Ballad and Dagger: Part Five

They won’t take her from me. Not her, and not Tams or Maza—both of whom are probably somewhere in the fray, fighting for their lives.

The empire pirates set up a barricade in front of the club. I was with a group that charged them, but they flanked us somehow, and then it was just everyone for themselves and I got knocked over—I don’t even know who did it!

More wounded stragglers pass as I get closer.

She nods at the barricades: a pile of overturned cars, assorted trash, and a few tables from the club.

Over by the crosswalk, some street medics from another Santero house treat a group of walking wounded—probably more casualties from when they attempted a direct charge.

But now it’s too late—Safiya took advantage of their confusion and sent her people forward in a furious throng.

And then Safiya is next to me, and we duck into a tunnel, the whole surly, triumphant battalion of Santeros, Sefaradim, pirates, and assorted randoms behind us.

Seems they’ve breached the tunnels. So, I’m leading our troops down there to head them off, but you—you gotta go get Chela.

Nadia hands him something long and curved like a scimitar. The handle, which Tolo now holds out to me, is beaded like Chela’s dagger.

Before I have time to adjust my stance or even take a breath, a bambarúto barrels out of the darkness.

The air leaves me, my chest crushed between this creature’s bulky body armor and the ground, and then that slimy, too-many-teethed maw opens across the whole darkness, right in front of my face.

I catch its face with my upswing, cleaving off most of that ichorous snout, and...that does it.

I need the power of its demise, though! Just before it blips out of sight, with the next two enraged monsters just a few seconds from reaching me, I lean over and reach out with one hand—and feel the impossible chaos of molecules ceasing its vanishing swirl.

I take one shaky step, then another, find my stride, and then fall into a steady jog upward, upward, sword poised, hands ready—let’s go.

Another fully incarnated, huge bambarúto stands beside him, and a crowd of spectral ones wait nearby, getting ready to become flesh by feeding off Chela’s powers.

And then the world gets dead quiet, and all I hear is Chela’s voice cutting through all the dampened chaos, all the pain.

I barely have time to catch my breath before the other fully formed bambarúto swings at me with one claw and then clobbers me with the other when I dodge.

I look at Chela, glowing brightly with a ferocious effervescence as she pulls her bloody hand from the creature and nods at me with a glance toward the skylight.

You, creator, destroyer, bind and brandish, you wield the rocks and soil, from nothing pull the essence of this earth, and in your sparkling hands, a new world is born.

Restore vitality to your aching heart, run my sparkling hands along your contours to find the breaking points, the damage; soothe to a stop each hemorrhage and ache.

You—angel of creation, angel of destruction, shining light over a stormy sea, an unrelenting warrior at my side against that ancient giant.

You reconstruct an ancient bawdy love ballad into a praise hymn, slide it into their throats as they heal, and when they are in need, they call me: Avrix mi Galanika.

Right now, in this place between past and present, this niche within the world, outside of time, it is just us.

Directly above us, the ruptured stage lets in a shaft of light from the main club, and a little farther away, another hole in the ceiling illuminates a pile of rubble.

I sidestep and unleash a swath of broken bambarúbones into its back as it rushes past.

Chela and I back toward each other, facing down our respective enemies, and somehow it feels like old times.

The statue rumbles and then surges to life with a deep, sonorous growl.

I’m back in the middle of the melee, side by side with Chela and Tams, beating away a surge of hired goons, when Tams says, “Destroyer and creator, huh?” and Chela nods with a slight smile.

Then he bursts out laughing as his arm bubbles and regenerates itself in a hideous, festering explosion of flesh.

He feints toward Chela and then slaps me hard across the face when I lunge for him.

After the great Madrigal War, the elders decided to banish all memories and mementos that bore my name and divided the spirit Madrigal into two opposite parts to keep their precious trinity intact.

“Well, it was a few hundred years, hmm? But still, a moment—back during Muslim rule of Spain—when Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived together in some kind of harmony. We call it La Convivencia, and it probably wasn’t quite as ideal as all that.”

“And then some of us landed at Madrigal, and we thought: Here, on this strange island in the Caribbean Sea, is La Convivencia, perhaps. Here it is reborn, but with a different trinity, a new harmony, and”—the rabbi’s big cheeks rise, his whole face a squint, to indicate a joke is imminent—“better weather, of course!”

Tolo hooked us up with one of his smuggling boats and a crew every bit as eccentric and menacing as you’d imagine them to be.

This is not right. We knew it in the fullness of our beings, the strange prickling that careened suddenly through us.

She felt us with her; it brought a tiny, fleeting warmth to her pounding heart.

Screams and footsteps and curses, and amidst it all, a small, misshapen sphere of flesh dropped and rolled across the floor toward that feverish green light.

As if pulled by an invisible thread, the ball of flesh bounced once, then again before landing in a shivering, emaciated hand reaching out from a small altar.

The boy reached for the sphere. The old man held it away, laughing in a shrill, guttural howl.

The bambarúto stepped toward the corpse man, obscuring that heinous green glow.