Blackheart Man, page 31
“How long?” Veycosi whispered.
“Fifty and three years!”
“You slept away a whole lifetime?”
“Close to. People didn’t believe I was Acotiren. They thought I was some old dotard as mad as Maridowa. I asked after my grandson. ‘Metata,’ I said. ‘Is where Metata dey?’ Finally somebody heard me who knew our family. ‘Oh, you mean Goat!’ he said. ‘Gone buccaneering years now. Nobody know if he quick or he dead.’ ”
Acotiren wiped her eyes dry with the heels of her hands. “At least he found a work where the climbing was always good. Me, I learned not to try to convince people who I was. Witches were old-time story to them. I became Cookie.”
“A hundred and fifty years ago?”
She smiled. “Ah-hah. Is like my body forget how to die. From the time the doors of the Colloquium opened, always been a Cookie there. Always been me.”
“And no one,” he asked skeptically, “realised you weren’t aging? Weren’t passing to the next life?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know why not, Maas’ Cosi. From that day when we three witches opened some kind of door wide to change the fate of Chynchin, this place have pockets and occurrences of the uncanny that can’t be explained. Maybe one of them hovering around me, like a cloud.”
Veycosi had no reply to that. He cast an eye over the sleeping pickens. The smaller ones had instinctually curled into the body warmth of the larger ones. He realised they might all be feeling chilled after their sweaty forced march. The pile of them lying there didn’t take up plenty room. His hooking might be big enough to cover them all.
Groaning to his feet, he fetched his satchel from the hook by the door. He opened it and pulled out the crumpled fabric. He shook it.
The missing soul cases clattered to the floor. The noise woke the pickens, and Cookie. The pickens remained where they were, sith he’d given them no commands. Cookie saw where the noise had come from. “So that’s where you put them,” she said.
What was that trickling sound from the other side of the table? Oh, swive him. How long since he’d herded the lot of the pickens out to the privy? He would deal with the soul cases in a bit. He bade the pickens come and stand near him. “We have to make haste,” he told them, though he knew they wouldn’t reply. He couldn’t see any danger from out the window, so they went outside to where the privy was, and he told them one by one to relieve themselves if they needed to.
A flash of sunlight dashed into his eye. He looked up. From here, he could see one of the seventy relay towers that girded Chynchin. Reflected firelight pulsed from the very top of it. A daytime signal to tell the neighbouring towns they were under attack!
How long would it take them to muster to Carenage’s aid, though?
When he got back to the room, Cookie had drifted to merciful sleep. She was snoring a little. Cookie? Acotiren? She would have it to say they were one and the same. But Cookie was who he’d always known her to be, so Cookie it would remain. For now.
Maitefa was shivering. Poor wight was only wearing a light shift, after all. Veycosi wrapped his scarf around her, sari-wise. The sun had begun its march down to the horizon but was still visible in the sky. Veycosi lifted Maitefa into his arms and took her out to the backyard, where she could get warm in what remained of the sunlight. Her indifference made her awkward to hold. He had to instruct her to put her arms around his neck. This was the same picken whose agility and quick thinking had bested a capo mestre many times her size. Water brimmed over from Veycosi’s eyes. He longed to see her responsive again, in even the smallest way. “Look, Maitefa,” he said, pointing up to the sky. “Koo the cullybrees.”
Maitefa’s eyes obediently followed where Veycosi was pointing.
The cullybrees were flying lower. It was close to hatching time.
There came a disorganized tromping of feet along the road, around a bend where he couldn’t see. Veycosi’s heart dropped into his belly. He pulled Maitefa into a crouch with him behind a large euphorbia bush. Who was coming? Carenage Town citizens, fleeing the two armies?
Then he heard the never-ending syllables of Datiao’s repeated chantson, spoken loud and ungarbled from a throat now cleared of piche.
Mama-ji!
Veycosi hustled Maitefa back inside, only to find Cookie looking in even worse shape than before. “It’s the tar army!” he told her.
“Oh.” She looked resigned. “He find me, then.”
“We have to leave!”
“I can’t run, son,” Cookie said. She closed her eyes. “Too weak. Mek them come. You take the pickens and go.”
No time! The thump and scrape of the duppy army had reached the gate. Veycosi looked around wildly. He couldn’t lead eleven tired pickens on another forced march.
The duppies were coming up the walkway. Veycosi could hear the wheeze of terror in his own throat.
He was nimble. Maybe he would have to leave the rest to their fate. In his wit-flown need to survive, he half made to run.
Then he saw Kaïra’s dull gaze, looking not at him, but through him. No. He would not abandon that child again. None of them. He picked the spilled soul cases up, slipped Kaïra’s over her head, then put on his. He gathered up and threw the rest of them willy nilly at the other pickens. He didn’t know what else he could do for them. “Put them on!” he yelled. He didn’t know whose was whose, but he hoped against hope that some of them would touch their rightful owners and return their wits to them. Maybe then they could run to safety.
Of course, nothing happened. Cookie had just been spinning tales after all. But she was his charge now, just as the pickens were.
* * *
He scurried to gather all the pickens in front of Cookie’s divan. He put himself in front of them and her, to fight the duppies off as best he might. To finally face the Blackheart Man that had come out of the piche in search of him.
The door slammed open. The piche soldiers entered the doorway a-tromp and advanced towards them. Their sulphurous reek filled the apartment. Their awfully broken, piche-infused bodies made his skin crawl. Pity for what had happened to them lived side by each with terror for what they could do to him.
Datiao’s face was livid with triumph. He advanced upon Veycosi, muttering the chantson the while. The soldiers were plumping up. Still sere, but no longer merely dried skin stretched over brittle bone. As Master Tar worked his obeah, their bodies were trying to quicken back to life. With slight success that Veycosi could see, despite their having filled out little bit. Their wounds, bloodless, still gaped open. Other than Master Tar’s, their broken limbs had not reset. Missing body parts had not regenerated. The soldiers’ expressions—those with faces left, any road—bore no malice, just sadness. Some of them stared only, pleadingly, at Datiao. That one man’s drive for revenge was keeping them all bound in this nonliving life.
They brandished their weapons but seemed loath to use them. Veycosi moved towards them, waving his hooking as though it were a net and the duppies so many lobsters he might entangle in it. He looked ridiculous and he knew it, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Stay back!” he shouted. Blasted pickens began following. The soldiers would overrun them to get to him! “Remain behind me, pickens!” he ordered them. The duppy soldiers, those that had eyes remaining in their heads, rolled them nervously in the direction of the pickens. Seemed even the dead found the children uncanny. Or perhaps they had enough wit left to hate the thought of killing pickens.
Behind him, Cookie rasped a breathy laugh. “Duppies and all fear the Blackheart Man,” she said.
Him. She meant him. They were looking at him. Muttering the cantrip in between his orders, Master Tar barked at his men to fall to. Looked like they feared him the more, for they rushed immediately at Veycosi and Cookie. Veycosi managed to entangle two of them in his hooking and push their cracked-leather bodies to the ground, only because their bodies were too broken to be nimble. Then a keen thread of fire burned along his side. He cried out and fell to his knees. One of the dogsons had come up beside him and scored him with her knife. He threw his hand up against her next blow. Cookie grunted. Her two feet landed on the floor in front of Veycosi, and now it was she shielding him. Master Tar shouted. From Veycosi’s place peering out behind Cookie’s hem, he saw Master Tar dash forwards and elbow his soldier to the ground before she could strike Cookie a blow. “Mine! Mumble,” he cried out. “Acotiren mumble is mine to kill!”
Acotiren. He knew her to be Acotiren. She’d been telling the truth.
“But is me you want!” Veycosi blurted. He rose, legs trembling, to his feet. He had already proved himself able to steal the hearts of pickens. He must be able to do worse than that. Cold with fear, Veycosi made his legs move forwards to face Datiao.
Datiao turned his gaze from Cookie-who-was-Acotiren to Veycosi. The duppy took a rasping breath. “Who mumble you?”
Veycosi didn’t understand. “Is me, Veycosi,” he said. “I begged you to save my mother all those years ago. I said I would take your place, and now you’ve come to fulfill your bargain.”
Datiao frowned. “Don’t know mumble you. Acotiren mumble is my mumble prize.” So saying, he shoved Veycosi aside with the flat of his machete.
“In your dreams,” Cookie told Datiao. Veycosi could think of her by no other name. She rested her hand on his shoulder. “Cricket, you deh-deh?” The gesture was meant to be one of comfort, but he could tell she could barely stand. She was leaning with all her weight. The pressure intensified the pain in Veycosi’s side till it roared like the surf, but he made shift not to cry out. He was only wounded. Cookie was dying from Datiao’s obeah.
Master Tar lifted the heel of his outstretched palm to his lips. The palm was pink, its life lines clean. He was really a fine figure of a man, for one dead over two centaines. He smiled like a very demon and blew a sulphur-heavy breath at Cookie. Cookie staggered. The long exhalation stank of tar, then cooled to simple human warmth. He’d blown the last of the corruption out of him and into Cookie. “Cinder,” he said, “in your eye.” No muttering this time. Cookie coughed, gave a death rattle of a breath. Her knees began to give way. Datiao seized her by the neck of her robe, yanked her briskly to her feet, as though she weighed no more than ash. Veycosi didn’t try to stop him. Mama-ji forgive him, but he didn’t even self try. She was their buffer. Dead, he couldn’t help the pickens. Is that he told himself, any road.
Datiao smiled the loving smile of a yawning crypt at Cookie. He opened his free hand. A thing lay on his palm. It was round and black, no bigger than a pigeon’s egg. Weakly, Cookie reached for it. Datiao batted her hand away. “Not yours,” he said. “Not anymore. Your soul, your life? Mine now, Acotiren.”
She groaned. Datiao closed his endmost three fingers over her soul case. With pointing finger, he tipped Cookie’s chin up so that her two eyes made four with his. His look’pon her was attentive as a lover’s. When he had her gaze, he commenced to stroking the side of her face with the obi bag. She jerked in his grasp, began to tremble. “Give me the rest,” murmured Datiao. “Every last little bit. All your life for all those times I died.”
The piche soldiers had found their voices. They were keening in low, breathy moans, the sound punctuated by the dripping of bitumen quitting their bodies and falling to the floor.
Cookie’s breath huffed out of her. Her head slumped against Datiao’s hand. Her body went limp. Datiao cried out in triumph, let her crash to the ground. Veycosi broke her fall best he could, though it tore at his wound little more. He turned her over to see her face. It was slack. No breath, no heartbeat. She was dead.
“Mine,” said Datiao again. He put her soul case to his lips and with a dreadful, gulping effort swallowed it. The last of the greyness left his face. He breathed in, examined his restored hands and arms with a self-satisfied look. “Good. Now I going to—”
Then he screamed, “No! You can’t—!” He backed away from Cookie’s body, started muttering the chantson again, frantically. “Stop it!” he said, his voice gone high and strange. His eyes were wide.
The piche soldiers began making noises even more tortured than before. Datiao grabbed his throat. He heaved and heaved, chanting and pleading the while.
Then, weirdly, he laughed, his voice higher than it had been.
And just so, the piche soldiers fell back into petrification, every one. They dried and blackened, writhing like slugs thrown onto the fire. The cordwood sound of piche soldiers tumbling was all around. As Veycosi watched, their petrified husks crumbled away, leaving only piles of soot on the floor. Datiao gave another high-pitched shout, staggered towards Veycosi. Veycosi slid Cookie’s knife from its scabbard and clambered to his feet to face Datiao.
Datiao stopped. He felt his own body, his face with his hands. He looked mazed. He stared at Cookie’s body. “I… dead?” he whispered. To Veycosi’s grief, Cookie, like the piche soldiers, began also shrinking, blackening into a husk, crumbling into ash.
Veycosi rushed Datiao, though the pain tore through his side like the bite of a rusty blade.
“Cricket, no!” Datiao cried out. It was Cookie’s voice. Startled, Veycosi slipped in his own blood, crashed hard onto the heel of his free hand. The jolt sang pain through him. He near fainted away from it.
Datiao kicked the knife from his hand, knelt beside Veycosi. “Cosi-boy, don’t dead, now,” he said. “Let me bind that wound.” He put his hands on Veycosi, who tried to scramble from his grasp. “Cosi, is me,” said Datiao. “Is Acotiren.”
“You killed her,” Veycosi told Datiao. Tears started from his eyes. “You happy now? Please, just leave the pickens alone. They can’t harm you.”
“Datiao didn’t kill me! You don’t understand?” Datiao tapped his own chest. “This is me, Acotiren!”
Veycosi was nearly insensible. He couldn’t defend himself against Datiao, couldn’t fathom what he was saying. He could only gape dazedly at the man.
Datiao looked at his own hand, its fingertips red with Veycosi’s blood. He turned it front and back. It was like he’d never seen his hand before. “He swallowed me,” he said. “My soul case. He put my soul inside him, and it pushed his out.” He gave Veycosi a shaky smile. “Datiao gone, Cosi. He gone for good this time.”
“You not Cookie, blast you! You making mock.” Veycosi couldn’t hold his head up any longer. He lowered it to the floor. Datiao had won. Veycosi had been no help at all, no saviour. The pickens, Chynchin; all were lost.
Datiao started tearing the hem of his robe into strips. “Wai! Thought I was strong before! What a thing to have a man’s sinews!” He began to wrap Veycosi’s wound. “I will prove to you that I am Acotiren,” Datiao said. “One night I catch you and Thandy making woo outside in the back of the kitchen when you thought everybody was gone. Was only me left, checking that the bread was rising proper for the next morning’s meal. I gave you each a tulum sweetie from the kitchen and sent you on your ways.”
It was true. That was a thing a devil duppy from beneath the earth probably wouldn’t know. But Cookie would.
Datiao’s hands were gentle, but impartial and quick. He handled Veycosi like Cookie would cube meat for the pot. “The old war done at last,” he said. “We still have the new one to fight, though….” He closed his eyes. His features settled into a mask, a duppy of the old Acotiren’s. “Two rassclaat centaines, but finally the blasted gate we opened that day is closed.”
“You?” Veycosi asked. “You closed it?”
“Or something like that. Maybe because I swallowed my soul case. Ease up your right side little bit there so I can wrap your wound proper.”
Veycosi’s ear for sound recognized those speech patterns, the turns of phrase. This was Acotiren, his Cookie, in Datiao’s body! A wild excitement filled Veycosi’s breast. He half sat, wincing at the burning in his side. “So you’re going to save us!” he said. “I knew something would!” Is lie he was telling. He hadn’t known anything of the sort. He’d hoped he would win the day. But that victory wasn’t for him. Chynchin really was juju, after all. He’d found Chynchin’s actual hero.
Acotiren frowned at Veycosi. “Nah me,” ee said.
“Don’t make jest; of course, you. You going to stop this invasion, just like the three of you did before. You going to magic Ymisen into the ground, nah true?”
“I—” Acotiren’s man’s voice broke back into an old woman’s. Ee swallowed. “Hold still and let me finish tie this bandage.”
But Veycosi pushed ir hands away. “No! Now is not the time to mind me! You have the whole of Chynchin to save!” He rocked to his feet. The sting of the knife slash was merely spice to the stew of pain that action brought him. He grunted. Tried to pay it no mind. “Come on, nuh? What you need me to do? I going to do it, whatever it is.”
“You can’t do nothing, Cricket,” Acotiren said gently. “I can’t do nothing. Not anymore.”
“But you must! Only you know how!”
Acotiren walked over to the front door and opened it. Ee looked up. “I thought so.” Ee turned to Veycosi. Ee was smiling. “Come see, nuh?”
“You only have to use the same juju as before,” Veycosi said, pleading. He struggled to stand. He limped to ir side and looked where ee was pointing.
Backwinging as though they were seagulls, thousands of cullybrees were calmly landing, on tree branches, on rooftops, on the ground, everywhere the eye could see. More followed, in waves. They chirruped at each other and jostled and pecked for space. “But they can’t do that!” Veycosi said. “They all going to dead!”
Acotiren narrowed ir eyes and scanned the mass of cullybrees. “I don’t think so, you know. They not magic anymore. Chynchin rejoining the world.” Ee giggled and pointed. “Look at those over there. They already learning how to walk.”
Ir voice kept switching registers, almost like a youngboy’s when he got old enough his piss start to make froth.
