Her laughter boomed, the sound cracking so hard I was driven to my knees. Her fingers like the grasp of death closed over my face.
“Yee talk too much. The secret is not yee own to share.”
A mask of water hardened over my face. The foul liquid coursed into my eyes and nose and mouth. But the flood had not ripped me away. Vai had saved me from the drowning waters.
Water splashed in my face. I was being carried through the rain-washed streets.
“Let me down. Let me down!” I struggled free and landed on my knees, first coughing, then heaving uncontrollably until I thought I would retch the entire sea out of my lungs.
Vai knelt beside me. His skin was hot, or mine was cold. “Catherine, we have to keep moving. The sea is flooding inland.”
“I have to save Bee!” But when I tried to rise the darkness beneath the overturned boat engulfed me until I saw nothing. Perhaps I flew. Perhaps it was all a nightmare.
For then I was sitting in the chair under the shelter by the kitchen with my muddy wet blouse stuck to me and a dry pagne draped modestly over my soaked drawers. A poultice soothed my scraped knee. One of the toddlers cuddled in my lap, a comforting presence.
“’Twas bravely done,” said Kofi, behind me, “but I still reckon that gal be hiding the truth from yee.”
“This is the not the time to speak of it,” said Vai. “She saved your uncle’s life when we all would have left him there not knowing he was trapped.”
“’Tis true. She saved him. I shall go over to he daughter’s place to see how he fares.”
Their voices faded. The wind mocked me in its singsong chant: We want one of they, do yee hear, me sissy-o?
The old man was dead. The spirits had taken him. The thread that linked him and me unraveled and its last tendril snapped like a hand slipping out of the hand that seeks to hold it in this world. His spirit sighed, and crossed over. A crow perched on the open sill and watched me as the sun behind it made a cowl of golden light for its form. Weary beyond measure, I went to bed.
I woke the next morning on the cot, wearing fresh drawers and a clean blouse I had no memory of putting on. The sound of hammering and sawing beat at my aching head. My mouth tasted of a vile brew that I could only imagine had been fermented from a stew of rotted worm guts and moldy rat droppings. Gagging, I fastened my spare pagne around my hips and, aching in every battered muscle, creaked down to the washhouse to do my business. After, I hobbled to the kitchen, where Aunty Djeneba greeted me with a cup of fresh juice and a kiss on each cheek.