Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

  They’re going to kill him. They’re going to kill Redd, and I just met Redd. Why would he throw himself into the jaws of certain death for me? What am I supposed to do with all this?

  The clang of ghost blades rings out into the night. Redd is retreating, blocking swipe after swipe as the horde of ’catchers tries to flank him on either side, fails, tries again. The rest of the Council start to follow, but Botus calls them back: “Let your brothers handle this, men. Don’t get distracted.”

  Dammit. “That was our chance,” I whisper. Now Redd’s gonna die and we’re gonna be stuck still. And then I hear yells from the other end of the circle.

  “The hell?” Jimmy hisses.

  It’s Big Cane. He wades into the thick of the soulcatchers, towering over them, blade slashing to either side, chopping fools indiscriminately. He must’ve just rolled up smooth, same as Redd, and then come in chopping. The ’catchers are rallying now, translucent steel clashes on either end of the circle. Big Cane is an insider in the Council just like I am. There’s . . . there’s no reason he should be revealing himself except to . . . save me.

  “No,” I whisper. “He can’t do this.” Jimmy must know me pretty well by now, because just as I make to dash out into the fray, his warm, flesh-and-blood hand is on my cool, barely there arm.

  “No,” Jimmy says. “You can’t do this. They’re doing this for you. Don’t make it for nothing.”

  I shake my head, and tears find their way out my eyes, slide down my face.

  Big Cane has never moved this fast. He gets the job done, don’t get me wrong—there’s no one I’d rather have at my back in a fight—but he gets it done in his own lumbering time. Now, though, Cane fights with a fury I’ve never seen. He’s cutting, slashing, stabbing. Four ’catchers surround him, taking turns advancing, then falling back; he blocks and parries and then sends them all scattering with a lunging slash.

  “Take them alive!” Botus hollers over the clang of battle. “I want them alive for questioning!”

  “We gotta go,” Jimmy says. “This is our chance.”

  “Ayo, mothafuckas!” Riley stands at the far end of the circle. Soulcatchers stream past Big Cane, their howl reaching out into the night. Riley’s been public enemy number one since he defied the Council a few months back. Any ’catcher knows his capture will enshrine them in Council history forever. In seconds the concrete park around Columbus’s pillar is almost empty.

  “Scatter!” Riley yells. Then he dashes off down a side street.

  Big Cane cuts his way out of the throng and then breaks in the opposite direction, a shimmering mountain barging through the snow-covered streets. Redd is already gone.

  “Come the fuck on,” Jimmy growls.

  He’s right: it’s time to go.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Carlos

  So,” the Iyawo says with a mischievous grin, “y’all basically saying you’re living a Badu song. Am I right?”

  It’s midmorning, and Baba Eddie’s Botánica is empty but for myself, Sasha, and the Iyawo. Some sad child croons R & B out the speakers; two dozen plaster saints watch us from the aisles.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.

  Sasha clearly does, though. She cackles as the Iyawo raises one eyebrow, Rico Suave–style, and leans across the counter at her. “Your whole vibe is . . . you know, I could see myself being with you forever.”

  Sasha touches her face with exaggerated shock. “Wow, that is really—that’s really beautiful. I kinda dig you too; you know that. We . . . but we friends, and I’m in a situation. I’m in a relationship, and you know what that means.”

  “Well”—the Iyawo drops her voice down to a sultry baritone and squinches her face to hold back laughter—“whatever I gotta do, I’ll do it for you.”

  “Sure put me in an awkward situation,” Sasha says. Then they both burst into song, perfectly harmonized. I just smile, partly because I’m clueless and partly because I want to take it in, this shared moment between these two amazing women in my life. A flash of joy in the storm. This morning, Sasha and I woke up holding each other like one of us would float away if we let go. I’d dreamt about that woman whispering my name again; she had honey on her lips and I felt guilty but somehow peaceful about it. It was warm under the blankets—neither of us generate much heat, but somehow the collective energy of our entwined bodies did the trick. Morning wood throbbed between my legs, and all the sex we could maybe have danced a ruckus mambo up and down my spine, but I kept it to myself. This wasn’t the time.

  Sasha made coffee and told me about the kids—how Xiomara talks and talks in the nonchalant gibberish of toddlers and Jackson just watches, wide eyes taking in the whole world in gulps. How they both dote on Gordo, curling up in his huge lap while he tells stories about his delinquent years and reads my letters out loud. I listened and smiled through my aching heart, and then smiled more as Sasha went on about how her and Janey and Reza had formed an unlikely trinity of deadly excellence, how they go around having each other’s backs in various supernatural and gangland shenanigans across Brooklyn, how they took out the Council brain project on the Spine Islands.

  And I’m smiling now, watching Sasha be unbreakable in the face of past and future traumas. She and the Iyawo hit a high note, and the song collapses into giggles. For a second, we’re something like a normal family—one that hasn’t killed and died to get here. I think: if after everything that’s happened and all that may yet come, Sasha can still step outside the storm to find hilarity with a teenage girl, then somehow there’s a way through all this. Sasha’s laughter is a light that will guide the way. And I’ll follow that light through Hell if need be.

  “Carlos!” the Iyawo yells, waving. “Come back to us, man. Sash, you gotta make him a mixtape or something—how he don’t know Mama Erykah?”

  Sasha rolls her eyes and pats me on the shoulder. “I’m gonna work on him, Iyawo, but he just found out about GPS yesterday; it’s gonna take some time.”

  I like the sound of that so much that I can’t concentrate on a snappy reply. The Iyawo shakes her head. “Get to it, girl.”

  “I’m on it,” Sasha says, pulling on her coat. “But now I gotta handle some shit. C, I’ll hit you later on tonight. Iyawo”—she crosses her arms over her chest—“be good.”

  “Pshaw,” the Iyawo says. “Being good overrated as fu—rt.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Furt, Iyawo?”

  “Shut up, Carlos.”

  Sasha’s still laughing when she kisses my cheek; her breath is warm on my neck. Then she’s gone, out the jangly door, into the bright winter morning.

  “Well,” the Iyawo says, “that happened.”

  “Mmhm.”

  “Y’all fucked?”

  “God, you sound like Riley.”

  “But did you?”

  “Nah. Sometimes it’s better to wait. Wasn’t the time. So much shit going on . . .”

  “Homey, that is exactly the time when you gotta lay pipe. Stress-relief sexy times. Ain’t a thing better.” She does a little samba behind the counter.

  “What you know about . . . You know what? Never mind. What happened in Rio stays in Rio.”

  “I feel you, though,” she says, sobering. “You got long game, and I respect that. For real.”

  “Thanks. You’re peppy this morning.”

  “The Iyawo has coffee today!” She takes an exaggerated sip from a burgundy ceramic mug and says, “Ah!”

  “You don’t usually drink coffee.”

  She shakes her head. “But hey! Hey!”

  “Maybe that was a good thing.”

  “Hey! Oh, I meant to ask you: How well you know Krys the ghost?”

  “She’s good people,” I say. “And a force of nature in battle. Kind of reminds me of you now that I think about it.”

  “Why, cuz sh
e’s a black girl? Fall back, halfie.”

  “I’m taking your coffee away, Iyawo.”

  She grips the cup, eyes wide.

  “Anyway, why you ask?”

  “Just wondering. We were talking yesterday; she seems cool.”

  “Carlos!” Baba Eddie pokes his head in. “Let’s roll out—we’re late. Hi, Iyawocita.”

  The Iyawo smiles, eyes narrowed, brows raised, lips pushed out.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” I say. We trade an air high five, and I follow Baba Eddie into the cold.

  —

  “What you know about dreams, Baba?”

  Rohan guides his Crown Vic through the crowded Bushwick streets toward East New York. Baba Eddie sits in the passenger seat, halfway turned around while I catch him up on what’s been going on from the back. He’d stopped me outside the botánica, wrapped his arms around me, and held me for a few startling seconds—I guess the Iyawo let him know ’bout her research—and I thanked him, and that was that.

  “I mean”—he puts an unlit Pall Mall in his mouth—“plenty. What you got?”

  “It’s a recurring one: beautiful woman, dark skin, big hair, smiling usually, naked, saying my name.”

  “Y’all fuck?” Rohan asks from the front.

  “You sound like the Iyawo,” I say.

  Baba Eddie narrows his eyes. “My Iyawo said what now?”

  “Never mind. Uh . . . sometimes, yeah. Usually we’re just about to; then I wake up.”

  “Bummer,” Rohan mutters. “I’m sure you finish the job, though.”

  “She say anything besides your name?” Baba asks.

  “Not that I can remember, but it’s like she knows me really well. And I know her somehow, except I don’t.”

  “Someone from when you were alive before, maybe?” Baba says.

  “I’ve thought that but . . . somehow doesn’t feel right. I can’t explain it.”

  He furrows his brow, fiddles with the cigarette. “And she’s naked?”

  “Always. And last night she had honey on her lips, like dripping.”

  “Damn, bruh.” Rohan adjusts himself in the front seat. “That’s the hotness.”

  “Oh!” Baba Eddie lets out a chortle and then lights his cigarette.

  I know better than to interrupt his moment of Zen, so I just wait while he lovingly inhales, eyes closed, and then releases the first stream of smoke out the slightly open window.

  “Oh?”

  “This one time, Ogun,” Baba Eddie starts.

  “That’s the war and ironworking one,” I say. “Right?”

  “Bingo. Ogun gets fed up with being a part of the world. He’s over it. People, all the little dramas and bullshit, drama with other orishas. Finito. So he’s like, ‘Ay, fuck this,’ and heads to the mountains.”

  “That’s a direct quote?”

  “I mean, he probably said it in Yoruba, but you know.”

  “Right.”

  “Thing is, Ogun is technology, he’s civilization, he’s how shit gets done. So what happens when he leaves?”

  Rohan chuckles. “Shit don’t get done.”

  “Eso mismo,” Baba Eddie says.

  “Get the fuck out the way!” Rohan yells out the window. A city bus has clogged both sides of Myrtle Ave, snarling traffic in either direction.

  “Anyway, all the orishas try to get him back; none of them can. Even Ogun’s hunting brothers Elgeba and Ochosi can’t convince him to come back.”

  Rohan rolls the window up. “Meanwhile, shit still falling apart back in the world, am I right?”

  “Exactly. Finally, Oshun says, ‘Lemme talk to him.’”

  “Oshun is like the sexy mama orisha,” Rohan tells me, winking into the rearview mirror.

  “But she’s so much more than that too,” Baba Eddie says. “Oshun is the youngest but one of the most powerful orishas. That mirror she carries will show you all the deepest parts of yourself if you’re brave enough to look. She’s both lover and fighter, and her rivers run through every single one of us.”

  “Damn,” Rohan says. “She bad.”

  This is all way over my head, so I mostly nod and try to keep up.

  “Anyway,” Baba Eddie continues, “she goes to get Ogun. Ogun not tryna hear nobody. Oshun is like, ‘Hey,’ puts some honey on her lips.”

  “Like ol’ girl in C’s dream!” Rohan belts out.

  “And she starts dancing, swaying those hips. Ogun is transfixed. He stumbles out the woods toward her, and she keeps leading him further and further from his hideaway, back to the world.”

  “Does he hit that, though?” Rohan wants to know.

  “Rohan, man . . . ,” I say.

  Baba Eddie nods wisely. “In fact, he does.”

  “Ay, this is my kind of story!” Rohan does a little jig in the front seat, then swerves the Vic away from an oncoming delivery truck. “Stay the fuck out my lane, then!”

  “You were in his,” Baba Eddie points out.

  “Yuh mother’s pussyhole!” Rohan yells out the window as we screech away.

  “So wait,” I say. “Are you saying the woman’s Oshun and I’m Ogun? Or I’m Oshun and the woman is like . . . inside me somehow? Or Sasha’s Ogun?”

  “Oh look,” Baba Eddie says with a wink. “We’re here!”

  —

  El Mar sits along a bustling stretch of Fulton Street in East New York, not far from where Moco’s band of rebellious ghosts made their stand against the Council a few months ago. Bakeries, dollar stores, and nail salons surround it; the J train rumbles overhead.

  Normally, folks mill about in front of the tall, darkened windows of El Mar, peeking in to see what corny keyboard wizard or random bachata band will entertain the diners. Today, though, the street is empty. Well, empty of the living. About fifty shimmering ghosts on bicycles crowd the block. The bikes are all full size (not the tiny stationary ones those little demons the ngks use), and painted white. The riders look ornery.

  “The hell is this all about?” I ask Baba Eddie as we move gingerly past a glowering spandexed ghost with a beard and helmet.

  “Things didn’t go so well yesterday, as you may have heard.”

  “Just a little,” I say.

  “Seems at least two of the Remote District leaders might be compromised, and we don’t know if that means the districts themselves are out too. Meaning—”

  “We might be even more outnumbered than we thought,” Rohan finishes.

  “So Cyrus put the word out to a few groups of semiautonomous ghosts,” Baba Eddie says. “Folks that may or may not be on our side.”

  “Time to find out,” I say.

  “Indeed. Also”—Baba Eddie holds the wooden door open as Rohan and I walk in—“we have no idea where Big Cane is.”

  “What?”

  Baba Eddie doesn’t bother trying to answer; reggaeton obliterates every other sound as soon as we walk in. Some kind of monstrous, driving beat and excited dude with a fade and wraparound sunglasses, I’m sure. We move toward the back.

  The big round table we normally sit around is gone. Instead, Cyrus holds court behind a long wooden bar at the back of the dim room. Jimmy, Krys, and some of the African Burial Ground leaders sit on one side of him, Riley and Damian on the other. Ghosts of all shapes and colors heavy up the air around us, all of them facing the bar.

  “Ah, Carlos, Rohan, Baba Eddie!” Cyrus calls when we walk in. Dozens of translucent faces turn to look at us. “Come, join us.”

  We move through the chilly crowd. Ahead of us, two dead white women in spandex straddle mountain bikes in front of the bar. “This is what I don’t understand, Mr. Langley,” one of them says. “You cause trouble, lots of trouble, and the Council responds. You’ve been causing trouble for the Council since you showed up from that Burial Ground. Terribl
e situation, by the way; we’re awfully sorry to hear about that.”

  Cyrus nods, his face set in a crooked, indiscernible smile. Riley, on the other hand, looks like he’s one disingenuous apology away from losing his entire shit.

  The other woman furrows her brow.

  “Anyway,” the first one says, “the Ghost Riders support your cause in theory, but you can’t ask us to throw our whole weight behind and possibly die the Deeper Death for a problem that you yourself caused. With all due respect.”

  The group assembled behind the bar erupts into angry chatter. “Who the fuck are the Ghost Riders?” I whisper to Baba Eddie as we find our seats. “And why the fuck haven’t I heard about them before?”

  “It’s a group of bikers that got killed by motorists. They bike around the city in a big clump. Usually Manhattan, though—that might be why you missed ’em.”

  “Sharon!” the second woman snaps. “Don’t . . . ugh.” She steps forward, dragging her bike with her. “Mr. Langley, I apologize for my Ghost Riding sister’s disrespect. We are having some organizational . . . conflicts within the leadership and . . . a great many of us in fact support your movement to topple the Council.”

  Cyrus raises his eyebrows.

  “Damnit, Brit!” Sharon yells. “Can’t we even get along long enough to present a united front? This is unacceptable.”

  She starts working her way through the crowd of ghosts, pushing her bicycle along beneath her.

  Brit cringes. “I’m sorry, everyone. I’m going to speak to her. I will make this right. Sharon!” She turns and heads for the door. “Why did you do that, Sharon?” The room clears out; spirits depart one by one and in small groups, dispersing into the frosty New York afternoon to report back to their districts.

  Cyrus shakes his head again, that smile teasing the edge of his lips. “So much changed, so much stayed the same.” He turns to Riley. “When I first met you, you would’ve jumped down that white lady’s throat for her disrespect.”

  “Ay.” Riley scowls. “We ain’t got time for the small shit these days. She’ll learn or she won’t.”