The Jumbies

Surrounded by jumbies and fighting, Corinne, Bouki, and Malik cannot go find Dru, so they hide behind one of Hugo’s outdoor bakery ovens and fall asleep from exhaustion. In the morning, they awaken inside Hugo’s bakery, with the baker asleep on a chair barricading the shop’s door. Hugo looks like a lagahoo attacked him the previous night.

The children slip out a window and regroup; the village looks nearly destroyed. The friends discuss their next steps. Bouki is skeptical about their winning another fight against the jumbies, whose magical abilities surpass human strength. Corinne insists that everything has a weakness, and she tells Bouki that Dru said jumbies cannot come out during the day. Dru appears and reminds them that Severine is the exception to that rule. The three are surprised and relieved to see Dru is safe.

Corinne hugs her friend, but Dru does not hug her back. She tells her friends that the night before, she watched her neighbor Allan turn into a douen when the jumbies descended on her village. When Allan’s mother tried to call him away, his upper body turned toward her, but his feet continued to follow the jumbies into the forest. Corinne offers her sympathy to Dru, but Dru only shoots Corinne an accusing look. Malik suggests they seek out the white witch for help, but Dru snidely says the witch may not want to help Corinne, due to all the trouble she has caused. The four begin to argue over who started the chaos on the island—Dru blames Corinne, Corinne blames Bouki—until Malik and Corinne assert that they should try to find the witch again and ask for her help.

The four children journey into the witch’s swamp. Thick mangrove trees surround it, making their trek difficult, but the four bravely wade through the stagnant water in search of the witch’s hut. Finally, Malik spots it at the center of the swamp, atop a small mud island. After struggling on some slippery rocks, Corinne knocks on the door.

Corinne confronts the white witch about her earlier refusal to help with Severine, who now wants to hurt everyone on the island. She asks for her help getting past the poisonous vines that envelop her house, but the witch says there is nothing she can do. Corinne asks if she can get rid of the jumbies altogether; the witch says she cannot. There is nothing she can do about Pierre’s condition, either.

The white witch explains that magic cannot remove the jumbies because they are part of the island. Confirming Severine’s story about Nicole, the witch tells Corinne that, like Corinne, the witch is part jumbie. As such, the witch vowed not to side with either group. Corinne persists, asking whether the witch can clear a path through the forest so she may retrieve her mother’s necklace. This annoys the witch; she tells the children that Severine tried to drown them at the river, but she broke her vow by saving them. Her broken arm is her punishment, and she cannot help further. She has no remedies for Severine’s magic because it is more ancient than her own.

The witch teaches the children that magic does not come from nowhere: “It comes from somewhere […] It’s just using your head and your heart” (164). Magic is like a seed: If you nurture it, it will sprout, but if you ignore it, it will remain a seed. She splits a seed in half to show them there is nothing magical about the seed; it must simply be nourished correctly. Corinne has the seed of her mother’s magic, and she must find a way to nurture and use it. Corinne does not understand but says she will continue to fight Severine. The witch assures Corinne she will lose but encourages the children to quickly plan something if they do not want Pierre’s condition to become permanent.

On their way from the witch’s shack, Dru hangs back and does not walk with the other children. Corinne confronts Dru about her standoffishness, asking if she is afraid of Corinne now that she knows she is part jumbie. Dru denies being afraid of Corinne, but Corinne does not believe her. She tells Dru to leave; after blaming the island’s trouble on Corinne, Dru disappears down the coast toward her village. Through her tears, Corinne tells Bouki and Malik they should leave too. It is safer for Corinne to work alone.

Bouki and Malik want to help, though. The three plan for Corinne to retrieve her mother’s necklace from the cliff above the bay. Corinne will row out to the cliff and climb to the necklace. She does not know what she will do once she has it, but she knows the stone pendant is powerful because it burned Severine; she will try to figure out the stone’s power and use it again against her. Like the witch taught them, in her heart, Corinne feels the stone necklace will help them. Her main concern in enacting their plan is Victor, whom she expects will try to stop her from rowing away alone.

Bouki and Malik agree to distract the villagers while Corinne rows out to the cliff. She is excited to execute their plan though she still feels sad about her father and Dru.

This brief chapter follows Bouki and Malik who, back at their cave, prepare to distract the fishing villagers. Malik puts on a pair of pants that Bouki stole off a clothesline, in addition to a custom pair of sandals, whittled from coconut husks. Bouki carved the sandals to look like they hold a backward pair of feet, like a douen’s. Additionally, from dried coconut leaves Bouki weaves a peaked hat for Malik to wear. In his disguise, he looks exactly like a douen. When Malik whines about not being able to see with the hat on, Bouki tells him he won’t need to see because he will be dragging him along.

The brothers share a coconut for dinner, and Bouki tells Malik it is time to go.

In this chapter, Corinne waits by the beach for Bouki and Malik. She grows restless, though, and walks up the hill to her house to see if she can get through the vines surrounding it. The magical vines look thicker than before, however, and as Corinne searches for a gap to sneak through, they adjust themselves in response to her movements.

She hesitantly leaves and returns to the shore, thinking fondly of her mother, but worrying about the work that lies ahead. Hungry, she searches in her pocket for a piece of fruit, but only finds a seed from the witch’s house; the witch had split the seed in two to try to instruct the children about magic. From the two halves of the seed, Corinne sees something sprouting: a tiny root from one half, and a shoot from the other. The sight annoys Corinne, though, reminding her of the witch’s unhelpfulness, so she throws it into the sea. The sprouting seed quickly returns on a wave, however, and Corinne repeats something her father taught her: “The sea doesn’t keep anything” (179). At the sound of her voice, the tiny plant grows a little bigger as another wave pulls it out to sea.

Bouki and Malik, in his douen disguise, make their way back toward Corinne’s village. They want to get close enough for Corinne’s neighbors to hear them scream, but far enough away from the shore for Corinne to be able to paddle out, unseen, in her father’s boat. As they are walking, they meet Dru and tell her their plan. No one can climb the cliff Corinne plans to climb, so Dru is worried; she is also afraid that if Corinne does reach the top of the cliff, jumbies will appear from the forest and take her.

Dru volunteers to make sure no jumbies are looking at the cliff as Corinne climbs. Bouki is surprised at her sudden bravery, but expresses second thoughts about their plan. He jokes that the climb could kill Corinne, the forest may kill Dru, and douens might take him and Malik. Dru brushes off Bouki’s remarks, responding that Corinne needs her help, and she knows she must at least try. Bouki is impressed, but at the smell of bread floating from Hugo’s bakery, he shudders to think of what douens eat for dinner.

This brief chapter follows Dru, who returns to her house as her family works together to board up the windows and doors in preparation for the jumbies’ return. Her mother sequesters her in the bedroom for safety, but Dru refuses to stay while everyone else fights for their island.

She changes into one of her brothers’ shirts and pants and removes a couple loose floorboards near her sleeping mat. She usually uses this space to hide things she does not want her siblings to tease her about, but on this night, the space below the bedroom becomes Dru’s escape hatch. She grabs some matches and shimmies out of her family home. Her heart pounds as she tries not to think of her mother’s reaction to her disappearance.