Legacy (20 page)

A young girl sat on a rock and listened for the spirits to tell her what to do. Ola’ea’s teacher had been killed trying to evade capture. That had distracted the whitefaces long enough for her to lead the people of her village to the rain forest.

She was no stranger to the Darkness. It had been growing in that region for nearly two hundred years, since the first Portuguese traders came to take human beings from their homes and sell them as slaves to plantation owners in the Caribbean. But now the Darkness had taken her village, and Ola’ea knew that to fight it, she would need more magic than she had yet learned.

She sat on the rock in the rain forest with the souls of her people weighing heavily upon her heart for three days and three nights without eating or sleeping. Then, on the fourth day, Ola’ea smelled the ocean.

She recognized the scent as the breath of Olokun, goddess of the sea, who was known to other peoples as Kwan Yin or Yemani or Mari. With her sea-voice, Olokun called to Ola’ea, saying,
Come with me now, little one, and learn what I have to teach you.

And so, knowing that the goddess must be obeyed, Ola’ea set off on her journey.

After walking for three more days, she arrived at the ocean’s shore. “I have come to your home, Olokun!” she shouted into the waves. “Where shall I go now?”

To the ships,
the goddess answered.

“But they will capture and enslave me.”

Yes.

This was the first lesson she learned. The lesson of water:
Be willing.

Young Ola’ea walked along the shore until she came upon the evil ships that reeked of human sweat and waste, and gave herself up to the whiteface demons who thrust her into the vast stinking hold of the ship along with hundreds of others. The prisoners were given food on the voyage, but Ola’ea ate nothing.

When the ship arrived in Barbados, Ola’ea was so thin that she was considered too weak to work in the fields of the sugar cane plantations owned by the English. But she was also very beautiful, and so was bought to serve the British masters in their house, which was like a cave. It was so large and dark that those who lived inside almost never felt the sun or rain. All of the scents in the place, too, were human, reminding her of the rank odor of the slave ship.

An old man taught her English, which was not like the sibilant water-sounds spoken by the Portuguese slavers or the crisp, clacking earth sounds of her own tongue, but a dry, spitting language, produced at the front of the mouth with no resonance. It was the language of air.

This was how Ola’ea related to all things, through the four elements of nature. Everything she could see, think, know, or dream, could be organized by element: Whatever it was, it was either earth, air, fire, or water. The tangible, solid, physical things were earth. Water was the realm of all things flexible and giving. Air was for creativity and change, and fire . . . fire was destruction. Fire was death, fear, anger, endings. And it, too, had its place.

The old man who had been assigned to teach her English told her to imitate the civilized manners of her betters. “If you are sweet-tempered and helpful, the master will give you an easy life,” he said.

“An easy life will teach me nothing,” she answered.

“Perhaps the master will take you to his bed,” the old man said.

“Then I shall kill him.”

The old slave told the mistress of the house that the girl Ola’ea was too wild to be of use indoors.

“Sara!” the English woman called. Sara was the name she had given her.

“My name is Ola’ea,” she answered.

The woman slapped her. It was a weak, harmless blow from a useless, indolent body. Ola’ea wondered why the other servants seemed to be so afraid of these people.

She was banished from the house and relegated to the kitchen garden. There she discovered okra and breadfruit, bananas, figs, avocados, and callaloo. From her garden she coaxed ginger, grapefruit, guava, mango, sapodilla, passion fruit, papaya, pigeon peas, plantains, soursop, and star apple; also sunflower seeds, cashews, yams, and christophene. Delicious, gorgeous, fragrant food, earth magic, born of the land. They taught Ola’ea the second lesson of her life:
Take your strength from what is offered.
The earth was teaching her, making her magic grow along with her vegetables.

Just before the cane harvest during her fourth year on the sugar plantation, Ola’ea once again heard the voice of the sea-goddess Olokun.

Your ship is ready,
she said. Ola’ea did not question. She said farewell to her garden, blessing the trees and the ground, then wiped the soil off her hands and headed back toward the ocean.

An overseer saw her leaving the garden and called out to her. When she failed to answer his call, he ran after her, brandishing the whip he sometimes used on the field hands.

“I’ll teach you something you ain’t going to forget anytime soon,” he said, flicking the whip to release its steel tip into the air. It spun and weaved like a serpent, then shot forward, aimed squarely between Ola’ea’s narrow shoulders.

She heard it, because her time in the garden had taught her about air. There she had learned the third lesson of nature’s teaching:
Everything but the past can be changed.

Ola’ea fixed her sorceress’ eyes on the whip and moved her fingers in a circle. The whip obeyed, curving in the air, changing direction, doubling back in its graceful dance until it wound, faster, faster, under the armpit of the screaming overseer until, with a final click of the steel tip, the man’s arm severed and fell with a gush of pumping blood to the ground.

He dropped to his knees, his eyes bulging in shock, his mouth open wide, the sound coming out of it an animal cry. Ola’ea looked at him, and then at the house where she had sent her vegetables to be eaten by the weak-armed whitefaces who had bought her, and she knew what she had to do.

Raising her arms to her sides, she called forth all the anger that had been stored within her since she had been forced from her village, and sent it out the tips of her fingers. It crackled and ignited, shooting sparks. The dry grass caught fire, as did the trees, the shrubs, the ground plants, the house. The overseer screamed one last time as his heart cooked in the volcanic flames of Ola’ea’s wrath.

That was the fourth lesson of her journey here to paradise:

Take the bitter with the sweet.
This was a hard lesson, the lesson of fire. Destruction and death were necessary to the wheel of life, and a sorceress must be prepared both to kill, if necessary, and to die.

Her soul clean now and devoid of hatred, Ola’ea turned away from the flames and walked once more toward the sea. In her wake, the entire plantation burned to the ground, with the exception of the kitchen garden, which fed all the rabbits and birds and goats that came into it seeking shelter.

At the dock, she surveyed the ships at anchor.

That one,
said the voice of Olokun.

Ola’ea climbed the gangplank. “’Ere, you,” the ship’s boatswain said, grabbing her arm. “What do you think you’re doing aboard this here cargo ship?”

“I must cross the ocean,” she said. “I will be your cook.”

“Cook?” the man repeated. Just what he needed to make sail. “You’re a cook, you say?”

“I am.”

He studied her face. The young woman was strange and beautiful. But a woman. That was the worst part. The men, he knew, must never see her, because she would fill them with fear and lust. “All right, Cook,” he said. “But you must dress like a man, and sleep alone in the galley. And you must speak to no one.”

She nodded her assent. She did not speak another word during the voyage.

Ola’ea fulfilled her part of the bargain, preparing the crew’s meals in silence, and sleeping next to the ship’s stove. She kept her voluminous hair braided and tied at the top of her head like a cat-o’-nine-tails.

The men, believing her to be the Captain’s private slavey boy, did not bother her.

But during the voyage she fell sick. It was, perhaps, the putrid, algae-covered water that she had been forced to drink for lack of any other. She worked as long as she could, but just as she smelled land on the breeze, she slumped to the floor in a fever.

The foretopman found her lying unconscious on the slimy galley deck and summoned the ship’s surgeon, who discovered that not only was the cook a woman, but that she was infected with yellow fever. Amid a chorus of curses and oaths, imprecations and sailors’ prayers, she was hastily hauled onto the deck and thrown overboard.

If it had not been for the shock of the water against her fevered body, she might never have regained consciousness.

If the month had not been August, she could have frozen in those Atlantic waters.

If she had remained on the ship, she would have docked with it at Shaw Island, where an official of the trading company would have had her jailed as a runaway slave.

But none of this occurred. Hanging on to a plank from a recent wreck, Ola’ea floated past the island and into the warm, shallow waters along the coastline of Whitfield Bay. She was found by Serenity Ainsworth, who was counting dead birds, Cory’s shearwaters, fallen by the dozens. And among them, a young woman dressed in men’s clothes, with hair like a pirate corsair, skin like teak wood, and the same witch’s eyes that Serenity herself saw every time she looked into a glass.

Ola’ea came to in Serenity’s arms. “Olokun,” she said with great surprise before fainting again.

She had never even entertained the possibility that the goddess of the sea would be an old white woman.

But then, Olokun was full of surprises.

“Katy?” Cheswick passed a hand in front of my face. “Earth calling.”

“Are you okay?” Verity looked worried.

“I’m fine,” I said numbly. It always took me a while to come out of these psychometric states. In this case, I didn’t even know I was going into one, let alone coming out of one.
No images
, I told myself.
No more images.
“I wasn’t talking, was I?”

“No,” Cheswick said. “You just looked . . . zoned.”

Verity looked me levelly in the eye. “Have you been tested for epilepsy?” she asked.

“Verity, I’m fine.”

“Okay, okay. We were just trying to get closer to the bonfire, and then we saw you looking weird,” Cheswick said. Verity poked him in the ribs. “Well, not weird, exactly, but—”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Psychometry,” I said, holding up the blue stone. “I was picking up on someone’s life.”

“Awesome,” Cheswick said. “I wish I could do that.”

“I have an aunt who’s a psychometrist,” Verity said. “Sometimes she actually
becomes
the person. Especially if they’re dead.”

“Amazing. Can I?” Cheswick took the stone and closed his eyes. “Nope, nothing,” he said, handing it back after a moment. “Say, can you do that, Katy? What Verity said about becoming the person?”

“Sometimes. Not always. I didn’t just now. I only kind of saw what was happening. And it took place over a long span of time, four or five years. Sometimes I only get an incident, or just a thought. Once—”

“I think it’s almost time for the handfasting.” Cheswick said, standing up. “Want to join us? We’re going to try to get a spot up front.”

“Uh, no thanks,” I said, mortified. “I’m fine here.”

“Cheswick and I are going to be handfasted next year,” Verity said coyly, taking his hand.

“Hey, great,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“He got me a locket.” She moved closer to me so that I could see the heart-shaped pendant dangling from a chain around her neck.

“Have you . . . have you seen Peter?” I asked.

“I think he’s still grounded. Sorry.” Verity said. Of course everyone knew about the fire in the Shaw mansion and our subsequent punishment, but I’d heard rumors that Peter hadn’t been confined to quarters the way I’d thought. I hadn’t seen much of him at school, either.

She and Cheswick ran off toward the bonfire, their silhouettes stark against the bright cobalt blue of falling night. The men were carrying slabs of meat out of the bonfire, which
was just about at the right level for the ritual. Around it stood the couples, the women with flowers in their hair, the men with belts of vine or with small horns glued to their heads. I stood on the rock I’d been sitting on to get a better look at the proceedings. I could see Agnes, for once unguarded and smiling. I’d never seen her look so pretty. That must have been how my mother looked, I thought.

Then I realized that she could never have been handfasted to my father, because he wouldn’t have been able to enter the Meadow. She’d never walked among her people with flowers in her hair, or jumped over the bonfire in a three-thousand-year-old ritual. She could have been high priestess; instead, she’d settled for living among cowen who believed that her people were supernaturally evil, if they believed we existed at all.

She must have loved him so much. So terribly much.

My eyes filled with tears as I watched the couples begin to line up on the far side of the bonfire. The intendeds spoke their true names.

“Lucrezia Penrose,” announced the first woman to be handfasted.

“Atherton Bell.”

Holding hands, they raced toward the fire and then leapt over it like deer while the crowd roared its approval. A number of men clanked their tankards and drained the contents, a practice they would repeat in honor of each couple until they either lost consciousness or were dragged home.

Agnes and Jonathan were next. He’d given her a ring that morning, even though engagement rings were a cowen practice and not at all necessary for a handfasting. Jonathan had given it to her because it had belonged to his great-great-grandmother,
who had had it fashioned into a ring during the Civil War. Before that, it had been the handle of a spoon made by Paul Revere. People in Old Town had deep roots.