She started down the trail, too consumed by the exigencies of her immediate situation to worry any more about Calixte's motives in bringing her and the others to the crossroads, the identity of the strangely dressed men crowned with candles, or to even wonder about their mysterious rescuers, if, indeed, the band that had ambushed their kidnappers had meant to rescue them.
She walked through the darkness.
It was difficult going. Right at the start of her trek she'd taken off her right shoe to even her stride, and sometime soon afterward she'd lost it. The ground was not without sticks and stones and other sharp objects, and before long her feet hurt like hell. She cataloged her miseries minutely so she'd know exactly how much to take out of Tachyon's hide if she ever got back to Port-au-Prince.
Not if, she told herself repeatedly. When. When. When. She was chanting the word as a short, snappy little marching song when she suddenly realized that someone was walking toward her on the trail. It was difficult to say for sure in the uncertain light, but it looked like a man, a tall, frail man carrying a hoe or shovel or something over his shoulder. He was headed right toward her.
She stopped, leaned against a nearby tree, and let out a long, relieved sigh. The brief thought flashed through her mind that he might be a member of Calixte's odd gang, but from what she could discern, he was dressed like a peasant, and he was carrying some sort of farm implement. He was probably just a local out on a late errand. She had the sudden fear that her appearance might scare him away before she could ask for help, but quenched it with the realization that he had to have already seen her, and he was still steadily approaching.
"Bon jour," she called out, exhausting most of her French. But the man made no sign that he had heard. He kept on walking past the tree against which she leaned.
"Hey! Are you deaf?" she reached out and tugged at his arm as he passed by, and as she touched him, he stopped, turned, and fixed her with his gaze.
Chrysalis felt as if a slice of night had stabbed into her heart. She went cold and shivery and for a long moment couldn't catch her breath. She couldn't look away from his eyes.
They were open. They moved, they shifted focus, they even blinked slowly and ponderously, but they did not see. The face from which they peered was scarcely less skeletal than her own. The brow ridges, eye sockets, cheekbones, jaw, and chin stood out in minute detail, as if there were no flesh between the bone and the taut black skin that covered them. She could count the ribs underneath the ragged work shirt as easily as anyone could count her own. She stared at him as he looked toward her and her breath caught again when she realized that he wasn't breathing. She would have screamed or run or done something, but as she stared he took a long, shallow breath that barely inflated his sunken chest. She watched him closely, and twenty seconds passed before he took another.
She suddenly realized that she was still holding his ragged sleeve, and she released it. He continued to stare in her direction for a moment or two, then turned back the way he'd been headed and started walking away.
Chrysalis stared at his back for a moment, shivering, despite the warmth of the evening. She had just seen, talked to, and even touched, she realized, a zombi. As a resident of jokertown and a joker herself, she'd thought herself inured to strangeness, accustomed to the bizarre. But apparently she wasn't. She had never been so afraid in her life, not even when, as a girl barely out of her teens, she had broken into her father's safe to finance her escape from the prison that was her home.
She swallowed hard. Zombi or not, he had to be going somewhere. Somewhere where there might be other… real… people.
Timorously, because there was nothing else she could do, she began to follow him.
They didn't have far to go. He soon turned off onto a smaller, less-traveled side trail that wound down and around a steep hill. As they passed a sharp curve in the trail, Chrysalis noticed a light burning ahead.
He headed toward the light, and she followed him. It was a kerosene lantern, stuck on a pole in front of what looked like a small, ramshackle but clinging to the lower slopes of the precipitous hillside. A tiny garden was in front of the hut, and in front of the garden a woman was peering into the night.
She was the most prosperous looking Haitian that Chrysalis had yet seen outside of the Palais National. She was actually plump, her calico dress was fresh and new-looking, and she wore a bright orange madras bandanna wrapped around her head. The woman smiled as Chrysalis and the apparition she was following approached.
"Ah, Marcel, who has followed you home?" She chuckled. "Madame Brigitte herself, if I'm not mistaken." She sketched a curtsy that, despite her plumpness, was quite graceful. "Welcome to my home."
Marcel kept walking right on past her, ignoring her and heading for the rear of the hut. Chrysalis stopped before the woman, who was regarding her with an open, welcoming expression that contained a fair amount df good-natured curiosity in it.
"Thank you," Chrysalis said hesitantly. There were a thousand things she could have said, but the question burning in the forefront of her mind had to be answered. "I have to ask you… that is… about Marcel."
"Yes?"
"He's not actually a zombi, is he?"
"Of course he is, my child, of course he is. Come, come." She made gathering motions with her hands. "I must go inside and tell my man to call off the search."
Chrysalis hung back. "Search?"
"For you, my child, for you." The woman shook her head and made tsking sounds. "You shouldn't have run off like that. It caused quite a bit of trouble and worry for us. We thought that the zobop column might capture you again."
"Zobop? What's a zobop?" It sounded to Chrysalis like a term for some kind of jazz afficionado. It was all she could do to keep from laughing hysterically at the thought.
"Zobop are"-the woman gestured vaguely with her hands as if she were trying to describe an enormously complicated subject in simple words-"the assistants of a bokor-an evil sorcerer-who have sold themselves to the bokor for material riches. They follow his bidding in all things, often kidnaping victims chosen by the bokor."
"I… see… And who, if you don't mind my asking, are you?" The woman laughed good-humoredly. "No, child, I don't mind at all. It shows admirable caution on your part. I am Mambo Julia, priestess and premiere reine of the local Bizango chapter." She must have correctly read the baled look on Chrysalis's face, for she laughed aloud. "You blancs are so funny! You think you know everything. You come to Haiti in your great airplane, walk about for one day, and then dispense your magical advice that will cure all our ills. And not once do even one of you leave Port-au-Prince!" Mambo Julia laughed again, this time with some derision. "You know nothing of Haiti, the real Haiti. Port-au-Prince is a gigantic caricer that shelters the leeches that are sucking the juices from Haiti's body. But the countryside, ah, the countryside is Haiti's heart!"
"Well, my child, I shall tell you everything you need to know to begin to understand. Everything, and more, than you want to know. Come to my hut. Rest. Drink. Have a little something to eat. And listen."
Chrysalis considered the woman's offer. Right now she was more concerned about her own difficulties than Haiti's, but Mambo Julia's invitation sounded good. She wanted to rest her aching feet and drink something cold. The idea of food also sounded inviting. It seemed as if she'd last eaten years ago.
"All right," she said, following Mambo Julia toward the hut. Before they reached the door, a middle-aged man, thin, like most Haitians, with a shock of premature white hair, came around from the back.
"Baptiste!" Mambo Julia cried. "Have you fed the zombi?" The man nodded and bobbed a courteous bow in Chrysalis's direction. "Good. Tell the others that Madame Brigitte has found her own way home."