LIFE NEAR THE BONE Read online

  “You will give anything if I raise her up? Anything? You will even give up your child to me?” He must make sure she meant it.

  A look of dawning understanding and then dismay filled the mother’s eyes. She hung her head. Her tears kept falling, drenching her sweaty naked breasts. She had to decide. Bury her child in the cold ground or see her rise up and walk again, alive and well, but belonging to someone else. Belonging to…

  “Yes,” she said, jutting out her chin in defiance. “Yes, I told you, yes. Anything. If you must take her, then take her, as long as she is alive again.”

  The witch doctor stood and came to the child’s mother. “When I raise her, she will be mine. You understand? Forever mine. I will take her from here and she will live with me. One day, when she is old enough to wed, she will be my bride. Tell me you understand.”

  Since the mother made no protest beyond the horror of what she was doing to her only child reflecting from her eyes, the pact was sealed.

  “If you break your promise, I will kill you,” he said. “I will come in the night like a shadow and kill you.”

  She turned aside, unable to look him in the face.

  He left through the low door and stood a moment staring up at the starry sky from whence he derived part of his power. The sky, the earth, the sea, they all gave him just a particle of their powers, but it was enough. Enough to raise a human being he did not know yet, but enough to hope to raise one.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Keep away the family, let no one see her, allow no ceremony for her spirit. Tell no one, ever, of what happens here, good or bad, you understand? And while I'm gone keep the flies away too,” he added. “She must be kept clean and free of vermin.”

  He hurried off into the night, loping like a gazelle. His talismans were left behind, discarded on the floor near the dead girl. For this he would not need them, and in fact, they would play no part. He required special plants that grew deep in the interior of the jungle, and water from the sea, and earth from the foot of the great sacred rock where all former witch doctors had been buried. Three times he had raised the dead with the secret potion, but if he was successful this fourth time it would be such a great accomplishment he might think himself a king rather than a witch doctor.

  And the little girl would be his queen.

  #

  The island the witch doctor searched in the dark for his magic ingredients had no name for the people. Later in history it would be called Hispaniola. It was home to a few hundred aborigines who did not remember how any of them had come to be on the island and none of whom had ever tried to leave it. The land was merely home, the place where they lived out their lives. Centuries later the island would be conquered and ruled by the Spanish, who changed the name to Santo Domingo. In 1697 a formal division of the island occurred changing the name again into Santo Domingo and Saint-Domingue. Finally, it was changed to Haiti, what an ancient people used to call it. From that period the island was ruled over by despots and dictators.

  But in this time before time was kept, it was nothing more than a jungle-encrusted plot of land in the Atlantic, neglected and ignored, its people savage and superstitious and alone, so very alone.

  There were other witch doctors, and other small tribes, on various parts of the island, but Mujai knew he was the greatest of all. He had learned well everything his father and his grandfather had taught him about the witch arts, until he surpassed them and discovered, really by chance, the potion that brought the dead back to life again.

  His reputation had spread and, after it was known he raised up a panther, some even feared him so much they let themselves die of fevers and infections rather than call for him. Others, however, knowing his value, came to his door and kept him rich with food and weapons for his prized wisdom. Perhaps, he thought, they were afraid, too, so they left him bribes. They gave him feathers of the rare ni-ni bird that had tail feathers of royal purple and emerald green. They brought beautiful shells taken by skilled divers from the sea floor, shells radiant with rainbow colors. And every fruit and every fish and every varmint that walked the island had at one time or another been deposited before his door as a gift.

  He had never really wanted for anything or worked to feed himself. Yet there was one gift he had never been granted. Mujai had never had a woman. He was too feared. He was not good marriage material, never even considered as a mate for a father’s daughters. A man who could raise the dead was a fearful being indeed. He expected to live a solitary existence and die old and alone. Until tonight, with the little sleeping-dead girl who he knew, some way, some how, he would be able to raise up. She held a promise of the one thing he wanted and missed the most.

  It was true the chicken did not cluck after it was raised. And the dog did not bark. But the panther, yes, it had been almost as before, roaring, leaping, hunting prey. But it had seemed to Mujai, following the dead-before-now-alive panther’s trail for several weeks out of curiosity, it had seemed the big cat had turned into quite a voracious beast. Keeping well-hidden and down wind, Mujai watched it many times take it’s prey apart nearly on the very moment of impact, at the instant of its death from the panther’s vicious long teeth. Flesh went flying skyward, to the right and to the left, and still the beast attacked, ripping and tearing in such a frenzy that its entire face and chest was slathered with blood from its victim. It did not feed so much as battle and destroy.

  Mujai loped harder and tapped on his chest for protection, thinking of the beast he had raised and how dark the night still was, dawn some hours yet in the distance. Where was that hungry beast now? And was it on the prowl anywhere nearby for the fearful master who had raised it from the dead?

  And what of the child, he wondered, suddenly, his lope faltering. Mujai was not a stupid man, and could follow a line of logic as neatly as anyone. What if when raised the little girl was changed? Was vicious? Was rapacious? What if she became a beast who could not be satisfied?

  Again Majai tapped his chest for protection, for good luck, for help from the gods, for the heavens to favor him, as they had done all his life. He possessed but this one chance and he would take it, no matter what the outcome.

  He took up his running lope again, for he had to hurry. Many of the plants he needed for the potion were scattered far and wide. He had much work to do, much territory to cover. And already the child was cold, so cold.

  The breeze from the ocean wafted across his face, filling his nostrils until he could taste the brine on his tongue. He could smell the fecund earth and his nostrils flooded with the scent of various night-blooming flowers whose perfume was so strong it could dull a weaker man. He concentrated so the spirit gods would lead him to the plants he needed. Once calm, it came again on the wind, the scent of the deep, mysterious sea. He breathed in deeply and smiled. This is my island, he boasted to himself. I am king here. I am a god here. No one can do what I have done and what I am about to do. I am afraid of nothing, nothing. If I fail, no one will know. If I succeed…

  He went into a trot and then into a true all-out run. He had to hurry, hurry, hurry.

  He had a child bride to save. He had a beautiful, innocent, perfectly proportioned queen to raise up from the dead and to make his very own. She could not remain dead too long or even the potion would not work.

  Yet if it worked! He would be alone no more. He swore it. Like his grandfather and father before him, he had found a woman he could take and make his own. That she was so young did not matter. He could teach her everything and be patient until she was a few years older. He would spend those years tutoring her how to work for him, bathe him, fetch and cook and climb the trees for his honey. He would teach her how to behave. How to love him as her king, as her Giver of Life. She would, after all, owe him everything, forever. She would be his Child-Lover-Mother-Companion-Inspiration, his alone, forever.

  CHAPTER 3

  COMING ALIVE

  The instant the potion was massaged down her throat so that it slid into her be
lly, the magic began to work.

  The potion mixed with the contents of her stomach, permeated the cells of the stomach wall, drifted into the silent blood stream. Like a horde of marauding ants, the potion properties invaded the cells. Those cells twinkled to life and began to move, invading the cells next to them. Within an hour all the cells of the child’s body had been changed, replaced, even down into the marrow of her bones. Human cells still, yes, but the DNA had been tweaked into something beyond human and life now was not like any life existing on the planet earth.

  After waiting the proper amount of time, Mujai said a wild prayer beneath his breath and began to pound on the child’s chest. He must get the heart moving again. This is what he had done with the animals. With each mild thump he whispered wilder and more desperate prayers to the gods, asking for this miracle, this one if no other ever again.

  He had pushed the mother from the hut and forbade her from speaking of this death and this ritual to anyone. He promised to take her life if she did. This was one raising he did not want to broadcast. In fact, if this raising worked, he had promised himself he would never do it again. Somewhere in the center of him where his man spirit resided, he felt what he was doing was against all nature. Already he had broken the very rules of the world by raising animals, but to raise a human being was…well, it was a bad business. He knew that, sensed it, even though he could not stop from trying to do it.

  With each thump on the girl’s dead chest, he prayed harder. Do this for me, he prayed. I want her. I need her. She is mine. Sweat dripped from his face. Outside the moon had slid around the edge of the world and soon the sun would peak from over the lip of the blue sea. He could not be found here in the day, performing this ritual on the child. If others discovered he could raise a human being, they would bring every death on the island to him. Corpses outside his hut would rise higher than the thatched roof and drown the sky.

  If they knew of it and he failed, they would dismiss him as a charlatan. He’d be thought of as someone who had cruelly made a grieving mother believe in the impossible. Rather than a king, he would become a pariah. His people knew no forgiveness. When you did a horribly wrong thing, you were cast out.

  He pounded. He prayed. He feared defeat. And then life happened like a spark taking hold on massed palm tree shavings.

  Her eyes opened.

  Mujai sank back onto his heels in true astonishment, his hands frozen over her still body. He had not really, in the heart of him, believed that this could happen. He wanted success and now that he had it, he was mortified.

  “Speak to me,” he whispered in sudden fear. “If you can hear me, speak.” Would she be mute like the chicken, the dog?

  “My master,” she said. “I have come back for you.”

  Mujai nearly passed out. He could not move even an eyelid. His mouth gaped.

  She slowly sat up, woodenly, like a doll made of sticks. The black irises of her eyes were so enlarged they nearly covered the original mud brown color of her eyes.

  “I saw Death,” she said. “I was lost in the dark.”

  “Yes.” He gasped the word, the air in his lungs so short he was on the verge of fainting. “You were dead. I brought you back. You…you will live with me now.”

  The girl pulled her legs beneath her woven palm skirt and she leaned forward on her hands so that her perfect little face was mere inches from his.

  “Of course I will,” she said in a breathy voice that sounded nothing like a child’s voice. “I will come live with you.”

  It felt like a threat to Mujai. At the very moment he knew he should feel exultant and powerful, he was overwhelmed with the greatest fear he had ever experienced.

  What could he do? He had brought the dead to life and now he owned her. He had bargained for her life and she belonged to him, whether he feared her or not.

  He rose shakily to his feet and held out his hand. “Come with me, then,” he said. “We will go.”

  Her hand was shockingly cold. He forced himself not to cringe from her touch. He wondered if she would ever feel warm, feel human again.

  Outside the hut the girl’s mother fell to her knees, mewling like a newborn. Tears ran down her face. “My baby, my baby, my baby lives,” she cried.

  “Goodbye, Mother,” the girl said formally and without emotion. Then she moved forward, pulling the witch doctor behind her.

  It seemed she knew the way home.

  #

  In the first days of her second life, the girl gave herself a new name. “Call me Angelique,” she instructed the witch doctor. “I do not like my old name. Tell me now how you raised me up.”

  The question caused him to pause in the whittling he was doing on a bow. He looked up at her. “I cannot tell you,” he said.

  “You mean you won’t.”

  He shrugged and went back to his whittling, shaving long slivers of green bark from the limber wood.

  “Tell me how you raised me up,” she insisted.

  Something told him the girl wanted to know his secrets for reasons other than just to know how she came to be alive again. She wanted to steal his power. With his special knowledge, she could replace him as the village witch doctor. She could perform miracles and demand the respect that was reserved for him.

  He looked up again. He frowned at her, hoping to instill fear. “I will never tell you. I will never do it again so you will never see how I do it, even if you were to shadow me the rest of my life. The magic that made you come back is now forgotten.” He tapped the side of his head and shook it a little as if throwing out the recipe for the potion.

  She smiled. He hadn’t expected that response and he frowned harder. “I swear you will never know how I did it! Get the idea out of your head, you hear me? I will never tell and you will never know.”

  She stood. She moved now with more grace, almost the way any child might. She said, “Mujai, my master, you are a silly, suspicious man.”

  Smiling, she left him sitting with his unfinished bow, wondering at how she could insult him when he was the adult, he was her master, her king, her life-giver. How dare a little child speak to him with such disrespect. "Ungrateful little witch,” he muttered, and went back to his work.

  She never spoke of it again, but then she had almost stopped speaking to him at all.

  Out of fear or revulsion, Mujai did not know which, he kept his distance and went about his normal routines without dealing with the girl very often. She was sullen and withdrawn. She might get over it, she might change and be nice to him if he left her alone enough.

  He set food before her, but after the first time watching her eat, he made sure to go into the jungle after serving her. No human being ate the way she did. It was like the panther, only worse because it was a child devouring food like a beast who has lost its mind. She shredded the meat he made in the fire without even dusting off the soot first. She broke the bones and sucked the marrow, licking her fingers of the grease. She put her whole face into a mango, until her nose disappeared as she feasted. If he did not bring her food at least three times a day, she would rummage in his gift pile the people brought for him, and ate whatever she found there in its raw state. A bird, feathers and all. A muskrat, tail and head and all. An entire melon, skin, seeds, and all. Nothing she ate seemed to bother her stomach or make her sick.

  If it had just been the insane way she ate, her sulky silence, her utter lack of respect for him, Mujai thought he could come to accept it. But there were other things and these he could not countenance.

  She rarely slept. It was as if death had given her all the sleep she would ever require. She sat up during the dark hours, watching over him in the hut. He turned his back to her, trying to cleanse his mind of those black eyes staring at him, but often he failed and lay awake himself, praying for the gods to make her right. Make her right, he prayed. Make her as she was before.

  She took no direction whatsoever. If he asked her to do something for him, she pretended not to understand. “No ent
iendo,” she’d reply. I do not know what you mean, she said. What do you mean?

  After patiently explaining the most rudimentary elements of gathering firewood or climbing a tree to gather honey, her reply was always the same. “No entiendo.”

  He suspected she was being deliberately obtuse, the claims of not understanding his orders more examples of a lack of respect. He thought she knew exactly what he wanted, but she wasn’t going to do it. She had from the first refused his rule over her. This was her way of letting him know he did not own her.

  He once thought of beating her. He lost his temper early on and after a week of feeding the girl, bringing clean drinking water, and doing all the chores, he asked for her to bring over his spear that stood against the giant umbrella tree near his camp.

  “No entiendo.”

  He asked her again.

  “No entiendo.”

  He asked her six times, raising his voice higher in anger each time, and six times she pretended not to understand.

  He stood and raised his hand to slap her into submission, but when she lifted her face to him and looked him in the eyes, his hand was stayed as if paralyzed.

  I will kill you if you lay a hand on me, her look said. You will die if you ever touch me, her look said, mocking his impotency.

  From that time forward when she wouldn’t do as he said, he let it go. Finally he stopped asking anything of her and realized instead of gaining a queen, he had inherited a master. He was the child’s slave.

  She was useless to him. She was truly a burden. He knew when she was old enough to mate she would never let him come near her. At wit’s end, he went to the girl’s mother and questioned her.

  “Before she died, was your daughter obedient? Did she help you out with the chores?”

  “Certainly. Very obedient. She is a good girl.”

  “And respect? She showed you respect?”