The Black Isle (26 page)

I knew it was Issa.

“They are doing their best,” he whispered. “But it won’t be enough. They don’t have what we have.”

Without turning, without any hint of a concession, I said, “I want to talk to you. About everything.”

“I thought so. Meet me by the car.”

When I looked back, there was only darkness.

The instant we pulled out of the driveway, I started lobbing questions at him.

“Where are we going?”

“Forbidden Hill. Where it’s safe to talk.”

“Are you one of them, too?”

“Me?” He laughed. “What use would they have for a low-class chap like me? I have no money, no power.”

“But that was Kenneth Kee, wasn’t it? Why’s he here?”

“No doubt he’s one of them.”

“But he’s got no money or power. What do they want with him?”

“He’s like a son to Mr. Wee. The son Mr. Wee would have preferred.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You have a gift for seeing hidden things and yet you don’t see what’s most obvious. Kenneth’s a bright boy from a poor family, always first in class. Your fiancé—and I mean no disrespect—is rich but not so clever. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: Mr. Wee paid for Kenneth’s schooling so long as he let Daniel copy his schoolwork. For many years, Kenneth almost lived at the house. Mr. Wee even offered him the spare room but Daniel objected. Anyway, it was because of Kenneth’s help that your fiancé managed to get a place at Oxford.”

“But he didn’t go.”

“Of course not. If he went away for three years, who can say how his father’s love would shift, correct? The prince must guard his place in the kingdom.”

I held back my impulse to defend Daniel. Instead of making me think less of him, as was surely Issa’s intent, these revelations filled me with a more ardent protectiveness: The boy couldn’t even be certain of his own father’s affections.

My questions about the Wees exhausted themselves quickly. Issa knew as well as I did that we had more dangerous things to discuss, not that I was ready to broach the subject: I didn’t have the right words. He said nothing either and we drove on in silence.

The Bentley hurtled through deserted streets, reaching Forbidden Hill in fewer than ten minutes. Halfway up its south side, by the entrance to the cemetery, we left the car and began walking. The watchman had forgotten to lock the gates or had been bribed to leave them open—one never knew which on the Black Isle. We passed through them like spies from the world of the living entering the land of the dead. The change in the air was palpable—cooler, danker, the humidity clinging tighter to my clothes and skin.

“Don’t be frightened.”

“I’m not frightened.” I was excited. The prospect of finally speaking to someone about the spirit world. My heart was racing.

“The dead are caught in an endless argument they can never win,” he said. “The vast majority give up, but for some, this debate fuels them. It keeps them from having to accept the reality that, no matter how well they argue their case, no matter how
alive
they feel, it’s already too late—they’re dead. These are the ones you call ghosts.” He gave me an enigmatic smile. “Come along.”

The moon was full, a bright disk casting silver light on everything around us, everything except Issa’s hair, whose blackness seemed immutable. Crows cawed and took wing as we passed.

I had assumed from the wrought-iron fencing that this would be a Christian cemetery. I was wrong. All of humanity was mixed up in this spiritual crossroads. On the gray slabs jutting out of the mossy earth like dragon’s teeth were Taoist swastikas, Stars of David, Islamic crescent moons, even cherubim with plump cheeks blackened with mold. This was either neutral ground or a ring where all souls came to do battle.

We’d come seeking the quiet and had found it. Yet Issa seemed determined to drag me even deeper into the dark.

“Isn’t this good enough?”

“Just follow.”

We walked on until, suddenly, the world became so utterly silent and still that my ears felt hollowed out. No birdsong, no crickets, not even the faintest stirrings of a breeze. He stopped.

“Every cemetery has a sacred heart, where no sound and no wind can enter,” he said. “We have reached the heart of this one. It is safe here. We will begin.”

“Begin?”

He was not a man for small talk. He brought his palms together, crossed his legs, and lowered himself deliberately onto the damp grass. Thus arrayed, he nodded once.

“You and I are links in an endless chain of ghosts. The only difference between us and them is that we eat, we breathe, and we bleed.” He gestured for me to sit, too. “They called my people the
Badjao
or
Orang Laut
—Sea Gypsies, the People of the Water. These names made us sound quaint, harmless, like simple people who spent their whole lives catching fish with their bare hands. But in the beginning, we had a title. We were the Royal Guard, the rajah’s men. We were here for centuries before the rest of you came. We patrolled the seas. We kept the peace by keeping the invaders out.”

In the moonglow, I saw him beam with racial pride—then instantly deride it with a sneer.

“But then our kings became greedy. They let in the outsiders in exchange for gold and silk. This one and that one, until eventually they all came. And now look at the trouble we’re in. You may know us as the
Orang Laut
, but we were never fishermen; we were never primitives. I want you to remember this.”

“You were pirates.”

His face twitched; then the equanimity returned. “We were
warriors
. We kept the peace by claiming what was ours. If you don’t draw lines, you give in and give in until there’s nothing of yourself left. But I didn’t bring you here to talk about brigands. I brought you here to tell you about
ilmu
—magic. As the invaders came, my forefathers had to protect themselves and their livelihood. They turned to ilmu because magic is something nobody can take away from you. It is crucial that
you
remember this, when the war comes.”

“You misunderstand me. I was hoping you’d tell me how to make them go
away
.”

“Miss Cassandra”—he shook his head—“you are gifted, a natural, and it needs you.”

I froze. “It?”

“The Isle. Once all hell breaks loose, it will need as many of us as possible.”

Again with his sorcerer’s pitch. I’d never thought of my ability to see ghosts as being magic—much more a curse. “Tell me. You see them, too?”

“Yes.” He smiled.

“Then how on earth can you think it’s a gift?”

“How can it
not
be a gift? We can do things other people cannot.”

“What if I refuse?” My voice grew louder. “What if I choose to be normal?”

“You will never be normal, Miss Cassandra.” He began unbuttoning his long-sleeved shirt. Where the two halves of fabric peeled apart, I glimpsed his smooth caramel chest, covered with tribal markings. Two black serpents faced off in mirror image S’s on his pectorals; below each of his shoulder blades was a black chrysanthemum rosette. As the white shirt fluttered to the ground, he flexed his muscles, showing off yet more: Black thorny vines crisscrossed up and down his biceps. I’d never seen these tattoos—he’d been careful to keep them hidden—and his priestly way of unveiling them suggested that we had embarked on some kind of a shared journey, no matter how unwilling I was as a traveler.

“Put your clothes back on.”

But he proceeded as if he hadn’t heard me.

“My grandfather painted me when I was twelve. Powdered charcoal, mixed with ground tiger bone. He believed it could ward off evil spirits. But evil is relative, isn’t it?”

He rose to his knees, paused for a few seconds, and began digging in the dirt with his enormous hands. Before long, his palms were filled with fecund, loamy soil, graveyard meal fragranced with the humors of the dead. The recent rains had enriched the mix even more. I winced at the wriggling, blood-colored earthworms. He rubbed the black earth all over his arms, chest, and neck like the chieftain of an ancient rite, one that might suddenly turn violent.

“What are you doing? Stop that.”

“Join me.” It was an exhortation as much as an invitation. “We must dirty ourselves before speaking to the spirits. To earn their trust, we must be more like them.”

“I came to speak to you, not the spirits!”

“Do as I say, Miss Cassandra. This is no time to be childish. I cannot show you the things I have to show you unless you do as I say.
Please
.”

I lowered myself and began plunging my fingers into the earth. The soil seethed as hot and foul as manure, moistened with the cadaverous fluids from six feet under us. But after slapping the first tentative pats onto my bare arms, my resistance eroded; the earth became a nurturing balm, a caress that heightened my sense of being alive. My mind leapt back to my nights alone in the jungle. I had been so powerful then, so alert, so fearless, and as much as I wanted to reinvent myself as clean, as ordinary, this warmth was proof that my flesh was inextricably bound to the earth. I crushed the dark salve all over my arms, more aggressively now, then on my neck, sparing no thought for the cotton dress that was my shell.

Kneeling on the grass, facing Issa, I could tell I’d passed some test. He smiled with no small degree of self-satisfaction, which instantly made me bristle.

“Don’t look so smug!”

“Oh, I’m not smug,” he said, still smiling, still superior. “Unlike you, magic did not come naturally to me. I had to acquire ilmu for myself, just as my forefathers did. There are several ways of doing this. One is through study, in which the seeker prays, fasts, and recites the Koran until he reaches a state of forgetfulness. Eventually, the magic descends on him. That was the way of my ancestors. My forefathers used ilmu to predict the rice harvest, the sex of a child, lucky numbers for gambling, but none of that interested me. I wanted something more powerful, something more…thrilling. And so I went down a different path, a path my forefathers warned me against.

“On a full-moon night like this, I went to the grave of a murdered man. I had been told that his enemy broke into his home and slashed his throat while he slept. Only at the grave of a murdered man will you find the restless spirit that is called
badi
. The badi is always searching for a better home.

“I sat on the grave. I took out my knife and started paddling with it, as though I were in a canoe.” He mimed out the actions. “Left, right, left, right. After two hours, when my arms were aching and I was about to give up, the world…shifted. Suddenly, I was sitting in a canoe, a real canoe, in the middle of the horizon. The sky and the sea were both clear blue, divided by a white line. An old man appeared on this line and he began walking toward me, as if the water were solid. I knew this had to be the badi. When we came face-to-face, I asked the badi for a little magic. You cannot be greedy with spirits; you can ask for only a little at a time. Then the badi granted me everything.”

There had to be more to the story. Restless spirits were not philanthropists—this I knew from experience. “What did you have to offer him? Your soul?”

“After a ritual like this, one is supposed to return the badi to a safe house, where it cannot do any more mischief. Usually, it’s inside a monitor lizard or the heart of a tree. But I didn’t. You see, my badi offered me a lifetime of ilmu jahat—what you people like to call black magic—in exchange for freedom. How could I say no? I was only thirteen years old.”

I stared at him. With his upper torso soiled, he looked both grand and ridiculous—part guru, part child playing in the mud. In keeping with this image of him, I only half believed his story.

“If you possess such magic, then why are you just a chauffeur?” I asked.

“
Just
a chauffeur?” He grinned. “Why are you
just
a lady of leisure when you can be doing so much more with your gift? We do not evaluate success along such
simple
lines. Besides, being close to the powerful has its advantages, as I’m sure you’ve discovered for yourself. By the way, take a look around you now.”

We were no longer alone.

The cemetery was peopled with the wandering dead, men and women of all ages, strolling past one another as if this were a town square, each of them caught in his or her own reality, oblivious to all else.
They are still here
.

He had tricked me! I stood up and tried to rub the taint from my skin.

“Make them go away! I don’t want to see them! I told you I don’t want anything to do with them!”

“But how will you command an army you cannot see, Miss Cassandra?”

He pulled a match from his trouser pocket and leaned over, striking it against the tombstone behind me. In its orange flare, I picked out Arabic script. We had been convening on the plot of a Muslim man.

“This is my father’s grave.” He paused. “He was murdered when I was young.”

Murdered
. The very word made me shudder.

I needed to free myself, get clean again. But the mud simply refused to be scraped from my skin. The more I tried to fling it off, the more it stayed on my fingers and spread all over my hands and clothes, everything I touched. This soil, darkened by a murdered man’s essence, had encased me. My hands were shaking. How stupid I was to trust this loathsome pirate!

“Are you frightened, Miss Cassandra?”

“No!”

He stood up solemnly. “Fear is not a bad thing. We should never be afraid of fear. Because when you’re afraid, you see the world in a new light. Everything comes into focus like never before.”

With liturgical grace, he pulled out a dagger that was tucked under his belt, its jagged iron blade covered in wild floral engravings so fine they resembled fish scales. It was a
keris
, the sacred knife of the Malays. Only men of regal standing were permitted to handle one. Never women. And yet he was about to hand his over to me?

“Fear, rage, and evil roam freely in the world. To overcome them, you have to understand them…”

His grip tightened around the dagger. The curved blade of his keris dived down and slashed my left arm, above the elbow. Before I could feel its bite, the dagger was raised again, and in a flash my right arm, too, was struck. He was going to finish me off.