Iwa

by Anna Katherine

Originally published December 2009. “Anna Katherine” is the pseudonym of Anna Genoese and Katherine Crighton; this story is a prequel to the Door-world book SALT AND SILVER, 2009; a flash background piece about one of our side characters. Enjoy!

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She grew up being told that her mother had wanted to name her Roxanne because of the song. It wasn’t true, though. It was just the name in the last paket kongo her mother had made; nobody knew why. Her father had chosen Roxie’s middle name, though: Kri. In Creole it meant to shout, yell, scream. It’s what her mother had done, just before she died giving birth to her.

Roxie was ten when she felt her first loa. Ezili Dantor crawled into her bed and held her, humming under her breath, the hilts of her knives digging into Roxie’s back. The tune was long, and low, and filled with blood — a mother’s blood, shed for Roxie. Maybe even shed willingly. After a time, Ezili whispered in Roxie’s ear how she was a chosen one, she would be a great warrior, and she would be a living aspect of Ezili. And then the loa held her again until Roxie could stop shaking.

By the time she was sixteen, Roxie had met all the Petwo family of loa, met them and knew them as her own. It was Ogun who had ridden her when she’d come across her first Door to Hell, who’d shown her how to wield her knives while smoking a cigar. Kalfu was there to teach her tricks and sorceries to keep herself alive, though she’d never had quite the same fear of Doors afterward, a fear she should have kept. Marinette … Marinette had killed the man who’d hurt Roxie on her sixteenth birthday, and later Marinette had washed her hands in the blood of the babe that would never be.

Marinette liked to free her, even when she didn’t want to be free.

When Roxie had been seventeen a month, she discovered what she was: a hunter. That’s what the girl at the movie theater said; a demon hunter, a knife against the Doors — and not alone. That night Roxie and the girl, the other hunter, worked together to fight an elemental. Roxie’s knives flew, and she felt the Petwo around her; her face was cut deep before she killed the demon. She breathed hard, retreated, and looked around for the other girl. It took her a moment, staring at the dark, to recognize the body.

That night Roxie dreamed strange and terrible things. Ezili came. The weight against Roxie’s back was hot, and soft breasts pressed against her skin. Ezili’s hand stroked her cut cheeks. Oh, lady, the loa whispered. Oh, lady, ma chere, I need you too much. She laughed a little. You and me, she said, and pulled away.

So then Ogun came, and poured rum over her face, and held down her arms. Kalfu came, pulled out a silver necklace, and breathed charms against it. Marinette came, laid the necklace along the cuts on Roxie’s face, and pressed it down hard enough to make Roxie scream. Finally Ezili, her body a drumbeat, burned, and burned, and burned the silver into place.

Oh, ma chere, ma chere, such things we will do.