| |
The shovel bit easily into the dirt. I’d expected the handle to snap or the blade to shatter. I couldn’t name a spell or ritual which would manage that kind of enchantment. Had I done it? Had it been precast? A backwoods version of the sword in the stone?
Jupiter might’ve picked up some natural talent from his mother. Otherwise, somebody else knew about the location and had anticipated the need. This left a short list of suspects with Fortune at the top.
The old hoodoo said he’d been “minding the trunk.” But his was no tree trunk. Rice trunks were wooden barricades which controlled water flow into the fields, he’d said. His larger ritual certainly had released a magical energy into this river basin which I could still sense. His motives would have to stay another mystery. My caseload was full.
Three feet down, scooping out a sludgy mixture, the shovel blade finally skidded off something solid.
“Ow!” Jupiter cradled his forehead and rubbed it fiercely.
I held off asking if he was okay. He wasn’t okay. Hadn’t ever been. I set the shovel aside and began carefully scraping away mud.
My fingers traced the orbits of the eye sockets. The triangular cavity of a nose. Ridges of teeth came next and a slightly askew jaw. His forehead was an unmarred plate, smooth and whole. The bone gleamed in the evening dimness. Below the jaw? Nothing.
Jupiter stared into the pit. “I done what he asked. When I wasn’t lookin’, he took the axe we’d brought to get through the roots and he...”
I climbed out of the hole, my heart aching more than my blistered hands. His single cursed eye averted, I could see my son standing there in a few years’ time. I cautiously took him by the shoulders and pulled him close. He didn’t cry, all he did was sigh. Me? I damned near wept like a baby.
Fighting those emotions, cold logic kicked in. I tried to puzzle out why his father’s spirit had spoken to me and offered his magic. Or why I’d been drawn to this boy and spoken of him as my own.
A young boy had died here. His father and I had a connection through the spirit realm just like any would. That was the saddest part. The most devastating. None of this was an isolated incident from a darker past. It was a reality of the present. A son dead because of the chains which bound him. I wanted to know he’d be safe because if I could rescue Jupiter, I could save one of my own.
My own...
Mother had said we have relatives in South Carolina. A Ruth Haynes had appeared on Hallewell’s property list. Ancestors, they meant something with any belief. They gave you the strength to face the continued march of time.
But this whole state had been one of the biggest destinations for slave ships. The links through the Above and Below with ancestors could run deep as the Nile or shallow as a gutter. Genealogy, not my thing unless I could sense the connections. With this boy though, I couldn’t untangle my own damn feelings. Maybe another job for Caleb when, if, I got back to Florida.
Jupiter scooted away and raised his head. “When you came to the house, I saw the man who done this to me and wanted him to pay. When those men came in their black carriage at the crossroads, I could smell the greed on ‘em. They’d come here for the treasure. I’da been stuck here for good if they took it.”
“I’m not going to let you suffer any more,” I said.
I descended into the hole and scraped out around the skull. In the colorless night, I could smell more than damp soil. I smelled blood. That blood which Fortune said had already been shed. Here at Jupiter’s grave and in the fields. When I’d worked my fingers behind the fragile skull, cradled as any father would, I gently pulled.
In Atofo’s world, only the Two Spirits or the shaman could handle the dead. Anyone else would be cursed. For whatever mixed up reason, that duty had fallen to me. Araceli’s heaven and hell be damned, this boy had been trapped between realms for nothing he’d done. I was here to right that. Of all the spells and rituals I’d ever cast as a shaman, this one felt the most real. The sword was secondary.
The skull slurped free as if I’d pulled the plug on a hidden drain. A vortex swirled around the point, kicking up leaves and sprays of dirt. The great tree’s limbs clamored and groaned. Jupiter tossed his head back to watch and was gone.
Ground shifted and I scrambled out of the hole. I could see searchlights flickering in the trees when I reached the top. Good ‘ol Sheriff Hallewell had sent his posse into the woods. Inside the hole, the ground continued to swirl. The slurry of mud and blood receded.
A brass bound steamer trunk filled the emptiness. With Jupiter’s curse gone, a powerful aura seeped out, bold and timeless enough to make the massive tree seem like a sapling. I could feel the blade locked inside and the eons layered into every stroke of the smith’s hammer.
I grabbed the shovel and slid back into the hole. With as much strength as I could find, I rammed it into the padlock prepared to hammer away until it gave. Both shovel and lock shattered at first strike. Flinging open the chest, there it was.
The contents had been done up in satin with the sword left reverently on top. Intricate symbols etched the untarnished blade from pommel to tip. A six-pointed star surrounded a golden rivet above the pommel. More gold formed the basket hilt which shielded a grip covered in an unidentifiable hide and bound with gray silk. An unbelievable find. A piece of history uncovered. Fit for a museum, no restoration required.
Except for the immense field of divine energy.
Yeah. Divine. Damned if I didn’t want to argue with Araceli, but divine. Like your favorite song in church and the tiny swell in your chest when you sang it. The little bitty spark the preacher would happily declare to be proof of God’s existence. The Almighty’s finger extended to touch your doubting heart.
Only this was a fist reached inside your cracked open chest to massage a cold, still muscle back to life.
When I’d put on a badge and gun, I’d wanted to fight a broken system from the inside and do my best to protect and serve. The shield started a transformation whether you wanted it or not. It gave you a solemn mandate and duty as compelling as any spell. What you did with it, that was on you.
But this sword would make me the final word. I would answer to nobody but the sharp edge of Justice. Mordecai and his minions? Sheriff Hallewell, a man with a badge and no honor? They’d fall like grass, like the harvested rice.
“Let me end them,” spoke the sword.
And I wanted it. I wanted it like I’ve wanted nothing in my life.
The Shaw sword in one hand, Jupiter’s skull in the other, I scrambled out of the hole and I ran.
Flashlight beams sliced through the trees, too far away to snitch, but close enough my pursuers must’ve heard me crashing through the brush. The search parties had fanned out. They’d formed a loose perimeter, forcing me in one direction: West.
Good. That’s where the cemetery was. That’s where I needed to be. I dug deep and had a solid lead when I burst into the open rice fields.
Too far into the open to turn, I suddenly understood their strategy. Flashlights bobbed off to the left. Part of the group had already worked their way down the trail from the manor. A swollen creek ran to the other side. I had nowhere else to run.
My legs went wooden. I’ve seen how this ended so many times before. Drop the weapon! Shots fired. Shots fired. Suspect down.
I tried to focus only on the horizon. The cemetery where Jupiter’s father rested couldn’t be too far beyond the trees, but the distance seemed to grow. My steps fell unevenly. Knees threatened to buckle.
They finally gave out and I stumbled. The headlong, swimming fall hurtled me into the clearing where Fortune had performed his ritual. Only an empty stillness had been left behind.
I went down hard. Shaw’s sword glittered briefly and stuck a landing in the mud, shivering with the impact. My hands out, they crushed rigid stalks then reed-choked mud. I tucked my chin, my forehead striking next.
Atofo’s rough lips against the crest of my skull, that’s what I felt in the moment of impact. Where those cold, hungry lips had sifted through my spirit for the poison hidden inside. Only he was nowhere near to save me this time. Death had found me unguarded.
I rolled to my back and stared into the sky. Hadn’t I just been here? Same damn predicament?
Clouds feathered a starry view. Astrologers had read for me on my journeys, none indicated I’d die here, alone, in an empty field. Maybe this is what Tish had seen in the entrails.
But what did they know? Jupiter’s mom had been a seer too. She’d foreseen a war her son would start. The sword a swaying shadow among the tall grass, whatever war was meant to happen would end tonight if I couldn’t get up. A war that wasn’t even mine. But I knew who wanted it. Some crazy Catalan alchemist nun doomsayer. Damned if she couldn’t just have it.
I fumbled through my jacket pockets. Inside I found a small ingot of metal and a tightly wrapped packet. What had she said to do? Clap?
“Put your hands together.” I chuckled. Little most definitely not a nun was getting me to pray.
I imagined a flare shooting into the sky. Mordecai’s goons resting not far away, I’d be handing the lynch mob a triple murder conviction and an Armageddon Sword all at once. But they’d find me sooner or later. And I couldn’t go another step.
No blinding flare shot into the sky. Instead, I felt a tingle on my palms. Pulling them apart became a struggle, a fight against an unseen force. I relaxed and let the power snap them closed again before tearing them apart one more time. Magnetism. I’d become a true North for the metal-sensing alchemist.
The laugh came more easily this time. If she wasn’t already in custody, she’d never get here in time. The flashlight beams had stopped bobbing and found the footpath I’d blazed earlier through the field. A straight line, they’d be on top of me, sure enough.
I closed my eyes and dared to call out to Death.
“Yo, I’m right here! Been here all this time you son of a bitch!”
Clouds blotted out the moon and stars. Water sloshed, not the splash of oars but a tiny trickle which built into a steady rush. The water level in the field stayed the same but the shadows, the hidden spaces of the Below, crept over me. The perimeter darkness reached out and deftly spread to conceal first my Timbs then crawled up toward my face.
Searchlights closed in. Their beams turned the beaten path into a trench of mercury. Dead at the opening, one of the bodyguards stared lifeless into the sky. Right before the searchlights would’ve caught the lost gleam in his eyes, I heard a pop and complete darkness fell.
Confused voices followed. Their night vision already ruined by the bright lights, the posse stumbled through the darkness, exposed, weak. A predatory urge spiked in my chest. Now was the time to strike. The ancient sword demanded justice while another deeper more recent injury called out for revenge.
This wasn’t a death shroud, this was the cloak. Once more, I’d been protected. I couldn’t say the same for the police swarming into the field.