Spirits of Ash and Foam

by Greg Weisman

  “Was that your mom?” Rain asked, already sure it was and confident the woman was long dead.

  Miranda nodded. “Antonia Guerrero. Oh, and that’s me in there too, kind of.”

  “She’s very beautiful,” Renée said.

  “She was,” Miranda said. “I don’t remember her, though.”

  Charlie looked down at his father’s watch, hanging loosely on his wrist. He turned away.

  “How long ago did she die?” Rain asked matter-of-factly.

  “Rain,” Charlie said.

  Rain ignored him, and Miranda seemed unfazed by the question. “Thirteen years ago. On my birthday. On my birth day.”

  “Oh, wow. Sorry. That must be awful.”

  “Rain,” Charlie repeated with a bit more edge.

  “It’s okay,” Miranda said. “Really. I wish I had known her. But I never did. So I can’t exactly miss her, can I?”

  Rain didn’t think that sounded right. More like something Miranda had practiced to convince herself. “You know you don’t have to—”

  “Rain…” Charlie interrupted, his voice low but tense.

  Rain rolled her eyes—positive she hadn’t said anything too insensitive—and turned around to face him. Then she saw what he was looking at. The entire wall, on either side of the door, was covered with close to a hundred pre-Columbian artifacts. There were idols and gourds, necklaces, anklets, bracelets and armbands, headbands and masks, musical instruments, tools and weapons. Some were made of stone, some of wood, some of turquoise, some of gold. And every single artifact was decorated with human or animal figures: men, women, bats, snakes, fish, crabs, birds, gods.

  Rain felt a tingling on her left arm and looked down in time to see the eyes on the armband’s Searcher snake briefly flare with blue light. She turned to Miranda. “What—what is all this?”

  Miranda shrugged. “They’re zemis.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SEARCH AND RESEARCH

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

  “Zemis…” Rain whispered.

  “But there are like a hundred of them,” Charlie said. He turned to Rain. “I thought there were only supposed to be—”

  Her look shut him up.

  “What’s a zemi?” Renée asked, unintentionally helpful.

  “Well, it’s … um. It’s like a spirit,” Miranda said haltingly. “Or it contains the spirit or something like that. My dad collects them.”

  Rain moved in for a closer look. There were multiple gourd jars all in a row. One was circled with fish, another with hermit crabs, a third with gulls. There was a clay mask composed of writhing snakes. A whistle or flute, as thick as her wrist, carved from driftwood—bleached nearly white from sun and sand and surf—to look like a bat with folded wings. And another right beside it, but carved to look like an owl instead. There was a belt of beaded black and red seeds that depicted a female figure amid the waves or maybe the wind. Though the image was simple and emblematic, Rain recognized Hurricane Julia immediately. “Who made these?” Rain asked.

  “I, uh … don’t remember.” Miranda laughed nervously. “If I had known there was going to be a quiz, I would have paid more attention when my dad droned on about them.”

  “Can we find out?” Rain asked almost breathlessly as she moved to study the zemis on the other side of the door.

  Miranda and Renée exchanged a How weird is this? glance. Then Miranda turned back to Rain. “But … what about the hot tub?”

  Rain didn’t respond right away. She examined a wooden spear. The inlaid carving of another bat was etched into its stone spearhead, which was secured atop the spear by two sinewy cords that then hung down half the length of the weapon. She moved on to a necklace with a bluestone amulet depicting another owl. Then a small ironwood statue of a man with a wide grin and a bowl atop his head. Beside that was a golden armband, inlaid with the mosaic of a dog formed from tiny gray and white shells. Drawn to that trinket, Rain reached out, and a panicked Miranda all but shouted, “I don’t think you should touch that.”

  Rain withdrew her hand but continued staring.

  Seeing she was fully immersed, Charlie came to her aid. “Your, uh, dad’s collection. It’s pretty cool. And the hot tub’ll still be there, right?”

  Rain finally spoke up. “I really want to know more.”

  Miranda was stunned. She could tell Charlie was only making an excuse for Rain, the girl who took Spanish—despite being fluent—so she wouldn’t have to work hard in school. Now she wanted to forgo the Jacuzzi to study these stupid zemis? Even to Miranda, who was a studious child by nature, this did not sound like a fun way to start their weekend. On the other hand, she wanted Rain as a friend …

  “Well, I guess just about everything you’d want to know is in those books,” she said, pointing to an entire wall of built-in bookshelves, perpendicular to the artifacts.

  Charlie looked at the wall of volumes and then turned around to face the open French doors that led outside and, presumably, to the hot tub. Well, at least this’ll reduce the threat of head explosion. “Great,” he sighed. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

  Miranda turned to Renée. “Do you mind?”

  Renée did mind. Very much. One of the few advantages of holding off on her revenge was the hedonistic pleasure she could take by using what Miranda’s lifestyle had to offer in the meantime. Right now, though, Renée’s long-term plan required her to appear cooperative and benign. So she said, “No. It’s … interesting.” She moved toward the laptop on the desk. “We could probably find stuff online, too.” Since she was forcing herself to play nice, at least she could try to speed up the process.

  Hearing Renée’s suggestion, Rain mentally kicked herself for never having thought of taking her Search online. Due to the magical way she had first been introduced to the word zemi, she had taken it as a given that it was some kind of arcane term. She thought she’d have to find some ancient scroll or tablet to reveal a definition. Checking on the computer in Mom’s office never crossed my mind! Now, as Renée fired up Mr. Guerrero’s laptop, Rain felt like a complete idiot.

  She shook her head and crossed to the shelves, trying to take in the hundreds of books in English and Spanish that resided there. One title immediately caught her eye. “The Taíno Zemi,” she read aloud as she pulled it from the shelf.

  “Hey,” Charlie said, “aren’t you Taíno?”

  “I think so. Or I think ’Bastian’s abuela was. My great-great-grandmother. Oh, and maybe my Grandma Rose.”

  Eager to get this over with, Renée was already online. “Should I Wikipedia Taíno or zemi?”

  “Both,” Rain said.

  Miranda was positive her father wouldn’t want them on his personal laptop. She wished she could pull out her iPhone instead, but she had left it upstairs in her backpack. (In Madrid, she never went anywhere without it, but few of her San Próspero peers could afford one, so she had quickly learned to keep hers out of sight.) Still, she knew Pablo wouldn’t be back until after dinner. Probably long after dinner. There’s no way we won’t be done by then. Is there?

  They were at it for a while.

  Rain was an inexperienced and impatient scholar. She would pull a book off the shelf and flip through it, searching desperately for answers to some very specific questions. But she didn’t know where to look or how, and if something didn’t catch her eye right away, it would wander to yet another title.

  For the opposite reason, Renée wasn’t doing any better on the laptop. Not particularly interested in the endeavor, she would bounce from one link to another—never quite staying on any single page long enough to learn all that much. Meanwhile, Miranda continued to stress about the incursion into her father’s study, the growing history on his browser and the growing number of books removed from his shelves. Charlie—attempting to balance Rain’s needs with Miranda’s obvious discomfort—spent as much time putting volumes back in their proper places as he did skimming through them.

  At one point, th
ey all paused for a good seven minutes when a Web site played music from a Taíno areyto ceremonial dance. (And think, for a moment, just how long seven minutes is.) Listening—in my way—from across Próspero Bay, I recognized the once familiar sounds of the mayohuacan drum and the baijo flute. It made me smile. Charlie, Miranda and even Renée found the music strangely hypnotic. (For once, Renée didn’t click away instantly.) In Rain, it touched something very deep, something rooted within herself, reaching back into her ancestry, her D.N.A. Saying it immediately became her new mental soundtrack doesn’t begin to cover it.

  The recording ended; the clumsy research continued. Ultimately, here’s what our odd little quartet learned …

  The Taíno people, a subset of the Arawak, were the original inhabitants of the Ghost Keys and most of the Caribbean before the coming of Christopher Columbus. When the Spanish landed, they brought a host of ills: diseases for which the Taíno had no immunity, slavery, slaughter and near-total cultural and literal genocide. No, not a pretty picture.

  Rain believed she was descended from the Taíno on her mother’s side. Both her Grandma Rose (Iris’ mother) and her Great-Great-Grandmother Concha (’Bastian’s abuela) were largely of Taíno descent, or so she vaguely felt she had once been told. Yet there was nothing vague about the feelings that rose up unbidden when she read about the suffering of the Taíno under the gold-grubbing cruelty of the Europeans. This is “the wound,” she decided. This is what the Healer must heal. But how do I ever heal something this big, this ancient—even with nine magical zemis?

  Still, the zemis were clearly the key to unlocking this mystery, and the four teens managed in their haphazard way to learn the basics about them. In the religion, culture and mythology of the Taíno peoples, a zemi was a spirit-god. In fact, that’s what the word meant in the Taíno language. A zemi was also an icon, a talisman created by the Taíno and infused with the power of the spirit depicted upon it—like the two snakes (Searcher and Healer) on Rain’s armband. Many zemis were sculptures—idols, if you will—but that wasn’t mandatory. A zemi could be anything. A piece of jewelry. A tool. A weapon. A jar. A musical instrument. Anything that portrayed and housed the animistic essence of the zemi spirit-god became a zemi itself. Thus the nine completely different shapes waiting for their zemis in the Cache. And that was the problem. Nowhere could Rain find any mention of nine specialzemis necessary for healing a wound. Nowhere could she find a reference to Healer or Searcher. Though she had learned a great deal, she was still caught on the horns of her original dilemma: She had no idea what she was searching for or where to begin her Search.

  Charlie crossed back over to Pablo Guerrero’s collection. “I don’t see anything that looks like a roll of quarters.”

  Renée wasn’t even listening at this point, but Charlie’s comment triggered a new line of thought for Miranda. Something’s going on here. There were looks Charlie and Rain had exchanged. Things they had said as prompts for Renée’s online meanderings. Things they had semiwhispered to each other. “There are like a hundred of them. I thought there were only supposed to be—” “Anything about zemis having healing powers?” “It doesn’t say anything about an Earch-Say.” “How many on that page? Count ’em.” Now, “I don’t see anything that looks like a roll of quarters.”

  Miranda said, “Are you guys looking for something … specific?”

  The book in Rain’s hands slammed shut! She put it back on the shelf. (AndCharlie moved it back to where it belonged on the shelf.) Rain smiled brightly and said, “Now, how about that hot tub?”

  Within seconds, and with barely a glance exchanged between them, Rain and Charlie had crossed the length of the study to wait by the French doors. Miranda practically had whiplash from Rain’s abrupt change of direction, but Renée (who managed to suppress a “Finally”) was on her feet and already heading outside, leaving Miranda to quickly clear the history on her father’s browser and shut down his computer. This flurry of activity successfully flustered her enough to momentarily push any question of Rain and Charlie’s secret agenda out of her mind.

  For now.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DEMON CHILD

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

  Their time in the hot tub was pleasant—but brief.

  While Charlie tried very hard not to get caught looking at any particular part of any particular girl, Rain tried even harder to keep an eye on the moving target that was his wristwatch. By the time the sun had crept below tree level, leaving the Jacuzzi in shadow, Rain knew it was time to go. She wanted to be back at the cave by sunset to give her a shot at conferring with its new-minted ghost.

  It didn’t quite work out that way.

  She had her excuse ready. She and Charlie needed to head home now: They had to be in bed early in order to get up early, because they needed to work her dad’s charter first thing the next morning.

  Miranda was stunningly disappointed. “But … we just got in the hot tub. And I thought you were staying for dinner. The ferry runs until midnight, and we could watch a movie or something…” She trailed off.

  As usual, Charlie tried to make it better. He put a hand on her arm and tried to catch her eye. “We’ll do this again. And you can come over to my place too. It’s not fancy. But Rain and I have been meaning to borrow some mopeds from my mom’s rental lot.”

  Miranda’s weak smile still managed to show her gratitude for his effort—and perhaps something more. Renée caught it. Miranda was crushing on Charlie, who Renée knew was crushing on Rain, who was—big surprise—also crushing on Rain. Bitterly, Renée thought, I can use this. Otherwise, she was pretty happy with how things were turning out. Rain and Charlie were proving lousy friends, which would make Miranda even more dependent on Renée.

  Rain was already out of the tub and drying off when Miranda abruptly got out too. Rain’s eyes went wide. “Wait, you don’t have to. Stay here. You know, with Renée. We can find our own way out.”

  But despite protests from Rain, Charlie and Renée, Miranda insisted on walking her departing friends down to the ferry. She turned to Renée and once again asked, “Do you mind?”

  It took every ounce of self-control for her to respond evenly, “No. I’m getting pruney anyway, Sugar.”

  So they all got out of the water. They all toweled dry. They all went inside and upstairs to change. They all headed for the Sycorax dock, where they all stood waiting for the ferry. They all … were miserable.

  Rain again tried to tell Miranda she didn’t have to wait, but Miranda insisted. If she didn’t stay, Rain and Charlie would have to pay for the ride back to San Próspero. Rain told her that was okay. Miranda just shook her head.

  Rain was beyond frustrated. She turned to look west. The sun was on the verge of setting, but there was no way she was getting to the cave tonight. And I need to talk to that ghost! She was furious with Miranda for interfering with the Search. She wanted to tell her off and turned back toward her with something cutting on the tip of her tongue. What she saw stopped her.

  It was Charlie, really. The way he was looking at Miranda. On his open, sensitive face, it was clear he felt really bad for her. With Charlie unintentionally—though not for the first time—acting as Rain’s own personal Jiminy Cricket, she managed to step out of her own deck shoes long enough to walk a few steps in Miranda’s sandals. The new girl had wanted this “play date” badly, and she had wanted it to go well. Sure, Miranda tried too hard. She didn’t actually need to show Rain and Charlie a good time for them to like her. Miranda didn’t know that, though, and Rain had completely spoiled the afternoon from moment one. Immediately, Rain wanted to take it all back. To say, You know, maybe we don’t have to go to bed that early. But it was too late. It would just be too strange to about-face now. Too suspicious.

  So instead, she said, “Hey, you know the charter tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” Miranda said gloomily.

  “Well, the family has three little kids. And kids can get kinda crazy on a boat. That�
�s why my dad wants me and Charlie there. To make sure they don’t fall off the side or whatever.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, but, see, there are three kids and only two of us. I don’t know if this would be fun for you—and, well, I don’t think my dad could pay you, but—”

  “Yes!” Miranda said, happily enough and loudly enough that she was instantly embarrassed by her own enthusiasm. She tried to tone it down. “I mean, if you think I could help?” She was still smiling broadly.

  “Yeah, definitely,” Rain said. She looked at Renée and smiled evilly. “You’re welcome to come too.”

  Renée smiled back, holding Rain’s gaze, acknowledging that Rain had scored a point. They both were well aware that even Renée’s vengeance had its limits. Miranda might think it was fun to get up early and work a charter for no money, but Renée knew better. Besides, she had her own job. One that paid. “Sorry, I have to work, Sugar. You three have fun without me.”

  “We’ll try,” Rain said, triumphant. Then she glanced at Charlie, who was looking right at her. He was proud of her—and not for putting one over on Renée. Rain found herself smiling again, shyly this time. She’d never admit it, but having Charlie think well of her mattered more than pretty much anything else in her world. So she punched him in the arm.

  Just like that, none of them was miserable. Not even Renée, who didn’t mind a challenge and still had the rest of the evening to further secure her bond with Miranda. The ferry was still a good twenty minutes off, but they stood there chatting easily now.

  A few feet up the gangway, Isaac Naborías was chatting easily with a trio of Sycorax employees waiting to head home. Sure, he had planned to simply pick up his paycheck, say a few good-byes and be back on San Próspero hours ago. But when he got to the guard shack, Jimmy had told him his check was being held at the main office. And when Isaac got there, he found twenty or thirty people waiting to throw him a retirement party, complete with champagne and a chocolate cake. It was unexpected and wonderful, and he had welled up a bit. He’d had some cake, and maybe a glass—or four—of the bubbly. There were old stories and lots of laughs and many, many hugs. (You’d think he was moving half a world away, when in fact they’d still see each other on San Próspero often. Maybe more often, now that Isaac wasn’t working the graveyard shift.) So he’d lost track of the time. Truth be told, he was feeling warm, fuzzy, nostalgic and tipsy enough that he’d even lost track of why keeping track of the time mattered. It was in there, though, struggling to escape. Which may explain why his mind eventually wandered where it did.