Caribbee

  *

  Serina settled the candle carefully atop the iron frame supporting the rollers, then stood for a moment studying the flickering shadows it cast across the thatched ceiling of the mill house. From the gables above her head came the chirp of crickets, mingled with the occasional night murmurs of nesting birds.

  The room exuded an eerie peacefulness; again it called to mind the sanctuary of whitewash and frangipani scent that had been her home in Pernambuco. Once before, the magic of this deserted mill house had transported her back to that place of long ago, back to gentle afternoons and soft voices and innocence. To the love of her Yoruba mother Dara, and the kindliness of an old babalawo so much like Atiba.

  Shango's spirit had taken her home. He had come to this place that night, and he had lifted her into his being and taken her back. And here, for the first time, she had understood his awesome power. Shango. The great, terrifying god of West Africa was now here in the Caribbees, to guard his people. One day, she told herself, even the Christians would be on their knees to him.

  Carefully she unwrapped the wand—its wood carved with an African woman's fertile shape, then topped with a double- headed axe—and placed it beside the candle. Atiba had made it with his own hands, and he always kept it hidden in his hut, as part of his babalawo's cache of sacred implements.

  The mill had not turned since the day the great ships of the Ingles appeared in the bay, before the night of the storm. Traces of white cassava flour were still mingled with the fine dust on the floor. The place where Atiba had drawn Shango's sign was . . . she squinted in the candlelight . . . was there, near the square comer of the iron frame. Nothing remained now of the symbol save a scattering of pale powder. But across the room, near the post by the doorway, lay the small bag of cassava flour he had used. It must, she told herself, have been knocked there during the ceremony.

  Perhaps it was not empty.

  Timorously she picked it up and probed inside. Some flour still remained, dry and fine as coral dust. As she drew out a handful and let it sift through her fingers, the idea came—almost as though Shango had whispered it to her in the dark.

  The drawing of the double-headed axe. Shango's sign. Had it somehow summoned him that night? Beckoned him forth from the ancient consciousness of Africa, to this puny room?

  She stood for a moment and tried again to breathe a prayer. What precisely had Atiba done? How had he drawn the sym­bol? Her legs trembling, she knelt with a handful of the white powder and carefully began laying down the first line.

  It was not as straight as she had wished, nor was its width even, but the flour flowed more readily than she had thought it might. The symbol Atiba had drawn was still etched in her memory. It was simple, powerful, it almost drew itself: the crossed lines, their ends joined, formed two triangles meeting at a common point, and then down the middle the bold stroke that was its handle. The drawing came into form so readily she found herself thinking that Shango must be guiding her hand, urging her on in this uncertain homage to his power.

  She stood away and, taking the candle, studied the figure at her feet. The white seemed to undulate in the flickering light. She held the candle a moment longer, then reached out and placed it directly in the center of the double axe-head.

  Perhaps it was a gust of wind, but the wick suddenly flared brighter, as though it now drew strength from the symbol it illuminated. The mill, the walls of the room, all glowed in its warm, quivering flame. Was it imagination or was the candle now giving off that same pale radiance she remem­bered from languorous afternoons long ago in Brazil—the half-light of mist and rainbows that bathed their courtyard in a gossamer sheen when an afternoon storm swept overhead.

  She backed away, uneasy and disturbed, groping blindly toward the mill frame. When her touch caught the hard metal, she slipped her hand across the top till her grasp closed on the wand. The stone axe at its tip was strangely warm now, as though it had drawn heat from the iron. Or perhaps it had been from the candle.

  She clasped it against her shift, feeling its warmth flow into her. First it filled her breasts with a sensation of white­ness, then it passed downward till it mingled in her thighs. It was a sensation of being fulfilled, brought to completeness, by some essence that flowed out of Shango.

  She glanced back at the flickering candle. Now it washed the drawing with a glow of yellow and gold. The candle, too, seemed to be becoming part of her. She wanted to draw its fiery tip into her body, to possess it.

  Sweat poured down her thighs; and in its warmth she felt the desire of Shango. As she clasped the wand ever more tightly against her breasts, she gasped, then shuddered. The white presence was entering her, taking her body for its own. She sensed a heat in her eyes, as though they might now bum through the dark.

  A heaviness was growing in her legs, and she planted her feet wide apart to receive and support the burden she felt swelling in her breasts. The room was hot and cold and dark and light. She no longer saw anything save whiteness. Then she plunged the wand skyward and called out in a distant voice, resonant.

  "E wa nibi! SHANGO!"