The serpent vanished then, like a new day’s mist. Fury/Okima gaped. A shadow flashed before her nose. Then came the ripping from deep inside her skull, a endlessly burning lance of pain followed by a slow smolder, the world black with hurt. Blood washed down their cheeks hot and sticky, but when she brushed her hands against her face all they brought away were tears. Hands, none too gentle, lifted Fury/Okima’s wounded body, carried her aloft. A flaming green admonition rang in her ears.
You will never see this place again.
Fury sucked down enormous gulps of Coreeane’s dead-foul air. Whispers of long dead testimonies peppered everything around her. Her stomach’s contents floated on a sea of unease. The conjureman had shifted back to his original form, complete with suit. He sat on one of the porches with his skinny legs crossed at the knees, swinging a foot like the it was a normal, lazy summer evening. Junebug clawed closer, his presence stronger than before.
“I have to settle this before my Uncle returns.”
“He is so many of your Uncles. He is my uncle too, for what it’s worth. I’m sorry I had to do him like that.”
Fury’s guitar had fallen. It lay in the dirt, pockmarked and worn, strings still shimmering with power. She looked at it, then at the old conjure man. His eyes held her.
“If I kill you, that pain...,” she said, “that stank goes with you.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t let Okima live, either.”
“I’m glad you see this. This is the work that all of Okima’s victims—your people as much as mine—would appreciate, I think.” The conjure man stood, stepped closer to Fury. He smelled of wax, of loam and strong liquor and wind blowing through cracked glass. “It will be a heavy burden for you.”
“I guess I never had to really deal with this. Having to be stretched like this between the needs of so many that I care about. But shit, that’s the cost of justice, ain’t it?” Fury considered for a moment, weighing the true cost of the transaction. “I gotta tie myself to you if I am going to do this. I gotta...I gotta make this burden a part of me, if I’m gonna get justice for you and yours.”
“I know,” Demijohn breathed, shuddering. “I’m ready. I been ready. These old bones is tired, child. Plum tired.”
It took Fury thirty-six hours to eat Demijohn. As she cracked open his core, the entire plane of the land opened itself up to her. All the stank, the whispers, all the trauma of death, destruction, and murder that Demijohn held inside of him flowed into her flesh and bones, bled into the hollow spaces in her being and filled them with a cold, gray fire. In those fleeting moments, she could truly see. From somewhere deep within she remembered a song of memory and healing. She plucked out a few notes of it, and Junebug’s struggling form flashed back into his crystalline home, sighing as he settled into its rejuvenating cosmic facets. A new freshness rose from the soil.
Fury staggered with the new weight but pulled herself standing and shuffled to the center of the crossroads, where Coreeane met New Molen. She stooped to pick up Junebug’s crystal. The rock pulsed warm in her palm. She kissed it, hung the thong around her neck, and turned toward New Molen. Each step was lighter than the last.
© Copyright 2019 Troy L. Wiggins
Troy L Wiggins - [BCS276 S01] - Fury at the Crossroads (html) Page 3
