Chapter Nineteen

“Will you teach me?”

“If you wish.”

Oh, I wished.

“You do realize that raising the dead is an act performed only by a bokor?” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“So if I teach you, and you perform the ritual, you become like me.”

I’d known that; I’d just chosen not of think about it for fear I’d chicken out. But now, faced with the end to my quest, the prospect of life after death, hope from the ashes, I knew it didn’t matter.

“I’ll do anything.”

His smile widened. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Unease sparked, a trickle of gooseflesh across my neck, then down my arms. I felt as if I’d agreed to a devil’s bargain, and I probably had.

“Can you teach me now?”

“The ritual may only be performed beneath the full moon.”

Rats. I didn’t want to wait another week until the lopsided moon became round, but I doubted even Mezareau could speed up that process.

“Until then,” he snapped his fingers again, “you will be my guest.”

The minions returned. They grabbed me by the arms and hauled me to my hut, about three hundred yards away. We had been close.

The goons shoved me inside, then stood guard at the door. I guess Mezareau’s idea of guest and mine were pretty far apart.

The day passed, the night, too, and then several more. They didn’t starve me at least. I wasn’t so sure they were being as nice to Murphy. I asked after him, but if my guards understood English, they weren’t letting on, going about their duties with silent, stoic precision.

My handmaidens had disappeared. I hoped they weren’t being punished for allowing me to escape.

Punishment around here was probably not pretty.

At last the moon arose complete, and my guards supplied me with a robe of red. The color was worn only in Petro rituals, when the more violent loos were summoned. These never took place in a temple but outside at a crossroad in an open field or a forest.

They led me to the recently tilled field, surrounded by trees. Mezareau stood at the edge garbed in a robe similar to mine, his ason in one hand and a knife in the other. Murphy lay gagged and bound at his feet.

“What the hell’s going on?” I asked.

“You wanted to learn the ritual.” He knelt next to Murphy, whose eyes widened at the sight of the knife.

More a dagger really—shiny, j eweled, pretty, if it wasn’t going to be used on you. “Let’s get started.”

“I won’t let you kill him.”

“But, my dear, you said you’d do anything.”

My heart gave a sudden thud and the night turned cold. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do. You donned the red robe, which symbolizes the blood sacrifice necessary to appease the Petro spirits.”

“A chicken or a pig, not—”

“The goat without horns?” Mezareau suggested, using a common reference to a human sacrifice.

“How about just a goat?”

“You think the raising of the dead is a simple prospect? That it happens just by wishing, without the sacrifice of blood?”

I guess I hadn’t thought that far. I shook my head, put my hands out as if to stop him, backed up, and bumped into the minions. They shoved me forward and I stumbled, righting myself just as Mezareau raised the knife.

“No,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me, or he didn’t care.

With a lightning-fast movement, Mezareau slashed downward. Black dots danced in front of my eyes.

What had I done? Given a life for a life? Murphy for Sarah? I’d said I’d do anything, but had I really done this?

“Lucky for you both,” Mezareau murmured, “this ritual requires only blood and not the soul.”

The dots parted. Murphy wasn’t dead, just bleeding. Mezareau caught the blood dripping from

Murphy’s forearm in a shallow wooden bowl.

Murphy was pale; I felt sick. Mezareau smirked. He was enj oying himself.

A quick j erk of his head and the guards scooted around me, dragging Murphy away.

“You couldn’t use your own blood?” I muttered.

“I could, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, Murphy needs to be good for something, or he’s good for nothing.” His cool, light eyes met mine, and I understood the threat. When Murphy ceased to be worthwhile to him, he’d be dead. We needed to get out of here.

The shadows cast by the moon made the field even more eerie. The place was too quiet—a gathering of ghosts. The tiny shoots dotting the earth looked like fingers reaching for heaven.

Shivering, I turned away only to meet Mezareau’s eyes, which appeared greener then ever before. “Get on with it,” I said.

His smile was sly. “Mirror my movements; say what I say—exactly.”

Mezareau set down the bowl of blood and picked up one of water, then he shook his ason.

I spread my empty hands, and he pointed to a second gourd nearby. I’d never used an ason that was not my own; nevertheless, I picked it up and followed Mezareau’s lead, shaking the gourd as I followed him around the field.

He sprinkled the water, giving nourishment to the earth. Halfway, he handed the bowl to me. I did as he had, continuing on the same path until we’d closed the circle, the two of us on the inside.

I had so many questions: Why were we here? Did the ritual have to be performed on newly turned ground? How long did this take? Where was the body?

But I kept my mouth shut and concentrated on mirroring Mezareau’s every move so I could do this myself when the time came.

He began to chant in English, surprising me a bit. In Haiti the rituals have always been performed in French and Creole, perhaps a little Latin. However, the language wasn’t as important as the words, the emotions, and the power of the one reciting them.

“Come back to us now. Come back. Death is not the end. Live again as you once lived. Forget you ever died. Follow me into the world. Come back to us now. Come back.”

At Mezareau’s urging I repeated the chant as we walked in steadily smaller circles toward the center of the field.

I didn’t understand how we could raise the dead when they weren’t here. And didn’t we need a name?

How else would the dead know whom we were calling from the grave?

“Drink.”

Mezareau held a cup in each hand; one he extended to me. Where had they come from?

I hesitated, but when he drained his I had no choice but to do the same. I recognized the flavor— kleren, raw white rum made in Haiti. A particular favorite of the Gede, it was not a favorite of mine. The stuff tasted like rotten sugar, which was kind of what it was, being made from fermented cane.

Grimacing, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Mezareau tossed the empty cup over his shoulder; so did I. They bounced with a soft, plastic thud.

“Whoops.” I giggled. Was I drunk?

The world spun. The moon seemed to grow larger, come closer, and whisper, Soon.  Very soon. You ’ll do any thing.

Mezareau didn’t seem affected. He appeared before me, this time with the bowl of blood.

His robe parted, revealing the diamond strung around his neck. I guess I wouldn’t leave that lying around, either.

“One last thing,” he murmured, and tipped the bowl.

The air seemed to thicken. Time slowed. The blood fell in a crimson stream toward the earth. The moon glinted off the j ewel at the center of his chest.

I knew I shouldn’t speak, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. “Where’s the body?”

My tongue was heavy; the words came out in a voice that wasn’t my own. I’d been possessed before, by my met tet, but this was different. When Danballah was driving the controls, I spoke in a hiss, not words, a sacred language that had originated in Africa, akin to speaking in tongues, which only the loa could understand.

Mezareau didn’t answer. In the end, he didn’t have to.

The blood splashed against the earth, springing up, then plopping down, turning black beneath the full silver light of the moon just before midnight.

My gaze was drawn to the tiny shoots that looked like fingers sprouting from the ground, and I suddenly understood that the plants didn’t look like fingers.

They were fingers.