Banished

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Mujai nearly passed out. He could not move even an eyelid. His mouth gaped.

  She slowly sat up, woodenly, like a doll made of sticks. The black irises of her eyes were so enlarged they nearly covered the original mud brown color of her eyes.

  “I saw Death,” she said. “I was lost in the dark.”

  “Yes.” He gasped the word, the air in his lungs so short he was on the verge of fainting. “You were dead. I brought you back. You…you will live with me now.”

  The girl pulled her legs beneath her woven palm skirt and she leaned forward on her hands so that her perfect little face was mere inches from his.

  “Of course I will,” she said in a breathy voice that sounded nothing like a child’s voice. “I will come live with you.”

  It felt like a threat to Mujai. At the very moment he knew he should feel exultant and powerful, he was overwhelmed with the greatest fear he had ever experienced.

  What could he do? He had brought the dead to life and now he owned her. He had bargained for her life and she belonged to him, whether he feared her or not.

  He rose shakily to his feet and held out his hand. “Come with me, then,” he said. “We will go.”

  Her hand was shockingly cold. He forced himself not to cringe from her touch. He wondered if she would ever feel warm, feel human again.

  Outside the hut the girl’s mother fell to her knees, mewling like a newborn. Tears ran down her face. “My baby, my baby, my baby lives,” she cried.

  “Goodbye, Mother,” the girl said formally and without emotion. Then she moved forward, pulling the witch doctor behind her.

  It seemed she knew the way home.

  #

  In the first days of her second life, the girl gave herself a new name. “Call me Angelique,” she instructed the witch doctor. “I do not like my old name. Tell me now how you raised me up.”

  The question caused him to pause in the whittling he was doing on a bow. He looked up at her. “I cannot tell you,” he said.

  “You mean you won’t.”

  He shrugged and went back to his whittling, shaving long slivers of green bark from the limber wood.

  “Tell me how you raised me up,” she insisted.

  Something told him the girl wanted to know his secrets for reasons other than just to know how she came to be alive again. She wanted to steal his power. With his special knowledge, she could replace him as the village witch doctor. She could perform miracles and demand the respect that was reserved for him.

  He looked up again. He frowned at her, hoping to instill fear. “I will never tell you. I will never do it again so you will never see how I do it, even if you were to shadow me the rest of my life. The magic that made you come back is now forgotten.” He tapped the side of his head and shook it a little as if throwing out the recipe for the potion.

  She smiled. He hadn’t expected that response and he frowned harder. “I swear you will never know how I did it! Get the idea out of your head, you hear me? I will never tell and you will never know.”

  She stood. She moved now with more grace, almost the way any child might. She said, “Mujai, my master, you are a silly, suspicious man.”

  Smiling, she left him sitting with his unfinished bow, wondering at how she could insult him when he was the adult, he was her master, her king, her life-giver. How dare a little child speak to him with such disrespect. "Ungrateful little witch,” he muttered, and went back to his work.

  She never spoke of it again, but then she had almost stopped speaking to him at all.

  Out of fear or revulsion, Mujai did not know which, he kept his distance and went about his normal routines without dealing with the girl very often. She was sullen and withdrawn. She might get over it, she might change and be nice to him if he left her alone enough.

  He set food before her, but after the first time watching her eat, he made sure to go into the jungle after serving her. No human being ate the way she did. It was like the panther, only worse because it was a child devouring food like a beast who has lost its mind. She shredded the meat he made in the fire without even dusting off the soot first. She broke the bones and sucked the marrow, licking her fingers of the grease. She put her whole face into a mango, until her nose disappeared as she feasted. If he did not bring her food at least three times a day, she would rummage in his gift pile the people brought for him, and ate whatever she found there in its raw state. A bird, feathers and all. A muskrat, tail and head and all. An entire melon, skin, seeds, and all. Nothing she ate seemed to bother her stomach or make her sick.

  If it had just been the insane way she ate, her sulky silence, her utter lack of respect for him, Mujai thought he could come to accept it. But there were other things and these he could not countenance.

  She rarely slept. It was as if death had given her all the sleep she would ever require. She sat up during the dark hours, watching over him in the hut. He turned his back to her, trying to cleanse his mind of those black eyes staring at him, but often he failed and lay awake himself, praying for the gods to make her right. Make her right, he prayed. Make her as she was before.

  She took no direction whatsoever. If he asked her to do something for him, she pretended not to understand. “No entiendo,” she’d reply. I do not know what you mean, she said. What do you mean?

  After patiently explaining the most rudimentary elements of gathering firewood or climbing a tree to gather honey, her reply was always the same. “No entiendo.”

  He suspected she was being deliberately obtuse, the claims of not understanding his orders more examples of a lack of respect. He thought she knew exactly what he wanted, but she wasn’t going to do it. She had from the first refused his rule over her. This was her way of letting him know he did not own her.

  He once thought of beating her. He lost his temper early on and after a week of feeding the girl, bringing clean drinking water, and doing all the chores, he asked for her to bring over his spear that stood against the giant umbrella tree near his camp.

  “No entiendo.”

  He asked her again.

  “No entiendo.”

  He asked her six times, raising his voice higher in anger each time, and six times she pretended not to understand.

  He stood and raised his hand to slap her into submission, but when she lifted her face to him and looked him in the eyes, his hand was stayed as if paralyzed.

  I will kill you if you lay a hand on me, her look said. You will die if you ever touch me, her look said, mocking his impotency.

  From that time forward when she wouldn’t do as he said, he let it go. Finally he stopped asking anything of her and realized instead of gaining a queen, he had inherited a master. He was the child’s slave.

  She was useless to him. She was truly a burden. He knew when she was old enough to mate she would never let him come near her. At wit’s end, he went to the girl’s mother and questioned her.

  “Before she died, was your daughter obedient? Did she help you out with the chores?”

  “Certainly. Very obedient. She is a good girl.”

  “And respect? She showed you respect?”

  “Yes!”

  “Before she died, did she ever…did she ever scare you in any way? In how she acted or how she looked at you?”

  “Never! My baby was full of love, a gentle, loving child. What do all these questions mean?’

  “She is not right,” he said simply, and left it at that. He thought of sending the girl back to her mother, but had a feeling Angelique would not go. She cared no more for her mother than she did for him. That was evident in the way she’d left her and how, when the mother visited, she backed away without letting her mother touch her. When called by her name she said, “Call me Angelique!” Then screaming like a wild thing, “I am Angelique!”

  As his absolute last resort, and after much inner turmoil and argument with himself about the morality of it, Mujai decided he would have to kill her. He would never be free if he didn’t. He’d tell
the villagers she had died of the fever. So many did and no one questioned it. When she asked, as he knew she would, he would tell the girl’s mother he would not raise her again. And then all this would be over. What he had done was so against the law of nature that it had created a creature he did not want around him. He had to fix his mistake. He certainly would never make it again. He was forever through with the raising of the dead.

  The day he meant to murder the child, he broke a large shale rock from a sea cliff wall and slipped it beneath his woven sleeping mat in the hut. The rock had a sharp cutting edge and fit his hand perfectly. It would slice into her face like parting water. He would cleave her ruined brain in two.

  Though she did not sleep and kept watch over him, she would never expect him to rise up with the rock in his hand to bludgeon her. He had never, after the first time when he raised his hand to her, indicated that he was dangerous or violent. The opposite, in fact, seemed to be his beaten demeanor around the girl—even subservient.

  All day he was excited about his plan. He sneaked looks at her as he worked around the camp site, thinking of her dead and buried and out of his life. Then it came to him. He would not bury her! She might in some way be a magical creature after her tryst with Death. She might know how to rise up on her own and had been asking after his secret potion as a ruse. In order to be safe he would throw her into the sea and let the fish nibble her pale little body down to the bones.

  If he had to watch her tear into a slab of meat one more time he thought he would go mad. Living with her was like living with the undead monster panther. As far as he could tell there was little difference between them.

  That night he went to bed not long after darkfall, as was his custom. He had said few words to the girl all day and had looked into her eyes not once. He feared she might know of his murderous plan if she could see what lay behind his eyes.

  After a few minutes she slipped inside the hut with him and sat cross-legged at his back. He could feel her there, her dark eyes staring. But this night he was not unnerved and sleepless.

  He bided his time. He wanted to make his move when he had his wrath worked up to killing pitch. He wanted nothing to go wrong. If he missed on the first strike, she might skitter away into the jungle. He would never get a second chance, he understood that implicitly. This was an intelligent, conniving child. A manipulative child. An evil child.

  After an hour he had his mind ready. What he was about to do was not a sin. Besides, she was supposed to be dead. He was going to do her a favor and send her back into the dark where she belonged.

  He grasped the rock, feeling the rough hardness of it, the cold heaviness of its weight. He must move fast and not falter. He must strike like a snake, without remorse, without a moment’s hesitation. He could not dare look into her eyes.

  He flexed the muscle of his right arm that held the rock. He drew in one breath and then he made his move. He sat up and swiveled around in the same motion, raising the rock high above his head. Though he didn’t know it, he was screaming one long, sustained furious scream.

  He felt a sudden horrible pain strike him in his midsection, but nothing was going to stop the downward motion of the killing blow.

  He swung. But where she sat, she no longer existed. The rock struck the ground so hard he broke two of his fingers and cut his palm. He dropped the rock, looking around in the near darkness for where she had moved. Panic caused him to lose his breath. He had missed! He had failed! But she had been right there a second ago, right there below his raised arm.

  A shadow fell over him from the doorway, blocking the moon. He turned and saw her, so beautiful, so small, so perfect. The island child beauty with the long dark hair, the perfect features. The little dead ten-year-old.

  “You will die a slow death, my master. Look to your belly for your future.” As were all her words, these were said without emotion or inflection.

  He glanced to his lap and saw the long spear sticking from his stomach. Blood poured from the wound, soaking his naked legs.

  “What have you done?” he asked plaintively. The unfairness of this situation was so great, greater even than the pain that was now like fire burning him inside out, that tears sprang into his eyes.

  “Only what you would have done to me.”

  “Death invaded you. You have a soul from a god of the deep down under.” He took hold of the spear, but he could not dislodge it without fainting outright. He knew he was doomed, but his mind railed against the injustice. Hadn’t he given her life? Hadn’t he raised her up?

  “Demon,” he hissed. “Monster.”

  “I am what you made. You snatched me from the dark and now you ask why the dark has come to fetch you. Goodbye, Master.”

  She turned then and walked out of the clearing, leaving him alone. He had no talismans to save himself. He had no potion to bring him to life. He was going to die in her stead. He had cheated death of her presence and replaced it with his own.

  He lay his head back and stared at the palmed ceiling that rustled in a breeze from the sea. At the very least he would be rid of her. Let the living be party to her baneful corruption.

  He, the greatest witchdoctor who had ever lived, was now through with it all.

  His body sagged to the side. His last fleeting thought was that he hoped no one ever chanced on his secret potion ever again. A world populated by the living dead would be no world for the living.

  What had he done? What had he done?

  CHAPTER 4

  RULING THE TRIBE

  First she had to find the panther. She hadn’t gotten Mujai to tell her how his magic brought her back from the dark but he had spoken—bragged really--of the three animal experiments before her.

  It was the panther she felt closest to, more than to any human. She knew she was not the person she had been when alive. She was all new. And all different. If she managed to escape accident (and enemies who meant to murder her) by using her new-found powers, she thought she might live forever.

  It was a pity she had to take Mujai’s life, but he had tried to destroy her. She had known he would come to that. He feared her as he would fear the green venomous viper that trailed in the island’s tree limbs.

  She knew she could outwit and out live him. He was just a man. A normal unchanged man. He could not move from one place to another in an instant. He could not tell what a person was thinking by looking into his eyes. He could not hear the whisper of padded feet in the forest a mile distant. And, of course, he could not see and hear and interact with the People from the Dark, who gave her all sorts of secret knowledge useful against living men. He had none of the gifts she’d been graced with after her awakening.

  She moved stealthily through the jungle, unafraid, but alert, her mind on a quest. If she could get to the panther and make it her friend, she could demand great power over the people on the island. They might not, at first, fear her, but they would immediately fear a panther, especially one that walked at her side as if her guardian. And most of them knew the rumor of a panther brought back to life by the witch doctor, a panther that was now supernatural and so fierce it was like a new beast walking the earth.

  It took some time, and much concentrated thought, but finally Angelique came down a narrow ravine, following the thin ribbon of water washed silver in the moonlight and there she saw the panther.

  He stood majestic, a large cat with rippling muscles and a great smooth head with widely spaced yellow eyes. He was sipping at the water when she approached. He raised his imperious head and his lips rolled back from long, sharp teeth. Water and saliva dripped down his massive chest. He growled deep in his throat.

  “Don’t fear me,” she said calmly, moving ever closer to him. “I am like you. Come. Smell me and you will know. Let us be friends.”

  She walked toward him, down the narrow bank path, her bare feet making no noise in the soft undergrowth. The cat did not move, but watched carefully. She could hear his breathing mingle with the gentle tricklin
g of the waters sliding over rocks.

  She got within two feet of him, holding him still and calm with her magnetic gaze. “Do you understand? I am like you. I am your brethren.”

  The cat’s lips lowered over his teeth. He moved forward until he was breathing hotly on her bare skin. He lay his head against her arm where she lifted a hand and stroked him softly.

  “There will be no love for us from anyone or anything else. We will be a team and help one another.” She wasn’t sure that he understood the individual words of her language, but he appeared to understand she was no threat to him, nor was she food.

  The thought of food made her stomach churn. “Let’s go hunting,” she said, jolly now that she had made the panther her friend and cohort. “Come! You catch the prey and we will feast on it together.”

  The panther, now completely under her power, turned with her, wheeling toward the upward bank and together they climbed back into the chaos of the jungle to look for their midnight supper.

  Chapter 5

  A GATHERING OF THE PEOPLE

  Angelique strode confidently into the village proper, the panther she had named Sokuru, at her side. People came from their huts and dropped whatever they were doing to stare. No one moved a muscle, fearing the panther might leap. Even the children were silent and kept still.

  “I am Angelique and this is my friend, Sokuru. If you obey me, I will not have him kill you. If you run or you hide or you disobey, you will die. Do you understand?”

  The village elder, the tribe’s leader, stepped forward, trying to appear unafraid. He held his spear at his side, its tip in the dirt. “Are you not the daughter of Lenosa? The girl she gave to the witch doctor? Is your name not Kera?”

  “I am the daughter of Lenosa, but I am emancipated. I no longer belong to my mother or the witch doctor. He is dead because he tried to do me harm. My new name is Angelique and that is what you will call me when you speak to your queen.”