All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

poteau mitan . His knees came up almost to his chest as he marched, but his hands did not move at all. His arms were sticking at his ribs like the arms of a wooden man. Ghede’s neck was long and very stiff but he could not make Achille’s back come straight.

I am calling brave Ghede
Come and save the children here
I am calling Brave Ghede —

    The voice was coming out of Merbillay, though her mouth was no longer seeming to move and her eyes had closed in on her dancing. The rapping of the drum slowed and began, slowed and began a new speed. Ghede stopped before Jean-Pic and began to accuse him: You have brought no bread for Ghede. You have brought no meat for Ghede. You have not brought any rum for Ghede. Ghede’s hunger is very strong. Why will you not feed Ghede?
    I was dancing in a wave, rising and falling. I did not need to move my body anymore because the wave moved it all of itself in time to the changes of the drum. The wave came up over my head and then went down and then again. I could still hear Ogûn’s song although no one was singing it out loud any longer.

Ogûn travay-o
Ogûn pa mâjé
Yé o swa Feraille dòmi sâ supé …

    Ghede stood before me, watching. His lips were thin and his eyes were glassy and wide so there was a white line all around the balls of them. Ghede put his head on one side and then on the other. I could not hear what he was saying because I was shrinking far away. Riau was shrinking, shrinking far away. He felt the pushing in his head as Ogûn pushed out his ti-bon-ange to make space in the head to put himself. The drum changed and the wave closed over Riau’s head and Riau was gone and there was Ogûn.
    Ogûn Feraille! Ogûn turned his back on Ghede. Ogûn took up a cane knife and swung it in circles around his head as he walked around the poteau mitan . He put the cane knife down into the middle of the fire and left it there to burn with heat. The sun had struck into the edge of the sea and was sinking in a blood-stained mist. The edge of the cane knife was glowing red hot when Ogûn took it from the fire and kissed it with his lips. Ogûn touched the knife with his tongue. The hot iron had no power to burn him. Ogûn Feraille! He took the shining cane knife and stabbed it into the wet dirt of the dying spring. The hot blade sizzled and went dark and Ogûn cried out in a loud voice that he was hungry too and that his hunger was greater than the hunger of Ghede.
             
    O N THE NEXT DAY Riau was tired. The muscles in his arms and legs felt stretched and rubbery, as if he had been swimming a very long way against a very strong current. Merbillay put a piece of mango on a leaf down beside him and went away without saying anything. Riau ate a little of the mango, chewing the pulp a long time. It seemed hard for him to swallow it.
    Riau saw his cane knife sticking out of the dead spring and went and picked it up. For a long time he sat with it on his knees. The heat had made a rippling pattern on the surface of the metal and there was a white ashy dusting where the blade joined the hilt. When someone called to him, Riau got up and put the cane knife into his waistband and began helping the rest of us get ready to leave. We had decided to go away from the mountain all together, and Riau was coming too although for the moment it seemed to make little difference to him whether we had decided to go or remain.
    We cooked the meal into flat cakes and ate the fruit that we could gather. For two days there was no spring or stream and we got water by cutting vines and draining them. We did not go so very fast because Ti-Jeanne was always lagging. There were two children who could go as fast as anyone, and one boy named Epi who was too small, and so we took turns carrying him. When I had him on my shoulders he held on to one of my ears and said Riau, Riau , whispering it over. By then I had returned all the way from Ogûn and I was once more I. On the sixth day we found the small