The two ran to the dirt road, past the almond tree, and up the hill to their little house.
The windows banged open and shut in the wind. A gust knocked Corinne into a patch of mud and splashed her up to the neck. She slipped back into the puddle when she tried to get her feet under her, so Pierre grabbed her work shirt to pull her out. Together they scrambled for the front door, bracing against the wind.
Corinne pulled the door open. Inside the house was a mess. The rain had blown in and left everything sodden.
Glass rattled in the wooden window frames, adding to the cacophony of the howling wind outside. They rushed to the windows, fighting wet, whipping curtains to pull the frames shut and secure each iron hook into the eye that held it closed. But the windows still shook, struggling against the hooks like creatures desperate to be free of their bonds.
In the relative stillness, Corinne and Pierre tried to catch their breath as rainwater and mud from their hair and clothes pooled at their feet.
“That came on suddenly,” Corinne said between pants.
Pierre nodded. “We didn’t even see the clouds. One minute, blue sky, and then the next . . . I’ve never seen anything like it before.” A frown flickered across Pierre’s face, but he smoothed it away quickly. “We should clean up.”
Corinne gathered towels. She wrapped one around herself to stave off the shivering and used another to sop up the wet floors.
Pierre went through the house picking up items that had fallen to the floor. Broken wares, utensils, a tin cup. “Look, she survived,” he said, holding out a small grayish wax statue of a woman.
Corinne cupped it gently in her hand and took it to her bedroom, laying it in the center of the bed, where it was safest. The wax sculpture was of her mother, and Corinne had made it herself months ago. Since then, it had broken twice. A third time, she feared, would make it irreparable.
The wind pushed rain through every crevice. Corinne and her father used towels to stop up the spaces under the doors, between the walls and the windows, and in the seams between the wall boards. By the time they were finished, the air was stifling.
And there was nothing to do but wait.
Corinne changed into a colorful skirt and white blouse, an outfit that most girls on the island wore. She only ever wore her papa’s old shirts and pants when she was at work. It was impossible to climb coconut trees and pick oranges in a skirt.
Outside, the plants bowed in the wind. Branches snapped, and leaves scraped against the shivering glass windows. Corinne moved into the kitchen and put some water on to boil. After she pulled a bottle of tea leaves out and put them in a strainer, she took two tin mugs out of the cupboard. When the water was ready, she poured it over the strainer and into each mug. Then she quartered an orange and squeezed juice into the tea.
The room filled with the orange’s bright scent, and the warmth of the hot water penetrated straight to Corinne’s bones. She brought the cups to the table, where Pierre inhaled deeply before lifting his and taking a sip. The windows rattled, and the wind and rain howled.
“We’ll have to secure the windows better,” he said.
“Do you think it’s that bad?” she asked.
“Hurricane,” he said.
“It’s too early for hurricanes. June, too soon. July, stand by. August, come it must. September, remember. October, all over.”
“I don’t think the storm knows that poem,” Pierre said. “It’s definitely a hurricane.” His head tilted as he listened. “It’s getting quiet.” The trees still trembled, but they weren’t bending the way they had been minutes before. “Let’s go.”
Corinne didn’t like the sound of Pierre’s voice. It was low and gravelly, filled with worry. She downed her tea quickly and followed him out the back door.
The wind pushed against them, spattering debris against their bodies, but there was plenty of work to be done. Pierre gathered a few loose boards. While Corinne held them in place over the windows, he hammered nails into the frames. They made their way quickly around the house. When they came around to the back again, the wind seemed to have died down, but the sea was still roiling as if it was being stirred up from beneath the surface. The piece of wood Corinne was holding slipped from her hand as she watched the water, and Pierre’s hammer banged straight against the window frame, shattering the glass.
“Corinne!”
“Sorry, Papa,” she said. “But look at the sea!”
Every muscle in Pierre’s body tightened when he looked. “There’s nothing we can do about that. Like every other storm, we will have to wait it out.”
But this wasn’t like every other storm. It was a hurricane. In June. There was nothing normal about that. She had a sick feeling about why this hurricane was too early. What had been the cause of every strange thing on the island in recent months? The jumbies. Perhaps this was what the white witch had meant. Corinne was missing things by looking so far out to sea. The problem was in the water, just beneath her own house.
Corinne’s stomach knotted.
There was always some selfish motive behind the jumbies’ behavior. Corinne could find out why a hurricane was being whipped up now. But the only way was to face Mama D’Leau, the cruelest of the jumbies.
4
Only a Storm
Rain was nothing to Mama D’Leau. She lived for water. She ruled it. The jumbie sat on the muddy bank of the river in a thick patch of grass. Her body and arms draped over the fallen trunk of a tree, while the thick anaconda’s tail that started at her waist wrapped around the other end of the tree trunk and sloped into the water. Occasionally she flicked the tip of her tail, spraying droplets in time with the music she plucked out on the cuatro strings.
As the rain came harder, Mama D’Leau turned her face to the sky and let the water roll down her throat and neck. It soaked into the long braided ropes of black hair that fell over her back and chest, hiding her nakedness. The rain thunked against the cuatro’s strings and drummed on its polished wood body, adding to its music. The rain puckered the surface of the river and tapped the rocks and the leaves of the mango tree above her. Mama D’Leau tilted her head to listen, then changed her tune.
’Twas Friday morn when we set sail
And we were not far from the land
When the captain, he spied a lovely mermaid
With a comb and a glass in her hand . . . her hand . . .
With a comb and a glass in her hand . . .
Her voice was soft as she twined the lyrics with the percussion of the rain.
“Beauty,” said Papa Bois.
Mama D’Leau let her last note trail off and turned to see the old jumbie emerge near a wild-growing okra plant. Her face, already soft from singing, relaxed even more. Papa Bois smiled deeply.
“Ah oui,” said Mama D’Leau. “And what it is you want now?”
Papa Bois pointed at the sky and squinted up at the rain. “Do you feel that?” he asked.
“What is it I should feel, eh?” Mama D’Leau sucked her teeth, chups. “You always worrying about something.”
“And you not worrying enough,” Papa Bois said gently. He held his hand out and let the raindrops dance in his palm.
Mama D’Leau frowned. She stuck her tongue out and tasted the storm. Her eyes flashed the same gray color as the rainwater and her tail coiled tightly under her as if she was getting ready to spring.
Papa Bois moved closer, and Mama D’Leau tilted her body to block a little nest she had made surrounding a small opal that looked like the bottom of the ocean. She palmed it, pulling the opal to her chest as she turned away from Papa Bois.
“I see it already. No point trying to hide it now,” he drawled.
Mama D’Leau opened her palm just enough for the stone to shine in her hand. There was a small nick in the side that she rubbed gently. Every time she did, she thought of the irritating boy who had
marred its perfect surface. “It has nothing to do with this,” she said. “I’ve had it for months already. You didn’t think of that, eh?” She looked smugly at him, but only for a moment.
Papa Bois took a breath as slow as a flower opening at dawn. “Something is coming,” he said.
“It is only a storm, love,” she said, but her words were edged with worry.
“No, doux doux. Not only that.”
Mama D’Leau unwrapped herself from the broken tree trunk. She gripped the stone more tightly and slithered into the water as the rain beat down all around her. Beneath the ruffled surface, she watched Papa Bois walk to where she had been and pick up the cuatro she left behind. He embraced the instrument, holding it against his bare chest, then returned slowly to the forest. Only then, Mama D’Leau left.
5
Summon the Sea
By late afternoon, the oil lamps were nearly empty. They swayed on their hooks in the kitchen each time wind rocked the house. Corinne watched their flames burn down to low orange glows, like sunsets. Then they went dark and everything became still. Despite the fact they were far from sunset, the house was as black as midnight.
“Hear that?” Pierre asked.
“The rain is dying down,” she said.
Pierre took three long strides to the back of the kitchen and carefully opened the top of the Dutch door. A fine mist blew inside, sprinkling the wooden floor like flour from a sifter.
“Is it over, Papa?” Corinne asked.
“It’s only the eye of the storm,” he answered. “The wind and rain will come again. We don’t have much time.” He stepped into the yard and beckoned to her. “Come.”
The thick cloud cover surrounded them like a pouch that could close in at any moment. And beneath it, the brown sea writhed. The beach was strewn with debris. Torn-off coconut leaves, broken branches, and seaweed littered the sand. A sunbeam, like a long, thin finger, pushed through a hole in the knitted clouds, illuminating a single spot in the middle of the sea. The air was still and heat pressed around Corinne like a hand around a throat. How much time did she have in the eye of a storm?
As Pierre began to drag broken branches away from the side of the house, Corinne snuck down to the sea.
The hill was slick with reddish mud that ran in thick rivulets. Corinne skidded and stubbed her toe on rocks and tree roots, but she kept moving. Nothing was going to stop her now. At the bottom of the hill the beach sand was a minefield of broken, jagged shells and rocks and sodden pits of mud. She tried to pick her way through, but the sand sucked at her feet, sinking her to her ankles with every step. She lost one sandal and then another as she pulled her feet out of the muck, but she was determined to reach the edge of the waves. Above her, the clouds began to close in.
It was time to call the jumbie.
The first time Corinne had faced Mama D’Leau, she had been armed with offerings, things that would make the jumbie talk, things that would please her. She had been warned to never ask a question. And she had had the support of her friends. Corinne had never faced Mama D’Leau alone. But she knew that the storm would only dredge the worst things to the surface—just like after the earthquake, when children all over the island began to go missing.
Corinne opened and closed her empty hands and steeled herself to the possibility that she would face the jumbie’s wrath. She got ready to beg. She had nothing else to give.
The wind picked up again and pushed Corinne’s braids out of her face and her blouse against her chest. She leaned into the air and made it to the mucky edge of the waves that deposited small pieces of wood, shell, and weeds on her bare toes.
“Mama!” she called into the waves.
The wind pulled her voice back and pushed at her as if it was trying to keep her away from the sea.
“Mama!” Corinne screamed. “I need you!”
Corinne understood the rules. The white witch had been very clear about them. Without an offering from Corinne, the jumbie was unlikely to show herself, but this was not the usual situation.
The surface of the water smoothed as if someone had pulled a wrinkled sheet tight across a bed and tucked in the edges. Corinne entered the water. She remembered her own mama’s hands, brown and smooth and warm. She clutched her necklace, squeezing the stone her mama had left for her. It had saved her twice now. But she didn’t know if it had anything left to give.
She whispered “Mama” again, only this time she tried to picture her own mother’s face. She struggled to pick out any individual feature like the crook of her smile or the wideness of her eyes. Pierre described Corinne’s mother, Nicole, to her often, but lately, Corinne couldn’t summon her mother’s features. They blurred like a dream that had faded. Corinne held the stone pendant out. What else did she have to offer? “Mama, please,” she said. Her throat and eyes began to burn. Corinne stumbled as the sharp, splintered edges of coconut husks, twigs, and leaves scratched at her legs.
She shut her eyes.
A wet hand cupped her cheek, as if to comfort her, but the fingers were ice cold. When Corinne looked up, she was gazing into the face of Mama D’Leau. The jumbie’s eyes were brown with clouds of golden sand, the same as the sea, and they were hard as stones.
Mama D’Leau’s deep brown skin glistened from the seawater, catching what little light filtered through the thick clouds. Her long braided hair, usually perfectly neat and wrapped on the top of her head, fell around her shoulders like frayed rope. Not a crab or snail twined its way through her strands, and instead of fresh coral and bright seaweed, dull, broken sticks and rotting kelp tangled in her hair. The plaits ended past her waist, where her thick, tough anaconda tail began. Its muscles moved in a slow undulation as Mama D’Leau towered over Corinne, while the thin end of it flicked sand-stirred water into Corinne’s face.
Mama D’Leau’s sharp nails traced a line down from Corinne’s cheek. When she came to the necklace, the jumbie wrapped her fingers around the stone and yanked it, breaking the cord from Corinne’s neck. “What you want now?” Mama D’Leau asked. “You can’t see I busy?”
Corinne gritted her teeth. She had been right. Mama D’Leau was to blame for the storm. Corinne resisted the urge to rub the burning spot where the necklace snapped. She didn’t want to give Mama D’Leau the satisfaction of knowing she was hurt. “I want you to stop,” Corinne said, careful not to ask any questions. “You have everything you asked for. There is no reason to do this.”
“I?” Mama D’Leau said. “You think I cause this storm?” She sucked her teeth, chups. “You realize this is the second time you blame me for something I didn’t cause?”
“You made the tidal wave that knocked Severine from under the rocks,” Corinne said. “And you are whipping up the sea now. No one else could do it.”
Mama D’Leau sat back on the coils of her tail. They slithered in circles beneath her. “Is that so?” She folded her arms. “The question, I suppose, is why you think I doing all that.”
“Because you want me to run another errand for you,” Corinne said. “You needed that opal.” Corinne took a tentative step farther into the sea. “But now that you have it, there isn’t anything else I can do for you.” Corinne looked around, worried at the state of the sea. “I fulfilled my end of the bargain.”
Mama D’Leau’s eyes flashed like lightning, and her face was nose to nose with Corinne’s in an instant. “Not entirely,” she growled. “You brought me the stone, but you didn’t do everything I asked.”
Corinne stepped back. Her heart roiled like the sea around her. “Ellie,” she whispered, shuddering as she remembered the mermaid that had been lost. “I . . . I . . .” she said.
Mama D’Leau waved a hand and turned away. She picked up a long, dull braid and twisted it around her fingers.
Corinne had seen Dru play with her hair before when she was nervous.
“So . . . you didn’t
do this,” Corinne said.
“Corinne!” Pierre called from the beach.
“It’s all right, Papa,” Corinne said. “It really is just a storm.”
Pierre threw a heated look at Mama D’Leau as he rushed to Corinne’s side and pulled her back to shore.
“Papa!” Corinne protested.
“I told you there wasn’t much time,” Pierre thundered. “I told you the storm would be back. It’s dangerous, Corinne. You could be killed.”
What little light there was around them dimmed as he spoke. The sea dulled to a murky gray and the clouds over their heads tightened. Rain hurtled at them in huge drops.
Mama D’Leau looked to the sky and shuddered.
The relief Corinne had felt only moments before evaporated in the warm air. She followed Mama D’Leau’s gaze into the clouds. A bolt of lightning cracked against the gray.
Mama D’Leau covered her head with her arms.
“We have to get off the wet sand, Corinne,” Pierre said. His face looked nearly as stricken as Mama D’Leau’s.
“What is it, Papa?” she asked.
“Lightning doesn’t come with hurricanes,” he said. “Not often, anyway. I’ve only seen this once before.”
“You said you’d never seen a storm like this one, Papa.”
Pierre’s only response was grabbing Corinne’s hands in his own and pulling her away from the sea.
“When?” Corinne asked.
Pierre kept moving and did not answer. As they retreated, Victor, one of the fishermen from the village, ran toward the sea. His muscles rippled with effort as he tore toward the edge of the waves.
In his hands was a long fishing spear, and in his eyes was a look of determination and rage.
6
Blood in the Water
Victor grunted as he hurled the spear. Its sharpened tip gleamed as he launched it at Mama D’Leau. The jumbie twisted left, just out of the way, and grabbed the shaft with her right hand, but the spear had met its mark. It stabbed one of the coils of her tail and vibrated in her flesh.
The Jumbie God's Revenge Page 2
