Hammer of Witches (29 page)

She stood and wiped her hands on her hose. “Here, I’ll break out of this one too.” Catalina closed her eyes and murmured something under her breath. In seconds the garden faded into the muddy universe of Ayití. She had broken my spell.

I smirked at her. “Thanks for destroying my paradise, Eve.”

“Paradise?” Catalina said, opening her eyes. “Being stuck with you in a garden for all eternity? Sounds like my own personal version of Hell.”

“Say what you will, Doña Terreros. We both know you’re dying for another kiss.”

“Try that again and I will hit you.”

I picked up the bag of supplies Rodrigo had given me and said, “So how did you do it?”

“Break out of your Eden? Simple. You just need to figure out why you don’t belong there. I said to myself, ‘This is a story made by a naïve little boy who doesn’t know how to live in the real world. I, however, am an adult. I prefer the fruit of knowledge and the pain of life to cowardice and inexperience.’ Do you want me to go on?”

I mumbled in the negative.

“Then we should go,” Catalina said. “We have to find Jinniyah and your father. And Tito.”

“You lost him?”

“When I left the fortress he ran off into the woods, and I haven’t seen him since. But don’t worry. Tito can take care of himself — although he prefers the company of others. And one more thing.” She picked up my rolled-up tunic and tossed it in my face. “For the sake of everyone on this island, put your shirt back on.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, and we continued hiking through the forest.

We wandered through the fetid heat of Ayití until it finally turned to night. Then we huddled under the trunk of an enormous tree, listening to the frogs whistle about us as the rain pounded on our heads. The next day after little sleep we trekked on, following the edge of the river, and the day after that we hiked through a valley surrounded by rolling green mountains. When needed, we ate the food in our bags and whatever fruits we found hanging above us in the trees. As we walked, Catalina stayed mostly quiet. Knowing what she was thinking about, I filled the silence with anything I could think of — talk of the weather, Jinniyah’s whereabouts, or how we might defeat Amir al-Katib.

Try as I might all she gave me was distant, one-word answers, so on the fifth day I started to play dirty.

“Of all the great kisses in your life,” I said, “how do you feel mine would rank? Because I can make adjustments if you want.”

Catalina stopped in her tracks and said sharply, “Be quiet.”

“I will not be quiet! I’m trying to gather valuable information!”

“I said
be quiet
!” Catalina shouted at me in a whisper. “Listen! There’s someone out there!”

Her face tensed as she scanned the forest around us. I followed her lead. Then more than a dozen arrowheads stuck out of the trees, aimed at our hearts and our heads. The bow-wielding soldiers stepped out slowly from their hiding places. There were so many of them, yet I hadn’t heard a thing.

“You will come with us, Spanish,” one of the Taíno soldiers said. “On the order of Cacique Caonabó and High Priestess Anacaona. Welcome to Maguana.”

We followed the soldiers
of Maguana through the jungle. Soon the forests opened into an overcast valley filled with hundreds of thatched-roof buildings ringing a central square. It was Arabuko’s village writ large, with thousands of people milling through its dirt roads and side streets. We were led down a main road that weaved through the city’s houses. Black eyes peeked out at us from the doors of the shadowy buildings, and children with coarse black hair gawked at us and laughed.

At last we arrived at the town’s puddle-filled main courtyard, an empty, garden-lined area in front of a thatched rectangular house about twice the size of the town’s other buildings. The palace of Caonabó and Anacaona, I supposed. The dozen soldiers guarded us from the courtyard’s grassy perimeter.

From afar we heard the wail of a conch shell trumpet and a tinkling melody of high-pitched drums. As the sound of the drumming came closer, I could hear a discordant chorus shouting a call-and-response. It seemed that the entire village, in three straight lines, was parading its way into the courtyard. The men wore red paint on their faces; they dug in their heels with each step. The women here wore longer skirts than those in Arabuko’s village, and their skirts were painted with images of birds and dog-faced men. Around their ankles they wore bracelets adorned with pink seashells that jangled when they moved. A cavalcade of young girls wearing white headbands followed the women, carrying yellow and green gourds. On each off-beat the girls shook their gourds, rattling the sand and pebbles inside them. Behind them came the drummers, and finally the man with the conch horn.

Then two figures were carried out of the palace on a litter: a man and a woman, both of striking beauty. On the left sat the warlord Caonabó, a flinty-eyed man, who, unlike the other men of his village, had pulled his hair into a knot on the back of his head. The few wrinkles circling his eyes reflected the man’s middle age. Along with his thick, arched eyebrows, they gave him the look of an owl. So much red dye snaked down his muscled arms that I could make out little of his true coloring. His wispy, graying bangs were mostly hidden by a beaded red headband, in the center of which was a golden medallion. He had gold earrings in his ears, as well, thick golden crescents that stuck out of both earlobes.

Beside him sat the lady Anacaona, wearing a painted white skirt that cascaded over the lower half of her voluptuous body. What did the Taíno call the wife of a cacique? A queen? As far as I knew they had no word for it. With her long silky hair,
pristine face, and bright almond eyes, I would say she was around twenty, if that old. From her place on the litter the cacique’s wife threw her arms carelessly behind her head and tapped one foot to the beat of her musicians’ drums.

The men who carried them lowered the litters to the ground as two young girls rushed to place two chairs at the head of the courtyard. Each chair had been fashioned out of a single tree trunk. They had high, reclining backs, and their legs had been formed into animal paws. At the front of each, on the bottom, a sculpted beast grinned at us cryptically.

Caonabó climbed off his litter and strode to one of the thrones, and two strongmen led Anacaona to the other. The queen wore nothing but her painted white skirt and a feathered necklace with a light-blue pendant. The strongmen held her hands as she sat on her throne and crossed her legs. Despite the informal way they sat, the cacique and his wife gave the impression of extreme power. The two held themselves as if they were nothing less than gods.

The conch shell trumpeted a last time, and at once all the music stopped. I glanced at Catalina and immediately threw myself into a florid bow. “We greet you, most noble cacique, and High Priestess Anacaona. I am Luis de Torres, son of the Duke of Burgos, and may I present to you my cousin Serena. We are here on the orders of the Spanish crown. Our queen sent us here to negotiate a trade agreement and perhaps in time, a military alliance —”

But when I looked up from my bow I could see Caonabó was racked with silent laughter, and his wife had put her hands excitedly on her knees.

“I like his style, Husband!”

“Yes, I might even believe his story if it didn’t look like they’ve spent the last week surviving on tree-frogs and mud!”

The Tamo crowd surrounding us joined them in their merriment. Apparently we’d need to go for the direct approach. “My name is Baltasar, and this is Catalina. We got lost in the woods and beg for your protection.”

Anacaona rested her chin on a fist. “Such nerve he has, Husband! Admitting he’s lied to the cacique.”

“They disrespect us, Wife,” Caonabó agreed. “Even though they are less than scum.”

Anacaona beckoned a girl of about seven standing shyly in the corner of the courtyard. “Higuamota, beautiful daughter.” Anacaona gestured in my direction. “Show them how we treat foreign scum.”

Two soldiers came up behind Catalina and me, so fast that we had no time to stop them. They grabbed our hair and forced us into bows on the ground. Higuamota looked back and forth between our prostrate bodies and her mother. At last the girl came forward and spat dryly in our faces.

“Let them go!” I thought I heard Jinni cry, and a Tamo girl with Jinniyah’s face flew in from the crowds and landed beside me. “You get away from them!”

Jinniyah grabbed the wrist of the soldier holding onto Catalina. The man fell backward, squealing and holding his wrist, which was now branded with a blistering burn in the shape of Jinniyah’s hand. “Get back,” Jinni said to the soldier holding me, threatening Higuamota with her hand. With a
whoosh,
black flames cascaded down Jinniyah’s body as they had done in the inn back in Palos. The soldier holding me fled into the crowd, and little Higuamota screamed and ran crying to her mother.

“What are you?” Caonabó demanded of Jinni. “How long have you been hiding in our city?”

“Two days.” Jinni transformed into her original flame-haired form. She put her hand on mine and said, “Bal, I heard one of them talking about Amir, but I haven’t been able to find him!”

On the other side of me Catalina’s fingers screwed into the dirt. Her fingers had gone white, and her face was bright red. “How dare you!” she said to Caonabó and Anacaona. “Do you have any idea who we are?”

For a second I thought Catalina would summon something or rush at the priestess and fight her with bare hands. But it was suicide, I knew — we were still surrounded by arrows. I squeezed her hand and whispered, “They know where Amir is. Let’s try and talk.”

Anacaona stood and slunk toward us. “Yes, talk,” she said, her voice low and cutting. “Go on, boy. Confess. Tell all of Maguana of your crimes.”

I let go of Catalina’s hand, startled. “What are you talking
about? We didn’t do anything to your people.”

“Oh, no?” The queen arched her back, rising to her full height. Her long hair swished around her hips as she turned to address the crowd. “Then I shall refresh your memory. Several nights ago your people raided our northern camp and stole off with five of our women!”

The crowds around us exploded into jeers and hisses, slinging insults at us from every angle: “Savages!” “Kidnappers!” “Demons!” “Rapists!” My heart dropped into my stomach. The five women Catalina had told me about. I looked over at Catalina, but she looked away, wrought with some unknown emotion.

Caonabó raised a finger, silencing the crowd, and Anacaona looked down on Catalina. “And you,” the queen said. “I expect men to allow such savagery. But a woman? To let such horrors occur in front of you?” I could see tears forming in Catalina’s eyes. Anacaona’s lips lifted in disgust. “Stand,” the queen ordered Catalina, and two soldiers came forward to pull the girl to her feet. “Well? What do you have to say to defend yourself?”

But Catalina couldn’t answer that question. She had gone pale and limp and would likely collapse if the soldiers that held her let go. I rushed to my feet. “Catalina did nothing wrong! We’ve cut ties with the rest of the crew. We had nothing to do with the kidnapping of those women!”

Hearing this, the crowds around us began calling for our heads. Again Caonabó silenced them and crossed one muscled
leg over his knee. “The boy may not be lying, my love. It is possible they left their crew before the incident occurred.”

Anacaona turned back to her husband. “Nevertheless. We cannot allow such savagery to go unpunished.”

“No doubt. The question now is, what do we do with these three? Three Spanish hostages might be useful.”

Anacaona returned to her seat on the throne. “Hostages are good. Severed heads are better.”

“Perhaps. But we must not be rash.”

Beside me, the soldiers holding Catalina let her loose. She fell to her knees. As I watched her, the voices of Anacaona and Caonabó seemed to fade from the courtyard. For an instant, I was sure she and I were alone.

Catalina. Where are you? What do you see?
Right now, with her face bloodless and gaunt as a banshee’s, I could have mistaken her for the sleeping princess she had summoned on the beach so many weeks ago.
Trapped,
that empty look seemed to say.
Please help me. I’m trapped.

“Mama, look!”

A series of gasps rippled across the courtyard as I followed the line of Higuamota’s outstretched finger. Ashy words reading
S
LEEPING
P
RINCESS
formed in front of me. And the princess arrived: the familiar drawn cheeks, the crazed stare, the rose-thorn shackles. I had summoned her accidentally. But this time her face was different. This time she looked exactly like Catalina Terreros.

I looked back and forth between Catalina and the doppelganger I had summoned. Higuamota rushed into her mother’s arms. Caonabó rose from his throne, the veins on his face and arms stressed and swelling. “What is this . . . 
thing?”
he demanded. Before I could answer he grabbed a fish-tooth spear from one of his soldiers and aimed it at the Sleeping Princess. Black thorny vines whipped from underneath the summoned princess’s tattered sleeves, shot out at the cacique, coiled around his spear, and threw the weapon far from his reach.