Authors: Sherwood Smith
“There’s the Kindah,” Aurélie cried. “We are at Accompong!”
Accompong, I remembered from my college history course, was one of the main Maroon towns in the mountains of Jamaica. So the kids had been diving off of Fort Charles, over the rooftops of the two-thirds of Port Royal that had sunk in a mighty quake in 1692.
We entered a cottage with a steeply slanted thatched roof mostly made of palm fronds, set under a tamarind tree. It was open on three sides. The sun was fast sinking when Aurélie dashed inside, crying, “Nanny! Nanny!”
“Manners,” Anne called hoarsely.
Aurélie caught herself up short, and politely greeted everyone she saw, who greeted her in return as they paused in decorating the chamber with bright red silk scarves and fresh flowers.
I looked into faces of varying colors, from Anne’s sun-scorched pale to light brown, reddish bronze, and very dark. From the skin colors and bone structures of the people gathered I guessed they were Africans and Spaniards as well as northern Europeans, with youngsters of various genetic mixes.
Most of those faces looked back at Aurélie with love, and some with sadness, though that expression might have been carved in, the silent evidence of the brutal life of slavery: I glimpsed the puckered scars of brands on some, though others’ skin had the smoothness of freedom, or else the scars were hidden under the bright clothes.
The center of attention was a very old woman whose lined face was darker even than Mimba’s. As Aurélie ran up to kiss her, she smiled and held out gnarled hands.
“Where is the regal?” Aurélie exclaimed. “Is it time for music?”
“You will not play tonight. You will dance, for tonight is yours.” The husky old voice was tender, almost reedy.
The chamber filled with life in a fantasia of hues. Scarves, silks, belts, every type of personal decoration enhanced the effect as people and animals crowded in. There was even a snake curling languorously on a silken cushion.
Gradually my perceptions widened as the music began. The regal, ancestor of the organ, began an entrancing melody, given a dancy beat by drums. Threading through the melody strummed a lute and a twelve-stringed harp. The musicians began weaving the people together into harmony via dance. The mesmerizing rhythms, with counterpoint singing, and the explosion of scarlet, molten gold, cobalt, and viridian, fulgent with life, intensified exponentially, until it seethed through me, overwhelming me to the point of pain. I sensed others around me, a shifting, blending luminescence of beings, as Aurélie danced happily among the other children.
Nanny Hiasinte had been sitting in the midst of the celebrants, her eyes closed, as she rocked gently to the rhythms. Now her eyes opened slowly, their expression not vacant, but distant, as if she had been called from a place of equipoise between the past, the now, and the possible future.
She lifted her gaze and focused on me.
I knew she saw me: my nerves prickled though my body was miles and years away. Her voice was low and rough, her French accent singsong, and old-fashioned in the way Anne’s English was old-fashioned. “I called upon Ayizan, but you are not one of the
lwa
, the spirits who serve
le bon Dieu
. Your body lives. Your soul is bound to Aurélie by blood, and by magic. You are called to walk in the form of a duppy to guard this child, Aurélie.”
“Duppy?” I tried to say—and she heard me.
“You both are called away from your homes. It has been and will be. In French we say
vous-deux.”
You two
, I translated into English.
“The future you come from is fog to me,” Nanny Hiasinte said. “My understanding is that the future is not bound as is the past, but I called for one from her future in order to secure her survival if I could.”
So here was the person who had yanked me out of my life. I could understand her wanting to protect Aurélie by reaching into Aurélie’s future, but a month before my wedding, I didn’t want to be the one. Anyway, I didn’t know anything about kids—I was an only child, and had never even been a babysitter.
But before I could ask her to pick someone else, she went on, her voice thinned to a thread as if this conversation took the strength out of her. “Much can change, but this I know: You have carried the Navaratna necklace with its stones of great power, as will Aurélie.”
That caught me totally by surprise. “The what?” I asked. So far, the only famous necklace I’d worn was something Alec had loaned me the night of the masquerade ball, when I was pretending to be Ruli. But he hadn’t mentioned any magical powers.
“No one else can see it go from me to her.” She closed her eyes.
Another blink and the light of dawn edged the palms and fruit trees and ferns with goldy-green fire. Nanny Hiasinte sat upright in her chair. Before her knelt Aurélie, her head on the old woman’s lap. Anne and Mimba stood at either side of the old woman’s chair.
“You are called away from here,” Nanny said to Aurélie, low and tender. “Your fate lies across the sea. But you will have three things to take with you: our love, a gift, and a guide.”
“What guide?” Aurélie asked tearfully, completely hoarse.
“I have bound a duppy to you as your guide. You must learn to listen, and she will speak to you, and you to her.”
“I have a duppy of my own?” Aurélie lifted her head.
“She is there to protect you as much as she can, but because she is a duppy, she cannot act in the physical world. So you must listen.”
“But I don’t want to go away.”
Anne knelt down by her daughter. “Child, it is best. Your father died in one sea battle, your brother in another when he was your age. Your sister died in the hurricane when this plantation was ruined, before you were born. When that letter came, my first thought was, if you go, then one of my children might live.”
Aurélie wiped teary eyes, and Anne went on. “My father always used
to talk about England, how peaceful it is. The ordered virtue of its gardens, which never know the infernal intrusion of pirates or hurricanes. Your life will know prodigious improvement in England. I shall see to that.”
Mimba laid her hand on Aurélie’s curly head. “Nanny has spoken. What she says, must be.”
“I want you to go, too,” Aurélie cried to her mother.
Anne winced, and Mimba pulled her to her feet. They started out of the cottage.
Nanny stretched out a gnarled hand toward Aurélie. “Bide a moment, child.”
Anne and Mimba withdrew, leaving Aurélie standing with Nanny, and me hovering invisibly nearby.
“You must go, Aurélie. It is to be. But it is not to be for your mother,” Nanny said. “Do not make it more painful for her.”
Aurélie cried, “My
Maman
, is she in danger? I can feel it, she has the fever.”
“The fate of this fever I do not see. I see only that your paths must diverge here. I have called to the
lwa
for aid and guidance, and you have been sent your own duppy to guide you. And now for the gift I promised, which will protect you from harmful spirits and spells.”
Aurélie fretted. “I do not want them! Harry says the English call our ways heathen, and devil-worship. He even says bad things about my grandmother Marie-Claude’s priests. Why I must go to such a place?”
“There are good and bad among them. Just as there are good and bad among us.”
“So these Kittredges are not evil?” Aurélie asked.
“I do not know them. I do not see them. But people who reach so very far to find their family? That is not an evil action,” Nanny said.
Aurélie gave a tiny nod.
“Your mother wishes for you to go live among these
Anglais
, and it is natural for a mother to wish her child to know the ways of her people. It might come to pass that the
Anglais
will wish to change your ways,
even your name,” Nanny said. “Names can be put off and put on, you will find, like the wealthy change their clothes. You are still you, whatever name you wear. Do you comprehend?”
The child ducked her head, then gulped on a sob.
“Then with my gift come three things, as I once heard from my grandmother in Africa.”
Aurélie bent her head, listening.
“First, remember that you own yourself. There are many ways to own and be owned, not just on the auction block. Never sell yourself, for a chosen bondage is harder to escape than the chains of the oppressor. I will add, to remind you, that you are connected by blood to the great Boukman, and to Queen Nanny of the Windward Maroons. They are great people.”
Aurélie assented with the air of one who knows these facts.
“Second, it might come to pass that your English family will want to baptize you. They will teach you their ways. Take what is good, for that is part of the great Creole. You understand, child?”
“I know what Creole means,” Aurélie exclaimed as she knuckled tears from her eyes. “It is like the two kinds of French. There is the kind that I must speak with Grandmère Marie-Claude and the family on Saint-Domingue, and there is the French that
we
speak, that Tante Mimba said is made of words from French and Spanish and Akan and Igbo tongues. I like that French best, for it is quick, and pretty, like the doctor bird.”
“You have a quick ear, the ear of the musician, child,” Nanny said. “The great Creole unites all faiths as one under
le bon Dieu
.” She pronounced the French for “God” with an accent that sounded more like
Bondje
. “But you might have to keep your understanding hidden.”
Aurélie bobbed her head, looking troubled. “I know. Grandmère was so very angry when Cousin Fiba talked of praying to
lwa
to help
le bon Dieu
hear us.”
“Your third thing is the gift itself. It is a secret thing, to keep hidden. It is very old, older even than our family forced here to these islands. It is older than our family brought to Africa, for it is from a
woman who traveled out of far Siam to marry an African prince. And her foremothers were from another part of the world altogether, so you will see.”
Nanny opened her hands. She disclosed a worked chain of gold with bright stones set into it at intervals. Aurélie stared, marveling, for each stone was a different color from the next. “It is called the Navaratna.”
I stared. I had definitely never seen that necklace before.
Nanny’s forefinger touched the center stone. “So it was said in the Sanskrit: this ruby represents the sun. It is your center.” She moved on, chanting as she touched each stone. “Red Coral for Mangala, the red star, an emerald for Budah, the green star, son of the moon, a yellow sapphire for Deva-guru, father-star, a diamond for Shukra, the white star, a blue sapphire for Shani, the ring-star, Gomedaka,” she touched a ruddy stone that looked like a garnet, “for Rahu, when the moon is on the rise, and a Cat’s Eye for Ketu, when the moon is descending.” With that, she clasped the necklace around Aurélie’s neck, and tucked it inside her shirt, so that it was completely hidden. “There are those who murder and cause strife to steal and sell such stones, but far more powerful are the charms woven into them, with love, and loyalty, and good will. It surrounds you as the stars surround us, sheltering and protecting the good spirits who watch over those who strive to be pure in heart.”
Wow, I thought. This Great Creole seemed to have Hindu thought at its base—at least, what I understood of Hindu as the oldest religious tradition in the world: complete freedom of worship that accepts all forms of belief and regards all humans as one family.
“How can I be pure in heart?” Aurélie asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means choosing to do no evil. It is a lifelong struggle,” Nanny said. “There are rules that come with this gift. You must never take a life. And you must not eat of any slaughtered creature.”
“Creature?”
“You must not eat meat. This is why my obeah is not begun with a sacrifice, though others practice differently. This is why my walls are hung with red to remind us of the lifeblood all creatures share. But I do not spill it.”
“Can I eat eggs?”
“You
can
eat anything, but you must
choose
not to eat meat. Eggs are not slaughtered in violence. My grandmother taught me that the hen does not object to the egg being taken, so you may eat of it. You may drink the milk of goat or cow, because she gives it freely.”
Aurélie looked confused, then said, “Why is the necklace to come to me, your great-granddaughter, and not to my Tante Mimba, who is your granddaughter?”
“Because it has skipped that generation and chosen you. It is a gift, but it also is a burden, for its protections must stay secret.”
Aurélie clutched her thin fingers to her skinny chest. “If, if I don’t keep the rules, will it kill me?”
Nanny Hiasinte let out a breath of a laugh, more sad than humorous. “A necklace cannot kill you. It is how you choose to use the power the charms command that will cause good or evil.”
“What charms?”
“I will not teach a child powers she does not understand, for that is to put the carving knife into the hands of a baby who only knows how to grasp and to poke. Your work is to listen, to learn through the teaching of dreams and of the wise, to avoid doing harm. If, in the course of time you learn of powerful things, it is to be hoped you will have learnt the wisdom to wield the power well. Always, always, always you must keep it secret. It is too powerful to be taken from you, but demons who see it will do anything to trick you into giving it, and that must never happen, for they will use it to cause more harm in a world already burdened with woe.”
A kiss, and Nanny let her go.
Aurélie departed with slow steps, rejoining her mother and aunt at the top of the path.
“As well it’s mostly downhill,” Mimba said with a worried look at Anne.
The clear morning light revealed that Anne’s blotchy face was due less to sunburn than to fever. By the time they reached the cove where the Kittredge plantation’s main building was, Mimba was mostly supporting
Anne’s weight. She sent Aurélie on ahead to alert their cook, who I understood to be their medical practitioner as well.