Ring Shout(25)

“That not going to bring her back,” Chef whispers. She looks up at me, eyes red and wet. I fight to talk, but it’s like the anger gripping my tongue.

“Hunnah bex down,” Nana Jean tells me. “Gwine bun up.”

She right. My skin on fire. Feel like I could rip it off. I turn and stalk through the front door. Chef calls out but I’m already off the porch, making my way into the yard of bottle trees. There’s a hornet’s nest in my head I can’t get quiet—as if a piece of Butcher Clyde’s awful singing wormed its way inside. Even worse is the guilt gnawing my insides. Whispering that I stirred all this up. That Sadie’s death is my fault. Looking to the night sky, I let out that scream I been holding in and start shouting.

“Where you at? Give me the sword and now take it back? Leave me with nothing?” Molly’s apprentices stand guard on the porch, eyeing me. But I don’t care. “If I’m your champion, then help me! Tell me what I have to do! Damn you, answer me!”

In anger I kick at one of the bottle trees and go tumbling, falling to land on my backside—somewhere else.

I scramble up on unsteady feet, swaying from the dizziness. The blue sky without a sun is now an angry orange with bits of lightning dancing across it. The big oak ain’t got leaves no more and long black sheets hang from bare branches, blowing in a breeze I can’t feel. Auntie Ondine, Auntie Margaret, and Auntie Jadine all there, wearing black dresses and broad black hats. A dark table sits between them. No drink or food this time, just a bundle of black cloth.

“Did you know?” I shout at Auntie Jadine. “You see what coming! Did you—?”

She runs forward, embracing me. I fight her, but she holds me tight, singing the same mourning song the Shouters was: I’ll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms,

Lay dis body down.

And my soul and your soul will meet in de day,

When I lay dis body down.

I don’t know why, but those words from her lips send every feeling I been keeping back this night pouring out. I fall into her, loosing a cry filled with a pain I ain’t tried to feel in seven years. Since the night I lost …

I lay there sobbing until I can catch a breath, then look up to face them.

“I needed you and you wasn’t there.”

Auntie Ondine glances to the angry sky. “The veil … has grown.”

“The enemy cut us off from your world!” Auntie Margaret grumbles.

“Then how did I get here?”

“You wanted to very badly,” Auntie Ondine says. “Sometimes that is enough.”

Then I remember. “My sword, it—”

Auntie Ondine’s face falls and they all look to the bundle on the table. I disentangle from Auntie Jadine, walking up to find my sword, nestled in black cloth. The dark leaf-blade is in pieces, a jagged edge jutting from the silver hilt. I run fingers along the fragments. There’s no song. No nothing.

“It returned when broken,” Auntie Ondine explains.

“Can you fix it?”

Auntie Margaret sucks her teeth. “Nobody can do that but you.”

As usual, I got no idea what that means. But there’s other things need discussing. I tell them about my confrontations with Butcher Clyde, about what he says is coming.

“There’s an evil going on,” Auntie Jadine hums darkly.

“This Grand Cyclops.” Auntie Ondine’s mouth twists up at the name. “It is an incarnation of the enemy, given flesh. I fear what it means for your world.”

“It gon’ mean the end!” Auntie Margaret huffs.

“Butcher Clyde, he tell more than that. He say he and the Ku Kluxes came looking for me seven years back. That they the ones who…” I can’t say the rest.

All three exchange looks before Auntie Ondine nods slow.

Her answer hits like a hammer. “So all that they done, was because they wanted me? Why did you choose me as your champion?”

More exchanged glances, and I fight not to start shouting.

“To stop you from being theirs,” Auntie Ondine says finally.

I step back, staggered. “That don’t make sense!”

“They didn’t come to kill you that night,” Auntie Ondine says. “Not in body.”

“Enemy have a prophecy,” Auntie Margaret says. “To steal our champion. Make her over as theirs.”

“We stopped them from taking you,” Auntie Ondine explains. “To undo their plans. But I fear we may have unwittingly done their bidding.” She looks to the broken sword. “The weapon is a thing of vengeance. The wielder must pour their own anger and suffering into it. We thought it could take away your pain. But we have only fed that wound, made you into a killer.”

“It’s a sword,” I snap. “What else could I be?”

Auntie Ondine eyes me stern. “Very soon, the enemy will make an offer. How you choose will determine the fate of your world.”

I glare back, set to tell her she crazy, until I remember Butcher Clyde’s words: Said before we wanted to make an offer, Maryse. Give you what you want more than anything—power over life and death. I shake my head. “What they got to offer to make me side with them? They kill my people! People who look like me!”

“We can’t see—the enemy veils it from us…” Auntie Ondine begins.