Chapters (50)
- Cover
- Roc Books by Jacqueline Carey
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
Instead, he frowned. “Alas, I fear obeah is far and away the most oblique and poorly documented of the Afro-Caribbean belief systems. But I have some excellent resource material on vodou or Santería if that might help.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. How come there isn’t more on obeah?”
“Why,” he said.
“Um . . . why what?”
“Why isn’t there more information available on obeah,” Mr. Leary said sternly. “Not how come.”
Once a strict grammarian, always a strict grammarian. I winced. “Sorry. Why isn’t there more information available?”
He crossed his legs. “For one thing, unlike other belief systems emanating from the African diaspora, obeah doesn’t appear to have been syncretized with Christianity.”
“Could you, um, elaborate?”
“Plantation owners in the Caribbean did their best to suppress any expression of faith rooted in the traditions of African slaves and their descendants,” he said. “They feared, not without cause, that those they oppressed would find sufficient inspiration in such worship to entertain notions of rebellion. In some places, such as Haiti and Cuba, practitioners continued to worship in a covert manner. They simply established an association between their own existing deities, their loas and orishas and what have you, and Catholic saints. For example, Papa Legba in Haitian vodou, a probable descendant of the Yoruban Elegua, is the god of the crossroads. He’s commonly associated with Saint Peter, who performs a similar function as a gatekeeper.”
“So someone could appear to be praying to Saint Peter when in actuality they were praying to Papa Legba?” I asked.
“Precisely.” Mr. Leary nodded. “Or Saint Lazarus, I believe . . . something to do with a cane and a dog. I’d be happy to look it up for you if you think it might be helpful— Oh, but you were asking about obeah.”
“Right.” I sipped my tea, which really was insanely refreshing. “Which wasn’t syncretized. So that meant it was driven deeper undercover?”
“It’s conjecture on my part,” he said modestly. “It’s also entirely possible that little is known simply because there’s little to know, that rather than a complex, multifunctional belief system, obeah is merely an umbrella term for a particular accretion of superstition and folklore.”
I give Mr. Leary a lot of credit for the fact that I have a not-totally-embarrassing vocabulary for a small-town hell-spawn with a high school education, but it took me a few seconds to tease the meaning out of that one. “Maybe.” I had the sense that the Right Honorable Mrs. Sinclair’s Mom was involved in something a bit bigger than an accretion. “But I wonder, does it work?”
“Does it work?” he echoed.
“Obeah magic.” I swirled the tea in my glass, making the ice cubes rattle. “How can it? You know the saying: As below, so above. As far as I know, Jamaica doesn’t have an underworld. So I don’t see how it can have functioning magic.”