Fury at the Crossroads
By Troy L. Wiggins
Furious Jackson reclined on the banks of the BlackDog river and strummed her guitar for an audience of dead cypress. The trees stretched their dark fingers toward the pinkening sky, swaying seemingly in time with her deep-bellied twang.
She drifted along the natal notes of the music, reconnecting to the dear, dead presence, the protector innate to her skin and her soul and the souls of her dead ancestors. Awash in memories that weren’t all hers, Fury lost her footing in the world and broke off her song for a moment to hum, her vibrato dark and mournful, her song laced with a power both ancient and fresh.
After a moment, her song ended and she removed her hat with a whirl of her wrist, baring her nappy black braids to the sky. A squelching rumble from her empty stomach capped off the impromptu performance. Not for the first time, she wished that her faith could fill her stomach in addition to sending her soul aflame.
Fury Mae Jackson. Junebug called from the cloudy crystal hanging around Fury’s neck. Good old Junebug. His voice was a history. Get your ass up. Ain’t you hungry? These trees ain’t serving nothing.
“Easy for you to talk about standing up,” Fury grumbled both to Junebug and the swamp. “Your legs ain’t been the ones been pumping these last seven days.”
Before she could get out the last word, her stomach rumbled again. Junebug’s laugh was windchimes, a stirring tinkle of haint breath. lf a year we been together and you still ain’t learned how to lie good. I oughta leave you here.
“Your mouth sure is smart. You keep on and I’m gonna set you down on a rock somewhere.”
Stop playing and let’s go, Junebug snorted. She could feel the thrill of fear though his bravado, and fought down a grin. She liked to fuck with him like that, even though they both knew the two of them were connected soul to soul by a thread of kinship that stretched back as long as humanity.
“I need a minute. My legs feel like there’s lightning running through them.” Fury scooted across loose, slimy soil over toward the water. The BlackDog river was a still specimen, as lazy as a warm breeze. It didn’t run or trickle but sat, deciding every so often to lap up against the muddy shore. Even this water, heavy with the stank of decades, would be better than the hunger rippling through her belly—and the scraps of divine flame limning her bones would protect her from the worst of whatever could try and sicken her body.
As she leaned in to take a slurp of the BlackDog’s grit, Junebug chilled the air in warning. Now hold on, Fury Mae—but before he could finish some wicked, deathly stench curled up from the river and crawled up her nose, rancid with rotten flesh and the sticky tang of long-held hatred.
“Gotdamn,” Fury spluttered, “This is some foul-ass water!”
I tried to tell you, girl. That stank ain’t natural.
“You’re right. Damn,” Fury muttered. Even though she hadn’t taken any of the water, even her proximity to that deep, spiritual stank sent her stomach flopping. She bent double and retched up a stream of sick.
All ain’t lost. Just stick with Junebug. Have I ever steered you wrong in all these years we been together? No ma’am I have not. Junebug flickered into the world of the living as a flitting ball of light and buzzed a lingering trail through the trees. Warm bodies this way. They might even have a knob of gristle for you to gnaw on. Press on, sista.
Fury grit her teeth and followed.
All of the spirits in the trees declared that the coming town was named New Molen. Fury and Junebug kept pushing, noting that New Molen seemed to be losing the battle between itself and whatever foulness had seeped into the BlackDog wetlands. Ruins popped out of the dark dirt like weeds. Skeletal leavings of several old houses remained, with rusty metal pipework jutting from bare stone foundations like the final molars in a rotting mouth. There was fear here, fear of the dauntless river, and those who’d built this place knew the water was an enemy as ancient and unforgiving as a curse. The few houses that Fury could make out were built from the gray flesh of the surrounding trees, their roofs blackened scales of tarred flagstone. Whoever lived in New Molen had laid gravel beneath the soil, and Fury’s boots crunched into it just as the rustling of people reached her ears. Discovered, she sent a guitar riff fluttering into the humid air.
That stank all up and through here too, Junebug whispered directly to Fury’s bones. You feel it?
“Yeah,” Fury replied. Men emerged from the shadows between houses. Two before and one behind. They had a funk too, but it was regular man-funk, nothing spiritual.
We squarin’ up or...?
“Nah. We come in peace, right? Let’s just be easy.” Fury fought down the leftover boiling stank in her guts, turned so that she could get all three of the men in her sights. “Good evening, brothas. We come in peace—”
Behind her, a fourth had approached with the silent speed of practiced predation. Fury cursed when the sour sack went down over her head, and the repeated blows against her skull sent her into swift darkness.
She dreamed in time with the eternal rattle of chains. The presence inside of her, what small piece remained, sent jagged nightmares through Fury’s veins—memories of water, of black bodies dancing, of fire, of bloody feet and whips made of coiled lightning.
When she woke up she woke up in pieces, all raw: lungs, fingers, throat. She coughed for a brace of minutes. Someone had bound her wrists in a rough cord. The floor, a concrete slab, gnawed at her knees. Humid swamp air weighed down her thickly coiled plaits. Where was her hat? A rusty tang had settled on her lips, and somebody’s rough hands gripped her shoulders. New Molen came back to her—the deep stank that permeated the bones of the world close behind. Everything warped sideways. Bile rushed into her throat, she forced it back.
“You’re awake.” The voice was stone, not steel, but the edge to it was just as keen. This was not a question.
“Looks that way,” Fury mumbled. Junebug had gone dark, though Fury could feel the pull of him nearby. Damp air prickled her naked arms. Where was her guitar—
“Good,” the voice came again. “We almost gave you back to the river.”
Before her was a throne, old but strong, built of thick red-brown wood and covered with plush, patterned orange and green fabric.
The woman sitting atop the throne matched its general demeanor: well past youth and heavy with the strength of experience. Her skin was the color of country clay, and she wore her glossy black hair in two thick braids that hung down over her chest. One of her eyes had been torn out, the scar where the organ had been still ragged and raw; the other had a sharp enough gaze to make up for it. She was limned with tattoos: blunt crosses on her hands, the outline of black feathers down one arm. Her big hands were strong enough to squeeze a head into meat, even with two fingers missing from the right one. She wore a ragged gray shirt over her chest, and atop her shoulders, the pelt of an enormous spotted swampcat. Her trousers were gray with many pockets, and she had a longknife strapped to her right thigh. Her brown boots were free of the oily dirt that lived on everything else near.
Junebug’s agitation zipped along their connection. That shit was contagious given the nature of their linkage, so Fury closed herself off to the gaggle of emotions that he represented. She found it odd they hadn’t taken the crystal from her, but a cloudy rock didn’t barter for much of anything in this world where humans had flayed their gods and cast them out.
Fury wondered at her captor’s dead eye, wondered what deity the woman might have sent her prayers to. Some flaming, obsidian-skinned god of war no doubt. Didn�
��t matter. All of them were gone now. Even her divine protector, whose name Fury was born into, had receded into the barest of whispers. Fury’s deity was a survivor though, as were the scant few who still worshipped the protector. Downtrodden, all of them, cursed since they’d set foot in a world not made for them. She breathed deep, focused on the divine inside her and called the faith of her boundless ancestors. Some of the cloudiness around her head dissipated.
“Is this how you do in New Molen?” Fury spat something nasty with pink froth across the concrete. “Strip people and hide their particulars? You could’ve at least fed me first.”
Rough fingers dug into Fury’s scalp and wrenched her head up, exposing her throat to the woman seated on the makeshift throne.
You need to watch your hands, homeboy! Junebug yelled. His anger was an impotent flare of energy, eddies of violent intent washing over the sour-scented man holding her—he muttered a curse and his fingers trembled, but his grip did not falter. The woman’s single eye settled on Fury. She half-smiled, half-snarled. Gilded fangs glimmered in her mouth.
“You’re lucky we didn’t kill you,” she growled, but there was no threat in it. “I’m Okima, Mayor and rightful ruler of New Molen and surrounding areas. We don’t take lightly to folks just walking up in our spot. The world don’t work that way no more. Way I see it, you could be a spy from The Field, or from Carter’s, or from any other one of those spots that want what we got over here. So as of right now your ass, and everything that belonged to it, is mine now.”
Junebug flickered back into reality, a glowing ball that should have been invisible to everyone except for Fury. Okima sniffed the air like a hunter scenting prey. A man with oily black skin and a distended belly covered in a chain-mesh tunic brought out Fury’s guitar and her boots. The boots, he threw to the floor in front of Fury, but he handed the guitar to Okima with something resembling reverence.
“Give me my shit back,” Fury growled. The sight of her guitar awoke righteous rage in her. It was hers, the last remnant of her family and people, the last thing she carried from her home as it was destroyed, burned in humanity’s war against its divine. Aside from being a priestess and the embodiment of her people’s divine protector, Fury’s mother had been a woodworker. Her father had made a living singing the praises of their divine, when he wasn’t composing raunchy love songs to her mother. Both had been burned to ash by hatred. Besides Fury herself, the guitar was the only thing that remained to prove that her parents’ love had existed.
Instead of responding, Okima kept rustling through Fury’s worn leather satchel, pulling out incrementals and tossing them aside: a hank of red plaid cloth, a couple of silver coins, black elastic ties for holding back unruly hair; these she stuck in her pockets. If Fury could have shot the fiery remnants of her protector out of her eyes, Okima would have been a pile of ash herself. “I’m not fucking around. Just give me my stuff back and let me go on my way. I don’t have a problem with you or New Molen.”
Mayor Okima and her retinue all buckled in laughter, including the man who held her by the hair.
Be easy, Fury Mae. Junebug said. If they really wanted to kill us we’d be dead by now.
Junebug was right, of course. But there was something here, something foul beneath their feet that sent waves of disgust out into the swamp and into New Molen itself. Something that was poisoning this place, perhaps even these people. And if the lightheadedness and strange dreams were anything to go by, perhaps it was poisoning Fury. Even though Okima’s man still held Fury’s guitar it was powerless for him, but Okima herself was armed with that wicked longknife. The other man’s strong hands still gripped her hair.
“You got a smart mouth—” her sour warden said between chuckles “—for somebody who’s breath still smells like mama’s milk.”
“My mama has joined the ancestral train,” Fury said. “All I got in the world is the shit in that bag, and I want it back.”
Okima’s face went stone again. “We don’t negotiate in New Molen, honey. I done told you, your shit is my shit. I might give you some of it back, if you tell me why Carter or maybe Little Ms. Phet sent you over here—”
Some of the old divine pride flushed Fury’s neck and she bristled, sent a flare of straight old-school power flowing through Okima’s space. Okima’s lone eye bucked a bit, and Fury noticed the expression through her righteous rage. “My name ain’t sugar and I ain’t sweet. I ain’t in none of this shit you talking. I ain’t no spy, neither.”
“I’m starting to see that,” Okima murmured. “What are you, then?”
“I’m Furious,” Fury growled. “You could at least have your man get his hands outta my head.”
“Ease up, Two-Son.” The pressure on Fury’s skull relented. Okima gentled the rough edges of her voice. “You say you’re not a spy, and I’ll buy that for now. Still, how’d you find your way to our little river?”
Fury leaned back on her heels, cooling, considering Junebug’s observation. “I’ve been walking. Minding my business. Surviving. My path led me here, and here is where I am.”
Okima shook her head. “Better that you ended up stopping here. Any farther past us is dangerous land.”
Fury scoffed, looked around the room. “Everywhere is dangerous land. Mayor.”
“We have to be rough out here,” Okima said, “But you understand, don’t you? This world wasn’t inherited by no meek ones. The strong survive, and you? You’re strong, strong in the old ways. I can see it in your eyes, can smell all the blood and smoke on that instrument of yours.”
“What that got to do with you holding on to my shit?”
“You mean to tell me you don’t feel it?” Okima said. “That rot? You got to. That’s what knocked you on your ass before you got here. That’s what got us so low like this. I’m surrounded by enemies on all sides, seeing spies and knives in every little piece of dark. Folks want this stability we got, and they’ll do anything to get it. I know you got the last little bit of justice in this world inside your chest, which means I know that you gotta help us. We’re your people too, in need of justice and retribution.”
Fury felt the jaws of the trap slam shut around her. Of course Okima knew who she was. Stupid, letting her taste that power. Stupid, even coming this way. A long moment passed in silence before Fury nodded once, slight enough to be a kiss from the breeze. Okima clapped twice and one of her men removed the cord that had bound Fury’s arms.
“Who am I going to see?” Fury stood, massaged her wrists.
“Tomcat here thinks it’s the devil himself,” Okima said, nodding at her fat black aide. “But he’s so scared of everything now that he can’t see his dick. You look hungry. We can talk about what I need over a meal.”
Okima prayed to some long-gone god over the food, but it was still shit: nondescript greenery boiled to a chewy near-sludge, hunks of some animal’s tailbones charred tough and black, all washed down with cloudy homebrew. Fury forced it down it out of respect to her nutrient-drained body. Okima’s men stood to either side of her, watching with various intents in their gazes.
“Don’t you wonder why we’re empty like this? No, don’t stop eating, just listen. There was an old conjureman who lived down at Coreeane to the south. Old as the dirt, and just as crusty. Rumors were that he had food, treasure down there, at the space where two roads met and crossed. Some fools came through and tried to take his treasures—but he made all of them forget that they knew how to see or eat or breathe, then buried them around his hut to curse anybody who’d want to do him wrong. You know how legends grow: some worshippers came and built a settlement there at the crossroads. The old conjureman stayed there with them. They called him protector.”
Fury harrumphed. In the old ways, people created protectors out of fragments of their will, and breathed being into them. But here, now, was this the same? This wasn’t the old times, but if the story was to be believed, this man seemed to be filling the role of those old-time protectors. Times were strange an
d the homebrew was thick. Fury considered changing her name to Fuzzy. Junebug bubbled himself back into half-existence.
Shit is a deeper degree of funky in this spot than it needs to be, sistren. We’d do good to dip out soon— He paused for a moment, studying her. You’re about to do some work for ol’ girl, ain’t you? Dammit, Fury Mae. I don’t think you need to let no blood in service to her.
“Your friend seems agitated,” Okima prodded.
Fury slowly turned to face Okima. “You see more than you let on.”
Okima gestured to her darkened eye socket. “Courtesy of our friend I was just talking about. He died, but because his people tied their needs to him his remnant lives on, stanking up the earth with his rot. He’s been poisoning my land and my people for years. I went to the Coreeane four way to handle him...”
Only dregs of the homebrew remained. Fury swirled the ceramic mug, but their settling pattern did not reveal any of Okima’s truths. “You went up against the one them folks named their protector? That was foolish.”
Okima’s face twisted, briefly, before settling into a gilded smile. “Definitely not too bright of me. You know as well as I do that only the smallest pieces of the old protectors are still around. This motherfucker though? He’s damn near as strong as the old ones were when they were as strong as they could be.”
Fury held up her hands. “I doubt that.”
“Joke all you want, but the earth itself is rebelling against that old conjureman holding Coreeane. He’s always hated me, and he’s trying to choke me out of here. We have the right to be here, same as them. Where’s the justice in what he’s doing to us?”
“You know that in this world we gotta make our own justice,” Fury said, the untruth already bitter on her lips.
“You’re sitting right here in front of me, so that’s not the case now.” Okima genuflected, touched her forehead to the dirt. Her back remained rigid, but the supplication was true. “We’ve lost so many, but we can’t lose one more. I’m begging you, please: get justice for me, for my people killed by his curse, and for this land that is so dear to me.”
Troy L Wiggins - [BCS276 S01] - Fury at the Crossroads (html) Page 1