Making Waves (8 page)

It was amazing! I had bags of energy suddenly. All my self-pity had vanished, and I saw the whole thing with total clarity. And I knew now why I’d had to come on Brice’s mission.

It was like that gruesome fairy story about the three blind old women, who had to share one eye between them.

I had to see for all of us. And I had to remember for all of us. But I couldn’t do that if I got sucked into the illusion along with my friends. It
seemed
like Brice, Lola and I were trapped in totally different movies. It even
seemed
like my soul-mate hated me. But these were just cosmic illusions.

Lola and I had a truly special bond. Even before we met, we were already connected. This connection was still there, even if Lola couldn’t see or feel it. I just had to find a way to remind her. I had to find a way to help my best friend see through her fog of cosmic amnesia. I’d creep out after dark and go to her hut. Whatever it took to get through to Lola, I’d do.

Now that I had a plan, it seemed OK to have a little siesta.

By the time I woke up it was night. I smoothed down my crumpled gown, put on my seventeenth-century cotton cap and little leather slippers and crept out of the house.

Stars sparkled high above the plantation. Some of the stars were so tiny they were just scatters of glitter dust. Crickets sang their metallic ‘sweet-sweet’ song from every tree and bush, like a chorus of tiny bicycle bells. And I became aware of another thrilling sound vibrating through the night like a heartbeat. A faraway beating of drums.

As I got nearer to the slave quarters, I saw the flicker of cooking fires through the palms. I could hear voices murmuring, warm and intimate in the dark. I felt all the fine hairs rise on the back of my neck. The Bexfords had a piece of Africa, right here in their back yard; a living, breathing, stolen piece of Africa. A three-year-old child would know how precious this was. Yet the Bexfords and their kind had no idea. I actually had to pinch myself. “You’re in Jamaica, Melanie,” I whispered. “You’re in Jamaica, listening to African slaves talking in the dark.”

I can’t explain why, exactly, but I felt like I was supposed to be here. I felt, I don’t know,
honoured
. I glanced up at the stars, and for a moment I had a dizzy sense of being part of that vast shimmery totally mysterious pattern.

I must have been invisible standing in the shadowy coconut grove, because two figures sped softly past me without even noticing I was there. It was Brice and Lola! “What on earth?” I gasped.

I raced after them, trying not to trip over my stupid gown, and finally caught them up in the stables.

A lighted lantern made a pool of weak yellowish light. A horse was nervously shifting its hooves on the straw. I saw the whites of its eyes gleaming. Brice was murmuring soothing words as he adjusted the saddle.

“What’s going on?” I said breathlessly.

My friends froze guiltily. I could see Lola’s pulse beating in her throat. I could smell hay and horses, and the strong-smelling coconut oil that the slave Lola used on her hair.

“Mi tell you dat white girl bring trouble!” she hissed to Brice as if I wasn’t there. “She tell Ole Massa for sure!”

“Who am I? The secret police?” I said angrily. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

It might just be an illusion, but Lola’s hostility was really hard to take.

Brice fastened the girth on the nervous horse. “We’re leaving this place.”

“I’d sort of worked that out,” I said. “Where are you running to?”

“Don’ tell her, Massa!” Lola cried. “Ole Massa set dogs on wi.”

I took several deep breaths. “I’m not your enemy. I won’t tell. You don’t have to be scared of me, OK?”

The sound of drumming was getting louder, as if the wind had suddenly changed. A horse whickered from its stall.

Lola shot me a look, half scared, half triumphant. “Mi nah scared a you, white girl!” she said. “Young Massa buy wi freedom. He buy all wi freedom!”

I was stunned. “He’s going to free you ALL?”

“Just our slaves at first,” Brice explained. “There’s a place up in the hills. People call it Cockpit country. Hundreds of runaway slaves live up there.”

Isn’t that incredible? Brice couldn’t remember his name or his heavenly address. He had no conscious memory of the Agency. Yet he had made up his mind to save slaves single-handed. It’s like he
knew
he was supposed to be on a mission! He’d just forgotten that he didn’t have to do it alone.

If this had been the normal Brice I could have reasoned with him. I could have said, “You tried that rescue-trip before and it got you into deep poo.” Brice’s previous rescue attempt ended in a long and gruesome exile in the Hell dimensions, where he only survived by doing freelance work for a number of Dark agencies.

But the Beau Bexford Brice didn’t know about Hell dimensions or warring cosmic agencies. He was saving the world, the only way he knew how. So I stuck to basics. “Where are you going to get that kind of money?”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” he said cagily.

Please say he isn’t planning a robbery, I prayed. I didn’t think the Agency would be too thrilled if Brice robbed a bank, even if his motives were totally pristine. For once I didn’t have to think about what to do next.

“I’m coming with you!” I said in a bright voice. “I think what you’re both doing is, um, amazing and I want to help.”

Lola did her rude tooth-sucking sound. “It look like three people can sit on dat poor lickle horse to you?”

“Then steal two horses, girlfriend,” I told her. “I’m coming and that’s final.”

Brice shook his head. “I can’t let you do that. I couldn’t guarantee your safety.”

“I don’t care,” I said stubbornly. “I’m coming.”

Lola was scowling horribly. No way did she want me on their romantic trip! “Tie her to a coconut tree! Massa nah find her till mawnin’.”

Illusion or not, Lola’s attitude was really getting under my skin. I flashed my sweetest smile. “You tie me up, and I’ll scream the place down, and you’ll have that whole slavering-hunting-dogs scenario you’re anxious to avoid.”

Well, I wasn’t trying to win a popularity contest after all. I was following the first law of angelic teamwork. Keep your team together at ALL times.

You
need
me, I told them silently. I’m your seeing-eye angel.

Perhaps my cosmic vibes got through to him, because Brice reluctantly saddled a second horse. Lola was visibly fuming. Instead of riding off alone with the handsome Young Massa, she was stuck with me.

“Where are we going by the way?” I asked her as we spurred our horses into the night.

Lola’s answer gave me the chills.

“Port Royal,” she snarled. “Di wickedest city on Earth!”

Chapter Six

A
t dawn next day we were riding single file through a misty river gorge. Ladders of sunlight slanted down through the mist. Now and then I had to push aside the lush tangles of vines that hung down like curtains. A bird called the same two-note song over and over. It felt like we were all alone at the green dawn of the world.

Well, if it wasn’t for the vibes. I’m serious! It’s a miracle I didn’t break out in blisters! As the morning went on, I genuinely started to wonder if my best friend was plotting to poison me. Lola kept stopping to pick stinky plants she spotted by the track.

“Dis herb good for mi skin, Massa,” she’d tell Brice, stuffing some obscene hairy root in her bag. And she’d shoot him this intimate smile. Sometimes she’d tell him it was a herb that would make her hair shine, or whiten her teeth, the scheming little minx. When Brice wasn’t looking, she’d dart spiteful looks at me. Like: “You better not cross me, girl, or I’ll put these babies in your stew!”

I was relieved when Brice said we were breaking our journey in a place called Spanish Town. It was getting hot, plus my angelic backside was SO sore, my previous horse-riding experience being basically nil.

In Spanish Town a lively street market was in full swing. Old ladies in vividly-coloured head-ties squatted in the shade beside heaps of yams, bananas and sweet potatoes, pots, pans and bales of cloth, singing out to passers-by.

This was the first real town I’d seen since I’d arrived. A little girl ran alongside trying to sell us some freshly-picked oranges. Brice threw her some coins and we rode along, slurping at the greenish-skinned fruit.

“Why’s this called Spanish Town?” I asked in a juicy voice.

“The English captured Jamaica from the Spanish,” Brice explained. “It’s the perfect base for attacking foreign ships.”

I was shocked. “Isn’t that piracy?”

He grinned. “Piracy is exactly what it is.”

“Sorry, I don’t believe you,” I said primly. “I can’t believe the British government would encourage pirates.”

He laughed out loud. “Why not? The government gets the loot!”

I could feel Lola fidgeting sulkily behind me. I was always trying to include her, but she totally refused to join any conversation I was a part of. The bottom line was: I wasn’t meant to be there.

We stopped at an inn on the outskirts and seated ourselves at an outdoor table in the leafy shade of a passion-fruit vine. A slave-girl brought us our breakfast. She looked genuinely shocked to see two white people sitting at the same table as their slave.

Brice and Lola spent the meal whispering to each other. I didn’t want to be a gooseberry, so I concentrated on trying to find something I could eat. It was a weird breakfast, I have to say. The stewed goat looked really stringy, plus there was this evil Jamaican green vegetable that someone had boiled to a slimy pulp. The coconut cake seemed the safest bet. Dry but edible if you washed it down with a beaker of fresh cane juice.

While we ate, a vulture circled lazily overhead in a cloudless blue sky.

Lola shook her fist. “G’way!” she threatened. “You nah get dinner today, John Crow!”

How does she KNOW this stuff? I wondered, amazed.

My friend had lived in seventeenth-century Jamaica for less than ten days. But when she hummed to herself, she sang authentic slave tunes! She knew which local plants made your hair shiny. She even knew how to tie a head-tie, African-style. And Brice knew all about sugar mills and pirates and stealing horses. It’s like my friends had plugged into some cosmic equivalent of the Discovery Channel!

I was still puzzling over this when Brice went off to get supplies. The minute he was out of sight, Lola let me have it.

My Lola has a way with words. But this Lola came out with stuff that made my eyes water. Even when she was insulting me it sounded like sheer poetry. Lola told me that young Massa Bexford might be taken in by my sweet innocent manner but she’d had me totally figured from day one.

According to her, I was a little gold-digger determined to get my hooks into my rich cousin. I know! She was convinced I wanted to marry him for his inheritance! Also, according to Lola, I was just
pretending
to care about slaves. White people were all the same, purely out for themselves.

By the time Lola had finished with me I’d started to think she was right. Being white was starting to seem like a really unpleasant disease. I literally felt like I might be emanating a pale poisonous glow. Purely by walking round inside my skin, I’d become a living advertisement for Evil.

If I’d been human, I think I’d have crawled into some dark hole and died of shame. Lola was meant to be my best friend but she couldn’t even see me. It broke my heart that Lola couldn’t see the real me hurting inside.

It’s embarrassing, I know. She’s the slave, yet I want her to pity me, the poor misunderstood white girl! I literally had to shut my eyes to stop the tears from falling.

My inner angel had just been waiting for the chance to put a stop to all this nonsense. A message flashed up on my mental screen:
A soul-mate’s true colours shine through no matter what
.

Lola’s parting words.

I felt all the stress drain out through the soles of my feet. Lola wasn’t a slave. I was not an evil white-skinned devil. None of this was real. We’re just angels, I thought. Just angels passing through.

I was so relieved to be back in angelic reality that I was smiling through my tears.

Lola gave a scornful snort. “You laugh like stupid! But you don’ know nuttin! You don’ even know why we goin’ to Port Royal. But Massa tell me. Massa tell mi everyting!”

Poor girl. She was so desperate to prove that the young Massa loved her best that she blurted out the entire plan.

It was complete madness. The whole enterprise depended on Brice selling a treasure map he’d acquired from a pirate called Bermuda Jack, in return for a bottle of rum. This wasn’t your regular treasure map, mind you. It was a map leading to an ancient Indian city. A city made of pure gold. I know! You couldn’t make it up!!

“Massa get a heap a gold for dis map,” Lola said proudly. “A whole heap a gold.”

“Why are we talking about gold?” Brice had come up behind her.

Lola gasped, backing away from him with a guilty expression. “Mi nah want to tell her, Massa. She drag it outa me!”