Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

“I should like to see this. There is no fire bane I cannot control.”

She rose, and they departed together. I grunted under my breath, straining, but I could not move. Women came in to truss, tie, and gag me. My thoughts plowed a sluggish furrow. To blink took all my effort and concentration.

A shadowy crow settled on my face, talons digging into my cheeks. I could not fight or even scream as it pecked out my eyes and ate them, leaving me blind with nothing but the sting of my fire-burned skin to tell me tales of the world. Hands lifted me into a sling. Rope abraded me as I was jostled along. The close still air within the building melted into the cling of a steamy breeze outside. As through muffling cloth, I heard a clamor of voices as drums rattled a call to battle and men cried out to weigh anchor. Alarm horns sounded far away and too feebly to matter. Then came silence.

Smoke curled up my nose and pooled in the aching hollows where once had been my eyes. In these swirling pools I saw as with the crow’s vision from high above. Somehow it was daylight, and Bee and Caonabo sat in a courtyard sharing a large hammock under the shade of a tree, he now dressed in white cotton in the Taino way. He had one leg crossed under him and one on the ground rocking the hammock. Not quite touching him, Bee reclined at her ease, casual in a blouse and pagne. She was talking quite intently and, to my surprise, listened equally intently as he replied. They looked up as the shadows of airships rippled over the ground. Up and up my eyes flew, as airships crossed the border between the Taino kingdom and Expedition Territory. Far below, soldiers marched in neat ranks down the roads and paths that led through the outlying pastures, fields, and orchards toward the city. Wardens shouted down the streets calling for peace and order while brash young men raged in alleys holding machetes and axes and adzes. Luce stood at the gate, staring, as a column of Taino soldiers passed down the street; a few looked her up and down although none broke ranks; Aunty Djeneba yanked her inside and barred the gate.

I woke up, buzzing and swaying with the wind in my face and soldiers behind me speaking Taino so rapidly its lilt was music. I heard the fluttering roar of the airship’s propeller. Empty air surrounded me, a chasm whose winds dizzied me. But I could see with my own eyes.

Pale pink light rimmed the east like a rose’s unfurling. Below lay briny waters still dark in slumber. I was bound into a large sling and suspended off the prow of an airship, dangling in the air far above the sea. The scream I wanted to make spilled into a torrent of trembling that shook through my whole body. I breathed down my panic as I considered my situation. Rope bound my wrists. I worked my fingers to turn my wrists back and forth, trying to get play in the rope.

But it was already too late. As the sun rose, so a shore rose before us, a band of white beach lapped by blue water. Below, a signal flag was raised from within a familiar half circle of houses.

The airship descended, and the anchor was dropped, the prow swinging clockwise as they lowered me down.

To Salt Island.

34

First they placed me in an enclosure with stout wooden bars, packed earth as a floor, an awning to protect me against rain and sun, and a bucket for waste. But after a day of kicking, prying, digging, chewing, and climbing, I was clouted over the head. While I was stunned, they locked me in a metal cage set on stone with no protection from sun or rain and nowhere to relieve myself except where I crouched. The cage was so small I could not stand straight nor stretch out.

My head ached, and I vomited all down my front.

“Don’ fight it, gal,” said a woman from behind me. “Yee only harm yee own self.”

The ground reeled, only it was me and not the ground reeling. I leaned against the outer wall of the enclosure and shut my eyes as the sun set.

The sun rose. A hand poked me. A cup swam in front of my face. I was so thirsty I drank without thinking, but it was guava juice with lime and pineapple, my favorite that Vai had so often brought me. Such a riptide of longing and fury and fear dragged through me that it was all I could do not to fling the cup at the bars in the hope it would shatter into as many pieces as my broken dreams. Instead, I choked down my rage and said, “Might I have more, please?”

My voice scraped horribly. But they gave me more. They pulled a length of canvas over the bars so the sun did not cook me. I swallowed as much as I could of the yam pudding my captors offered. My stomach churned, but nothing came back up. In my stinking clothes, I rested to gather my strength. The enclosure sat in a clearing surrounded by trees and backed by a rocky ridge. I saw no sign of habitation. Yet from the distance, sounds remarkably like those of the commonplace work of a village floated on the breeze: grain being pounded with women singing in accompaniment; wood being chopped; a strap being stropped.

The next day they allowed me back into the first enclosure. A crow landed on the palisade, measuring me as if to remind me to measure once again the height of the walls. Then it flew off.

About midday, three shackled women were shoved into the enclosure, one weeping copiously, one stunned, and one with the resigned air of the condemned whose reprieve has run out. They sat as far from me as possible.

“Are you from Expedition?” I asked.

The resigned one called to the man fastening the locks on the gate. “That one stink. Can yee wash her, or put her elsewhere?”

“We got no other cage,” said the man. “Women come to this side of the island shall stay in the cage ’til we see if they’s pregnant.”

“What happens if they’re pregnant?” I called, but he was already walking away.

“How did you come here?” I asked the others in a voice I hoped was mild.

After eyeing me suspiciously, one answered. “The Taino arrested us.”

“Did the Taino occupy Expedition?”

“That talk of a wedding areito was nothing but an excuse to bring in they army. On the Council steps they read out a proclamation. It say Expedition’s Council broke the First Treaty because folk bitten and healed were let stay in the city, not sent to Salt Island. The Taino behiques and soldiers hunted down all them who was bitten and healed. Like us. ’Tis how we come here.”

I thought of the way the occupying soldiers had looked at Luce in my dream, and such a spear of killing rage pierced my heart at the thought of the liberties soldiers might take when they had the right of arms, that the three women shrank away from me as if I had snarled.

So I did. “Give me your pagnes. You do not want me to get angry.”

I tied the lengths of cloth into a makeshift rope as they cowered in the corner. I dumped out the contents of the bucket and tied the cloth to the handle. It took me six tries to get the bucket over the palisade and properly hooked to take my weight. Though I was shaky, it was not so difficult to climb the rope of pagnes and heave myself over the wall. They began yelling as I lowered myself to the limit of my hands and dropped the rest of the way. I landed on my feet.

Shadows drawn around me, I ran down the path. I had not seen this side of the island before. I was surprised to find a pretty community with fenced compounds strung alongside stands of fruit trees and mounded fields. Flower and vegetable gardens offered a fine view over the sea. Fish and meat dried on racks, but I saw no fishing boats. A plaza, small batey court, and thatched-roof assembly house linked together the sprawling wings of the village. I could, just barely, hear the captive women shouting, but no one here seemed to notice. In the village, folk napped in the heat of the day. Crows fought over a slip of silver ribbon. A woman grated cassava root, chatting with a companion who was plaiting a basket out of reeds. The one thing I did not see was children.