Hammer of Witches

by Shana Mlawski

  “Why did you do this?” I demanded. “Why did you burn the fortress? You made a deal with Catalina. You said there would be a truce!”

  Anacaona tossed her chin upward. “I’ll not deny it. But the truce ended when you returned to our village with your father. We had no choice. Not only did the Spanish kidnap our women, they invaded one of our sacred caves, killing one of the shamans inside.”

  “It could have been an accident!”

  “It was an act of war. We had no choice but to strike back.”

  “You promised you would talk!”

  “Talk! What good would talk do? The world doesn’t work that way, Shaman. We have tried to talk before, when others stole our women, attacked our lands. Talk is useless.”

  Maybe she was right. I thought of the women the crew had kidnapped, and Arabuko enslaved on the Niña. I said, “I agree that what my people did was wrong. But a war won’t help the Taíno. If you had waited, I could have helped you negotiate with Colón. You could have built an alliance based on trade, done something in the self-interests of both our people. And maybe we could have avoided any bloodshed.”

  “Be sure, Shaman, we Taíno do not seek out conflict. But we must defend ourselves.” With a bare foot Anacaona prodded one of the dead on the ground next to her, the corpse of my old friend Salcedo, the musician. “People like this do not listen to reason. Your people and mine are too different. The only language they understand is the language of spears and blood.”

  Thunder crashed above us, and Anacaona shielded her head with an arm. The crimson band of paint streamed down her cheeks under the rain. “Enough talk. We will return to Maguana. You and your father may stay with us for as long as you desire.”

  I fixed my gaze on the charred bodies by her feet. “My thanks,” I murmured. I had nowhere else to go.

  The young queen rubbed my wet head and picked up my chin with a finger. “Buck up, little shaman! Tonight we will feast.” Anacaona grabbed a sack of booty from her side and hoisted it over her shoulder. I watched her as she made her way down the path to the bay across the beach, a sprightly red figure hiking through a maze of black bodies.

  “They’ll be back, you know!” I called down to her. “Colón and the others. There will be a war!”

  “I hope so!” she called back. “They deserve it.”

  I watched Anacaona for another minute until she disappeared into the forest. As it started to rain, I made my way back down to the beach, where Jinni and Catalina were helping my father stand. “I’m fine,” he said to their fussing, and he looked it too. Rotating his shoulder in its socket he said, “I haven’t felt so good in a long time.” He looked over at the genie I had summoned and said, “I will have to remember that trick.”

  Catalina and I released the genie and ring from our service. I told my father, “Anacaona invited us to stay with her in Maguana.”

  “Then we should go,” he said. “I think I could use some rest.”

  “You go. I’m going to stay here for a minute.”

  Jinniyah clung to my arm, and my father said, “Very well, Bali. Then I will see all of you in Maguana.”

  As angry as I was that he had attacked the fortress, as I watched my father leave the battlefield I felt mostly relieved. At least my father was still alive, because of me. I would have time to argue with him later.

  As Amir followed the rest of the Taíno into the forest, I took Jinniyah under a palm tree to protect her from the rain. Catalina joined us and said, “What are we going to do now?”

  Before us the high tide crept up over the corpses of those the genie had been unable to save. I said, “We’re going to bury them. All of them.”

  And we did. Even using golems to carry the bodies and dig the plots, the burials took most of the evening. As we worked, Anacaona’s words beat on my mind: It is a sad truth. They do not listen to reason. Your people and mine are too different.

  In the forest I added a last pile of dirt to the grave of my friend, Antonio de Cuellar, and wondered if she was right. I wiped my hands and sat with Catalina and Jinni at the edge of the woods. We watched the ocean as the rain began to thin.

  Something flat, maybe a leaf, struck the side of my face and lay against my cheek. I took it off. It was a playing card, one of the old cards Antonio and Pérez had played with long, long ago. It was burnt around the edges, almost unreadable. I wiped off the soot and raised the thing in front of me.

  The king of spades. A dark man, full of wisdom.

  A light wind, filled with drizzle, brushed past us, bearing a rank smell of fire and death. “Wisdom,” I thought. “What a joke.” I flung the ashy card into the wind and let it tumble away.

  There was no wisdom here in this graveyard. In the old stories, the hero would go from a child who knew nothing about the world to a warrior full of strength and insight. It wasn’t supposed to happen the other way around. But now I felt more childish and useless than I had ever felt before.

  “It didn’t have to be like this,” I said, looking back at the graves we had made. “They could have talked. They could have listened. They could have —”

  Catalina, sitting beside me, talked into her knees. “That’s not the way things work in the real world, Infante.”

  At another time, maybe, I would have let that be the last word. Now I shot to my feet. “The real world, the real world! I am sick of the real world! If this is the way the world works, then it’s not one worth living in! The whole time we thought we were trying to stop an evil power that would destroy the world. Well, maybe a world like this needs to be destroyed! I’m done with it! I’m sick of it! I’m sick of it all!”

  Jinniyah tugged at the bottom of my tunic, her eyes sparkling with new tears. “Bal, don’t say that!” Next to her, Catalina bit her lip, looking like she was about to cry.

  I knelt down next to her. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Please don’t say things like that, Infante,” Catalina said in a small voice. “When you say things like that, you sound like me. I hate it.”

  I sat next to her and said, “Why? What’s wrong with sounding like Catalina Terreros? I’d have to work on sounding more pompous, but . . .”

  “Something tells me you could handle it.” With a finger she began drawing circles in the wet sand. “I never trust people. Not for a second. But you do.”

  I picked up a rock I found in the sand and threw it out into the bay. “And look where it got me. I trusted Caonabó, Anacaona, my father. I trusted Antonio. I trusted Colón.” I buried my face in my knees. “I’m a fool.”

  “You’re an optimist. Your father said it, and I wasn’t sure I believed it at the time. But it’s true. Underneath the stupid stories and the jokes and the sarcasm, I see it. The way you interpreted my sleeping princess story the first time; the way you talked Anacaona out of killing us. The way you talked to your father instead of killing him. I wish I could be like that. Like you and Jinniyah. You have faith in people. In the world. That’s why I like you.”

  Under the drizzling rain, I felt my face grow hot. Catalina must have seen me blush, because she scowled and said, “For goodness’ . . . ! I didn’t mean it that way!”

  I stood and took a couple of steps toward the sea. A cool breeze was blowing in from the west. “All right. I don’t want the world destroyed. That’s the wrong word. A long time ago, Antonio said we’d be going to a new world. And a new world can be, well, new, can’t it? Different, I mean.”

  “I think, after this, everything’s going to be different. For everyone.”

  Jinniyah suddenly leaped up pointing in the direction of La Navidad. “Hey, look. It’s Tito!”

  Indeed a raggedy shape was stumbling down from the bluff. Jinni flew over to the scraggly cat, scooped him up in her arms, and flew back to dump the heap of sand and muddy fur into Catalina’s lap.

  “Here’s your kitty.” Though tear-burns lined her sooty face, Jinniyah wore a tentative smile.

  Picking him up
by the scruff, I said, “I think he’s lost some weight.”

  The cat grumbled, and Catalina frowned. “We’ll feed him when we get back to Maguana. Or I suppose we could find him a tree frog or something.”

  Jinni scrunched up her nose and took Tito from me. “You shouldn’t eat frogs, Tito. Dirty, dirty animals.”

  Catalina scratched behind Tito’s ears. “Honestly, I don’t think it matters to cats.”

  Jinniyah brought Tito’s face close to hers. “I don’t know. Tito’s picky. Like his owner.”

  As the two girls continued fussing over the cat, I felt a warmth growing within me. On the bluff, Anacaona had said people were too different, that they could never understand one another. And I certainly didn’t always understand Jinni or Catalina. All the stories in the world wouldn’t give me the power to read their thoughts or understand what it meant to live every day as a genie or a girl.

  But as I watched the two giggling together, I couldn’t help but hope that Anacaona was wrong. “We can still stop this,” I said to myself.

  Catalina looked at me oddly. “What did you say?”

  “Sorry. I was just talking to myself again.”

  Catalina kept scratching Tito and said, “You never can stop talking, can you?”

  “No,” I said, standing. “And I won’t. Anacaona said we’re welcome to stay in Maguana. We can keep talking to her and Caonabó, convince them to end this war. Antonio said Colón’ll come back; when he does, we’ll talk to him. We’ll talk to Guacanagarí, to my father. We’ll —”

  “But Bal!” Jinni cut through my speech. “You saw what the Baba Yaga’s cards said! Someone’s going to destroy the world as we know it. That’s the future, and you can’t change the future!”

  I plucked up the king of spades I’d tossed into the sand and showed it to Jinniyah. “That’s the thing, Jinni. We don’t know what the Baba Yaga’s cards said. Maybe this war is going to destroy the world —”

  Catalina finished for me, “Or maybe the Baba Yaga wasn’t telling the future at all. Perhaps she was trying to trick Infante and his father into traveling west for some reason we don’t yet understand.”

  “Exactly. The Baba Yaga said it herself. The cards have different significances — different interpretations. So I’m going to interpret them my way. I say they mean that were going to destroy the world. We’re going to destroy this awful world and replace it with a new one — a better one.” I threw my hand out at the makeshift graveyard behind us. “We’re going to make sure this never happens again. Never.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Catalina said.

  “Sure, I do. I’m the hero. For me, everything comes easy.”

  While I grinned, Catalina rolled her eyes. “I think you need to start paying more attention to what goes on around you, Infante.”

  I put my hand out in front of her. “So, you going to help me or not?”

  “I suppose I could find the time in my busy schedule to help you.” She put her hand gently in mine and let me help her to her feet. “What kind of recompense are you prepared to offer?”

  I scratched the back of my head. “I’ll let you stay with me in Maguana.”

  “I accept. At least until we can find a route to Cathay or Cipango.”

  “Jinni?”

  Jinniyah smiled up at me from her place on the ground. “We’re a team,” she told me. “Always.”

  “Then let’s go!”

  I guess Tito understood what I said, because he jumped out of Jinniyah’s lap and sped off into the jungle. “Tito, come back!” Jinniyah yelled. She let go of my hand and chased after him.

  As she went I looked back toward the ocean. Good-bye, Arabuko. I turned back to the forest graveyard. Good-bye, Bartolome, Salcedo, Pérez. Good-bye, Antonio.

  “I wish we knew how to give them a proper funeral service,” I said.

  Catalina opened her mouth, closed it, and sighed.

  “What?” I said. “Did I say something wrong?”

  Catalina sighed again and made a cross with her fingers in the air. And she sang in Latin, “In paradisum deducant te Angeli. In tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres . . .”

  And as she sang I understood her words: “May the angels lead you into Paradise. When you arrive, may the martyrs receive you and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem. May the angels receive you, and with the pauper Lazarus may you have eternal rest.”

  “Amen,” I said.

  We watched the ocean and the sun sinking into the west. Bats swooped over the shoreline and into the forest.

  And I laughed. “What’s so funny?” Catalina asked me.

  “I’m a little shocked, that’s all. I thought I’d figured out all your secrets.”

  “What secrets?”

  “Like . . . how did you learn to sing?”

  Catalina rolled her eyes at the memory. “I lived in a convent for a while. Singing was unfortunately a requirement.”

  A convent! The word set my Storytelling heart aflutter.

  “Ooh, let me guess! You were in love with a dashing young man — dark, not too tall, but handsome — but your parents didn’t want you to marry him because he was too far below your station. So they sent you to a nunnery and arranged for him to be sent to a monastery far, far away.”

  Pretending to ignore me, Catalina walked into the forest toward the sound of Jinniyah’s voice as she yelled some incomprehensible commands at Tito. “Don’t read too much into this, Infante.”

  I ran to catch up with Catalina as she entered the brush of Ayití. “Your parents sent you away — but they didn’t realize the convent was actually a front for a witch’s coven! And every Sunday night there would be virgin sacrifices, and demonic rites, and . . . and orgies . . .”

  Catalina swatted away a vine hanging in front of her. “You have a very active imagination, Infante. But — and please pay attention so I don’t have to say this again — this isn’t one of your fairy tales. I lived in a regular, unmagical convent with regular, unmagical nuns. Sometimes, if we were particularly fortunate, a regular, unmagical bishop would come visit us. There is no hidden meaning in this story. I promise.”

  I laughed. Somewhere in my memory, I heard my Uncle Diego say to my aunt through a dream, It is just a story, my love. Meaningless.

  I understood now that he was lying. After all, there was magic in a story, wasn’t there?

  I said, “You know, my uncle told me something when I was younger. Once there was a poor family that was forced to move to a faraway land. They lived in a house on a large field, but the field was barren and they nearly starved. And to make matters worse, one day their house was struck by lightning and it burned to the ground.”

  “Lovely,” Catalina said in a dull voice.

  “No, listen! Even though the family was all but ruined, they didn’t give up. They decided to build a new foundation and a new home. And when they were digging in their barren fields to start on the foundation, they found gemstones buried in the earth. There was a hidden treasure there for generations, and no one even knew it. The family became rich and generous, and they were happy for the rest of their days.”

  Catalina said, “I’m sorry, Infante. I’m still not following you.”

  I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and said, “What kind of Storyteller are you, anyway? I’m saying there’s a whole world of fields out there. Let’s go dig up some treasure.”

  Some of you may be wondering, “How historically accurate is Hammer of Witches?” Magic aside, I’d say, “Reasonably.” Cristóbal Colón was of course a real person, as were the Pinzón brothers, Antonio de Cuellar, Juan de la Cosa, Rodrigo Sanchez, Anacaona, Caonabó, Higuamota, and Guacanagarí. Colón’s Jewish translator, Luis de Torres, and his cabin boy, Pedro de Terreros, also existed, though I’d venture to guess they weren’t actually wizards.

  The cultural diversity in Hammer of Witches is based in history. Before 1492, Spanish Catholics, Jews, and Muslims lived and worked side by side, often grudgingly. Then
, as Baltasar mentions, the Muslim emirate of Granada fell to Spanish forces, marking the end of the Spanish Reconquista, a series of wars battled over the course of several centuries to “take back” Spain from Muslim rule. In Granada, King Fernando and Queen Isabel signed the Alhambra Decree, expelling all non-converted Jews from the country. At least a hundred thousand Jews were displaced, and those who converted faced a more aggressive Inquisition. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims left Spain at the time of the fall of Granada, and the Moriscos (Muslims who converted to Christianity) would be banished not long later. But Spain would remain diverse in other ways. Walking through the streets of fifteenth century Valencia, for example, you’d see Spaniards, Berbers, Arabs, Genoese traders, Eastern European and Greek slaves, and a substantial population of Africans (both slave and free). Palos, as a small harbor town, would not be as diverse as a large city, but it also wouldn’t be completely white.

  When writing about the events that unfolded in Ayití (Hispaniola) during the last weeks of Columbus’s first voyage, I strove to be as historically accurate as possible and to describe Taíno culture with as much precision and sensitivity as I could, given my own non-native background and the dearth of reliable primary sources from the period. No written language existed in the Caribbean in pre-Columbian times, so most of what we know about fifteenth century Taíno culture comes from a few contemporary Spanish writers (all of whom had their own agendas) and more modern archaeological and linguistic research. What these resources make clear is that Taíno civilization was and is significantly more complex than high school history textbooks give it credit for, and I hope my humble abilities as a writer were enough to illustrate the richness of fifteenth century Ayití’s culture. At the same time, Baltasar is a somewhat unreliable narrator who sees the Taíno through young, Eurocentric eyes. Throughout the book he swings back and forth between seeing the citizens of Marién and Maguana as “barbarians,” noble savages in a Garden of Eden, wise mentors, warlike villains, victims in need of saving and, sometimes, actual human beings. He’s learning — slowly. His beliefs are his beliefs and not my own.