4:28 P.M.
I run as fast as I can. In the middle of the cane field, I can see even less than I did in the fog up on the volcano, but I don’t slow down. I use my arms to push away the stalks that hit my face and my legs.
I think about Papa’s words again. The words he spoke when he woke me up, just before the main road.
“Run, sweetheart, run through the field, straight ahead, and try to follow the sound of traffic, but don’t let anyone see you. Look out for the bell tower of the church. Don’t go up or down, just try to stay at the same level so you won’t get lost. The umbrella lady, Sopha, remember? You have to reach the umbrella lady. There’ll be lots of people there. You’ll be safe.”
I cried a lot.
I knew from the beginning. Papa was lying to me.
I’ll never see Maman again. And yet he told me she was waiting for me there, near the black rocks, on the other side of the road.
Papa had crouched down in front of me then. The way I like him to. And he started speaking very fast, almost without breathing.
“You’re right, sweetheart, your maman is on the other side of the road. But there’s something I haven’t told you. There is another lady waiting for us there. A lady your Papa used to love a long time ago. Alex’s mother—you know, your big brother who died. That made her very unhappy, when Alex died, and she’s become a bad person, a very bad person. Like the witches in your books, like Grand-mère Kalle. Do you understand, Sopha? So, you have to help us. Are you my princess, sweetheart?”
My heart hurt too much for me to answer.
“Are you my princess, yes or no?”
“Y-yes . . .”
“Good. Then you have to run, Sopha, you have to run and tell the fairy with the parasol, the one who protects us. You have to run as fast as you can.”
I don’t believe in fairies any more, Papa.
I am running, though. I’m running as fast as my legs will carry me.
Because this time, I believe you.
4:29 P.M.
Three smashed guava branches lie on the pebbles. The murky red liquid that poured from the fruit is almost instantly washed away by the foam from the waves. Near the guavas, a beige canvas blanket has fallen, as if abandoned by a ghost, frightened away by the three gunshots. A fourth branch, thicker and covered with sugar cane and screwpine leaves to give it the shape of a young child, has rolled a few meters further away.
Graziella suppresses an explosion of hatred. The Hämmerli shakes in her hand.
“Where is the child?”
“Somewhere safe, my darling.”
Graziella moves forward. The barrel of the revolver is only a few centimeters from his chest. The dark foundation on her face, streaked with tears, looks like war paint. She forces herself to lower the tension, to keep control of the situation and of herself.
“What’s the point of your little ruse, exactly?”
“I had to bring something in exchange for Liane, as you told me. But did you really think I’d be stupid enough to hand Sopha over to you? She just had to stay with me as long as possible, because I knew you’d be listening to the radio, following the hunt as it happened. If I’d given Sopha to the police, you would have known immediately. It would have been all over the news.”
Graziella erupts with forced laughter.
“How touching! And how ridiculous, too. She can’t have got far in that case. With a bit of luck, I should have time to kill you both and then go and flush her out with my 4x4.”
For a brief instant, Graziella turns away and looks over at the Zodiac. Martial doesn’t hesitate this time. His arm flies forward and, with the back of his hand, he knocks the revolver out of Graziella’s grip. It falls to the ground two meters away.
Lodged between two stones.
Graziella swears. Martial shoves her backwards. Spotting the Hämmerli, he rushes towards it, bridging the distance in three strides. He reaches down, and his hand closes around the revolver. He turns and aims. Finally the mad bitch is . . .
The sun disappears behind a black moon.
This is the last thing he sees. In the next second, the huge black stone that Graziella has picked up with two hands smashes against his temple.
4:31 P.M.
The fairy with the parasol!
She’s there, in front of me. I can see the big blue umbrella above the cane stalks.
I’m almost there!
It’s really a parasol, Papa told me, not an umbrella!
The blue fairy hasn’t seen me. Her eyes and smile are soft, like a maman who forgives everything.
I keep pushing through the sugar cane. The stalks hurt me. It’s like swimming through a sea of sharp seaweed, but there are less of them now. I think I’m coming to the end of the field.
I can run even faster. I hear the cars on the road. I see houses in the distance. Papa told me to grab the first person I see and tell them my name is Josapha Bellion.
“Just your name,” Papa told me. “The first thing the person will do is call the police.”
As you wish, Papa.
If you think the police are better at fighting witches than fairies.
Sopha will never know the answer to this.
Suddenly, she bursts through the last curtain of sugar cane, her eyes fixed on the blue and gold parasol. Never did she imagine that the cane field would stop for a lava flow.
Her right foot is the first to bang against the grey scoria. Sopha loses her balance. Then her left foot trips over a block of tuff.
The little girl rolls several meters. She sees the blue fairy and the parasol spinning in the sky, like a tightrope walker defying gravity, while her whole body is scraped and torn on the sharp, serrated rock.
But she doesn’t suffer for long.
Her head collides with the slender trunk of what is known in Réunion as a “rampart tree,’ growing in a narrow gap between the flows of hardened lava.