, staying late to work out new designs, I caught Adelaide in the storeroom mixing some of Zula’s old potions. She cast a glance toward me, her motions undisturbed by my unanticipated presence. I froze in the knowledge that I was seeing something I shouldn’t, unsure whether to retreat or confront her. I began to back away when Adelaide asked me to wait. She funneled three ounces of the chicory-smelling brew into a small cruet, placed it in a drawstring bag, and handed it to me.

“Put this in your boot,” she said. “Walk to Toulouse and Burgundy and wait for the gentleman with the snakehead cane. When the clouds come, tell him, ‘His Excellency sends his regards,’ and when he tips his hat, give him the bag. Speak to no one else and come straight back.”

It was a simple enough request, and only a few blocks away, but the urgency in my mother’s voice was at odds with her calm mannerisms and my head swam with questions.

“Who is he? What am I bringing him? How long should I wait if he isn’t there?” I asked.

“I can’t answer right now, Camille. I’ll explain everything when you return, but the clouds are coming soon and I’m busy here so I can’t go. Please just do this quickly for me. Go!”

Her final push loosened my feet and I left the shop. I’d run hundreds of errands for the store before, but always things like delivering garments or picking up fabrics, never anything that seemed so urgent or secretive. Pushing my confusion aside for my brief walk, I thrilled at the fantasy of my top-secret delivery, imagining myself slinking through shadows and tucking into narrow, shuttered doorways until I arrived at my destination and casually looked around for my mark.

The cathedral bells tolled twelve and the purple clouds materialized almost immediately. It was time.

From the east, a man no older than twenty emerged from the mauvy haze. He carried a walking stick with the head of a viper, just as Adelaide had said, and he looked as though he had no plans to stop. As he swept past me, my adrenaline pulsed and I uttered the magic words my mother had given me — perhaps too loudly.

As I chirped about His Excellency, the man turned swiftly and smoothly, lowering his face close to mine. His eyes were amber and fierce, confirming my suspicion that I should’ve been more discreet.

“Keep your voice down,” he whispered, intensely but not unkindly, as he continued to hold my gaze. I felt color creep into my cheeks and labored to steady my breathing as the man tipped his cap, never breaking our contact. I retrieved the cruet from my shoe and he took it from me, masking the hand-off by placing a kiss on my hand as he slipped the bottle away.

He continued his walk down Burgundy and I returned to the store, exhilarated by the exchange and even more curious for Adelaide to explain what I’d just done.

When I arrived back at Fontenot's, I went directly to the back room, confirmed the successful hand-off with my mother, and situated myself near her workspace, ready to be enlightened. It was then that she told me of the Church’s threats against Zula, and the calling she, Adelaide, had to continue Zula’s work.

“Zula had gifts, and so do I, and I suspect you will, too, that provide health and contentment and spiritual wholeness, but our methods are at odds with what the Church will allow in the parish, so we must be careful. We can only move during the overcast.”

I surveyed the room as I listened, and my eyes fell on dozens more filled cruets lining tabletops. Adelaide had bottled enough draught to heal the entire Quarter, and I wondered how I’d never had any inkling of this operation before.

“You’ve caught me at a good time,” Adelaide said. “I could use a lot more help. How much do you think you can run right now?”

I didn’t know it then, but that night was the last time an elixir delivery would ever be so easy.