Cold Fire

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.

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 Haubey, 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 Haubey 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 Haubey 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.