Ring Shout(35)

“You only have to say yes, Maryse,” Butcher Clyde urges. “Accept this gift!”

Should be easy for me to say no. To damn these monsters to hell and beyond.

But … Butcher Clyde’s words are in my head and I can’t shake them out. What they offering me is power. Power to protect. Power to avenge. Power over the life and death of my people. When colored folk ever had anyone offer us so much? When we ever had the power not to be scared no more? Ain’t we been suffering and dying all this time, at the hands of monsters in human form? What difference then if we make a pact with some other monsters? What we owe this world that so despises and brutalizes us? Why lift a hand to save it when it ain’t never done a damn thing to save us?

So close you are to seeing the truth, the Grand Cyclops croons. Give over your anger. Let us show you how to wield it. How to make you strong. Without fear of your enemies or mercy. Do not flee from it. Embrace it. Who is to blame for the hate that hate made?

I can feel the heat of that anger rising, hot enough to burn. In my head are all the visions I ever seen. Men, women, and children who look like me, under the lash, in chains, whipped until the flesh hanging from their bones, hurt so bad their souls cry out. This why they chose me. Because I carry not just the anger of what I seen with my own eyes but centuries of anger—growing up in me. Auntie Ondine’s fears was right. In giving me that sword, they were molding me for the very enemy I’m meant to fight.

Be careful now, Bruh Rabbit. My brother’s voice comes so strong, it feels like he’s right in my ear. We the trickster—the spider, the rabbit, even the fox. We fool those stronger than us. That’s how we survive. Watch out you don’t get tricked yo’self!

His voice is followed by another.

They like the places where we hurt. They use it against us.

The words of the girl, my other self from the dream place, strikes with sudden understanding. The places where we hurt. Where we hurt. Not just me, all of us, colored folk everywhere, who carry our wounds with us, sometimes open for all to see, but always so much more buried and hidden deep. I remember the songs that come with all those visions. Songs full of hurt. Songs of sadness and tears. Songs pulsing with pain. A righteous anger and cry for justice.

But not hate.

They ain’t the same thing. Never was. These monsters want to pervert that. Turn it to their own ends. Because that’s what they do. Twist you all up so that you forget yourself. Make you into something like them. Only I can’t forget, because all those memories always with me, showing me the way.

I smile, and a cleansing breath cools the fire beneath my skin. This was my test. And I think I just passed. I flick eyes to Butcher Clyde.

“You said tonight, they all just meat.”

He look confused for once. I appreciate that.

“That’s what you call these Klans, just meat.”

“Not sure we follow—”

“First time, back at your shop, you said we was all meat. No matter the skin. You say we all here for you to use up.” I nod to the Ku Kluxes. “You’d do to us what they let you do to them. If I gave you the chance. That right?”

He don’t answer, just puts on a jack-o’-lantern grin. But it speaks well enough. I smile back, lowering my hand—and call up my sword.

The visions swirl about. Only there’s no frightened girl threatening to pull me under. And with that fear conquered, seems like I opened a floodgate. The spirits that come now not just a few, not even hundreds. More like thousands, rushing to the sword, pouring out the songs of their lives, the strength of it running through the iron and up into me. Drums and shouts and cries, shrieks and laughter and howls, rhythmic chants and long keening moans. An archive of endless memories, from watery graves in the Atlantic to muddy rice fields and cotton plantations, from the stifling depths of gold mines to the sickly sweet smell of boiling sugar that consumed up people, devoured them in jaws of whips and chains and iron implements to shackle and ruin. I’m swept up by that maelstrom and I’m singing too, spilling out my own pain. The bound chiefs and kings shout at our cries, rousing old gods, and the cool silver slides into my waiting grip, black smoke stitching into a sharp leaf-blade. Somewhere near I hear Butcher Clyde choke, his voice strangled.

“We broke you!”

Don’t know if he means me or the sword. Maybe both.

I wink at Chef before turning back to the Grand Cyclops, whose tentacles still writhing about me.

What is this? What is happening?

“You ever hear the story of Truth and Lies?” I ask. “Well, I’ll get to the good part. You the Lie.”

Bringing up my sword, I grip it with both hands and plunge it into that nest of eyes on the monster’s stump of a head. The blade bursts into light, scorching all it touches. The Grand Cyclops shudders as white fire courses through her massive body, showing beneath the glistening flesh, sending hundreds of mouths screaming in agony, flames erupting from their parted lips. Across the mountaintop, Ku Kluxes scream too, like they feeling that pain. Good! I pull out my sword just as she whips back her long neck, sending blood and charred flesh flying.

Chef whoops. “That’s what I’m talking about!” She pulls out two bottles from her jacket, shaking them until the liquid inside glows bright. A special concoction Molly helped brew: part explosives and pure Mama’s Water. Running forward she hurls one into a screaming flaming mouth on the Grand Cyclops’s torso and then the second into another. When she drops to the platform, I follow, just as the detonations go off—blowing big holes in the monster’s body, so that I think she might come crashing down. But she bellows a roar that shakes the mountaintop. And I know, we only done made her mad.