Cold Fire

I slipped through the village, stole two pagnes and a blouse from a clothesline, a knife and a machete, a stack of cassava bread, dried fish, and gourds that I filled with fresh water from a cistern. I stashed my bundle in the crook of a tree at the forest’s edge. Then I crept to the field farthest from the village, where four men with hoes and machetes sat amid cassava mounds and drank maize beer.



I said, “Know yee of a man named Haübey, or Juba?” They leaped up in consternation, for they could not see me. “Don’ bother seeking me, for I’s an opia. He made promises to me cousin.”



Three of the men looked Taino, and although it was clear they could barely understand me, they set down their machetes. One held out a ripe guava. My mouth watered, but I did not take it.



The fourth man had a shaved head and a bushy beard. “You don’ scare us, opia. We who live here is dead to we other life, just as yee is. That Haübey came here on the boat two years back. We knew he was noble-born, but even they nobles is treated the same under Taino law.”



“Where is Haübey now?”



“He is gone.”



“How could he leave the island?”



“I reckon that question is one we all shall wish an answer for.”



“Me thanks.” I snatched the guava, startling them. “I crave yam pudding and rice porridge. Just set a big bowl out every night in the ball court, and I shall be no bother at all.”



Soon after I reached my stash, a bell began to ring. They had discovered my escape. Yet with no dogs on the island, how could they track me? I walked west toward a rocky out-runner of the ridge that rose like the spine of the island’s back. In a tiny cove, I rinsed and wrung out my pagne and blouse. Where a rivulet of fresh water trickled down through a set of rocky pools, I scrubbed my face and hands. The rocks offered a route to the promontory, whose narrow headland broke the waters like the prow of a ship.



I climbed. The wind rippled through my clothes; the sun beat down on my back; the sea shone. White-winged birds sailed above me, riding the currents of air. From that height I could see the contours of the island, with the village on one side and the quarantine pens on the bay on the opposite side: As with life and death, it was a short walk from one shore to the other.



Yet my spirits lifted with the swooping play of the birds. Let them come. They would not catch me.



As the sun set I made my way down. Dusk smeared gold onto the waters. I found a sheltered beach, and there I stripped and waded in. In the sea, I washed fear and doubt from my heart and emerged with the water streaming off me.



So much for Camjiata’s promises. Had his wife truly told him I would be the instrument of his death or had he just said that to intimidate and fluster me? Had he been plotting to get rid of me all along, after he had used me to flush out Vai? Was that why he had thrown me into the path of the cacica? She had exiled her own son to Salt Island, and I could not know whether she had engineered Juba’s rescue or if another person had. Maybe she had truly acted in the cause of justice, that the law apply in equal measure to all. I did not know her, so I could not be sure.



But I was sure of this: The general had betrayed us. Vai thought I was with Bee, and Bee would think I was back with Vai. They had walked straight into the trap. And while Bee had gone in as a willing pawn with the intent to become a queen, Vai had followed merely to stay near me.



“There is no fire bane I cannot control.”



The memory of the cacica’s words burrowed into my heart. First they scoured me with despair. Then I got angry.



So be it. My enemies had no idea what anger they had woken. Hard to imagine I would ever be glad to have an opportunity to say it:



My sire is the Master of the Wild Hunt. And Hallows’ Night is coming.



35



The last day of October dawned with rain and blood.



On the previous night, I had crept to the assembly house to eat my nightly bowl of porridge only to find the village gathered to discuss the weather. A red dawn and the afternoon’s steadily rising swells foretold the coming of the Angry Queen. I slept in the rafters of a roofless, abandoned shed, and woke at daybreak soaking wet from a squall of rain and bleeding with my monthly courses. I endured the rain but was glad of the blood.



As the winds began to batter, folk hurried to lash down everything they could before they headed to the ridge for safety. The storm was coming in faster than they had anticipated. Already water flooded up the shoreline far past the high-water mark. The wind had risen to such a pitch that it rumbled. Branches whipped, tearing free. A roof??’s thatch scattered in a bluster of debris. The sea was streaked with foam as the wind sheared the tops off the pounding waves.