Divine embers seared purpose along the hollows of Fury’s soul. The ancient call for justice still had the power to compel her. “I’m gonna need my stuff.”
Okima scrambled back to sitting, snapped her fingers, and Tomcat dropped Fury’s bag just far enough away where she had to reach to get it. She stretched out her arms and the big man grabbed them, held her taut. Okima pulled out Fury’s guitar, walked her cracked fingers along the strings. Everyone in the room froze, but only ragged notes came from the instrument.
Fury took a deep breath and let herself be reassured by the smoky, musty old wood scent of her guitar.
Fury waited until the sun dipped below the trees before she set out. She picked her way through the forest, guitar in hand, belly full, pack strapped tight, eyes on the road. For one swift moment, she considered leaving New Molen and Coreeane to their respective fates. Their territorial disputes didn’t mean anything to her.
But they meant something to her ancestors, to her divine, to all those people robbed of justice. This was her charge, why she lived: to carry on the work that had begun centuries ago, when ancestors long removed cried out to someone, anyone for justice. And Okima was one of her people, crying out yet again. With renewed purpose, she kept to her intended path.
Junebug flitted through the dark forest, following the trail of stank that got stronger the further south she went. The moon’s eye, half-closed, spun silver thread down on the soggy earth. Fury pulled out her guitar and began to play, her song low and slow. At each pluck of the string, the thick night air hummed, consumed the music and dispersed it through the darkness.
This place is crying full of dead, Junebug tinkled.
“I know that, June. Why you think I’m tapping out this sad noise? You gonna talk to them for me, right?”
Only the ones that’s kin—that’s all I can do. There’s a lot of people out here who not connected to us at all.
Fury could sense the truth of it. Hollow lights flashed at the edges of her vision, disappearing when she turned her focus to them. Fury was not afraid of these spirits. The twang of her song spoke friendship to them, reminded them of the joys and pleasures of life. It also, in a change of notes, could speak of their unshackling from this plane of reality, of freedom from devastating emotion and release into the energy swirling through the earth’s eldritch veins.
The remnants kept their distance. Junebug flitted close to those who ventured nearer, traded frosty wisps of ghostly breath with them. After a flurry of moments, he returned.
Coreeane come soon. Conjure man is listening to our steps. He’s strong, the haintfolk say. Keep your head.
Fury grunted, slung her guitar over her shoulder. Silence ruled everything around save for the scuffle of Fury’s boots against the paved southward road. Dead fluttered the leaves. Night wind carried the scent of warmth, an unnatural presence here in the dead of the swamp.
Look, Fury Mae. There it is.
Where New Molen had appeared in fits and starts, the Coreeane Four-Way rose up all at once from the earth. It was a genuine crossroads: Fury’s path ran north to south, and an east-west road intersected it. Once, there had been a sign marking this occurrence, but now all that remained of the waysign was a sharp spike of ruined metal. The houses were well preserved, built for the foolish leisure of times long gone: brightly painted wooden walls and tar-shingled roofs, porches with swings bolted to the ceilings, big bold windows to watch the sun. Soil here had been worked, though no vegetables grew. There was a tinkling of windchimes, and beneath it all, the soul-flipping funk permeating everything. Fury’s New Molen dinner came rushing up, and she fought it back, leaving her throat burning.
Shit, sistren. There’s some bad mojo lurking about, here. I hate to even talk like this, but there’s a chance that we might’ve bit off more than we can chew.
“You always so dramatic, June. You’ve been dead for too long to be so damn shaky.”
Junebug swelled up at the insult, a thundercloud of pride. A hard head make a soft ass, Fury Mae. Better be easy. I might not have a body, but I’ll still whoop a knot on your head.
At the taste of Junebug’s prideful energy, the shadows around Coreeane shuddered, thickened. Somewhere in the cluster of houses, a wooden creaking crawled out into the night.
“Shit, June. You’ve told everything around that we’re here!”
Aw girl, hush. This man knew that we were here from the minute we stepped foot on his land.
Fury readied her guitar. It thumped as she handled it, the old strings humming as if in anticipation. “Come on out here, conjureman! I smell you lurking. I don’t want to hurt nothing or nobody, but I will if you make me come in there after you.”
There was a tug at the edges of Fury’s brain, and she turned in its direction. A man walked through the closed door of the smallest house at the Coreeane Four Way, with its leaning walls and its protector tree hung with bright blue bottles that were filled with the imprisoned glow of the dead. The conjureman was small and thin, had been old and toothless when he died. He still smelled of graveyard dirt and wore his burial clothes: a black pinstriped suit, black shoes, white shirt, and purple tie, the colors washed out against his wispy remnant form. Curls of life fluttered from off his shoulders, consumed by the night spirits that gathered around him like moths.
“I go by Demijohn.” His voice was the fluttering of long lost memories. “You here on Okima’s behalf, then?”
Fury couldn’t seem to form words. She shook her head. “I am.”
“I bet Okima has filled your head full of lies. Something about me stealing this land from her and her people, is that it?”
Ask him about this funk, Fury. Ask him where this stank come from.
“I swore that I would get justice for her and her people. She’s accused you of spreading this hateful taint that’s been creeping through the earth and laying people low.”
“I gave it legs, yes. But I didn’t create it alone.”
“Then I have to do what I am charged to do.”
Reconsider, Fury Mae.
“You need to listen, young’un. Let’s talk just you and me.” He waved his hand as if he was shooing a fly.
Fury—
Junebug blasted off into the night sky like a shooting star. Fury felt the tether that connected him to the crystal around her neck stretch, and stretch, and stretch, and stretch, countless years, countless souls, all stretched taut to snapping. The trauma of Junebug’s sudden strained connection pulled Fury damn near off her feet. She gritted her teeth and—
The world, burning with god-hate. Gathered before Fury, an assemblage of revered ancestors, a glimpse of her kin given to the beyond. She could make out only glimmers of faces, features like hers, points of light great and small, all of them brought to the realm of reality by her mother’s praise-song, her mother’s call out to the power of justice that had lived with them since before anyone could remember. Fury watched a glistening chunk of what remained of the godling fall away from those assembled ancestors and slide down into the world, and she knew him, the brother of a mother’s mother’s mother from long ago. Her familiarity with him was shocking in its intimacy; he was as known to her as wrinkles in her right hand, as the faintest taste of joy after ages spent weeping in despair. Fury knew the depth of her protector’s love for the first time.
You can just call me Uncle Junebug, little mama, he’d said. That would be just fine.
Junebug.
Junebug.
If she lost Junebug he’d be gone forever, doomed to wander the earth as a vengeful, disconnected wraith. Fury clasped the milky white crystal pendant in her fist and willed Junebug’s flight to cease. A clatter of interrupted motion raised a ruckus inside of her, shut up fire in her bones. Fury collapsed to her knees. Junebug was still there. As faint as a passing dream, but there.
Demijohn squatted before her, watched her with moist, drooping eyes. “Ain’t you something. Usually I can send a haint on out of here with a sneeze. Y’all
have a deep connection. That’s rare.”
Fury found the strength to stand. She was taller than Demijohn, but somehow he towered over her. He raised his hand again. Fury struggled not to flinch. Instead of obliterating her, he ran a hand through his thinning hair.
“You shouldn’t have been able to do that, Demijohn,” she growled. “But you gonna pay for it all the same.”
“You don’t have to beat understanding into me. But do you understand? There’s a magnitude here and you’ve blinded yourself to the game. Do you remember who you serve? Why you walk?”
“Justice.” Fury gripped her guitar. “I serve my people. I remember.”
“I’m one of your people too. An old man who’s tired of fighting. But the fights never stop.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Fury managed. The world was going soft around the edges. Junebug was as much a connection to her power as the flames in her body.
Before Fury could move, Demijohn winked away. She remained alert, whipped her head side to side. His presence was pressure, a whirlwind enormous and swirling. Fury crouched, extended her arms to steady herself in Demijohn’s vortex of power and emotion.
“Stop the games!” Fury bellowed, feeling a twinge atop her skull. She glanced up toward the night sky.
Demijohn seemed to leap from the moon itself, a twisting, silvery flash of wiry muscle, horn, scale, and cold flame. When he landed, the earth trembled. Remnants gathered around, drawn by his immense aura. He pulled himself up high in his new form, the scales on his belly rasping. Flame licked from between his fangs, and his face had transformed into an elongated snout filled with jagged yellow teeth. Six pairs of horns jutted from his skull. Thin, nappy hair still clung to his head, his eyes still moist and sad.
Junebug’s weak, slow advance tugged the crystal at Fury’s neck. She did the math: running was an option, but she’d have to come back and finish this before she could leave—she’d given her word, and the spirit inside her would burn her until she fulfilled her contract. Junebug was weak; closer, but weak. He needed the calm planar facets of his home crystal to set his spirit aright. Demijohn’s scales shifted; a dry, leathery noise. But he did not move.
“Have you caught hold of your senses?” Demijohn’s voice was still his voice, just everywhere.
Junebug would make his way back to the crystal, so long as their connection wasn’t stretched any further. She removed the thong from her neck, turned, and tossed it as far as she could back down the road she’d come up. When she turned back to Demijohn’s hulking new form, he bared those arm-length fangs.
Conflicted, Fury stalled, trying to give herself time to think. Maybe there was truth to the depths of Demijohn’s power, but all of it came from the long-held prayers and wishes of her people as well, the people who had huddled here at Coreeane. Nothing about this felt right to her. “Why’d you have to go after Junebug, Demijohn? Shit wasn’t personal before that.”
“Your walk and your work is always personal, and this shit ain’t never easy. You’ve forgotten that.” Demijohn pulled half of his body off the ground, swayed. “You’ve gotten lonely, tired. I know that feeling. But you’re not on the right side of shit here. Seems like it’s me that’s gonna have to beat some understanding into you.”
Demijohn came at Fury like a bolt of silver, propelled by all the power he had held in life. His mouth was open, fangs bright. No half stepping. Fury threw herself aside and just barely evaded Demijohn’s charge—he collided with a cluster of houses at one corner of the Four Way. Had his form been physical, they would have been rubble. Instead, they swayed.
Fury stuck two fingers in her mouth and blew out a harsh whistle, a grating flash of sound that sent twin lines of silvery-black lightning flashing down Demijohn’s flanks. He thrashed about, coiling ropes of spirit and long-held hate. Fury leapt up, planted her feet on one of his writhing scales and pushed off, using Demijohn’s strength to propel herself into the sky. She whipped her guitar off of her shoulder as she rose into the air, curled her fingers over the strings, and went to work. She played fast and hot, and the guitar—the song itself responded—slicing, stabbing, biting, ripping, burning in a lattice of fear and rage and love that could have set an entire empire ablaze. Blue-black blood the color of the night sky twinkled from the countless smoking wounds that had been blasted into Demijohn’s ancient astral form.
He weathered the assault, pulling his head deep within his armored flesh. Fury, seeing his defenses close shut, landed and circled him. Sad twin pools of gold glinted from the shadows of his coils. Cold heat built at the Four Way, simultaneously boiling and freezing the air. Demijohn stuck his head out from inside of his armor and blasted a withering stream of ice-green flames from his maw. The fire shifted, shimmered, curled in mid-flight, split into hundreds of smaller flames that homed in on Fury’s living warmth despite her evasive dashing. Each of them was burdened with a story that they screamed into the night as they burned through the air in search of her.
Okima boys took my legs. How can I work with no legs?
Flames licked Fury’s flesh as they exploded against the ground.
This land is bloody and nasty, like death. What kind of protection is this!
She stumbled, fell, rose again.
P-please, no! Not my babies! NOT MY BABIES!
That stank lived in her nose.
Everybody we love. Shit, everybody we hate. Gone. Gone and ain’t coming back.
Murder. Anguish. The smell of the dead, stacked high atop each other, a spiritual charnel stench that was freezing. Burning. The destruction would have been beautiful if it wasn’t tearing at Fury’s mind and body. A patch of flame exploded next to her, seasoned with the sobs of one of Okima’s victims. Fury tried to stand, but her legs seemed like they were filled with water.
“This is a rude trick,” she barked.
Demijohn zipped through and between the flames as Fury attempted to stagger to her feet. A flick of his tail sent her flying, tumbling, crashing, bleeding. His voice was still everywhere. “This is these folks’ fight. I’m just their chosen vengeance.”
Wood and stone melted before Fury’s song as she blasted herself free of rubble. Demijohn waited, his body arranged in a pyramid of coils, his head a swaying, hypnotic pendulum. Coreeane’s dead voiced their pain through the undying flicker of cold green flames, a paralyzing chorus of whispers. Demijohn tensed as Fury emerged, her hair covered in dust. She held up a trembling hand to shield herself against him but dropped it to clutch her stomach as she doubled over and collapsed, consumed by the cries and sobs pouring from the flames.
“I can’t shut them out. Demijohn, I can’t shut them out! They’re crying out for me! What happened? Why is there so much sorrow here?”
“I can show you better than I can tell you,” he said. He raised his long neck. Soft noises, like gulps in reverse, came from beneath his scales. He dipped his head, opened his mouth, and a distended, glowing orb rolled from his tongue across the soil, not stopping until it brushed against Fury’s knee. Okima’s eye was filled with a deathly green glow, and still warm to the touch. A gentle rhythm pulsed from it, like the weakest of heartbeats.
“Go ahead,” Demijohn chided. His form had deflated and Fury realized: it really was hatred that had kept him going, hatred that kept the embers of his power stoked. Without it, he was lessened. But still strong. Fury didn’t relax her guard. Instead, she bent before Okima’s Eye, only intending to take a sip of the sorrow buried within. But as she opened herself up to it, visions swarmed her, dug their claws into her mind and latched on tight.
Fury rode Okima as she walked through a field, backed by an entire cadre of her boys including Two-Son and Tomcat. Blades hung at their hips, clattering loosely as they marched. Fury/Okima looked down at her hands, each fully five fingered. One hand gripped a longkife, sure and heavy.
Coreeane Four Way came into view and the cadre melted into the trees. Fury/Okima signaled the men to spread out, then rose from the tall gra
ss and drew her longknife. The promise of violence flooded her mouth, vibrated through her legs and belly in the sweetest rush of pain as she bellowed, announcing her presence to the assembled people standing before the Coreeane Four Way. Her fear was a thing that Fury could taste, oily and sour.
The conjureman, elderly and ashen, met them on the southbound road.
“Go away from here. These people called me to protect them from your consuming. They don’t want to be a part of this new empire you’re building. They’ve been just fine living here on their own, away from all of your murdering and greed.”
Fury/Okima charged the conjureman, knocked him down, and stepped over him. All around, her boys whipped their blades free, all the cold steel rasping with icy indifference. Fury/Okima could smell the blood already.
“If they won’t join us, they’ll join their ancestors!” Fury/Okima thundered. Her boys took to the slaughter with a butcher’s glee.
Before Fury/Okima could cut down her first, she was knocked stumbling backward. Something sat on her chest and she lashed out, fist striking flesh as tough as an old grudge. Retaliatory blows rocked her, exploded in her head, shoulders, chest. Fury/Okima fell, rolled through the grass, gained her feet, longknife bared. The old conjureman stood close enough to spit on, too far away to cut.
“I’m gonna slice you up real thin.” She snarled. Her breath was rage.
The conjure man, by contrast, was calm. “You won’t. In fact, you’ll never see this place again.”
“I’m here now!” Fury/Okima threw her arms out, walked a wide, bragging circle. “You couldn’t keep me away before, and I ain’t going nowhere now.”
Then the conjure man was gone.
For a moment—just a moment—a primordial fear slithered up Fury/Okima’s shin bones. The conjure man was gone, and what stood in his place? An ancient serpent, winged, horned and fanged. The promise of flaming death. Fury/Okima, to her credit, tightened her ass and prepared to die blade-first.
Troy L Wiggins - [BCS276 S01] - Fury at the Crossroads (html) Page 2