People from the fishing village came to join them. They took off their earrings and bracelets and necklaces and tossed them into the sea. Laurent tugged Mrs. Duval forward. She unhooked a delicate gold chain from her throat and threw it into the crest of a wave. Laurent squeezed her hand.
The gifts gleamed in the sunset as they floated on the leaves and sank in the water.
Pierre put Corinne’s flower in the water and pushed it gently out. It looked like a spark of fire. He put the bottle of plums down. It lodged in the sand, where the waves pushed sand around it, burying it slowly.
The sun had nearly disappeared, and still nothing happened.
“It isn’t working,” Bouki said.
The witch sighed. She rubbed her withered arm and moved up.
“Not you,” a slow, creaking voice said. The crowd made way for Papa Bois. “You have sacrificed enough, witch,” he said. He stepped in front of her and took out Mama D’Leau’s stone. He held it up to the last remaining light, then touched it to the delicate froth that was retreating to the sea.
Mama D’Leau rose out of the water and rode to them on a wave like a throne. When it broke, she towered over them with the end of her tail flicking sea foam. “Is rare that you call me,” she said to Papa Bois.
“I have been reminded that the girl owes me a debt,” he said.
“So?” Mama D’Leau shrugged.
“So you have taken someone who has promised to work for me,” he said. “That’s not our way. She will have to come back.”
“I didn’t take her,” Mama D’Leau said. “She left her own self.”
Papa Bois dipped his head. “With some help from you, I think.” He pointed his stick back at the island. “You can have her back after she has helped the forest regrow.”
“If you making them do it on they own, it will take forever,” Mama D’Leau said.
Papa Bois smiled. The wrinkles around his eyes creased. “How will they learn?” he asked. “And anyway, what is time to us?”
“I don’t know where she gone to,” Mama D’Leau said. “She was determined, eh? She would have gotten far already.”
“You can reach anything in the water,” he said. “You can find her.”
“What she go come back for? She won’t remember anything by now. Why she would want to come back to things she don’t know?”
“Take me,” Pierre said. “She will remember me.”
“She won’t,” Dru said. “She is too far from home.”
“I am her home,” Pierre said. He walked into the water and plucked Corinne’s flower out of the waves as he went.
Mama D’Leau dove in an arc backward into the sea. Her tail curved into the air casting flecks of glittering foam over the crowd. The tip of it wrapped around Pierre and pulled him down.
50
A Spark of Memory
The shadow bore down on them fast in the freezing cold water, splitting them apart as they moved to get out of the way. The thick black-and-white fish turned sharply, its jaws open and its teeth as white as the ice floating in the water around them.
It won’t stop, the mermaid said. We have to go different ways.
The twig creature nodded and darted off in another direction. It was surprisingly fast despite having no fins. The fish stuck with the mermaid. It moved its smooth body through the water easily and snapped at the end of her tail. The mermaid dove abruptly, then doubled back, hoping to shake it off, but the fish was nearly as agile as she was and came after her again, this time diving deep and coming from below.
It hit her with its nose and sent her rolling against a block of ice. Some of the ice splintered off. The mermaid grabbed a large shard and charged at the fish as it came at her again. She dug the shard of ice into the fish’s side, but its skin was so tough, there was little damage. She left the ice wedged in its flesh and readied herself to take it head-on, but it darted behind a floe. The mermaid stopped. A steady heartbeat rippled across the water and bounced against her skin.
Corinne, came a voice.
The mermaid turned. A man with long hair and sad brown eyes faced her. She lifted her hand and then remembered that she no longer had the shard of ice to defend herself. She fled. The man followed, carried by a creature with ice-cold eyes that was much larger than he was. The pair matched the mermaid’s every move. She dove down, and they dove with her. She turned, and they turned.
She gave up and faced them, ready to fight, but the man held his arms open. In one hand was a small, bright thing, the color of her tail. She thought she had seen something like it before, but where? She lived in a world of ice. She darted toward the man, and at the last moment, he moved aside and pressed his hand to hers. As their skin touched, it sparked a memory. It was the sound of laughter. She pulled away with the small orange and yellow flower in her hand, and the laughter rang through her mind again. It was her own laughter, and the man’s too. She frowned and swam away again.
This time the man and the creature with him didn’t follow. The man called out, Grand-père is king of the fish-folk and I have seawater in my veins.
And I am my mama’s child, the mermaid said. I belong on the land. She remembered saying this every morning to the man, but she could not recall where. When she looked at him again, it was a face she knew. She stopped swimming.
Corinne.
Papa?
Corinne’s heart began to fill with memories of her papa, her friends, and her island. They flooded her like sunlight. Moment after lovely moment sparkled and bounced through her. But there were clouds on the edges of her mind. She swam away with her papa, but she kept looking back. There was something else she had forgotten. Or someone. In the distance, a shape like a bundle of twigs drifted. Corinne reached out, but it was too far away.
51
Turning Back
Corinne pushed up out of the water and slung the piece of net into the little yellow boat, while still hanging on to the edge. On the other side of the boat was her beach and her house just above it, on the hill. Pierre pulled her from the warm water. She landed on top of the nets, getting one of her feet caught.
“Are you going to stay out here all morning?” Pierre asked.
“You need my help, Papa,” Corinne said, extracting her foot.
“I don’t mind the company,” her papa said. “And it’s always a good strategy to drum up demand for your business by making your customers wait. But they won’t wait forever.” He winked and looked up at their house where her orange tree was laden with fruit. “Anyway, if you wait too long, all the fruit will rot, and then you won’t be the girl with the sweetest oranges on the island anymore.”
Corinne kissed Pierre’s rough face. She looked for the worry that sometimes played behind his eyes, and couldn’t find it. “Okay, Papa,” she said. She dove off the side of the boat and swam to the beach, then trudged up the hill to change her clothes and fill her basket before heading to town.
Corinne passed the dry well and then the full well with the mahogany forest to her right. The trees still looked like sharp, black shadows, but a few green shoots were already pushing up between them. When she arrived at the market, she maneuvered around noisy vendors holding out fruit and vegetables and scooting back chickens that were trying to make their escape. She came to her usual spot. Miss Evelyn and Miss Aileen had kept a space open for her. Mrs. Rootsingh and Dru had already set up to her left.
“You came!” Dru said.
Corinne quietly spread out her blanket. “Good morning, Miss Evelyn, Miss Aileen.”
The women nodded and smiled only slightly, as if any more would crack their faces.
Dru helped set up the oranges in pyramids of five. Corinne noticed Dru staring at her legs again. “I’m not going to turn,” Corinne said.
“How are you so sure?” Dru asked.
The truth was, Corinne didn’t know
exactly how she had become a girl again. As Mama D’Leau had pulled her and Pierre through the sea, her memories had slowly returned, and she had wished she could be a girl again. She wanted to be with her papa on land and run with her friends over the rocky hills. The desire tingled along her spine and extended up and down her body. But the tingling reminded her of something else—that feeling she got when people were watching her. She had looked around and found the eyes of several other mermaids lined up in the sea.
They floated shoulder to shoulder, hands clasped and colorful tails waving beneath their bodies. Their faces were dark as shadows, all different, but each one beautiful. Corinne’s heart swelled. She had been wrong. Mama D’Leau had long ago saved more than the four mermaids who carried her and her friends across the sea. She had not left them all to perish. As Corinne was pulled along, the mermaids began to sing in a language that Corinne didn’t know. Their hearts beat out a steady rhythm and their words undulated like a wave cresting and crashing and cresting again.
She looked at Mama D’Leau and her papa, but Mama D’Leau was focused on the sea ahead, and her papa only had eyes for Corinne. They didn’t see the mermaids who lined the way, and they didn’t seem to hear the song that followed them home.
By the time they arrived, Corinne was a girl again. She didn’t know how, and the look of surprise on Mama D’Leau’s face told Corinne that the jumbie didn’t know, either.
Corinne and Dru continued to stack the oranges. As the fruits rubbed against each other, their scent rose and mingled with the other smells of the market, peppery, spicy, earthy smells that made Corinne wish for a snack. Marlene tapped her shoulder lightly and held out a piece of brown paper with five plums inside. Corinne took them and Marlene threw her arms around Corinne’s neck and hugged her hard. Then she chose two oranges, held up two fingers, and skipped off to her mother. Mrs. Chow smiled and waved and brushed Marlene’s already smooth hair with her fingers. Corinne shared the plums with Dru.
Vendors called out, “Bananas for a dollar! Sweet like no other!” and “Plenty fruit, fat and douce!” Buyers swarmed Corinne, buying pyramid after pyramid of her oranges.
“See?” Dru said. “No one is afraid of you.”
“They’re barely talking to me though,” Corinne observed.
“They are buying. That’s what’s important,” Mrs. Rootsingh said. “It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks of you. It only matters what you think of yourself.”
Across the market, Corinne spotted Mrs. Ramdeen with her basket hooked onto her arm. She looked small and frail as she walked through the vendors, buying only a few things. She took up the tiniest pile of bodi and the smallest of the christophene. Her eyes flicked toward Corinne and flicked away again. She avoided Corinne’s side of the market entirely.
Corinne was about to hop over her oranges toward Mrs. Ramdeen when Dru caught her arm. “I have to do something, Dru,” Corinne protested.
“What can you do? The douens would not let Allan go.”
“We got everyone else home. Why can’t we get him back too?” Corinne passed out her few remaining oranges to Mrs. Rootsingh, Miss Evelyn, and Miss Aileen and grabbed her basket. Dru followed her out of the market. “Maybe I can find someone to get him back.”
Along the road, Bouki and Malik fell into step next to them. “Where are we off to?” Bouki asked.
“I don’t know,” Dru said.
“When do we ever know what we’re doing, eh, brother?” Bouki asked Malik, giving him a nudge. Malik nudged him back harder.
Corinne turned into the mahogany forest. She pulled Bouki’s slingshot out of his pocket and placed a stone against the strap, then pulled it back and squinted one eye as she looked around for something to shoot.
“You don’t really mean to do that, do you?” A stump to the right of them unfolded itself and Papa Bois sat cross-legged in the middle of a few tiny sprouts.
Corinne smiled. “No, sir.”
Papa Bois bowed his head. “Come. Work.” He handed them seeds, which they began to plant around him.
“Papa,” Corinne said as she worked. “Mama D’Leau said she couldn’t change me back from a mermaid, but when I got here, I was a girl again.”
“Yes.”
“And what about Ellie? She was one of the mermaids. She changed back into a girl when she tried to go home. Only she didn’t survive. How come?”
“What do you think?” Papa Bois asked.
Corinne pushed a few seeds into the soil. “I think when I remembered who I was, I wanted to go home. And when Ellie remembered who she was, she wanted to go home, too.”
“Right,” Papa Bois said.
“But Ellie died. And I became me again.”
“Ellie had been with Mama D’Leau a long time. Centuries,” Papa Bois said. “You human saplings don’t last very long. Not without some help.”
“So it’s not too late for Allan, then?” Dru asked.
“Your little douen friend?” Papa Bois said. “That depends.”
“On what?” Bouki asked.
Corinne sat back on her heels. “It depends on whether he wants to go back or not. That was the thing that changed Ellie and me, wasn’t it? We both wanted to go home.”
Papa Bois smiled at her. His kind eyes warmed her right through. “Only your friend can choose to come back,” he said. “Everyone has the power to be the thing they most want. Your little friend is going to have to want it so badly that there is no other choice but to change.”
“He’s afraid,” Dru said.
Corinne put her hand on Dru’s shoulder. “We will have to remind him of the things he loves. He won’t be afraid then.”
Papa Bois pointed his walking stick to a path in the forest. Dru ran ahead, calling Allan’s name. They found him scratching with a twig at the gray soil beneath a burned-out tree.
Dru dropped to her knees in front of him. “Allan? Do you want to be a boy again?”
He nodded.
“You can go home if you want to,” Corinne said.
Allan continued to dig.
“Do you remember the things you loved?” Corinne asked. “Like pelau.”
“And goat’s milk,” Dru added.
Malik made a circle in the dirt and pitched a stone into it.
“Marbles,” Bouki said.
Allan smiled.
“And your soft bed?” Dru added.
Allan stood.
“Come on,” Corinne said.
Bouki stepped in front of them. “Are you sure you want a mother?” he asked. “It might be better without one. They are very fussy.”
Allan walked around Bouki. He kept a quick, steady pace all the way to the market, hurrying ahead of the others, even on his backward jumbie feet. Mrs. Ramdeen was finishing up her shopping.
“Mama!” he called out.
Mrs. Ramdeen dropped her basket. The bodi fanned out, and the green christophene fell to the ground and rolled and bounced over the dirt. Her eggs broke and yolk traced a path from Mrs. Ramdeen’s toes toward Allan’s heels.
The market hushed.
Allan took a few wobbly steps toward his mama. He paused and turned back to Dru. She nodded and Corinne waved him on.
“Remember who you are,” Corinne said.
“Only if you really want,” Bouki added.
Corinne stomped Bouki’s foot.
Allan took a step backward, closer to his mama.
“Remember how you used to follow me everywhere?” Dru asked. “Remember how we used to swap our marbles? Remember how your mama used to sing to you at night?”
Allan took another step.
“Turn around, Allan,” Corinne said. “All you have to do is want to go home.”
Allan turned toward his mama again. This time, his feet didn’t move, so his body lined up perfectly. When he stepped fo
rward, his movement was steady and sure.
Mrs. Ramdeen dropped to her knees. Allan ran into her arms and they cried against each other’s cheeks.
Corinne’s heart felt full. The melody of the mermaids’ song that had accompanied her home played in her memory. She threw her head back, and felt the sun on her face, and laughed. As she and her friends left the market, the crowd closed in behind them, surrounding Allan and his mother.
“You saved all of them, Corinne!” Dru said.
Corinne blushed. “I couldn’t have done it without all of you.”
“I wonder if you and Allan can switch back if you want to?” Bouki asked. “This jumbie thing could be useful sometimes.”
Corinne shook her head.
“What do you like better? Being a jumbie or being a girl?” he asked.
“I like being Corinne.”
“And it means you can be on land and in the sea,” Dru said.
Corinne stopped walking.
“What is it?” Dru asked.
“Severine,” she said. “I left her behind.”
“Good riddance,” said Bouki. He high-fived Malik.
“She doesn’t know who she is, or even where she is. She’s lost and alone.”
“I thought that was the idea,” Bouki said.
“I told her I would stay with her,” Corinne said.
Dru rubbed Corinne’s arm. “There’s nothing you can do now. She wanted to hurt all of us. Isn’t this better?”
Malik touched Corinne’s hand and pointed to his head.
“I know she doesn’t remember now,” Corinne said. “But what if she does later? I remembered who I was. Ellie did too. And Allan. What if her memory comes back?”
“How?” Bouki asked. “Ellie remembered because she was sent home. You remembered because your father went for you. And Allan only needed to know that he could go home if he wanted to. There’s no one to remind Severine.” He swiped his hands twice as if he was dusting the very idea off his palms.
Rise of the Jumbies Page 16
