the sky with flames, and the ocean will turn orange as far as the eye can see. The infidels will pay the highest price for drowning us. I have done research,” he glanced at his iPhone, “and it is simple: If we release all the fertilizer at once, it will make temperatures drop till they freeze in their colder countries. Then they will stop stealing our island.”
Adnan agreed to sign up for tanker duty without the hesitation that he’d shown about bombing diamond island. His eyes brightened when Parvez told him that they would make a video of him and post it on scores of Islamic Web sites. “You, Adnan, you will declare victory for Muslims everywhere.”
Parvez stared at the open ocean, imagining flames and orange floodwaters—the surface of the sea reflecting the holocaust of sky—and knew that martyrdom would greet his friend, and that both of them would be honored the world over.
CHAPTER 7
Forensia sat “sky clad” on the crunchy meadow grass. The strikingly pretty twenty-three-year-old wore only the sunflower tattoo on her right shoulder and a red ankh—the oddly anthropomorphic-looking Egyptian cross—on her left breast. She resisted a powerful urge to brush aside one of her long black braids and look at the other naked bodies gathered behind her and Sang-mi.
The two young women were about to be initiated into a witches’ coven. A few feet in front of them a “circle of power,” formed of white stones, glowed under the full moon. Inside the circle, an altar of rough-hewn pine had been raised. A twig broomstick, known as a besom, rested against the altar’s left side. Three candles burned at its center. Forensia worried that they’d set off a raging conflagration. Then she spotted a bucket of water just outside the circle and hoped that it would be enough to snuff the flames if the candles fell over.
At the end of the altar closest to Forensia, incense smoldered, giving off a sharp, spicy odor that she couldn’t identify.
A thick iron cauldron squatted beside the candles; the tip of a boline—a black-handled knife with a foot-long blade—had been sunk into the wood beside the pot. Reflections of the red and orange candle flames danced on the blade’s shiny silver surface.
Forensia worried about what would come next—the blindfold, the tethering of her hands behind her back, and the scourging with whips. She struggled to take solace in the reassurances from Heart Warrior, her spiritual adviser, that these practices were largely symbolic. “You will not be hurt,” Heart Warrior had told her. Even so, Forensia’s nakedness—her sense of vulnerability—made her squirm silently. But more than any other goal in her life, she wanted to become what she had always known she was: a witch. It made bearable all the anxiety swirling through her system.
Reminding herself of her aspiration steadied her nerves until she realized that seeing the boline had caused a tiny knot to tug at her gut. Even the most benign-looking butter knives had always unsettled her, and this weapon did not look kind or gentle or forgiving. Made for murder, her mind whispered. Her worst fear—by far—had always been that she’d be killed with the savage inefficiency of a blade. One of her earliest memories was of hearing a news report over the radio in her mother’s old Ford Falcon about a twelve-year-old girl who’d been stabbed forty-seven times. Fear of such a fate never left her and she was somehow drawn to every bit of news that mentioned a knifing death. Just days ago, she’d read of a young woman who had been killed with a butcher knife in New York City.
It’s just a symbol, she reminded herself, of how you’re cutting yourself off from your old life.
Forensia forced her gaze to a large pentagram of woven animal skin that was hanging from a branch behind the altar, like a giant pendant from a neck chain. But this was no laser-cut diamond heart or sapphire oval. The ancient five-pointed star had been hacked from crudely tanned hide spotted with patches of dull fur and scattered shanks of coarse hair that hung unevenly, like roughly chopped fringe. A cattle horn, grayed by smoke and time, curled out of the twisted pelts, a forged fang in an errant grave.
The star’s harsh appearance was not reassuring and Forensia quickly reminded herself that the five points symbolized the five appendages of her body. That it hung from a tree also was symbolic, for trees represented the five true elements: earth, air,