The light from the pane shone on a fallen palm trunk. She climbed up on it to look. Inside, kerosene burned in a stone bowl, throwing shadows on the black faces of a half dozen island women in sparkling white dresses and white bandannas.

They sat on chairs at the side of the room. Four men faced them, sitting on Clarence's communal family bed. One clutched between his legs a painted hunto drum. He was tapping it softly, and she could feel, more than hear, the gentle booming of its beat.

Clarence was nowhere to be seen. Neither were his daughters, Cissy or Deenie, or his wife.

A central pole had been erected in the manner of the peristyle shed of a humfo voodoo church.

As her eyes grew accustomed to the flickering light within, she saw Papa Jacques emerging from the shadows. He was dancing the yanvalou around the central pole. As he passed the women he tapped one with his asson on the head. She rose, blank-faced, and the two clasped hands and twirled, in the ancient way.

The woman broke away. In a full trance, she kissed the ground before the hunto drummer. He increased the beat. He was calling the woman's loa, and she began to writhe. Another woman joined her, and another, and soon the room was swirling with jerking, twisting bodies and minds gone quite adrift.

She remembered her mambo mother, presiding with great dignity over dances much like this. But Mama's were for good loa, not for evil ones, and these drums spoke of horror and death.

Mama, Mama, protèges-moi... Protect me!

All at once Deenie, Clarence's older daughter, appeared from out of the bushes. She grabbed Louisa's hand.

"Louisa!" the child whispered. "We scared, we out in the bush. Papa Jacques make me take Thea's bucket off the beach! He gwine give Thea to his loa!"

From the central pole inside hung a child's red bucket, a little doll painted on it. She knew that she must somehow get it, but she was frozen with fear.

Papa Jacques rattled his asson at the bucket, and though she did not think he touched it, the bucket began to swing to the beat of the hunto drum.

Papa Jacques stooped, and when he straightened he had a live chicken. He held it high, put its neck to his lips, and suddenly ripped its windpipe open with his teeth.

Holding the shuddering bird by the legs, he let its blood pour into the swinging bucket. Paralyzed with terror, Louisa could only watch.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Ellen regarded Carla and Thea. Carla was kneeling on the sand in the moonlight, staring into her daughter's face. Thea was pouting, patting the sand with her shovel.

"But, darling, why? You've never done this before!"

"Maybe she had another dream," suggested Ellen. "Her grandmother certainly did."

Carla looked helplessly toward Masthead Point. "Your daddy must think you've run away. God knows where he is now!"