Rise of the Jumbies

by Tracey Baptiste

  Corinne shook her head. “Children have been taken. Mama . . . Mami Wata won’t help us find them unless we bring the stone back.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the goddess,” Kahiri said.

  “People change,” Bouki said drily. “Even goddesses.”

  “How?” Kahiri asked.

  Corinne took a breath. She told him about Severine, the white witch, the night on the cliff, the orange trees she planted, the earthquake, the missing children, and Mama D’Leau.

  “I don’t know if it’s the same goddess,” Kahiri said. “Mami Wata is helpful. Your Mama D’Leau doesn’t sound very nice.”

  “How else would she know about the stone?” Dru asked.

  “Many people have heard about the stone,” Kahiri said. “Many people have done all kinds of things to try to get it.”

  “People who can command mermaids?” Corinne asked.

  Kahiri looked like he was working a thought on his tongue, rolling it around and tasting it. But finally he swallowed and said nothing.

  “You believe us, don’t you?” Dru asked.

  “I will try to find out about the mermaids’ families,” Kahiri said. “But I can’t help anymore with the stone. You will have to figure that out on your own.”

  Corinne collapsed on the soft, silty ground and took off her sandals so she could wash her feet and her shoes could dry out. Everyone else did the same.

  “Terrific,” Bouki said. “How are we going to do that?”

  Corinne lay back with her hair spread out around her and squinted up at the sun. “No idea,” she said.

  “Whatever you do, you can’t do it here,” Kahiri said. “Ma Dessaly is here. And she is angrier than I’ve ever seen her.”

  All five of them scrambled to the top of the bank and watched the commotion on the street. Ma Dessaly and Kahiri’s mother were in a heated argument, and they had attracted a crowd.

  “She’s looking for you,” Kahiri said.

  Bouki turned to Corinne. “What now, goddess?”

  “If she’s here, it means that she isn’t at the house to stop us,” Corinne said.

  “We already looked there,” Kahiri said. “She probably has the place locked up tight.”

  “If we only had a little more time, we could search properly,” Corinne said.

  Dru shook her head. “It’s not right. Even if the stone isn’t hers, it’s not right to break into someone’s house and go through their things.” She paused. “I mean, a second time.”

  “But if we don’t, what will happen to Laurent? Or Marlene?” Corinne asked.

  While they argued over what to do, Malik pulled at Corinne’s clothes, and poked her in the arm, and waved his hands in front of her face.

  “What, Malik?” Corinne yelled. “Sometimes I wish you would just talk. You can do it. I’ve heard you.”

  Malik froze, and the excitement drained from his face. Dru and Bouki pulled him closer. Corinne knew she should say she was sorry, but she clenched her jaw tight and scanned the crowd again.

  “It’s time for me to go,” Kahiri said. “I’ll go up the river so they won’t look for you here, but it’s not safe. You’ll have to find somewhere else to hide.”

  “Where?” Dru asked.

  Kahiri pointed to the large sand-colored fort. “Go to the castle,” he said. “There are plenty of rooms to hide in, and nobody stays there after dark.”

  “How long is it going to take for you to find out about the mermaids’ families?” Dru asked.

  Kahiri shrugged. “They’ve been gone a long, long time.” He walked away.

  “You three go to the castle and wait,” Corinne said.

  “You’re not doing this alone,” said Dru. “We came too. Because of you.” Her words were sharp, but she looked down at the ground when she said them.

  “What if they’ve already been found?” Bouki said. “What if all of this is for nothing?”

  “And what if they haven’t?” Dru argued. “If we go back empty-handed, it really will have been for nothing.”

  Corinne shook her head. “A jumbie wouldn’t give them up so easily,” she said.

  “What does Mama D’Leau want with them anyway?” Dru asked. “She has the mermaids.” She picked at the ends of her hair, frowned at the strands in her fingers, then tucked them behind her ears.

  “Why do you think it’s her?” Corinne asked.

  “Who else would it be?” Bouki argued.

  “You’re defending a jumbie?” asked Dru.

  Corinne folded her arms across her chest. “What’s wrong with defending a jumbie? I’m one.”

  “Well, not exactly,” Dru said. “You’re—”

  “A jumbie,” Corinne said flatly. “Just like Mama D’Leau. Just like Severine.”

  “Don’t say her name,” Bouki said with a shudder. “She’s gone. She doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Maybe she does,” Corinne said.

  “We all know it was a water jumbie who was taking the children,” Bouki said. “They all went missing by the water. You heard one of them sing. What kind of jumbies sing, Corinne? I bet this whole thing is a game for Mama D’Leau. Maybe Laurent and the others are in some other part of the world too. This could be how she has her fun, Corinne. Does that sound like a jumbie thing to do?”

  There was a sharpness in Bouki’s jaw and an arch in his eyebrows that unsettled Corinne. Her friends had never looked at her this way before.

  “It’s very strange,” Dru said.

  “Everything jumbies do is strange. Seeing in the dark, talking to snakes!” Bouki gestured wildly and Corinne’s hands closed into fists. The next moment, Corinne had been knocked back. Both Corinne and Bouki fell in the sand and slid down the bank. Malik stood over both of them. His head was lowered, and his chest heaved. He drew a finger up slowly and pressed it to his lips. Then he pointed toward the vendors.

  Corinne and Bouki crawled up to see what he was pointing at. Kahiri was there, getting yelled at by his mother, while Ma Dessaly stood over him, making him shrink like a wilting plant. As soon as Kahiri stopped talking, Ma Dessaly motioned with her thick arms, and two men joined her. She pointed in different directions and the men moved off, looking into and under stalls, behind crates, and up into trees.

  “A search party,” Corinne said.

  Without another word, they returned to the water and made a quick route back to the sea. In minutes, they were in deep enough water to dive under the waves and swim for the castle. They resurfaced only for sips of air until they came to a jetty of slippery rocks that led to a series of broken, weather-worn, splintery stairs on the other side of the beach. Above them was the castle.

  23

  Two Stories

  Kahiri wiped the tears from his eyes and the snot from his nose as he walked the curving road to Manu’s house. His mother had been angry. He slipped away, knowing it would make her even angrier, but he had made a promise, and he was going to try to keep it. He flipped Dru’s coin into the air, once, twice. It fell on his palm with a light tap. It was heavier than a fifty-pesewas coin, but about the same size. This coin was from another time, and only Manu still told stories that stretched so far back.

  He came to a small house with faded green paint. He pushed open the wobbly gate and went up to the verandah, where an old man sat in a rocking chair carving a small figure.

  “Mema wo aha, Kahiri!” the man said.

  “Agya mema wo aha,” Kahiri said. He sat on the floor in front of the rocking chair and watched Manu dig the tip of the knife into the wood with quick twists. When he stopped and blew off the dust, he had carved one eye on the little figure. He turned it to Kahiri.

  “What can I do for you?” Manu asked in soft Twi.

  Kahiri flipped the coin to Manu. “I will tell you a story,” he said. “And then you will tell me
one.”

  Manu squinted at the coin, and then at Kahiri. “All right,” he said. “Begin.”

  24

  In a Fine Castle

  Corinne pulled everyone under the broken stairs and looked through the cracks as Ma Dessaly and the two men searched all three levels of the castle. They hung on to thick posts as they waited.

  “He told on us,” Bouki said. “How would they know to look here?”

  “There’s nowhere else to hide,” Corinne said.

  “We can’t stay in the water,” Dru added.

  Malik pointed to a seawall against the castle that was broken in one spot, like a chipped tooth. The crack was low enough for them to pull themselves over. He took a gulp of air and swam the entire length to the wall, resurfacing just as Ma Dessaly arrived and looked out at the water. If she looked straight down, she would see him. Corinne ducked behind the posts with the others, but she felt as if someone was squeezing her heart in a vise. A few moments later, Ma Dessaly motioned to the men in another part of the castle, and she moved on. Malik flashed his smile across the waves and gave a thumbs-up.

  Corinne, Bouki, and Dru met him at the wall. They waited until they could no longer hear the crunch of footsteps before they pulled themselves through the crack.

  The castle was a mottled combination of dirty white paint and sandy-colored patches where the paint had peeled off, revealing the raw, crumbling stone underneath. Lines of mold and rot expanded cracks and colored some surfaces shades of poisonous-looking black and green. The walls, the floors, the ceiling—everything was solid, as if the castle had been carved from one boulder. And every level of the castle had a terrace that overlooked the water, where dozens of black cannons peered over the sea like the eyes of an all-seeing monster.

  There was a nearby alcove partly filled with heavy black cannon balls. The four of them jammed inside, trying to keep out of sight. But it was not long before their backs ached and their muscles felt stiff. Someone’s stomach growled and Corinne’s muscles tightened.

  “Stop breathing on me,” Bouki complained.

  “What would you like me to do?” Corinne whispered. “Hold my breath?”

  “Try it. Maybe some of that jumbie stuff will kick in.”

  Corinne pinched what she thought was Bouki’s arm, but Dru yelped.

  “Sorry,” Corinne said.

  “Maybe you should say that to Malik,” Dru retorted.

  “Shh!” Malik said.

  Dru moved a leg, and they all tumbled out of the space and then scrambled back. “We can’t stay here all day,” she whined.

  “You all should go back to the mermaids,” Corinne said. “I will talk to Ma Dessaly alone.”

  Bouki rolled his eyes. “This again.”

  “You don’t want to be around a jumbie, so go,” Corinne said. “Nobody is keeping you here.”

  “But you brought us,” Bouki said. “We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t thought of us. And why did you, anyway?”

  Corinne bit her lip. “Because I couldn’t do it without you,” she said. “I knew I couldn’t.”

  Bouki looked genuinely sorry. Dru gave Corinne a sideways smile and Malik winked.

  “Anyway, Dru’s right,” Corinne said. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Well, we got dragged across the whole ocean,” Bouki said. “So you’re not doing anything alone.”

  Malik ventured onto the landing. He stayed low until he reached a set of stairs. He called his friends over with one finger. Beyond them was an open courtyard. There were stairs on both sides. Facing the sea side were the cannons, each with a pyramid of stacked cannon balls, and at the back were rooms with peeling, faded blue doors. Ma Dessaly and the two men were already searching the next level up.

  Malik dashed across the courtyard and pulled at one of the doors. A large iron latch stuck on the clasp, so he had to pull a few times to get it open. The door screeched on its hinges. He cringed and opened it just wide enough for everyone to squeeze through.

  From a crack in the door, they saw Ma Dessaly appear on one set of stairs and the two men on the other. They searched down into the courtyard. Malik tapped Corinne on the shoulder and made a motion across his chest with his hand. Bouki chuckled.

  “What is it?” Dru whispered.

  “She has the stone on her. Look,” Corinne said.

  Ma Dessaly was wearing the same white dress from before, but there was a bag hung across her chest from her shoulder to her hip. Inside was something lumpish and heavy-looking. Ma Dessaly kept one hand firmly on the strap as she called instructions to the two men.

  “Do you really think . . .” Dru began.

  “What better way to keep it safe than to have it on you where you can be sure no one will take it,” Bouki said. He turned to Corinne and pointed at her necklace. “Isn’t that where you keep your most prized possession? Where you can touch it?”

  Dru sighed. “That means it’s going to be even harder to get.”

  “This is when it’s helpful to know a couple of thieves,” said Bouki. Malik rubbed his palms together, and Bouki stretched his fingers. “This is going to be difficult, brother,” he said. “But not impossible.”

  Malik screwed up his lips.

  “Well, maybe it will be very close to impossible, but there is a sliver of hope.”

  Malik arched an eyebrow.

  “A very, very, very thin sliver.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Dru asked.

  “You approve of thieving now?” Bouki asked, smiling.

  “This is different,” Dru said. “We have to get the stone, otherwise—”

  “Right, right, the missing children. But we are also children, and there are more of us than there are ones missing back home.” Malik jabbed Bouki with an elbow. “Uh, that we know of. And it would be simpler to cut our losses and go.”

  “But then you wouldn’t get to show us your excellent thieving skills,” Corinne pointed out.

  “True,” Bouki said. He lifted his chin and smirked.

  Malik and Bouki went to work in a corner of the room covered in a thin layer of sand that had blown in from the beach. They drew up a first draft of their plan, wiped it away, and drew again.

  The room was dark, except for slivers of light that came in through windows too high to see out of. There were no glass panes, so sand from the beach had settled in thin, uneven layers that crunched under their feet. Against the walls were long dark stains, taller than Corinne. In a few places there were etched markings that looked like someone had made them with the sharp edge of a stone, but she didn’t know what they said. Some of the etchings were only a series of straight lines. Those, Corinne understood. Whoever had made them was counting. In one spot, there were thirty-three. What were they counting? she wondered. People? Meals? Days? Weeks? She saw a length of chain in one corner, and the memory of the chains on the ship came straight at her like an arrow. The chain was heavy, almost too heavy for her to pick up, but she did, feeling the weight against her hand.

  “Were the mermaids here?” Dru asked.

  “They were girls once,” Corinne said. “And they were chained on that ship. Maybe they were here first.” Corinne’s stomach soured, and her throat tightened.

  “What is this place?” Dru asked.

  25

  Hide and Thief

  Kahiri had called it the castle, but it didn’t look like a place for kings or queens. If each of the rooms on this floor had the same high windows, they probably also had the same chains, and maybe even the same etched tally marks. Castle seemed like too soft a word for a place where everything looked heavy and dangerous.

  Corinne was pulled from her thoughts by the sharp snap of Bouki’s fingers. “That’s it, brother,” he said. “Brilliant.” He rubbed Malik’s curly hair. Then he turned to the girls. “It’s going to take all of us. Your sp
eed, Dru, and your climbing skills, Corinne. We’re going to make them split up and leave Ma Dessaly by herself. She doesn’t think we can get the stone from her if she can feel it all the time on her body.” He grinned. “She’s so sure that it will almost be too easy to take.”

  “How?” Corinne asked.

  “Never ask a master his secrets,” Bouki said. “All you have to do is not get caught.” Bouki brought them to the drawing he and Malik had made in the sand and explained. When he was finished, Malik bolted from the room. He opened another door all the way, letting it creak loud and long. Just as Bouki had predicted, Ma Dessaly and the two men came to investigate. One of the men came with Ma Dessaly down the staircase nearest to the children and the other ran to the stairs on the other side of the courtyard. They were going to surround them. Corinne came out of the room and climbed the wall, putting her feet into the cracks until she reached the window slits and then pushing herself up to the next level, where Ma Dessaly and the men had been moments before. There, she picked up a handful of gravel and tossed it at Ma Dessaly and each of the men, to distract them long enough for Dru and Bouki to run off in different directions. Corinne gaped so long at Dru’s speed that she didn’t notice one of the men running toward her until he was at the top of the stairs. She tossed the rest of the stones at him. He skidded and grabbed the railing to keep from falling, giving Corinne time to slip inside an open room and hide beneath an old wooden desk. She heard the scrape of the man’s shoes on the sand-covered floor and his hard, gasping breath as he looked into the room, but he moved on quickly. As soon as she was sure he was gone, Corinne got up to look around.

  Unlike on the level below, the windows here were low enough for anyone to see into or out of. Corinne closed the broken shutters, blotting out the sun except for a few shards of light. There was no other furniture besides the heavy desk. Corinne traced her finger over the top. There was a round hole on the right and a smooth groove, just deep enough to fit her finger, running nearly the full width of the desk. Corinne pulled the desk’s drawers. They stuck, but she rocked them open. Her father often oiled the wooden surfaces in their house to make sure that they didn’t bow and bend with age and exposure to the damp sea air. No one had been taking care of the furniture here. The drawers were musty and empty.