Corinne and Dru got to work rebuilding the tent for Fatima’s wedding. They gathered bamboo poles and put them on the side so they could be re-posted and tied to the canopy. Allan gathered the ropes that had blown away. He was well suited for it because he could fit into small spaces and didn’t mind digging in the mud. Every time he found one, he held it up, grinning.
Once all the poles had been piled up, Corinne looked around for something else to do.
“You have done enough,” Mrs. Rootsingh said. She brushed a long strand of black hair from her face and lashed two of the bamboo poles together with rope.
“I can still help,” Corinne said.
Mrs. Rootsingh flashed her eyes at Dru and then cocked an eyebrow.
Dru took Corinne’s hand and pulled her away. “I think we’re in the way.” She tugged Corinne down the road that led to the heart of the village.
Corinne dragged her feet the entire time. Dru stopped. “You’re scared of the village,” she said.
“What am I afraid of ?” Corinne asked.
“You’re hiding. You haven’t been to the market in days! Weeds are growing up in your spot.”
“I’ve been doing other things.”
“Like?”
“Selling coconuts with Bouki and Malik.”
“They don’t need you to sell coconuts,” Dru said. “And you don’t need them to sell anything.”
“I left Severine in the sea,” Corinne said. “And she’s going to figure it out someday. Then she will be back.”
“You think that the storm will make that happen? You left her across the whole ocean,” Dru said. “It’s a long way back.”
“But not an impossible way back,” Corinne said. “I returned, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but you had help,” Dru pointed out. “If your papa and Mama D’Leau had not come for you, maybe you wouldn’t have found your way home. And anyway, look, the storm is over and nothing has happened.”
It was true. The sky was bright. The clouds were moving quickly, gathering into shapes as they moved. There was one that looked like a dog or a goat that turned into a chair and then a long flower before blurring to nothing at all. Her mind went to the man she had seen in the clouds. Maybe it was nothing, but Corinne felt something in her stomach tighten. “Mama D’Leau was looking up at the sky, and her face was worried.”
“It was a bad storm,” Dru said. “Maybe she hasn’t seen one like it in a long time.”
“I don’t know,” Corinne said. “She must have seen so many of them.” She looked around at the mud that ran down the sides of the road. “Mama D’Leau can control the currents. She can go anywhere she wants in the sea. Why would one storm bother her?”
The clouds had gone gray at the edges. She squinted, trying to make out the man again.
“What is it?” Dru asked.
“There’s something else,” Corinne said. “I saw something in the clouds. A person. Not exactly a person. The shape of a person. And then it turned into an angry face.”
“That’s nothing,” Dru said. “I see things in the clouds all the time.”
Corinne bit her lip. Dru was right, of course. And yet there was something Corinne was feeling that she couldn’t quite explain. She moved to a nearby mango tree and sat against the trunk. Several fruits had been pried free in the storm and littered the ground at her feet. The flies had already gotten to the ripe ones. The green ones had rolled around in the dirt.
Dru sat next to her.
“Nobody believed me when I said that Severine had come back. You didn’t.”
Dru looked guilty.
“I’m not mad,” Corinne added quickly. “It’s just . . . I’m not sure what I saw wasn’t real.”
“But there’s no jumbie that lives in the clouds,” Dru said.
“It’s not a jumbie!” Bouki said. He appeared next to the tree with Malik alongside.
“What do you mean?” Corinne asked.
“Maybe what you saw in the clouds wasn’t a jumbie,” Bouki said.
Malik’s eyebrows waggled up and down as if that was explanation enough. The girls looked at each other and then back at the brothers.
“What was it then?” Dru asked.
“A god.” Bouki’s face was grim and Malik nodded gravely.
“That’s ridiculous,” Corinne said. “Gods don’t pop up in the clouds!”
“Not very long ago you thought there were no such things as jumbies,” Bouki said. “You don’t know everything.”
“Then what god is this, and why would Mama D’Leau be so afraid?” Corinne asked.
“It’s the god of storms,” Bouki explained. Malik trickled his fingers down like rain. “This god can break mountains, rip up forests, and flatten everything else.” Malik punched his own fist and stamped his feet. “When he rages, the sea trembles, the ground, even the sky.” Malik shook his hands down from the ground to up in the air.
“How do you know about this?” Corinne asked.
“Everybody knows!”
“I don’t,” Corinne and Dru said together.
“Are you sure?” Corinne asked.
Malik shook his head and pointed up at the sky. In the time they had been talking, the clouds had darkened again and tumbled over their heads.
The girls picked themselves up and moved beyond the tree’s canopy to get a better look.
“Last night when the lightning flashed across the sky, I saw the outline of a man watching over the island in the clouds,” Bouki said. “I remembered the story then, but I wasn’t sure it was real until the clouds began to gather again.”
Malik nodded enthusiastically.
“You know this story, too?” Corinne asked.
“Of course he does!” Bouki said. “Why would I know it and he wouldn’t?”
The wind picked up and the clouds formed and re-formed into angry faces with piercing eyes and hungry mouths. The four of them shivered. Lightning flashed again and the air itself crackled.
Around the village, people paused their work to look up at the sky. Their faces were long with dread and their bodies still crouched from working. They all felt the air change. Another storm was coming.
“We can’t stay here,” Bouki said.
Corinne looked at the already damaged village. “Where can we go?” she asked.
Malik pointed toward the hills in the distance.
“The mountains,” Bouki said. “They’re solid rock, and we lived there for years. The caves have enough room for everyone.”
“What about my papa and Hugo?” Corinne asked.
“When you’ve lived out in the open for a long time, you learn to recognize when the weather is about to take a turn,” Bouki said. “As soon as we felt the air change, we told Hugo to meet us at the base of the hill with Pierre. But we have to go now.”
The leaves of the mango tree rustled. The wind sent the hem of Dru’s kurta flying into her face. Corinne’s plaits whipped behind her. In the houses, curtains peeled out of windows one by one, as if the wind was taking its time going down the alley. Leaves, bits of cloth, and a little rubber ball tumbled in the muddy road. The wind pushed against everything, sending skirts and shirts flapping, and dirt and leaves scattering. Dru and Corinne let it push them back to the tent and told everyone about the plan to go to the mountains. Mrs. Rootsingh filled a water jug and wrapped a cloth around her head, then put the jug on top, holding it with one hand as she beckoned her children with the other. Mr. Rootsingh put roti skins in a paper sack and shoved the sack in a larger cloth bag that was already bulging with other supplies. Dru’s siblings scattered, grabbing supplies. Arjun got a length of rope. Vidia and Karma, the two girls just older than Dru, got some more of the food. Fatima finally stopped complaining long enough to carry a jug of water, though not on her head like her mother. Then they all turned back to the
road and pushed against the wind and the light rain it had brought with it.
“What about the goats?” Dru asked when they reached the boys.
“My life is ruined and you are worried about three goats?” Fatima cried.
“I’m not leaving them.”
“We have to go,” Bouki said.
“It won’t take long to get them,” Dru promised. “I can catch up.” She turned and ran back to the house.
At one look from Mrs. Rootsingh, Corinne ran off after Dru. Even if Mrs. Rootsingh had not given her the eye, she wouldn’t have left her friend on her own, even for a moment. She met Dru as she crawled under the house and grabbed the rope that encircled the mama goat’s neck.
“Come on, come on!” Dru called.
The goat bleated, but dug its hooves into the soft ground and pulled back the other way.
Corinne crawled next to Dru and grabbed the goat by the neck. Its deep brown eyes were wide and its ears strained back. “We’re trying to save you,” Corinne said gently. “Come on, now.”
“Get the babies,” Dru said.
Corinne turned her attention to the two kids next to the mama goat. She had to crawl farther under the house, but she got her arm around one kid’s neck and pulled it out. The mama charged at Corinne, and Dru yanked the rope, keeping Corinne a mere inch from a head-butting. Dru put all her weight into pulling the nanny goat away, until it stopped fighting and followed the kid that Corinne had wrestled out. The second kid bounded out, skipping as if it was all a game.
Dru scowled at the goats and then down at her mud-plastered clothes.
“Well, they came out, didn’t they?” Corinne said. “Come on.”
The village had emptied and was silent. By the time they got to the edge of the road where it split, going one way toward the market and the other back to Dru’s village, only Mr. and Mrs. Rootsingh were left. Ahead was a trail of gravel and rocks. Their neighbors were already making their way past the cane fields. Mr. Rootsingh took the mother goat’s rope and led it. Mrs. Rootsingh pursed her lips when she saw Dru, but said nothing. They caught up with their neighbors just as the cane fields gave way to low, undulating rocks on the foothills toward the mountains.
Corinne and Dru pushed ahead until they caught up to Bouki and Malik, who were leading everyone up.
“Have my papa and Hugo made it yet?” Corinne asked.
Bouki shook his head.
There were more than just the Rootsinghs’ neighbors picking their way through the rocks. Corinne recognized people from the market who lived in town, but she saw no one from her fishing village.
“My village is farther away. They’ll come along soon,” Corinne said, though it felt more like she was saying it for herself than to anyone in particular. She moved to a higher rock and strained her neck looking over each face.
“You can’t wait there all day,” Bouki said. “You’re right. They’ll catch up.”
“I’ll wait,” Corinne said. “We can follow behind. Just be sure you know what you’re doing.”
Bouki made a face at her that said both of course and are you kidding me? Malik rolled his eyes and shook his head at her, as if she should have known better than to ask.
“When you lived in the mountains, you always needed to come down to town to steal things,” Corinne pointed out.
“But we lived without your fancy houses and your soft blankets and your regular meals,” Bouki replied.
“And this god,” Corinne said.
“What about him?” Bouki asked.
“You said he could flatten mountains.”
Bouki gaped, but recovered quickly. “So what?”
“Maybe the mountains aren’t the best place to wait out the storm.”
“Where else would you like to go?” Bouki asked. “Not all of us can turn jumbie and hide under the sea.”
Corinne bit her lip. “I’m only asking if you’re sure we will be safe.”
“It’s the safest place I know,” he said.
“There!” Corinne shouted. Pierre and Hugo appeared on the market road and turned toward the rock-filled path. They were helping some older neighbors who moved much more slowly. Hugo was laden with bags but still managed to help a gray-haired old man move through the rocks.
Corinne waved and Pierre waved back, then held his palm out, indicating she should wait there. She jumped off the rock near Bouki and Malik.
“Bouki?” she said.
“What now?”
“Does this god have a name?”
Malik looked at her with eyes as big as saucers. He took a long, slow breath and said, “Huracan.”
9
The Way Up
More and more people joined the climb to higher ground. Families from surrounding villages—carrying small packs filled with food and water, or with babies wrapped against their parents’ bodies and toddlers just able to walk on their own but needing a hand to hold—all converged on the foot of the mountain.
When Pierre and Hugo got close, Corinne joined them, helping those at the back of the crowd.
A little girl with a head full of beaded braids got her foot caught between two boulders. She managed to pull herself free, but lost her sandal. She peered into the shadowed space between the rocks. The beads on the end of her hair clicked softly around her face, but she didn’t attempt a rescue.
“I’ll get it,” Corinne offered. She pushed her hand between the stones and freed the leather shoe, which was etched with the girl’s name. “Maya?” she asked. When the girl nodded, she helped buckle it back around her ankle. “Here you go.”
Maya ran to catch up with her mother, who was struggling with two even smaller children.
“What if there was a scorpion?” Dru asked. She was holding on to the mother goat’s rope again, and the two little ones were bounding over the rocks, skipping ahead, and bleating joyfully even in the rain. “Or a snake!”
“She’d have a hard time without her shoe,” Corinne said.
“I would have gotten a stick,” Dru said. “Or found someone who could pry the rocks apart.”
Corinne’s steps immediately slowed. Her stomach felt sour and her head ached. She let Dru get farther up ahead before she resumed her pace. Around her the faces were all creased with concern, and dripping with rainwater. In each of those faces she saw the worry of her papa, which had deepened in the last few months after the arrival of the beautiful stranger, Severine, who turned out to be a jumbie and the sister of Corinne’s mama, Nicole. Everything had been different since her aunt Severine’s arrival. Their lives seemed haunted by ghosts and the ever-present idea that some new jumbie would wind up on their doorstep.
Corinne sometimes worried that she was the one who had called all the trouble to the island. It was she who had run into the forest and awakened Severine’s interest. It was she who had volunteered to face Mama D’Leau. It was she who had turned into a mermaid and forced Severine into the coldest depths of water on the planet. Every time, the trouble she had tried to fix turned worse, and all because she didn’t often think before she acted. Her papa had said so, and now Dru.
Going to the caves was not her plan. This time she was following. This time she couldn’t be blamed if something went wrong.
The sound of sandals scraping against the rocks and swishing through the wet grass beat out an even rhythm like chac-chacs. Corinne remembered a sunny day when she rocked in a hammock in the yard while her mama looked down on her. A song wound its way up through her memory, but it was not her mama’s voice she heard. It was Pierre’s deep tone that carried the tune, singing to soothe her worries when the light grew dim.
“Tingalayo,” Corinne sang. The sandals scraped. “Come little donkey, come.”
Maya turned to look, and pulled the thumb she was sucking out of her mouth. “Tingalayo!” she sang, smiling her few milk
teeth at Corinne.
“Come little donkey, come,” Corinne answered.
Several other children joined in.
Mih donkey walk, mih donkey talk
Mih donkey eat with a knife and fork
Mih donkey walk, mih donkey talk
Mih donkey eat with a knife and fork
By the time they had gotten to the fourth or fifth round of the song, the melody had spread through the crowd and even Dru had joined in. At a sharp slope, Bouki stopped. He turned in every direction as if he was lost and looking for the way. The song tapered off, ending with a little boy on his father’s shoulders who giggled as he sang the last lines.
Mih donkey eat, mih donkey sleep
Mih donkey kick with his two hind feet
The crowd grew silent when Bouki turned to them.
“It gets harder from here,” he called out. “We’re going to have to walk single file the rest of the way.” He jerked his head at a young boy near him, who looked about the same age as Malik. “You’re going to have to help the smaller ones.” The boy nodded, as did all the other little kids who thought they were old enough to help. Even Maya stood up straighter and grabbed the hand of a child who could only have been her younger sister. The two of them had the same pattern of cornrows braided into their hair with a cluster of white beads at the end of each plait.
Wind whistled out of the narrow spaces between the stones. Lightning flashed in the sky again, and Corinne squinted, hoping to make out the figure in the clouds again, but also hoping that she didn’t see anything.
“Hurry,” Bouki said.
He directed two men ahead of everyone, then took a small boy against his hip as he continued up. The path was nearly vertical in some places, making it necessary to move with hands and feet. On narrow paths, smaller children were passed up to waiting hands. The going was much slower, and they were all drenched to the skin. The men stopped near a large stone and called back something Corinne couldn’t make out. Bouki put down the child he was holding and disappeared behind the stone. Moments later, a large branch went tumbling down the side of the mountain, and Bouki waved everyone on.
The Jumbie God's Revenge Page 4
