As I climbed, the air changed texture, stirred by a guava-scented wind. I emerged into the hollow trunk of a ceiba tree so huge that the buttressing of its aboveground roots rose like the pillars of a house over my head. The chittering of Rory’s captors echoed around me, but I could not see them. I sought threads of shadow to conceal myself, but here in the spirit world the shadows were like eels, too slippery to hold. Skulking in the tangle of roots, furious and almost weeping at losing Vai when I had come so close to him, I probed at my shoulder. Just below the collarbone rose a puckered scar, tender to the touch. The fingers of my left hand were scored with whitened scars, cleanly healed. The ache subsided to that of an injury sustained days ago instead of moments. The speed of healing was a brutal reminder of how time passed differently in the spirit world, where an hour might equate to days in the mortal world and a day to months. How much time had passed in the mortal world just while I climbed the tree? How far away was Vai now?
Hidden within the roots, I peered onto open ground, my first glimpse of the spirit world here in Taino country. In the heavens, no sun or moon shone. The sky had a silvery-white sheen like the inside of a conch shell. Straight ahead lay a monumental ballcourt where figures played batey, the game so beloved in Expedition and throughout the Antilles. The players ran up and down the ballcourt bouncing a rubber ball off thighs or forearms or elbows, never letting it touch the ground. They even bounced the ball off stone belts they wore around their hips, although in Expedition no one used the traditional gear.
At the end of the ballcourt closest to me rose a stone platform. A man sat there, cross-legged, watching the game. He wore a headdress ridged with feathers as in imitation of a troll’s bright crest, a white cotton loin wrap, and armlets of beaten gold. His septum was pierced by a needle of pale green jade, and he wore dangling earrings carved out of bone. One step below him, a rabbit dressed in a loin wrap was seated at a sloped writing desk with a brush in hand, busily writing in sweeping strokes as its ears twitched.
I crossed the plaza, climbed four steps, and halted below the lord.
“You’re the Thunder, the Herald of the storm the people call hurricane.”
“Here you are, Cousin,” said the Thunder, unsurprised by my arrival. “By what name should I call you?”
“People call me Cat,” I replied, for I knew better than to reveal my full name. “Why did you take my brother?”
“You took a life. We took a life.”
Dread chilled my heart. “Have you killed my brother?”