The Emerald Storm

Chapter 27

I backed out of the hut, and Cecile ponderously followed. She picked up my lantern and waddled toward the sound of the drums. Once more, I followed. She was as sure as my other guides in twisting through the maze of land and water, but much slower, and she stopped sometimes to wheeze, insects droning in time to her breaths. I waited uneasily, feeling I’d been brought on a test, not an invitation.

The wood throbbed with sound.

“I feel things watching us,” I said.

“Just baka,” she dismissed. “Small monster.”

“Small what?”

“They watch in the night. Diab, too. Devils. Don’t let them take you.”

“And how am I to do that?”

“Stay on the right path. You are in Haiti now.”

What you seek. I followed so close her skirt brushed my ankles. The forest seemed malevolent, as if I’d stepped through a portal into an underworld. I’d sense something watching or creeping and whirl around, but there was never anything I could see.

Cecile cackled softly.

I finally spied firelight through the leaves, and I knew we were coming to the source of the drumming. Our damp trail broadened to a beaten lane bordered by two rows of poles like lampposts. I glanced up at what I first thought were flowers or ribbons decorating the posts’ tops. But no, black roosters dangled upside down, the throats of each one neatly cut and drained.

“The poor will eat tomorrow,” Cecile said.

We entered an open-air church, the swamp trees a cathedral wall, the ceiling a cone-shaped thatch roof. At this peristyle’s center, jutting toward the roof’s peak, was a stout phallic pole fifteen feet high. At least a hundred people lined the periphery of this temple, focused on the pole the way a Philadelphia congregation would be focused on an altar. A fire pit illuminated dark faces. The celebrants swayed to a mesmerizing drumbeat. The music came from four male drummers opposite our entry, their instruments flared at the top, narrow at the bottom, and made of hide stretched over jungle wood. Other musicians had flattened bells, bamboo flutes, and wooden triangles. The rhythm pumped like a heart.

“Now you see voodoo,” said Cecile. “This is the oldest religion. It comes from when man was born.” She took a gourd shaped like a rattle and shook it, and I could hear seeds inside. “This is an ason. I must consecrate this place for Ezili.”

She moved around the perimeter of the peristyle, acknowledging the greetings of robed worshippers by shaking her instrument while they bowed. They set a beat with their feet, the ceremony as electric as if charged by the generator I’d once built at Acre. The air itself seemed to prickle. My own senses were heightened, as if I could hear distant whispers and see in the dark.

Cecile accepted a pitcher of what I assumed was holy water. This was offered to the four compass points, and then poured three times: once at the post, once at the peristyle’s entrance, and once, oddly, at my feet. Was I some sort of sacrifice? Cecile spoke in slave Creole, the crowd answering, and I followed only a few words. Sometimes I thought I heard a name of one of the voodoo gods that Astiza had mentioned to me, memories of old Africa scrambled with stories of the Catholic saints: Mawu, Bosu, Damballah, Simbi, Sogbo, Ogu. The old woman stooped stiffly and began sketching patterns on the dirt floor. If Communion is designed to bring Christ into the souls of its participants, I guessed these drawings were designed to bring voodoo gods into the assembly.

Just what I was doing here I still didn’t know, but the drums were slowly accelerating, the swaying of the celebrants becoming more pronounced. Finally they began to dance and chant, moving in a circle in serpentlike undulation. They sipped from bowls as I had, and responded in chorus to Creole calls from Cecile. The dances were stately and intricate, not savage or erotic, and choreographed as carefully as the cotillion I’d just seen in the Government House of Rochambeau.

Black hands tugged at me, and I hesitantly joined the circulation, not dancing exactly but swaying as best I could, feeling clumsy and conspicuous. My companions, however, smiled at my attempt. Another bowl was offered, and I drank the bitter broth, just to be polite. I found the taste not quite as acrid this time, but my mouth was growing numb. I was thirsty, and drank more.

Time ceased, or rather my perception of it. I’d no sense how long we danced except that it seemed both a moment and an eternity, and the melody permeated so deeply that I felt myself becoming music. The noise was a bridge between our realm and the supernatural, and did indeed invite spirits from another world.

The crowd suddenly parted, as if pushed by an invisible force, and a new figure stepped onto the stamped floor of the temple. I stumbled and gaped. It was my earlier hooded guide, the elusive woman of the swamps, except that now the hood was down and her luxuriant dark hair cascaded to her waist. She stepped toward the central post with the grace of a doe, eyes large and dark, lips sensuous, neck high, gaze transfixing. There was something animal about her, human but wild, uninhibited, skittish.

“Ezili,” the crowd murmured.

She could not really be a goddess; it was a young woman playing the part. Except that in my inebriated condition she did seem to float instead of walk, and glow with translucence instead of blocking the light. When she reached out to touch the central pillar, a spark seemed to flash between flesh and wood, and I jumped. I was transfixed, hypnotized, reason gone and emotion roaring.

Women, as Jubal had observed, make me stupid.

This creature put her back to the post and rotated her head to smile at all of us, but especially me. At least I thought her attention was focused on me. I gaped, trying to remember dignity. Astiza was beautiful, but this woman was beyond beauty; she was luminous as a Madonna, polished as a marble saint, delicate as Venetian glass. Her complexion was mulatto but with a golden tint, reminding me of amber, or celestial honey, its flow somehow explaining the languid precision of her movements. All her features were perfect, in an almost unnatural way, which attracted and repelled at the same time. Ezili seemed like an idol forbidden to human touch. Her smile was dazzling, and when she lifted her arms above her head and planted one foot on the post to lean back, the pose lifted her breasts, arched her back, and emphasized her unworldly sublimity. Where had they found this damsel? But perhaps she really wasn’t a girl at all but truly Ezili in the flesh! Or, at least Ezili as I might imagine her after three bowls of Cecile’s broth. I couldn’t look away. Now her shift seemed artfully draped by an erotic sculptor, toga folds as light and fine as spider silk.

The drums grew louder.

“Damballah!”

The crowd gave a shout that was almost a sigh, and I startled to see a snake slither into our gathering. No one jumped away. The serpent was thick as my arm and longer than my body, but undulated across the dirt toward Ezili as if trained like a pet. Her eyes gleamed welcome, and its tongue flicked in and out. I glanced at Cecile. The tip of the mambo ’s tongue was between her lips.

“Damballah blesses us with his visit!” she shouted.

The snake seemed to have no more fear of people than they had fear of it, and came on toward the woman at the post as if to squeeze or devour her. I was transfixed, horrified, fascinated. Would no one rescue the beauty?

But no, Ezili stooped, held out an arm, and the snake slithered up as if climbing a tree limb, the congregants moaning in appreciation. Woman and animal entwined, the snake curling around her shoulders. Its diamond-shaped head dipped as if to explore her torso, a tableau both revolting and erotic.

“Damballah says it is time,” Ezili told her audience in a clear, commanding voice. Men stepped forward, took the serpent from her, and carried the snake back to the surrounding jungle with reverence befitting the Ark of the Covenant. They dropped the reptile into foliage, and it swiftly slithered away.

Now there was a squeal and a scrabble of small hooves. A black pig was dragged into this jungle church, straining against a red leather rope. The animal was scrubbed clean as a cat, its tail and ears tied with ribbons. The eyes were wide as if guessing its fate, its body heaving.

Ezili’s eyes-and that’s how I thought of her now, Ezili Danto the loa, the compelling beauty goddess of the voodoo world-shut in welcome.

The pig skidded into the designs Cecile had drawn to call down the gods, and the old woman waddled forward with a bright steel knife. She called to the congregants; their chorus chanted in reply. Call and chant, call and chant. It was a sacrificial song. Now the goddess-girl was holding a silver bowl-when had it been brought to her? — and when Cecile bent to expertly slit the animal’s throat, the assembly roared and sang. Ezili caught the arc of blood in her metal receptacle, and when the spurt subsided and the pig lay in the dust (with the tired dignity of sacrifice, I thought), she lifted the bowl high and danced a twirl, as spritely as an Irish jig. The Haitians raised their own arms and whirled to mimic her.

Then she brought down the crimson liquid and Cecile threw in herbs, salt, and a hearty splash of rum. Ezili danced around the edge of their church with this pagan communion. Some dipped fingers in the bloody broth and sucked them dry, while others scooped up enough to paint a cross on their own foreheads.

It was blasphemy, and yet blasphemy synchronized with the life-and-death truths of our earth, like the symbol of wine at Communion.

Blood was sprinkled on the post, on the trampled designs, and on the instruments of the musicians, bright droplets flung from Ezili’s fingers. She laughed as she danced.

I was the last to be served. The goddess twirled and stopped before me, hair and dress settling as she posed. She gave me a seductive smile, eyes probing. What was I supposed to do? But I knew what, and as she and everyone else in the assembly watched I dipped my fingers and sucked the blood as the others had done. It was salty, fiery with rum, and the herbs made my vision waver even more. The congregation roared, the drumming grew even louder, and then I was dancing round and round the periphery with Ezili, not touching her but somehow turning with her, as if the drums of Africa themselves had instructed me in the dance. I was hopelessly drunk by her beauty and wondering if I’d just become damned.

Cecile suddenly gripped my shoulders, her old claws strong as talons. “The answers come from her, monsieur,” she whispered fiercely.

“I want her. I’m terrified of her.”

“You must follow her to learn what you want to know.”

What you seek. Without conscious decision I trailed Ezili out of the peristyle and into the jungle, moving as if in a dream. Once more she floated ahead but never so far that I couldn’t keep up my pursuit. She led me from swamp into low jungle hills, farther and farther from the drums, up along ridge crests and down into small ravines, her gown aglow like fairy light.

As I followed I sensed another presence as well, predatory and looming. This wasn’t the devils I’d sensed with Cecile before, but something huge, dark, ill intended; it was stalking me, its breath hot. Except when I furtively looked around, I couldn’t see its eyes or anything else, only feel it in my imagination. It was not an animal that tracked me but a man, a sorcerer, a loa, unshakable as a shadow or the guilt of a horrible secret. I whirled about, again and again, but nothing was there. At least, nothing that I could see. The forest shut out the sky; I had no sense of stars, moon, or direction. I hurried after Ezili, panting now. Her dress had become almost transparent, accentuating every curve of her body. I dimly remembered I was married and that I was here for my wife, but could no more stop following this apparition than I could stop breathing.

What was I thinking? Nothing at all.

The drumming of the ceremony had grown so faint that it was overtaken by a new sound, pouring water. Ferns six feet high were a door that Ezili pushed through. I followed into a grotto of cliffs, a phosphorescent waterfall dropping thirty feet down a fern-fuzzed cliff into a pool of dark water. Now I could see stars, thousands of them, reflected in the water’s mirror. It was cooler here, the air moist, and she stopped at the edge of the pool and turned to me.

“This is our sacred spring. What do you want to know, Ethan Gage?” Her voice was like music.

Mine was a croak. It was difficult even to remember my question. “What is the diamond?” I finally managed. Did it even matter?

I could feel the man-beast behind me, crouched in the shadows.

“Come, and I will tell you.” Her clothes slid off her body without a touch. She was, of course, perfect, but so flawless as to seem eerie, forbidden. Her form was regal, her skin what we lost in Eden, and her breasts, belly, thighs, and dark triangle all hopelessly seductive. She was sex incarnate. I groaned with lust and longing. Ezili waded into the water, the ripples seeming to reflect her flowing form, her posture as graceful as a swan’s neck. I stumbled forward like the fool I am, all sense gone, my mind as engorged as my erect member.

The dark thing loomed high and dark behind and over me, but if I could only reach and fuse with Ezili, it would leave us alone, wouldn’t it? She was a goddess! A loa! Every dream, every fantasy. The enchanted water was midway up her thighs, accentuating the nudity of what was still visible.

“Wait,” I gasped.

I reached to strip off my clothes. She smiled the smile of a seductress.

And then I lurched to a stop, blinking.

Astiza. The name exploded into my muddled consciousness like a shattering of glass.

I staggered. My God, I was married, and not just married but melded to the mother of my son, the most wonderful woman in the world, an epic beauty in her own right. I had taken vows! I had grown up!

Suddenly I felt sick. It was as if a blow hit my stomach, and I groaned, leaned, and heaved, vomiting up the noxious stuff I’d tasted so that it splattered all over the water. It smelled vile.

Ezili watched me despoil her pool with disdain. I stepped back, emptied, ashamed, confused, my body shaking with illness and humiliation.

Her seductive smile vanished, and with it her luminescence. The pool had gone dark, the reflected stars winking out. She’d become a silhouette. The waterfall was merely a line of gray in the dark. Had I offended the supernatural?

“What’s the matter?” she asked across the water, watching me with a cool objectivity.

She was still achingly beautiful, but something had fundamentally changed. I could not betray my captive wife. And with my resolve, a spell had been broken. “I’m married.”

“And?”

“I’m trying to save my wife. I can’t do this.”

“It is your choice, to seek and resist me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I just wanted an answer to L’Ouverture’s riddle.”

Her head rose slightly, and she looked at me squarely. “The diamond is in Martinique.”

“What?”

“The diamond,” she repeated slowly, “is in Martinique.”

“How will I find one diamond in an entire French island?”

“It will be right in front of you, Ethan.”

My mind was whirling. The dark shadow arched like a cloud, ready to pounce, but furious at being suspended. Ezili receding. Had I made an irrevocable mistake? Or saved us all?

“But how could emeralds be inside?”

“They carry the curse of Montezuma.” Her voice was distant now. “They’ve carried death for nearly three hundred years. Are you ready to risk?”

“For Astiza. For my son.”

She was becoming insubstantial. “But will you save her?”

Something evil, potent with malevolence, reaching for me. “Wait! Please…”

She was fading like dreams at dawn. “Strength, Ethan. But if you choose wrong, what you most love will be gone forever.”

“Wait…”

A frozen coldness brushed my cheek, a touch clammy as death, but it didn’t seize hold. It was like the scale of a caiman, the slither of Damballah, the cold steel of the French guillotine… and then gone, retreated.

I staggered to the bank a drunken man, looking into the most profound darkness I’d ever seen.

What wrong choice could she mean?

Then I fainted.