“There is no choice,” Papa Bois said. He tried to move away from Mama D’Leau and stand on his own feet. Malik spotted a shadow looming in the doorway. He moved to intercept, but it was too late.
Victor charged into Papa Bois’s side, knocking him to the floor and toppling Mama D’Leau with him.
“It’s your kind that caused all this,” Victor said. He was soaked to the skin and breathed hard, as if he had taken a difficult climb.
“They are helping us,” Dru said.
“Cause a problem just to fix it?” Victor said with a laugh. He got to his feet and wiped spittle from his mouth.
Dru walked up to him. “Didn’t you run off? Maybe you should keep running.” Her eyes widened, as if she was surprised at her own words. She looked for her mother in the crowd. Mrs. Rootsingh cocked an eyebrow and nodded firmly. Dru turned to Victor again. “Back off!”
Malik stood at Dru’s side, and Bouki came up next to him.
Victor’s eyebrows rose, but his jaw was a hard line. He took a step back and lowered his head like a bull about to charge. He narrowed his eyes. “Get out of the way. You don’t know what you’re doing.” He swiped the three of them aside, pushing them into Papa Bois as the jumbie tried to pick himself up.
Papa Bois stumbled backward. Mama D’Leau caught him, but her head tie came undone in the scuffle. It unraveled, along with her braided hair, spilling to the floor. Her opal rolled out with her unfurling hair and fell to the ground. It wobbled out of the cloth and shone like a huge drop of water that contained bits of coral and seaweed.
Mama D’Leau gasped and reached for it as Victor’s eyes became cruel and his mouth widened with pleasure. They both scrambled for the stone, but Malik dove under them, trying to cover it with his body. Before he got to it, Mama D’Leau knocked it out of the way, and the stone skidded into the crowd, bounding off someone’s foot and spinning into the shadows.
Mama D’Leau dropped to her knees. Victor shoved his way through people. Bouki and Dru went after Victor, but Malik turned when he heard a soft thud behind him.
Mama D’Leau writhed in anguish as her legs fused and became scaly under her skirt, and her body lengthened.
Papa Bois reached for Mama D’Leau, but she turned away, shielding her face with her hands. He moved more slowly and scooped her up in his arms. His stick fell away and he tried to steady himself on his goat’s legs.
Malik tapped Papa Bois’s leg and looked up at him.
“She has to get into the rain,” Papa Bois said.
Pierre and Hugo turned to help the jumbies.
“The opal,” Mama D’Leau cried. “You must get it.”
“You have to let it go, love,” Papa Bois said.
“Just that,” she said. “I have to be the one to let it go. Otherwise is all for nothing.”
As Pierre and Hugo took Mama D’Leau’s lengthening, undulating body out of the building, Malik looked back and found Victor in the crowd.
27
Determination
Corinne had the feeling she was being followed, but she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t even turn and look. There was no time. Every lightning strike hit the mountain now, shaking loose larger and larger rocks. Each time, Corinne pressed against the side of the mountain for protection, but the rocks still hit her. Larger ones left bruises that made each of Corinne’s movements ache. Sharper ones left scratches that burned in the rain. But Huracan wouldn’t stop, so neither would she.
28
Race for the Stone
Dru tracked Victor through the crowd, watching as he pushed, shoved, and stepped on anyone in his way. His head moved in every direction, his gaze scanning the ground. He hadn’t spotted the opal yet. The boys were also searching. They had him outnumbered. It was Dru’s only relief.
She hopped over bodies and crawled under limbs, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rock before Victor did. She was to his right when she heard him grunt with satisfaction and her heart sank.
Victor bent down and Dru hurtled herself at him.
She knocked him off his feet and sent him crashing into Malik, who groaned under the fisherman’s weight.
“Don’t let him go!” Dru shouted.
Malik wrapped his legs around Victor’s arm and his little hands around his head.
“Get off!” Victor growled.
“You get off my brother!” Bouki hollered.
Dru spotted the stone, shining like the sea. She got to her knees and crawled to it, grabbing it just as Victor caught her ankles and dragged her across the floor.
“Let go of my child!” Mrs. Rootsingh slapped Victor across the face and Bouki charged into Victor’s side.
“What are you doing to these children?” Aunty Lu cried, coming up behind Victor and hemming him in between herself and Mrs. Rootsingh.
“She is going to help that jumbie,” Victor said. “I don’t want to hurt your child. I want to stop her from helping the jumbie that’s hurting us all.”
“Which jumbie is that?” Mrs. Rootsingh asked. “The one who helped get everyone to safety up here in this village?”
“The one who saved all the children from the lagoon?” Mrs. Chow piped up.
“What did that jumbie do to you?” Aunty Lu asked.
Victor tried to back away, but there was nowhere for him to go. Everyone glared at him, waiting for an answer.
Then Mrs. Chow dropped her eyes and looked around her. She turned pale. “Where is Marlene?”
29
A Little Help
The peak of the mountain had been blasted into a flat surface covered in grayish mud. Corinne scrambled to the top. The ground beneath her was still warm from the last lightning strike. She felt its energy surging up through her feet and all through her body.
Now all she needed to do was turn.
And rise up to Huracan.
And stop him.
Fear muted every sensation as one word consumed her: how.
“Do you need help?” a small voice asked.
Marlene stood near the edge, the blue ribbon in her hair plastered to her head from the rain. She held her hands behind her back, clearly hiding something from Corinne.
“Marlene! You could have gotten hurt.”
“You too, Corinne,” she said, frowning. She looked down the side. “I’m a good climber.”
“It isn’t safe here. You need to go back,” Corinne said.
“But you need help,” Marlene insisted. She grinned and pulled her hands to the front. In them was the large calabash. “Who will take care of your skin?”
Corinne sighed.
“Go on.” Marlene turned her head to the side and squeezed her eyes shut. “Take it off.” Then she opened one eye to peek.
“I don’t know how,” Corinne admitted.
Marlene’s hands dropped. She turned the calabash in her fingers. “How did it happen before?” she asked.
“I don’t know how,” Corinne said. “I was just angry, and then it happened.”
“You’re not angry anymore?” Marlene asked.
“Yes! I am!”
“Okay, then,” Marlene said. She held the calabash out. “Go on.”
30
The Last Goodbye
Papa Bois knelt in the mud as Hugo and Pierre laid Mama D’Leau in the wet grass. The rain seemed to soothe her, and her tail continued to extend outward, growing longer and larger as they stepped away. She moaned in pain.
“It never hurt her to turn before,” Dru said. “Not when I saw it happen.”
“She has been human too long this time,” Papa Bois said. “It weakens us. It is easier when we do it together. But alone . . .” He shook his head.
“What do you mean?” Dru asked.
“We made a choice to become human together, so we could be forever close. B
ut I had to turn back without her. My leaving her had consequences. We knew that. She wanted me to stay with her. Now, she suffers. Because of me.”
“Can’t you both just turn back?” Dru asked.
“Only once more,” the jumbie said. “Then never again.”
Dru handed the stone to him.
Papa Bois took the stone to Mama D’Leau as she lay in the grass, her tail flicking in the mud. “Look, cherie,” he said.
Mama D’Leau wrapped her fingers around the stone and Papa Bois’s fingers. She seemed to relax. “Merci,” she replied. “So is time, then?”
“Oui,” Papa Bois said.
Mama D’Leau moved her tail under her and got upright. Then the two of them went to the edge of the village, to the cliff.
Dru followed with Pierre and Hugo. Each put a hand on Dru’s shoulder as they neared the ledge. Lightning flashed and Dru saw the same water, black with pitch, that she and Corinne had splashed into when they took the basket down the side of the mountain.
Papa Bois wrapped his hands around Mama D’Leau’s with the opal safe inside her palms.
“What if it doesn’t work?” she asked.
Papa Bois smiled. “Have confidence, cherie.”
Mama D’Leau straightened her body. “Together?”
“Together,” Papa Bois said.
They pulled back and threw the opal into the air. It flipped end on end, wobbling slightly, and then arced down and disappeared in the darkness.
“Let the pitch keep it,” Papa Bois said.
“Maybe another time, we could—” Mama D’Leau began.
“Maybe.” Papa Bois held Mama D’Leau in his arms for a moment. “You understand what she meant?” he asked.
“About being we true selves?” She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“She is a smart girl.”
“The witch was right about her,” Mama D’Leau said. “She go fix this whole mess.” The jumbie pulled away. Her copper body and glistening tail shone in the lightning. She moved even closer to the edge, coiling her tail underneath her. Then she sprang backward with her tail whipping after her, hurtling in an arc down to the black water below.
31
The Fire Within
Marlene opened her other eye and turned to Corinne. “Well?”
“Maybe I’m not angry enough,” Corinne said.
“What were you angry about before?” Marlene asked.
“I was mad because I had tried everything to help and nothing did. I was mad because Severine hurt me. It still hurts now.” Corinne rubbed a dark bruise on her arm. “I was mad that I knew anything about jumbies at all, which wouldn’t have happened in the first place if Bouki and Malik didn’t tie my mama’s necklace to an agouti!” Corinne held the leather-wrapped stone at her neck. “I was mad that I hurt my papa. I was mad that my friends were taken and hidden underwater and I had to make a bargain with Mama D’Leau to save them. I was mad that people still look at me as if I’m something to fear. I was mad because I was tired.” She took a deep breath. “I was mad at everything!”
Marlene bit her lip and set the calabash down. She came to Corinne and hugged her. Then she looked into the sky, shielding her eyes from the rain with the palm of her hand. “The lightning stopped,” she said.
Corinne looked up too. “It did.”
“How come?” Marlene asked.
“Even Huracan knows I’m not a threat,” Corinne said, wiping her eyes and nose with the back of her hand.
Marlene got to her feet and grabbed a handful of rocks, pelting them into the air. “Stupid god!” she screamed. “Dumb, stinky, mean god!”
“Marlene!”
“What?”
The sky darkened just above them as if the clouds had suddenly become thicker.
“Marlene,” Corinne said again. The girls grabbed each other’s hands and backed away, but they soon came to the edge of the plateau that had been blasted out of the peak. The thicket of clouds grew larger and closer. Light flickered within it, like something striking a match, and a thin thread of lightning shot out from the center, arcing straight toward the girls. They dove to the ground, letting go of each other’s hands, and the lightning missed its mark, striking the ground near Marlene’s feet, sending up a spray of rocks and mud.
Marlene gasped and stumbled backward. Corinne reached to catch Marlene before she fell over the edge. The little girl’s eyes widened, and then she grinned. The hand Corinne reached out was pure fire.
32
Let We See
The sulfur water of the pitch lake soothed the last aches in Mama D’Leau’s body the moment she splashed down. She sensed the opal sinking into the thick pitch, being swallowed in its depths. In all likelihood she would never find her stone again, but never was a real long time, eh? Who was to say?
Mama D’Leau had other things to do, though. It was too dark to see, so she tasted the water to find what she needed—a disturbance in the flow, where one current strained against all the rest. It wasn’t hard to find. She put all her energy into reaching it, and as she swam, she laughed.
You think you can hold me hostage in mih own water? she said. Well, let we see now.
33
A Place to Hide
The tiny, scuttling thing that looked like a tangle of branches had followed along in the trail of people as they fled for the mountains. She had fitted herself inside any crack and crevice, bending and folding and making herself as small as she could to hide, but the tide kept rising, and water seeped everywhere. Bolts of lightning cracked the ground and thunder roared in the sky.
Nowhere was safe for a thing as brittle as she was.
Severine sniffed the ground and found the weak odor of her sister’s child, nearly washed away by the rain. She traced the child’s scent to the mountain and felt the firmness of the rocks under her twig-thin fingers.
Here was a place to hide, a place that could protect.
Another bolt of lightning hit the top and exploded. Rocks came tumbling down the sides, and Severine’s twig body pressed up against the wall of the mountain like a stack of branches, waiting for the shaking to stop. It was a while before the rocks reached all the way to where she was, but when they did, they hurtled against her thin body and ripped away something that cracked like bone and wood.
Severine cried out, but the booming blast of thunder covered the sound.
34
Cloud Fight
Corinne pulled Marlene to safety and turned toward the sky. She burst through a cloud thick with rain, hovering just above it. She wanted to call out, but didn’t quite know what to say. Instead, she waited.
She felt the air pressure change from a loose breeze to her left, to something denser and more pressing. She turned to face it.
A gust of wind exploded against her body and pushed her away, sending her spinning into the wet darkness. She righted herself and concentrated. The air was gathering again, this time at her back. Before it came to its full strength, she shot upward and the gust caught only her leg, tossing her foot over head like a pinwheel. She used another pocket of air to pull herself to a stop and lowered herself gently, finding a spot of thick, wet cloud to rest.
Wherever she went, the mist around her evaporated, burned away by her fire.
The air pressure mounted again, squeezing her like pincers. Her fire sputtered. She flattened her body and slipped out of its grasp, sliding along the misty top of a cloud, boiling it away as she went. Just as quickly, the cloud thickened again as if she had not caused any harm to it at all.
Corinne closed her eyes and tried to sense Huracan himself, not just the blows he dealt. Once again, the air pressure gathered, but lightning crackled beneath it.
Corinne’s eyes flashed open as the light sparked just beneath her body. She hurtled herself to the right. The lightning shot ou
t, reaching like thin, gnarled fingers, each one trying to catch her on the sharp edge of its nail.
The air electrified and popped against her flesh, throwing every nerve into anguish. The popping stopped and a cold gust chilled her to the bone. She dropped several feet until a cushion of air buoyed her back up. She could almost see the cloud tightening above her, almost feel the knuckle of it readying to take another swing. She shifted her weight to another, lighter current that would take her away from Huracan’s fist.
The strike blew past Corinne, but the cold wind it drew cut against her raw skin and nearly put out her flame. The chill numbed her senses, stupefying her long enough for Huracan to land a blow. Corinne was knocked back and vibrated heat until Huracan’s mist burned away, forming a black hole in the center of his fist.
Thunder gargled with anger all around her. She covered her ears, but hated the sound of her own raw, wet, squelching body rubbing against itself. She pulled away, feeling for Huracan’s next move.
35
The Roots
Papa Bois sank beneath the mountain, feeling the scrape of every stone, every moist clump of dirt, and the twisting, tangled roots of every plant brush past his skin. He buried himself deep and then felt for all the roots of all the plants through the island.
They all reached for him, sending tendrils twining against one another, wrapping themselves like hair, like fingers, entangled.
They held together until Papa Bois was more root than creature, until all that seemed to be left of him were the eyes that pierced through the ground, seeing past the rocks and dirt and plants, through to the water that thrashed around the island.
36
Fighting the Sea
The current was riotous and unwieldy. Mama D’Leau turned within it like a piece of rotten wood. The mermaids had arrived only to be tossed about in the undertow created by Huracan’s winds.
Mama D’Leau refused to be pinned down again. She whipped her tail, cracking it against the current, trying to bend it to her will, but she flailed in the water and had to grab on to the edge of a piece of broken coral to steady herself. The coral cut into her hand but she didn’t let go. As blood darkened the water, Mama D’Leau sensed the smallest of the mermaids trying to reach her.
The Jumbie God's Revenge Page 14