In Darkness by Nick Lake Page A

out, said Manman. Get out now.
    The chimères backed away. Manman stood for a long time holding that gun, and we waited in the silence. But they didn’t come back.
    I was still on the ground. Papa’s blood was on my hands and my face; it was sticky and smelled of everything bad. Manman stepped over me and went out into the street, holding the gun in front of her. A minute or a day later, she came back inside. There was a flat, cold look in her eye. She was shaking, and I was worried that the gun might go off by accident. But then she seemed to seize control of herself and she was Manman again.
    She picked me up and gently prised open my fingers.
    — What do you have there? she said.
    It was a bottle cap. I hadn’t realized I had been holding it.
    Manman carried me out through the back of the shack. She walked and walked, and I didn’t know where she was going. Then I smelled the sea and I knew she was heading for the boat, the one Papa used for fishing, and she said we would sleep in there till we could find somewhere else.
    — What about Papa? I said.
    — We can’t help him now.
    — And the gun? Where did you get the gun?
    — It doesn’t matter.
    — But what about Marguerite? What happened to Marguerite?
    In my mind’s eye, I saw my sister sitting on my back, smiling. I hoped she had run away.
    Manman stopped and looked at me. That flatness had come into her eyes again.
    — They took her, she said eventually. Those chimères.
    — Why?
    Manman hesitated.
    — She’s a girl, she said. And she’s pretty. One day she might be valuable.
    I thought that was stupid. I thought Marguerite was valuable now. Manman looked like she was going to cry, and I didn’t blame her. But there was one thing I was grateful for: Marguerite was alive.
    — I’ll get her back, I said.
    Manman, she kind of nodded her head.
    — It’s hard, she said. But we should count our blessings. We’re alive and we’re together, you and me. We have each other.
    — Yeah, I said.
    Manman, she liked to count her blessings. It didn’t usually take long.
    We walked across the sand to where the fishermen moored their boats. I could see the one Papa and his friend used. I wondered then if Papa really was a fisherman. Manman wouldn’t tell me where the gun had come from, but what if it was his? What if he was a chimère, too?
    Maybe I didn’t wonder that, actually. It’s hard for me to remember. But I do wonder it now.
    — I’ll do whatever it takes, I told Manman. I’ll bring Marguerite home.
    — OK, she said. OK.
    I don’t think she believed me – but she should have. If she had, I might not be in this mess. When you keep hurting someone, you do one of three things. Either you fill them up with hate, and they destroy everything around them. Or you fill them up with sadness, and they destroy themselves. Or you fill them up with justice, and they try to destroy everything that’s bad and cruel in this world.
    Me, I was the first kind of person.

Then
    In his dream, Toussaint rode back to Bois Caiman. He knew the blind houngan lived there. People said he could speak to the alligators and had become their king. They said there were dead people in the marshes, zombis who he had put there and that he could make rise up and kill anyone who threatened him. Toussaint thought those were good stories to put about if you wanted to be left alone, and anyway, he knew perfectly well how zombis were made – it was a process more of pharmacology than death.
    He followed a dim light through the trees, careful of the swamp on both sides of the track. A small voice inside him said that this was not really happening, but he was still scared.
    There was a rich, vegetable smell of decay. It was dark, the moon that had been so full and fat the previous night obscured by dense clouds. He could see very little other than the looming shapes of the trees, the spidery shadows of the vines. Last night he had been amongst friends – fellow slaves. Tonight he was a