The fountain took Henry’s breath away. About the size of a carousel, it had carvings of baka decorating its edge. They surrounded a low pool, from which a short pillar rose. A jet of water gurgled atop this column, sparkling in the torchlight and sending reflections across the cavern walls. This light show also bathed a sword in the center of the spray. The weapon plunged downward through the water stream, like the Arthurian myth, except this blade was thinner and more ornate.
“I’ve never seen a sword like that,” Jell said.
“A rapier, Spanish by the look of it,” Henry encircled the weapon. A series of complex, sweeping rings festooned its hilt. “Probably belonged to a Conquistador.” As he rounded the fountain, Henry noticed the pool itself wasn’t a perfect circle.
“It’s heart shaped,” he said, scratching his beard. The base had two bulges that formed the unmistakable shape. So the fountain’s a heart pierced by a sword, Henry thought, but instead of blood it pumps water.
“That’s the veve for Ayzili,” Jell said, “a fierce protector lwa.”
“Hmmm, explains the sword.” Somehow, Henry wasn’t surprised. It made sense to pay homage to a fierce spirit if you wanted to protect the archives. But his gut told him there was more here.
“We need to keep looking through the scrolls,” Jell said, turning away.
“No, Riyal would’ve already done that.” Henry sat down at the edge of the fountain. “I think the answers we seek are encoded here.”
“But there’s no text.”
“In the Middle Ages…” Henry began but saw that Jell didn’t understand. “In my world, there was a time when lessons were told in stone, through statues and wall reliefs. Maybe the people who built this place were trying to do the same thing – teach us something regardless what language we speak.”
“Who do you think carved this fountain?” Jell asked.
Henry twisted his university ring, lost in thought. “The Taino Indians, Conquistadors, lost British colonists…maybe all of the above,” he said with a hint of excitement in his voice.
* * *
The current pulled their raft away from the shore, but no one minded at this point. As each swell reached its peak, the expedition party was given fresh views of the baka army, retreating angrily from the surf. The creatures now covered the dunes like ants, rows of them stretching off into the distance.
“They’ve formed ranks,” Carlos said in awe, “like a human army.”
Ayzili frowned. “They’ve brought water. That’s a bad sign.”
A few of the crabs bunched around what appeared to be giant sea anemones, tugging at their tentacles like a litter of nursing puppies.
“They only bring water on extended sieges,” Ayzili explained. Then she fell silent, starring at the ridge of a far dune. Framed amongst the hulking shadows of the baka, stood the silhouette of a solitary man. The figure stared at them for some time and then turned and walked down the opposite slope.
“Traitor.” Ayzili sunk her sword into the raft and collapsed next to it. “I hope they eat him alive.” Carlos noticed that the man next to her was bleeding severely across the chest.
“Where are you cut?” he asked him.
“Everywhere.”
Carlos tore a piece of the blanket off the box tarp. “Apply pressure to the wound.” The man grimaced and did so. The cloth instantly turned crimson and then started to run as water mixed with the blood. Raindrops were falling from the sky, just a few at first, and then the clouds let loose with a strong downpour. Most of the men huddled up under the tarp. But Ayzili stood at the bow of the raft, staring blankly into the water ahead. As the deluge increased, the water’s surface broke with thousands of miniature explosions.
“What are you looking at?” Carlos asked, joining her. She parted a strand of wet hair from her eyes.
“Out here’s where I left my husband.” This was the last thing he’d expected her to say. He studied her face to gauge the emotion, but there was none to read. Either that, or she was skilled at masking it. Rain streamed down her hair, highlighting the angular features of her cheekbones.
“He was buried at sea?” Carlos asked. She nodded. “How did he die?”
“The same way you and I will, crushed beneath a baka’s claw.” Ayzili winced as she pulled the memories from her subconscious. Then her jaw tightened. “My husband was a high priest. Years ago he joined an expedition like this, to say the harvest prayers.” Her eyes stared off into the distance.
“The baka attacked his party. He was wounded.” She swallowed. “After he died, I sailed out here to release the body. I left my son at home, alone and unprotected.” Her face said the rest, and Carlos had enough tact not to inquire further.
“Don’t blame yourself,” he said, staring into the water, black as ink. For a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of movement deep below - probably one of those huge blowfish, he figured
“The baka that killed my son was small. If I’d been there…” Ayzili broke off. “You still believe you can fight them all?”
“We’ve got enough poison here to kill a million, at least. If we arm every man in Ginen —”
“We lost fourteen, Carlos,” she sighed. “Fourteen fighting one baka legion. One.” She stressed the number by holding up a finger. “Hundreds of legions live in the dune sea. And there aren’t enough hands or weapons to kill them all.” The teen eyed them nervously from across the raft, so Ayzili lowered her voice. “These are the death throes of our people. If you want to survive, you’d best leave while you still can.”
“I lost someone too, once. I wasn’t there to protect her.” He didn’t need to complete the thought – his message was clear. He wasn’t running away.
Ayzili turned her gaze from the horizon to stare at him. “I don’t need protecting.”
“I can see that.”
Her long fingers pushed back the hair from her face again. The storm had lightened up now, and a thin mist left drops on her eyelashes. “You lost a child?”
Carlos nodded. “Almost a year ago. She was sick.” He swallowed hard. “You need to move on.” Even as the words escaped his lips, they seemed hollow. He was a hypocrite, giving advice he’d never followed himself.
“I didn’t kill the baka. So my son…” Ayzili faltered. Saying this was taking a toll of her, but she continued anyway. “Unless it died, which it likely didn’t, his soul’s trapped in that shell.”
“Inside the baka?”
She shook her head, yes.
“You want justice?” But as he said it, he realized it was much more than that. She really felt that the soul of her son was trapped inside the shell of a monster - physically trapped there. Is this the fate of all devoured by the baka? He now understood why she looked so pained.
“You know the path of the dead?” she said, staring into the water. “The souls swim in the low waters for over a year and a day.” She watched the swells rise and fall. “Then there’s a ceremony, a beautiful one, when we reclaim them from the depths. They enter the govi jars and rest forever. Their spirit’s finally at peace. And they won’t torment us anymore.” A tear ran down her cheek. “We should sleep,” Ayzili said, trying to soothe the knot that had marred her brow.
“You’ve not performed this ceremony for your husband or son?” Carlos asked.
“One day, I will.” Ayzili smiled and curled up near the edge of the raft. She folded her arms behind her head and closed her eyes. “One day soon.”
“Yeah, we should turn in.”
Carlos gazed across the raft at Ayzili. A chasm of experience separated him from this woman. She couldn’t be more different. Why then, he asked himself, do I feel so close to her?
A full moon lit up the raft and reflected disjointedly in the ocean below. All was silent now save the gentle lapping of water against timbers. Occasionally, fabric rustled as one of the expedition members shifted in their sleep. Carlos couldn’t join them, however. Too many thoughts drifted through his mind at the moment, chief among them, Ayzili’s contradictions.
So often she seemed to abandon hope, her words laced with morbid humor - while at other times, she was all that kept them going. She’d shown great contempt for anything sacred - yet when she spoke of this ceremony to honor the dead, he’d seen her smile. A battle certainly raged inside her as fierce as the one she fought with her sword. Which side will win? He wasn’t sure. But he was pretty certain death was the cause of all that turmoil. That much he knew from experience.
Carlos watched a layer of clouds engulf the moon, plunging the raft into shadow. Then he heard a splash. It was not loud enough to cause alarm, likely just a fish, but still he sat upright.
In the darkness, he saw the silhouette of Ayzili crouched at one end of the raft. She lay on her belly, legs dangling over the side like a swimmer pushing out from the pool. Long strings of hair fell across her face and gleamed wet. Had she been swimming? The cloud passed from the moon and instantly, the raft was bathed in light.
It was not Ayzili crouching there, for she still lay curled up at the far edge of the raft. Looming over her was what appeared to be a drowned woman, beautiful and eerily still. Her skin glistened pale and green in the moonlight, the color of kelp. Dark, dripping hair fell over two of the largest eyes Carlos had ever seen. And they locked on him.
Before Carlos could make a sound, the stranger threw herself onto Ayzili, rolling them both into the water with surprising agility. Ayzili gave a yell, but it was cut short as the two disappeared beneath the dark surface with the flip of a silvery tail.
“Hey!” Carlos jumped to his feet, his shout stirring the others.
“What happened?” the men asked.
“Something grabbed Ayzili.” Carlos ran to the edge of the raft and peered down. He could see shapes moving deep in the water, indistinct and blurry. Without thinking, he took a deep breath and pushed off from the wood. As he connected with the waterline, a freezing jolt shocked him from the fog of sleep.
The shouts of the expedition members fell to silence in this eerie world. Below he could see two dark shapes struggling deeper into the depths. One was pulling the other steadily downward. They were heading into what should have been darkness. But instead, they swam into a river of light. It reminded Carlos of a night drive through Miami, headlights winding along the Palmetto Expressway. Thousands of individual globs pulsed in rhythm like a great vein – jellyfish. With strong kicks. Carlos pressed into this highway of light.
He couldn’t make out the details of the jellies, but he felt their sting. Lines of fire flashed across his arm as the unseen tentacles grazed his skin. The forms of Ayzili and her captor were rapidly vanishing amidst the swarms of glowing creatures. Their numbers were so thick now that the water below teemed with them, almost seemed to boil. It was like staring into the sun. Through this glare, he caught Ayzili’s head staring back at him with one last, imploring look, but she was soon yanked away into the tangle of stinging light. The pain overwhelmed Carlos. He relented, cried out, and felt his body drift back to the surface. Barely conscious, the last thing he remembered were the hands of the other men dragging him aboard the raft.
* * *
“Let’s take this piece by piece. What do we have?” Henry stared at the fountain, hoping the answers might strike him in a flash of insight.
“The only carvings I recognize are those veves,” Jell said, pointing to the stepping-stones scattered across the water like lily pads. Strange carved symbols decorated each stump. “Five symbols, five spirits…,” Jell said thoughtfully. Henry squinted at one that looked like an ornate cross.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the lwa symbols, so he turned to the other carvings. Those are baka, right?” He gestured to the bass relief along the inside wall of the pool. The carvings depicted a ring of crabs just above the waterline.
Jell knelt down to inspect the nearest one. Although half-submerged in the water, he could still make out its pincers. “Yes, I’ve seen a baka do this before with its claws. They sweep the water into their mouths. That’s how they drink.”
“Where did you see a baka drinking water?”
“It wasn’t water,” Jell said grimly and left it at that.
Henry swallowed hard. His throat was dry and parched, however, so he motioned to the fountain. “Safe to drink?”
“Yes. It’s likely the same as flows from the falls above.”
Cupping his hands, Henry took a long sip. The water tasted cool and sweet with a hint of copper. He examined the sword rising from the fountain’s center, its hilt sparkling with pearl-sized droplets. Up close, the blade looked razor sharp. It had taken a great deal of skill to forge such a weapon and even more to etch the designs into its metal. Suddenly, Henry’s eyes lit up.
“What is it?” Jell asked.
He grinned. “I think I know how to kill the baka,” he said, “every last one of them.”
* * *
The story continues in “Bones of the Baka”.
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