Ballad & Dagger, page 17
Maza feigns being crestfallen, but you can tell they don’t really mind. “Oh, wow, my bad.”
That moment would’ve had me stumbling over my words for hours and thinking about how badly I’d bungled it for years; I don’t know how Tams does it.
I laugh, partially out of relief, and head off after Chela. “See you there, Tams! Later, Maza!”
“Wear your whites!” Tams calls. “And don’t be late!”
The streets of Little Madrigal still bristle with election-eve gossip and whispers of bambarúto, and all the way through them, two thoughts fight for space inside my mind:
1) What the hell happened back at the studio? And…
2) If I tell Chela about Gerval asking me to bring her to him, too, am I betraying him, or Tía Lucia, or no one? If I don’t, am I betraying her? Does it matter? I don’t know!
My brain starts to short-circuit as lose-lose scenarios play out in an aggravating death loop. And jumping ship to deal with thought number one doesn’t do me much good. I have no idea what happened. Gerval was singing, then Chela was, too, and then light erupted through me and I could barely move.
Galanika, I’m sure. It was his praisesong. And even if I didn’t see him this time, he had to have been there. Inside me, I guess? Nothing makes sense.
Fortunately, Chela is off in her own world, nose buried in that small, ancient book, so she probably doesn’t notice me driving myself bonkers with questions I have no answer to. And she definitely doesn’t notice the car zooming toward her as she steps into the street without looking up.
“Chela!” I yell, grabbing her arm and pulling her back toward me. Her blade comes out so fast I don’t even know where she pulled it from. I barely have time to stumble backward a few steps, trip over my feet, and land on my ass as she lunges toward me and the car slams its brakes, screeching to a halt right where she’d been standing.
She blinks, frozen in mid windup for a stab.
“¡Puñeta!” the driver yells. “¿Qué carajo estás pensando, muchacha?” Then she glimpses the dagger, mutters, “Ah, bueno pues,” rolls up the window quick, and is on her way with a rev of the engine.
Thanks, lady.
Now it’s just me and Chela on the street, but I’m on the ground, staring up at her. “You can’t just grab people like that!” she blurts out. “I could’ve…I almost…”
“Cool. Next time I’ll just let the car hit you,” I snap, standing up and brushing myself off.
Chela scowls, I think more at herself than me. “No, it’s just—” She slowly vanishes the knife into some hidden holster. “Thank you,” she finally manages.
I take a step closer. “What’s going on, Chela? You’re…What’s in that book?”
She shakes her head, eyes closed. “I don’t know yet. I’m still trying to figure it out, but…I don’t like what Gerval and Vedo were saying. I don’t totally understand it, but it feels like they know something about me that I don’t even know. Or maybe I’ve always known but haven’t known how to make sense of it.” She shakes her head, looking anywhere but at me. “I’m not even making sense to myself.”
“Well, let’s get to Tolo’s,” I say, trying to force things to be okay, to create an answer to this mess through sheer willpower. “See if he can help us figure it out.”
But who am I kidding? There is no us. Whatever happened in that convo, whatever truth is being revealed in those timeworn pages, it’s pushing Chela deeper into her unreachable shell.
Tía Lucia was right, of course. Trust no one. So I won’t. But in the meantime, I’ll find out as much info as I can.
WHATEVER’S GOING ON WITH CHELA, Tolo and his bodyguard Safiya are too lit up by the gifts we’ve brought them to notice.
“Incredible,” Tolo mutters in that deep, raspy voice of his.
“How have we never seen these books?” Safiya says, looking over his shoulder. “Or even heard of them?”
Tolo nods at the smaller tome that Chela still has cradled in her arms. “¿Y la otra?”
“A notebook of some kind,” she says, sullen. “I’m still trying to decipher it.”
Safiya narrows her eyes. “Where did you guys say you got these again?”
Chela looks at me, but I have no idea what that look is supposed to mean. “Gerval’s studio,” I say.
“You…what, broke in?” Tolo demands. The man’s wrath is like an oncoming hurricane—you can feel it in your gut miles before it hits. He never has to raise his voice, the danger just inhabits the air all around him, seethes off him in cruel, effortless waves.
“No,” Chela says. “We just walked in. Everyone was out front rallying for the vote tomorrow night.”
Tolo shakes his head, smirking ever so slightly. “You just assigning yourself missions now, cuz? Trying to be like me, huh?”
Chela stares him down. “We needed more info, so we got it. You’re welcome.” She retreats to a leather chair in the far corner of his office and falls back into her book.
Tolo sends an exasperated look my way. “How do you solve a problem like la Chela, am I right, Mateo?”
“Um, pretty sure she just helped get us that much closer to figuring out who the initiated child of Madrigal is,” I point out.
Tolo isn’t listening. “That’s the song we used to sing when she was a kid and got into trouble.” He chuckles to himself, shaking that big bald head of his, and then places the book on his desk.
Safiya joins him. They open the first tome and then look directly at me. “Well, well, well,” Tolo says. “Seems we’re gonna need the help of your superpower, buddy.”
“Not more healing stuff,” I sigh, walking over.
“Heh, nope. The other one.” He holds up the book with both hands, and I almost yelp. “Extreme music dorkiness.”
It’s all partitur paper. Little elegant notes splatter across staff lines. “Whoa! Gimme!” I say, making grabby motions.
With just a glance, I can tell this much: it’s a chaotic symphony I’m holding. A whole Galerano mess, splayed out in various colors, I notice, flipping through the pages. Then I look at the top line, where the composer’s name is written: Archibaldo Medina.
The “madman” of Madrigal. Mr. Sea Espíritu himself.
The gasp I let out is so loud even Chela looks up. “You okay?” she asks.
“Yeah, it’s just…my ancestor wrote this.”
“Oh, wow.”
“The legend is that he lost his mind and started playing just pure nonsense. But…I didn’t think his music was written down anywhere. Guess I just figured he was improvising. I don’t think anyone knew about this.”
“Well, your boy Gerval did,” Tolo says. “Probably Anisette, too.” He opens the second tome. “This one looks to be a ledger of some kind. Numbers and dates and cargo, I think.”
“That’s all yours.” I plop into a chair across the room from Chela’s and dive into my own work.
Immediately, what I can tell you is that there are so many weird things to sort through I have to make a list.
Weird Thing 1: The title of the piece is “La Clave”—that’s the rhythm, usually played on two hollow sticks of the same name, that underlies a whole lot of Cuban music. That sweet tak tak…tak…tak tak you hear threading in and out of the pulse on mambos and boleros and guanguancos? That’s the clave. Thing is, there’s no clave to be found in this piece. Like, maybe someone’s supposed to be playing it the whole time, but usually the other instruments will reflect it somehow—echo it, or play in and out of it. You can feel the clave in a song that’s written with it in mind, even when no one’s playing the actual rhythm. This ain’t that. It’s just not there.
Weird Thing 2: Okay, so there’s no sharps or flats in the key signature, which isn’t that weird unto itself—means it’s either in C major or A minor or one of those creepy modes that old monks used a bunch (wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case, given the material). But the notes themselves don’t give any indication of a key. There’s no one tonic note that begins it all, that we keep coming back to, that we finally land back on when it all comes crashing down. In fact, it doesn’t come crashing down at all, it just kind of wanders and strays. It’s just chaos, at least at a glance.
Weird Thing 3: What’s with all these different colors? Each…song, I guess, is written in a different-colored ink, and that’s just…It’s different. What’s the point?
Weird Thing 4: Each song has two staffs for piano music and one for what I’m guessing is supposed to be a voice melody. That’s normal enough. It’s even marked piano and voz respectively. But there are no lyrics to go along with it, which you’d expect for a voice part, unless the singers are just supposed to hum or go oooh. I’m just saying: weird.
Final Weird Thing (for now, anyway): At the very end, someone seems to have added a couple pages more recently. On what looks like printer paper, with different handwriting.
“You know what’s especially strange?” Safiya says after we’ve all been at it for a while in silence.
“Literally everything,” I say, exasperated.
“Right. But also the fact that we’ve never seen one single mention of the existence of these books, you know?”
“I mean, yours could just be some shopkeeper’s account log,” I point out.
Safiya is unconvinced. “It’s definitely bigger than that. These dates span centuries.”
“And look,” Tolo says, “San Madrigal historical docs—everything from banal government ledgers to war poetry—are nothing if not self-referential. Believe me, when you read enough of them, you’ll see. Across all three main cultures, across all variety of forms and styles, everything mentions everything else. Nothing stands alone. Whether it’s a cookbook referencing a collection of folktales from a century earlier or a Santero’s ceremony log that diverges into some Sefaradi bestiary—it’s like there was one large meta-mind behind it all, creating a huge web of knowledge and history and myth.”
“Exactly.” Safiya shakes her head. “But this book…This is off the radar.”
“When do the dates start?” I ask, unfolding myself and walking over to the desk. I’m all dead ends on the music stuff right now anyway; think I need to let it marinate some. Chela has barely stirred this whole time, just sits curled like a beautiful gargoyle around that strange little notebook.
Tolo carefully flips through the pages back to the beginning. “First date is August twenty-sixth, 1810.”
“Not long after the end of the Madrigal War,” Safiya says, squinting at the numbers.
She runs her finger along the side column. Seemingly random letters begin each row: R, V, A, AM. “That’s what’s got us kind of stumped. Otherwise, it’s pretty clear this is a trade ledger book, and from the look of it, it’s major trade. The numbers are big.”
“Russia, Virginia, Antarctica, America?” I try.
“I was thinking the AM might be connected to the music thing,” Safiya says. “A minor?”
I turn it around in my brain. “It could almost work.…A minor doesn’t have any sharps or flats, and neither does the music. But…most of this is in Spanish. They use solfège—do, re, mi, and all that—not letters like music in English.”
Tolo grunts his frustration.
“Still,” I say, “it’s possible….”
The inside of the ledger’s front cover looks weirdly bulky. I examine the outer edge and find a small flap there. “Wait…Is this…?” The flap opens when I slide my thumb under it, and I stick my fingers in. “It’s an envelope!”
Tolo and Safiya both grin at me like little kids for a half second before gesturing wildly at me to hurry up and get whatever’s inside.
I pull out a single leaf of paper with fancy antique writing scrawled across it. Fortunately, my Spanish is still pretty good, so I translate out loud as I read.
“‘Our Dear Fellow Traveler—
“‘You are reading this because you have been selected to join the noble and sacred lineage of the San Madrigal Pirate Republic. You will be a member of the Galerano Triumvirate representing the pirate community. You were selected because we deemed you worthy. We believe in your abilities, discretion, and prowess.’”
“This book was supposed to come to me,” Tolo growls.
“Gerval said Vedo’s mom gave it to him,” I say.
Safiya cocks an eyebrow at me. “You talked to him?”
“Us hearing him say something,” Chela points out quietly from her spot, “doesn’t mean he said it to us.”
I did talk to him, though, and now I keep thinking about what he said in the park, about all the weird things he’d been learning about Madrigal, both from Anisette, and I think he said others, too….
“Clearly, you and I have a lot to talk about, little cousin,” Tolo says sharply. “Don’t think the sulking-in-the-corner routine is going to get you out of it.”
Chela goes back to reading, and so do I.
“‘The secrets contained in this book are known only to a tiny select society of thinkers that you have now joined. Indeed, it is of the utmost necessity that no one else find out about them. Their revelation would bring an end to everything we hold sacred and dear.’”
“Whoever these guys are,” Tolo says, “I already hate them.”
“That’s probably why Gerval ended up with the book,” Safiya points out.
Tolo grins that long lizard grin of his. “Heh, well, it’s ours now. Go on, kid.”
“‘A war has ended, and we enter into a new era of San Madrigal history, one that will be marked by cooperation and peace. But make no mistake—our war is never over, not until Our Lord has risen.’”
“Yikes,” I say, because yikes. The worst part about this is that only one of the original three spirits of San Madrigal is male: mine. So, unless they’re talking about a spirit from some other tradition, I might be the last member of a very creepy-sounding secret cult of creepos.
“‘And when He does Rise, it will only be because of the diligent, patient work of His servants. That is the noble calling to which you now belong, fellow traveler, leader of pirates.
“‘Perhaps you will be the one chosen to lead in that time, and if you are so blessed, there will be many elements to pull together for the Rising to take place. Some are contained in the pages of this ledger. Others are in the accompanying sacred text that our priests have compiled. Both will be given to you upon your ascension to the Cabildo.
“‘But the most important element of all is simply this: blood will be answered with blood. Our island cries out for balance. With its very origin, there was a destruction, and so will there be destruction in the rebirth of its most powerful Lord, who Himself is embodied by the island, the three noble peaks, the teeming populace! The island is His tomb, and if ever the island itself falls, it will be a sign that His Rising has begun.
“‘You will take part in this Rising.
“‘There are many pieces, but as the old Santero saying attests: with one thing the world begins; with one thing the world ends.
“‘The one who destroyed and entrapped our Lord must fall in order for the island to rise, and Our Lord to rise with it….’”
I stop.
“Well?” Tolo demands. “That’s the missing piece, the thing Gerval’s looking for. What’s it say?”
“That’s it,” I say. “That’s the end of the letter.”
Safiya throws up her hands. “Well, who the hell is ‘the one who destroyed’?”
I hadn’t even realized Chela was by the door. There are tears in her eyes, and her voice is barely a whisper when she says, “Me.”
Then she’s gone.
I START AFTER CHELA, BUT Tolo’s soft, raspy voice reaches me before I make it to the hallway, and it brooks no argument: “Let her go.”
I stop, knowing he’s right—she left because she wants to be alone, not as some stunt to get attention. Then I spin around. “What are we supposed to do? What did she mean?”
Tolo shakes his head. “I don’t know, man, but when Chela storms out, you let her go. Them’s the rules. She’ll figure out what she needs to on her own, and when she’s ready, she’ll come back with what she’s got. Meanwhile, we have our own work cut out for us.”
“But what if…?” I shake my head as billions of horrible possibilities dance through it.
“All that energy you spending thinking up what-ifs,” Safiya says, already getting back to work, “you could put toward making sense of this mess. Come look.”
I do, still trying to rid myself of various imagined tragedies and interpretations of what she meant by that one word, me.
“What this appears to be,” Tolo says with a little extra growl in his low voice, “is a San Madrigal trade ledger detailing an entire hidden economy that we’ve never known about.”
My eyes go wide. “How?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. And also who?”
“Who the trade was with?”
He nods. “Who the trade was with, and who was doing it. Because, based on the items alone, there’s no way this wasn’t with slaver nations. Look: Algodón, that’s cotton. Azúcar, sugar. Here’s café, which you already know.”
Then I read a few columns ahead and look up to see Tolo’s fallen face. “No…” I whisper. With one word—esclavos—the whole mythology of who we are feels like it’s been blown to smithereens.
“Unless our ancestors were robbing the ships,” Safiya says, “or buying from people who were and then freeing everyone…”
“San Madrigal was dealing with empire.” It comes out of me with a sad sigh. “And part of the slave trade.” If that’s true, well…I guess every story really does contain its own opposite, like the saying goes. Here we all thought we were this big bandit island, off the maps, nunca conquistada…
“Problem is,” Tolo says, “without knowing what these abbreviations mean, we’re just assuming things. It’s pretty clear, but I don’t know if it’s gonna be clear enough to make sense to a bunch of people who don’t want to believe how truly jacked-up their own homeland has been all along.”
