The Black God's Drums

by P. Djèlí Clark

  Doctor Duval cries out when he sees his daughter, ripping off a mask he’d been given before grabbing and hugging her tight. The captain seizes me, inspecting the gash on my arm, her eyes showing concern behind her mask. But I snatch it back. Hurts a whole lot, yes. But it seems least important right now. A shout from the Jeannots says they’ve noticed the fire I started, which is eating up that one shack and starting to spread. We stay here and they’ll find us soon enough.

  “How we getting out all this?” I ask the captain, pulling down the cloth from my face.

  She lifts off her own mask, sniffing and testing the air until she’s satisfied it’s safe. She sends another frown at my arm, but answers my question by lifting her pistol to the air and firing. There’s the clap of a gunshot that’s loud enough to tell everyone our position. And I think maybe she’s gone crazy. But instead of a bullet there’s a stream of smoke trailing from the barrel—like the fireworks I seen on Free New Orleans Day celebrations and the like. It flies high then explodes in a burst of bright colours against the black night. The captain searches the sky as the lights die out, looking hard for something.

  “Come on, come on!” she mutters tight, almost under breath. “Bring my doux-doux darling to me. Blast your eyes, allyuh have to see that! Follow it!”

  I follow her gaze to the sky, not understanding. Bring what to her? Who had to see? I’m still wondering when my ears catch a sound: a deep familiar hum. It grows louder by the moment, like it’s getting closer. My eyes widen as I realize where I’ve heard that sound before, up in my alcove on Les Grand Murs. It’s the sound of spinning ship propellers. Suddenly there’s light. It’s blinding. I cover my eyes, blinking until I can see. And I make out the incredible sight of an airship! Lord almighty! It’s big and beautiful, hanging right over the Dead City, its lamps searching about the swamp before training down on us. In the glare, I can just read the words painted in big gold letters on its hull—Midnight Robber.

  The captain grins. “We ride reach!”

  The Jeannots spin about, shocked so much at first they barely move. And there’s this long stretch of quiet, except for those spinning propellers. Then one of them lets out that banshee yell they so famous for and starts shooting into the air. The rest join in, yipping and hollering and aiming all their fire on the airship. But that thing’s got guns too—bigger guns. When they shoot back it sound like loud handclaps one right after the other, and bullets rain down on the Jeannots with the force of a hammer. It tear through knots of them at a time. The ones still swaying with drapeto don’t even cry out when they’re hit. They just fall into the swamp, quiet. It don’t take long before the rest of them break and run for cover. Some even drop their rifles, scrambling fast as their feet can carry them deeper into the swamp. I laugh at the sight. They ain’t yipping and hollering now! The Midnight Robber makes a sweep above the city that clears the whole area, then comes to hover right above us. A rope ladder with iron rungs falls out, and hanging at its end is the Hindoo—looking pretty as ever. He smiles and I stifle the blushing again, though his eyes are all for the captain.

  “Need some assistance, my lady?” he calls out dramatically.

  “Ravi!” she greets with a whoop.

  So it’s Ravi then, is it? I decide to remember that name.

  “You could have mentioned you were bringing a whole airship,” I comment.

  The captain shoots me a crooked grin. “Had to time it right. If it didn’t work, all now so we running back to New Orleans!” She turns back to Ravi, who’s standing now beside us. Her hand motions to me, Féral, Doctor Duval, and his daughter. “See about getting all ah them on the ship! François and Nogai should be making their way back. The three of we going to—”

  She don’t get to finish before the boom goes off. It’s so loud I jump. The ground shakes beneath our feet, leaving us all rattled and my ears ringing. Another explosion, I wonder? No, more than that, I realize, feeling a chill creep along my skin. I turn toward the cannon, where white smoke is curling up out from the rounded black muzzle.

  “No!” I breathe out, not wanting to accept what I’m seeing.

  The captain is already running for the cannon and I follow close behind. When we reach it, you can smell the stink of the gunpowder thick in the air: sour and bitter all at once. There’s a Jeannot lying on the ground. I gasp at the sight of him. It’s the tall man in the black suit! I was certain I left him for dead in that shack, but no mistaking that’s him! He look bad off. His clothes are almost all burnt away and his mask is melted on one side, showing scorched blistered skin underneath. But damn if he ain’t still alive! Just my luck he didn’t go up in the fire. Don’t even know how he managed to crawl out here in all this confusion. But he’s here now, sprawled out with one arm extended. I follow it to where his hand is clutching at a long wire that extends back to the cannon. I seen those before. They what you pull to make a cannon fire. And I know then what he’s done.

  He begins to cough and laugh at the same time and from under his breath I can hear him croaking out a song:

  “’Twas when they let a cannon fly,

  Then up went rockets in the sky,

  Huzza! For Jackson was the cry . . .”

  He chokes and stops, angling those icy blue eyes to fix on me. I’m expecting him to curse or spit. But instead he smiles wide—showing half real yellowed teeth and half a melted white mask. “Looks like I win, cher,” he rasps feebly. “Here come . . . death.” His head turns away to rest facing up, eyes staring as a slow hiss escapes from that unchanging grin and he goes still.

  I follow his gaze to where the cannon shell has exploded in the night sky—a big puff of gray smoke spreading out in every direction. It reminds me of a storm cloud, though growing and moving different from any I ever seen. Not too hard to figure out what it is: Shango’s Thunder.

  Doctor Duval runs up beside us, his eyes glaring up at that strange expanding cloud.

  “We must leave here!” he cries.

  The captain is staring up too. “Maybe it won’t reach high enough,” she says. But her voice don’t sound like she believes it. She turns to look at me. And for the first time since we met, I see fright on her face. That scares me even more.

  Doctor Duval shakes his head. “Does not matter! The compound, it rises! Even now, it seeds the sky!”

  He don’t have to tell me. In my head, Oya is chanting louder by the minute. And the air around me is changing. I can feel it, like little needles pricking sharp on my skin. There’s a fresh smell like tilled up earth in the air: the kind you get right before a rainstorm. Only this is so strong it’s almost overwhelming, filling up my nose and mouth ’til I can taste it. A wind picks up from nowhere. It ripples across the Dead City, whistling between empty streets and corridors, swaying the hanging moss on cypress trees and sending the old buildings to rattling and creaking, so it feel they might topple over. It passes over us in a rush and I shiver as Oya drinks it in. The waters of the swamp are moving too, the wind got it jumping up and down like that pot of gumbo Sister Eunice was cooking—as if somebody set it to boiling. From somewhere up above comes the first deep rumble of thunder, slow and building.

  “No!” the captain protests, as if that alone can stop what’s coming. There’s anguish in her voice. But her eyes aren’t on the approaching storm. She’s staring out into the distance. Though we can’t see it from here, I know she’s looking out to New Orleans. The thought makes my heart drop.

  “We must go!” Doctor Duval urges again. “There’s no more we can do!”

  The wind’s gotten stronger by now, so that it’s howling in our ears.

  “He’s right!” Ravi shouts coming up. The Haitian and the Mongolian are there at his side, all of them looking worriedly at the sky. “We can’t stay here!” he says, nodding towards the Midnight Robber. “We get caught up there in this storm, we might not make it out!” The captain still seems reluctant, but she turns and begins giving orders to get back to the airship.

 
; Me, I don’t move. My eyes are still fixed on the distance. Oya’s vision flickers in my head, its meaning made plain now. The grinning skull rising like a moon over New Orleans is this dead Jeannot at my feet, who’s loosed Shango’s Thunder on the city. People will be out tonight for the Maddi grá. None of them know what’s coming. Nobody even warned them. And now it’s too late. This isn’t storm season. There are no shelters open. No one’s ready for this. Even if the walls hold, whole place will drown in all that rain and wind. Everyone will drown. I can’t let that happen, I know at once. Not to my city. I feel a growing anger building up in me. I won’t let that happen.

  The captain sees me standing there and she turns back from the others. The wind is howling louder now as flashes of lightning streak across the night, giving glimpses of dark churning clouds. When the rain starts, it don’t fall in drops. It comes in sheets that slants and stings your skin when it hits. The water in the swamp is churning up too, picked up by the wind and crashing against the buildings of the Dead City in waves.

  “I’m not going!” I yell, before she can begin. “I have to stop this!”

  She stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. And maybe I have. “How you mean?” she shouts, wiping rain from her face.

  “Oya!” I cry back over the rising wind. “I have to get her to help! She can stop this!”

  The captain eyes me like she’s unsure. “Will she listen to you?”

  Lord, I hope so. I close my eyes and call to her. She talks back.

  In my head Oya is like a beating drum. I see through her eyes, her memories. I see that day the Frenchies tried to take back Haiti. I see Napoleon’s ships like little toy boats to her, tossed along the waves, the wind tearing those big white sails like paper. I see masts and hulls broken to splinters and dashed over the dark waters. Men in blue and white uniforms and bright plumed hats scream as the water fills up their mouths and chests, pulling them down, down, down into the black deep. But that wasn’t all. The goddess, she remembers the rest. And it’s painful to watch.

  I see the storm heave itself from the sea onto land, like a great monster of wind and rain and sea. I see the Haitian soldiers cheering the end of the Frenchies going quiet one by one, watching what’s coming for them. Some start to run. But they can’t escape this. Now they screaming too. The wind rips through them, flinging people into the air like dolls. The water comes with it, more water than I ever seen: washing away trees and buildings, mashing them all up together and rolling over everyone and everything in its way. The people run. They scream. Some fall to their knees and throw up their hands in prayer. They cry out to their gods to save them. The gods who had helped them win their freedom. They cry out even as the storm swallows them up and delivers them back out to the sea.

  Oya remembers it all too well. It wasn’t just the Frenchies that got swept away that day. It was her people too. Her people who had brought her with them in the belly of slave ships. Who had sung her songs and made her offerings in this strange new land, calling her by new names and mixing her up with new gods. Her people who had kept her alive, passing on her tales to those who came after. She hadn’t meant to harm them. But she was Oya, the rain that grows your crops and the tornado that tears your home apart; the wind that brings change and the storm that reaps destruction. Calling on her was always like flipping a coin: one side a blessing, the other chaos. I’m throwing up that coin now, and praying it comes down on the right side.

  “Your people need you now!” I plead. “Just like they did back then. They asked you to be a weapon. And you were as terrible as they wanted you to be. Because that’s what we do, isn’t it? We change you gods wherever we bring you, make you into whatever we need. You couldn’t help your people that got caught in your whirlwind. You couldn’t save them in time. But you can save your people now. The ones right here in this city. They remember you, even if they don’t always call you by name. They sing and dance your songs. They carry you with them in their stories and memories. I carry you. And we need your protection!”

  Oya answers my call with a great shout, filling me up with her power. Hard to explain that feeling. It’s like a whole hurricane is swirling up inside me. Like I got lightning at my fingertips and thunder rolling behind my eyes. I can hear drums pounding out a rhythm first played back in old Lafrik, joined in by a rattle and chanting voices. It make my feet want to dance and it seem like the whole world is moving with me. I surrender to it fully, letting the goddess ride me, guide me as her own. I raise up my hands to the storm—her hands too, now. Our hands. The storm roars back, angry, like a child at its mother, trying to make me kneel. But I laugh. I am the Mistress of Winds! I gather them up, forcing them to bend to me. They struggle but I hold on tight, letting Oya work through me, with me, together.

  Then something slams me hard. A wave so big it knocks me down. I barely have time to think as my world is turned sideways. I plunge into the rising water of the swamp and am swept away, tossed about and carried along in all that turbulence. My feet slip once, twice on the ground beneath. Then there’s no more ground and I’m fighting to swim. But the water’s strong: a living thing that wraps around me, pulling me under. I’m sinking now, caught by jutting tree roots and the buried wreckage of a lifeless city. It feels like hands dragging me down. I open my mouth stupidly to cry out and the water rushes in. I can’t breathe. And I’m trying to reach up, to find the air and wind that is Oya’s domain again. But these waters got me held fast. And I must have hit one of those deep parts, because I feel like I keep going down. Down. Down. Down. Like those Frenchies. Going on to Yemoja’s realm. I wonder if, when I get to the bottom, I’ll meet them.

  Suddenly someone has me. No, not someone. These aren’t hands holding onto me. It’s the water itself. The very same one that was trying to drown me. But now it’s different. Now it’s pushing on me, pulling on me, lifting me up. I break the surface, sucking in air and wind by the mouthful. I think it’s the sweetest thing I ever tasted. Then I see who it was that saved me.

  It’s the captain. She’s standing in the rising waters of the Dead City. No, she ain’t standing in the waters. Lord almighty, she’s standing on top of the waters! Her head is tilted back and her arms are held wide. She’s moving them back and forth like she’s doing some kind of dance. And the waters shift with her, great big waves swirling in time to her movements, parting and pushing back to leave a space for both of us. Not just the captain I know. Not just Ann-Marie. Because she’s all light again. Golden, beautiful light like the sun breaking through a storm. Oshun, the Bright Lady.

  What are the chances that both Oya and Oshun come to New Orleans in both of us at the same time, those two odd nuns had asked? Now I know the answer. No chance. Not chance at all. My sister done her part. Time to do mine.

  I rise back up with my hands to the sky, still coughing out water. The storm resists, but I am Oya now. My burgundy dress flows about me as I dance, a machete over my head, in the middle of the whirlwind. I bend those winds to me, making them surrender to my control. I reach up to pluck away bright cords of lightning from the heavens, shaping them in my palm until they’re just sparkling bits of fireflies. I plunge fingers into black clouds, swirling them from within until they’re untroubled, and a heavy rain turns into a light shower. I laugh as I go about my work. And beside me, my sister Oshun shines.

  * * *

  It’s a long time after sunrise as I sit on the deck of the Midnight Robber looking out at the city. It’s Maddi grá morning. I can hear the noise of it faintly—horns and music and people—even now, way up here at the air docks on one of Les Grand Murs. Don’t remember much about last night. I woke up here on the Midnight Robber. The pretty Hindoo man, Ravi, he say they thought they’d lost the captain and me for good. The airship had been forced to sail away, or it might have been struck right out of the sky. Then the storm stopped suddenly so they could swing back and land again. They found the two of us lying in the swamp—on a dry patch of land where the waters had all pulled back
. Thought we was dead, but we were both just passed out. The big Mongolian carried us to the ship slung over his shoulders, he said. Was him that sewed up the gash on my arm. And we’d slept right through until the dawn.

  “Glad to see you awake,” someone greets me.

  I turn to look up at the captain. She’s dressed in her Free Isles jacket, standing there straight-backed, bright eyed and rested—appearing every bit the commander of this airship. I watch as she runs a hand along a railing, stroking it like the vessel is alive and can feel her touch. Think I hear her mutter my doux-doux darling under her breath.

  “Long night,” I answer back.

  “Damn long,” she agrees and sits down with me on her deck, stretching her legs out. For a while we both don’t do any talking. It’s enough just to take in the sun and the breeze on our faces. Finally, I work up the courage to say what we both avoiding.

  “You remember any of what happened?”

  The captain takes a while, then shakes her head. “Not too much. But I think. . . .” Her words trail off before she starts up again. “I think I was someone else for a while.”

  I shake my head back at her. “You were you. Just Oshun too. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for helping save the city.”

  She gives an uncomfortable shrug. “When you get pulled away by the waters and I couldn’t find you, I remember wanting to get you out of there so bad I . . .”

  “You opened yourself up,” I finish. “You let Oshun in. How was it?”