“God damn you little bastards,” Anne growled. “Stay out of my memories. They’re mine, mine! You have no business with them, with me.”
“They belong to us now, Annnnnneeee. Seeeee how much weeeee share?” the Biloko said.
Anne’s mind sought a safe place and retreated to the warmth and light of the old tavern she used to hide at, in the East End of London, in Spitalfields, when she was young and called herself Andy. It was the place she ran to when she couldn’t stand her father anymore, couldn’t bear another beating.
A sharp branch on one of the leadwood trees scratched her face, leaving a wet trail of blood behind. The Biloko howled at the scent of her blood. A dark stain, an old painful memory, grew like a tumor from the safe place her mind had been flailing for.
It was the night the fat old man, the man who smelled of rotten eggs, had come into the tavern. He had bought her bowl after bowl of hot soup and even some sweets and hot cider.
“No!” Anne screamed. “I won’t remember! I can’t! You vile cockchaffing sons of bitches! Leave it!” She almost said please, almost begged them to stop, but she didn’t. The memory opened in her like a stinking flower planted on a grave.
Her memory of leaving the tavern with the fat man was less clear; she was sure now that he had been putting something dodgy in her food. The haze over her memory lifted when he tore down her breeches in a filthy alleyway. He had roared with anger at his discovery that she was actually a girl. The bad-egg man took her that night the way he would have taken her if she had been a boy, and then he beat her—the worst beating of her young life—and left her bloody on the garbage-strewn floor of the alley. Almost weeping, but boys didn’t weep. Andy, always Andy. Tears were surrender. Never.
“We’reeeeee sooooo hungry, Annnneeeee,” the Biloko called out all around her. Her fingers trembled to hang onto the lantern, she had to keep moving forward, one step, another … another. Her feet were barely moving, shuffling. The trees were so close now the branches scratched her skin; each cut was cold and it burned.
Years after that night with the rotten-egg man, Anne would wake shaking, wet from sweat, from the nightmare, his bloated face, florid and sweaty, the stink of rancid gas billowing off him. In her mind that smell was what evil smelled like.
The Biloko’s claws were long like straight razors, and their burning orange eyes nibbled at her soul each time Anne looked into them. The jaws were unhinging like serpents’, drool splattering her face from their howling maws, so close to her that she could smell their breath.… It smelled of rotten eggs. “Feeeeed usssss,” they moaned, “give ussss your fleeeeesssshhhh…”
Anne fumbled and found the amulet, the gold snake, at her breast. She clutched it and focused on the warm gold shape of it in her mind, trying to push out the Biloko’s voices, their words like cold syrup pouring into the folds of her brain, trying to wipe away her will to resist them, to let them to fall upon her and strip her flesh from her bones like piranha.
When she had staggered home from the alleyway, Anne endured a second beating at the hands of her father, who accused her of whoring herself. Anne took that beating with no tears, never a whimper. Never again would she give a man the satisfaction of making her cry. It was just flesh, and flesh was worth sacrificing to keep the fire inside you alive, untouched. When it was over, her mother took care of her. Anne never told anyone what happened that night, but her mother knew. Without a word, she understood, and that was enough.
This will not break me, Anne thought. That did not break me … you will not break me!
Anne pushed the unreasoning fear away. The Biloko had peeled back her memories, used them to try to destroy her. The realization made Anne angry, and she threw her fear into the pyre of that anger. Looking around her, the Biloko were everywhere, shrieking, spitting, frenzied for a taste of her flesh, of her soul. There was no more path forward, and there was no path back.
“You belong to usssssss, Annnneeeee,” the Biloko said. “There is noooooo escape for youuuuuuu…”
Anne reached into her coat pocket and retrieved the extra flask of lamp oil she was carrying. She uncorked it and splashed it on the Biloko’s dead trees, all around her. She raised the lantern, her eyes flashing with cold fury.
“There’s no escape for you bastards either!” she screamed, and smashed the lantern against the trees.
The lamp exploded, igniting with a loud thump as the oil caught and began to burn, jumping from tree to tree.
“What!” the Biloko wailed, a chorus of hatred and fear. “What haveeeeee you done, womannnnnn?”
“You picked the wrong bone-bucket to taff about in, fuckers!” Anne shouted over the greedy roar of the growing blaze. “Burn, you bastards! Burn!” The evil spirits wailed. In moments, the whole forest was ablaze, the ancient dead trees turning to ash, collapsing under their faltering, hollow weight. The fire spread farther, faster. There was no way out for Anne; everywhere was beautiful, bright, dancing death.
At the center of the firestorm, Anne Bonny cackled as she heard the Biloko beg for mercy, plead to the gods they had so long angrily defied. The monsters screamed in pain and loss, their foul spirits bleeding out of the disintegrating wood, in plumes of thick black smoke.
“I’ll see you boys in Hell!” she said.
The pirate queen listened to the last of the unliving die. The burning forest was finally silent except for the snap and whine of the fire devouring the now-empty wood. They were the last sounds Anne heard before the smoke and fire claimed her, too—but only her flesh.
* * *
Hell smelled like boiling vegetables and cinnamon. Anne coughed and tried to move. Her chest felt like it was on fire; she coughed more, desperately trying to catch a breath between the hacking spasms. Her throat felt like a chimney that needed a good sweep.
She remembered a figure, masked and hooded, coming through the fire toward her as the evil ghosts howled and perished. Anne had thought it was Death, come to claim her. She recalled soft hands, like worn leather, picking her up as if she weighed nothing. Flying into the air, the figure seemed to climb the fires as if they were solid, leaping from one flickering spear of fatal flame to the next. Her rescuer’s cloak smoldered, but it never caught. There had been a final leap into the cool darkness, and then nothing, until now.
Anne opened her eyes. That was a mistake; her head throbbed, almost dizzy with pain. She was on a sleeping mat in a small hut. There was a cook fire a few feet away from her, and an iron pot bubbled and steamed over the flame.
“Good,” a strangely familiar woman’s voice said behind her. “You’re not dead, and you woke up just in time for the evening meal.” Anne rolled over and found herself looking at the old woman who had been wearing the speckled cloak and bird skull mask in the royal court of Ife. The woman’s voice was the voice from her strange dreams, the voice that Adu had been talking with when she had been recovering from the duel with Nourbese.
“Oya?” Anne said, struggling to her feet. She made it as far as her hands and knees before another coughing fit took her. She gasped and retched. “I’m ready to fight…” she said, gasping for breath.
“I see,” the old woman said. She spoke very good English. Without the skull-mask, Oya’s face was brown, wrinkled and cracked like a dry riverbed. Her eyes were the color of tiger eye stones, and had a positive gleam to them. Her hair was white and wiry in a loose halo around her head. “But humor me and have some water and a bit of stew before you pummel me, yes?”
Anne flopped back on the mat. “Well, if you insist.”
The night sky was a deep indigo and stars spread across the firmament like scattered grains of sand. Oya’s home was near the bank of the Chad. They ate outside near a small fire. The cool, fresh air felt good on Anne’s red and blistered skin and soothed her raw throat. Anne was polishing off her second bowl of the vegetable stew Oya had served her on a bed of couscous.
“This is the best stew I’ve ever eaten,” Anne said.
“Of c
ourse it is. Have you heard the story of the strawberry?” Oya asked. Anne shook her head as she sopped up a bit of her meal with a piece of unleavened bread. “A man was walking one day, when he was beset by a hungry tiger. He ran and the tiger gave chase. Seeing he had come to the edge of cliff, and the tiger was bearing down upon him, the man’s only hope was to clutch a vine with both hands and swing over the side of the cliff, which is exactly what he did.
“Looking below, he saw two more hungry tigers pacing in the ravine beneath him. The first tiger was also waiting at the edge of the cliff above. Two rats, a white one and a black one, scuttled out of their holes in the side of the cliff and began to gnaw on the vine. The man tried to shoo them away, but to no avail.
“As the vine began to thin and weaken under the rats’ attention, the man knew he was going to die. At that moment, he noticed a single wild strawberry growing in a fissure between two rocks on the cliff face. He hung onto the vine with only one hand and reached out to pluck the strawberry. When he ate it, it was exquisite.”
Anne was silent on her side of the fire, Oya silent upon completing the story. Finally Anne began to giggle, then to laugh. She nodded as she wiped her eyes. Oya’s face seemed to split as she grinned widely.
“Do they even grow bloody strawberries in Africa?” Anne asked, still laughing.
“A few,” Oya said, “a few.” She opened a small clay pot and with a wooden gourd ladle dipped a liquid out of the pot and into a wooden cup. She offered it to Anne, who wiped a few more tears of laughter from her eyes. “Tonto?” Oya said, referring to the drink. Anne took the cup.
“Thanks,” she said, and took a sip. “Mmm,” she said. “Got a little kick. What is it?”
“Banana beer,” Oya said, as she poured herself a cup as well. “Often used in ceremonies.”
“This a ceremony?” Anne asked. Oya nodded and raised her cup.
“A rite of passage,” she said. Anne raised her cup, and both women drank.
“You know I’m not here to pass some daft tests, right?” Anne said.
“Life is a test,” Oya said, “death too.”
“Am I dead?” Anne asked. “Did I die in that fire?”
“That remains to be seen,” Oya said. “We walk through the gates of life and death all the time; we’re usually too preoccupied to notice.”
“Can I ask you something,” Anne said. Oya gave a shrug. “How did you talk to me in my dreams? How could you possibly save me from that fire? How did that bird show up there and in the real world, too, the kite…”
“The kite is her bird, the Mother’s symbol, her servant,” Oya said. “There is a way for Daughters of certain bloodlines to walk in the great lodges of their ancestors, to learn secrets and lost knowledge. But it is a jealously guarded craft that takes a lifetime to master. It is possible, given a long enough life, aptitude and patience, to learn to walk in the dreams of the living and the dead.”
“The dead dream?” Anne asked. Oya nodded.
“Oh yes,” she said. “That is how they talk to us.”
“What do the dead dream about?”
“That is a secret for those initiated,” Oya said. “Some think this world we live in is what the dead dream.”
“More like a nightmare,” Anne said, upending her cup. Oya refilled it.
“I was not entering your dreams,” Oya said. “I thought you were somehow influencing and appearing in my dreams. I marveled how a relative child…”
“I am soddin’ tired of you long-toothed bastards calling me a child!” Anne said. “Just because I haven’t thrown fucking bones with King Solomon doesn’t mean I’m a snapper!”
Oya grinned at the outburst. “My apologies, young woman. Very maturely stated, I might add. As I was saying, I couldn’t figure out how you were doing that, so I approached Adu while you were healing in Agaja’s court, and he told me how highly he thought of your prospects to succeed and reach me. I have to admit I was skeptical and somewhat bigoted. My encounters with whites have all ended … poorly, especially the last one I trusted with a responsibility.”
Anne shrugged. “People in general tend to fuck you,” she said, her eyes drooping, “don’t give no matter to the shade of ’em.” She took another sip of the beer. The sip turned into polishing off most of the cup of the sweet, bitter, potent drink. “So, if it wasn’t you showing me all that, and it wasn’t me showing you all that … then, who’s been running a rig on us? Whose voice have I been hearing in my dreams, in these visions?”
“Someone old and powerful,” Oya said. Anne yawned widely and then belched.
“As for rescuing you from the fire. You will learn how to do that as well in time.”
“What? Not burn up?” Anne muttered. Her eyes were fighting to stay open. “Dance across flames like swinging in the rigging of a ship? It’s impossible.”
“Flame is energy,” Oya said. “Everything is energy. Once you understand there is no difference in the thing, save the name we place upon it, you will begin to see that we can have power over the primal thing if we do not give its name power over us with words like ‘impossible.’”
“What difference does a name make?” Anne asked.
“Exactly,” Oya said. “Once you see past the name of a thing, its mask, and see its essence, it no longer has power over you. You have power over it.”
“Sounds like bloody magic,” Anne said.
“‘Magic’ is just a name as well,” Oya said. “There is truth and there is falsehood, in all things. One gives you power, the other takes it away.”
Anne started to reply but she yawned again instead. “Rest, strawberry,” Oya said. “We’ll talk more in the morning.”
Anne drank the last of the beer and dropped the cup beside her. “Are you really a goddess?” she asked Oya as she rolled over onto her side on the pile of furs by the fire. Her belly was full and her eyes were heavy.
“As much as any of us are, child,” Oya said. Anne slept.
* * *
Anne awoke to bright sunlight on her face. It was late morning and last night’s fire was only a memory, the fire pit full of gray ash. Anne climbed to her feet with a groan and looked about. Oya’s hut was about three hundred yards from the shore of the lake. Off to the southwest a thin ribbon of black smoke drifted higher in the iridescent blue sky. Anne checked the hut, but Oya was nowhere to be found. Anne started to walk in the direction of the trailing streamers of smoke and, in about twenty minutes, she found the old woman, sitting cross-legged in the barren sandy soil, looking at the charred remains of the Biloko’s forest.
“Do you know how many have tried to cross those woods in the countless eons since Carcosa was founded?” Oya said. “Kings, warlords, mystics, monks, seekers of glory, knowledge and riches. Most lost their minds within moments of the Biloko falling upon them, opening them; then they lost their lives, and finally their souls.”
Anne sat down beside her. “I almost did,” she said. “I almost lost everything in there. I wanted to just run, blindly. I’ve never been more scared of anything in my life.”
“And you would have been lost if you had,” Oya said.
“Those things … they tore me open,” Anne said. “It made me just a little madder than I was scared.” She chuckled.
“And you burned everything down,” Oya said, “regardless of the consequence, regardless of what it did to you.”
“Aye,” Anne said. She stood, and dusted off the bottom of her breeches. “End of the dance, all you have is yourself. Those evil tossers tried to take all that away from me.” Anne took a few steps back and raised her fists. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Oya, still sitting, looked at her. “What are you doing, exactly?”
“I’m ready to scrap,” Anne said.
“Scrap?” Oya said. “Fight?”
“Aye,” Anne said. “Adu said you were the one putting all those tests in my way, that you were the last guardian of Carcosa. You saved me from that fire and you fed me and let me rest. Yo
u’ve been more than fair. I’m ready.”
Oya stood. It was almost as if gravity didn’t have a hold on her as she glided up to her feet. “There’s no need for that anymore,” she said. “I think I’m convinced. But if I know you, and I think I do, you won’t be satisfied until we do this. So, begin.”
Anne charged Oya with a snarl. She threw a wild right at the old woman’s head. It was on target, except the old woman’s head was no longer there; she was somehow a few feet to the left of where Anne swore she had been. Oya shoved Anne gently, little more than a push. It felt like Anne had struck a tree. The pirate queen flew back a good ten yards and landed with a thump on her butt, then skidded till she finally came to a stop. Anne scrambled back to her feet, and charged at Oya again.
“C’mon then! Faire!” Anne howled the old Irish battle cry as she hurled a series of punches and kicks at Oya. Oya stood rock still, but every swing, every kick, missed her. Oya brought her hands together in front of her in a clap, and there was thunder, deafening Anne. She felt the force of the shock wave over her whole body, like running straight into an invisible brick wall. She was airborne again, and fell to the rocky soil with a crunch.
“Had enough yet?” Anne said.
“You’d keep going, wouldn’t you?” Oya said. “Until I had to actually incapacitate or kill you.”
“I don’t care what you are,” Anne said, struggling to her feet, again. “Demon, orisha, goddess, I ain’t backing down, and you will have to kill me to stop me.”
“Very well,” Oya said. Her arms windmilled and Anne actually felt the force of the breeze from ten feet away. The old woman shifted her body into a crouch, her left foot pointing forward and her left arm cocked, her right arm extended, palm out. She locked eyes with Anne, who was taking up a boxing stance. Oya slipped out of the posture, as effortlessly as she entered it, and stood placidly. “I surrender,” she said. “You win.”
“What?” Anne said. “You can do magic and you’re just letting me win?”
“It’s not magic,” Oya said, then paused. “Well … maybe it’s a little magic, but it’s mostly just knowledge and practice and will; will is everything. A child can learn it. As to letting you win, there is only one thing that is valuable in Carcosa.” Oya walked toward Anne. The pirate still had her arms raised to fight. “Trust me, you do not want it,” Oya added. “The treasure of Carcosa is a legend, sent out into the world, into your parts of the world, like your map box, to draw those unafraid of monsters and gods, to see if any of them are worthy of the only true treasure to be found here.”
The Queen of Swords Page 30