Crystal Rain

by Tobias S. Buckell

  Jerome’s heart thudded, he could hear everything: his leather shoes crunching as he walked over pieces of gravel, Schmitti sniffling, Daseki’s wheezing breaths. A gust pushed dust into the air, making him blink.

  And just like that the man leaped over the wall. His coat swirled out around him, then settled down. He threw the bag of marbles out in front of him and took his hat off.

  “Hello,” he said to Jerome. “I think you dropped something.”

  He sounded northern. Almost like, Jerome made the comparison again, his dad. This man had a weathered face too. He looked old, but in a young body. His muscles filled out the coat. When he moved his arms, Jerome could see his biceps through the heavy cloth sleeves.

  “Who you is?” Swagga demanded. “You the Baron?” Swagga was right, Jerome gulped. This man dressed fine, like the Baron Samedi, Death himself. Top hat, coat.

  “The Baron?” The man frowned. “Samedi?” He snorted. “That’s good, but I’m not that kind of legend, no.” He smiled at the four boys. “Call me Pepper.” He walked forward, boots clicking on the concrete. “The view up here is very good. I like it.”

  Jerome nodded, trapped. Behind Pepper, both Daseki and Schmitti ran to the edge of the wall and climbed down the ladder. Pepper looked over his shoulder at the disappearing boys and turned back around.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said to Jerome and Swagga. “This is just the best lookout in town. But since you two are here, I was hoping you could help me. I’m looking for John deBrun. I know he never misses carnival. I’ve been in the jungle for weeks trying to get here before carnival. Do any of you know John deBrun?”

  Dad! Jerome shot a look at Swagga. Say nothing, he willed his friend. For once in his fool life, Swagga kept his mouth shut, still looking at Pepper with wide eyes.

  “Why?” Jerome asked.

  “We’re old friends from a long time ago,” Pepper said.

  Yeah, right, Jerome thought. And Dad wasn’t in town yet anyway. Maybe Uncle Harold could handle Pepper and figure out if he was a friend for real.

  “I could take you to someone who know him,” Jerome said.

  “I’d appreciate that,” Pepper said. “See, I only just arrived after a long, long journey. I’ve been spending a lot of time looking for old friends all over Nanagada, and if John deBrun is here, I would love to see him again.” The words sounded cheerfully fake.

  He pulled what looked like binoculars covered in bumpy rubber out from his coat and looked east toward the Wicked Highs.

  “There usually that many airships in the air over there?” he asked. Five sliver-shaped ships floated in the air above the mountain slopes.

  Jerome shook his head. “Never seen five all together before.”

  Pepper put the strange binoculars away. “Odd,” he murmured. Then he looked at Jerome. “Let’s go see this man of yours who knows John.” He indicated that Jerome lead the way.

  As Jerome led Pepper down Gregerie road toward the waterfront, and Uncle Harold, Swagga pulled close and whispered, “You think he really you father friend?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The sound of steel pan increased, and the few people along the street’s side this far from the real crowd down Main Street at least bounced to the rhythm, if not outright danced. Jerome turned left heading home, east for half a mile, to dodge the worst of the crowd. Almost no one was here. The music faded away. Jerome figured they could pick up the waterfront from farther down and come back up on the judging booths easier this way.

  A scream echoed down the street at them.

  “You hear that?” Swagga asked.

  “Yeah,” Jerome said.

  “Sound like a jumbie, man.” Swagga turned back around. “I’m going back this way.” He ran off toward the crowds.

  “He has the right idea.” Pepper sniffed the air, like a dog.

  Jerome kept walking. “We just need to get around the corner here. We can cut through and end up on waterfront.” He turned into an alley, and Pepper trotted past him. Jerome could see the harbor past the cobblestones and a green fishing boat that bobbed out at anchor. All they had to do was turn and walk the waterfront down to the crowds.

  “Come on, child, quick.” Pepper looked up and down the waterfront.

  Jerome turned the corner after him. Distant song and the nearby lapping of harbor waves against the waterfront’s concrete edge mixed in the air. Jerome hurried to keep up with Pepper. He almost smacked into the man when Pepper froze, looking into the shade of Harry’s bar, empty since it was this far down the waterfront. The BEST SPIRIT IN TOWN sign squeaked. It hung from a wooden roof that shaded the tables on the sidewalk, propped out over them at an angle by poles.

  “Tlacateccatl,” Pepper whispered. Jerome squinted. And saw.

  An Azteca warrior stood inside. He wore a bright red cape that came to his waist, feathers braided into his hair like one of Jerome’s aunts, and leather bracelets. Blood ran off the grooved mace in his left hand. It was crowned with several black metal blades.

  The warrior looked up from his work, smiled with full, black-colored lips, and moved to unsling the large gun strapped to his back. Pepper’s left hand ducked beneath his coat. He pulled out a gun not much bigger than his hand.

  It spat, not nearly the loud bang Jerome expected. The Azteca warrior staggered back into the bar with a bloody hole in his chest. Pepper walked in, gun still in hand. He fired three more times, looked down at the man on the ground, then walked back out.

  He carried the Azteca’s long gun with him.

  “Come on,” Pepper said. “You need to introduce me to this man who can find John deBrun. There seems to be an Azteca problem here. We don’t have much time to dally.”

  Jerome trembled. “Uncle Harold said ragamuffin and mongoose-men would be out guarding the edge of town. He said it were just a scout party. How that warrior get in?”

  He could have died. Right there. And he’d just seen Pepper kill that Aztecan without missing a beat. Again Jerome found himself trying to puzzle out what kind of person Pepper was.

  He had to be a soldier.

  And should he tell him the truth about his dad?

  “I ran into Jaguar scouts coming out here,” Pepper said. “I’m getting to know more about these Azteca than I want. That warrior was a tlacateccatl, he commands many warriors. Not a good commander, he’s too far ahead of his men, even if he is a scout. An unblooded warrior. Probably got too excited about making sure he got a couple captures before the general attack. Either way, seeing him, my guess is that a whole army is creeping into this town.” Jerome almost jogged to walk as fast as Pepper. “They would have just secured the town’s border after I got here,” Pepper said. Jerome kept as close to Pepper as he could. He was more scared now than when he went out at night and the wind made his skin prickle. Right by Pepper’s side seemed to be the safest place right now.

  What about Dad back at their house?

  Everything around them, the shadows the cheerfully painted buildings cast, the gutters, the faceless windows, everything seemed sinister and dangerous. It destroyed the comfortable feelings Jerome had about Brungstun. And even though Pepper had saved his life, he still scared Jerome. Even more so now, as Pepper’s face hadn’t even changed when he’d killed the Azteca.

  The waterfront curved out in front of them, menacing and dangerous.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Azteca had dragged John deeper into the bush that night until they reached a clearing with a large black stone in the middle. This wasn’t a small scout party. John saw enough different Azteca to guess that hundreds of Azteca warriors crept around the bush near Brungstun. Maybe more.

  Three sleeping men lay tied next to a downed mango tree. Blood and dirt caked their clothes, but John recognized them as mongoose-men.

  John had been shoved against the tree, his cheek scraping bark. A few deft kicks to his knees and stomach dropped him to the ground, and the Azteca scout by his side had bound John’s hands
and feet together, then roped him to the mango tree. A warrior clubbed John’s head to knock him out for the night.

  It still throbbed when he woke up late in the morning.

  John now wriggled his back up against the tree and looked across at the awake mongoose-men.

  “What are your names?” he whispered, but they remained silent. “My name is John deBrun. I’m from Brungstun, who are you?”

  The man with a battered face next to him looked off in the distance. “Is best we don’t know each other. Trust me.”

  “We have to get free,” John said. “No one could expect this many Azteca. We have to warn Brungstun that so many are here.”

  “Shut up, man, just shut up,” a second mongoose-man hissed. “We ain’t escaping, and you ain’t making this easier.”

  John’s thighs cramped underneath him. “What do you mean?”

  The man next to him, the first to speak, shifted. “Make you peace. Because soon we go die.”

  A faint sob, a cough, and silence fell again.

  Peace? How? He didn’t remember who most of himself was. He’d settled, taken a family, and been happy. But now that he’d had the barrel of a gun pointed down at him, he felt soft, mushy, unprepared.

  Frustrated.

  The white-hot feeling made him jittery. Frustrated that with only a few hours left of his life, he still could not remember a thing from before that singular moment when he’d washed up on the Brungstun beach.

  A single thing.

  At least the men around John had an entire life to regret, or miss. He was going to die not even knowing who he really was. And how selfish, he berated himself, that this frustration ate at him almost as much as the helplessness of being unable to run out and be by his wife, his son.

  Azteca moved and shouted. Last night’s captors surrounded the tree and pointed at the four captives, coming to a decision. They sliced the ropes free and made two mongoose-men stand up. To his shame, John felt relief.

  As the two men stumbled off, John turned to the man next to him, the only one to talk to him. “Please,” John begged. “Tell me your name.”

  The man closed his eyes. “Alex.”

  “How many will they take?”

  Alex shrugged. “It varies.”

  The two men were dragged off around the tree’s branches, out of sight toward the black stone at the center of the clearing. For several minutes only a few jungle birds fluttered and cawed into the silence.

  Then the screaming began. It stopped after a high-pitched hiccup, a groan, and a joyful shout in Azteca.

  A minute later the second man started screaming.

  When that stopped, John and Alex sat with their backs to the mango tree, avoiding each other’s eyes. They remained silent, waiting for the Azteca to come back for them.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It took forever to get closer to the carnival crowd by following the waterfront. All around the gentle U of Brungstun’s edge the warehouses and shops clustered, and then behind them, inching up the coast’s steep slope, the residential areas of town jutted out in cheerful colors highlighted by the drab roads cut into the bright green brush and jungle. Jerome jumped at every sudden noise.

  They encountered the edge of the carnival crowd: a couple kissing near a doorway, someone selling fruit on a table where the juices had leaked out and stained it black in patches. Five fishermen milled about, talking about their boats.

  Jerome slowed down. “We should warn them,” he said to Pepper. He yelled, “Azteca coming! The Azteca coming!”

  No one paid him any attention as they moved farther into the thickening crowd. The more people around, the more the shouting and jumping of carnival drowned out Jerome’s voice. They pushed their way toward the large wooden scaffolds by the bank building and post office.

  Jerome couldn’t see Uncle Harold up in the sheltered judges’ benches. Half the judges were gone. Was it because most of the judges were Brungstun ragamuffin and off investigating the gunshots?

  Another scream floated over the chaos of carnival. Jerome shoved and elbowed through to the street. He couldn’t see Pepper anymore, but the peacock-costumed woman he’d seen earlier came proudly walking down the street. Behind her a band of women costumed as birds twirled batons with streamers on the end.

  Shots echoed from the alleys. People paused. Steel pans fell quiet as three parrot-costumed women at the end of the street turned around. Fifteen men with blue-feathered bamboo masks and stiff cotton pads marched toward them.

  “Azteca,” Jerome screamed into the still.

  The masked men pulled out clubs and nets. The first one to reach a parrot-costumed woman knocked her out. The two behind him threw a net over her and pulled her down the road, back toward other Azteca stepping into the street. Jerome whirled around. Azteca warriors trickled out from between buildings at the far edges of town. Both sides of the waterfront were blocked. Azteca shadows stood in the alleys. Everyone in Brungstun stood corraled on the waterfront as hundreds of Azteca poured out. They moved into the edges of the crowd, knocking people out with clubs and carrying them away in nets, working at the edges with quick, practiced calm, and stopping anyone from running away. People screamed and babies wailed while everyone shoved at everyone else. The air smelled sour.

  Just a few hundred feet from Jerome two farmers with machetes ran forward to slash at one Azteca before getting shot. Blood ran along the cobblestones. A moko jumbie on fire ran toward the pier. He wobbled on his stilts and then fell to the ground. He didn’t get up.

  The crowd surged as several thousand people tried to pull back from Azteca nets and weapons. Jerome fought to keep standing.

  A hand grabbed Jerome’s collar. He screamed.

  “Quiet.” Pepper picked Jerome up, tucked him under an arm, and started running through the crowd. Jerome’s feet slapped against people as they passed, and Pepper paused once to pull out his silent gun to shoot a lone Azteca who had pushed too far into the crowd. The Azteca grabbed for ankles as he fell. People trampled and kicked him.

  Pepper ran down to the docks toward the steamboat, but Jerome twisted around. “Take that sailboat,” he yelled, pointing at Lucita. “The steamboat take too long to warm up.”

  Pepper dropped him to the dock and Jerome staggered for balance. A splinter caught his heel before he stopped, but he barely noticed it as he jumped into his dad’s boat.

  The mast swayed a bit.

  “Mr. Pepper,” Jerome yelled. “What about me mother?”

  Pepper threw the aft painter into the cockpit. The rope’s end stung Jerome’s cheek. Pepper ran along the dock and grabbed both the bow and mid painter in his two hands. He yanked on them hard and the cleats ripped free with an iron-nailed shriek.

  “Pepper! I need to find her.” Jerome’s hands trembled. He grabbed the mast. “She out with the Azteca. What they go do?”

  Pepper pushed the boat out from the dock and leapt in, bringing the rear down. Jerome caught his balance. Several others in the crowd were leaping to boats. A crowd had gathered on the steamer and a small trickle of smoke wafted over the boiler.

  Jerome ran to Lucita’s stern and grabbed the gunwale’s wooden lip. Pepper found the oars, shoved them into place, and began to row. Each strong pull shook them forward away from the dock.

  “You have to do what you have to do,” Pepper finally said. “Now would be a good time to jump.”

  The oars hit the water, slap, then drained as he lifted them into the air. They bit back down into the water again.

  “I’m scared.” Jerome sat down on the rear seat, ready to cry, holding his stomach. His eyes burned.

  “Drop the tiller and steer us,” Pepper said.

  Jerome turned back around and loosened the rope to the oval-shaped rudder. It splashed down into the water.

  Several Azteca in stiff cotton lined up on the waterfront and aimed guns at them. Pepper stopped rowing. His gun huffed a few times and three Azteca fell, one into the water. Others ran for cover, feathe
rs bobbing.

  “You know how to get the sail up?” Pepper asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do it.”

  Jerome hustled to get the sail unlashed from the boom while staying out of Pepper’s way. Pepper pulled at the oars like mad, pointing them into the wind. Bits of the sail draped over the boat’s side, some dragging alongside in the water.

  Dad would have yelled at him.

  Jerome cried silently, wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and pulled the sail up as far and as tight as he could while the wind yanked hard at it. The boom swung around and banged. When Jerome tied it down, Pepper pulled in the oars and took the tiller with the mainsheet in his hand. He pulled it in, bringing the boom and sail in closer to the boat.

  Lucita tilted over and picked up speed. Pepper, still calm and serious, sailed them away from the waterfront.

  The sun beat down on them. Pepper hadn’t said a word in the last twenty minutes; he lay against the side of the cockpit, one leg steering them upwind, one arm in his jacket, the other trailing in the water. They weren’t really going anywhere, just making three legs of a triangle around and around some imaginary spot in the ocean.

  Occasionally Pepper would take out his rubber binoculars and look back at Brungstun.

  At one point they’d come near the light water of Severun’s Reef, but without needing a warning, Pepper had tacked hard, the boom swinging violently as the wind eased up on it. He must have known the harbor well.

  A dark knot inside Jerome kept threatening more tears. He’d left his mother in Brungstun to die and his dad trapped at the house. He’d seen people die! Get shot. Captured by Azteca. He shivered. The image of blood dripping into the street sewer grate as if it were only so much wastewater, that image he felt he would never shake as long as he lived.

  He couldn’t do anything. He had never felt so helpless as he did now.

  “How you do it?” Jerome asked Pepper.