Rise of the Jumbies Read online

  Tracey Baptiste

  Algonquin Young Readers 2017

  To all the ones who were taken,

  to the ones who took, to those who have forgotten,

  and to those who remember all too well.

  Contents

  Chapter 1: The Game

  Chapter 2: An Opening in the Sea

  Chapter 3: What the Sea Keeps

  Chapter 4: Another Way

  Chapter 5: The Talk at the Market

  Chapter 6: The Water’s Song

  Chapter 7: The Other Jumbie

  Chapter 8: Mama D’Leau

  Chapter 9: On Second Thought

  Chapter 10: Under Water

  Chapter 11: The Favor

  Chapter 12: Light in the Dark

  Chapter 13: Shadows in the Sea

  Chapter 14: The Empty Waves

  Chapter 15: Who Dares?

  Chapter 16: Before It’s Too Late

  Chapter 17: The Fire

  Chapter 18: Diving into the Wreck

  Chapter 19: Home

  Chapter 20: Girl and Goddess

  Chapter 21: Try a Thing

  Chapter 22: Things Fall Apart

  Chapter 23: Two Stories

  Chapter 24: In a Fine Castle

  Chapter 25: Hide and Thief

  Chapter 26: The Door of No Return

  Chapter 27: Faded Memories

  Chapter 28: Two Cons

  Chapter 29: The Ash Trees

  Chapter 30: Papa Bois

  Chapter 31: Water and Sand

  Chapter 32: Lagoon des Enfants

  Chapter 33: Favorite Food

  Chapter 34: Tante Severine

  Chapter 35: A Breath of Water

  Chapter 36: Familiar Ground

  Chapter 37: A Call for Help

  Chapter 38: Friend or Foe?

  Chapter 39: How to Breathe

  Chapter 40: A Promise to Keep

  Chapter 41: Which Jumbie?

  Chapter 42: Two Things

  Chapter 43: The Water Jumbies

  Chapter 44: Just in Time

  Chapter 45: Girl or Jumbie?

  Chapter 46: The Mermaid’s Argument

  Chapter 47: Bitterness like Dew

  Chapter 48: Where Water Turns to Stone

  Chapter 49: The Usual

  Chapter 50: A Spark of Memory

  Chapter 51: Turning Back

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  The Game

  Corinne La Mer dove through the waves. Streaks of light illuminated the golden sand beneath her and shone on a large pink shell half-buried on the seafloor, just out of reach. She kicked her feet and pushed harder toward it. Just as she was about to make a grab, a huge wave crashed down and a zillion salty bubbles and grains of sand blocked the shell from view. Corinne’s lungs were bursting. She turned and swam to the surface.

  As soon as she came up, she spotted Bouki and Malik, closer to the shore. The grinning brothers had seawater dripping from their tightly curled hair. They bounced up, and Corinne realized too late that they were preparing to dive beneath a wave. The water came down, rolling her onto the gritty sand. The boys had timed their dives perfectly to avoid being tumbled by the force of the crash. By the time Corinne surfaced again, they were gone. She took a deep breath and went under, fighting the urge to close her eyes against the stinging saltwater so that she wouldn’t miss the prize. And there it was, the shining pink seashell.

  She kicked her feet and reached toward it, but just as she got close enough, a pair of dark hands snatched the shell out of reach. Bouki—the older boy—grinned. A few bubbles escaped from between his teeth, and he pushed up toward the sun.

  “Eh heh!” he said when Corinne joined him over the waves.

  “Fine, Bouki. You win,” Corinne said.

  “Say it,” he said. “Say it!”

  Corinne rolled her eyes. “You’re . . .”

  But before she could finish, his little brother swam up behind and yanked the shell out of his hand.

  “. . . not king of the sea!” Corinne finished. “Looks like Malik is.”

  Bouki dove after his brother. Corinne swam for shore. They had been in the water for hours. Her fingers were wrinkly and her eyes burned. She dragged herself over to a coconut tree and sat against its curved trunk, sticking her legs straight out in the warm sand. Striped shadows from the coconut leaves danced on her skin and the ground in front of her. To her left, a group of little girls held hands around a lopsided sand castle, danced in a circle, and sang.

  In a fine castle, do you hear my sissy-o,

  In a fine castle, do you hear my sissy-o.

  Ours is the prettiest, do you hear my sissy-o.

  Ours is the prettiest . . .

  The sand shivered. Corinne felt a tremor go straight through her body. The girls stopped dancing, and the people on the beach stopped mid-action. But her papa and the other fishermen in their boats were still far out on the water, their nets dragging in the sea. None of them seemed to notice. She looked up at the sky. It was clear and quiet. Where are the seagulls? she wondered. The ground shook again. This time, she got up. The group of girls ran to their parents and the adults looked around with wide eyes.

  “Earthquake!” one of the women shouted.

  Corinne looked into the water again. There was no sign of the boys.

  “Get out of the water!” another voice yelled.

  Mothers with small children gathered them up and ran from shore. Laurent, one of Corinne’s friends from the fishing village, rounded up his siblings while his mother came behind with the baby. The second youngest, Abner, stumbled. Corinne reached for him, but his mother pushed Corinne’s hand away, and in one swoop, tucked Abner under her free arm.

  “Mrs. Duval, I was only trying to help.”

  Laurent’s mother cut a fearful glance at Corinne, and Corinne’s face burned with embarrassment.

  Maybe it’s just the earthquake, Corinne thought. But it wasn’t. She had been getting looks like that for months.

  “It’s okay,” Laurent said. “We have them.” He smiled at Corinne, which made her feel better, but only a little. She had barely seen Laurent in weeks. His mother always found some chore for him to do any time they were about to play.

  Corinne ran toward the waves. “Bouki! Malik!” she shouted.

  The boys’ heads bobbed up out of the water. They were still fighting over the shell.

  “Get out!” Corinne yelled. “Get out of the water!”

  At the water’s edge, the waves pulled back as if the ocean were being drained. She ran to the boys with wet sand sticking under her feet. The edge of the water went farther and farther out, taking Bouki and Malik with it.

  “Swim!” she yelled at them, waving her arms toward herself.

  Finally, Bouki and Malik seemed to understand. They beat a path toward Corinne, but the sea was still pulling them away from shore. Corinne ran forward, toeing the froth at the edge of the waves. She was much farther out than she had been when they were playing. But where there had been water deep enough to swim in, there was now only wet, sucking sand.

  “Faster!”

  Water splashed on Corinne’s toes. The tide was turning. The boys got closer, but so did the sea. Corinne stayed where she was with the water licking at her feet, her ankles, and then surging up to her knees until th
e brothers were close enough to grab and pull along.

  “Run!” Corinne commanded. All three of them took off toward the hill where she lived. But the waves crashed down around them, washing the sand away and pulling at their feet. One wave had barely turned back when another one overtook it and came at them again. It was the strongest tide Corinne had ever experienced.

  There was another rumble. Corinne and the boys scrambled over rocky steps. Loose stones shook away beneath their feet, tripping them until they reached the dirt road. They stopped a moment with their hands on their knees to steady themselves and catch their breath. The ground stopped moving, but the waves kept coming, and they were bringing the fishing boats in fast—right to where they stood. Corinne’s papa’s yellow boat crashed into other vessels as it rushed toward shore. Her father’s eyes found her. He pointed frantically at their house at the top of the hill.

  Corinne nodded once and pulled the boys behind her. Malik stumbled and Bouki helped him to his feet.

  “Come on, brother,” Bouki said.

  Malik patted his back pockets and looked around. His slingshot spun on the surface of the water. He reached for it, but it was drawn down a muddy whirlpool.

  “I’ll make you another,” Bouki said as he made sure he still had his own.

  They continued up the hill and paused near the house to look over the beach, which was now covered in brackish water, tree limbs, and splintered wood. A small brown object, round like a bare head, bobbed by, and for a moment, Corinne’s heart stopped. But there were others, green ones, yellow ones­—coconuts, Corinne realized with relief—all drifting in the water. As they floated, Corinne saw a couple of them get sucked under like Malik’s slingshot and disappear.

  She looked to the pileup of boats that had run aground, but her papa’s was not among them.

  2

  An Opening in the Sea

  Beneath the tangle of boats and nets, the ocean floor quivered. Sand rose up, muddying the water. Schools of fish were shaken out of the coral. Rocks covered in barnacles and layers of sediment dislodged and knocked against each other. As they tumbled, they opened hidden chasms, like a bottle finally free of its cork. In the darkness of a newly opened chamber, a gnarled, shriveled-looking creature shifted and then shifted again, as if it was testing out its new space.

  Long, twig-thin fingers reached out from under the rocks and folded into the fissures of the stone above. The fingers pushed the stone, stretching the chasm wide like the jaws of a beast.

  3

  What the Sea Keeps

  Corinne took a few steps back down the hill. Malik grabbed her hand. He looked her in the eyes and shook his head. Malik never said much, but they all understood him perfectly—most of the time.

  “I know he told us to go home,” Corinne said. She pleaded with her eyes. Malik pulled her to the yard.

  Bouki stopped dead in his tracks before the front steps and frowned at the small wooden house. “What if there’s another one,” he said. “This house could come crashing down on our heads if we go inside.”

  “Do you think you would be better off in your cave?” Corinne asked.

  “All the time we lived in caves, nothing bad ever happened to us,” Bouki said.

  Malik went up to the verandah and looked in through the louver-shuttered windows. He gestured for Corinne and Bouki to follow.

  Broken lanterns lay on the floor, but most everything else seemed to be okay. Corinne went inside and began picking up fallen objects. She used a kitchen towel to sop up the lantern oil and pick up the shattered glass in one swoop. Then she came to a broken lump of wax. It was a figure of her mother that she had made last All Hallows’ Eve. It had been broken once before. Her hand fluttered up to her necklace and wrapped around the stone her mother had given to her. She brought it to her lips to kiss, nicking herself on a crack. The stone in the necklace had broken too, but her father wrapped the remaining pieces in leather straps so that Corinne could keep it close to her heart where she liked it.

  Malik picked up the other piece of Corinne’s wax figure and held it against the one Corinne had.

  “It’s okay, Malik,” she said. “I can fix it again.” She ran her finger along the broken edge. It was covered in a thin layer of black soot where the pieces had been stuck together the last time.

  “Hello? You in there?”

  “Here, Uncle Hugo!”

  The stairs creaked under the baker’s weight as he jogged up to the verandah. He looked relieved to see both boys on either side of Corinne. Flour puffed from his apron when he folded over to catch his breath. “Did you feel that?” he asked.

  “We were in the water when it happened,” Bouki said.

  Hugo reached up, squeezed Bouki’s hand, and pulled Malik into a hug. “Are you all right?” he asked. Before he gave them a chance to respond, he added, “And Pierre?”

  Corinne’s stomach flipped, but she said calmly, “Papa was out on the boat, but he’ll be here soon.”

  The boys gave her a look that said they knew she wasn’t quite telling the truth, but Hugo didn’t notice. He walked with them to the back of the house and opened the top of the Dutch door. When he saw the beach, he squeezed the boys even more tightly.

  “Everyone got away,” Corinne said. “We were the last ones on shore.”

  Hugo touched Corinne’s wet braids. “Of course you were. The four of you really know how to find danger.” Then he looked at the three of them and said, “Wait.”

  “Dru wasn’t with us,” Corinne said quickly.

  The door opened and Pierre walked in, soaked to the skin and breathing heavily. His dreadlocked hair hung over his shoulders, dripping a puddle of water at his feet.

  “Papa!” Corinne said. She ran to Pierre and wrapped her arms around his neck. His large arms closed around her, and she felt calmer immediately. “I was so worried, Papa.”

  Pierre smoothed the braids on her head. “You forget that your grand-père is king of the fish-folk and I have seawater in my veins. You and I are always safe on the sea.”

  This was the game they played every morning before he set out to catch fish, but today Pierre didn’t sound as certain as he usually did, and Corinne wasn’t sure she believed it anymore. “Is the earthquake over, Papa?” she asked.

  Pierre nodded. “We didn’t know what was happening at first. The tide started to pull us out. Everyone dropped their nets.” He took a deep breath. “There’s no use pulling against the tide. It always wins.”

  “What about the boat?” Corinne asked.

  “I can fix it this time,” he said with a wink.

  Corinne swallowed hard. She felt bad about what had happened to her father’s last fishing boat when she had rowed it out to sea and it broke apart at the base of the cliff.

  “If everyone is safe, we should go,” Hugo said. He gestured for the boys to follow him, but as they reached the door, three fishermen came up the steps.

  “What is it?” Pierre asked.

  “A child is missing,” Victor said.

  Corinne and the boys shared a horrified look. “Who?” Corinne asked.

  “It’s Laurent,” Victor said. “His mother said she saw him running toward the house, but he never made it.”

  A chill went through Corinne. “I saw him too,” she said. “He can’t be far.” She hurried to the door, ready to look for her friend.

  “Stay here, Corinne,” Pierre said. “The beach is still dangerous. I will help them find him.”

  “Where did you see him last?” Victor asked.

  “He was running past the pink house,” Corinne said. “He was almost home.”

  “I will search with you,” Hugo said. He gave the boys a look that was both stern and loving, and the men left, closing the door behind them.

  Laurent was one of Corinne’s oldest friends. Even though his mother had been tr
ying to keep him away from her, he sometimes managed to sneak a quick swim or a race in the sand. Corinne burst out of the door and said, “He’s a strong swimmer and a fast runner.”

  Pierre came back and put a hand on her cheek. “That will give him a very good chance, then.” He pushed her gently inside and waited until she had closed the door.

  “We can’t just stand here,” Corinne said.

  “Maybe you can’t,” Bouki said. “But I can. You heard your father. It’s dangerous down there.”

  Malik crouched and took a pair of binoculars from under one of the chairs. He lifted them up with a grin.

  “We can help,” Corinne said. “And we don’t have to be on the beach to do it.”

  They watched the searchers walking through mucky, ankle-deep water. One of them was Laurent’s mother, Mrs. Duval. She had taken care of Corinne sometimes when Corinne was still too young to be home alone and her papa was out on the sea. But things had changed since Corinne had gone into the mahogany forest and a jumbie—the kind the grown-ups told stories about at night—had followed her out. Mrs. Duval’s voice called out above the other searchers, “Laurent! Laurent!” It reminded Corinne of how long it had been since she had heard the sound of her own mother’s voice. She could only remember the gentle tone of it and a few words. She tried to remember how her mother had said Corinne. It had come back once on a breeze, and it had filled her up and carried her like the sail on a boat, but her mama’s voice dissipated just as gently and she couldn’t catch it again. Corinne squeezed the stone at her neck as if her mother’s voice were inside, waiting to ooze out of the crack. But only Mrs. Duval’s voice came to her.

  The search party had spread out. They walked the entire length of the beach in one direction, then back the other way, looking under debris as they went.

  The sea slowly returned to its normal place, but the water remained a yellowish brown. Corinne, Bouki, and Malik took turns with the binoculars, searching until the sun dove beneath the waves and everything went dark. In the moonlight, the search party returned to their homes, and Hugo and Pierre climbed the hill alone. They entered quietly and shook their heads when Corinne and the boys came in from the backyard.