She suddenly realized that she was still holding his ragged sleeve, and she released it. He continued to stare in her direction for a moment or two, then turned back the way he'd been headed and started walking away.
Chrysalis stared at his back for a moment, shivering, despite the warmth of the evening. She had just seen, talked to, and even touched, she realized, a zombi. As a resident of jokertown and a joker herself, she'd thought herself inured to strangeness, accustomed to the bizarre. But apparently she wasn't. She had never been so afraid in her life, not even when, as a girl barely out of her teens, she had broken into her father's safe to finance her escape from the prison that was her home.
She swallowed hard. Zombi or not, he had to be going somewhere. Somewhere where there might be other ... real ... people.
Timorously, because there was nothing else she could do, she began to follow him.
They didn't have far to go. He soon turned off onto a smaller, less-traveled side trail that wound down and around a steep hill. As they passed a sharp curve in the trail, Chrysalis noticed a light burning ahead.
He headed toward the light, and she followed him. It was a kerosene lantern, stuck on a pole in front of what looked like a small, ramshackle but clinging to the lower slopes of the precipitous hillside. A tiny garden was in front of the hut, and in front of the garden a woman was peering into the night.
She was the most prosperous looking Haitian that Chrysalis had yet seen outside of the Palais National. She was actually plump, her calico dress was fresh and new-looking, and she wore a bright orange madras bandanna wrapped around her head. The woman smiled as Chrysalis and the apparition she was following approached.
"Ah, Marcel, who has followed you home?" She chuckled. "Madame Brigitte herself, if I'm not mistaken." She sketched a curtsy that, despite her plumpness, was quite graceful. "Welcome to my home."
Marcel kept walking right on past her, ignoring her and heading for the rear of the hut. Chrysalis stopped before the woman, who was regarding her with an open, welcoming expression that contained a fair amount df good-natured curiosity in it.
"Thank you," Chrysalis said hesitantly. There were a thousand things she could have said, but the question burning in the forefront of her mind had to be answered. "I have to ask you ... that is ... about Marcel."
"Yes?"
"He's not actually a zombi, is he?"
"Of course he is, my child, of course he is. Come, come." She made gathering motions with her hands. "I must go inside and tell my man to call off the search."
Chrysalis hung back. "Search?"
"For you, my child, for you." The woman shook her head and made tsking sounds. "You shouldn't have run off like that. It caused quite a bit of trouble and worry for us. We thought that the zobop column might capture you again."
"Zobop? What's a zobop?" It sounded to Chrysalis like a term for some kind of jazz afficionado. It was all she could do to keep from laughing hysterically at the thought.
"Zobop are"--the woman gestured vaguely with her hands as if she were trying to describe an enormously complicated subject in simple words-"the assistants of a bokor-an evil sorcerer-who have sold themselves to the bokor for material riches. They follow his bidding in all things, often kidnaping victims chosen by the bokor."
"I ... see ... And who, if you don't mind my asking, are you?" The woman laughed good-humoredly. "No, child, I don't mind at all. It shows admirable caution on your part. I am Mambo Julia, priestess and premiere reine of the local Bizango chapter." She must have correctly read the baled look on Chrysalis's face, for she laughed aloud. "You blancs are so funny! You think you know everything. You come to Haiti in your great airplane, walk about for one day, and then dispense your magical advice that will cure all our ills. And not once do even one of you leave Port-au-Prince!" Mambo Julia laughed again, this time with some derision. "You know nothing of Haiti, the real Haiti. Port-au-Prince is a gigantic caricer that shelters the leeches that are sucking the juices from Haiti's body. But the countryside, ah, the countryside is Haiti's heart!"
"Well, my child, I shall tell you everything you need to know to begin to understand. Everything, and more, than you want to know. Come to