Everyone froze, and the trio inhaled sharply. Bombardier’s fixed gaze conveyed his respect.
Zinsa lay back, unmoving on the ground, and Efe fell beside her. She ignored her own shattered wrist and, lifting Zinsa’s limp head, probed her wounds and wailed.
Bombardier yanked the spear from his leg, releasing a high arcing spurt of blood. The big man struggled to his feet and lumbered a few steps forward, battered by wind and fatigue. He moved in what he hoped was the direction of the red trailer, blood covering his leg and soaking the ground in his wake. He looked back at the Dahomey women soldiers, and for all the barbs they’d exchanged, all the snarls and snipes, he felt no pride at what he had done. They had fought well. He turned away. Dust and dirt blurred his vision, and his legs felt as heavy as felled logs, but through sheer will, he plodded on.
Short of his destination, he fell.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
A RECKONING
The red trailer sat on an incline, reigning over the rest of the trailers like a beast of prey. As Liza marched in the trailer’s direction, the early-evening haze grew shades darker. She cast her gaze up at the sky, took in the roiling dark clouds, seemingly bubbling over like a stew. Fitting. Ishe strolled up beside her, and she met his eyes. The pain there was staggering, but as much as she tried to muster words of forgiveness, they eluded her. Liza was overcome with a mixture of guilt and relief. She hadn’t known if she would have the courage to face Ahiku without him.
She lowered her head and then gasped for breath as a hostile wind picked up, sending the murk scurrying across the sky ahead of an enormous black dust cloud. She had imagined this moment and knew instinctively that this life, that Bacchanal, was about to die. Her steps were unsteady, but she lumbered forward. About ten feet away, the door flew open, and the woman, the demon, alighted gracefully from the red trailer. She was beautiful. Her thick, dark hair fanned out to the sides and back on the wind, her smile sparkling, eyes of ancient evil. It was as if Ahiku swallowed Ishe whole with the look she gave him.
“You would die for her.” Ahiku stalked toward them. “How admirable.”
Liza fought to stand her ground as the wind battered them all. Their clothes rippling in the wind, dust burning her eyes. Behind the demon, on the far horizon, Liza could see the wall of black gloom rumbling toward them. Her stomach clenched, and more than anything, she wanted to turn and bolt. She allowed her eyes to close briefly; she inhaled deeply and fought back the cough that wanted to escape her dust-coated throat. This time, she didn’t need the mantra. Her animals glided effortlessly into her mind as if on a raven’s wings, howling, spitting, clawing.
With them, she felt as impenetrable as an elephant’s herd. When she opened her eyes, she wielded a predatory smile.
Beside Liza, Ishe had apparently made up his own mind about how he wanted things to go, because he shoved her away and sprinted toward Ahiku. The demon spoke a few words that Liza couldn’t understand, and Ishe stopped in his tracks. He turned back to Liza and mouthed the words “I’m sorry” before letting out a bloodcurdling scream and falling to the ground in convulsions. He was turning.
Liza shifted her attention back to Ahiku. “I don’t know what you are and I don’t much care, but you”—Liza waved her hand—“this . . . is about to be over.”
“I beg to differ,” Ahiku said, any traces of humor gone now. “And when I am done with you, I will have your precious Twiggy. Such a brave little spirit.”
Clay emerged from the trailer, and behind him, hand clasped in his, was Twiggy. The child looked perplexed, and when she tried to go to Liza, Clay held her back.
Liza nearly fainted. Her insides turned to liquid panic.
“You won’t lay a hand on her!” she screamed. “And you.” She shot Clay a steely-eyed glare. “How could you?”
Elephant sent Liza an image that horrified her. It was of something inhuman. Both gnarled and sinewy. Part animal, part . . . something else. As soon as Liza embraced the image, Ahiku’s human shell cracked into a million acidic pieces, carried away on miniature tornadoes up into the swirling wind. What was left was a vaguely human figure, still the shape of a woman but a thousand years old, with reddish-brown skin the color of dried blood. Dark amber slits where her eyes should have been. When the figure opened her mouth to shriek her outrage, Liza took an involuntary step backward.
Ishe had turned completely, a mindless hyena once more, and now came to his feet. He darted straight for Clay. But in one swift motion, Clay lifted a revolver, and in that brief, unspeakable moment, everything else fell away. Liza’s hand stretched out; she was deaf to her own horrified screams. Clay fired one shot that blew a hole in Ishe’s chest. He spun and stumbled back in Liza’s direction before he collapsed to the ground and began turning back to his human form.
Liza ran to Ishe and knelt beside him. She touched his face, wishing with everything in her being that the devastation in his chest could be healed. That the life she’d envisioned with him weren’t slipping through her fingers.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he said with a mouth full of blood.
“I forgive you,” Liza said. “You’re free now.” She moved away from Ishe’s body as his life ebbed away.
Ahiku waved a hand and sent Liza hurtling with an ice-cold dagger of blinding pain, but Badger sprang into her mind, and she landed deftly on all fours.
Clay stood over Ishe and dropped the smoking revolver from his hand. Mouth open, no words. Eyes blinking as if he could unsee. Twiggy screamed and stretched out her tiny hands toward Ishe as he lay dying on the ground. Clay’s whole body stiffened with the affront of what he’d done. Clenching his fists, he screamed, “No more!” He shoved Twiggy away from him, and she took off for Liza as Clay swooped up the revolver. He took one shot at Ahiku before she clamped his head between her hands. A flame erupted from his belly and seared him from the inside out. Clay’s charred remains ascended into the storm and disintegrated.
Liza’s eyes bulged in horror as Twiggy struggled toward her. The girl’s little arms tried to shield the bustling wind and dust from her face.
“Twiggy!” Liza shouted.
Ahiku turned toward the child and grinned, a chilling sight. She waved her hands, and Twiggy began moving toward her.
It became difficult to see, the wind picking up even more. The dark cloud that had seemed miles away was nearly upon them. Down the hill, carnies screamed and ran back and forth, seeking shelter, some being carried upward into the storm.
You must accept them. It was as if Oya’s edict had ridden in on the wind and besieged every nerve ending in her body. She was positively bursting with the joy of it. She was of two places. American, born and raised, but her story hadn’t begun here. She was also African, descended from a powerful lineage, a goddess, her grandmother. This was who she was.
Liza screamed as Raven conspired to transform her into the only thing that would give a demon spirit pause—a more powerful spirit. Oya. She felt nearly consumed with a blazing, searing warmth that tingled and burned her skin. It was like she’d put on a pair of eyeglasses that had changed the world. Every hair on her body went stiff with the shock of it. The wind slowed. She blinked at the microscopically tiny dust particles slowly churning before her. Whispers. Children’s voices, too many voices, cried out to her. Liza welcomed the spirit of the African warrior woman into her body. She took a tentative step forward, and it felt like she sailed on a ray of sunlight.
“You!” Ahiku screamed. She tried weaving waving her hands in another intricate pattern and thrusting it forward. Liza, as Oya, simply waved a hand and moved it aside. A tree was unearthed with the power she’d flung its way. Twiggy stopped moving toward the demon and stared, blinking wildly, looking small and vulnerable against the dust.
“She who invokes a storm on her own people cannot prevent her house from destruction.” Liza spoke in her grandmother’s husky baritone. “Release the children and slither on back to the underworld where you belong.”
“Come, Oya,” Ahiku sneered and then urged Liza over with a finger. “Do come on over here and make me.”
“Oh, I’d hoped you wouldn’t make this easy,” Liza crooned.
Oya urged Liza to move, to strike, and she readily obliged. She felt the unfamiliar tug of a leather sheath that hadn’t been there before slung across her body. She sought out the source of the weight resting between her shoulder blades, and her hand landed on a hilt that felt sculpted just for her. The sound of metal pierced the air as she slid the sword from its sheath.
The copper-colored blade shone as if lit by a million unseen candles. It had the heft of iron.
Ahiku traced a claw through the air and conjured an even more horrific version of the skeletal stilt walker that had cornered Liza that one terrifying morning, its bony body exposed, save the red-and-black carnival mask covering its face. The headdress of skulls still covered its head. It tossed a massive blade from hand to hand—that was new.
The stilt walker ran forward, its cadaverous feet churning up the earth. Liza bolted toward it.
She raised the copper blade just as the skeleton swung its own weapon down toward her head. Liza attempted to pull back, readying for another swing, but the stilt walker clasped its other hand over hers.
Searing pain flared where its skeletal fingers touched her skin.
But Oya was with her.
Instead of pressing forward, she backtracked, pulling her opponent toward her and taking it off balance. She wrested out of its grip, and though her hand was blackened, she barely registered the pain.
The skeleton recovered quickly. It came at her again. She parried and swung the blade, taking off one bony arm just below the shoulder. The skeleton had raised the blade with its other hand, and Liza met it. As they struggled against each other, those cursed tiny skulls detached from the headdress and whipped out on her flank.
She clawed at the face and tore off the mask, revealing a grisly skull with a full mouth of blood-darkened teeth. While she had a grip on the creature’s sword-wielding right hand, the tiny skulls worried at her left, snipping and biting. They had taken out several sizable chunks of her flesh before she freed herself.
The copper blade glowed and sang, as if sensing an opening. This time, when she swung, she sawed through the stilt walker’s waist, and it collapsed in a heap of charred bones.
“They were right about you. Your village elders,” Liza said, channeling Oya. “They knew you were a creature of the underworld from the beginning. You did not willingly march into the flames; they chose you. And if you’d stayed there where you belonged, no one would have mourned your ending, but true evil knows no shame. You had to claw your way back into the land of the living. And you were willing to sacrifice children to extend your miserable existence.”
“Where were you when their bellies were empty? Their parents drunk and beating them senseless?” Ahiku said. “Your moral sentimentality is as boring as it is hypocritical. You are no better than I. You have more offspring than you can keep up with and more than one husband, to boot. A leopard will never be pronounced innocent if the judge is a goat. And to my keen eye, dear Oya, you do have the look of a goat.”
Liza was incensed. She sailed through the wind, vaguely aware that a shard of her power had cocooned her little sister in a bubble of safety.
Ahiku conjured again, this time opening a chasm in the earth. Hellion hands and wails emerged, grasping at Liza, but she cut through them with ease.
She reached Ahiku and, with Oya, set upon the demon with a vengeance. At the anxious sound of an untold number of little heartbeats, Oya’s rage soared.
Liza struck out at Ahiku again and again, amassing a spattering of cuts on the demon’s body, but Ahiku proved a commendable opponent. The demon came down hard with a crushing blow to Liza’s forearm, dislodging the copper sword. It clattered to the ground.
But Liza didn’t need it. She wrapped her hands around the demon’s throat. Ahiku locked on to her, sinking her claws into her flesh.
They grappled endlessly, neither gaining ground. Where Liza was ripped open, Oya healed. Then Liza gave in to the storm bucking to erupt inside her. She unleashed it.
It tore and ripped at Ahiku’s body, exposing her chest . . . she had to open it! Oya’s power coursing through her, Liza plunged her hands into the demon’s chest and, with Badger’s strength, cracked open her rib cage, exposing a barely human heart that reeked of rot. Oya streamed from Liza’s body in a golden mist that spun into Ahiku and emerged with the souls of all the screaming children she had consumed. Liza was thrown backward and looked on in sickly satisfying horror as the children’s souls set upon Ahiku the way she had once set upon them. When they were done feasting, Oya led them away on the wind, and there was nothing left of the demon but a few colorful rags.
Liza ran toward Twiggy, who stood with her arms out. As she reached her little sister and scooped her up and into her arms, the massive dark cloud of the last dust storm to hit Oklahoma swooped down on the G. B. Bacchanal Carnival.
EPILOGUE
A raven flew through the air and alighted on the branch of a blighted tree. Sunlight warmed like a soft golden blanket. The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was coming awake in the distance. On the light breeze, a banner announcing a carnival floated to and fro. A wheel rolled along as if it were still carrying the weight of a trailer and then fell on its side.
Where a red trailer had once stood, only scorched earth remained, the fringe already dotted with fresh sprouts of weeds. The rest, flattened grass and trodden ground, a clutch of popcorn kernels.
Farther out into the countryside, on a boulder that a passerby might miss, a girl and her little sister sat panting and spent, huddled together at the feet of their mother, a weary pygmy marmoset, and an ancient African man who, during his lifetime, had gone by the name Ago.
Liza sat in a rocking chair holding her granddaughter, Mia. She’d told her the story of a nearly all-Negro carnival during the 1930s. The animals, the people, the colorful characters. Through the wide picture window, a palm tree danced on the Jamaican breeze. And birds sang their songs.
Liza had a room in the May Pen countryside house her daughter, Kala, shared with her family. Twiggy lived in the big city—Kingston—under the watchful eye of their mother, Ella. The shopkeeper had gotten it all wrong, or maybe Papa had lied to protect her. But Ella had been very much alive, and Oya guided them back together after so many years apart. Though Ella was still given to spells of silence, she delighted in her family.
“There wasn’t never no black carnival in America.” Kala swept into the room, wearing the same grim expression as her father, Ishe. “Don’t go filling her head with all those old tales and superstitions of yours, Mama. The old religion’s turned to dust.”
Liza’s room was tastefully decorated with items from their past: A black-and-white picture of her and Hope (it had taken years to forgive her, though if she survived the storm, they never spoke again); an African mask; a picture of a gigantic black strongman; a replica of a carnival poster. Two yellowing newspaper clippings, one featuring a then-budding starlet, Autumn, and the other news of Jamey’s indictment on racketeering charges. He’d come out on the winning end, but she’d kept the clipping only because it helped her remember him. And there was a book, authored by none other than Malachi Dumas, founder of the African American School of Kemetic Meditation. Alongside these, on a shelf, an amulet. On the discs, a majestic picture of an elephant, a badger, and a raven.
Liza smiled and kissed her grandchild on the forehead. She called Raven. She snapped her fingers, and the gold coin she held in her palm turned into a long black raven’s feather. Mia grinned and snatched the feather.
Liza’s gaze drifted back to the picture window. “Who knows what’s real and what isn’t in the mind of an old woman?”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE ENIGMATIC LIFE OF MADAME STEPHANIE ST. CLAIR
December 24, 1897. Most sources agree on the when; the where, t
hough, remains a topic of vigorous debate. What we do know is that Madame Stephanie St. Clair was born to a single mother, Félicienne, in either Martinique or Guadeloupe, West Indies. Both were colonized by the French.
Félicienne, it seems, had a dream for her only daughter. An education, a pathway to a different life. And for a time, Stephanie excelled at school, but when her mother became ill, Stephanie was forced to abandon that dream and go to work for a rich family as a maid. After suffering untold abuses at the hands of the family’s son, she took the money she’d saved and fled.
Where she landed is another matter of dispute. One account points to Marseilles, France, where though she spoke and wrote fluent French, her first language, Stephanie was unable to find work; she subsequently immigrated to America. This version of events goes on to suggest that she used the lengthy sea voyage aboard the SS Guiana to learn English.
A second narrative paints a different picture. One of Stephanie landing in New York, then traveling north to Canada, where she worked as a domestic servant before returning to the city.
Path notwithstanding, Stephanie eventually settled into Harlem’s growing African American community. She embarked upon a series of unfortunate relationships that ended in violence in some form or another, but they introduced her to Harlem’s underbelly and advanced her career in the process.
Her first boyfriend she stabbed in the eye when he tried to prostitute her; the second died of a crushed skull when she pushed him so hard that he fell, hitting his head against a table. Some stories suggest that Stephanie became the leader of a local gang, the Forty Thieves, who made their living on theft and extortion rackets.
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