The book of spirits, p.39
The Book of Spirits, page 39
He was forsaking me; selling me to my death for a fistful of notes and a horse I’d not bothered to name. Only then did I regret the risk I’d taken. There I stood on a white sand beach bounded by mangrove and sea grape, without a mount on which to make my way. I had my haversack and nothing else. I was barefoot, my boots tied astride my shoulder, my stockings wadded and stuffed in their maws. My pants I’d rolled to the knee. Beneath my swaddling, salt—from the sea, from sweat?—was but one of many irritants. O, but I’d little choice now; and so, with the sun high, and no clouds to occlude it, I set to walking the strand, following the line of detritus drawn by the tide: shells, sea grass, piscine skeletons, et cetera.
On I walked. No boats could I see upon the green; and a vasty green it was, speaking too eloquently of my solitude. No sound but the surf, and the rustle of palms. A far wall of sea grape defined the dune.
Finally the sea grape showed a break: a path, leading inland. I determined to take it; and so sat upon higher, deeper, drier sand to don again my stockings and boots, and to take a fortifying draft from the skin slung o’er my shoulder. A second drink washed back a corner of the corn bread I carried, wrapped in sea-moistened moss. It was then I wondered if my heart was refusing my plan, the leaving behind of sun and sand for inland shade; for it beat a new tattoo: deep-spaced and timed to a count of four. But no: this pulse came not from me, but from the sand itself. It wended its way up my very spine. Ever steadier, ever louder it grew; till finally, looking down the beach to my left, or southerly, I saw it:
A single unit: horse and rider; coming on too fast to be friendly.
I ran, ran for that shaded opening leading off the strand.
True: I’d wanted discovery; for I hadn’t the means to wander till I found Sweet Marie. As Riojo had said: she’d find me; and I needed her to. But here was a rider high upon a horse of too many hands. Bare-chested he was, with black hair twisting on a wind of his own devising; for he came on fast, indeed: the surf foamed o’er the horse’s forelegs.
…The path, yes. O, but that designation is perhaps too kind; for the way was overgrown with roots and boles below, and vine-tied above. I had to writhe along in snaking fashion, knowing true snakes mocked my every step. On I went, as quickly and quietly as I could, turning time and again to see if horse and rider came behind. Surely this scrub was too dense, surely I’d evaded whoever had come riding, had come pounding down the sands to…
From such self-delusion, from such reverie I was rudely drawn; for, turning back to the darkling forest before me, I saw it snap to life:
The trees. Something moved amidst the pine and palmetto. It set the shaded green to swaying at some midstory level; and so it was too tall for a panther, lest said cat were stalking me by slinking tree to tree, limb to limb. A bear? No: too fast. A stag? Yes. I’d startled some grazing deer, surely, and now they were scampering off. I was relieved; and wrong:
For down onto the path before me there dropped a man of indeterminate color. And dress. And intent.
I’d have screamed, had I not been stunned.
Turning to run back in the direction of the open beach (despite the horseman thereon), I found my way blocked by a second man of similar description. I was stilled. And heard the first man let go a cry, one that chilled my fast-coursing blood. Thusly were two more men summoned, coming from without the green so that now I stood penned.
In the sweltering dark, reeking of rot, redolent, too, of sap-trickling pines, I knew fear as never before. As the men closed from all four sides, I saw them more clearly. First this one, then that. I spun, looking to each.
Hewn from hardwoods, they seemed: well squared and strong; and dark. In the deep shade I could not descry their races: red, black, or brown. And as they neared, what first I took for masks of a sort became faces. Faces too stiff, too stolid. Faces showing a deep impassivity. Faces like stopped clocks. Faces of an age out of keeping with the suppleness of their limbs; which now they displayed, leaping o’er logs and looped vines to close upon me.
Odd as those faces were, it was the clothing of the four that frightened me more; for I recognized it:
One wore a crown, the silver plate, nay silver paint of which had worn away. Its gemcrack gleamed ’neath what sun sifted down. Another wore a robe of regal purple, sewn with silver stars and symbols seeming those of an old-world wizard. The other two were plainly dressed, albeit in the fashion of a day long passed. By these clothes, by these costumes I identifed this band; for, some months prior, all the territory had been afire with news of the Shakespearean troupe that had been waylaid and slain on the plains well north of Tampa. One of the actors had lived to tell of the massacre, to speak of his own scalping…. Yes: here were murderers. Prince Hal, Pros-pero, Horatio, and Falstaff, I will call them; but I mean no mirth, and name them only for narrative expedience. And fast I’ll write of what came to pass, the worst of which began as the Prince approached from the forestage, as it were, to stand before me. His eyes were drawn, shrunken, and desiccate. His face was well lined yet still taut; and called to mind a streambed run dry. O, but his chest was broad and unmarked save by muscle and a necklace of hammered silver disks, strung to hang like smiles, smiles that mocked his stone-set face.
Spurred by the Prince—who must have muttered something direct, though the words of the four were but a mess of Muskogee and Spanish, and an English sounding equally foreign—the three closed upon me: their quarry. And as they shoved, as they pushed and pulled at me, I saw they were each…incomplete. They’d been marred, maimed in too exact a way:
Prince Hal hadn’t any ears; rather, they’d been cropped, their squared tops showing against his faux-silver crown. The deposed duke, Prospero, hadn’t a full complement of fingers. Horatio limped terribly, foot-flappingly, such that I imagine one or both of his heel strings had been cut. And Falstaff had had his tongue shorn. This, though, did not stop the maroon—now I saw his skin showed both red and black blood—from speaking, or trying to: his stub of tongue shivered like a snake’s rattle.
Imagine their demoniacal delight. Further: imagine it showing on their faces not at all…. Doubled was my dread.
Prospero danced his six digits upon me, seeking knife or gun. Falstaff brought his wooden visage so near I saw his skin: the brown of sun-cured steak; with bands of berry juice streaked upon it: war paint. Too, I saw now the scarred, flesh-soldered tip of his rattler’s tongue. Horatio had my arms pinioned behind me, such that it seemed my shoulders would pop from their sockets.
We stood in deep shade, yes, and still I was clothed; but these scarified savages seemed to be urging one another on, toward the doing of misdeeds I need not describe. So fearful was I of what would come should they strip me, should they discover me in full and find…
Enfin, fearing I was to die either this way or that, I determined to fight, and upon the hip of Prince Hal I saw what I sought: a knife in its buckskin sheath. As I sprang for it…No. Stay; and rather let me say that just as I determined to spring for the knife, there occurred things so numerous and sudden that this listing must suffice:
Horatio tightened his hold upon me.
Unseen birds fled their roosts; and all the forest came suddenly, loudly alive.
Falstaff fell back from me to join Prospero and Prince Hal; and the lot of them seemed to cry, nay chant, nonsensically.
I heard again that drumming that told it plain: though the way had seemed too close, too overgrown for speed, here came that horseman from off the beach.
Horatio shoved me, such that I fell to the ground. And there I lay, amidst the stirred muck and the stink of things in decay. On came the rider; till finally the forelegs of a horse some fifteen hands high stopped so near me I might have reached to touch them…. Of course, I did not. I did nothing; for I was…in a state. A state whose nature I knew only when the rider leapt from his mount, lifted me to my feet, looked upon me—long and hard—and spun me, spun me to face my four attackers. Who—to a one—drew back. They stood shoulder to shoulder, stilled into silence; for there was light enough in those piney surrounds to show that my eyes had turned.
The time-set faces of those miscreants showed what they could of awe; but their bodies bespoke it the better as they turned their backs to me, dropped to a knee, and bowed their heads. Yes: at the sign of the Toad they all four fell. And whereas earlier they’d chanted, now a lowing rose from them; and the supplication within it only stirred me the more. O, but thankfully I’ve no need to confess that I took red retribution upon the four; for the fifth stilled me.
He, too, had ancient eyes, but his shone as those of the Shakespeareans did not: a fire still burned within the horseman, whose face showed its Indian contours despite being death-set, decayed, crisped, and sere. Those kindly eyes were set off by that long black hair, banded at the brow and be-decked with cock feathers fanning out to show their russet tones. He wore only a breechcloth, well beaded; and his body bore little relation to his face: the former was somehow…beautiful, the latter moribund.
This fifth set his hand upon me; but not as the others had. Still I showed the witch’s eye. I could feel it, and held it by dint of a risen, riled will. O, I was angry indeed; yet I held the horseman’s eye. And his steely gaze upon my witch-turned one told me he’d seen the Eye before, yes.
I watched as the Indian stepped to the kneeling four. He tore the purple robe from off Prospero’s shoulders and set his moccasined foot upon that man’s back, shoving him down, into the dirt. I heard a crack that was either spine or foreteeth, finding rock or risen root. It seemed the fifth man would grind this duke—now deposed, truly—to dust. Indeed, the fallen man’s hands—deficient of finger—clawed at the forest floor.
Rough words and actions, both, had he for the other three.
When finally he spoke it was to command the four; who rose and fell into single file, faces downturned. There they stood in the humid dark, ready to run behind us as we rode from the smothering green to retake the beach, so blindingly white.
Fivekiller, this was: he who hauled me up behind him, set me upon his steed, and delivered me to Sweet Marie.
49
Glass Lake
Gaining the beach again, we turned southward; and we rode a long while before cutting inland, o’er grass-grown dunes and into deepest shade. Before that eastward turn, Fivekiller stopped. So, too, did the four, standing well back, behind us in the surf. They turned from us; from me, specifically. They took to their knees. Heads bowed, it seemed they watched the sea suck at their footprints, at any sign of our having come this way.
Fivekiller did not dismount; rather he half turned in the saddle, so that for the first time I saw his face by the bright light of day. His skin was the ruddy red of fresh-baked brick, as smooth on his prominent cheeks as on his back. O, but that face! The eyes were well-deep and dark. The features fine, and regular; but their fixedness was eerie. What handsomeness he showed was that of a thing…preserved; as when once I’d found a dragonfly upon my sill, death-still, dry, and admired its armor, the fine webbing of its wings and its high color, which yet it held. His body, though, was supple, strong; for as we rode I’d no choice but to hold fast to my captor.
When Fivekiller turned, I saw he meant to address the kneeling four. Evidently, he’d intended to requisition one of their kerchiefs, or a length of something with which to bind my eyes; but instead he saw the yellow fabric I wore around my wrist: talisman to the loa Salango. He untied and took it; and though it seemed he knew it for witchery, still he tied it so as to blind me. And blind me he did: the yellow of the silk stifled the yellow of the sun. Only then did we make our inland cut.
After riding a while more, we stopped to drink from an upwelling spring, the trill of which told me I was thirsty, very much so. Fivekiller untied my blind, and I saw the Shakespeareans sitting at a distance, forgoing water in favor of a skin they passed in silence. Their backs were toward me. Some great tide had turned; this was plain: I’d a power now, born of the witch’s eye. Though their fear was extreme, I did not attribute this to Sweet Marie, which now seems foolish; but I understood that ragged, denatured band knew of witchery. As did their leader, certainly; for:
Fivekiller took my haversack from me and dumped its contents onto the ground, where first he’d laid a tray of sorts: sea-grape leaves snipped from off a rambling stand. He was not curious, not idly so; rather, he was taking stock of what I carried, as if readying to report on same. So it was he untied pied scraps of fabric, and found within them such items as I’d thought to pack: the ingredients of spells I’d cast on Celia, if ever I found her. Some of these bespoke Western witchery, and the stregharia I’d come to favor. Others bespoke voodoo: cascara sagrada, Gilead buds, wood betony, quince seed, meadow queen, et cetera; all of it crushed, of course, for easier carriage, and tied into the scraps or set in tiny vials of sundry sort. Of course, I carried a complement to the Book I then kept. This was a hidebound journal of handy size into which I’d press biota for later discovery—leaves, skins, and such—and onto the pages of which I’d copied certain spells that might prove useful: to break the love-bound, to lessen or transfer their allegiance, et cetera. Too, as ever, the Book held my innermost thoughts. These Fivekiller perused. Whether he could read the words or not, I did not know; but by the time we remounted, it seemed he knew me for what I was: I’d shown the Eye earlier, yes; but also—being fearful, clinging to his back as we rode—I suppose I’d pressed my bound breasts to his back, and further betrayed myself.
We’d come to a clearing. I’d no idea where we were, save southeasterly from where I’d been taken. And I knew it for a clearing only when I felt the sun shining without filter, directly down. The air, too, was lighter than it had been within the wood. Finally my blindfold was taken from me: a clearing, yes; but not of the ordinary sort.
There spread before us a savannah freshly mown; but when my eyes adjusted to the sun, and to sight, I saw the ground was black: burned, not a season past. Somehow the fire had been confined to a perfect circle: the bordering slash pine, bay, and bastard ash showed no blaze marks. The hearty palmetto had returned, of course; and fiddleback ferns, maidenhair, lesser grasses, and saplings were asprout. Upon this charred land there grazed long-horned cattle: a herd of ten, twelve head. But these I soon discounted; for this odd meadowland bounded a spring, or limestone sink, full of water so blindingly blue I was transfixed.
Blue and still. Perfectly still. Center all in this clearing, spreading like a flat-cut sapphire. And within the sink there sat an island, dense with growth, and dark. Perfect circles, they seemed—savannah, sink, and island—set concentrically.
Across the clearing, just inside the forest wall, there stood a second, smaller clearing; and here Fivekiller picketed his horse, alongside four more. Coming out again onto the burned land, I understood our destination to be that island sitting in the too-pellucid pool; for there lay a raft of lathed cypress. On this we poled o’er that jeweled lake; and never, never had I seen its like.
It was still, as said; and I could see to its depths. There, on a bed of white sand, sat shells and stones and…things less suited to the scene: a rifle, I saw, and pale branches—broken and lying massed—which now I wager were bones. A shadow flitted across the sandy bottom; and I looked up to see a vulture circling. I watched for fish, but saw nary a one. How deep this water went, I cannot say: fifteen feet or fifty? Neither do I know from whence it sprang.
Soon my regard shifted; for things far stranger awaited us upon the island’s shore, clotted with cypress and live oak maned in Spanish moss. I refer to things living, things unseen but heard; which hearing was accompanied by my blood going as still as the water we’d traversed. A breathing, this was; and as we neared I mistook a concomitant sound for oncoming thunder. But no thunder, this. And indeed those sounds married to a roar as our raft slipped under an oaken arm to tap the shore. There I saw eight bamboo cages of unsturdy construction, stacked two high. In these there glittered the sixteen eyes of eight panthers, turning tight circles.
Each cat wore a collar braided of palm; and beside the cages—themselves set upon a raft—there hung withes, or long leads braided of hemp, horsehair, and husks. From another tree there depended the haunch of an animal—a deer, I suppose—aswarm with flies, half of its flesh already cut away and fed to these felines, who yet yearned for more. Flesh, that is: deer or otherwise.
“Come,” said Fivekiller to me. “No reason to fear the cats. Not yet.” And then he released the Shakespeareans: “Go,” said he; and they ran as if the cats came behind.
I walked as directed, with Fivekiller following. Glad I was to put the cats behind me; but for all I knew I walked toward worse. As these:
Trees; death-adorned.
Yes: three skeletons: human: hanging from the high branch of an oak, and decomposed to disparate stages. On one I saw the scraps of a soldier’s uniform. The second had hung the longest in its noose of slip-knotted vine; for bones had begun to fall from their place to the ground below. The third was naked, its stomach distended; and—heinously—the soft flesh of the cheeks, the chest and buttocks had been beset. By whom? By what? I hadn’t long to wonder; for the higher branches of this very tree were thick with carrion fowl: grizzled, fat-bellied buzzards, brown and black blots upon the branches. Fish crows, too, had come in for their share; for one of these now let go its cry, as if to warn me away from the meat of the hanged man. At this cry the tree was vacated, the birds rising in black waves and twisting away. Only the dead men remained.
How long I stood, staring up, I cannot say; but there came a gentle shove from Fivekiller, saying, “She waits.”
