Paradise Cursed – Snippet 19
“The whole summer?” Dayna couldn’t believe their luck. “You said yes. Right?”
Erin looked away.
No matter how many sheep or good-looking sailors Dayna counted in her mind, she had not been able to sleep. Anyway, she could still hear music playing on shore. Her shoulders and feet refused to be still. When the rain had stopped, and Erin returned to their cabin, Dayna bombarded her with questions until the captain’s proposal popped out like a surprise inside a birthday cake. They could travel with the crew for as long as Erin did tarot readings for the ship’s passengers. How could she not say yes?
“I told him I would consider it,” Erin said.
Her sister still didn’t look at her. Dayna couldn’t stand the silence. Silence meant Erin was stacking all the reasons to say no on one side against a single yes on the other.
“What’s to consider? This is a no-brainer, Erin. You can use the summer to get out of your funk, thumb your nose at the jerk, catch up on your blog, get a sensational tan, breathe a whole summer of air untainted by diesel fumes and cow farts and, best reason of all, I can learn to sail a schooner!”
“I’m not in a funk.”
“Oh, really?” Dayna jumped from her bunk, walked the two steps to their bureau and got the hand mirror. She held it in front of Erin’s face. “That is what a funk looks like.”
Erin took the mirror and turned it upside down on her mattress. “Maybe you’re right about taking more time away from… everything. But this ship…”
“This ship is perfect for letting go of whatever’s clogging your head. We’ve never been on a tall ship before. We’ve never been to the Caribbean. We don’t know anyone like the people we’ve met here.”
“Your point?”
“No reminders, Erin. You can make all new memories. Who knows, maybe you’ll decide to sell the old albatross and buy a house somewhere in the islands.”
“Our house is not an albatross.”
“Yes, it kind of is. Or you could lease it—whatever—just to stay away until you can look at the walls and the furniture and the dishes and photographs and smell the garden without instantly reliving every bad thing that happened in the past year.”
Erin finally turned to look at her. “We have good memories there, too.”
“We don’t need a house to remember the good times.” Dayna sat down and placed a hand over her sister’s. “You deserve to have some healing time, sis.”
Instead of cheering her, the words seemed to deepen Erin’s frown. And then Dayna got it. How could she have been so dense? In her own crazy happy world of working with the ship’s crew tomorrow, she’d blanked out on what happened just before the captain appeared.
“Is this about that… thing… we saw on the deck earlier? Spooky, but what does that have to do with the ship? You’ve always been a little bit psychic—yeah, I know, you don’t like to talk about it, but it’s true. If we go home, that goes with you. It’s part of you. It’s not part of the ship.”
“I’ve never before seen a forty-foot snake with yellow, murderous eyes coming at me.”
Dayna felt a shiver, remembering. It had happened so quick. And maybe she’d intentionally shoved it out of her mind. “How did you know what to do?”
Erin shrugged and shook her head. “I didn’t. I just…I saw the snake, and the amulet was suddenly in my hand, and—”
“But you knew the words to say that made it vanish. How did you know?” Then another thought occurred to her. “If you’re the psychic, why did I see that spooky vision?”
Again, the shrug, the vague shake of her head. “I’ve no idea where it all came from. But I think you only saw it because you were touching me.”
“Yeah-ah-h.” It made sense now. “You stepped away from me, and it vanished, but you were still staring, mumbling those words, as if you could still see it.”
“That sort of wide-awake vision never happened to me before I set foot on this ship.”
“And you think it will stop if you leave?”
“I don’t know.” She fingered the amulet hanging around her neck. “The captain wants me to do readings. And I guess he wants you to scrub decks and polish brass.”
Dayna didn’t mind scut work. It was the way of the sea. You learned to care for a ship before you learned to steer it. “I bet I’ll get a turn at the helm before the summer’s over.”
Erin’s eyes were full of sadness and confusion. “Dayna, you know I want you to have this dream, but I don’t know if I can do this.”
“The reading with Ola went okay, didn’t it? She was ecstatic when you told her about the year ahead, and you didn’t get any spooky backlash. Did you?”
“No.” The tiniest smile curved Erin’s lips and touched her eyes. “It went well.”
“And you’ve always loved that ability to help people see what’s ahead.”
“Until I…” The smile vanished as quickly as it appeared.
“Until you began seeing things that weren’t all roses and sunshine.”
“That’s not fair. I’ve always been willing to lay out exactly what comes to me, good or not so good, but…cards and astrology charts don’t predict death. And the things I’ve been seeing, well I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about them.”
“Okay.” Dayna wanted her to accept the captain’s offer, wanted to sail on the Sarah Jane all summer, wanted it so bad, but she didn’t want her sister to be hurt or unhappy. “So here’s how I see it. If you want to curl up and hide from what’s going on in your head, let’s go home. If you want to find out what you’ve got and get hold of it, this ship seems like the right place.”
Erin lifted her eyebrows and pursed her lips in a way that always signaled she was giving an idea some serious consideration. Then she smiled, a real one, not that same sad half-smile as before. “Little sister, when did you grow up so much?”
Dayna grinned back. Yes!
*
“There’s nothing more I can do,” Demarae had said.
After casting off, I opened the dory’s throttle hoping the speed, the sound and the wind in my face would siphon off some of the frustration of getting bugger-all in my dealings with the shaman. True, he did not appear to be the charlatan I was prepared to strong-arm into refunding Ayanna’s money. In fact, he had proffered the envelope she gave him before I could mention it.
But money wasn’t the real issue, was it? Mind and body, the girl was turning into a bloody reptile, and who the blazes knew what was happening to her soul in the process?
“Not good enough!” I had not come to hear him beg off. “There’s got to be something we can do. A replay of the same ceremony, only with a goat instead of a chicken. Isn’t that a bigger sacrifice, better to win the orichas’ favor?”
“Not better, just different. And a replay, as you say, would not benefit Ayanna. I am a humble servant of my religion with strong favor among the orichas, but the Bokor’s dark magic is more powerful.”
“What if we take the orichas aboard the Sarah Jane? You know the rumors about my ship having her own powerful magic. You, Marisha, all the ladies from last night. I’ll clear out the dining room, and we’ll do it while my passengers are ashore.” I hated the idea, but I hated even more knowing a loathsome voodoo master was using my ship to sharpen his nasty habits. What Ayanna was going through needed to be stopped.
Demarae seemed to seriously consider the idea.
“I cannot guarantee it would work. And the risk? This is a thing that needs careful thought.”
“I understand.” A simpering platitude, because I didn’t understand at all. Yes, the ship was three hundred years old and still sailing, just as I was. In addition to the periodic overhauls, there had to be something magical about that. “Yet judging by Ayanna’s change from yesterday, when she boarded, until an hour ago when I took that video, she doesn’t have a lot of time before whatever this Bokor has planned will come to completion. Reversing a curse must be a lot harder than stopping one in its tracks.”
Demarae gave another of his grave nods. “Time is certainly a factor to be considered, though perhaps haste is not as important as having the best practitioner. I am an excellent shaman, and I will carefully consider your plan to have the Sarah Jane‘s power amplify my own. But here is another possibility.” He paused. “On Roatan Island, Honduras, Shaman Omar Shawnte practices a somewhat different order, using various herbs and poisons. He is said to have trained in Africa, the birthplace of our religion. I have sent other difficult cases to him.”
“With what result?”
“Various, in all honesty. It is a sad fact that the black arts are very strong, and Ayanna’s Bokor is clearly practicing on the side of evil.”
Except for the watch lights, the Sarah Jane was quiet now and dark. As I tied off the dory and climbed the accommodation ladder, I reflected on my new assessment of Shaman Demarae. He was a good man seeking to do good in the manner in which he was trained. What more could anyone ask? I decided to discuss both options with Ayanna, but I was leaning toward a visit to Roatan.
A pirates’ haven in the old days, though decades before my time, the island held strong memories for me. I had spent more plunder on Roatan while drinking tankards of rum, trading stories and bedding women than on any other island in the Caribbean.
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