The Jumbies

This chapter follows Bouki and Malik’s perspective, its events picking up from the end of Chapter 39. A douen drags the brothers into the forest, where they meet up with more of these creatures. The group of jumbies begins whistling a soothing song that feels familiar to Bouki; he suddenly feels compelled to whistle along with the douens. Malik stops him, however, as they both realize this is one of the douens’ ploys for trapping children. Just then, the douens begin closing in on the boys.

Behind the douens, Bouki and Malik spot a path through the woods. Malik signals to Bouki, and, as the douens get closer, the brothers jump over them and run toward the path.

As they run away, a loud sound behind them makes them turn: Hugo has appeared and is hitting douens with an oven paddle. He yells to the brothers to run, and they do. As Bouki and Malik are running away, Hugo catches up to them and scoops each boy under one arm. The narrator notes Bouki’s surprise that carrying the brothers does not affect Hugo’s pace. The brief chapter closes with Bouki, Malik, and Hugo reaching safety.

The soucouyant menacing Corinne suddenly returns to its human disguise, an old woman; the creature smells Dru’s fire on the wind and recedes into the forest. Corinne notices that her mother’s pendant is glowing orange. Inside the stone, she sees an object and decides to crack the stone open. She hits it twice with a sharp rock and an orange seed appears. Corinne is disappointed and her injured leg throbs, as she re-opened her wound climbing the cliff. She fears she has failed and lost Pierre. Severine appears from the forest in her jumbie form; beside her is a large, gray beast. This beast, Corinne soon realizes, is Pierre.

Severine mocks Corinne’s tiny seed, and she begins to cry, dropping it to the ground. As Corinne is about to lose hope, her tears pool around the seed and it sprouts. Corinne is surprised and quickly notices the shoot grows a little whenever she speaks; she remembers her mother saying “a seed is a promise” (164). Severine notices the tree sprouting behind Corinne and mocks her mother’s magic; determined, Corinne tells the tree, “Grow” (212).

The tree shoots toward the sky and drops fragrant, juicy oranges. Severine grabs one and greedily devours it; delighted, she climbs into the growing tree for more. Corinne continues telling the orange tree to grow, and it eventually becomes too heavy for the cliff edge to hold. A crack opens in the ground between Corinne and the tree, causing it to lean and suspend Severine over the waves below. Pierre lunges to save Severine, but Corinne knocks him out of the way. Severine falls, and the waves swallow her.

Corinne feeds Pierre some of the trees’ oranges, and he slowly comes out of Severine’s spell. At that moment, rain begins to fall, extinguishing the forest fire.

Corinne and Pierre gather oranges and seeds from the ground, when a douen appears from the forest and points them in the direction of home. Startled, the duo decides to trust the creature and follow his directions; other douens also jump out to help Corinne and Pierre, one of them placing a treatment on Corinne’s wounded leg.

When Corinne and Pierre come to the road, Corinne sees all the people on the island gathered. Bouki and Malik, who have found the frog, are clean and wearing new clothes, and Dru sports a new bobbed haircut. Dru tells Corinne about the fire she set and that Bouki and Malik have a new father, Hugo. Bouki bristles against this, but Corinne points out that Hugo has been helping the boys for years by leaving them pastries to steal for dinner.

The white witch approaches Corinne, and Corinne shows her ability to make orange seeds grow on command. Corinne’s friends are amazed, but the rest of the villagers worry the jumbies will return. Talk of lost children ripples through the crowd as Corinne tells them that Severine, now taken by the sea, caused the war with the jumbies. She encourages the people to try to live peacefully beside the jumbies. With the white witch’s help, Corinne uses the seeds in her pocket to grow a wall of orange trees, blocking the way into the forest. Several people on the island react with skepticism, some suspiciously whispering about Corinne as they walk away.

Dru gives Corinne the wax figure of her mother, which she has repaired. Just then, Bouki and Malik trip and fall into a muddy puddle, soiling their clean clothes as the frog hops away. The fragrance of oranges envelops the island as Pierre and Corinne head home to clean up the magic vines, now dead.