The Jumbies (6 page)

15

Muddy Tears

T
he jumbie crawled with ease over thick trunks and gnarled underbrush, even though night in the forest was pitch-black. After centuries of moving among these trees, she knew the paths through the dark and tangled roots as if she had carved them out herself. The branches that caught at the hair of humans and the picker bushes that scratched their skin never hurt her. She knew each one. She also knew when people had walked through them. She could smell their blood on the edges of thorns and the scent of their skin on even the tiniest thread that got ripped off of their clothing. In this forest, the ground, and every plant that grew from it, made way for the jumbie. But people didn't have her command. Plus, they were clumsy and afraid, and the creatures in the mahogany forest happily made obstacles for them if they dared to pass through.

Usually, the farther she walked into her own land, the happier she became, but not on this night. On this night all she could think about was the way Pierre dismissed her, how he pushed her aside. The night before had been so different. She thought she was gaining their trust. But now everything had changed.

“They don't see me as family,” the jumbie muttered. “They only see each other.” She seethed. “They will never accept me.” A muddy tear spilled onto her cheek, then sprouted legs and crawled down her body. “I was right all along. This island was better before people came to it. It is time for them to go. But not before I repay their kind for luring my sister away from me.”

The jumbie's hand shot out and grabbed a small furry creature by the neck. It wriggled as Severine squeezed tighter and tighter with her thumb and forefinger until the small bones snapped and the creature became still. She brought the dead animal to her chest and stroked it. “I will give my sister's child a choice. Maybe she can be convinced to join me.” She squeezed the animal again, and for a moment, it trembled as if it was coming back to life, but it was only a flicker. She opened her mouth and gobbled the little creature, bones, fur, and all. “I can feel the power in her,” the jumbie said after she swallowed the animal's crunched-up bones. She licked her lips. “And I need it.”

16

Little Men

I
n the morning, Corinne unwrapped her father's bandage and found a soft red scab covering her wound. She touched it. It hurt, but not too much.

She picked her oranges for the day and walked slowly to market. As she limped up the dusty road, the forest on her right side seemed to crowd in. She began to sweat, and the hairs on her arms stood on end. For the first time, the mahogany forest made her heart beat hard inside her chest. She remembered the eyes she had seen in the forest days ago, and she remembered that last night, Severine's eyes had the same gleam.

It's the same forest I've lived next to every day of my life,
she told herself as the shiver crawled up her arms like a wave of insects.
The stories about jumbies are just things that grown people say when they make up stories at night.
She tried to laugh off the idea of Severine as a jumbie. She walked on a few steps.
But what did those eyes belong to? And where did Severine come from? She said she lived close enough to walk, but no one knows her.

Corinne put down her basket near the well and slipped a few of the small oranges into her pockets. She hesitated for a moment but thought of her father and the way he looked at Severine last night, like she was a stranger. Corinne crossed the road, pushed aside a tangle of branches, and stepped inside the forest.

It was cooler among the trees. A few harmless animals scurried away from her feet. She swallowed hard and moved on. When the road was out of sight, she put an orange in the crook of a branch to mark the spot where she entered. She walked on for a few minutes, searched around, and placed oranges as markers, but she found nothing that seemed out of place for a forest. Then, on the other side of a tree, she heard a light rustle. Her pulse quickened. She followed the sound and placed her last orange in a branch above her. Around the other side of the tree trunk, a shrub shivered as though something had just gone past it. She followed the shaking path of leaves until they stopped beneath a fat, short tree. She combed the leaves apart and looked behind them.

“Oh!” Corinne said, surprised.

There was a child sitting on the damp ground, playing with soft, wet dirt between its fingers. It was wearing a woven straw hat shaped like a short, wide cone.

When the child looked up at her, beneath the hat brim Corinne could only see its mouth. It was shaped into the form of an
O.
It echoed. “Oh. Oh, oh, oh. Oh!” And with each syllable, the voice grew deeper until it was less like a child's and more like a man's.

Corinne stepped back. She saw several other little man- children standing around the squat tree. The small thing had not been imitating her. It had been calling to its own kind. Corinne had heard enough stories to know that these could be
douens
—baby spirits that steal children straight from their homes.

Corinne froze with fear. There was something else she had heard about douens. As one of the little men got up, Corinne tried to see its feet. It took an awkward step toward her. Its feet were turned backward. Now she was sure. A scream left Corinne's throat. A small flock of kiskadees rose up into the air, and a
manicou
and a bright green iguana scurried into some underbrush. The sound of the animals moving unfroze Corinne and she ran too.

Corinne went to the last tree she'd marked and grabbed the orange. She turned and threw it at the little jumbie coming toward her. The jumbie caught it and continued on. Corinne ran to the next tree. Now all the douens were moving toward her. With every step, they chanted, “Oh, oh, oh!” The sound filled her ears, her head, and matched time with her heartbeat until it felt like the douens' sounds were becoming part of her. It took all her strength to grab the next orange and throw again. This one burst on the shoulder of another douen, but the tough little jumbie walked on as if nothing had touched it.

Corinne kept moving, though each step felt harder than the last, like swimming against a current. She threw a third orange as hard as she could behind her. Then there were no more oranges. She looked for the road, but it was nowhere near. She had marked more trees, she was sure of it, but the oranges were all gone. She was lost.

Her heart pounded faster. She looked around for a clue of which way to run, but all the trees looked alike. She tried to feel the air against her cheek, but all she noticed was sweat dripping down her skin. Her legs felt weak and wobbly. She couldn't get them to move the way she wanted to. The douens had her surrounded.

The army of tiny douens was closing in, their calls growing louder and louder, when a small frog hopped into the circle and stopped in front of Corinne.

“Oh,” the douens said, distracted by the frog. “Oh, oh, oh.”

It hopped once toward them. The douen closest to the frog leaned in. A few licked their lips. Just as one of the douens lunged at it, the frog hopped out of reach. It hopped closer to the douens again, and hopped away when another one of them tried to grab it. Each time, the frog drew them farther and farther away from Corinne.

Was that the same frog from the well?
Corinne barely had time to wonder as the frog lured the douens all together. When they all lunged for the frog, the jumbies landed in a heap, some with their fingers just a hair's breadth from the frog's back legs. The frog turned and hopped toward a barely noticeable path. Then it turned again and hopped away deeper into the forest. Without the douens' sounds filling her head, Corinne could think clearly. Her legs began to work again. She sprinted down the path the frog had revealed. Her injured leg hurt, but she didn't stop.

A few moments later, she burst out onto the road and stood panting and blinking in the sunlight.

Dru was right.
Jumbies are real.

17

The Jumbies

D
ru held her sari up over her knees as she ran hard toward the well. She spotted Corinne and stopped herself by grabbing on to Corinne's shoulders. The girls held on tight to each other until they found enough breath to speak.

“I'm sorry I didn't believe you about the jumbies,” Corinne said. She pointed to the forest. “There are douens in there!”

Dru held Corinne's hand. “I got away from Mami as early as I could. What about Miss Severine? Did she come back?”

Corinne's legs felt like they might fail her again. She shook her head no.

“If she went into the forest last night like we thought, and there are douens in there, then we're sure she can only be one of them too.”

“I know,” Corinne said. “But she is not like the little men, the douens.”

“No. My mother said she must be a La Diabless. A devil-woman,” Dru said. “Have you ever seen Miss Severine's feet? She always wears that long dress.”

Corinne frowned. “What do you mean?”

“La Diabless are always beautiful women, but they have one cow hoof instead of a foot,” Dru explained. “They lure men into the forest and kill them.”

Even with the long dress, Corinne was sure she would have noticed if Severine walked with one cow hoof. “No. Not a La Diabless.” Corinne knew her father was safe on the sea that morning. “If she was, she would have killed my father the first night. What else could she be?”

“Whatever she is, you have to stay away from her,” Dru pleaded. “Our kind and their kind don't belong together.”

“But she keeps coming to us,” Corinne said.

“Tell your father to lock the doors.”

Corinne knew that her father did not believe in jumbies
,
and he would not believe Severine was one
.
There was only one person Corinne thought could help them, even though she got a cold feeling at the thought of her. “What about the white witch? She knows magic.”

For a moment, both girls hesitated.

Corinne picked up the basket that she had left on the road and looked toward the market. “The faster we get this over with, the faster everything will be the way it was,” Corinne said, as a way to coax them both.

The girls held hands and headed off.

…

The witch made a long sigh when Corinne arrived in front of her blanket. “Are you in trouble again?” she asked without looking up. She handed a paper-wrapped package to her customer and dropped the coins he paid into her pouch with three loud clinks.

Corinne stepped closer. “Tell me about Miss Severine, the woman in green.”

The man, who was just leaving, stopped dead in his tracks and looked from the witch to Corinne and back again. The white witch rubbed her withered left arm and cut him an evil look. “Why don't you mind your own business?” she snapped and he scurried away. She turned back to Corinne. “Is that what she is calling herself? Well, I am not getting involved with her. And I advise that you do the same.”

“I can't do that now. It's too late,” Corinne said. “You have to do something to help me.”

“Do I?” the witch grumbled. She touched her arm again.

“We think she's a jumbie that lives in the forest. We think she might be dangerous,” Corinne said.

“We?” The witch looked behind Corinne and saw Dru hovering at a distance, twirling a long braid around her finger. “Well, I think swimming in rivers when no one knows where you are and running off into the forest alone is dangerous. I think you like to look for dangerous things.”

Corinne was startled. How had the witch known about her running into the forest alone? “I didn't go looking for Severine,” Corinne said. Her voice dropped low. “But I think she might have come looking for me.”

“What would she want with a scrawny little thing like you?”

“I don't know. I only need to know how to get rid of her.”

The witch laughed. “Impossible. The jumbies have lived on this island long before people were even dreamt of. She won't go away so easily.”

“So she is a jumbie then?” Dru said as she took a single step forward.

“Hush!” the witch hissed.

“Our kind and their kind don't belong together,” Corinne said with a nod to Dru.

“Our kind? What do you know about our kind and their kind, little one? You can't even tell the difference. You are new to this world. Trust in those who have been around much, much longer than you.” The witch moved around a few things on her blanket. “You must accept that things are the way they are for a reason. Here's my advice: The next time you see this Severine coming, go the other way.”

“But she comes to my house,” Corinne said.

The witch's eyebrows twitched as she searched Corinne's face. “Then you're right. It is too late.” The witch's shoulders drooped. Her left arm dangled useless at her side. “There is no hope for you. She is a bad one.”

“But you have to do something!” Dru shrieked. She now stood by Corinne's side.

The witch avoided the girls' stares as she shook her head. Her sparse white braids tossed. “I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do.”

“Then I'll have to take care of her myself.” Corinne turned.

“Corinne, wait!” Dru grabbed her arm. “What are you going to do by yourself? That will only be trouble.”

Corinne pulled her arm away. “This time, I didn't trouble trouble. Trouble came troubling me. And I intend to do something about it.” She turned toward the road.

“You must pay me for my time!” the witch yelled.

Dru took an orange from Corinne's basket and threw it at the old woman. The witch made a deft catch with her good hand. Her long yellow nails clicked together around the fruit. Corinne and Dru both shuddered at the sound. Then Corinne ran to the sea.

By the time Corinne got to the shore, her cut had ripped open again and her leg was shining with blood, but she barely noticed. She needed to find her father. She skidded to a halt. Corinne's chest felt tight and her breath came in hard, painful bursts. His yellow boat lay in the sand, empty. The nets were dry and neatly gathered in the prow of the boat, the way they were every morning before he cast off.

His boat had never left the shore.