Rise of the Jumbies

by Tracey Baptiste

  “You would fight me for them?” Victor asked. “We have known each other since we were boys.”

  “You were wiser then,” Pierre said.

  Victor nodded and wiped his mouth against his shoulder. “When the island goes down, remember, you didn’t do anything to stop it.”

  “I know you’re angry, Victor,” Pierre said. “But anger only makes more anger. Like fire only makes more fire. It doesn’t help.”

  Victor glanced at Malik, who had picked up the gleaming hook and walked away.

  The fire was a mere crackle now. No one could reach the remaining flames without walking through the smoldering forest, where branches fell, sending up red embers and hot ash. Everyone stopped and encircled Corinne, Malik, and Dru.

  “Didn’t she tell you anything about the missing children?” Mrs. Rootsingh asked.

  “No, Mama,” Dru said. “She sent us on an errand to get a stone. But . . .” She looked at Corinne.

  “Bouki hid the stone because he didn’t trust her,” Corinne said. “So she took him.”

  “Why would he do that?” Hugo asked.

  “He saved us, Uncle,” Corinne said. “She wasn’t going to hold up her end of the bargain.”

  “And now a fourth child is gone,” Hugo said. He pulled Malik to his side.

  “And we have no way to get any of them back,” Mrs. Rootsingh said.

  An argument rose into the air like smoke, about what could be done and what they should have done in the first place.

  Dru pulled Corinne and Malik away. “They’ll never figure it out with all that yelling.” She threw a look at her mother. “We have to get Mama D’Leau to keep her end of the bargain.”

  “We could ask the mermaids,” Corinne suggested.

  Malik shook his head.

  “There’s only one jumbie Mama D’Leau will listen to, and he’s in there,” Dru said. They looked at the smoky forest.

  “How do we get him to come out?” Corinne asked.

  “I’m not sure Papa Bois ever leaves the forest,” Dru said. She played with the ends of her hair and pulled a strand toward her lips.

  “Then we will have to go in,” Corinne said.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Dru said.

  “That hasn’t stopped us before.”

  As the three of them made a plan, the adults’ argument petered out.

  Pierre came to Corinne. “There’s nothing more we can do for now,” he said. “We can only hope that the fire doesn’t catch again, or that the rain comes.”

  Small flickers still burned, but they would have to wait for parts of the forest to cool before continuing on. Gaping holes had been burned into the wall of orange trees that Corinne and the white witch had planted to separate jumbies and people. Animals were scurrying out through the gaps, but behind the trees, scores of others cried out, scratching from the other side. The tree wall was strong and held most of them inside the steaming forest. Corinne felt sick to her stomach. She had made the wall. She had trapped the animals inside. She had done this.

  Mrs. Rootsingh held out her hands for Dru. Malik joined Hugo on the road to the bakery. People returned to their villages, and the jumbies skirted the forest, looking for a safe place to enter. When they did, they stamped out flickers of orange flame with their feet and hooves. Both people and jumbies looked to the sky. The sun had just risen, and heavy clouds dimmed the light, but they gave no rain.

  Corinne put her sooty hand into her father’s and rubbed his rough skin. They trudged to the house on the hill, where Pierre made Corinne clean herself up. He gave her something warm to eat and ushered her to bed. The sun had just risen over the sea. But when Corinne saw him return to the front room to watch the fire, she joined him. She laid her head in her papa’s lap and looked at the forest. She felt his hands and the pull of a comb as Pierre untangled knots and plaited her hair. The rhythm of each stroke of the comb and Pierre’s fingers against her locks after each pass soothed her. Before long, she fell asleep.

  • • •

  Later in the morning, the bittersweet scent of burned wood filled the air. White ash had blown in through the open door and windows. Corinne kicked a blanket off her legs, and ash drifted to the floor. It left streaks everywhere—on the furniture, the shelves, even the broken wax figure of Corinne’s mama. She found her papa in the garden, walking among the plants and shaking the ash off leaves and branches. Everything was covered in a delicate layer of white, as if someone had sprinkled salt over it all, even Corinne’s oranges.

  “They will choke,” Pierre said.

  Corinne followed him, shaking ash off some plants, blowing or wiping it from others. When they were finished, Corinne prepared eggs and tea while Pierre sliced bread. They ate quickly, and without a word, got dressed and went to the mahogany forest. When they bent the corner from their house and started on the straight part of the road to the dry well, Corinne gasped. Pierre squeezed her shoulder and steered her forward.

  The forest was black. Wisps of smoke curled from its depths, and the shrubs that had edged the trees and grown up anywhere they could find space had become tangles of blackened twigs. The wall of orange trees was still standing, but the burned-out holes ringed with black were starker in daylight.

  Pierre and Corinne reached the tamarind tree where Corinne had once faced off against a sharp-toothed lagahoo. She wondered if it was the same big one that had helped them the night before. The tree’s branches were broken, and many of the tamarind pods lay on the ground, roasted. Corinne picked one up and it broke apart in her hand. It smelled smoky and sweet.

  “What if Laurent and the others were in the forest, Papa?” she asked.

  Pierre took a breath. “Setting the fire was a bad thing to do. Parents were afraid for their children and hurt because nothing they tried had worked. Fear and sorrow can make anyone do foolish things.” His voice was strained. “Wherever the children are, this didn’t help.” He wiped a hand across Corinne’s furrowed brow. “But if Mama D’Leau said she would take you to them, it means they could not have been on land. We will find them, Corinne. Somehow.”

  Hugo was sitting on a bench in front of the bakery. His kind face looked drawn and sallow. He and Pierre went inside, and Malik replaced him on the bench. Corinne sat with him. They focused their attention on the road that led to Dru’s village and waited.

  “Malik,” Corinne said. “I’m sorry about yelling at you.”

  Malik smiled a very small smile then refocused on the road. A few minutes later Dru appeared around the corner. They met her and raced to where the line of orange trees met the thickest part of the forest.

  Corinne found a hole large enough for all of them to go through.

  30

  Papa Bois

  Smoke irritated their noses, and a low sizzle was still in the air. The ground was hot and sandals provided little protection. The rubber soles stuck to the burned forest floor. Fewer leaves and branches meant more light, but the smoldering carcasses of trees made the mahogany forest a graveyard of broken black bones reaching to the sky. The sky that hung over them was still cloudy and withheld even a hint of blue.

  Corinne was used to the feeling of many eyes on her, especially when she stepped into the woods, but today the forest felt empty. Somehow, that was worse. She heard the sharp crack of a twig to her left and spun in that direction.

  Corinne and her friends stood still, barely breathing, waiting for another sound.

  “Papa Bois?” Corinne called out softly.

  “No, not Papa.”

  Corinne’s stomach tightened.

  Something small stirred behind the fallen trunk of a tree that had been split down the middle. The little thing came around, kicking up ash and a few tiny embers until it faced Corinne, Dru, and Malik.

  “Allan!” Dru rushed to her friend. Allan was nearly naked except for the roun
d hat that the douens wore and the last shreds of the pants he was wearing the night the jumbies had taken him. They hung off his hips beneath a round belly. “You’re alive!” Dru cried, hugging him and looking back at the others. Corinne frowned and Dru pulled away to look at Allan’s backward-facing feet.

  Corinne pulled Dru away. When Severine had sent jumbies to attack the people of the island, Allan had been taken. But Corinne wasn’t sure how, exactly, so she didn’t want Dru to get too close.

  Several more douens came out from behind burned-out trees and ash-covered stumps. They surrounded the children.

  “It’s not safe here,” Allan said.

  “Are you going to eat us?” Dru asked.

  “I won’t hurt you,” Allan said.

  Malik pointed at the closing circle of douens.

  “What about them?” Corinne asked.

  Allan didn’t say.

  “But last night everyone was working together,” Corinne said.

  Allan shrugged. “Last night was different.”

  “We have a message for Papa Bois,” Dru said. “Can you help us?”

  The advancing douens paused, and Allan tilted his head up so that they could see his face. A chill went through Corinne. Allan looked so much like his mother, Mrs. Ramdeen.

  “There are children missing,” Corinne said. “Like you. Papa Bois can help us get them back home.”

  Allan’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t go home,” he said. “No one has helped me. Not even Papa Bois.”

  “Your mama has been searching for you every day,” Dru said.

  “She will never find me. I don’t want her to see me now. She will hate me, just like the people who did this.” He gestured around to the blackened trees. “I’m learning to sense when people come near. That’s how I found you.” He looked at Dru. “You didn’t come looking for me. You were my friend. Do you hate me, too?”

  “Nobody hates you, Allan,” Corinne said. “The people who set the fire were angry and scared because too many children have gone missing, including you. We have to find all of them, and only Papa Bois can help us with that.”

  “We can get everyone home with your help,” Dru said.

  “I miss my soft bed. And my mama’s pelau,” he whispered.

  “So you will help us?” Corinne asked.

  Allan ran awkwardly to Corinne with his backward feet and grabbed her hand. He pulled her over the smoking ground. Corinne tried to twist her way out of his grip, but it was like a vise. Malik and Dru followed with the douens close on their heels. Allan stopped in front of a large, squat boulder surrounded by a few trees that seemed to have been spared from the fire. Several branches were full of unfurling leaves of bright, fresh green. “Here,” he said.

  “What is here?” Dru asked.

  Allan pointed at the rock.

  Corinne felt something like a heartbeat coming up through the soles of her sandals. It was as if the entire forest had come alive. The pulse felt stronger as she moved closer to the boulder. She squinted at it and turned her head to the side. The boulder itself moved as if it was breathing. Corinne’s pulse quickened, but she reached a finger out to touch it, and the surface felt soft but tough, like muscle. She jumped back. The boulder rearranged itself. Cracks and crevices twisted in other directions. Some opened up, exposing new muscle beneath, and the surface of the rock shifted. When it stopped moving, the boulder had unfolded into a little old man not much taller than Corinne, with a long gray beard, the legs of a goat, and a pair of tiny horns peeking through his messy gray cornrowed hair.

  Dru grabbed Corinne’s arm, and Corinne stared agape at Papa Bois’s hoofed feet until Malik tipped her chin up to meet his eyes.

  “What are you staring at?” the old man asked in a voice like the long, slow creaking of timber.

  Dru took a deep breath. “Sorry, sir,” she said, her voice trembling. “Good morning, sir.” Then she added, “We need your help.”

  “I know that already,” Papa Bois said, taking his time for each word. He settled against a walking stick, which a moment before had looked like a branch that had fallen against the rock. “So, which of you was it that started the fire?”

  “None of us,” Corinne said. “Sir,” she added. “We weren’t here when the fire was set. We don’t know—”

  Papa Bois held up his walking stick. He looked at Dru. “She came with her matches and set fire to the wood. I can still smell the sulfur on her fingers. She had long hair then. But I took care of that.” Papa Bois moved slowly in the little clearing as he spoke. He bent over the few surviving plants and picked up a half-burned leaf. In his fingers, it sprang back to life. He looked at Dru again. “Not so?”

  She pulled at the shaggy edges of her shiny black hair and looked down at the ground. “Yes, sir,” she said. “But that was a little while ago. And I didn’t mean for the fire to get out of hand. And I’m sorry, sir.”

  “But here we are again.” Papa Bois gestured around them.

  “This time it wasn’t her,” Corinne said.

  “A fire is a fire,” Papa Bois said. “Burn one tree, burn one hundred, it’s all the same unless you are burning it for warmth or to cook your food. It’s wasteful.”

  “She was trying to help me,” Corinne said.

  “And while she did that, she was hurting others.” Papa Bois’s stare rooted Corinne to the ground. She felt as trapped as she had been in the grip of Mama D’Leau’s seaweed. “Someone will have to pay,” he said.

  Corinne stepped forward. “If anyone should pay, it’s me.”

  Papa Bois chuckled slowly. A few tears squeezed out of the wrinkled corners of his kind brown eyes. Where they fell to the ground, tiny white flowers sprang up and opened their buds. “Tell me, did Mama D’Leau send you for her treasure?”

  Corinne felt her muscles go slack. “How do you know about that?”

  “I can smell the sea on you,” he said. “It goes right through you. Like you’ve been soaking in it.” He put his hand on the bark of a tree, and it changed from ashen gray to deep brown. “The help you need has something to do with Mama D’Leau, I bet.”

  “She has Malik’s brother, sir,” Dru said.

  “And Mama D’Leau promised to show us where some missing children are,” Corinne said. “But she didn’t keep her promise.”

  “She listens to you, doesn’t she?” Dru asked.

  Papa Bois tilted his head and looked at Malik. “It’s nice to be quiet, isn’t it? You see so much more than the others.” He winked and walked on. Beneath his hooves, grass shot up and bushes grew with every brush of his fingers. Even the soil became springy beneath him. Gradually, the black-and-white world of the forest was coming alive again.

  Malik pointed to the light waning in the sky.

  “How did it get so late?” Dru asked.

  “Things take time to heal,” Papa Bois said. “Nothing happens quickly.”

  “We have to get back,” Corinne said. “Mama D’Leau still has Bouki, and she—”

  “She won’t hurt him, if he’s smart and he keeps his mouth shut.”

  Corinne swallowed hard, Dru’s shoulders drooped, and Malik’s lips twisted.

  “I see,” Papa Bois said. “Better get on with it then.” The sky was already turning orange.

  “How is this happening?” Corinne asked. “We will never get there by sunset. It’s the only time we can call her.”

  “Don’t worry, sapling,” Papa Bois said. “It’s not as far as you think.” He tilted his head and closed his eyes as if he was trying to hear something from far away. “She is ready now, little ones. Hold on.”

  Corinne felt the earth move around her. The ground opened up and swallowed them, burying them in sediment and roots. Soil pressed so hard against her she couldn’t breathe. Then they shifted sideways, going through rocks, past earthworms and ants, centipedes
and scorpions, until the earth fell away again and they were standing in the same positions as before, only they were no longer in the forest. They were at the edge of the sea, and several people on the beach looked shocked by their sudden arrival.

  Corinne, Malik, and Dru panted.

  Papa Bois looked at a man who had his hands around the neck of a small rabbit. “Are you planning to eat that, son?”

  The man’s grip slackened, and the rabbit stopped screaming and dropped to the ground. People ran off toward the village, while the rabbit bounded toward the cliff.

  Corinne called up to her house. “Papa!”

  Pierre and Hugo came running out the back. They disappeared inside the house and reappeared on the path to the beach. Their faces were frantic with worry. When they got close enough, they pulled Corinne, Dru, and Malik into their arms and away from Papa Bois.

  “It’s okay, Papa,” Corinne said. “He is here to help us.”

  “Why did you leave?” Hugo scolded Malik. He shook Malik gently at the shoulders, then pulled him into a hug. “You could have been hurt!” he said. He kept holding Malik away from his body and pulling him close over and over again as if he wasn’t sure that he was really there, safe and sound. Then he turned to Dru. “Your mother has been very upset.”

  Dru lowered her eyes.

  “How is he going to help?” Pierre asked.

  Papa Bois picked up his walking stick and pointed across the water. The sun had just touched the sea, and a large wave rose up and hurtled toward them.

  31

  Water and Sand

  The surge dissipated just before reaching shore, and in the middle of it, Mama D’Leau rose up to her waist. Her long braids hung around her body with shells and seaweed knotted in the strands like the tangle of Pierre’s nets when he hauled them from the sea.

  “So you come then,” Mama D’Leau said. Her voice rolled like a wave over the onlookers.

  “I hear you just fine,” said Papa Bois.

  “With them old ears?” Mama D’Leau asked with a laugh.

  “They are the same age as yours, about,” he replied.