Janet Berliner - Children of the Dusk (Book 3 of The Madagascar Manifesto)

By Janet Berliner & George Guthridge

Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital Edition

Copyright 2010 by Janet Berliner and George Guthridge

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your vendor of choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Child of the Light (Book 1 of the Madagascar Manifesto)

Child of the Journey (Book 2 of the Madagascar Manifesto)

Sols Song

What You Remember I Did (with Melanie Tem)

G rasshoppers blackened the moon.

The Malagasy laughed delightedly and pointed what was left of his fist at the predawn sky. Abandoning his guardianship of the limestone crypt, he shrugged off his ragged, clay-colored loincloth. By the fading light of the stars, of glowworms, and of the last embers of the coconut husk fire, he began a sinuous dance of triumph. He moved around the moss- and ivy-covered totems that dotted the area, carelessly swatting at the mosquitoes and the rain flies that heralded a tropical downpour. When he tired of the dance, he removed a liana from one of the totems, wove it into a garland, and placed it on top of his grisly red and salt-and-pepper head like a crown.

He ran his misshapen fingers down the totem. Miniature zebu horns topped an arabesque of curling leaves. Carved lemurs balanced on one another's backs, looking outward with huge, whorled eyes.

The grasshoppers moved away from the huge egg-yolk moon, away from the Zana-Malata who grinned a toothless grin. "Minihana! " he shrieked. "Eat!" He opened the gaping pink hole where his nose and mouth should have been, pushed his tongue outward in the manner of an iguana, and drew a stream of glowworms into his throat.

He exhaled a burst of fire and chuckled at his own cleverness. Soon, he thought, it would be time for lambda , the dressing of the dead, and only he knew who waited inside the crypt. He and the tree frogs and the glowworms. Meanwhile, he could wait. Here, in isolation, time meant nothing to him--any more than it did to those who were buried in the valavato .

He moved around the totems that dotted the area. At his feet, a d snake slithered away, carrying with it the soul of one of the dead who haunted the burial ground. Behind him, five short, black men, eyes painted with white and black tar circles, bodies pulsating with a luminous white mud, appeared out of the rim of trees, cavorted a moment, and disappeared.

As if it, too, knew that changes were imminent, the rainforest chorus stopped. When only the bats sang a cappella in the damp tropical air, the fox-lynxes raised their long faces to watch him. The aye-ayes and the larger lemurs fled; the zebu sauntered down the hill, bells clanking hollowly and dewlaps swaying beneath their chins.

The Zana-Malata stayed where he was, listening to the voices of the dead. Chief of all he surveyed, he stared down at the crescent coral reef three hundred feet below the burial ground. On the horizon, his keen eyes discerned the lights of a ship moving toward him. He glanced at the moon hanging over the horizon.

It was beginning. The ghosts were returning to Nosy Mangaby, his island where the dead dreamed.

Nosy Mangaby

10 September, 1939

S itting on the damp sand, Solomon Freund watched as lifeboats and launches traveled back and forth from the Altmark to shore. Some brought only men; others carried equipment and supplies loaded by the freighter's cranes and his fellow Jews. A large, awkward-looking raft, made of wood strapped onto empty fuel drums, was being readied to carry the small tank from the ship to shore. Knowing the German military, there was doubtless some order about the landing, but to Sol it seemed chaotic. He wondered cynically if Abwehr manuals contained explicit instructions for hacking a path through a rain forest.

Limited by his tunnel-vision, Sol tracked the boat which brought Major Otto Hempel. The SS officer strode from the water, his wolfhound and nine-year-old Misha Czisa in tow. Reaching the beach, he looked out over the water with ill-disguised disgust. Sol turned back toward the ship and saw Erich Weisser Alois, Abwehr colonel, riding in the last boat. Erich. Despite his hatred, Sol could not avoid thinking of his childhood friend in the familiar. Head uplifted, eyes surveying the surrounding jungle as if he half expected natives to come rushing out and throw themselves at his feet with offerings of gold, Colonel Alois stepped from the launch. Behind him, two Jews carried his beloved German shepherd, Taurus, strapped to a hospital stretcher.

"We're going to have to cut a path to the top of the hill," Erich said. He turned to Hempel. "Give the Malagasy a machete." He nodded toward Bruqah, their coffee-colored guide. "After you've supplied all of your men with machetes, give the Jews the rest."

"The Jews?" Hempel asked. "Is that wise?"

"Are you questioning my orders?" Erich's voice was dangerously quiet. "Take one squad and lead the way. Use Bruqah to guide you. I am sure you will at least agree with that, since it is his primary function here," he went on, having apparently decided to downplay the matter of Hempel's insubordination. "Freund, stay with them and take care of Mir...the woman. Pleshdimer, you and Taurus bring up the rear." He raised his voice. "We are going up that hill." He pointed toward the jungle. "There will be no relaxation of discipline. For the sake of every Jewish life here, I will say this once, and once only. You are to use the machetes for creating a path. Look as if you see them as weapons, make one movement that smells of an attempt to escape, and we will shoot half of you Jews and let the dogs finish the rest. Now move it!"

Without so much as a glance at his heavily pregnant wife Miriam or at Solomon, he turned his back to them and waited to be obeyed. Hempel, obviously furious, strode toward the ridge of trees, his omnipresent companions trotting behind.

Bruqah, ever the Malagasy aristocrat though he was for the moment a guide, watched without comment or movement.

"Do you not fear them?" Sol asked him.

"Pah!" Bruqah spat onto the wet earth.

"Does anything frighten you?"

Bruqah threw his head back and laughed uproariously. "You ask questions like a small child." He helped Miriam to her feet. "What Bruqah fears you cannot understand. Not yet."

"Tell me."

"Bruqah only fears things of man and not of man," he said softly, all trace of laughter gone.

"You are right, I do not understand." Sol was reminded of the days in the farmhouse outside Oranienburg where he had first met Bruqah. The Malagasy had been assigned to prepare them for their journey and sojourn here. He was apparently studying botany at the university in Berlin when he was offered the job in exchange for transportation home. The more he had come to know Bruqah, the more convinced he was that the events were less coincidental than they appeared.

"We of Africa accept she mystery," Bruqah went on. "It is for Europeans to need understanding. Belief be truth here." Bruqah pointed his walking stick at a twig. "What be this, Lady Miri?"