The Jumbies

by Tracey Baptiste

  Corinne fed her father another orange, and another. His hair turned black again. He was still coming back. And at last, there was Corinne’s papa kneeling beside her.

  “I’m so sorry, Corinne!” He kissed the tight braids on his daughter’s head like he used to every morning.

  Corinne hugged him tight.

  Together they looked down into the sea where Severine had disappeared. Nothing remained on the water’s surface but a few floating branches and bobbing oranges.

  Now they had a new problem. The forest near the cliff was ablaze.

  “How will we get through?” Corinne asked.

  Pierre looked to the sea and pointed to a single dark cloud. “Just wait,” he said. Moments later, the rain began.

  44

  For Keeps

  Corinne and her father filled their pockets with as many oranges and seeds as they could carry and turned to go home. “We’ll get lost, Papa,” Corinne said.

  “But we have to try, don’t we?”

  As they stepped toward the trees, a douen appeared and pointed the way. Pierre stiffened.

  “I think it’s trying to help us, Papa.”

  Still, Pierre’s eyes glittered like a rough sea. “We can’t be sure,” he said.

  “We have to try,” Corinne reminded him.

  Pierre shifted Corinne to his other side, away from the jumbie, and together they followed the path. A few steps into the forest, the trees were so close together that they did not know where to go next. Another douen appeared and pointed the way. As they went, more jumbies stepped in to show them the way home.

  Some bowed their heads slightly as Corinne and Pierre passed. Others watched them with wary eyes, but did nothing to stop them from going. One lagahoo reached out to Corinne with an expression that resembled a smile. Corinne squeezed Pierre’s hand tight, and they both stopped in their tracks. The lagahoo looked down at Corinne’s bleeding leg and whispered something. A moment later, a douen came out from some undergrowth and put something against the cut. Almost instantly, the pain was gone. Pierre bowed his thanks.

  When Corinne and her father finally emerged on the road, a crowd of villagers stood silent before them. The witch stepped forward. Dru and the brothers stepped forward too. The three of them were barely recognizable. Bouki and Malik were dressed in clean, untorn clothes and had somehow managed to scrub the color of mud from their hair and skin. It turned out that they were more golden brown than mud red. And Dru! Corinne walked with uncertainty toward her friend. Dru wore a sari, but her braids were gone, and her short, shaggy hair made her look like a fierce little boy.

  “What happened?” Corinne asked.

  “I set a fire to distract the jumbies,” Dru said. “I cleared the land and everything, but it didn’t go the way I planned.” Her hands touched her hair and tried to twirl the ends, but there was not much there. She dropped them to her sides. “I was lucky the rain came. It could have been worse.”

  “You helped me?”

  Dru nodded and Corinne could not resist giving her friend a hug.

  “And they got a father,” Dru said about the boys.

  “What father? Who said anything about having a father?” Bouki asked.

  “You think I didn’t see you coming out of the baker’s house this morning?” Dru asked.

  “He fed us. We were tired, so we stayed. It was a long night.”

  “If it wasn’t for the ears, I might not have recognized you,” Corinne said to Malik. Then she turned to Bouki. “So it’s back to the cave tonight?” she asked with a smirk.

  Malik winced.

  “We are not the baker’s children. He is not taking care of us,” Bouki said.

  “He’s been taking care of you for years,” Corinne said. “Every night you find food in his bakery for your dinner. Did you think it was a coincidence?”

  Bouki and Malik took a sheepish glance over at Hugo. The big man grinned and shifted from one leg to the other like someone caught in a small lie.

  The witch hobbled over and pointed at Bouki with her thumb. “I told you before that that one wasn’t very smart.” She snorted and searched Corinne’s eyes. “Well, how did the stone work?”

  “It wasn’t the stone at all. It was the seed inside it. Just like you showed me. Watch.” She held a seed in her hand and put it close to her lips. “Grow.”

  Almost at once, the seed rocked and split and a tiny green shoot sprouted up.

  The witch smiled. “Yes. That is the way,” she whispered to herself.

  Bouki, Malik, and Dru looked on, astonished. Corinne handed the sapling to Malik.

  “But is she gone?” Bouki asked.

  Corinne nodded. “She’s gone.”

  “What about the other ones?” Dru asked. “They’re still here.”

  Corinne looked at her papa. “But she’s not controlling them anymore,” Corinne said. “And they belong to the island. They’ve been here longer than we have.”

  Pierre nodded and the white witch smiled at Corinne’s words, but a grumble rose from almost everyone else.

  “They will come out again,” Victor said.

  “They took my child!” shouted a woman.

  “They killed my husband,” said another.

  “What about what she did to your father?” Dru asked. “What about the people we lost?”

  “That was all Severine,” Corinne said. “Just now the jumbies helped us get out of the forest. They helped heal my cut.” She pulled away the patch of leaves on her leg to show a wound that looked nearly healed. “Do you see? We have to find a way to live together.”

  There was more grumbling. Someone picked up a broken branch and smacked it against the palm of his hand. “I’m not going to live here while they still live here,” he said. It was Laurent’s father. Laurent stood beside him with a fierce scowl, as if he was determined to fight.

  “Then you can take your chances in the sea,” said the witch.

  The faces in the crowd turned hard. Corinne looked at her father to see if he knew what to do. He squeezed her hand gently in his. It gave her courage.

  “This island was theirs before we ever knew anything about it,” Corinne said in a strong voice. The witch nodded in agreement. “But now we’re all here together. It’s our home. All of ours.”

  “They took my friend,” Dru said.

  “And we have taken their homes,” Corinne answered. “Every time we cut down a tree to plant crops, they get pushed back.”

  Dru bit her lip.

  Malik stepped forward with the orange sapling in his hand. He dug a little hole in the ground by the forest and planted it. Then he looked at Corinne. “Grow,” he whispered.

  Corinne and Dru looked at Malik with shock.

  “I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” Bouki said. “I told you, he talks plenty.”

  Corinne took the orange seeds from her pockets and began to push them into the ground. The witch took some of the seeds and helped. Pierre handed more seeds to Dru, the brothers, and a few others, and they all planted rows of orange trees at the edge of the forest.

  Corinne held her hand out to the witch and said, “It’s a lot of seeds. I don’t think I can grow them all on my own.”

  The witch took Corinne’s hand with her good one. “I can help with this,” she said.

  “Grow,” the half-jumbies said together.

  The seeds began to sprout.

  A few people in the crowd gasped. The orange trees curved upward. They hardened and turned brown as they grew into each other and formed a solid wall that reached far into the sky. The trees looked beautiful, but more than that, they smelled delicious. The people in the village couldn’t resist picking the fruit and eating it on the spot. Only Dru stayed back.

  “This isn’t going to stop them,” she said. Her face was furrowed with worry.

  “It’s not to keep them in,” Corinne said. “It’s to keep us out. We’ve been taking their land. They deserve to survive too.”

  The sig
ht of the orange trees barring the way jogged Corinne’s memory. “The jumbie weed on my house!” she cried.

  “It’s dead,” Bouki said. “We went to see this morning. But it’s going to take a lot of cleaning up.”

  “If that kind of magic can fall, then so can this,” Dru protested. “They will come after us.”

  “The only time they ever came after us was when we disturbed them,” Corinne said. “And when Severine started her war. You even said you had never seen them before.”

  Dru said, “And when those trees are gone, then what?”

  “Maybe by that time we will have found a way to live together.” Corinne hugged Dru. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.

  Dru wiped a tear from her cheek. “I’m sorry I said I wished I had never met you. I blamed you for what happened to Allan. I thought you were just like them. I thought you would turn against us and everything would just get worse and worse.”

  “That’s the thing, Dru. There is no us and them. And anyway, some good things happened,” Corinne reminded Dru. “Look at these two!” She gestured at Bouki and Malik in their clean clothes and grinned. Corinne reached out to both of them for a hug.

  “Hold on, now. We just got cleaned up. You look like you’ve been sleeping in mud,” Bouki said. “And anyway, we don’t hug girls.”

  Malik made a firm nod. His curly hair bounced around him.

  Corinne laughed.

  Some in the crowd looked with wonder at the wall of orange trees and others looked at Corinne with suspicion. The pride that Corinne had felt began to fade as some people backed away and others whispered behind their hands. Pierre put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder and squeezed.

  Corinne felt her chest tighten. She whispered to the witch, “Is this what you meant? Is this what I lose?”

  The witch sneered. She yelled out, “Her oranges taste sweet though, eh? None of you are putting them down.”

  The crowd mumbled to themselves and began to disperse, most with some oranges clutched to their chests.

  Corinne didn’t watch them go. Her eyes stayed on Dru, who had remained rooted to the spot, looking uncertain.

  “Are you going too?” Corinne asked.

  Dru reached into her waist and untucked part of her sari, then unrolled it to reveal the wax form of Corinne’s mama. Even in the daytime it radiated light from deep inside.

  Corinne’s heart leapt as she took the statue. “How did you fix this?” she asked.

  Dru shrugged. “Just know I’ll always be there to help you.” She blew a kiss toward Corinne and skipped off to her village.

  Corinne sighed with relief.

  The brothers nodded to Corinne and followed the baker, walking carefully in their clean clothes and minding all the muddy puddles from the morning’s rain. Corinne watched as they steered clear of a large one but missed seeing a little frog that sat squat in the middle of the road. Bouki tripped over the quiet little frog and grabbed Malik to catch his balance. Both brothers fell smack into the very puddle they had been avoiding. They sat up sputtering, their new clothes completely covered in mud. Everyone laughed, even the baker, who grabbed the backs of the boys’ shirts and pulled them out in one easy lift.

  As Corinne wiped tears of laughter from her eyes, she noticed the little frog hop away. Somehow it looked very familiar.

  With a broad smile, Corinne showed her father the wax statue. Pierre nodded and gave her his warm, rough hand to hold.

  Meanwhile, in the sea, oranges bobbed up and down. Waves pushed hundreds of them onto the shore. They scraped against rocks at the bottom of the surf, which bruised their skin and released their smell. The sharp, sweet scent of oranges filled the air all over the island.

  Pierre smelled them and his face turned worried. “The sea doesn’t keep anything,” he said.

  Corinne squeezed his hand. “It kept Grand-père,” she said. “Maybe some things stay in the sea. And you and I stay where we belong. Together.”

  Pierre managed a smile.

  “Let’s go home, Papa,” Corinne said. “We have jumbie weed to clean up. It’s too bad I can’t make things un-grow.”

  “Can’t you?” he asked.

  The two of them looked at each other, wondering. Then they broke into broad smiles and headed off toward their house.

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader,

  I hope this is the kind of book that will make your eyebrows shoot up when you hear a noise at night. But I also hope it is the kind of book that lets you know there’s nothing a kid like you can’t handle, especially with some good friends by your side.

  I grew up reading European fairy tales that were nothing like the Caribbean jumbie stories I listened to on my island of Trinidad. There were no jumbie fairy-tale books, though I wished there were. This story is my attempt at filling that gap in fairy-tale lore.

  The Jumbies is inspired by the Haitian folktale “The Magic Orange Tree,” with the only similarities being the little girl, the oranges, the evil lady, and the island setting. In my story, the evil lady is a jumbie. In Trinidad, people talk about jumbies as if they might be your next-door neighbor or your cousin’s girlfriend. So you begin to wonder about the people you meet, especially at night.

  Jumbie (JUM-bee) is the name for every bad-thinking, sneaky, trick-loving creature that comes out at night with the purpose of causing trouble. There are many different kinds of jumbies. The douens (dwens) are spirit babies that live in the forest. If they know your name, they will call you and sound just like your mom or dad. If someone calls you at night, don’t answer unless you’re sure it’s someone you know, especially if you are in or near a forest. If you do meet a child in the forest and its feet and knees are backward, run.

  Then there are the La Diabless (LA-jah-bless). It seems weird to say the La Diabless, since “la” means “the” in French, but that’s what they like to be called, and who would argue with them? They are always beautiful women who wear long white dresses and big fancy white hats. But they have one cow’s hoof instead of a regular lady foot. If you meet a pretty lady at the side of the road one night, make sure you see both of her shoes!

  Soucouyant (soo-coo-YAH) are the ones that scare me the most. They are old ladies who will take off their skin, leave it in a nice safe place, and then fly around in a ball of flame, sucking out people’s blood. Many mornings when I was a kid, I woke with soucouyant bites on my arms and legs. Only they look a lot like mosquito bites, so I’m not sure. To avoid soucouyant, turn your broom upside down. (Note: this will not work against mosquitoes.)

  The only good jumbie is one you get away from before they see you, which brings us to the lagahoo (lah-gah-HOO), who you can usually hear coming. Traditionally, they wear chains and carry their own coffins when they are in human form, but they can also look like a werewolf without the chain and coffin. To simplify, I put the chains on the werewolf.

  There are other jumbies that did not make it into this book, but knowing how jumbies are, I bet they will pop up in another story. The main jumbie in this book, Severine, is completely my own invention, and thank goodness for that! If all jumbies had one creature ruling over them, there would really be trouble. Severine is everything I expect a jumbie to be—tricky, mean, and selfish—with the added bonus of thinking she’s better than everyone else. I am not sorry about what happened to her at the end.

  Beware of jumbies wherever you go. Remember, they love to trick you. It might be your nice neighbor, Mr. Jeanty, who walks his dog every afternoon when you get home from school. It might be your math teacher Miss Izzard. I hate to say it, but it might even be me.

  Your friendly jumbie author,

  Tracey Baptiste

  The

  Jumbies

  Tracey Baptiste

  Questions for Discussion

  Questions for Discussion

  1. Had you heard of any of the scary creatures that Tracey Baptiste describes in The Jumbies before reading the novel? If so, how did you first l
earn about the jumbie(s)? If not, which type of jumbie will you remember most?

  2. In what ways is The Jumbies like folktales and fairy tales you’ve read? What makes it different?

  3. What does Pierre mean when he says on page 19, “You know how the sea is. Nothing stays at the bottom forever”? After reading the story, does this meaning change?

  4. On page 70, Corinne detects something wrong with the food Severine is cooking; her father doesn’t. Describe a time when you knew something was not quite right even though it seemed to others that everything was okay.

  5. If Corinne’s mother were still alive, how might she have changed Corinne’s belief that “stories about jumbies are just things that grown people say when they make up stories at night”? Do you think Corinne’s mother would have told Corinne that jumbies were real? Why or why not?

  6. Malik and Bouki are loyal friends who remind Corinne that sometimes everyone needs help. When has a friend helped you through something that was too big to handle on your own? Do you think the story would have ended as it did if Corinne hadn’t had the help of her friends along the way? How would the ending have been different?

  7. Dru is timid and shy when she first meets Corinne, while Corinne is a risk taker. How do the girls change or grow over the course of their friendship? Why are the girls such good friends despite their differences?

  8. On page 92, Corinne has an experience that makes her believe that “jumbies are real.” How does this revelation change Corinne?

  9. On page 27, the white witch says, “If I help one, I have to help the other. For balance.” Over the course of The Jumbies, the white witch does provide each side with some help, but ultimately, does she stay true to her vow to keep things balanced? Did she make the right choices, such as giving Severine magic that would help her live among humans and saving Corinne, Dru, Malik, and Bouki from drowning? How would The Jumbies have been different without the white witch?

  10. Who has more right to live on the island, jumbies or humans? Why?

  11. On page 164, the white witch says, “Everybody thinks they need magic. Everybody wants answers . . . They want a bottle. Instant success! Something to drink, or sprinkle, or spill on the ground. They want magic from nothing. Magic doesn’t come from nothing. It comes from somewhere. And it isn’t so extraordinary. It’s just work. It’s just using your head and your heart.” Is there an example in the story that supports or disproves what the witch says? Explain.