[IC] Beneath our Two Suns

[Dinh AaronMk]

Southern Haiti, the Tiburon

A hot tropical breeze blew through the trees of the crossroads as a village gathered in the shade of an old bent mahogany. The highlands dipped and fall to one side drapped with the meandering course of the red-dusty road like a gentle scarf laid over a sleeping person's body, and the land sleepily sloped through fields and groves of palm that formed a pastoral landscape of plantation farms and fields of grazing animals. Far beyond the soft haze of the Caribbean lay brushed smooth against the northern sky. The weather was clear and heavy tufted clouds meandered across a ceiling of brilliant azure blue as the sounds of drums began beating on the crossroads below.

While one road lead north to connect the city of Port-au-Prince with the far southern coast the other that ran across it was a small vein in the pastoral network of highways that connected the communities and farmsteads of the sedimentary people of the Haitian inland with each other as it burrowed its way across the long spear tip of the Tiburon. Bird song emanated from the roadside groves of mangos and palm bushes as the song rose in intensity around the raised totem driven into the middle of the road like a lone spoke.

At its base, drawn in flower a delicate and intricate pattern lay against the dark red of the soil, its four cross arms pointing north to south and east to west. The ceremony was already well in play and the hougan was already dancing and spinning across the dirt with his company, clasping chickens by their claws they sought to summon Papa Legba, to seek his presence and to request he deliver to the mortals gathered the blessings of the loa. But not for good crops, and safe births; those had already been prayed for. But for the blessings of virtuous reward and glory in a raid. To find wisdom in the spirit's vision on who is the most bountiful.

To Guy Jean-Carel, the answer was obvious as he stood at the edge of the assembly clapping and applauding along to the hougan, a frail old man who in his dance and in the heat was sweating heavily through his thin white cotton shirt, clinging it to his ashen-black back as he twirled and swayed like a man drunk, or rather possessed. It was the same answer every time when the old man's eyes rolled back forward from inside his head and he starred up into the crowd waiting around him. “To America!” he would declare with a shallow breath and dry voice, “To America!”

To Guy, it was becoming a tired answer. He looked over across the ceremonial congregation, where standing among the warriors and raiders stood his daughter. She resembled so much of her father, and was well old enough to have been married off by now. But bitterly, Guy had let her go when the hougan came to his farm house drunk on providence and declared, “Your daughter, she be a powerful warrior! Destined for greatness. The spirits demand her service!”

It had been that moment that Guy had recollected the dowry he had set aside to marry her off, and let her go at the age of thirteen to be trained and remade into a fighter.

She was a tall lady now, much like his father. The two had no difficulties of looking over the heads of the crowd assembled around dancing and singing and the two caught each others' gaze with their own mutual sandy brown gaze. Guy was sharp and disapproving of the whole thing, he wished his nineteen year old daughter would come home and he could find a husband for her, as his sons had like-wise done. They all had grandchildren of their own now. But Flè, she had no husband. She had a ship and a crew under her. She had a bandolier of human teeth that wrapped across her chest from over her shoulder, stark bleached white over a breastplate of hardened and blackened with the sun and the salt of the sea. Her once beautiful long dark hair hidden underneath a crimson red head-wrap.

She was a strong woman, and sharp and cruel. She had come to believe in the Loa and show down her father's pensive worry and disdainful cynicism. The two's gaze separated and Guy returned to watching the priest, now seizing in the gentle arms of his flock as he was saddled by Papa Legba. In his ears the words of the messenger spirit would be whispered into his open ears and the target made and drawn up.

As the furor of the drums rose and the fanatic zeal of the chanting did so, the old hougan stopped his spasms and rose immediately on invisible strings. He staggered light on his feet, a marionette to another power as he rose his hands and a eerie silence befell the group. The drums stopped, and the chanting ceased. His blank whited eyes stared out over the crowds beholding their attentive silence as only the birds sang and the broad leaves of palms sighed softly in the warm motherly breeze.

Finally he took a deep breath and his back tightened. His eyes rolled back and he staggered forward, caught by his disciple before he could hit the ground.

“To the north!” he shouted with a wispy breath. His long curly hair fell about his head in loose strands of mostly metallic silver, though light pepper gray also hung there. A young man rushed over, handing the old priest his straw hat and he fitted it on his head and stood up as his cane – which had been unceremoniously abandoned to the side earlier in the ritual – was returned to his long weathered hands. “The north our warrior shall lead her hounds, there she shall seek treasures. Upon the shores of the lands known as the Carol Lines!”

There was an approving cheer from the crowd and from across Guy watched as Flè and her crew hoisted above their heads machetes, spears, and short pistol-like fire-arms above their heads. The drums beat a ceremonial pulse and victorious chanting rolled from the mouths of the people as they flocked to their newly departing warriors. There wasn't any expectation on what they shall bring home, but no one cared; in the end if the Loa willed it, so it would be done. Those who followed the Loa's wills would be richly rewarded with foreign, exotic treasures and prizes.

As the crowd filtered past the ceremonial ground, Guy loitered a little to watch the village hougan stumble to the tree, where he was given a large bottle of rich golden rum. He took a deep swig of the drink, before turning to follow the departing warriors.

They did go far, merely reaching the corner of a coffee field and the forty-strong body of warriors, pirates, and raiders marched north to Port-au-Prince. There wasn't much in ceremony to see his own daughter leave, and the sight of seeing her taken away so quickly, and without so much of a goodbye hurt the old farmer as much as it stung him to give her up years ago. The sting had not ebbed to a tolerable soreness as some said it would, but it remained as strong as a fresh knife wound to the chest. Perhaps sometime there would be a moment he could catch up on all the goodbyes, not just the passing greetings before she left for the village to divide up the wealth among the people, and to give the hougan his repayment in tobacco and “soft-drinks”.

“Your daughter is a strong woman!” the hougan exclaimed, catch up to Guy. He wore a wide smile as the warrior group marched and whooped and hollered back to Port-au-Prince. The rest of the village had filtered passed to home and work.

“You stole her from me.” Guy remarked bitterly, “I wanted to see a happy married woman, with grand-children. But you took her.” he was sour, and he hardly offered the hougan a glance in his direction.

“It was not I, if it was all up to me I would not have. But it was the loa who said I should, in a dream!” he explained, laughing a little, “It is safer to abide by their requests, than to loose a strong woman in child-birth.” he cast a hand towards the departing Flè, “But she is promised to live long, strong, and wealthy. More than any fisherman's son you would have given her to!”

Guy harumph'd dismissively. What did a man who had never bore no children but bastards he had rejected known above paternal love. He dismissed him coldly as he continued to watch the warrior group that his daughter lead off.

[Vilageidiotx]

Inland Central America, in a place that was once called the "Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve"

Manuel hated this route once they passed the point where the signs disappeared. The inland country was still marked by the crumbled remnants of roads and buildings, sunken into the mud of the brackish swamp but still useful for determining where you were. Some of the old steel signs could even be read. Salt eroded, humidity rusted, and the jungle swallowed whole, but a few relics of civilization stood strong.

This all changed in the north. They passed into a place that was all wilderness; an old nature reserve, who's only value was the military base hidden at its core. Chatarreros discovered it a decade ago, but it was still producing useful finds. Manuel and Daniel had made it their business to transport scrap out of the back-country for the Chatarreros, which in most places was not a difficult job, but the wildness of this place made it complicated. They could only take a single long canoe through the swamped streams and rivers, light enough to carry over land when they needed. If the Chatarreros managed to find something heavy or difficult, Manuel and Daniel would have to enlist help at their destination.

"We should dig a canal to the sea." Manuel said to his partner. He watched the trees for signs of jaguars as they paddled slowly over a thin stretch of tepid green water.

"To this site? It will not be long and this place will be completely salvaged. What then? It would take years, and hundreds of Turistas. And for what? When the site dries up, we will have a canal into a shitty shitty jungle." Daniel spat into the water. He was a lighter skinned man, enough so that he had to wear a rag on his balding head to protect it from sunburn.

"The wilderness here is healthy." Manuel replied, looking at the lush broad-leaf trees which hung lazily over the water. Flowers bloomed, and birds sung from everywhere surrounding them. It was a picturesque rain-forest scene. "I think the old sea waters are being processed by the jungle, and it has been many years since waves have smashed this place from the sea. It must be a good place to grow crops, if the trees were to be cleared."

Daniel's response was a judging chuckle. "You think you can become Sangre Azul? How many bullets and rolls of duct tape will it take to purchase fifty Turistas?"

Manuel stayed silent. Daniel's mood always went sour when the job was difficult, and navigating this place was as difficult as anything.

When they came to the end of the water, they were forced to carry their canoe for a time. Mud the color of old orange peels squelched underfoot when they stepped out onto land. There are different sounds in a place for night and for day. The day held the sounds of birds and monkeys, and at night they were replaced by the songs of the insects and whining of frogs. With the sun setting, these sounds were still very much intermixed. The red-glow of a moon rise peaked above the canopy to the east.

Manuel thought about how many Turistas he could buy if he could save the money. Their labor would be useful in this job. How good would it be if he no longer had to carry a wet canoe across the greasy mud of places like this? He knew nothing about purchasing Turistas though, and the thought of feeding and housing another person made the venture sound too complicated.

"There it is." Daniel said. Manuel looked forward and saw where a smattering of simple huts marked the entrance to a clearing. The first thing Manuel felt was relief. He would get to rest now. But in the next moment, that relief turned to apprehension as it became apparent the Chatarreria was not what it should be. It was too quiet. There were no human sounds here. He heard Daniel mutter "The doors." in a confused tone, and that is when he saw it.

The doors to each hut had been boarded up from the outside. The thick boards were made of a different lumber than the huts, and they were nailed hastily to bar entry.

"Did they abandon it?" Manuel did not know how to react. His natural impulse was to question as the fear born by unknown factors swelled within him.

They put the canoe down. Daniel kicked through the boarding in front of a hut, and the door smashed in. In the fading sunlight, particles of dust could be seen escaping the house. Manuel followed Daniel inside.

The windows had been boarded as well, leaving the place dark except for the fading light streaming from the doorway. There was a wooden cot, turned over. Bowls and the porridge within them had been thrown upon the ground, and the mess was beginning to mold. The strangest thing in the room was the smell. Perhaps it was the spilled porridge, Manuel considered, but the room had a pleasant musky-sweet scent.

Daniel inspected everything thoroughly. He picked up a bowl and inspected it thoughtfully, sniffing the crusty residue inside. He frowned and put it down. Manuel stood in the doorway, dumbstruck in the fading beam of light. What had happened in this place?

They inspected more houses, and found the same thing. The wooden huts with their dead broad-leaf thatching were immaculate on the outside except for being boarded up. There were signs of struggle. In one hut, they found bloodstains on a sheet. It was too dark to leave the village, but Manuel did not feel safe here. He suspected Daniel felt the same way, but the other man hid his true feelings behind a scowl.

The sun fled and gave way to the night. Nobody alive could remember the small white disk that was the old moon, but it lived on in the collective memory of all people, and this new one still seemed to be an imposter. It dominated the sky, a vicious red monster with a living surface, like the still heart of a slain giant suspended as a spiteful sign in the heavens. It gave off a light the color of blood drained straight from the arteries; a bruised tyrian purple, its glow multiplying their foreboding as the two men tried to get their bearings.

House by house they checked. When they finished the entire village, they hadn't learned any more than they discovered by the first hut. "We should find a place to sleep." Manuel suggested. The jungle around them was a wall of unknown black. To do anything else but stay here would be to risk themselves to the jaguars.

"Let's check the dig-site first." Daniel mutter. His eyes caught the bloody red light of the moon, and his pale skin looked ghostly in the light. Without waiting for an answer, he plunged forward down a muddy path that led into another unknown. Manuel followed.

The swamp bubbled around them. Frogs had taken over the singing from the birds, and their throaty calls were the only friendly thing among all the unknown whispering animal sounds of the impenetrable forest. The air was still humid and muggy, but a coolness was starting to settle in, delivered by a weak breeze. Manuel watched the forest and let Daniel look ahead. He thought he saw something move, but in the faded light all he could see was shadows.

"Jesus Christ." he heard Daniel exclaim. They stopped in their tracks, and Manuel looked forward. What he saw was a horror he hadn't imagined until now.

Near a stream there was a copse of mangroves. To each spindle branch was the naked corpse of a Chatarrero, garroted and fastened to the branch with ropes. Their blood had been drained from hundreds of X's cut deep across their entire bodies so that the water and ground beneath them was blacker than night. These people, men and women and children, had pale skin behind bloody cuts and eyes so very white they were like ivory. It was those white, white eyes frozen in terrified death that fastened Manuel's feet to the ground.

They had to run, but where to? It did not matter. In that moment, Jaguars no longer seemed like the most dangerous thing in the world.

[Dinh AaronMk]

Port-au-Prince, Presidential Palace

To call the palace in the highlands over Port-au-Prince anything close to a formal palace would be an over-estimation at its best regard. With its eerily out of place plantation richness though, it was really more of a large house, comparable to a small mansion than a sprawling political estate. Though the property it rested on could be called its most palatial features, with sprawling gardens flanking narrow gravel walkways, populated by palm and mahogany trees that sighed in the tropical breezes that blew through.

From the second-story windows one could see down to the boomerang shape of Port-au-Princes shoreline, a shape nicked and cut by the plethora of old-world piers and cement docks that jutted out into the bay. It was from that bay where every-day the waters of the sea would rise and wash inland several times a day to flood the old streets, during the old bay-side city into a labyrinth of canals that intersected between the tops of buildings. Through a telescope one could watch at these times of day and night as men in canoes paddled through the tidal water almost as much as the faint suggestion of men moved about on plank bridges that crisscrossed above the impromptu waterways. A second layer of structures had since been added over the years out of crude and primitive scaffold structures creating a veritable urban jungle inhabited by the nation's sea-farriers.

“The roads to Cap-Haitien and Port-de-Paix are still considerably dangerous routes. While our efforts south in the Tiburon are quiet effective, the roads and highways in the north are increasingly dangerous. Often washed out.” Said a squat portly man with a square face as unimpressive as a chunk of unused rock granite. A thin scruffy bushel of unshaven beard grew from his chin and did little to make the man any less of an over-sized piglet. “As well, given the condition of the road-ways some groups lacking any formal support or proper honor have taken to acting as guides to travelers, often mugging or abandoning their wards mid-way through and making off with their money or belongings; leaving them in some of our worse highland roads.”

“So why don't we just arrest the perpitrating groups and be done with it?” the president asked. Georges Mahon was a towering man with a soft voice. And much unlike the sweating figure standing in his stately little office he had a full beard, oil black with a few strands of salty gray and white among the curling wires. He turned from the windows where he was looking down at the city to hold the plump magistrate under his heavy cold brown eyes. “After all, they're breaking the law as highway men.”

“That would be an option your honor, but I'm afraid it's done before as I'm sure you remember.” the magistrate reminded him, “Within the decade new ones will arise to fill the need. Your office needs to execute an official program to address the underlying matter.” Georges had only assumed the title of President of Haiti six years ago. A younger hougan from Haiti's central highland he was a cold brooding man, his grandfather had briefly been president himself before falling ill and dying in his office.

Georges was a warrior though, his blood-line had raided against the Dominicans as far back as his grandfather's time. He wasn't as grand an architect as the man with him was hoping he'd be, or implying he try to be.

“Then send a stronger message, delay the next generation of brigands and we'll figure something out.” he said dismissively, “Don't just arrest the men have them hanged. Nail them to the rocks along the road-side if they have to be. Confiscate their belongings as contraband.

“We'll use that then to pay for a survey of the situation.” he added, summoning a relieved sigh from the man. Georges life had been one of anecdotes that pointed to this. There had been a man who was caught stealing another's pigs from his home village. His father summarily had his hands cut off with a machete in the village square; no one else had tried after. When it happened again when Georges had inherited the work of the village priest he did it again to the new thief, but also took a foot, there had been peace since, even if he had long retired to Port-au-Prince.

“Very well, should I write up an official warrant and bring it to you to sign?” he asked, more comfortable. The tension the short square man had held was gone, mostly.

“Yes, go ahead.” Georges beckoned and the magistrate turned and plodded out the door. As he left a new guest arrives

“If I were to have dealt with the brigands I would have ordered their blood drained as an extra gift to Kalfu so I may request strength against my enemies!” the new man laughed as he came to Georges with his arms outstretched. His wide brutish face was a smile hidden under a fiery two-pronged beard and his head of hair an untamed mess that fell over both his ears, but left the top of his head nearly flat.

With a roar the two men wrapped themselves in a warm embrace. “You're back, brother!” Georges exclaimed, laughing.

“Yes, but to leave again.” Georges brother, Wilguens Mahon, “I come to seek your blessings yet again as president of our faith land.” he said releasing his brother and laughing.

Wilquens was in his years older than Georges, but had a temperament more used to fighting than to ritual. While he enjoyed the finer aspects of honoring the more aggressive spirits, such as the drinking of gunpowder with added gunpowder or the sacrificial slaughter of pigs he could rarely bear going through the motions of the other Loa. Being in one place for very long was not his thing as well.

“You have yet to tell me about your last adventure though.” Georges begged as he sat on the windowsill.

“It was a grand adventure in nothing.” Wilquens moaned, “We looked to the Bahamas finding some overlooked treasure but only found miscreants and rogues exiled from their homes living among the mud of the Ghost Islands, hand fishing for crabs any anything that would come to the tidal shallows. For our troubles we picked up some men as slaves and a couple crabs. But our adventure to the American north was cut off short by a wind from the inland. I was bidden to return home so I did.”

“A shame.” Georges sighed, “So where will you go next if not further north?”

“I was thinking just this,” Wilquens smiled, “But I was thinking west. To first trade off our slaves here in port, purchase some rum and grass in Jamaica, and then head to Mexico or that whip of land that is the Mosquito Coast and Panama.”

“Then you have my blessings on this. How long will be in port?”

“For a couple days, but I must not be a merchant, brother.” Miquel said with distaste, “Me crew will have to unwind after their voyage. They have ass to chase after all.”