[GREAT] Awakening

[PepsiWhirda]

Tia Dalma missed her bed.  It wasn’t fair, what she had to deal with.  A woman’s own bed held a special place in her heart, and that place had been occupied for far too long by the black-veined woman to whom she tended.

For three years Tia had knelt beside the afflicted woman, reciting thick-tongued incantations meant to draw the vile contagion out of her.  For three years, within the fortified recesses of her mind, the woman had resisted—resisted, Tia knew, both the contagion and the cure.  The voodoo priestess understood the dilemma, had seen too many times a wayward soul elect the path of power.

It would end soon enough.  Her tortured spirit could no longer withstand the strain of the two forces, so diametrically opposed, tugging it to and fro.  She had read the crab claws each night for a tenday, and each night they showed her the same thing.  The woman would either choose or die.

Reclining languidly in a woven hammock, Tia reached with a slender finger to scratch her monkey companion, perched on a nearby shelf, on his chin.  “Ah, Jack,” she lamented.  “A shadow been laid upon dat one da likes’a which I ain’t neva seen before.”

The monkey cocked its head sideways and chittered, but in its too-wise eyes Tia could see her companion understood.  The capuchin was a diminutive creature, standing no more than a foot tall, its scrunched-up face surrounded by tufts of wiry beige fur.  It wore the garb of a seafarer: red vest atop a billowing white shirt, and a pair of brown breeches cinched tightly at the waist.  Its nimble fingers clutched a fig on which it now nibbled absentmindedly, seeming to have tired quickly of Tia’s lamentations.

“To hell with ya then,” Tia grumbled.

A warm ocean breeze swept through the open window of the shack, its susurrations rattling the many jars, bottles, and other trinkets dangling by hemp ropes from the ceiling.  For a few moments, the room sang with the clinks and thunks of things gently colliding.  Tia closed her eyes and enjoyed the sound. 

When the sound faded, Tia Dalma heard movement.

Incredulous, the voodoo priestess swung gracefully out of the hammock and landed barefoot on creaking floorboards.  She swept a stray dreadlock out of her face and hurried to the woman’s side, the words to a curative incantation already on her lips.

In Tia’s bed, the woman twisted and writhed.  Grunts and moans escaped her dry, cracked lips, and her veins seemed to pulse, distended by the heat of the contagion burning within her.  Sweat beaded on her furrowed brow and traced paths down her face and neck. 

Tia reached into a wooden bowl on a small pedestal beside the bed and grabbed a soaked rag, wringing the excess water onto the floor.  She dabbed at the woman’s head, trying to bring her a measure of comfort.  What came next would not be comfortable, and indeed threatened to tear the woman apart.  Throwing caution aside, Tia launched into her incantation.

Her lilting intonations built in volume and confidence as she entered the throes of spellcasting, the incantation a final attempt to draw the contagion forth, to confront the foul plague and see which of them was the stronger.  She leaned in close over the prone woman, whose thrashing had only intensified as if in response to the competing influence of Tia Dalma, the mighty voodoo priestess. 

Jack the monkey hopped from foot to foot, its tiny paws clutched over its ears and its teeth bared against the palpable magic crowding the space.  The incantation grew to a thundering crescendo, the raw, thrumming power of her song rattling and shaking every trinket in the shack.

Then, as quickly as it had started, it ceased.