Tamarind reached Playa Tamarindo and quickly released the cloaking spell guarding her horde of human artifacts. She ignored the pile of clothes and hair ornaments carefully tucked inside and snatched the moonstone Goddess up. There wasn’t much time and she had no idea if she’d mastered the necessary spell from the midwife’s book. Clutching it to her chest, she closed her eyes and murmured. She squatted, still murmuring and touched the seawater that surged restlessly toward her. A thrill ran through her fingers. On impulse, she popped up and hurried over to the scrub along the edge of the shore. Squatting again, she dug away at the roots of the closest low-growing bush and stuck her fingertips into the earth. Again she murmured. A new power tasted her skin and tickled her hand, unfamiliar and rich. When it flowed through her veins, it had none of the wild impatience of Mother Sea. Rather, it filled her with the dark, steady scent of the cavern where she’d gained her legs.
This new power stayed with her while she climbed away from the beach, her calf muscles straining against the incline and the soles of her feet aching from the stones and uneven ground. In the cavern of her fist, the moonstone glowed as if lit from within and the wires embossed themselves on her palm. She hummed a bit, deep and low, and several clicks skittered across her palate. Overhead, the flat gray sky waited, impervious and implacable. As she crested the top of the hill behind Ana’s house, rising winds waylaid her, nearly knocking her off her feet and back down the hidden path.
Her hair fluttered into her face and then two arms wrapped around her, one around her mouth and the other around her torso. She dropped the Goddess. Fingers from the hand over her mouth pressed hard into her nostrils, asphyxiating her. From somewhere off to her right, she heard a hoarse shout and then the pulsating of her blood drowned out all other sounds. She squirmed and kicked a heel into flesh and bone. A kaleidoscope of vivid colors whirled across her vision before disappearing into soft, soundless charcoal.
When her senses returned, she found her arms wrenched behind her and her wrists tied tightly together. Her ankles too were tied together and she lay on her side in the back of a moving vehicle. A gag bit the corners of her mouth and choked her dry tongue; some rough cloth covered her eyes. Beneath her, unidentifiable objects dug into her side and the reek of old fried foods, the bitter tang of stale beer, and the slightly sweetish scent of something else mingled together and assailed her. A sharp ache threatened to split her forehead and nausea burbled in her gut. In her current condition, so far from sea and unable even to manipulate the fine drops of water in the air around her with her fingers, she had no hope of calling on any magic, let alone producing a cloaking spell for herself.
Gusts of wind rocked the vehicle and a male voice swore in Spanish. The voice sounded familiar, but her headache interfered with her ability to concentrate. She waited, trying to hum around the gag, but her chest refused to expand against the restraint of her arms. Just when she thought that she might vomit into the gag and choke, the vehicle veered and abruptly halted. The driver opened his door and got out; whatever they’d ridden in rocked in reflex. He swung open the door near her feet and cool, humid air caressed her soles.
Her captor leaned in and caressed her upper thigh, murmuring unintelligibly. Tamarind desperately soaked up as much of the moisture in the air around her feet as she could. Still, she felt parched.
Father, help me. The thought formed before she recognized it.
When the unknown abductor tugged her toward him, her feet touched the earth and again she felt the strange power flow through her soles. She urged it to fill her and something responded to her silent plea, swirling through her chest and into the far reaches of her mind. Almost she felt as if she could understand it. Seconds later, he launched her up and over his shoulder and her stomach heaved dangerously.
John. Why didn’t you come for me?
The wind wrestled with her abductor as he walked and he cursed again. It snatched his words away and Tamarind sensed a thread of anger in its swift fingers—anger separate from the passion brewing the hurricane. The new power in her blood sang in response. Tamarind slumped against the shoulder he carried her over and waited.
He stopped and fiddled with something in front of him. She tentatively stretched a toe behind her. Her bare feet didn’t recognize the smooth, hard surface. Abruptly he opened a door and the wind howled past them as he stepped forward. Tamarind sensed the room around them before he turned and pushed the door shut, leaning against it for a long moment. In the sudden quiet, his breathing sounded harsh and uneven. After a moment, he pulled her from his shoulder and she tumbled onto the floor, hitting her head and bruising her back. When he spoke this time, she recognized the voice. Its caress chilled her.
“Ah, mi cariño. That was muy dificil. But now we’re alone, I can assure you that it was worth it.”
Jesus knelt over her and rolled her onto her side. Then she felt the cold blade he wielded as he cut the bindings on her ankles. Pain prickled through her feet along with the rush of blood. He cut the blindfold away from her eyes, dragging the flat of the blade across her cheek as she looked at him for the first time in more than a month.
He clicked his tongue and shook his head slightly. “So wide, your eyes, mi dulcinea. Perhaps you are surprised to see me after all this time spent ignoring me. Perhaps you guess I have heard the stories you have been telling about me and you are afraid.”
The gag wedged Tamarind’s tongue back into her throat, which was so dry that she could only shake her head.
“Ah, mi reina, you pretended innocence all those weeks of turtle watching. Innocence when that gringo looked at you lustfully every night on the beach, innocence when I took you dancing and tried to touch you. But you weren’t innocent when you returned and led me to Playa Melones to fuck, and you aren’t innocent now. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
As he spoke, he used the tip of the knife to toy with several strands of hair near her left ear.
“Even when you came back that night, you wouldn’t let me touch your hair.” His voice sounded husky, strange. “Your hair. It’s almost alive. You must be so proud of it. Too proud, perhaps.”
The blade caught and tugged at the strands for a moment.
“There are some that say you are del mar, but I, I say you are nothing but a foolish woman.”
He held up the severed strands for her to see, watching her eyes as he lifted them to his nose and inhaled. He dropped the strands onto her face and laughed as she blinked to clear hair from her vision. She was still blinking against the scratchy filaments rubbing against her eyeballs when he leaned over. Even so, she caught the bright flash of steel through the tangle of hair against her cheek.
Nineteen
Marilyn battered St. Croix, only 65 miles away, throughout the afternoon on its way north to the other U. S. Virgin Islands, St. John and St. Thomas, and Culebra. John, driving Valerie’s Jeep north on Route 251, refused to turn the radio on and listen to the reports from Miami. He met almost no one on the way to Ana’s small house; only a single black car turned east at the intersection of 251 and 250, away from Dewey. Many Culebrenses had fled their homes for the safety of the shelter built with relief money after Hugo had ripped through the island in 1989. Some huddled in the largest public buildings: the school and its library, the clinic and ferry terminal, and the two churches. Most of the owners of the guesthouses, including Valerie, had opened their doors to anyone looking for a place to hide.
John, his elbow propped on the window frame, looked out at the landscape as he drove. The treetops danced against the buttermilk sky and tired shrubs rustled, imitating the constant shushing of the ocean enclosing Culebra. Under a stand of palm trees on the east side of 251, a herd of wild horses huddled. The whites of their eyes showed even from a distance. Nothing else moved, on land or in sky. Valerie told John that morning that the seabirds had risen in dark sheets from their nesting grounds over the past few days and streamed away to the northeast and safety. The air, heavy and hot, s
melled like kindling and dust—overriding the faint metallic scent of the ocean.
In the silence, he heard Tamarind’s voice, clear and musical. Anguish rippled its edges.
John slowed down and looked around, half expecting to see Tamarind sitting next to him, her bare feet hanging out the window and her corkscrew hair filling the cabin. But no mischievous eyes peeked back at him, no fingers tapped in time with the radio on the seat beside him. Instead, an image of Tamarind hunched under the low-hanging night sky when he’d read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to her filled his mind. Her rounded shoulders burned themselves on his soul’s retina.
He’d just reached the access road to Tamarindo Estates when a dented blue Pontiac crested the hill and roared toward him. He almost ignored it, but then he caught sight of Ana’s wild white hair as the driver turned south onto 251. Quickly he turned the Jeep around and followed after the speeding car, alternately banging on the horn and flashing the high beams. The driver didn’t notice him until he’d turned onto 250 and even then he refused to stop, only slowing down enough for John to come along his left side. John leaned over while driving and jerked down the passenger window.
“Hey, you, Ana! Where’s Tamarind!”
She looked at him. The contrast between her brilliant blue eye and the cloudy left one silenced the howl of the wind and the rumble of the two engines. In her look, she subsumed life and death. When she smiled, a chill split his cranium and discharged along his spine. Something gleamed on her breast.
John swerved the Jeep toward the Pontiac.
The driver swore in Spanish as the Jeep rammed his car and pulled hard on the wheel to veer away from John.
“Pull over, amigo!”
The driver darted glances at John and pulled ahead of him, but John punched the accelerator and swerved in front of the Pontiac. The old car went right and skidded to a halt. The driver jumped out, leaving his door open, and ran around the back of the Jeep where John met him.
“Qué te pasa?” The man’s hoarse voice cut across the wind. He punched John’s shoulder with the heel of his hand.
“No hablo español.”
John brushed past the man, knocking him into the Jeep’s trunk as he did so. He’d almost reached the Pontiac’s right taillight when the man grabbed his left arm and spun him around. The first punch landed on his chin, but the second one John blocked. He grabbed a handful of hibiscus flowers and pulled the man closer to him.
“Look, I bet you comprende ingles muy bien. So listen up: I need to talk to Ana and I’m either gonna do it with you standing or with you flat on your back. If you’re in such a hurry to get somewhere that you won’t stop unless someone runs you off the road, I’d think you’d want me to leave you able to drive when I’m done with her. Got it?”
The other man’s eyes darted from side to side as John spoke, but when John finished, he nodded once sharply. John pushed him away and the man staggered into the Pontiac. He didn’t move, but watched John make his way around to the passenger side where Ana waited, smoking a clove cigarette. She looked at John, the cigarette held between her lips with the first two fingers of her right hand. She dragged on the cigarette and exhaled into the wind, which snatched the fragrant blue smoke and whisked it into oblivion.
“Where is she?”
She shrugged.
In the eerie bright overcast, John glimpsed a Goddess figure on a black cord around her neck. The stone in its belly winked as she moved. He reached into the window and snatched the cigarette out of her fingers and flung it away.
“I know you know where she is.”
“La mujer del mar?” The wind tore at the driver’s words, flinging them at John’s head like darts.
John looked across the front seat of the Pontiac. The man bent now and looked back at him from the other side.
“Sí.”
“Jesus la sacó.”
“What’d he say about Jesus?” John held his face near Ana’s wrinkled one.
“He said that Jesus took her.” Her fingers dropped to the Goddess around her neck and lifted it. Almost immediately, she dropped it back onto her shirt as if it burned her. “She wanted to be with him during the hurricane.”
“No.” The other man frowned. “No es la verdad. Jesus la agarró.” He mimed putting his arms around someone and pulling her with him.
Ana scowled and pinched her lips together.
“Where did you get that?” John pointed to the Goddess.
Ana looked down at her chest. “I found it.”
“Give it to me.”
She snapped her face up and looked at him. “No.”
John ignored her eyes and stared instead at the glistening wire-wrapped stone in the figure’s belly. Suddenly he reached into the window, grasped the Goddess, and yanked. Ana yelped. The black cord broke at the juncture with the figure, which remained in John’s fist. Ana screeched and lunged, but John pulled his arm to his side and stepped away from the Pontiac. She released the door latch and began to swing the door open.
“Amigo, don’t you have someplace to go?” John backed away from the Pontiac.
“Ay!” The man opened his car door and slid into the driver’s seat. “Carme! Tenemos que ir ahora! No tenemos tiempo para esta tontería!”
Ana paused, her right leg outside the open car door and her hand grasping the open window. She looked at Jaime and then back at John, who now stood near the rear bumper of the Pontiac. In this dark frame, she seemed shrunken, contained. The wind howled around her, tousling her hair, and nipping at her skirt hem. At its sudden ferocity, John realized that it had stilled during their conversation. Without saying another word, she tucked her leg back inside the car’s cavity and slammed the door. Its rattle underscored her silence.
John ran back to the Jeep and jumped into the driver’s seat. In its close interior, he brought the Goddess up where he could study it. He’d seen several dozen of these figures lying about Valerie’s kitchen and at The Mermaid’s Purse. This one appeared to be identical to all those others. Absently, he rubbed the stone with his thumb. After a moment, he set the figure on the dash behind the wheel and started the Jeep. He pulled out onto 250 without looking and drove, only vaguely aware of the road in front of him. Around him, the empty sky appeared a hazy bright citrine; where he could see the harbor on his right through the dark fringe of mangrove and thorny scrub, the sickly tint contrasted with the dull aquamarine of the seawater. The road hugged the ragged coastline, wending south and north along its many coves and channels as if nature would not be hurried. As he drove, the storm held its breath.
He’d nearly passed the Wildlife Refuge Office when he saw the black car that he’d seen a few minutes earlier parked on its far side. Teresa, the wildlife manager, drove a green Chevy. John braked and turned, cutting a wide swath across the dusty verge as the Jeep skidded toward the driveway leading to the office. He pulled in front of the low concrete building and shifted into park. As he did, he realized that his breath came in gasps. For a moment, his vision dimmed as his chest constricted and the heat enveloped him in its wet wool. Then he managed to wrench open the driver’s side door. Overhead, the sky had darkened and the wind picked up again.
John started to get out of the Jeep when a glint caught the corner of his eye. He stretched forward and snagged the Goddess figure from the dash and pocketed it. He slid his hand into his pocket and his fingers found the smooth gemstone. Its warmth calmed him and his breathing eased. He walked to the office door, his eyes squinting to catch any sign of movement. Plywood covered the windows and he heard nothing.
He rapped on the door with his left hand. When he got no response, he tried the doorknob. It was locked. He backed up and rammed the door with his left shoulder. The Goddess lying against his palm thrummed as if alive. A moment later, the door burst open.
Overhead, a fluorescent light hummed, its bright light dazzling him after the near-twilight outside. In front of him stood an old metal desk, large and sharp-cornered and dun-c
olored like the decade in which it was manufactured. Forms and documents fluttered around the small room as the wind swirled in behind him, searching for something or someone in the stuffy space. On the wall behind the desk hung an institutional wall clock like the kind he’d seen throughout childhood at school. Underneath it stood two old metal filing cabinets, gray and impervious. The sharp scent of burned coffee mingled with the smell of dusty carpets, stale perfume, and body odor.
John took a few steps around the end of the desk and stopped. On the floor before him lay Tamarind, a gag in her mouth and her arms awkwardly wrenched underneath her. Her t-shirt had been sliced open down the middle and her breasts lay exposed. Other than the ravaged t-shirt, she wore only a pair of pink underwear. She stared at him, unseeing. The pupils of her eyes had widened so much that the ultramarine of her irises had nearly disappeared. She looked odd. For a few wrenching heartbeats, John couldn’t comprehend why. And then he understood: her head had been shorn of its signature tresses. The manic copper curls lay forlornly in severed clumps about her on the floor and scattered across her chest. Long strands sprinkled her face and blurred her features.
“Tamarind!”
He crossed the distance between them without being aware that he moved and sank down on his knees at her side. She blinked several times and made no sound. Gently, he rotated her head until he could pick at the knot in the gag, but he couldn’t untie it. The bindings on her wrist had also been tied too tightly for him to manage with his fingertips. While he struggled with the knots, Tamarind lay still and silent. John sat back and grunted, running his fingers beneath his hair and raking his nails into the scalp. As he did so, the Goddess in his pocket burned his thigh through his pants and he yelped.
He dislodged the wire figure from the confines of his pocket and held it by the head away from him. Tamarind slowly turned her face towards it. Awareness precipitated in her eyes after the trajectory of her gaze intersected the gem’s soft beam and her pupils shrank back to normal. Her eyes slid up to John’s face and held his.
An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant Page 22