Rise of the Jumbies

by Tracey Baptiste

  Corinne listened for footsteps and moved to another room where she found a large bed frame, a stool, a smaller desk, and a peeling leather trunk. She looked inside the trunk and found a torn, yellowed cloth with the remnants of a pattern that reminded her of the vendors’ clothes. Blocky pyramids lay on a background of stripes of varying widths. She felt the paperiness of it between her fingers and smelled it. It had a sweet scent like faded perfume. It was still in her hands when Ma Dessaly walked in, taking up nearly the entire doorway, blocking out what little light there was.

  “Where are your snakes now?” she bellowed.

  • • •

  Ma Dessaly sneered at Corinne as the two men dragged her friends into the room. Ma Dessaly barked an order and the men stood outside the door, like guards.

  “My boys,” Ma Dessaly said. “They are good boys. They always do what I ask them to.” Beads of sweat glistened on her dark face. She shifted the strap of the bag with her thumb. There was a dark red imprint where the thin fabric had dug down into her flesh.

  “I want to know where you come from,” Ma Dessaly asked. “How do you know about Mami Wata and the opal when you don’t speak the language, and you are not dressed like anyone here?” She used a handkerchief to wipe her forehead. “Well?”

  “What is this place?” Corinne asked.

  “I am asking the questions, miss.”

  “Kahiri said this was a castle, but it doesn’t look like a castle.”

  Ma Dessaly lowered onto the stool. It creaked under her. “All right. Yes. The people who built this place called it the castle.”

  “But it’s a prison,” Bouki said.

  “Not exactly,” Ma Dessaly said. Her bulk had somehow changed. She seemed softer, as though her muscles and bones had all relaxed. Her head drooped. “The people who built this weren’t from here. They came to capture people and then they put them on ships to be sold across the ocean as slaves.”

  Corinne felt the surroundings closing in, as if everything and everyone in it had become tighter.

  “But not everyone survived the trip,” Dru said.

  “True.”

  “We saw one of the ships,” Corinne said. “It wasn’t that far out from here. There were chains on it like the ones we saw in the rooms downstairs.” She stepped forward. “There was this.” She pulled out the coin from the wreckage.

  Ma Dessaly perked up. She held the coin to a shaft of sunlight. She waved for the children to come closer. “You see here?” She pointed at the image etched into the coin. “Two doves, with the ocean in the middle. That’s for loved ones on either side of the water. But it’s not a coin.” She flipped it to the underside, which was blank. “There would have been a handle here. It’s a seal. Used to close letters. Tell me how you found it.”

  Corinne didn’t know if she could trust Ma Dessaly. But Ma Dessaly had no reason to trust Corinne, either. She had introduced herself with a lie. Maybe it was time to tell the truth. “Four mermaids brought us across the ocean to get the stone from you.”

  Corinne felt Ma Dessaly’s muscles vibrate like a pulled string. She looked at Corinne intently and her hand slid down to the stone in her bag.

  “Here,” Dru said. She put a large greenish fish scale into Ma Dessaly’s hand. One of Ellie’s.

  Ma Dessaly examined the scale like she did the coin. “You have seen Mami Wata, then?” she asked.

  Corinne shifted from one foot to the other. She wasn’t exactly sure whether Mama D’Leau and Mami Wata were the same. “She sent us for that,” she said, pointing at the bag. Corinne figured if she didn’t specify which she she meant, whatever Ma Dessaly assumed was not her fault.

  Ma Dessaly plucked the stone from the bag. It was perfectly round and gleamed in the reddish light of the setting sun. Corinne clutched her mama’s stone against her heart.

  “It looks like someone scooped out a piece of the sea,” Dru said.

  The opal was clear at the surface, but it looked like waving seaweed and colorful pieces of coral had been trapped in the middle. Corinne reached out to touch the jewel, expecting her finger to go through it, like it was a large drop of water, but it was solid. Ma Dessaly turned the stone in her hand, making the shapes in the middle look like they were swaying in a gentle tide.

  “Why did she send you?” Ma Dessaly asked.

  Corinne told her about the missing children and the favor they had to perform. She didn’t mention how terrifying Mama D’Leau was or how she had given them no choice, and no warning. She made it seem like Mama D’Leau was kind, more like Mami Wata might have been. “So you believe us now?” Corinne asked.

  Ma Dessaly stood up. “I believe you.”

  Corinne let out a breath that she didn’t know she had been holding in. She put her palm up, waiting for Ma Dessaly to drop the stone into it.

  But Ma Dessaly moved to the door. “Come,” she said.

  The children and the men followed her down to the lowest level of the castle. They faced the water and watched as the sun dove toward it like a red ball. It cast a bloody light over the walls, the cannons, and the ammunition. Behind them were the rooms with the chains.

  “Mami Wata saved those girls,” Ma Dessaly said. “And she saved my family, too. The opal has been with us for eight generations,” she said. “It was the last time anyone saw Mami Wata walking on this shore. Maybe right after that, she took those girls across the ocean with her and left this behind.” Ma Dessaly hefted the stone in her hand. “She gave it to my ancestor and told her to keep it with her always. It was a gift, she said, that would keep her family safe, and she was right. It did. But only our family. We were safe while others weren’t. Families were torn apart, split across the ocean. But our family was protected and people hated us for it. They said my ancestors should have tried to save others. They called them cruel, and worse things, too. When Mami Wata gave this to us, it was a blessing and a burden.” Ma Dessaly nodded, and her sons came up behind the children and opened a grate in the floor of the courtyard. Ma Dessaly’s fingers closed over the stone as if they might crush it to dust. “I’m not giving it to you,” she said.

  “But our friends!” Dru said.

  “What about us here?” Ma Dessaly said. “Mami Wata left the stone so my family would be safe from harm and so we would be prosperous. She left it so we would never have to fear losing our loved ones to this place or watch them cross the ocean, never to return. For generations we have been doing well, and this evil place has had no use. Why would I give it up now for some children? How many children do you imagine were already lost across the water?”

  “It’s not yours to keep,” Corinne said. “She wants it back.”

  Ma Dessaly laughed. She dropped the jewel into the bag and readjusted the strap against her shoulder. Bouki and Malik rushed at her. She swatted them away, but Malik kept pulling at the bag as Bouki tried to defend his brother. Her sons picked them off their mother like fruit off a tree.

  “You can’t do this,” Corinne said. “We came all this way.”

  Ma Dessaly’s sons grabbed her and Dru as well and shoved all four of them into the room beneath the courtyard and closed the iron grate on top of it. The children bounced down the stairs and landed in darkness. Corinne immediately ran back up the steps and pushed against the metal grid. It didn’t budge. Ma Dessaly fixed her head tie and smoothed her dress, then she walked grandly out of the castle. She never even looked back.

  26

  The Door of No Return

  All four of them pushing together only got the grating to budge slightly. After several frustrating minutes, they sat on the bottom step and listened to the waves crash against the castle walls. The room was so dark that Corinne couldn’t see its sides, and she felt the shadows close in on her like the water in the mermaids’ memory. Corinne rushed up the stairs and pushed the grating again. It felt like it was pushing back, as if the
steel itself wanted her to fail. She began to cry.

  Dru circled her arms around Corinne’s waist and dropped her head on Corinne’s shoulder.

  “Corinne?” Kahiri’s voice called out.

  “Here!” she called back. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  Kahiri’s head appeared at the top of the stairs where Ma Dessaly had exited. He ran over to them and knelt above the iron grate. “Are you all right? I saw Ma Dessaly walking away from the castle with a big, big smile on her face. I have never seen her smile like that.” He pulled up on the grating while the rest of them pushed from below, and finally, they shoved it all the way open.

  The four of them scrambled out.

  “What was that place?” Corinne asked.

  “They punished people by putting them in that dungeon before they were forced onto slave ships.” He pointed at the rooms with the high slit windows toward the back of the courtyard. “Those held the ones who were frightened enough to stay quiet. But you’re out now, and you’ll be going home soon.”

  “Without the stone,” Corinne muttered.

  “How many stones do we need?” Bouki asked, his eyes twinkling.

  “Bouki?” Corinne said.

  “Corinne?” Bouki answered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the stone. It took up his entire hand, but there it was, shining like a giant drop of water.

  “How did you do it?” Corinne asked.

  “Misdirection,” Bouki said. He tossed the stone into the air. It came down heavy and his wrist bent under the weight of it. He made a pained face and passed it to his other hand. “While she was trying to fend off Malik, I pulled the stone out of her bag and replaced it with another one.”

  “She’ll figure it out,” Kahiri said.

  “Not for a while,” Bouki said. “She’s sure that nothing happened to it. She put it in the bag herself. She’s probably not going to check until she gets back home because she won’t want anybody else to see it.”

  “Brilliant,” Corinne said.

  “I know,” he said. “Hey, you didn’t bring any more of those saltfish cakes, did you?” He grinned at Kahiri.

  Kahiri shook his head. “May I touch it?”

  Bouki handed it to him, and Kahiri turned it in his hands, staring with his mouth hanging open. “It’s pretty.”

  “And if it works the way it’s supposed to, now you’re lucky,” Dru said.

  Kahiri grinned. He led them toward water. “Time for you to go.”

  Malik shook his head and pointed toward the sea.

  “The mermaids,” Dru translated for Kahiri. “You were supposed to find out about their families.”

  “I have a story,” Kahiri said. “Only I’m not sure if it’s really about one of them.”

  Kahiri kept walking toward an open stone doorway that looked out at the sea. The sun had gone down, and the rising moonlight lit his face and the waves in the distance. “Your mermaids, when they were people, would have come through here,” he said. “Then they were taken down to the ships. This was the last view they had of home. When you go through these doors, you never return.”

  They stood in the doorway, silent. Corinne thought about what it would have been like to be forced away from her home, from her family, to an unknown destination, knowing she would never return. Her heart ached and she reached for the stone that hung around her neck, even though her home and her papa waited on the other side of the world and she knew she would return to them. Bouki reached for Malik’s fingers and held them tightly.

  “But they did return,” Dru said. “They are home now.”

  Kahiri smiled. “Yes. Terrible people stole them away from here. And terrible events brought them back. But after all that time, here they are again.” He led them through the door of no return. They climbed down the rickety stairs to the rocky jetty. Corinne put her lips to the salty water and called the mermaids, but they didn’t come.

  “Try again,” Bouki said.

  “Sisi would have come if she heard us,” Corinne said. “Maybe something is wrong.”

  “You have to say Boahinmaa,” Bouki said.

  “That’s actually correct,” said Dru.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” Bouki said. He narrowed his eyes at her, but smiled.

  “They promised to come for me,” Kahiri said. He and Corinne put their lips to the waves and called the mermaids’ true names, Boahinmaa, Ozigbodi, Gzifa, and Ababuo. A moment later, the mermaids appeared in the water near them.

  “Look what we found in a river,” Sisi said. The mermaids heaped oysters on the rocks. “There were masses of them.”

  Bouki knelt gently and wiped a grateful tear from his eyes. Then he picked up a stone and cracked the oysters open by knocking them on their thin edges.

  “You can’t!” Kahiri protested. “It’s bad luck to eat those!” But Bouki was already prying them open and passing them around. Corinne, Dru, Malik, and Bouki fell on the oysters, slurping them out of the shells as Kahiri looked on with worry in his eyes. “Everything will be ruined!” he insisted.

  Malik pointed at the jewel in Kahiri’s hand.

  “We have all the luck we need,” Dru said, taking the opal from him.

  Malik patted Kahiri sympathetically on the shoulder as he slurped another oyster. Kahiri went to the edge of the rocky jetty and dangled his feet in the water.

  “What did you find out about our families?” Noyi asked. She swam to the rocks and held on just beneath Kahiri’s knees.

  “There was a story about a girl named Boahinmaa, but I don’t know if it’s you,” he said to Sisi.

  She swam close. “Tell us.”

  Ellie and Addie also nestled close to Kahiri against the rocks and listened.

  “Boahinmaa was only thirteen when she was stolen in a raid on another village. Her family had traveled, herding their cattle, and she and her youngest brother stayed behind. The brother followed the warriors into the bush, trying to get her back. But he was small, and he didn’t have any weapons. So he tracked their footprints and their sounds. When they stopped to rest, he stopped too, but he slept too long and too hard, and when he woke up again, they had moved on.

  “The boy wandered the forest for a while, listening and looking for the footprints of the warriors. He found a piece of cloth on a thorn that looked like his sister’s skirt. He followed it, and he found another piece and another piece. It led him to where the men were, but by then, it was too late. He was at the outskirts of the warriors’ village, and he could not go inside without being seen. The boy waited for days, eating what little he could find in the bush and drinking from streams he had passed, but he never saw his sister again. He returned home with the pieces of her clothes and gave one each to his mother and father and their sisters and brothers as a memory.”

  Kahiri pulled out a piece of cloth. It was aged and faded, but there was a distinct yellow background with orange lines. “I got this from the man who told me that story,” he said.

  Sisi had pulled up close. Her uneven tail flipped behind her, dark yellow with red at the tips that looked like frayed cloth.

  “Was it you?” Ellie asked.

  “I don’t remember,” Sisi said.

  “Why don’t we remember everything?” Ellie asked. “Why can’t we know about our families when we are so close to home?”

  “I’m sorry,” Kahiri said. “If I had more time . . .”

  “We will come back,” Sisi promised. “Merekɔ aba.”

  Addie removed two of her scales and placed them on Kahiri’s ears. “Put your ear to the water and listen.”

  Kahiri did as he was told while Addie whispered into the water. He stood up beaming. “I heard you!” he said. “How often should I listen to the sea?”

  Addie laughed. “Our songs have a way of rippling on the water. Come any time and you wil
l hear them. We will sing to tell you when we can return.”

  Kahiri looked toward the village with a sad face. “I have to go home,” he said. He put his hands in Addie’s and they touched their foreheads to each other. “Safe journey. Wo ne nyame nkɔ.”

  Kahiri picked his way over the rocks to the beach. He walked away, turning back often to watch them until he disappeared beyond the dunes.

  • • •

  Once the oysters had been devoured, the children carefully made their way down the side of the stone jetty to the water. Corinne reached a hand out to Sisi, but Sisi didn’t take it. The mermaids had gathered close together, watching the path Kahiri had taken home.

  “I can’t leave without finding my family,” Ellie said. “I am home now. Why should I go?”

  “I would want to be home too,” Corinne said. “But our friends need us. Besides, Kahiri didn’t find your families yet.”

  Ellie began to cry. “But I am so close to them. I can feel it.” She sobbed in the water, making little waves that crashed against the rocks.

  “We will come back again,” Sisi said. “Just think, maybe by the time we return, Kahiri will be able to tell us about the children of our brothers and sisters.”

  Ellie shook her head violently. Her braids launched water that caught the moonlight in fast-moving arcs.

  “Why can they have their families when we can’t have ours?” Ellie shouted. “Why should I leave them behind again? I had no choice before, but I have a choice now.”

  Ellie sped for land. Corinne reached out to grab her as she had grabbed Noyi that morning, but Ellie slipped between her fingers and Corinne fell into the water. Her heart pounded as she watched the mermaid beach herself. “No!” Corinne called out, but Ellie kept moving across the land. “Do something!” Corinne pleaded with the other mermaids as she swam to Ellie. Noyi dashed forward, but stopped when the water was at her waist. With every moment, Ellie changed. First her skin turned from dark brown to gray, getting paler by the moment, like moth wings. Then the strands of hair in her braids faded to white.