“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I just wanted an answer to L’Ouverture’s riddle.”
Her head rose slightly, and she looked at me squarely. “The diamond is in Martinique.”
“What?”
“The diamond,” she repeated slowly, “is in Martinique.”
“How will I find one diamond in an entire French island?”
“It will be right in front of you, Ethan.”
My mind was whirling. The dark shadow arched like a cloud, ready to pounce, but furious at being suspended. Ezili receding. Had I made an irrevocable mistake? Or saved us all?
“But how could emeralds be inside?”
“They carry the curse of Montezuma.” Her voice was distant now. “They’ve carried death for nearly three hundred years. Are you ready to risk?”
“For Astiza. For my son.”
She was becoming insubstantial. “But will you save her?”
Something evil, potent with malevolence, reaching for me. “Wait! Please…”
She was fading like dreams at dawn. “Strength, Ethan. But if you choose wrong, what you most love will be gone forever.”
“Wait…”
A frozen coldness brushed my cheek, a touch clammy as death, but it didn’t seize hold. It was like the scale of a caiman, the slither of Damballah, the cold steel of the French guillotine… and then gone, retreated.
I staggered to the bank a drunken man, looking into the most profound darkness I’d ever seen.
What wrong choice could she mean?
Then I fainted.
Chapter 28
I came to with what I thought was wind in my ears, the blades of the great mills of Antigua churning fragments of nightmare. Then I realized I was hearing water and feeling sunlight. I winced, squinting up.
There was a dome of sky above the pool where I’d followed the goddess Ezili. Trees all around, a bright green well. Bright birds sang and flew in paint-box colors. Flowers curled like little gold trumpets. Ripples radiated out from the falls in bands of silver. An enchanted place, with no enchantress.
Groaning, I sat up. The beautiful woman was gone, leaving behind a sense of gaping relief and irretrievable loss-of temptation I’d never be offered again. I felt hollowed. I’d also, I believed, passed a test, and in passing it somehow saved myself. That dark presence waiting to devour me had gone.
My head ached, instead of swam.
But wait, someone was present. Stiffly, I turned on the muddy bank. Sitting on a stone was Cecile Fatiman, old, rotund, and serene.
“You drugged me.” My mouth was cotton, my cheeks still numb.
“I showed you the opening.” She smiled, the gaps in her teeth making her seem more matronly in daytime, and less devious.
“I hallucinated. I thought I was following a woman here.”
“You followed Ezili. She does not lead just anyone. She liked you, white man.”
“A loa? She is not, could not, be real.”
Cecile said nothing.
“She was too perfect to be real.”
Cecile still said nothing.
Groggily, I took stock. My clothes were damp and dirty, my face covered with stubble. My stomach was too queasy to feel hunger. I did feel fiercely thirsty so drank some from the clear pool.
Cecile kept watching me.
“What are you doing here?” I finally asked.
“Deciding if you are a zombi,” she said matter-of-factly.
The word had a feeling of wickedness about it, and for just a moment the jungle seemed to darken. I remembered that hideous spirit. “What’s a zombi?”
“People risen from the dead, or rather, never dead at all.”
I was puzzled. “Like Lazarus?”
“No. You don’t want to meet the zombi. They are cursed slaves of their masters, the magic priests known as boko. The boko give a potion to their enemies that make the enemy lie as if dead. The enemy is buried. Then the boko dig out the grave and revive the enemy, but only as the zombi, the living dead who must serve their master. Instead of returning to Guinea for reunification with their ancestors, the zombi is an eternal slave, trapped in Haiti. No revolt will ever free them. It is a curse far worse than death.”
“Your drink was a zombi potion?” I was appalled, and more than a little offended.
“No, and apparently you did not take what was offered. A boko followed you and Ezili. Did you lie with her?”
“No, of course not. I’m married. Faithful. The newly reformed Ethan Gage. She disappeared.”
Cecile regarded me with dubious surprise. “Ezili is not accustomed to being rejected.”
“I’m not accustomed to turning a woman like that down.”
“Maybe there’s more strength to you than I suspected, white man. I think your loyalty warded off the boko. Ezili wouldn’t let him touch you, because you didn’t touch her. The loa, she protect you, saving you for something else. But she’s a jealous spirit, and there is always a price.”
“Then I’m not a zombi?”
“Still foolish, perhaps, but not stupid like the zombi. They have slack mouths, vacant stares, and clumsy walks. They are ugly and smell of the grave. You not that bad.”
I take compliments where I can.
“It means the loa have greater uses for you, which will surprise Dessalines. You did not impress him. But now, perhaps, he will take you into his army. Did Ezili solve the riddle for you?”
“I’m begging you to clarify. That woman was not really Ezili, was she?”
Cecile said nothing, regarding me with mild impatience.
“She was? I mean, how could that be?”
“You did not answer my question.”
“She told me to go to Martinique. That I would find the diamond that holds the emeralds there. I don’t even know what that means. And even if I figure it out, it means going to a French-controlled island and trying to wrest a treasure from under their noses while rescuing Astiza and Harry. I don’t know if I can do that without help.”
“Then you must ask for help, from Dessalines.”
“Will he care about my mission?”
“If you care about his.”
I still didn’t have a comprehensible answer to the riddle of the jewels that the dying L’Ouverture had given my wife, but I at least had a new destination and, I hoped, new allies. My thought was to persuade Jubal to come with me to Martinique, but to get his loan from the rebel army I needed to make partnership with Dessalines. So I returned to the black general’s camp, explained in private the treasure all sides were after, and asked for men to help find it. This black king had given me opportunity by sending me to Cecile Fatiman. Now I had to make best use of it.
“This is a very colorful tale you tell,” Dessalines said, eyeing me shrewdly. “Aztec emperors, lost jewels, and flying machines.”
“Some of it must be true. I’m not that imaginative.”
“I do not believe it true, but I don’t believe it untrue, either. I don’t have much confidence in your courage, Ethan Gage, but I sense an instinct for survival that sets some men apart. I can only spare you soldiers after I take
