The Black Isle

by Sandi Tan

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said, and came to a halt. “Why did the Wees call you Issa if your name’s Iskandar Ibrahim?”

  The moonlight glistened off his smile. “I have no idea. I suppose it’s easier to say, and I never bothered to correct them. At least they didn’t call me Ahmad, which is what they called every other Malay—including my father, whose name was in fact Abdullah.”

  He had none of his old bitterness, and this surprised me. But as we walked, I realized I had better warn him about my past in these woods.

  “Years ago,” I said. “When I was a girl here, I…met a pontianak.”

  “You met a pontianak?” He paused. “Did you meet a bomoh, too?”

  “Yes, a sinister one.”

  “And were you by any chance having your—”

  “Yes, yes, it was that time of the month.”

  “Well, then. Blood and black magic. A very dangerous mix. Playing with corpses is not exactly my territory, nor should it be yours. I hope that episode ended well.”

  “I think so.”

  “And you’re not by any chance now—”

  “No,” I assured him.

  He drew in a deep breath, not wanting to let uncertainty enter into the mix. “All right, we have to keep walking, Cassandra, if we want to complete our task before the sun comes up.”

  “What about badis?”

  “What about them, Cassandra?”

  I was about to confess my botched summoning, but his tone—nurturing and impatient, all at once—made me too ashamed. Why bring up that old embarrassment? We were about to go and mend things now. Clean slate.

  “You’re right,” I said. “We should keep walking.”

  Blood Hill was every bit as bald as I remembered. We climbed up its grassless slopes and stood atop its crest, surveying my old dominion. Even in the moon-silvered dark, I could see where the twin lobes ended and the jungle began. How small my universe had been.

  “Kenneth is not doing well,” Issa said when we finally sat on the dry, hardened soil. “Mentally, physically. Independence means too much to him. He thinks it’s his way of correcting history.”

  “What do you mean correcting?”

  “Ever since Shahbandar, he replays the past in his mind, over and over. When some people do that, they learn from old mistakes. Not Kenneth. He dwells on them.” He took a breath. “You see, Daniel was also at Shahbandar.”

  Of course. The thought sickened me.

  “Don’t worry. Kenneth blames only himself. But if you hadn’t agreed to come up with us this time, I really don’t know what he would have done.” He stretched out his arms and looked around us. “You don’t see many ghosts in the jungle, do you?”

  Good—change of subject. “Even when I was a child, it was quite clean here.”

  “But do you know why?”

  “Fewer unhappy deaths?”

  “If only. People have been dying here for thousands of years, and I assure you most of those deaths were not happy. No, it’s quiet here because the spirits of the jungle live inside the trees. In my ancestors’ time, we had bomohs dedicated to putting them there. When one starts seeing spirits in the jungle, it’s time to get worried—it means that every tree has been occupied.” He touched my right hand with his withered one. “Tonight, we’ll have to call them out. And a graveyard is always a good place to start.”

  Goose bumps scurried along my arms. Even in the moonlight, his hand repulsed me. It looked and felt like a mummified rat.

  “You must understand, Cassandra, I don’t believe in using spirits for personal ends. They’re not toys. Once we’ve called them up, we can try to make them obey but ultimately, they’re just like people—it’s up to them. But Kenneth’s plan…Sooner or later, the Brits are going to find us. I won’t survive Shahbandar again…”

  I nodded slowly, pondering the implications of my agreement. I knew its dangers.

  “Do you sense evil on this mound?” he asked.

  “No.” That was the truth; it felt clean. “When I was young, people said unwanted baby girls were buried here. Or wives accused of adultery. In any case, they were all victims. I doubt these spirits will be malevolent or hard to control.”

  “We better hope not. Things can go out of control very quickly.” He paused. “How many souls are buried here?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Ten, at most?”

  Issa was already unbuttoning his shirt. Where I expected the black tattoos of snakes and rosettes, I saw a living map of whitish welts and pink scar continents.

  “As you can see, I’m not what I was.” There was no rancor in his voice, no accusation. “The Japs didn’t do this. I did it to myself as soon as they invaded. I didn’t want them skinning me for my secrets.”

  A dense bank of clouds sailed across the moon, and for a few seconds, the light vanished completely.

  “Do you want me to begin?” I asked. “The rowing?”

  He nodded, pleased that I hadn’t forgotten the ritual. Locking his eyes on me, he dug his fingers into the earth and lifted up crumbs of dirt, rubbing them over his face and chest. I followed suit. The soil on the mound was strangely dry and odorless. Free of plant roots and insects, it resembled virgin earth, if there’d ever been such a thing—earth that has never been used. Unlike the warm sludge of Forbidden Hill, it felt cool on my palms.

  “Just empty your thoughts, my child, and concentrate. Remember, prepare for the unexpected. Stay calm when you meet the badi.”

  I cringed. The word made me think of the dog-man.

  “Do not succumb to his temptations, no matter what they may be. And above all, be brave.”

  He handed me his keris and began an incantation. It had been years since I’d heard Arabic and was startled to remember how soothing I found its cadences. Gripping the handle of the keris, I closed my eyes and began rowing.

  I would do it for the Isle. I would do it for my own freedom.

  I rowed for what had to have been hours. Even though I’d anticipated the effort, I’d forgotten how endless the time would feel and how quickly my arms would lose their vigor. Just when I thought I could row no more—

  Salvation. My ears picked up the liquid strum of moving water, of waves. My eyelids twitched, and in rushed streams of sunlight.

  It was day. I was at sea, in a canoe, and all was calm. The experience was reassuringly familiar. I scanned the horizon for the badi. Indeed, there it was in the distance, its black-robed back turned to me. I waited, yet the badi did not deign to pay me any attention. I wanted more than anything to shout to it but stopped myself. This time, I would follow every rule. I continued rowing, the blazing sun scorching my hair and skin. With each pull of the oar, bolts of pain dug into my shoulders and back. A stabbing cramp set in at the base of my neck and grew.

  Just when I’d pushed myself to the limits of endurance, the caped figure turned.

  Who would it be? Father? Mother? Daniel? It began its approach. Not the dog-man. Please, not the dog-man…

  Twenty feet away from me, the badi dropped its cape.

  “Why, Cassandra,” it said.

  Standing on the waves, the warm breeze fluttering through his hair, was someone who looked completely at ease walking on water: Kenneth Kee. Not the conflicted, up-country Kenneth, but the prewar, Oxonian Kenneth—warm, unfettered by doubt, amused by folly. The smiling Kenneth.

  Steady, I warned myself, steady. It’s only an illusion.

  The badi sauntered across the glassy water until he came to the tip of my canoe.

  “You can stop rowing now,” he said. “Release the oar.”

  I didn’t believe him.

  “Trust me,” he said, and planted a foot on the prow to keep it from moving. “You’re not going to topple over while I’m here. I won’t allow it.”

  I dropped the oar. My arms felt numb, almost alien, no longer part of me.

  “See? You can trust me.”

  I wanted to believe him. He filled me with
a longing for the Kenneth I once knew: young and confident, the world at his feet.

  “You look so happy!” I blurted out.

  He smiled. “I am happy. The question is, are you happy?”

  I built up my nerve. “I would be happy if you freed the souls of this burial ground. I’d like to borrow them for just one night. If you please.”

  He laughed. “And here I was thinking you’d want me to help you turn back the clock and bring back your beloved Daniel.”

  I kept quiet. The badi was tempting me with impossibilities, just as Issa had warned. Impossible wishes for which it would exact an even more impossible price.

  “If that’s all you want, then good for you. You’ve certainly learned your lesson. Bravo.” He applauded. “And what do I get in return were I to oblige?”

  I looked at the badi’s youthful glow and again compared it to the dour, grim Kenneth of today. “I want you to be happy.”

  “What’s this fixation of yours with happiness, Cassandra? Don’t you know that happiness is not a prize one attains after hard work, like a medal or even, as Charlotte Brontë once put it, a potato? There’s no baccalaureate of happiness. Happiness only exists in the pursuit, in the fight. It can’t be bought; it can’t even be earned. It has to be lived. So don’t taunt me with happiness. Offer me something solid, something I can hold, something I can use. Like your body.”

  He climbed onto the canoe and sat facing me, his shoes dangling into the deep blue sea. His skin was radiant, tanned. He’d never been so charming.

  “Come now, Cassandra. We’re soul mates. We both know we are. And we both know that you’ve always wanted me. All those lonely nights in the jungle. You knew I was alone, yet never once did you come and find me. Was it shyness? Fear of rejection? Well, lie to your loins no longer, my friend. We both know what a creature of lust you are, how much you’re defined by your animal appetites.” He pitched himself forward so that our faces almost touched. “How wet you get in the dark thinking about the two of us—fucking.”

  He reached for the pin holding my hair up in a knot and with a quick tug freed it, sending my locks tumbling down my shoulders. I held steady, reminding myself that all of this was a projection of my mind. No matter what this impostor said or did to me, he wasn’t real.

  Rising to his challenge, I began undoing my top, a white blouse with a seemingly endless queue of small buttons. Impatient, I yanked it over my head and tossed it into the water, where it was instantly carried away by the current. I unhooked my brassiere and did the same.

  I waited for him to reach for me, but instead he pulled back and kept his distance. He eyed my body coolly, scanning it for imperfections. Then he twirled his finger.

  “More.”

  I lifted myself gingerly, careful not to let the canoe list from side to side, and pulled off my skirt, dropping it, too, over the edge. Then finally, my cotton knickers, which bobbed away like a paper boat. I tried not to flinch as the fiend stared at me.

  “That’ll do,” he said with a peremptory chuckle. “A little too fleshy here, much too wobbly over there. And I hope I’m not the first to mention this, but you’re frightfully…asymmetrical. Not my type, I’m afraid.”

  I gazed at my clothes. The waves had already carried them far away.

  The badi hoisted his legs up from the water—somehow his pants remained immaculately dry—and hunkered like a gargoyle on the canoe’s prow, facing forward. I burned to push him into the water.

  “You cannot force these things, you know,” he said, leering back at me. “The romantic impulse cannot be engineered.”

  “It’s all right.”

  He stood up and stepped onto the surface of the water. It gave slightly under his weight, then buoyed up his feet like springy foam. Making a show of tidying his clothes and hair, probably to needle me some more, he began walking away.

  “Wait!” I said firmly. “I haven’t given you the permission to leave.”

  He turned back with a look of mock surprise.

  “I called you up. I get to decide when you go. You’re not leaving before you fulfill your end of the bargain. Lend me the girls.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about.”

  “The women buried in the bloody hill.”

  “Relax, I was only joking. ’Course, I know the ones you mean—even if you don’t. The bloody part, however, will cost extra.” He began making his way across the water, away from me. “They’re already waiting.” Tilting his head back one last time, he boomed, “I’ve left you high and dry, haven’t I, Casshandra?”

  Then he ran like the wind.

  With the badi gone, I stared down at my naked body. My clothes could not be salvaged, nor my dignity.

  But before the waves of self-pity could wash over me, the world began swirling in a clockwise direction, as if under the influence of some diabolical magnet. Without oars, I was helpless in the canoe. I could only surrender and watch the horizon go round and round and round. None of this is real, I reminded myself. None of this is real.

  The circling grew faster, tightening, and everything, from the canoe to my clothes bobbing away in the distance, was pulled along with me, descending into a watery spout.

  Deeper and deeper I sank into the vibrating valve, twirling so fast that all I could see of the sky was a shrinking patch of blue. The air turned freezing cold as the dark liquid walls closed in. Just as the water touched my skin, darkness swallowed me up.

  Everything remained black until my eyes began to tease out gradations of light and shade. I found myself cross-legged on top of Blood Hill, Issa facing me in the moonlight, exactly as before. Except for one thing: I was completely naked.

  “Cover yourself.” Issa handed me my clothes, clumped on the ground next to me. He kept his eyes tilted away.

  We weren’t alone.

  All around us were prepubescent girls—maybe a hundred of them, their lips reddened with cinnabar, their eyelids darkened with kohl, giving us the apprehensive stares of underage brides. Solemn, even stately, they wore ceremonial robes of gold and silver. But they were eerily bald—every one of them, cleanly shorn. They didn’t even have eyebrows.

  The innocents buried in the hill. It had worked! But how wrong was I to guess there’d be only ten.

  “Welcome back, Cassandra,” said Issa. His tone of avuncular affection was new. I had made him proud. “I’ve been speaking to our young friends. The rumors were only part true. They weren’t disappointments to their parents or their husbands. They were all beloved daughters, and that’s why they were chosen—to be sacrificed. It was the custom to appease ancestral spirits with virgins. Unfortunately, the ancestors had asked for nothing of the sort. So these poor girls died in vain.”

  I was still trying to catch my breath. I tried not to think about the terror they must have felt at the moment of their murder. And the sense of betrayal.

  “There are two new complications,” said Issa. “First, there are more of them than previously expected…”

  “I can see that.”

  “Secondly, you are more powerful than previously expected. We’ll have to hope that the two things will cancel each other out and keep our situation under control.”

  “Have you told them”—my voice shook—“what I’d like them to do?”

  “Yes. You were away for hours.”

  The girl closest to us, who looked no more than eight or nine, had gray skin with the serious, unblinking eyes of a very old woman. She placed her tiny hand on Issa’s shoulder and spoke softly to him in an ancient-sounding tongue I didn’t recognize, a series of low rasps, all sibilants and air.

  “She says they will do our bidding tonight, if we let them go in peace afterward.”

  I nodded. “She has my word. Tell them I’m extremely grateful.” And deeply saddened, I wanted to add, but this was neither the time nor place for condolences. We needed to harness their outrage, their wrath.

  The little girl and Issa began
whispering. I gazed at my soldiers. They wore silver bangles and filigreed earrings that must have been acquired at great expense. These were truly the prized daughters of some vastly misguided people.

  “The girl says we should sleep now,” Issa said, “here, on this hill. They will complete their task while we sleep. It will be very quick.”

  “Sleep here?” For all my triumph, I couldn’t imagine letting my guard down atop any burial ground, let alone one where the spirits outnumbered us.

  “We have no choice, Cassandra.”

  The girls pushed in closer to us, tightening their circle until my lungs were thick with their scent of damp mold and earth. The ones in front reached for Issa’s hair, running their gray hands through his gray locks. He received them passively, his eyelids already drooping, heavy with sleep. I felt tugs at my own hair and realized they were doing the same to me, rubbing the strands between their palms, washing their hands. Their flesh was as cold and scabrous as wintry twigs.

  “Give in to sleep, Cassandra.”

  “Issa…”

  I reached for him. But we were too far apart, and he didn’t reciprocate.

  “Give in,” he murmured, “give in.”

  14

  The Night of the Burning Trees

  I OPENED MY EYES to see snow. Snow falling all around me.

  But these weren’t the big innocent flakes of Bing Crosby and his winter wonderlands. They were dusty, warm to the touch, and when they melted, they turned gray and then black, impossible to wipe off. My mouth was dry, clotted with the flat, unremitting bitterness of ash—the taste of the end of all things.

  Issa was still asleep a few feet away, covered in the weird snow. He looked like a stone memorial, one darkening by the second. As the flurry thinned, the Melmoth plantation came into view.

  Even during its decline, the estate had had thousands of trees. Not one survived. The lobes were decimated, as if a hundred lightning bolts had ripped through, leaving only charred stumps. Standing on the hill, I could see to the floor of the plantation.