Valkyrie Wilde, District 11

x | x

You remind me of the babe
What babe? The babe with the power
What power? The power of voodoo
Who do? You do
Do what? Remind me of the babe

( N A M E ) Valkyrie Arcadia Wilde
( A G E ) Eighteen
( G E N D E R ) Female
( D I S T R I C T / A R E A ) District Eleven

I saw my baby, crying hard as babe could cry
What could I do
My baby's love had gone
And left my baby blue
Nobody knew

( A P P E A R A N C E )

The Capitol takes all the fruit and the wheat and leaves us with nothin' but weeds, the sins of the earth, not realizing that such things are stubbornly strong, unlike the easy nourishment their fragile mouths consume that makes them weak. We grow wiry and resilient like dandelions, twistin' up out of the cracks they banished us to, as we steal sunlight and sustenance from wherever we can find it. So maybe I'm a little ragged around my edges, but I'm not frayed or worn down, just burlap-rough with the thickest skin you ever saw. I swear, the soles of my feet are like leather and it's not only because I walk barefoot down baked summer sidewalks that put hot coals to shame. We're born this way here and I'm not even the most of it.

The fieldworkers, they all got tawny skin as if they're rusting beneath that harvest sunshine, but I'm as washed out as the moonlight I was born under. I didn't always like it so much when I was younger, never being able to hide how different I was. That's somethin' I couldn't escape even if I wanted to and I don't. Not anymore, at least. There's not too much about me that falls into people's expectations for bein' normal, whatever that means. I'm just like my momma, from her faerie tale pale skin to the dark of her hair that betrays the wicked magic running deep in our blood. We've both got wide foreheads, sharp chins, and a crooked tilt in our lips from always trying to talk out our mouths to two different worlds at once. My voice tends to get more tangled up in itself than hers when I do that, its slurred drawl trippin' in slow motion over consonants that seem to be in a bigger hurry than the rest of the words are.

Momma says knowing your place between worlds and talkin' to the both of them gets easier with time, that all things get easier with time and not to rush none, because people always got more minutes and hours than they know what to do with. Sounds about right to me. Women in my family grow older than legends and I figure I'll do the same. 'Sides, my momma's got this way of making every word she casts out of her mouth into truth. When I was nothin' but young and awkward, she told me to scrub my knees and hold my shoulders steady like they're the scales of Lady Justice. Then she said somethin' about how "every girl has the voodoo of feminine charms in theyselves — you just got a little more than most, sugar — and spells like that can do a lot more than seduce men." Worry about what you think of yourself, not what's runnin' through other people's minds when they get to studying your rising hemlines and gothic hazel eyes. There's plenty of things more important than the perceptions of strangers, especially seeing as how they tend to overlook most of what's right in front of them.

What kind of magic spell to use
Slime and snails
Or puppy dogs tails
Thunder or lightning
Then baby said:

( P E R S O N A L I T Y )

Seems to be an awful lot of things in this world nobody sees and even when they do, they tell themselves their eyes are bein' tricked — that it's only a flicker of reflected light skippin' through those shadows — 'cause they can't be bringin' theyselves to believe in no such things as demons. Momma taught me to know better. Every day of my life is a new lesson on how to open my eyes a little wider. This world is full up with the strange and mischievous doin's of otherworldly spirits; they're not so much unseen as they are unknown to people. But see, as sure I'm here, there's somethin' of a God out there, it's just that She don't worry none about what makes you and I scared or happy, or interfere with any of the things we'd like to change in the time that passes between our days and nights. That greater power ain't got nothin' to do with little old us; it's those spirits that nobody gives any recognition to who preside over daily life — kind and cruel, troublesome and playful — they shape the happenin's of our world and intervene in human affairs whenever they please. Maybe you think it's wise to deny and ignore those mysterious forces, but momma and I, it's our job to maintain the relationship between the spirits and the community.

Some of them disbelievers call it Hoodoo, like they sayin' a dirty word. Call it what you will: Voodoo, Hoodoo, Juju, Rootwork, folk medicine, Mysticism, superstitions. 'S all the same, don't matter none too much what you try to name it. Fact is, it's there, iffin' you laugh at it or mind your mouth like you ought to. Faeries, let me tell you, they turn theyselves into imps real quick-like when they feelin' insulted. Shallow minds are a dangerous thing when the mouths they're talkin' through start invoking spirits without any heed for respect; ain't no talisman or gris-gris strong enough to protect somebody spoutin' off thoughtless words. That's why true rituals — Grimoire readings, spiritual baths, specially devised diets, prayer, personal ceremony — are held behind closed doors. The spirits got no interest in bein' insulted with showy nonsense. A white candle and a glass of water in a quiet room will endear you to them far quicker than a parade through the District square.

Now that's not to say that everything momma and I do is a quiet affair. Oh, no. Ain't no such thing as a quiet exorcism. Momma, she presides over the ceremonial meetings and ritual dances, scaring those angry spirits out of bodies they don't belong in, and offers sacrifices in exchange for her meddlin'. There's a reason those gamblers down on the low streets shout her name out when throwin' dice, why people come to her for charms, amulets, and magical powders. No, ain't nothin' quiet that ever guaranteed to cure ailments, grant desires, and confound or destroy one’s enemies. It gets real loud up in our house some days, when we gotta claw at the floorboards and ask Scratch to open the Gate.

See, you can take a discarded shoe and nail an army of crude dolls to the trees surrounding the cemetery — and if you're needin' messengers to the Otherworld, then they're reliable enough — but if you want words to come replyin' back, then you gotta go through Scratch. One of the first things momma ever taught me was how ancestors are "in the blood." You carry them with you, only, if you want to speak with them, you gotta be willin' to open yourself up too. And Scratch, well, he didn't get his name for nothin' and he guards the Gate to the afterlife real well, unless you play by his rules: gotta scratch at a plank of wood until you open up those bloodlines. Ain't no shame in howlin' out with the pain, but you're never gonna get somethin' for nothin', so it's best shed any ideas about Voodoo magic makin' things easier.

Our lives ain't ever been nothin' like easy. Gotta sweep the trash out before nightfall so we don't sweep away our luck, then lay the broom across the doorway at night so no witches can come in to hurt us. No shakin' tablecloths out after dark or someone in the family will die. Can't have no women come to see us on Monday mornings or it'll sour our luck for the rest of the week. Don't walk under no ladders and you best turn yourself right around iffin' a black cat tries to cross your path — unless you've been busy mixin' that toxic Jimson Weed up with sulphur and honey to make a cure-all and you're needin' yourself a black cat to rub the concoction up against. The list goes on. You can laugh about superstitions all you want, but life has got rules and momma and I gotta follow 'em. We've seen what happens when people don't and there ain't no good in it.

Dance magic, dance; Dance magic, dance
Put that baby spell on me
Jump magic, jump; Jump magic, jump
Put that magic jump on me
Slap that baby, make him free

( H I S T O R Y )

Momma is the voodoo queen of District Eleven, growin' the things that thrive beneath the moon, not the sun, the forbidden foods of the fae and the devil's children. Once upon a long time ago, she done taught my daddy, a vineyard man and a closet poet, to make absinthe out of some of those taboo seeds she nurtures like babies. Absinthe is the blood of muses, the infectious nip of unsullied inspiration itself, and it swept his mind away like a fantastical riptide of real-life make-believe. Soon enough, he fell in love with my momma — wasn't none too unexpected, considerin' how she's none other than the high priestess of the green faeries — or so he swore up and down until his throat was raw and hoarse. Words like love never swayed my momma much, at least not until she had me. I was born beneath a full moon so bright that its edges cut right through the dark and my skin and let all the displaced children of the night's shadows into the safe haven of my soul, to take refuge until the moon waned and they could return to their homes. They kissed my infant bones with their blessing, giving me the gift of second sight in return for sheltering them, the kind of seeing you keep even when your eyes are shut real tight.

I guess my daddy proposed to my momma every day for years and years, but she wouldn't marry him for nothin'. Ain't no man that can tame her. She just said, "thank you for my daughter," and went on living life by her own rules the way she always had, as impervious to his desperate declarations of love as she was to the neighbor's whispers about their scandal. Now, just because she wouldn't let him put no ring on her finger, that didn't mean she refused to see him again and maybe the push and pull of her half-hearted closeness is what really untethered his mind, not the absinthe. I know they still saw each other because I had a baby sister once — no brothers, my momma don't know how to make no boys — but she was born blue and the green faeries wouldn't abide that kind of change from the Old Ways. We secretly buried her in the backyard, because momma likes to grow things and also on account of how I cried at her first idea of burning that baby to scatter-dust, wantin' to keep her close, even if we couldn't keep her completely. That was when my daddy stopped gettin' down on his knee to murmur, howl, or beg for the right to her hand, realizing how there wasn't no romance to be found in the wake of somethin' like that. I still see all of it in his eyes sometimes; that despite the baby-blue shadow neither of them can shake from their vision, he still feels the pull of gravity on that knee of his, wants to let it touch the earth as he pleads for her acceptance just one more time...

Sometimes I just can't decide whether the change in him was about me or my momma. I know he sees her in me — I certainly don't look nothin' like him — but it's deeper than that, somethin' more than any haze of faerie magic that clouds his mind. After that baby came into the world so still, he started lookin' at me different and it wasn't just because of her, I don't think. Maybe all that loss made him want to love other things too. In any case, a word, a nod, the slip of a smile — the vaguest of hints and he was ready to cut his heart from his chest and lay it as an offering at my feet. My daddy done spoiled me rotten every chance he got, but it was always him looking for those moments, never me. He's a good man, even I'm not heathen enough to deny him of that, though I can't say I ever felt lonely without him. With the faeries around, I can't never feel nothin' like lonesome.

If ever I felt trapped on my own though, it was back when I was closer to knee-high and the voodoo hadn't learned to play so nice at the schoolyard. Tossing chicken bones and trying to tell the other kids how I could read the future in them wasn't the fastest way to make friends, but my ways never scared Airam. He looked like a plant that went and uprooted itself from the earth: a quiet kind of stubborn, all wiry and colored like a stray stalk of dry wheat. That boy, he's lookin' for somethin'. After all these years, he seems to think it might be me and I'm a lot of things, but I'm not that. There's somethin' between us that I can't ever put my finger on though, but it's shadow-sly and full up with wicked humor, 'cause the closest I've gotten to figuring the two of us out is that he and I, we're a lot like daddy and my momma. Airam, he's got the words in him just the same as I've got the magic in me. All the sudden, school didn't seem so tough with him around — he opened his mouth in defense of me and the other kids moved in tune with whatever he said, like he was singin' songs and all they had to do was take my hand and dance along.

It wasn't too long after he got a real good taste of absinthe and started makin' a habit of it, that he ran away from home and took up livin' in that abandoned windmill. Nothin' to be surprised about there; the green faeries always bring change. Just the same as he'd helped my strangeness flourish while I balanced my voodoo education from momma with all those contradicting words from my teachers at school, I wanted to help Airam. Together we started to make something of that old windmill — he calls me his muse, 'cause he still doesn't understand too well about the mysterious forces that can intervene in human affairs — and kids started comin' as if he were callin' to them in the dark. One day he's writing poetry on the walls, the next he's wailing it out like a victory cry in front of a small crowd. Sometimes I'd shout it out with him, using the voice I usually save for rituals and ceremonies, 'cause I like somethin' about the way he says: "Val, you got a voice made of bricks and cayenne pepper."

No matter what it is I feel for that boy, I understand why my momma won't let no ring touch her finger, 'cause I belong to myself and ain't no man got claims on me. See, Airam calls me Val, 'cause he has a piece of me, but —

But one night, when we were shouting out his words in a windmill full up with the escapist youth of District Eleven, somebody started thumpin' on the walls, pickin' up the beats in his words like they were followin' along on a drum. That's when the music started and it didn't take me none too long to learn that where there's music, there's Jessa. In all my unworldly visions, I ain't never seen nothin' that moves like her. Thought she was a spirit twistin' through that crowd and I only realized she wasn't when I tried to talk to her in the Rootwork tongues and sorted out how the only language she really speaks is dance. If there was anything between us at first sight, it was only mine; she couldn't even see me standin' there with all that music fillin' up her mind. Couldn't help but dwell on what my momma taught me about how all girls have the voodoo of feminine charms, 'cause suddenly I wasn't the only untamable one in that crowd.

Jessa didn't even know I was there that night — the time after, or the time after that. Finally, I couldn't stand seein' so much voodoo in someone and havin' nothin' to do with 'em, so I fought my way past the writhing congregation of swinging hips until I was face-to-face with her. Then I just stood there and stared until she looked up and saw me. She touched my face before she said anything, reaching out to fix my mouth into a proper smile, like she was giving me one of hers. That's when I started to learn how there ain't no taming involved when you really start to belong to someone. Just the opposite. I heard Airam calling out "Val! Val!" from across the room, some kind of distant and maybe even desperate cry for his own claims to me, but Airam calls me Val 'cause he has a piece of me... Jessa calls me Valkyrie because she has everything.

I saw my baby, trying hard as babe could try
What could I do
My baby's fun had gone
And left my baby blue
Nobody knew

( C O D E W O R D ) Odair
( F A C E C L A I M ) Christina Ricci

What kind of magic spell to use
Slime and snails
Or puppy dogs tails
Thunder or lightning
Then baby said:

( C O M M E N T S / O T H E R )

Magic Dance by David Bowie

Actually... her momma might secretly be David Bowie, now that I think about it.

Disclaimer: Yes, I researched traditional Voodoo, Hoodoo, Juju, and all sorts of things for this. No, I'm not trying to be very accurate with my usage of any of it. Most of this is made up or based more on false cliches/personal whims than actual practices.

Dance magic, dance; Dance magic, dance
Put that baby spell on me
Jump magic, jump; Jump magic, jump
Put that magic jump on me
Slap that baby, make him free

( S P E A K I N G ) 557C5F
( T E X T ) 7DAF90
( T H I N K I N G ) C5CD93
( O T H E R ) BEC04E
( O T H E R S P E A K I N G ) C57A4E

You remind me of the babe
What babe? The babe with the power
What power? The power of voodoo
Who do? You do
Do what? Remind me of the babe