Stormwitch (16 page)

“White boy!” shouts Zashar. “Have you come to speak for your own?”

Ray-boy flushes scarlet, but he doesn’t answer.

“Worse than grub worms, the white lot,” the witch continues. “Fat and pale, sloppy and sticky. You take what you can get.”

Ray-boy’s fists open and close, but he looks at me. I stare back without moving. It’s his choice.

Purple and sweating, he crams one fist in his mouth and flips over on the mattress.

And then Zashar’s chilly gaze passes to Grandmother Jones.

“I hear you speaking to your white god,” says the witch, and I worry. Grandmother Jones insists her god has no color, and she feels strongly about that.

Will she start an argument with the witch?

“You fancy this god a match for me?” Zashar asks.

Grandmother Jones trembles.

“Call him, then, old woman! Call down your god, or deny him with your silence!”

Grandmother Jones steps forward. She stands at my shoulder and stares at Zashar’s dark, foul bulk.

Outside our bubble, the trees begin to move again, ever so slightly, ever so gently, and I know the moment is coming.

I make myself keep my eyes on the witch and away
from Grandmother Jones. If I look at my grandmother, I’ll beg her to be silent. I’ll sob and tell her how I don’t want to lose her, too.

I feel the soft brush of Grandmother Jones’s lips against my cheek.

“My god taught me not to talk to the devil,” she whispers in my ear, speaking to me and not the witch. “My god taught me not to give the devil any openings at all. That’s why you want us to be quiet. I understand.”

Then, I hear a rustle as she drops stiffly to her knees without comment to Zashar. She folds her work-worn hands, and closes her eyes. Speak she does, but in her own mind, to her own god and not to the witch.

“You stand alone, girl,” Zashar says to me.

“No,” I tell her. “You do.” I thrust out my bow. The arrow rests lightly against my finger. With my toe, I kick Agaja’s necklace, and I fire the first shot. It slips through our floating bubble, leaving a ripple in its wake.

Smoke and shimmers billow forth from the necklace, catching Zashar’s eye as my arrow flies true. She doesn’t notice it to dodge. While she stares at the necklace, the arrow strikes her large left knee. She still doesn’t seem to be aware of it.

“Aaahhh,” she hisses as the smoke from the necklace takes form around me.

A shadow-man stands with me now, handsome and
youthful. His robes twinkle, brilliant silk, and he wears heavy pearls and glittering hammered gold.

“Begone, witch,” says Agaja, and he waves his beautiful wispy hands.

I fire my second arrow into Zashar’s right knee. Another ripple in the bubble, another true hit. She feels this one, and the other, and to my surprise, she sinks like Grandmother Jones in prayer.

“Once I killed your memory,” she growls to Agaja. “I killed your sons. It pleases me to kill your spirit, fool!”

She reaches for him, her hand pushing farther and farther into the bubble. The bubble shifts and distorts. It trembles, as if it might burst. My third and final arrow trembles against my finger, too. My nerves jangle. My arrow dips.

Zashar’s hand nears the spirit of King Agaja.

Suddenly, behind the witch’s head, I see a new glow. First one, then two, then flare after flare after flare. A face!

Ba’s face, grinning broadly.

And then another face, much like Ba’s. It must be Circe, my mother.

The witch’s hand falters and slows.

One by one, the stars come to be counted. Amazons beam at me from the sky, the white of their guard caps shining.

I straighten, and my arms feel young and strong. I gaze into the loving faces of my Amazon ancestors.

“Go back to the dead,” I yell at the witch, and I let fly the third arrow.

It leaves a bigger ripple in the bubble, then sails forward, a dream shaft, and lands between two strands of Zashar’s tunic. Just a prick to the heart, small as a pin, but tipped with love and the strength of all the generations of Amazons.

Zashar’s hand stops inches from the neck of my king, but still, she doesn’t fall, and she doesn’t retreat. I can tell she’s weakened, but not defeated.

The bubble holds against her thrust, but for how long? My body starts to shake.

I’ve fought her in all the ways Ba taught me. She’s half broken, and yet she stays. What’s left to do? I glance desperately at my bag. My herb jars have been broken and scattered. My oils are spilled. My machete is gone. There aren’t any extra arrows. My journal is the only thing left.

Shrugging off my quiver and dropping my bow, I reach for it. I don’t know what else to do.

Zashar, her hand still inches from Agaja’s spirit, watches me with mean, gleeful eyes.

I snatch up the journal and wield it like a shield.

And then, thinking of Grandmother Jones and all
she’s taught me so far, I take the journal, step forward, and say, “Go. You won’t win. Together, we’re too strong for you.”

Holding the journal with both hands, I use the book to give Zashar’s outstretched hand a gentle push away from us.

To my surprise, the witch screams as I make contact. Where I touched her bubble-coated fingers, the walls of the magical shield harden and reject her.

She stands, then staggers and throws back her head.

“Aaaahhhh!” she bellows, holding the hand I touched with the journal, giving off blasts of wind strong enough to fell buildings and mighty oaks. They penetrate the bubble like my arrows, rippling, but leaving it intact.

I hold up my journal and chant, using the book to knock away the gusts. They spin back outside the shield I made.

“Aaaaahhhh!” Zashar shrieks, and the wind around our bubble grows steady. It buffets the rounded shield, tossing it like a child might toss a marble, up and down. Back and forth.

Grandmother Jones topples over, but I hold the journal in one hand and grasp my grandmother’s hand with the other. Miss Hattie joins the chain, and Clay, and Crazy Sardine. Ray-boy pushes in between them.

The bubble starts to dissolve. Wind breaks in. We are
whipped around like feathers, anchored only by my grip and my will. Beneath my arm, Gisele somehow stands, and I see her reach toward my upraised arm.

Hold on to them
, Ba seems to whisper in my ears.
It’s not your time to go. You have years of love and battles ahead
.

My legs grow weak.

Zashar thrashes.

The bubble sinks, lower and lower, losing its shape steadily as it plunges us into the wild surf.

Wind and water slam against me, an elephant made of storming air and waves.

I stand, and I stand, on the bit of protective bubble still holding us up. Then, I feel Gisele’s fingers close over my elbow. She clings to me and I cling to her as Zashar’s winds turn on her. The witch strikes out at the swirling storm, but it strikes back. It seems to have teeth. A mouth. Opening wide, wide, wider to swallow her.

The sea itself snaps at her, each bite making her less and less whole. Less and less real. Less and less here, less and less now.

Zashar runs away, kicking tides and waves as she goes. Back into the ocean, the darkness. Back into death.

She doesn’t look back.

The bubble sags.

We fall into the ocean, but I feel no pain, no cold, no fear. Light blinds me, and …

I see you, Ba, holding the gates between life and death, ready to close them behind Zashar
.

You’re standing with my mother, waving. You look like you did when I was little, strong and full of energy. I see you blowing me kisses while King Agaja fades back into memory, and Zashar’s winds pound her farther and farther into death, where she can never find her way back
.

And if she does, you’ll be there. With my mother. With my foremothers. Guarding the gate
.

I feel Gisele’s hand on my arm. I feel Grandmother Jones squeeze my fingers in hers, and I know. The Amazons live, Ba. In us. In me. In my family
.

This is my first victory
.

On the beach in Haiti—I think I understand
.

I didn’t fail you. I didn’t let you go
.

It was you. You let go of me, because you were sick and your strength was failing. You knew Zashar was coming because Agontime told you, and you trusted me to be strong enough to defeat her. You let go so that in the end, we could hold on
.

I will always love you, Ba. I will always sense you in the night stars. My father, my mother, my grandmother, gone before me, but I’m not alone. I’m far from alone now
.

Good-bye, Grand-mère Ruba
.

Chapter Fifteen

Sometime, Someplace: After

A gentle rocking wakes me.

I’m floating, holding my wet journal to my chest with both hands.

Salt water laps my face. Rain drizzles across my body. My head rests on soggy cloth. I feel my tunic against my aching skin, wet with seawater and stained with my blood.

I sit up on a mattress in the ocean.

No! Not the ocean.

I’m bumping against a toppled cornice. Tops of trees poke through waves around me.

The ocean has swallowed Pass Christian, Mississippi.

I sink back to the waterlogged cloth and see nothing.

Chapter Sixteen

Monday, 18 August 1969

“Ruba?”

Someone shakes my shoulder.

“Ruba, open those eyes!”

My body feels still, though my mind has that floating sensation. I feel wet mattress with one hand and wet, hard ground with the other. The air smells wet and dank and dirty. I force my eyelids to cooperate, and Miss Hattie’s worried face blurs into view.

“Storm over?” I rasp, getting to my feet in sand and muck. My mattress apparently beached itself on branches and debris, and held fast as the storm surge pushed back out to sea.

“In a manner of speaking,” Miss Hattie says. She wraps the shreds of my cotton dress around me, covering my tunic.

Clay’s face looms at her elbow.

I step off my mattress, hearing it squish beneath me. Miss Hattie helps me keep my balance and not drop my journal.

The other things I lost, my bow and quiver, Agaja’s necklace—my mind soothes me by reminding me of Ba’s words in my ears. I held on because it wasn’t my time. Those things from my past, they’re gone because maybe it
was
their time to be lost.

My family doesn’t need them anymore. The stormwitch is back in the land of the dead, maybe for good.

“Good Lord, girl.” Miss Hattie pats my head. “I thought you washed away with that house. With all the houses.”

I glance left and right. Behind Miss Hattie and Clay lies what is left of Pass Christian, Mississippi—and that’s nearly nothing at all.

Seawater makes pools and ripples, and a light rain falls. Buildings are nothing but boards. Cars sit in boats that perch on heaps that might have been houses. Sand lies in piles like small mountains, and only a few trees stand.

“Where is everybody else?” I wheeze, shivering at masses of snakes writhing on all available flat surfaces.

“We’re all here, child,” says Grandmother Jones. I feel her arm drape my shoulder, and I bury my face in her wet dress. “Dang snakes. Looks like Satan’s kicked them all out of hell’s bayous. They’re everywhere!”

When I turn my head, I see ambulance drivers working on Crazy Sardine. One stands long enough to kick a
snake into a puddle. It flops and wriggles away.

“On my count,” says the other ambulance man. “Three, two, one,” and the men lift my cousin into an ambulance.

“Where are they taking Daddy?” asks Gisele in a tiny voice as the truck lumbers away through debris.

“To a hospital tent,” says Officer Bolin. I see him standing with a hand on Ray-boy’s shoulder.

To my horror, Leroy Frye stands next to his son. His arms are folded, and his eyes speak the hatred he feels.

“The radio,” I whisper.

“I’m not here for a radio, girl,” Officer Bolin says. “That man Sardis was shot, and I need to know how it happened.”

I scratch my shoulder, and my nails slide on the remnants of palm oil. My eyes flick to Ray-boy, and then to Grandmother Jones, and then from Clay to Miss Hattie and finally to Gisele. Without a word, Gisele turns away from Officer Bolin. Miss Hattie hugs Clay to her side, and they look off toward the shoreline.

My gaze strays back to Ray-boy. He looks miserable, waiting for me to turn him in.

Grandmother Jones pats my shoulder.

“Sorry, sir,” I say. “I don’t really remember what happened.”

Ray-boy’s mouth drops open. He looks straight at me
then, and I know he’s really seeing me, just like he really saw Gisele after he shot her father. Some things do get through to him, after all.

“Did it themselves,” shouts Leroy Frye. “I told you! They shot their own.”

Ray-boy’s mouth works, but no sound comes out. He closes his eyes, then hangs his head.

Leroy Frye isn’t finished. “You ought to arrest all of them. Jail might teach them a lesson.”

“Stop, Daddy,” Ray-boy mumbles.

“What?” Leroy Frye shakes his head like he thinks his ears are broken.

“I said stop,” Ray-boy repeats.

“Boy—”

Officer Bolin catches Leroy’s hand in mid-backswing, but says nothing.

Ray-boy turns to Officer Bolin. “I had a gun, and I made them get in the car at the Richelieu. Miss Jones, she drove off, and I kept them in a house until they tried to get away. That’s when I shot him.”

“You shot Sardis?” Officer Bolin rubs his hand over his head. In the gray light of the morning after Camille, he looks almost as broken as the town around us.

“Yes, sir.”

Officer Bolin frowns. “It was an accident, wasn’t it, boy?”

Ray-boy swallows. He wants to answer yes, I can tell. And if he does, I won’t say anything. He takes the waterlogged pistol from his pants. “I got this from—”

“Shut your mouth,” snarls Leroy, but Ray-boy turns a shoulder to his father. He hands the pistol to Officer Bolin, who takes it with another deep frown.