Free Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift by Fiction River Page A

to the street, fading into the traffic as the men regained their senses. “ Eh! ” they shouted.
    But she was gone, having slipped past the killing machines of the streets, past honking horns. On the other side of the street, she faded into the shadows splitting concrete pillars of rebar. A pile of loose rebar heaped beside the dirt path that rimmed the street. She picked up one of those metal poles that bent like a whip. A woman alone on the streets needed a little protection. And after dark, the streets of the city weren ’ t fit even for a jinn.
    She sniffed the air and caught a whiff of sweat, fart, and dead fish mixed in one. The vudu priest had come this way. She followed his trail down the path, over a broken wall, through a drainage pipe, past walls topped with rolls of barbed wire, searching for a hole, any kind of hole to let her into the underbelly of the city. Bars kept her out.
    The air pulsed, softly at first. Had she heard it? Was she here?
    She ’ d already gotten—and granted—her wish. Her will was free again.
    Not the click tic click of dominoes but a thrum. A merengue beat. The air came alive, pulsing first with the drums, then with voices. She followed the rhythm. It felt like an undertow pulling her in. She should be able to resist it.
    She could not.
    She was not tethered anymore. Had her tether severed, even to her home far away in the east? To her essence of jinn?
    The beat sucked her in. The side street that she followed lost its darkness at an intersection of colored lights and hypnotic rhythm.
    Like most street corners, this one had a neighborhood colmado , where a handful of people snapped their fingers to the beat, drank Presidente , the local beer, smoked cigars, and swapped stories.
    Within their midst, behind their skirts, the vudu priest hid.
    She tucked her rebar into a shadow and slipped inside, working her way through the crowds until she reached the priest ’ s side. She breathed her mango breath into his ear before he knew what hit him, and she pulled him outside into the shadows of the street. She didn ’ t need her rebar to finish him off, but it lay nearby for added encouragement.
    “ My wings, ” she said, blowing a steady stream of jinn power into his face, freezing him into a pillar of stone and overcoming his vudu power. His power was nothing without his poisonous fish, or his laced cigars, or the chants he recited over sacrificed chickens. Let his spells protect him now.
    “ Wings, ” he said, mumbling.
    “ Where are my wings? ” The jiniri raged. She was stuck here without her wings. She wanted to go home, away from this foreign place.
    “ Gone, ” he said.
    “ You will take me to them. Now. ”
    He mumbled something and shuffled into a zombie walk. She followed, breathing her jinn breath to keep him going. They retraced her steps through dark pierced with colored lights, through holes and cracks and past barbed wire, through pipes and back to the dirt path where traffic continued to careen along the malécon. They dodged the cars and buses and taxis and trucks, and they came to the almond grove and the spot where the vudu priest ’ s canvas throne had stood but now was stolen. The altar, however, remained untouched, as not even criminals were brave enough to disturb that which was taboo.
    “ Here, ” said the priest.
    “ You used my wings for one of your spells? ” The jiniri wanted to screech. He ’ d sliced up her wings, added them to chicken heads and snake tongues and bat wings and frog legs for his spells. How would she get home?
    Then she realized the fishing boat was gone. But it would be back, waiting to carry more packets of drugs into the underbelly of the city. If she was trapped here, she could use her new skills to greet the fishermen. Again and again. Until she finally freed these shores from a destiny no good people wanted.
    Untethered, she felt her new purpose. Nobody ’ s wishes bound her but her own. She ’ d come home at long last, but