Write...Edit...Publish - Chapter Three of 'Somewhere in Paris.'

Hi everyone!

Here is my entry for the Write...Edit...Publish permanent monthly blogfest. The prompt is 'Failure. Or is it?' I've picked up my Paris novella. I've previously posted the first two chapters for earlier WEP blogfests. 

The story is told from the POV of Willow, a teenager adrift in Paris, looking for her mother who has disappeared, fleeing from a domestic violence situation back home in Australia. Now here is the third installment...I have edited the original to 1,000 words.

For those who haven't read the previous two chapters, Jacques is the young Frenchman Willow has met after she arrived in Paris. 

If you want to read Chapter One, here it is.

If you want to read Chapter Two, here it is.

Somewhere in Paris

WILLOW

There is the world of

The flesh, and there is

The Spirit World.

When the flesh is gone,

The Spirit forever

Remains. Their voices

speak to those who

know how to listen.

Wisdom is born in the

Heart, and then spoken.

Wolf Clan Song.

I gather my courage in my warrior arms. I chant my mantra over and over. My mouth feels stiff, my teeth chatter.

My mother is not dead.

My mother is not dead.

My mother is not dead...

Jacques and I are in Cafe Paris again, but this time everything is veiled in a mysterious red mist. A noise startles me. I spin around in my chair to see two rough-looking men shove the door open, brushing snow from their shoulders. Both wear black overcoats and fedoras, dim figures escaping the cold. They pause and look back over their shoulders as if to check no one has followed them. The door screeches shut. The men remind me of ghosts as they maneuver their large bodies between tables towards the darkest corner of the room. 

‘Willow?’ Jacques, so dear to me already, leans closer, but his presence doesn’t help. Will I ever be warm again? I feel a soft shawl around my shoulders and briefly wonder where it came from.

‘Jacques, the f…fire…put some more w…wood on…fire.’ I tug the shawl tighter.

Alek comes running from his posse behind the cash register. He kneels before the flames, tossing sweet-smelling logs onto the huge open fire. I lean closer. My fingers look like stiff skinny icicles that will break off at the merest pressure. 

'Thanks Alex,' I whisper, thinking how much he resembles Jacques. I scoot my chair closer to the fire, hold my hands to its flames, but the heat doesn't touch me. I must be outside its radius. Or maybe I’ve suddenly become made of finer stuff, like a vibration, like light that has no substance. My hands feel nothing, my mind feels nothing, not even the warmth of my mother’s love. 

‘Willow!’ Jacques’ voice. The undertone of worry reaches me through the fog. I’m drifting, disembodied like some spirit that can’t find its way home. I’m bound to the earth, but I'm no longer of it. I’m a wisp of smoke drifting upwards from the logs on the fire. Does smoke die? Or does it just drift upwards from one place to another, becoming more and more incandescent?

I press my knuckles against my eyes, then look up. Alek holds out a mug of steaming cappuccino. The aroma brings me back to earth. Coffee, my drug of choice since I shared mugs with my mother in the early hours of the morning after Dad had left for work. Jacques takes the cappuccino from Alek, holds it to my frozen lips. I force a sip of the frothy, sweet milk down my parched throat. It tastes oh-so-delicious. 

Moisture oozes from my pores. The fire scorches me. I scoot backwards, tipping my chair into Jacques'.

I shake my head again and again. I’m alive. I exist. I’m not dead.

My mother is not dead.

My mother is not dead.

My mother is not dead...

‘Your mother is not dead, Willow.’ Had I spoken aloud? ‘Old Paul wished her dead,’ Jacques continues, ‘but that does not mean she is dead. Paul would not hurt a fly. He told me he will be haunted by a redheaded thief the rest of his life. But he did not kill her.’

I raise my head and stare at Jacques. ‘So I did see my mother at the bookstores along the Seine.’

‘Yes, it must have been your maman.’

‘But that argument I saw between my mother and that bouquiniste* was fierce.’ I hug myself and rock the chair. I turn to Jacques. ‘He looked angry enough to toss her in the Seine.’

Jacques holds both my shaking hands in his. ‘We will go to see my papa. He will help us find your mother.’

‘Really? You’d do that?’ I try to stand, but fall back onto the hard chair. A vision of my mother’s stash of books on her bedside table flashes before my eyes. ‘This whole thing’s got something to do with her books.’

‘It may well have.’ He moves me away from the fire. ‘But you’re not going anywhere until you eat something.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Two croque monsieurs, Alex, tout de suite.’

I cram the fatty, delicious, oozy sandwich down my throat. I wipe the crumbs from around my mouth and ball up the napkin, toss it onto my empty plate. ‘Thanks, Jacques.’ Great French cuisine it was not, but it was just what I’d needed, a warm hug to my stomach.

***

‘Shouldn’t we go to the police first?’ I ask Jacques as we dodge snowdrifts beside the Seine.

‘And tell them what? That you think your mother is in Paris. That you think you saw her in the distance this morning. That you think she was having an argument with a bouquiniste? They would think we are a hoax.’

When he put it that way, it didn’t sound a very convincing argument for scouting out the closest cop shop or whatever they called a police station here...gendarmarie? 

‘What about the river? River police? We could tell them that she might have fallen into the Seine.’

‘Might have are the operative words. If she did, it’d be a bit too late to save her now, don’t you—‘

I howl, clapping my hands over my ears. ‘My mother is not dead, Jacques!’

‘Alors, pardon. I am sorry. I cannot imagine your pain.’

The street lies under a blanket of white. Parked cars are slowly being obscured by inches of white powder. There is no blue in the steely-grey sky. The air is thick with wood smoke as Parisians keep themselves warm.

I have to find my mother. So far I’ve failed. But she’s here in Paris. I can feel her.

I look over my shoulder. The two men in black coats are following us.

***

* bouquiniste - bookseller

WORD COUNT: 1007

FULL CRITIQUE PLEASE!

I hope you enjoyed this installment of my Paris story.  Please click on other names on the list in my right-hand sidebar, or visit Write...Edit...Publish here.