avenue of giant oaks that led from the levee road to the immense double doors. How green 
had been this world even in darkness, with twisted oak branches dipping into the high 
grass. I think the long gray streaks of Spanish moss touched the roof of the car.
  The electric power had gone out that night with the storm, they told me.
  "Rather charming," Aaron had said as he greeted me. He'd been white-haired already by 
then, the consummate older gentleman, eternally good-natured, almost sweet. "Lets you see 
things as they were in the old days, don't you think?"
  Only oil lamps and candles illuminated the large square rooms. I had seen the flicker 
in the fanlight above the entranceway as we approached. Lanterns swayed in the wind in 
the deep galleries that wrapped the great square house about on its first and second 
floors.
  Before entering, I had taken my time, rain or no rain, to inspect this marvelous 
tropical mansion, impressed with its simple pillars. Once there had been sugarcane for 
miles all around it; out back beyond the flower beds, still vaguely colored in the 
downpour, were weathered outbuildings where once slaves had lived.
  She came down barefoot to meet me, in a lavender dress covered with pink flowers, 
scarcely the witch at all.
  Her eyes couldn't have been more mysterious had she worn the kohl of a Hindu princess 
to set off the color. One saw the green of the iris, and the dark circle around it, as 
well as the black pupil within. A marvelous eye, all the more vivid due to her light-tan 
creamy skin. Her hair had been brushed back from her forehead, and her slender hands 
merely hung at her sides. How at ease she'd seemed in the first moments.
  "David Talbot," she had said to me almost formally. I'd been enchanted by the 
confidence in her soft voice.
  They couldn't break her of the barefoot habit. It had been dreadfully enticing, those 
bare feet on the wool carpet. She'd grown up in the country, I thought, but no, they 
said, it was merely in an old tumbledown part of New Orleans where there were no 
sidewalks anymore and the weather-beaten houses were neglected and the blossoming and 
poisonous oleander grew as big as trees.
  She had lived there with her godmother, Great Nananne, the witch who'd taught her all 
the things that she knew. Her mother, a powerful seer, known to me then only by the 
mysterious name of Cold Sandra, had been in love with an explorer. There was no father of 
memory. She'd never gone to a real school.
  "Merrick Mayfair," I'd said warmly. I took her in my arms.
  She had been tall for her fourteen years, with beautifully shaped breasts quite natural 
under her simple cotton shift, and her soft dry hair had been loose down her back. She 
might have been a Spanish beauty to anyone outside of this bizarre part of the Southland, 
where the history of the slaves and their free descendants was so full of complex 
alliances and erotic romance. But any New Orleanean could see African blood in her by the 
lovely cafe au lait of her skin.
  Sure enough, when I poured the cream into the thick chicory coffee that they gave me, I 
understood those words.
  "All my people are colored," she said, with the French in her voice then. "Those that 
pass for white leave and go north. That's been happening forever. They don't want Great 
Nananne to visit. They don't want anyone to know. I could pass for white. But what about 
the family? What about all that's been handed down? I would never leave Great Nananne. I 
came here 'cause she told me to come."
  She had a temptress's poise as she sat there, small in the great winged chair of 
oxblood leather, a tiny tantalizing gold chain around her ankle, another with a small 
diamond-studded cross around her neck.
  "See these pictures?" she said invitingly. She had them in a shoe box which rested in 
her lap. "There's no witchcraft in them. You can look as you please."
  She laid them out on the table for me, daguerreotypes-stark clear photographs on glass, 
each one fitted into a crumbling little case of gutter perche, heavily embossed with 
rings of flowers or grapevines, many of which could be closed and clasped shut like 
little books.
  "They come from the 1840s," she said, "and they're all our people. One of our own took 
these pictures. He was known for taking portraits. They loved him. He left some stories-I 
know where they are. They're all written with beautiful handwriting. They're in a box in 
the attic of Great Nananne's house."
  She had moved to the edge of the chair, her knees poking out from under her skimpy hem. 
Her hair made a big mass of shadows behind her. Her hairline was clean and her forehead 
smooth and beautiful. Though the night had been only cool, there was a fire in the 
fireplace, and the room, with its shelves of books and its random Grecian sculptures, had 
been fragrant and comfortable, conducive to a spell.
  Aaron had been watching her proudly, yet full of concern.
  "See, these are all my people from the old days." She might have been laying out a deck 
of cards. The flash of the shadows was lovely on her oval face and the distinct bones of 
her cheeks. "You see, they kept together. But as I said, the ones that could pass are 
long gone. Look what they gave up, just think of it, so much history. See this?"
  I studied the small picture, glinting in the light of the oil lamp.
  "This is Lucy Nancy Marie Mayfair, she was the daughter of a white man, but we never 
knew much about him. All along there would be white men. Always white men. What these 
women did for white men. My mother went to South America with a white man. I went with 
them. I remember the jungles." Had she hesitated, picking up something from my thoughts, 
perhaps, or merely my doting face?
  I would never forget my own early years of exploration in the Amazon. I suppose I 
didn't want to forget, though nothing had made me more painfully conscious of my old age 
than to think of those adventures with gun and camera, lived on the bottom side of the 
world. I never dreamt then that I would return to uncharted jungles with her.
  I had stared again at the old glass daguerreotypes. Not a one among any of these 
individuals looked anything but rich-top hats and full taffeta skirts against studio 
backdrops of drapery and lavish plants. Here was a young woman beautiful as Merrick was 
now, sitting so prim and upright, in a high-backed Gothic chair. How to explain the 
remarkably clear evidence of African blood in so many of them? It seemed no more in some 
than an uncommon brightness of the eye against a darkened Caucasian face, yet it was 
there.
  "Here, this is the oldest," she said, "this is Angelique Marybelle Mayfair." A stately 
woman, dark hair parted in the middle, ornate shawl covering her shoulders and full 
sleeves. In her fingers she clasped a barely visible pair of spectacles and a folded fan.
  "She's the oldest and finest picture that I have. She was a secret witch, that's what 
they told me. There's secret witches and witches people come to. She was the secret kind, 
but she was smart. They say she was lovers with a white Mayfair who lived in the Garden 
District, and he was by blood her own nephew. I come down from her and from him. Oncle 
Julien, that was his name. He let his colored cousins call him Oncle Julien, instead of 
Monsieur Julien, the way the other white men might have done."
  Aaron had tensed but sought to hide it. Perhaps he could hide it from her, but not from 
me.
  So he's told her nothing of that dangerous Mayfair family. They haven't spoken of 
it-the dreadful Garden District Mayfairs, a tribe with supernatural powers, whom he had