Darrell slowly expelled a deep breath as he returned his attention to the road. “Could we catch leprosy?”
“Don’t be stupid, it’s not a leper colony anymore.”
Christa watched Darrell’s face, her heart sinking when she saw the fear clouding his eyes. He turned to her and smiled, the attempt at hiding his trepidation only making her feel more wretched.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “Just because this Makaio guy practices the dark arts doesn’t mean he’s evil. If a magick is dark, it’s potent and rich, vibrating with power. Light magick, on the other hand, can be tame and inconsistent, but it’s also safe and predictable. Practicing dark magick doesn’t always mean you have to sacrifice virgins or mutilate animals.”
“You sound like a text book.”
“Well, I have read a lot of them. There wasn’t a lot to do whenever I had to wait for my jinn mates to sleep off a large meal, and they always had books about magick and witchcraft lying around. It made them feel important, but I don’t think they really understood any of it.”
Darrell remained mute, both hands curled tightly around the steering wheel.
“Look,” Christa tried again, “if Makaio seems crazy or dangerous, we’ll just jump in the car and drive away. Okay?”
Finally, Darrell nodded. “Okay.”
***
The First Assembly of Christ Our Lord Leprosarium, also home to Makaio, Molokai’s resident holy man, was located at the bottom of a rocky cliff. Christa stood close to Darrell as they stared out over the precipice, trying to make out the neat collection of white wooden huts nestled at the bottom.
“You have to take a mule,” a man said from behind them. “It’s too steep on foot. I’ve just sent a group down, but I have another animal here if you don’t mind sharing.”
“That’s fine,” Christa said, turning to face him. He was tall and thin, his once pale skin bronzed by the sun and his shock of blonde hair bleached until it looked limp and washed-out.
“Great,” the man said. “The trip’s fifteen dollars each. That includes access to the Leprosarium and a guided tour.”
“We don’t need to pay,” Christa said, her eyes locked on the man’s pale blue ones. “You’re going to let us ride the mule down for free.”
After a few seconds, the man shut his open mouth and shook his head, laughing. “Of course, pretty girls ride for free,” he said.
“Thank you.” Christa smiled at Darrell while the man disappeared to find their mule.
“You’ll miss that when you can’t do it anymore,” Darrell said. “You’ll have to start paying for things.”
“Well, if I’m short of cash I’ll have to use my womanly charms to get what I want.”
“You might have to get a job,” Darrell teased. “I could see you working in a call centre, or maybe a factory.”
Christa slapped his arm, feigning indignation. “How dare you? I’m definitely personal assistant material.”
The man returned, pulling a handsome, muscular animal behind him.
“So this is a mule?” Christa said. “I’ve never seen one before.”
“A mule’s what you get when a donkey and a horse hook up,” the man said. His eyes were still glazed, his smile loose and drunken. “They’re strong, good for carrying stuff. But they usually can’t have kids.”
Christa stepped forward to stroke the mule’s long, velvety nose, making it whinny and shake its head. “So you’re the offspring of two different species?” she said. “I wonder if my baby will be strong and good at carrying stuff?”
When the man frowned, his head tipped to one side as he tried to decipher Christa’s strange comment, she smiled and took the mule’s reins from his hands. “I’m just joking,” she said. “Will you give me a hand up?”
The man silently complied, hoisting first Christa and then Darrell from a stirrup up to the mule’s worn leather saddle. “Just hold on,” he said when they were both in place, Christa at the reins and Darrell sat snugly behind her, his hands around her waist, “she knows the way to the bottom, you don’t need to direct her.”
He tapped the mule’s flank and the animal jolted forward, causing Christa and Darrell to rock in the saddle. The path zigzagging down the cliff face wasn’t much smoother. Darrell gripped Christa tighter at every bend, his eyes closed and his breath catching in his throat. When they finally reached the bottom and the mule came to a stop, Darrell slid from the animal’s back like a deflated balloon, his skin blanched pale and sallow.
Christa laughed at him as she swung herself from a stirrup to the ground. “You’re such a wimp.”
An elderly Hawaiian woman, her grey hair worn loose down her back, emerged from a wooden hut set against the cliff and came towards them. “Welcome to the Leprosarium,” she said. “May I take the mule?”
“With pleasure,” Darrell said.
Christa tried not to stare as the woman reached for the reins. Her hands were small and gnarled, the skin over her knuckles stretched tight and thin where the rest of her fingers used to be.
“It’s okay,” the woman said when she caught her looking. “There is no Hansen’s disease here anymore. Just scars.”
“I’m sorry,” Christa said. The woman simply nodded and led the mule down the beach to a pen filled with similar animals.
“I don’t like this place,” Darrell said. “People must treat it like a freak show. Why else would they come, but to stare at the lepers?”
“Just remember, that’s not why we’re here,” Christa said. “We’re not like the other tourists, ogling the freaks.”
“No, but that’s how we appear.”
Christa took Darrell’s hand and walked beneath a wrought iron archway bearing the catchy inscription: ‘The First Assembly of Christ Our Lord Leprosarium’. She held her other hand over her eyes to scan the buildings beyond. Spread before them was what looked like an idyllic, beautifully kept town in miniature. Neat rows of white wooden buildings, each adorned with boxes of colourful flowers and strings of lights, stretched along a raised, concrete surface set back from the gently lapping sea.
“This was a leper colony?” Darrell wondered.
“What did you expect it to look like?”
Darrell shrugged. “I don’t know. Not as nice, I suppose.”
Slowly, they walked down the centre of the quiet settlement. A man sitting on a veranda, gently rocking himself in a swing chair, waved to them, his lined face peaceful and contented. When Christa raised her hand to wave back she realised he was blind, smiling out into the warm air of the cove, lost in the worlds created behind the blank of his eyes. They stopped before a building that towered over the others, its long windows turned to face the sea.
“It’s a church,” Christa said, pointing to a large cross protruding from the sloping roof.
A sudden noise drew their attention away from the building, towards the end of the short, whitewashed street. When they crept towards it they found the group of tourists who had descended before them, gathered around the dark opening of a cave at the bottom of the cliff. They stood at the back of the group, stiffening against each other when a cloud of violet smoke erupted from the cave mouth, making the tourists shriek and laugh.
A man appeared from the smoke, broad and imposing against the rocks. “I am Makaio,” he announced in a deep voice. “I am the holy man of Molokai. Who comes to disturb me?”
The tourists laughed again, nudging each other and taking pictures. “Cast a spell on me, Makaio!” one of them shouted, a portly middle-aged woman in a blue sundress.
“You,” Makaio beckoned to the woman, “come here.”
The woman pushed her way through the crowd and scrambled over a ledge to stand beside Makaio in the mouth of the cave.
“No further,” Makaio warned. He pointed at the cliff behind him, to two roughly hewn crossed staves fixed to the rock above the cave. A glassy ball at the top of each glinted in the sunlight. “It is kapu, forbidden to
enter the domain of a holy man. Anywhere you see this symbol, you must stay away. Trespassing is punishable by death.” He bent down to peer into the woman’s face, his eyes huge and unblinking, only straightening once more when she tittered and backed away.
“So,” he continued, “you have come to see our famous lepers?”
“Yes, I suppose,” the woman said, glancing uncertainly at the crowd.
“Do you not agree that to understand what it is to be a leper, you must become a leper?”
Makaio spread his huge hands wide while the woman gaped, struggling for a reply. He brought his palms together slowly, his eyes closed, and nodded once. “Now she knows what it is to lose all sensation in her skin,” he said to the crowd. “What it is to watch her fingers melt away.”
Astonished, the tourists turned their attention back to the woman. She had brought her hands up to her face, horrified to find they were the deformed, mutilated hands of a leper. As she began to shake, unable to believe what was happening, the crowd broke out into rapturous applause and loud, intermittent cheering.
“Should I return her hands to their former beauty?” Makaio asked. When the tourists nodded and shouted their approval, the Hawaiian clapped his hands together three times. “It is a miracle, she has been cured.”
The woman shrieked with joy when she looked back down at her hands and saw they were restored. She held them up before the ecstatic crowd, waving and grinning even as Makaio helped her back down onto the sand.
“Please remember to visit our gift shop,” Makaio said. “All proceeds help to support the Leprosarium.”
Makaio disappeared inside the cave and the delighted tourists began to filter away, leaving Christa and Darrell alone before the cliff.
“That was interesting,” Darrell whispered.
“No, it was bloody disturbing is what it was.” Christa took a deep breath, her eyes fixed on the dark mouth of the cave. “Let’s go.”
They had barely climbed the rocky ledge before Makaio’s deep baritone rebounded from the depths of the cave: “Deiwo, please come in. My home is your home.”
Christa squeezed Darrell’s hand tightly in her own before entering, pleasantly surprised to find the interior of the cave was brightly lit, the walls strung with the same lights that wound around the wooden houses outside. Makaio sat cross-legged on a fraying sheep skin at the back of the echoing space, his bronzed bulk creating a large, light extinguishing shadow that stretched across the rock wall behind him.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “Don’t be afraid, please come closer.”
“Won’t you kill us for trespassing?” Christa said.
Makaio laughed, a deep, trembling sound that reverberated around the cavern. “Even if I wanted to, I do not think I could kill you, Deiwo. You could wring the life from me before I even lifted a hand. Besides, that is just a story for the tourists. Kapu hasn’t been observed for centuries.”
Put at ease by Makaio’s open face and infectious laughter, Christa inched further into the cave, stopping before the holy man to look for a place to sit.
“There are more sheep skins over there,” Makaio said.
Christa turned and selected a skin from a pile of similarly grubby, sand encrusted skins, spreading it out on the ground before Makaio. Once she and Darrell were seated she stared at him, following the mass of tattoos that began at his forehead and spiralled down the length of his torso to disappear into his denim jeans, suddenly wondering how she should begin.
“Start at the beginning,” Makaio said, startling her. “That is where all stories should begin.”
“Did you read my thoughts?”
Makaio smiled at her, declining to answer, his mouth stretched wide across broad teeth that gleamed white against the tan of his skin.
Christa fidgeted and crossed her legs beneath her, finding it hard not to flinch before Makaio’s intense gaze. “Why do they call this place Leper Valley?” she said. “It doesn’t look like a valley to me.”
“You wish to make idle small talk, Deiwo? To stall for time? That is fine by me, I don’t have another group of tourists arriving for an hour.”
Makaio leant forward and reached behind a rock, withdrawing a can of coke. “Would you like one?” Both Christa and Darrell declined, watching in silence as he ripped off the ring pull and drank the coke as though it was water, finishing half the can in two loud gulps. Christa waited, expecting Makaio to belch, but he simply sat back against the wall behind him, his disarming smile back in place.
“Now,” he continued with the air of a teacher, “Leper Valley is a crude nickname, taken from the prayer. It means it is the valley of the shadow of death.”
“Because this is where people came to die?”
“Sometimes. But as you can see from our residents, many recovered. They continue to live here because their deformities make them outcasts.”
They lapsed back into a silence that became so uncomfortable, Darrell felt compelled to speak for the first time. “Christa,” he said, “we didn’t come here for a history of Leper Valley, did we?” He spoke in hushed tones, his head turned away from Makaio.
“No, you did not,” the holy man answered for her. “It’s obvious the Deiwo has a favour to ask of me, a service she needs performed. I cannot quite penetrate the veil created by her mind in order to discover the nature of this favour, but I think she distrusts me, and this is preventing her from voicing her wishes. You’re curious about me. You wish to know why I live here among the lepers. Am I right, Deiwo?”
“Please don’t call me that. My name is Christa.” Makaio nodded. “You are right, I suppose,” she continued. “Why would a man like you, a man with power, choose to live in a filthy cave?” Christa didn’t have to peel away the layers of Makaio’s brain to know that her summation was right. The thin mattress and meagre collection of blackened pots and pans stacked in a far corner were evidence enough that he ate, slept and probably performed all his rituals within the shadowy confines of the cavern.
“There are many who do not wish to associate with a man such as myself,” Makaio replied. “I frighten them. But here I am accepted by the untouchable, by my own kind. They’re happy for me to live here, to practice my art as I will without interference, as long as I bring in the tourist dollars. This place is no longer funded by the government, hence the garish stage show and the gift shop. We all have to eat, after all.”
“Which arts do you practice?”
“Finally,” Makaio boomed, clapping his hands together so hard the sound rebounded from the walls, making Christa and Darrell jump. “That is the question you’ve wanted to ask me all along. You wish to know if I have the knowledge and strength required to aid you in some task. Please Christa, tell me what it is you would have me do.”
Christa fixed her full attention on him, wanting him to understand she was deadly serious when she said: “I want you to take my powers away. I don’t want to be the Deiwo anymore.”
She expected him to be shocked, even angry. What she didn’t expect was the deep belly-roll of laughter that erupted from Makaio, making his broad shoulders shake and his eyes stream with tears.
“Who would want to give up such a thing?” he managed between debilitating quakes of mirth. “Are you mad?” Eventually, he was able to calm himself enough to regain his breath and wipe the tears from his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but if you had any idea what I have gone through to gain the meagre powers I possess, if you knew how many people have come to me, begging to be given access to the secret knowledge I hold that could make them a fraction of the magickal creature you are, you would understand the joke.”
Christa shook her head at him, wanting to be angry but unable to suppress a smile. She was finding it hard to believe that the arts Makaio practiced were dark ones; he seemed to radiate a permanent glee. “I’m not mad,” she said. “I’m just tired. I’m tired of trying to control this thing inside me, and I’m tired of running away from people who think I’m the second bloody
coming. I want a normal life.”
“You are serious?”
“Yes,” Christa said, placing a hand on her stomach. “I don’t have just myself to think about anymore.”
“I can see that,” Makaio said, eying her rounded belly. He paused, his lips pursed in thought. “I can do this thing,” he finally said, “but first I want you to use your gifts one last time. It will be payment for my services.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“All will become clear. We have to wait a day, for the moon to be full. Meet me here then, at midnight.”
“Is that the magic hour, or something?”
“No, the most potent hour for working magick is between one and two. First, we have barbeque.” Makaio reached for his can of coke and slugged it back, his gaze directed at the cave entrance. “More tourists will be here soon.”
Taking her cue to leave, Christa rose from the sheep skin and brushed sand from the back of her trousers. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, then?”
Makaio grinned and nodded, his teeth rinsed in coke.
Twenty One
When Dylan returned to the apartment, pushing open the door with a lacklustre heart that wound his thoughts into an impenetrable, dark tangle, he was momentarily shocked at what he found inside. Rob and Jenna were on their knees, both still in various states of undress, surrounded by a group of jinn. The jinn snarled and pressed tighter around their captives as Dylan entered the room.
"What the fuck is this?"
"Dylan," Rob said, dull eyes blazing with renewed hope when he looked up and saw his friend, "these bastards let themselves in like they fucking own the place." He whimpered and bit back his words when one of the jinn kicked him hard in the small of his back.
"But we do own the place," Lindy said, appearing from the back of the group. "Or, at least Bredia does. She's not very happy with you, Dylan. I think the honeymoon period's over." She looked extremely happy at this prospect.
Jinn Nation Page 23