The Jumbie God's Revenge Read online

  The JUMBIE GOD’S REVENGE

  Tracey Baptiste

  Algonquin Young Readers  2019

  For Waynie and Wendy.

  And for all my Caribbean family displaced

  by extreme weather. May you find home again.

  Contents

  1

  The Horizon

  2

  The Jumbie in the Forest

  3

  June, Too Soon

  4

  Only a Storm

  5

  Summon the Sea

  6

  Blood in the Water

  7

  The Crying Bride

  8

  Not a Jumbie

  9

  The Way Up

  10

  The Weight of Water

  11

  Adrift

  12

  Back at Last

  13

  Dodo Piti Popo

  14

  Into the Fire

  15

  A Long Way Down

  16

  The Pitch Lake

  17

  A Quick Rescue

  18

  The Other Mermaid

  19

  A Cloud in the Water

  20

  The Boys Return

  21

  A Single Shard

  22

  Tangle in the Water

  23

  Home

  24

  Huracan

  25

  The Belly of the Mountain

  26

  A Plan in Motion

  27

  Determination

  28

  Race for the Stone

  29

  A Little Help

  30

  The Last Goodbye

  31

  The Fire Within

  32

  Let We See

  33

  A Place to Hide

  34

  Cloud Fight

  35

  The Roots

  36

  Fighting the Sea

  37

  A Crack on the Mountain

  38

  Severine’s Return

  39

  Hold Tight

  40

  Fire in the Water

  41

  A Mermaid Found a Swimming Lad

  42

  Ready

  43

  The Lagahoo

  44

  Take the Hit

  45

  Fire in the Sky

  46

  The Last Save

  47

  Mon Coeur

  48

  Things You Do for Family

  49

  Wire Bend

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  The Horizon

  Corinne La Mer leapt from one tall coconut tree to another. Nothing but air surrounded her and there was only the sand and a few sharp rocks below. She landed on the rough trunk of the tree, slapping it hard with her palms and then wrapping her legs around it. She slipped and felt a rush of panic rise to her throat until she got the soles of her feet flat against the bark to grip her in place.

  Corinne looked down at the beach. Mrs. Duval, in a bright purple headwrap and a loose white blouse and colorful skirt, shaded her eyes as she peered into the tree.

  “Don’t injure yourself before you get my coconuts, please,” she teased Corinne.

  Next to Mrs. Duval was Corinne’s friend Malik. He shaded his face with a small hand, watching Corinne as she moved. His older brother, Bouki, wasn’t looking her way at all. He was focused on the road, hoping for one last customer before they called it a morning.

  Corinne caught her breath and returned to her task. It was dizzyingly high at the top of the coconut trees. Even in the shade of their large fan-like leaves, and with the sea breeze blowing to shore, the heat had her drenched in sweat. She panted as she reached up for a thick, yellow coconut. She twisted and twisted it until the tough stem snapped and then looked down to see where Malik was waiting to catch it, but the coconut slipped from her sweat-slick palm.

  “Watch out!” she cried. Malik stepped nimbly out of the way, but Bouki, busily counting Mrs. Duval’s coins, didn’t hear her warning. The coconut grazed the side of his arm and dropped near his foot.

  “You nearly killed me!” he yelled.

  “I said ‘watch out.’” Corinne carefully climbed back down the sloping trunk. She had skinned the insides of her thighs climbing down before and had learned to use the soles of her feet to keep her body away from the bark. When she was close enough to the bottom, she pushed off the tree and landed near Bouki, who had lopped off the top of the coconut with a machete and passed it to Mrs. Duval.

  Mrs. Duval shook the coconut and screwed up her face. “All these coconuts dry, dry these days. I thought it was rainy season already.” She peered up into the tree again. “Aren’t there any more up there?”

  Bouki patted the trunk. “We only have what nature gives us,” he said.

  “And whatever else you can grab,” Mrs. Duval added.

  Bouki put on a fake look of offense as he pocketed her money, but it was not news to anyone that Bouki and Malik used to be thieves.

  “They’re reformed,” Corinne said.

  “Hmm. Reformed,” Mrs. Duval repeated, looking at the boys out of the corner of her eye. She sniffed the opening of the coconut and first sipped, then tipped it back and drank long. When she finally came up for air, there was a look of satisfaction on her face, but only for a moment. “You should go back to selling oranges,” Mrs. Duval said to Corinne. “Nothing on the island compares to your oranges.”

  Corinne blushed, but her gaze flitted over the waves, and the compliment faded quickly. “I can’t only sell oranges, Mrs. Duval,” she said. “It’s not good business.”

  “Ah, of course,” Mrs. Duval said, smiling. She turned to the beach, where a band of children played on the sand. She waved at them to catch their attention, and then pointed with the whole length of her arm to a pink house. They all went running.

  Corinne waved at Laurent, the oldest of the bunch, who played cricket with her when he wasn’t doing chores or watching his younger siblings.

  “I can send him along later,” Mrs. Duval said. “If you want to play.”

  Corinne shook her head. “Maybe another time.”

  “You know,” Mrs. Duval said, leaning in close. “You can’t watch the waves forever.” When Corinne didn’t answer, Mrs. Duval picked up all her coconuts by the stems and walked behind her children to their house.

  The sea was bright blue and the sun reflected off the choppy waves in dazzling silver and gold. In the line of fishing boats near the horizon, Corinne could just make out her papa’s, even though it was impossible to see its bright yellow color. She had memorized the shape of it, so she could always pick out her papa on the waves.

  “He’s safe, you know,” Bouki said.

  “For now,” Corinne replied.

  “You worry too much.”

  Corinne turned from the sea to look at her friend. There had been a time when she didn’t worry. That was before her orange trees bore their first fruit, when she and her papa had their routine. He would wake her up in the morning and tell her to be careful on land, and she would tell him to mi
nd that the sea didn’t swallow him up, and they would both promise to be safe. But then Severine came. She was beautiful at first, dreadful at their last encounter, and with her came all of the jumbies.

  “You don’t worry enough,” Corinne told Bouki. She clutched the stone pendant of the necklace that hung near her heart, and rubbed its cracked surface with her thumb.

  Corinne hadn’t believed in jumbies before Severine followed her out of the forest. She thought they were only stories that grown-ups told to scare the children on the island, stories about things that came out at night so little ones would stay in their beds. But then she encountered creatures with backward feet, women who shed their skin, and men covered in spiky fur with teeth as sharp as daggers. There was a jumbie who cared for the woods, and one who lived beneath the waves who would turn anyone into stone at a glance and who ruled the mermaids in the sea. Corinne had seen them all. But worse than that, she had witnessed their power, and she understood just how easy it was to succumb to any one of them.

  She had nearly lost her papa to Severine, and Bouki to Mama D’Leau. It was enough to make anyone worry.

  Months ago, when Corinne had dragged Severine into the sea and left her there, she had been sure that it was only a matter of time before the sea spat Severine back out.

  “The sea doesn’t keep anything, Corinne,” her papa had told her. So today, and every day, she stayed near the shore watching the waves and waiting.

  Corinne nicked the skin of her thumb on a sharp edge of her stone necklace. The stone had been her mama’s, and after Corinne had broken it, her papa had wrapped it in leather to hold it together again. In the months since, Corinne had rubbed some of the cracks smooth, but the stone did not soothe her like it used to.

  “What is it we are looking for?” an old woman asked. She had appeared out of nowhere and stood next to them in the shade of the coconut tree.

  “Witch!” Bouki said.

  The witch picked up her walking stick and brought it down with force on Bouki’s right foot. The sparse few strands of her short white hair shook with her jab.

  Bouki doubled over to nurse his foot and looked daggers at the white witch, but he knew enough not to say anything else.

  “Good morning, neighbor,” Corinne said.

  The witch knocked her walking stick on the trunk of the tree and squinted up at the fruit. “Any more good ones left?” she asked.

  “All green,” Corinne said.

  The witch nodded. “I don’t mind the young ones.”

  Malik scrambled up the tree. The witch leaned against the trunk, letting her stick rest against its curve. She rubbed her left arm slowly.

  Everything about the white witch looked like it was near expiration: the sun-bleached pattern on her dress, the threadbare wrap that tied her head, the few drooping twists of short white hair that refused to be contained in her headwrap. Even the skin of her body sagged loose around her bones as if it might detach and crumple around her at any moment. No one knew how old the white witch was. Even the oldest people in the villages remembered her as ancient when they were young.

  Corinne watched the witch massage her damaged arm. It was even more shriveled and grayer than the rest of her, as if the life had been leached out of it. But at the end of her arm, her hand seemed more vibrant. Her fingers curled and stretched in short, jerking movements.

  “Your hand is getting stronger,” Corinne said.

  “There’s only two ways for a thing to go,” the witch said. “Better, or worse.” She stretched and bent her fingers as she looked out to sea. “What you looking out at the sea for? You already know what is under the water.”

  Before Corinne could find an answer, Malik jumped to the ground holding a coconut with just the barest hint of yellow on the husk. He macheted the top off before presenting it to the witch.

  The witch’s tongue jumped out in anticipation, flicking over her thin, dry lips. She took the husk in her good hand and drank deeply. Some of the water dribbled out the sides of her mouth, past a patch of gray chin-stubble, and down the dark, wrinkled folds of her throat, which made jerking movements like fresh fish bundled in a net.

  She downed the entire contents in one go. Then she handed the coconut back to Malik. He moved to cut it open, but she shook her head. “There’s nothing there,” she said. She seemed to be discussing the sea, not the lack of jelly in the coconut.

  Without another word, the witch shuffled off, kicking up pale sand.

  “Didn’t I say that, brother?” Bouki asked. “Didn’t I tell her that nothing was going to happen?”

  “Is that what I said?” the witch called over her shoulder. She maneuvered back around to face them. “Dunce. Who ever said nothing is going to happen?” She lifted her cane with some difficulty and gestured around her. Her loose dress rippled in the wind. “Something is always happening.” She moved her mouth in a way that made Corinne think she was rearranging her teeth before she continued. “Boy, nothing is as dull as you.”

  “You think something else is going to happen,” Corinne said.

  The witch shot her the same look of disdain she had turned on Bouki. “Something is happening right now,” she said. “And a moment after that something will happen again.” She cut her eyes at Bouki again. “Maybe you are spending too much time with this one. You were smarter when you were coming to the market alone. You will miss things if you keep wasting time standing guard at the sea. You think this is the only piece of shore? The only spread of water?” She stretched her ruined fingers again and muttered, “Only two ways for things to go, better or worse. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  They watched the witch as she bent the corner around a grove of coconut trees. It was only after she was out of sight that Bouki shouted, “She didn’t pay!”

  2

  The Jumbie in the Forest

  In the sticky thickness of the forest, a large boulder covered with moss and slime sat precariously on a small square bit of rock. It rested at the edge of a sprawling plain in which several saplings were stretching toward the sky. If there had been any people there, they might have thought the boulder almost looked like an old man crouching, balancing on the flat of a pair of hooves where his toes should have been, and frowning over the plain. But there were no people there. No one ever went this far into the forest, because it was where most jumbies lived, hidden in the shadows.

  Far above the tips of the old trees, the saplings, and the craggy stone that looked both like an old man and an old goat, the sky turned gray like hard steel. Then a few drops splattered down, swiping leaves and blades of grass, and smacking the boulder on its back.

  The boulder seemed to tremble at the annoyance, and slowly unfolded itself, softening and smoothing, shaking dust and pebbles off its surface until it was a real man with hairy goat’s legs. Matted gray hair entwined with moss and leaves tumbled down the man’s back. Still crouched, the man looked up at the sky, slowly, as was his way. He reached a hand out, and a drop of water plopped into the center of his palm. He brought it to his wrinkled mouth and sipped.

  The ancient creases of his face deepened, his jaw tightened, and his light brown eyes went a reddish color like the ground that was muddying at his hooves.

  He picked up a long, thick stick lying near his feet, and used it to push himself to standing. He wasn’t tall, but with his shoulders back and his chin up, he seemed as large and unmovable as the rock he had been only moments before.

  Papa Bois—that was the old jumbie’s name—sighed. He shook his head and a few crumbles of dirt tumbled from the strands of his hair. In the distance he heard someone plucking a quick, tripping melody on a cuatro. The music blended wonderfully with the sound of water running over rocks in the nearby river.

  Papa Bois was glad his love was so close, waiting and happy for once. It was a shame he was going to give her bad news.

  3<
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  June, Too Soon

  The rain began softly at first, then quickly turned into pelting droplets that slapped Corinne’s skin. She put her hands over her head, but in moments, her long black braids became soaking whips that lashed her neck and chest as she ran for shelter beneath an almond tree.

  People on the beach grabbed up towels and children and snacks and toys, and ran for cover. Some went straight to their brightly colored houses on the shore. Others ran to the tree line, hiding under any available branch. A couple squeezed next to the snack stall at the edge of the road, taking what little shelter they could in its propped-up awning.

  The sky blackened and the wind whipped up. The same coconut trees Corinne and the boys had been climbing bowed toward the sea, pointing straight at the line of fishing boats on the churning water.

  The rain dulled everything, even the shapes of the boats. Corinne could not make out her papa’s.

  Mind the sea doesn’t swallow you up, she thought with a chill.

  “We should get inside,” Bouki said.

  Corinne nodded. “You go back to town. I will wait here for my papa.”

  Bouki squinted up at the sky. “Don’t wait too long.”

  The boys took off up the hill, and Corinne peered out at the horizon. Her heart thudded as fast as the raindrops striking the ground. From behind the gray veil of rain, the boats appeared. They were only dark shapes at first, but as they came closer the colors of each vessel, blue, green, red, and finally the bright yellow of Pierre La Mer’s, came into focus.

  Corinne ran to the sea. The wind pushed at her and the rain slapped against her, but she sprinted until she reached her papa.

  Pierre called to her, but whatever he said was whisked away by the wind. He pointed over her head toward their little house at the top of the hill. Corinne understood, but did not stop. She met him in hip-deep water and pulled the boat from the front as her father jumped out and pushed, steering it through the choppy waves. Once on shore, they hoisted it onto soft sand. Pierre knotted a rope around one of the posts at the dock and threw a tarp over the boat for cover. Then he lashed it with more rope, pulling it taut and tying it before he turned back to Corinne.

  “Come!” he shouted over the wind.