—Mother! There’s someone in the water.
—Ariani! Not a word. Keep your head down.
In the river, a young woman was screaming for help, struggling to keep her head above water. Her hands and feet were bound together, and a rope was tied around her waist so she could be brought to shore.
—She needs help, Mother!
Ariani had a good heart, always had. In the city, she fed birds and dogs and starving men, brought soup and blankets to the homeless. Her mother disapproved—the streets were not safe for a child her age—but she could not bring herself to forbid it. This was different.
—There is nothing we can do for her, Ariani. Remember the rules. Do not draw attention to yourself.
Ariani was not a rebellious child—far from it—but it was difficult for someone so young to weigh something concrete, like the screams of a young woman drowning, against something as abstract as a rule. She let go of her mother’s hand.
—Ariani!
The child ran through the crowd, to the bald man holding the end of the rope.
—Bring her back, mister! She’s drowning!
—We’ll bring her back if she sinks, but she won’t. She’s a witch! Have you ever seen a witch, little girl?
This was a “swimming.” If the accused was innocent, she would sink and hopefully be brought back before dying. A devil worshiper, on the other hand, would float. Having renounced her baptism, she would be rejected by water.
—She doesn’t float because she’s a witch, mister. She floats because she has little muscle and she’s a little fat. Fat has a lower density than water.
—Density?
—Yes, mister. Density is how much matter is in an object divided by how much space it occupies.
Ariani said it with a smile. She had repeated that formula many times but had never found a practical use for it until now.
—That is utter nonsense!
—No, it is not. You would most certainly float if they threw you in, mister.
The man did not take kindly to the accusation, but Ariani ignored the screaming and cursing. She was still proud of her scientific explanation. She had turned vague knowledge into something tangible. She remembered that air is also not as dense and turned to the woman in the river.
—Exhale, madam! Exhale! Get the air out of your lungs and you will sink!
The woman did as instructed and, as Ariani predicted, her body disappeared underwater.
—The heiden speaks the devil’s tongue. She spoke of density and put a spell on the witch!
Heidens, often called Egyptians by the locals, were societal pariahs throughout Europe. The skin tone of the Eighty-Seven was a common enough sight in Amsterdam, but there were few immigrants in rural areas and heidens were persecuted for their mere presence. Fearing for her child, Sura did what she could to defuse the situation.
—We are not heidens. We are traders from Amsterdam. We work with the VOC.
It was true. Upon her arrival in Amsterdam, the Eighty-Seven had purchased a fair number of shares in the Dutch East India Company and were selling goods from the colonies to the wealthy. True or not, it did not matter to the villagers, who were now screaming for more blood.
—Hang the witch!
Sura heard the words and kneeled without thinking. Visions of the past rushed into her mind. The wind blowing louder than her cries, driving sand in her eyes. Her small arms wrestling those of a man, trying to rip the next stone from his hand. Her mother’s lifeless face warped and distorted like wax on a burning stove.
Sura pleaded for her daughter, she begged as she had done for her mother. She knew full well the villagers wouldn’t listen. She had seen what fear could do to people. A woman grabbed Ariani by the arm. Two men ran to her aid and tied the screaming child’s hands behind her back. A rope went up and around a high branch. The two men pulled, and pulled, until Sura’s daughter was hanging in midair. Her small body twisted like a worm while the bald man stood in front of her watching.
Run, save her child, or kill them all. Sura did the math before her fever got too strong. The weight of the child would spread evenly through the surface of the rope around her neck. The thicker the rope, the smaller the pressure. Seventy-eight pounds of child spread over twelve square inches of rope meant that either the rope was too thick, or the child was too light. Either way, Ariani did not need saving, and Sura was done running.
She picked up two broken branches and hid them in her palms. With an uneven end, a hundred pounds of force should suffice to break skin. Sura let the fever take over.
She walked behind the man nearest her, stabbed him three times through the kidneys. Quick blows, arms close to the body. The man groaned and felt his back with his hand. His wife got stabbed in the carotid artery. She didn’t scream. Everyone kept staring at Ariani. Sura’s steps were brisk, her blows precise and controlled. One. Two. Three. The wooden sticks went in and out of bodies faster than anyone could see. Four, five, six. Most just stood in shock, unsure of what had happened. They were all dead, they just didn’t know. Nine were hit before the first one fell to the ground. Five more before someone pointed at Sura. Eighteen were done for before anyone did anything about it.
The first to come at Sura was a skinny man in a green suit holding a pitchfork. Sura grabbed a teenage boy paralyzed with fear and impaled him on the incoming tines. The man in the suit tried to hold on and fell forward. Sura ignored him and removed the weapon from the boy. She threw it at a woman who was running away. If everyone had run, the woman might have been safe, but they didn’t. She fell face-first into the mud, a long wooden handle sticking out of her neck.
The bald man was still staring at Ariani when the child swung forward and grabbed his head between her legs. She pushed herself up to relieve the pressure around her neck.
At the front of the remaining crowd, a man stood still holding an ax. Sura walked up to him at a steady pace, tore the ax from his hands, and split his head in half in one swoop. She let her anger loose. The twenty people left standing thought they could find safety in numbers and huddled together. The Eighty-Seven cut through them like a ship through fog. None of them were whole after thirty seconds, their parts mixed together like a jigsaw puzzle someone had dropped on the floor.
It would take another hour for the first eighteen to bleed out and stop moaning, but Sura didn’t hear them anymore. She took a knife off one of the dead and cut her daughter’s hands free. Ariani passed the noose over her head, her legs still wrapped around the bald man’s head. She took the knife her mother handed her and cut the man’s throat from shoulder to shoulder. She jumped off him and pushed him in the river.
—You see, mister? I told you you would float!
Without a word, Sura examined her daughter from head to toe. She turned her around to make sure there were no wounds.
—Mother, look! She’s alive! The lady’s alive!
They pulled the young woman out of the water. Ariani rolled her on her side to set her hands and legs free, but her mother stopped her.
—What, Mother? Why?
Sura did not speak. She did not need to. Ariani looked around and she knew. Remember the rules. The Eighty-Seven had just slaughtered a village. What were the odds this young lady could keep that a secret?
Ariani’s eyes filled with tears but she stopped herself from crying. She handed her mother the knife and gently stroked the woman’s hair. What seemed so abstract an hour ago was now painfully concrete. Do not draw attention to yourself.