Their next destination was far more public.
EVEN IF NEVA HADN’T known the way to the Dahomey Village, she could have found it by following the drums. The Fon people’s beat—created by pounding on skins stretched over empty kegs, wicker baskets, and hollow tree trunks—was discernible even amidst the Midway’s general cacophony. Especially when the Fon accompanied it with bells, horns, and brilliantly harmonized singing—as they were doing now, at the end of their last war dance of the day.
The performance reached its crescendo on the platform American carpenters and Fon craftsmen had erected in the center of the three thatched houses which comprised the Dahomey Village. As Neva and Derek approached it, she heard one onlooker mutter about the “savage noise” and turn to leave, even though his skin was darker than the Fons’.
“Doesn’t sound white enough for you?” asked Neva.
The onlooker—tall, gray-haired, and, based on the quality of his coat, well-to-do—glared at her. “Doesn’t sound civilized,” he muttered. “Excuse me.”
“What was that about?” asked Derek after the old Negro departed.
Neva scowled. “Some in the colored community, including Frederick Douglass, think the Fons’ inclusion at the Fair was designed to make the starkest possible contrast with the wonders of the White City. I understand the argument, but ... I like the music.” She shook her head as the performance ended and the rest of the crowd drifted away. “Never mind. The guards look bored.”
Several Columbian Guardsmen were still stationed around the village, presumably watching for signs of cannibalism—or whatever other “deviant” behaviors the press had sensationalized. Most of the sentries wore the same resigned expression, although one kept tapping his foot even though the music had stopped, and the eyes of another roved ceaselessly between the Fon women.
“Do they speak English?” asked Derek while Neva considered who in the village to approach and how to do so.
“Not much, but some of them know French.”
“Ah, right. I forgot they’re a colony now.”
“You were always better at languages—would you mind interpreting?”
He shrugged. “I’ll do my best.”
Most of the Fon dancers and musicians were retiring to the thatched houses. But the village’s artisans hadn’t stopped crafting: even at this late hour, the blacksmith pumped his goatskin bellows, and the carvers whittled intricate trinkets out of wood. Neva approached one of the latter workers, a lean fellow of about thirty who seemed to be minding the table of goods for sale.
“Hello,” she said after he’d acknowledged her with a grin.
“Hello,” he repeated with a delightful accent before spreading his arms to encompass the items on the table. “Everything one nickel.”
“Quick learners,” Derek remarked.
Neva ignored him, took a deep breath, and withdrew the necklace from her pocket. It fairly begged her to put it on, promising warmth and wellbeing and fluidness, but she managed to just hold it. “I was hoping you could tell me about this.”
The Fon’s face brightened when he saw the cowries. Holding up four fingers—one for each shell—he pointed at his goods again. “You take four.”
Derek shook his head. “He thinks you’re offering the shells as currency.”
“Understandable, I suppose.” Neva shook her head too, but at the Fon. “Can you ask in French?”
Derek obliged. The Fon listened, seemed to understand, looked at the necklace again ... and frowned. Turning in his seat, he called out in what must have been his native tongue. A short while later, a tall woman emerged from the nearest thatched house.
She cut a striking figure.
Her clothing was relatively modest. Earlier in the year, when the Fair had sweltered with Chicago’s summer heat, the Fon women had scandalized onlookers (and delighted the press) with their knee-length skirts and loose tunics. But now that the season had changed, the inhabitants of the Dahomey Village wore heavier garb. Still, this woman’s athletic build was readily apparent—the way she stalked towards them made Neva almost credit accounts of an Amazonian unit of female Fon warriors.
The table-minder pointed at the necklace. His countrywoman studied it for a moment, then reached out her hand. “May I hold it?” she asked in perfect French.
Neva forced herself to drop the shells into the tall woman’s palm. The ensuing sense of loss was both excruciating and welcome.
The tall woman raised the cowries to within an inch of her nose, adopted the same frown as the table-minder, and gave Neva a piercing look. “You should not have these.”
She tried not to betray any guilt about her sticky fingers in the Anthropology Building. “Why?”
Lowering the necklace to an empty spot on the table, the tall woman arranged the cowries so that two were on one side of the cord and two on the other. Then she pressed the bottom of the top shells to the top of the bottom shells, angling them so their score marks aligned. Finally, she touched the intersection of the first pair to the intersection of the second. The combined shape looked like a crudely rounded X. But when Neva focused on the apertures, their lines formed something more elegant.
And terrifying.
Derek nearly choked in surprise. “Good God, is that ...”
It was. Neva closed her eyes, but the symbol was still there when she opened them. The mark that had changed her life. The rash that had scarred her body up and down. The insects’ emblem.
Two adjoined crescents.
Chapter Nineteen
THE TALL WOMAN GAUGED Neva’s reaction correctly: “You’ve seen this mark before.”
She gripped the table’s edge. “Yes. What does it mean?”
The tall woman scooped up the shells as if breaking their pattern quickly was important. But she didn’t give them back. “Where did you get this?”
Hesitating, Neva glanced at Derek. “Can you tell her they’re a family heirloom?”
He did, and the tall woman replied faster than Neva could follow.
“She says, ‘Of all the things to save when your ancestors crossed the ocean,’” Derek translated after Neva tapped his arm, “‘why this? Why not an herb, or a bit of earth, to remind you of whence you came? Why not something gentler? Kinder? Safer?’”
“I’m not sure how to answer that. Just keep asking her what the crescents mean.”
Derek did so as other Fon gathered around the table, looking more curious than concerned. The tall woman shooed them away before responding.
“‘I’m not a thief,’” he translated again, “‘so I won’t take this from you. But you should destroy it—each shell in a different place.’”
The tall woman offered the necklace to Neva.
Would it have been wiser to recoil? To close her hand on the air and leave? Probably. Yet that didn’t stop her from grabbing the shells and stuffing them in her pocket. “Ask her why.”
“‘The cowry form the sign of a bad vodun, spirit guardian to a worse clan, dead now for many generations. You don’t want their ghosts interceding on your behalf.’”
“But why?”
The tall woman shook her head. “‘Disregard this, if you like. Pretend it’s merely the superstition of savages and ignore that your priests sound just as fanciful when they swear snakes can talk and men can change water into wine. But believe me when I tell you this clan was twisted and wrong, maddened by bad blood.’” She stepped away from the table. “‘That is all I will say. Go.’”
“And do what?”
“‘I’ve already told you: destroy the shells. Go.’” The tall woman turned and strode back into her house.
“Mysterious,” Derek commented after a moment. “Please don’t vault the table, though.”
Neva grit her teeth. But he was right—it wouldn’t help to chase the tall woman and bark more questions at her. Even if it was tempting. “Enough of this nonsense. Let’s leave.”
YET THERE WAS STILL plenty of foolishness left in the day.
<
br /> It started with Derek, in a very un-Derek way, speculating about the necklace unprompted. “Not that I believe everything we just heard, but what if someone in Dahomey—or Oceania, I suppose—had the ability to ... well ... imbue objects?”
Neva looked at him askance. “You mean with magic?”
“Or whatever passes for it. Is it really that hard to believe?” He lowered his voice. “Given what we can do? And what we know others can do?”
“Perhaps not. But next you’ll be wondering if Excalibur resides somewhere in the Anthropology Building.”
“Not at all.” He forced a smile. “Still, if ‘imbued objects’ exist, they’re likely to be mixed into such a collection.”
Neva snorted as they entered the Court of Honor. “She was talking about ‘bad vodun,’ Derek. ‘Twisted spirit guardians’ and ‘mad ghosts.’”
“I know—I know. You said the shells did something to you, though ... Something less than pleasant. Maybe we should err on the side of caution and heed her advice?”
“And destroy the shells?” Neva motioned for him to follow her into Machinery. “No,” she near-shouted as they stepped into the building’s din. “It’s the only connection I have. I won’t break it just because someone told an ominous tale.”
He nodded reluctantly. “Will you wear them again?”
“Not until we know more.”
That seemed to mollify him.
Seeing Wiley didn’t.
“No Pullman boosters allowed,” the Boer said when they encountered him near the storage room.
Derek bristled as intended. “Why are we here?” he asked Neva.
Hating that she had to lie to him, but knowing he was ill-suited to handling the truth in this case, Neva launched into the story she’d prepared. “The Pinkerton wants to go over my testimony about the Pier—and Augie.”
Derek cocked his head, a school of questions swimming in his eyes. But only two emerged from his lips: “At ten at night? In Machinery Hall?”
Wiley got right into character. “It’s best not to let this type of matter rest. Administration is overcrowded, so we’ve reserved a conference room here.”
She solidified the ruse by smiling sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I should have mentioned it earlier.”
Derek studied Wiley for a moment, then shrugged. “Not at all. I should get back anyway ... Are you sure you’ll be safe?”
“I’ll be careful,” Neva said. “Will you come tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure I can get away again so soon. I’ve already pressed my luck.”
“If you can manage one more day, I’d like to speak with Lucretia. Together.”
Derek winced but nodded. “Early morning. I can do that much. I’ll take the first train and look for you at the Algerian and Tunisian Village.”
“Thank you.” Neva squeezed his hand in farewell, and then he was on his way. Her second brother: newly revealed but blood from birth. God help her—God help them both.
Wiley led her to the storage room and undid the first lock.
“Did you run down any leads?” she asked quietly.
“What was that?”
“Any leads?”
“Maybe. We’re looking at a note taken from one of the unidentified victim’s pockets, but it’s unlikely to lead anywhere.” He rapped a pattern on the door—did the rhythm have more beats than before? A different code for a different day?—and waited. Neva’s eyes wandered during the delay: the hole she’d punched through the wall had already been plastered over. It wasn’t surprising. Director Burnham had maintenance crews working every night to keep the Fair’s buildings as picturesque as possible.
The door opened partway, enough to allow Brin’s lean face to poke through. “So you came.”
“I did,” Neva said, wondering again if she should have stayed away.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here, but the others still need convincing. Brace yourself.”
The rest of the anarchists were already inside. Pieter looked cheery, but Quill seemed conflicted, and Roland downright dour.
“Welcome,” Pieter said as everyone either made room or found a seat.
“She ain’t,” Roland objected, gesturing at Neva. “Not sure why my vote don’t count, but there’s no call for a colored girl to be part of this. ‘Specially one that crawls in the walls like a damn rat.”
“Here, now!” said Wiley.
Brin slugged Roland on the shoulder. “She overheard you same as she did us, you eijit. Might as well hear her out. And she’s not a bad sort.”
He crossed his beefy arms. “Says the girl who likes girls. And the Boers who want to paw her Zulu shakebags. And her old teacher. None of you is seein’ this clearly.”
“And you are?”
“What if she’s a plant for the Pinkertons? They’re not good at much, but they’re good at spyin’. Maybe they’re on to Wiley.”
Wiley rotated his wrists. “We’d already be in chains.”
“Maybe they’re playin’ a longer game than you think.”
“What else is there to play for? Chicago Day is next week. If the Pinkertons knew what you lot wanted to do, we’d be having this conversation in a cell.”
“Still time for that.”
Brin clucked her tongue. “They wouldn’t use a colored girl. Probably not a girl at all—they’d look to someone like Wiley or yourself.”
Roland shook his head. “And why the hell would we use a colored girl?”
Quill held his hand up for quiet. “Neva, crude as it is, I think that’s your cue. Why don’t you tell us why you’re here?”
She couldn’t help swallowing. “It’s fine,” she said when Wiley reached for her shoulder. “I don’t mind.” After taking a moment to collect her thoughts, she turned to the others. “I came to the Fair as excited as anyone else. Even when it was just scaffolding and mounds of earth, I knew it would be something to see, something to behold: Chicago’s rebirth, a vision of what a modern city could be—a chance for renewal. And there are certainly wonders here. I’m reminded of that every time I walk the grounds. But there’s injustice too.”
Pieter grunted appreciatively.
“The racial hierarchy to the exhibits,” Neva went on. “The fixation on profit while so much of the country descends into ruin—the Fair is a distraction. A glorious distraction, but a distraction nonetheless. A veil of fantasy that blinds the world to the day’s true issues.”
“She sounds like you,” Brin noted to Quill.
“Then there’s the fact that the Fair killed my brother.”
No one made any reply to this.
Neva balled her fists. “I won’t deny wanting to return the favor. On his birthday, no less: Chicago Day—October 9th—will be 22 years to the day after Augie and I were born. An explosion to commemorate his life and death would be about perfect.”
Quill nodded. “And we won’t deny wanting to humiliate Bonfield in recompense for those he killed at and after Haymarket. Vengeance isn’t the worst of inspirations.”
“Except when it is.”
Brin wrinkled her nose. “Come again?”
Neva bit her lip and stood. “You say no one will be hurt, but dynamite isn’t exactly a precise instrument. And you say you want to avenge fallen comrades, but blasting the Wheel won’t bring them back. Or Augie. All you’ll do is harden the country’s attitude against labor activists and social change.”
“Now she sounds like Wiley,” Pieter said, half-amused.
“Because she’s being rational,” Wiley countered.
Roland snorted. “Told you a colored girl wouldn’t be good for anything but servin’.”
It was one slight too many. “And what do you know about any of this?” hissed Neva, suddenly feeling the accumulated weight of all the slurs, the looks, the passing-overs. “A white man like yourself, claiming to fight one form of oppression while championing another? Have you read The Reason Why the Colored American is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition? Can you ev
en read?”
Roland smirked. “Can but didn’t. Knew from the title it was scut: I see a ‘Colored American’ right here.”
“Obviously there are Negroes at the Fair,” Quill interjected. “Wells, Douglass, and the other contributors wrote about why they aren’t represented in the exhibits—because of the legacy of slavery, and laws that perpetuate much of its hardships. But that’s beside the point.”
“Is it?” challenged Neva.
He shrugged. “Maybe not. But the most pertinent question is what you’ll do now.”
She glared at him. Her former teacher looked damnably calm, detached and academic about what could easily amount to a life-and-death subject, while she seethed with rage and pain and—
Fever.
God help her. It was the insect’s damn venom again. She’d been angry on her own, but her emotion had summoned the fever, and now her rashes were warming and pulsing like living warpaint.
“Neva?” prompted Wiley.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I need some air.” Rising abruptly, she stumbled towards the door, causing Roland to curse and Pieter to jerk his bulky frame out of her way.
“Let her go,” Brin called when Wiley would have stopped her from opening the door.
Brin. The Irishwoman had the same venom in her veins. Venom that could be released by slashing those veins open. Neva only had to turn around, harden her hands into bone blades, and—
No. She had to get outside. Had to hurry through Machinery and out of its clatter, escape into the Court of Honor, which would be lamplit, beautiful, and soothing ...
Yet not enough.
When Neva emerged into the Fair’s centerpiece, no immediate relief awaited her. Just new noise to replace the old, and an outdoor-bigness instead of Machinery’s indoor-closeness. Should she dip herself in the South Canal’s ice waters again? Brin might not come to pull her out this time, but surely someone else would. It was only a little past ten; there were still acres of people about.
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