That night, before I fall asleep in Cobra’s arms, I know I’m going to dream that dream and it’s going to reveal my mother this time. I know, just as surely as Cobra knows that Cat’s on her way to us, and she’s bringing Scarlett with her.
‘What about the others?’ I ask him.
His fingers garlanding my wrist, he lifts my hand in the air: a dark brown arm beside a wheat-coloured one. I twirl my thumb, rotate my wrist, and keep quiet as Cobra communes with Cat. From the way they’re able to talk to each other when they’re apart, I reckon they must have been holding hands in the womb, those two.
‘The others are coming too,’ Cobra says. ‘But Cat and Scarlett are on their own.’
‘Why?’ I sit up.
Cobra pulls me down again, and turns me, so I’m facing him. His greens lick my face; his fingers stroke my thigh, and that rush of emotion that surfaced when he first kissed me flashes through me again. I smoulder and crackle as he says: ‘It’s not as if I’m on a phone to her, Sante. Can’t ask her questions or hear her voice. I feel her. Feel she’s eager to reach us. Anxious.’
As anxious as my mother is, I suppose. Her presence has been lingering about us all day, interceding on our behalf and protecting me. I push her out of my mind, concentrate on Cat. ‘If she’s with Scarlett, where are the Old Ones?’
‘My guess is that they’re planning on getting help from the police.’
‘They can’t! Mama Rose and Redwood are missing, wanted for questioning. They’re outlaws! They can’t break their cover now.’
‘This is an emergency,’ Cobra reminds me. ‘Trouble doesn’t come much bigger than this.’
We’re in trouble all right.
I smooth down the spikes of Cobra’s black hair, kiss the lids of his greens to reassure myself he’s real. Stroke him, trace the sinews of his arms and thank my lucky stars that I’m not living this nightmare on my own.
After Grey Eyes bolted the door and left us alone, Cobra placed a saucer of water in a corner. Teased Bella and Scales out of the inside pocket of his tuxedo and let them drink until, satisfied, the snakes slipped into my rucksack to sleep.
‘They’re worn out,’ Cobra said.
‘Me too.’
Don’t know why, but that simple admission sparked an avalanche of laughter and we reeled with a step-away-from-cliff’s-edge hysteria. We laughed recalling the faces of those lizards and vultures in the snake-infested room. Finally, Cobra paused and broached the subject I was trying to forget: the ceremonial dagger, its levitation and whirling, the tumultuous roar of Mamadou’s music tonight.
‘What do you think’s going on, Sante? What are your spooks after?’
I sit on our narrow bed, hands hugging my ribs to ease the pain of our outburst: ‘I can’t say, Cobra. The only thing in the whole wide world I’m sure of right now is you. I’m glad you’re with me, beside me. I’m glad you’re my friend and more.’
‘For sure.’
The back of his hand grazed my cheek and then brushed the lobe of my ear as my eyes embraced his. ‘I appreciate it must be hard to make sense of what’s going on,’ he said. ‘But after everything that’s happened today, you must have an inkling of what they want, Sante.’
His fingers squeezed mine, urging me to talk.
I didn’t know how to put words to the feelings and thoughts jumbled up inside me. I still don’t. Don’t know how to separate what’s happening within me from the turbulence around me. Priss. Priss would help. I felt the urge to go walkabout with her to tease out my confusion. Just thinking of Priss brought tears to my eyes.
I gulped ’em down: ‘Priss has got my tongue, Cobra, and what’s in my mouth is tied. I can’t seem to find the words to place on it to make sense of anything. This is too deep for me, too complicated.’
‘Try, Sante. Try your best,’ he replied, quoting Redwood.
All he had to do was quote him and in a blink of an eye, I could hear Redwood talking to me as if he was standing beside me: ‘Whatever you do, kid, always do your best, always give your best.’
I closed my eyes, heaved a sigh, and did what Redwood advises we do in a Tight Situation Without an Easy Way Out. When a predicament confuses me; when I’m spitting with rage and can’t see what’s in front of me, Redwood tells me to calm down, breathe slowly, and then say whatever comes into my head. ’Cause more often than not, the body has answers the mind can’t fathom.
‘Trust your instincts, kid,’ I heard him saying. ‘You may not realise it yet, but deep inside, you know the answer to every problem life will fling at you. The trick is to let it out.’
I stilled my mind, then uttered the first thought that came: ‘Everything connects to my dream and the boat I was in. The dream tells me, and Isaka confirms that the boat, a boat full of migrants and refugees, was rammed. All of ’em drowned except for Isaka and me. I was put in a chest…’
I got up and started to walk around the room.
Up and down, round and about. Touched the walls, the door frame. Trailed my fingers along the dents and curves of our studio cell by doing the closest thing to hunting down my thoughts I could think of – pacing. Truth is, without Priss – her certainty, the spark of her fierce eyes – I felt hopeless, empty. A total waste of space. I gathered my wits, pushed the thought of Priss aside, and as my body relaxed and I exhaled, with my very next breath my tongue untied, and it came to me:
‘The sea-chest. As soon as Mama Rose opened that chest and gave me the rest of the gifts those people entrusted me with, everything changed.’
I remembered that hunch-backed cat of curiosity and felt it slinking between my legs again, almost tripping me up.
Cobra’s greens pleaded with me to dig deeper. It might as well have been Redwood standing in his shoes, Redwood who turned around. But it wasn’t Redwood. It was Cobra, his face brightening as he said: ‘And?’
‘Everything’s changed ’cause I want to know more. I want to find out exactly what happened. I have to know, ’cause I feel ’em around me.
‘Like me and Cat?’
‘I guess. Can’t talk to them as such, but I know they’re there. I hear ’em, Cobra. See ’em flitting around at the back of my eye. In that mirror, the uneven corners of this room. Hiding behind dark edges. I think they want me to help them. Don’t know how exactly…’
My nose twitched. I eased the itch to hide my uncertainty. ‘Sounds weird I know, but…’
‘Go on…’
‘I think they want justice, a day of reckoning.’
Cobra took off his tux. Hung it up. Then, with his knack of putting into words what I can’t quite grasp but is clamped deep inside and terrifies me, he said: ‘Are you sure they’re not out for revenge, Sante-girl? Are you sure they’re not using you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then what?’
‘Remember that time Mama Rose took us to the beach where she found me?’
‘Won’t forget that in a hurry. A trip to the seaside and what do we see?’
‘Dead bodies. Remember those women sunbathing next to ’em? Remember?’
Cobra winced in an effort to erase the image from his mind and sat down on the bed.
I settled beside him. ‘I reckon those spooks want the same sort of things we do, Cobra. They want their lives to matter. They saved me, I think, so that at least one person in the whole wide world would remember ’em. And I do. The dreams make sure of that.’
The scene on the beach seared within us, Cobra’s fingers trembled. He leaned over, picked up fragments of flute from the end of the bed, and slotted ’em together. ‘I can mend this if you want, Sante,’ he said. ‘Make it good as new for you and Mamadou.’
‘He doesn’t need a flute to play with now. Doesn’t need it as much as I do.’
Cobra put the bamboo pieces in my rucksack, then reassured me that if the Old Ones involve the police in our trouble all will be well.
‘But what if the police are already involved?’ What if…’
The endless possibilities and permutations of a connection between the Captain, Miguel, Grey Eyes and the local police propel me off the bed.
They’re all connected. Must be. I recall those faces leering at us in candlelight and I cringe, then shiver in fury: ‘Betcha the police are in on it. Betcha they get a cut of whatever the Captain and his crew make.’
Cobra sighs and beckons me back. As he rubs my nose with his, I gather him in my arms and bring out the full radiance of his smile with a promise: ‘We’re going to get out of this mess,’ I assure him. ‘Somehow or other I’m going to dream our way out of here tonight.’
He laughs, holds me tight. ‘You’re my girl, Sante,’ he whispers. ‘For ever and always, my very best girl.’
I don’t say a word. All I can to do is smile, ’cause I’m half-asleep already.