Free The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

hairs on her arms stood on end. For the first time, the mahogany forest made her heart beat hard inside her chest. She remembered the eyes she had seen in the forest days ago, and she remembered that last night, Severine’s eyes had the same gleam.
    It’s the same forest I’ve lived next to every day of my life, she told herself as the shiver crawled up her arms like a wave of insects. The stories about jumbies are just things that grown people say when they make up stories at night. She tried to laugh off the idea of Severine as a jumbie. She walked on a few steps. But what did those eyes belong to? And where did Severine come from? She said she lived close enough to walk, but no one knows her.
    Corinne put down her basket near the well and slipped a few of the small oranges into her pockets. She hesitated for a moment but thought of her father and the way he looked at Severine last night, like she was a stranger. Corinne crossed the road, pushed aside a tangle of branches, and stepped inside the forest.
    It was cooler among the trees. A few harmless animals scurried away from her feet. She swallowed hard and moved on. When the road was out of sight, she put an orange in the crook of a branch to mark the spot where she entered. She walked on for a few minutes, searched around, and placed oranges as markers, but she found nothing that seemed out of place for a forest. Then, on the other side of a tree, she heard a light rustle. Her pulse quickened. She followed the sound and placed her last orange in a branch above her. Around the other side of the tree trunk, a shrub shivered as though something had just gone past it. She followed the shaking path of leaves until they stopped beneath a fat, short tree. She combed the leaves apart and looked behind them.
    â€œOh!” Corinne said, surprised.
    There was a child sitting on the damp ground, playing with soft, wet dirt between its fingers. It was wearing a woven straw hat shaped like a short, wide cone.
    When the child looked up at her, beneath the hat brim Corinne could only see its mouth. It was shaped into the form of an O. It echoed. “Oh. Oh, oh, oh. Oh!” And with each syllable, the voice grew deeper until it was less like a child’s and more like a man’s.
    Corinne stepped back. She saw several other little man- children standing around the squat tree. The small thing had not been imitating her. It had been calling to its own kind. Corinne had heard enough stories to know that these could be douens —baby spirits that steal children straight from their homes.
    Corinne froze with fear. There was something else she had heard about douens. As one of the little men got up, Corinne tried to see its feet. It took an awkward step toward her. Its feet were turned backward. Now she was sure. A scream left Corinne’s throat. A small flock of kiskadees rose up into the air, and a manicou and a bright green iguana scurried into some underbrush. The sound of the animals moving unfroze Corinne and she ran too.
    Corinne went to the last tree she’d marked and grabbed the orange. She turned and threw it at the little jumbie coming toward her. The jumbie caught it and continued on. Corinne ran to the next tree. Now all the douens were moving toward her. With every step, they chanted, “Oh, oh, oh!” The sound filled her ears, her head, and matched time with her heartbeat until it felt like the douens’ sounds were becoming part of her. It took all her strength to grab the next orange and throw again. This one burst on the shoulder of another douen, but the tough little jumbie walked on as if nothing had touched it.
    Corinne kept moving, though each step felt harder than the last, like swimming against a current. She threw a third orange as hard as she could behind her. Then there were no more oranges. She looked for the road, but it was nowhere near. She had marked more trees, she was sure of it, but the oranges were all gone. She was