The Jumbies: Chapters 5–13

The white witch shook her head. Her braids tossed in every direction. “That was different. That was for the benefit of both sides. I can’t intervene like this. If I help one, I have to help the other. For balance.”

“These?” The witch laughed. “You know as well as I do that these concoctions don’t do nearly as much as they think.”

After a few more attempts, Corinne figured out how to grab on to the crevices with her fingers and toes.

Dru became slightly yellow with fear, but stepped carefully up to the writhing sack and held the ends with her fingertips.

Corinne led Dru across the dirt road and they both crouched inside a thicket of tall grass.

As he walked, he kept tucking his unruly curls behind a pair of ears that seemed too big for his small head.

The girls tried to smother their laughter as they crawled out of the grass.

Halfway there, she caught a scorpion by the tail, immobilizing it so it couldn’t use its stinger.

“What? Thieves! What have you ever seen us stealing?” Bouki asked defiantly.

Malik intertwined two of his fingers.
“We’re not alone,” Bouki added. “We’re together.” He wrapped his fingers together too.

At a small tributary, they drank deeply, ignoring the tadpoles and small lizards that darted through their fingers.

The ships had bright cloth that billowed above them like stiff clouds.

She remembered how she swam out to greet the sailors but gasped when she realized it was trees they had cut down to create their ships. The sailors had attacked her as she climbed up the hull.

As the others thrashed around, only Corinne and Malik remained calm.

From shore, Corinne, Dru, Bouki, and Malik watched the water in the middle of the river churn.

The witch winced when Corinne touched her arm. Corinne took care not to touch it as she propped the old lady against a rock to sit.

“Get away from here,” the witch said through gritted teeth.

“He lives over there,” Dru said to Corinne. She pointed to a ramshackle house across the street.

The three of them sipped their milk and listened to the clamor of the rest of the Rootsingh family, talking, laughing, tossing things around.

As she crossed the threshold, she saw her father leaning near the stove by a small pot of boiling water, laughing.

“We met at the wharf today,” he said. “She came to buy fish, but she didn’t get there early enough. Then when the rain started to pour down, I invited her to stay here until it was over.”

Corinne was still dumbstruck, so Pierre nudged her a little. “It’s not me,” Corinne sputtered. “It’s just a seed in the ground growing the way it should.”

The girls looked up as a commotion started at one of the market entrances.

Corinne wore a smug look, mainly for the benefit of pebble eyes and her friend flaky skin. “Hello, Miss Severine,” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Which ones would you like?”

Something about the feel of Severine’s skin against her own, and the way she leaned in, probing Corinne's face, made Corinne stiffen.