Eshu’s brow lifted. “You learned to conquer doubt and to accept circumstances you can’t change on the bridge.”
“How do you know that?
“Take this as fact. There is nothing about this scenario you can change. If you don’t defeat this, you won’t have to worry about being stuck in this place. Your soul will be sent from here to The Nothingness. That is unless Ọlọhun wants to see you for stealing their sweet potato. And trust me, that is far worse than The Nothingness.”
Jin narrowed her eyes. “You’re telling me if I don’t fight this…person, and if I don’t win this fight, I’m going to die?”
“Not die. Disappear,” Eshu confirmed, leaning in her space, the laughter gone from his voice. His face darkened, shadows of black and red dancing across his face. “And the difference here is, there will be no one to save you.”
CHAPTER SIXTY SIX
“Onye mere nwa nebe akwa? Egbe mere nwa nebe akwa!”
Jin stared out blankly in front of her trying to concentrate. The scent of Madyan was peculiar, like fresh seawater and powder. It was nauseating but also distracting. Almost as distracting as…
“Who made the baby cry? Hawk made the baby cry!”
Eshu. She was trying to come up with a strategy! If only Eshu would shut the hell up!
Out of frustration, she reached down and grabbed a handful of rocks. She turned to where he was sitting cross-legged on the head of his own statue, and threw them, watching them bounce off the statue’s shoulder. That ticked her off even more. “For the love of GOD would you stop singing?” she screamed.
“Which god are you praying to? Because this one wants to sing. Egbe mere nwa nebe akwa!”
Clenching her teeth, she turned from him and went back to staring across the water. She glanced up at the sky, bright and blue. “It’s almost noon,” she murmured. “It’s almost time.”
As for preparation, she’d stayed up most of the night in the throes of a one-woman pity party, lamenting on her luck, her situation, what she’d done in her life to deserve this.
Every time she would ask herself that question, she would receive an answer.
“Plenty.” The word would echo over the water, slithering to her like a python, wrapping around her throat and squeezing the breath out of her. It happened enough times that she got tired of it and got to work.
The figure was set to attack at noon. Jin had accessed the arena when the first light of dawn feathered over Discord, painting the sky pink and purple. From her island, she had the best shot. She’d considered walking to the wall–to see if Eshu was right that she could walk on water now–and climbing up the waterfalls and into one of the apartments, but trapping herself in an unfamiliar room had not worked well with Shen and it wasn’t going to work with some otherworldly beings.
Since she couldn’t call up her “powers” on demand, she spent the rest of the time resting, hoping to build a reservoir, for when she could invoke them. Other than that, she had nothing.
Onyu, AJ, and Benja’in-su had left her out here with nothing but a spear, some fancy bracelets that had stopped working hours ago and her smarts.
Jin was smart. She was very smart. She could figure this out. That led her to a question she should have asked.
“Eshu,” she said, calling over her shoulder to the orisha. “What exactly am I being tested on? Survival made sense when you weren’t throwing me head first into a fight. Is it escape? Is this some kind of quick jump start to sharpen my fighting skills? Is this just a way to test how quickly I can use my spiritual powers?”
Eshu hummed. “I’ve already told you what the test is.”
“No, you told me what the consequences were. I don’t know what I’m being tested on.”
Three rocks floated up to him from the ground and he began juggling them. “The consequence is the test. The test is the consequence.”
Jin gnashed her teeth. “I don’t even know why I bothered.”
“Oh, alright, I’ll give you a hint.” He hopped down and walked to her side. “Remember. If you cannot solve your problems with peace, you cannot solve your problems with war.”
Jin glared at him. “That’s your lesson. A proverb.”
“Yes.” The rocks floated back to the ground, smacking against the others. “Only I am throwing you into the war because you could not solve your problems with peace.”
CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN
Breathe.
Jin inhaled.
Breathe.
Jin exhaled.
Remember to breathe.
The sun was high in the sky. The shadow was almost gone.
Remember to breathe.
Jin looked at the other island. Five minutes ago, her opponent had hopped down from her perch. A minute ago, she began pacing back and forth at the edge of the island, her posture rigid with anticipatory glee. Rocks crunched under her feet and the sun glinted off the edge of her ax. Big problem. Big sharp problem. Every couple of seconds or so, she would face Jin and although Jin couldn’t see her face, she could feel the hate radiating off of her.
Jin wanted to know what she could have possibly done to make this being so angry with her. The anger was palpable; snapping at her ankles, making her want to jump back, quiver under the weight of it, find a place to hide and never come out.
You have something to prove.
She shook her head hard at the sound of AJ in her head. “You abandoned me. Leave me alone,” she whispered.
Just because I left you doesn’t mean I don’t care. Just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I’m gone, Jin. Be wise. Listen to my words.
The sun reached the highest point in the sky and no shadows remained across the water wasteland.
Have courage, young lion.
“DEATH! DIE!” the figure screeched from across the water. The threat echoed and the figure blurred out of existence.
Jin steeled herself, digging her feet into the ground and gripping the spear in her hand. Suddenly the water between the two islands split as if Moses himself had given the command. Jin’s eyes widened but it only took seconds to realize why the water was splitting. It was the wake of something moving through it…or above it.
Jin heard it a fraction of a second before she felt it, a whooshing sound before a great force was bowling into her and slamming her into the statue. Her spear flew somewhere out of her reach and the sound of the statue cracking as the wind was knocked from, her rattled in her head. She gasped hard, searching for more air.
“What–” The question she wanted to ask, she didn’t know. Jin’s vision swam in pain and her mind was screaming something she couldn’t catch. It didn’t matter. She felt herself being lifted in a current of air and force, up and over the statue and high into the air. Jin looked down. It was the woman, lifting her higher and higher and higher.
Her face was indistinguishable up close, like a swirl of color and paint where eyes and a nose, lips and a chin should be. The sun shined across her face and for a moment, Jin thought it was beautiful and otherworldly. It was also the deadliest thing she’d ever seen in her life.
Jin didn’t know what to do. She tried to make her limbs work but the force of the wind whipping past her, the speed in which they flew higher, rendered her immovable.
They paused midair and Jin saw how far up above the water wasteland they were. Gods. She could see all of Kowloon.
“DEATH!” the figure screamed, the sound echoing in Jin’s head rather than in her ears. The woman flipped them hard, like a graceful but murderous 540 battement en rond, and Jin felt the wind at her back as she was being driven down towards the water. She clawed at the woman’s hand clutching her leather vest but it was a steel vise. The impact with the water was as hard as colliding with the ground itself and almost knocked her unconscious.
The water was deep, way deeper than she imagined and the woman pushed her deeper and deeper and deeper. Jin’s fear of water resurfaced and she panicked, thrashing and kicking and screaming. They hit t
he floor, sandy like the bottom of a lake, kicking up a cloud of dirt. The figure wrapped a hand around her neck and held her there. Jin grappled at it, trying to knock it loose, staring past her, to the surface, feeling her lungs burn and the desire to inhale, to just breathe, almost take her over.
Her eyes fluttered as bubbles escaped her mouth. The hand around her neck was tight and painful and the figure was so strong. Jin felt her shoulders being pressed into the ground, the sand shifting under her weight.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I am not strong enough and I am going to die.
Her vision began to darken around the edges and the world began to shift to a murky black, filled with a mackle of red and blue and grey. A whirl of visions passed before her eyes–of her mother, of her father, her sisters and her brother, nieces, and nephews, and friends she considered family. She saw herself walking across the stage accepting her degree. She saw the desperate smiles on women’s faces as she testified on their behalf.
She saw Aiden.
She remembered the first time they kissed, violently, passionately, while they were hidden away from the world. She remembered the first time he said he loved her.
She saw herself standing over Chaerin’s grave.
The last bubble escaped from her mouth. The pain stopped.
CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT
Chaerin William’s Condo
Gangnam, Seoul, South Korea
Eight Years ago…
“Turn it off.”
Chaerin swirled the wine, something dark and dry, something that Jin would never drink, around in a large Fat Tuesday slushy cup. It was kind of how she knew the steely face calm Chaerin was exhibiting was a façade. She only pulled out “Mongo” whenever she was really stressed. In her other hand was a kretek–dark, pungent cigar of cloves and tobacco, the tendrils of smoke swirling above her.
Jin raised the remote and turned the television off. Moments ago, a major entertainment news show was broadcasting their latest juicy gossip:
television host and entertainment figure C.Willi, Chaerin’s stage name, was caught up in a scandal dealing with the man she’d been dating for a year.
An idol. A relationship. A sex tape. Bad news.
In America, you could stand to make millions off something of this nature being leaked. Can it up for consumption and make yourself a household name. In other parts of the world, it was disastrous, a segue to endless harassment and death threats, and the end of a career.
So far, her phone had rung ten times. Chaerin would pick it up and it would be someone breathing over the line before hanging up. It would only get worse after the broadcast.
“I didn’t know he was filming,” she admitted as she took a long drag of the kretek. “That’s a lie. I knew he was filming but he said he would delete it. I believed him. His career would be in as much danger as mine if this ever got out! Why would he store it on his computer?” she groaned. “Fucking saesangs,” she hissed.
Saesangs were the most vigilant of fans, hiring taxi drivers to follow pop idols around, camping outside of their homes, finding ways to hack phone companies to get phone numbers, bypassing passwords and cracking into computers and even going so far as to break into their homes to give them gifts. In one of the worst cases, a saesang tried to poison someone. Lunatics with absolutely no shame.
“They should have come to me. I would have paid them off. Now they have nothing. Idiots.” Chaerin took a large gulp of her wine, some of it slipping down the side of her mouth. She wiped it away harshly.
“Chae…it’ll blow over.”
Her best friend laughed harshly. “You’ve been living here long enough to know it won’t just “blow over.” Have you seen the fan cafés? The message boards? They’ve called for my head, my job. I’ve never been called a slut so many times in my life.”
Jin searched and searched for some conciliatory words. She found some, deep down, where she had to think optimistically for the both of them. She opened her mouth to say them, but Chaerin held up her hand.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. Chaerin glanced out of the window. “What am I going to do? What if this reaches my mom? What if she sees it before I can sit down and tell her? My dad,” she whispered, haunted.
Jin placed a hand on her back and rubbed in soothing circles. Chaerin took another large gulp, the drink staining her expensive silk blouse. Chaerin would easily, and often, drown her sorrows in alcohol. Jin was usually there to stop her. “C’mon, Chae. That’s enough–”
The phone began to ring and both of their heads snapped towards it. An anger overtook Jin, breathing hotly down her neck as watched the red tip blink, listening to the sound bounce off the walls. Chaerin started to get up to answer it but Jin put her hand on her thigh. “No.”
She stood and snatched the phone off its base and pressed the talk button. “Hello,” she said crisply.
“Yes! Is this Ms. Chaerin Williams? I’m Jessi Kwon, a reporter from the USAPop2U, an English based entertainment–”
“Don’t call here again,” she growled into the receiver before slamming it down.
Chaerin chuckled, although it was humorless. “Pissing them off won’t make anything better. Might make it worse. They are probably on their way here with a thousand cameras to ask me in person.”
“I can’t stand around and do nothing,” Jin said, pointing at the phone. She didn’t get celebrity life, here or at home. She didn’t get raising a person to such heights that they couldn’t be human, that if they slipped and made one mistake, they could fall to their deaths. She didn’t get it.
Chaerin hummed and started down into her cup. “You ever…you ever wondered what it would be like to die?” Tears lined her eyes, heavy and full and Chaerin didn’t even blink, just let the tears drop into her wine. “To just close your eyes and jump, or tilt your head back and swallow, feel the pills slide down your throat? You ever…” she laughed again, shaking her head. “No, not you. Your parents love you, your father doesn’t look at you like you disgust him…” she trailed off and frowned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. That wasn’t fair.”
Jin crossed the room, her steps determined and heavy. She pried the cup from of Chaerin’s hand. She removed the kretek, smashing it into the dollar store ashtray sitting on Chaerin’s thousand dollar abstract coffee table. She sat down by her friend and grabbed her hands. She could feed her some Hallmark lifetime bullshit quote on the joys of living or…or she could be honest. “I thought about it once.”
Chaerin looked up but didn’t say anything.
“It was in a vision. I can’t tell you much about it, but there was so much black and red and agony and suffering. And in that moment, I just wanted the pain to stop, you know? What’s a better way to make pain stop than death? Then it did. The pain stopped…but everything else stopped, too. I stopped hearing your voice, I stopped hearing my mom and my dad’s voice. I stopped feeling the happiness I felt in Shen’s arms. Shit, I even stopped feeling the deliciousness of a warm slice of sweet potato pie or those sweet cakes your mom makes. I stopped feeling it all and I never regretted anything more in my life.”
Chaerin sniffled. “I don’t want to die, Jin.”
“I know you don’t,” Jin sighed. “And I don’t want you to. Don’t even joke about it. If you need me, just call me. I’ll never leave you to bear anything alone.”
Chaerin pushed at her shoulder playfully. “You think you can fix everything. You can’t.”
“Personality flaw, sue me,” Jin joked. “Just like what you’re going to do to whoever did this to you, right? Now, enough of this sad shit. We’re dancing.” Jin stood and jogged over to Chaerin’s stereo system, turning her surround sound on, and picking the campiest pop tune she could think of out of Chaerin’s MP3 collection. The sound was obnoxious and sugary. Jin began to dance out the choreography, moves full of peace signs and spirit fingers. “Come on!” she urged.
Chaerin groaned and covered her head with a pillow. “I hate this song!”
Jin pulled a face. “Yeah right! You’ve seen this video like five million times! Stop acting like you don’t know the moves!”
Chaerin rolled her eyes and sighed. “You’re going to be the death of me one day!” she laughed and she stood up to join her.
CHAPTER SIXTY NINE
The memory brought her back to the surface of her own consciousness. I don’t want to die. Jin felt her body pulse. She felt adrenaline and power and magic flood into her bloodstream. She felt the same fire she felt under her skin in the forest of Kowloon Nuh.
It kicked in and Jin realized that she had to fight not to just escape Discord, but fight to survive, to live, even if she was stuck in this realm for the rest of her life. She wanted to live.
Strength flooded Jin, her bracelets glowed, and she felt the burn of the tattoos trailing down her skin. She maneuvered her arm between the woman’s hands around her neck and brought her elbow down hard, knocking one of the hands loose. That’s all she needed. She twisted her body until her feet were planted firmly on the sandy bottom and pushed.
Alar! The momentum knocked the woman’s other hand free as Jin barreled towards the sky. Jin broke the surface and inhaled greedily as she flew through the air. When she landed, the impact startled her. I didn’t jump far enough to land on the island, did I? She looked down and gasped.
Jin wasn’t on the island. She was on the water some twenty yards away. She tested one step, then another, realizing Eshu was right. She could walk on water.
Jin searched the water for the woman to no avail. She glanced over at the gate. Escaping is how you survive! If I can just get out of here then maybe! Jin felt her powers hum all around her. Her bracelets beeped and things began popping up in her vision, that she’d only seen an echo in her mind. She calculated the distance between her location and the red gate and tasted green in her mouth. The path to the gate was shaded in blue.
A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck Page 40
