In the year 728, the current Lord Dilysnia went about preparing his son, 23-year-old Harvold, for the responsibilities of a noble life, including seeing to the management of the family house and estate. A 300-year legacy would soon be in the hands of impetuous Harvold, and the lord’s intuition told him that Harvold needed a sink-or-swim test of his abilities. Dilysnia had significant holdings in the Spice Islands across the Western Ocean, including a floundering sugar plantation. A trip to the islands might burn some of the heat from young Harvold’s blood and give him a chance to prove his worth by turning a profit with the ailing plantation. It was decided: and Harvold’s passage was booked for the fall of that year.

A scarcely contained cultural conflict characterised the Spice Islands, as the throbbing verve of the combined aboriginal and imported slave cultures pulsed beneath the thin crust of the continental establishment. These politically and economically subjugated islanders retained traditions and beliefs both rich and simple, dark and light, mystical and yet earth-bound. The ancient voodoo religion thrived amidst these people, and in spite of (or in accordance with) the continental masters’ attempts to have the “savages” properly Churched, the islanders retained their ancestral beliefs, while co-opting the Church’s sacraments and canon of saints as another aspect of their own tribal values.

Carlotta Du’Preé was a child of such ancestral traditions, and while she held a station of servitude in the house of the Dilysnia Plantation, she had ascended to an esteemed position in the voodoo religion. Carlotta placated the white man and his silly ideas of ownership by tailoring and mending clothes for the puffed up aristocracy, but the seamstress was acutely aware of the transcendental rule of the god and his laos, or spirits, as she was a mambo, a priestess of voodoo. There was little harm in letting the white men keep their delusions of grandeur.

It was in her position of head seamstress that Carlotta first came to know the aforementioned rash lordling, Harvold. It seems the young man’s trousseau was overflowing with fabric much too thick to be comfortably worn in the perpetual summer of the islands. Through many a session of measuring, fitting, and refitting, the two came to an understanding, and though Harvold was usually loath to associate with the working class, there was an alluring mystique about this dark, sensuous seamstress that captivated our young lordling’s fascination. Whether such a change of temperament was wrought by the tropical air and otherworldly flora and fauna or the magical enchanting of a voodoo charm is still a matter of speculation.

Whatever the reason, Harvold soon found himself spending midnight hours chanting and dancing and witnessing fantastic spirit possessions at Carlotta’s gatherings. The two became lovers of a sort, and Harvold found that, in addition to Carlotta’s charms and magic stirring his passions to orgasmic heights never imagined, let alone reached, in his young life, her powers of prophecy and divination, and the occasional curse on an enemy, were helping him to turn the economic state of the plantation around—a fact that would please his aging father.

In the summer of the year 731, Harvold received word of his ailing father and was summoned home to the continent to attend the dying patriarch and prepare for his tenure as Lord Dilysnia. He was loath to leave Carlotta and, in the vertigo following a night of mind-blowing sex, made promise after promise to return to her or bring her to the continent to be with him—leaving his ring with the family crest with her as a sign of his pledge. Carlotta was as unaffected by his leaving as she was by his promises, and she later absently tucked the ring away in a sewing basket. His coming and going was no more remarkable than the ebb and flow of the tide. Things were as they were meant to be—and he was just a man after all, and a white one at that. And so with Harvold’s heart heavy, and Carlotta’s heart light, the soon-to-be-lord left the islands.

Nearly a month after Harvold’s departure, Carlotta discovered she was with child. She was neither shocked or dismayed by the fact, as a new being to join to line of the ancestors was cause for celebration. The father could be anybody of course, but that mattered little. The power came from the mother, especially if the child were a girl—and Carlotta just knew she carried a daughter. In the spring of the following year, a girl was born to mambo Carlotta and she named her Marína, for the child’s paternity came and went with the ocean. There could be no doubt, by the soft mocha skin, the blended features of light and dark, wild and refined, subjugated and dominant, that the girl’s father was the tractable Lord Dilysnia.

Marína grew up fair and proud. Her blended grace a testament to the beauty of the peaceful, if passionate mingling of contrasting cultures. She knew nothing of her father, for she never thought to ask, her mother always telling her the myth of her springing from the sea. And Carlotta saw little point in bringing up the subject of paternity; Marína was who she was, and that was that.

In the mean time, the fog around Harvold’s heart had cleared and the seeming spell of Carlotta faded as reason returned. He had an estate to run, and would eventually need a properly cultured girl to share his name and his bed and produce his heir. He eventually married a childhood friend and social equal, Augusta Moritia—a fine name to join with his in the production of a acceptable heir. A timid virgin upon their wedding night, Augusta soon bloomed into a woman of moderate, but suitable modest passions. And Harvold began to find the process of creating an heir rather tiresome. For while Carlotta’s spell around his heart had long ago faded, the spell around his loins seemed never to diminish. As Augusta napped after nights of tepid lovemaking, Harvold’s thoughts drifted to nights of tropical passions.

And so it came to be in 748, upon the distressing death of his first wife, that Harvold sent word to Carlotta to come to the continent. Along with the missive came the funding for her passage. Of course, he had no intension of being as easily taken in by the woman as he did in his foolish youth; he was an older and wiser man now and suffered no delusions of marriage to a native servant. But an exotic and willing sex partner, coupled with her mystic powers—so useful to him in the running of the plantation—would more than pay for her passage to the continent.

The letter arrived at the Du’Preé quarters just as Carlotta was struck with a mysterious island illness. Marína, dutifully and dotingly caring for her ill mother, opened the letter without consulting her, thinking it of no great importance. The letter baffled Marína, she not even knowing who this Lord Harvold Dilysnia was. She showed the letter to her mama, who, upon reading the contents, was immediately seized by a spirit and entered a trance from which she did not emerge for two days, leaving Marína dumbfounded and worried.

When Carlotta finally returned to herself, Marína rushed to her side, worried that the sickness had claimed her mother. Carlotta tried to ease her daughter’s distress by telling her that, though she was not long for this world, she had spent her time away communing with the ancestors. “ . . . and a more bull-headed lot you’ll never see, child. Dey tell me I have to send you to yo’ father—dat it’s is important fo’ you ta know and understand dat line of your ancestry as well as mine.” Seeing the confused look on Marína’s face, Carlotta proceeded to explain. “I know I never talked about him before, but dat letter you brought me is from him. I never told him about you either—never has cause to. But he wants me to come, and since I’ll be dead soon, you must go in my place. De ancestors won’t have it any udder way.” Marína argued with her ailing mother violently, crying that she had no intention of leaving her home and her people, but Carlotta shot back fiercely, “Damnit, child, he is yo’ people.” The fight lasted long into the night, and the shouts coming from the room gave no indication that anyone was on her deathbed. However, the morning came bringing a tenuous resolution between mother and daughter, and the mother extracting a grudging promise from the girl to take the money and sail for the continent.

Shortly thereafter, in the year 749, Carlotta had joined her ancestors. Marína remained in the islands for sometime, staying the necessary amount of time to resurrect her mother’s gros-bon-ange, or spirit, into a govi, a terra cotta jar. Shortly thereafter in 752, she booked passage on an east-bound vessel, packed a few belonging including the letter from Harvold, a ring with the Dilysnia family crest on it, and an odd terra cotta jar she was particularly careful of, and set sail for the continent. As the islands disappeared from sight, she turned and looked toward the looming horizon and muttered a curse against the mother she loved so much. She was not looking forward to this journey . . .