I’ve never seen a soucouyant stay behind while a feast of human souls awaits. Sometimes, our hunger for any human soul is sharper than our thirst for vengeance. None of us would give up consumption for anything. Even if we didn’t reach our voted victim, we would feast on our own and not mention a word of it to anyone. The human we’d consume would be our own secret.
But there are no humans left on that hill. What are Lourdes and Giselle waiting for?
Then I spot it—Stefanie’s skin left unprotected on the cool ground. No ice, no cover, no guard.
I watch as Giselle and Lourdes circle each other. Giselle’s flame is mostly blue, her hunger and vengeance much deeper than Lourdes’s, who is an even mix of orange, yellow, and turquoise. Her crackling flames extend much farther than Lourdes’s, too. It looks as if she’s out for blood and soul, except it’s not the Don’s or even Gerard’s. The second that Giselle shoots for the ground, I know for sure that she’s out for skin. New skin. Stefanie’s skin.
Lourdes lunges right behind Giselle, and immediately, I aim for the both of them. My flame latches on to theirs when I reach them, but they are too strong, too angry, and they roll out of my grip.
But Lourdes catches up to Giselle, and the two flames become entangled until they look like one giant, rolling fireball. I throw myself into their chaos, but their battle is so fierce, so hot that I bounce right off them as if they’ve become a solid bubble of flames. They’ve encapsulated themselves so that nothing can penetrate their little war.
I can no longer tell them apart. Soucouyant energy is like a human face. The way the flames dance and how the colors reveal themselves tell us who is who. But it’s as if one flame has consumed the other. Soucouyant are souls, too. But this is a taboo, one of only two. We do not consume the flaming soul of a sister soucouyant. We do not enter the skin of a sister soucouyant. These are not simply the rules for our game. It is tradition. It is a mandate from our foremothers.
Hunger pounds against my soul, and I’m sure by now that one of the soucouyant has reached the Don. He is probably a shell of white man now, body and no breath. It’s time for me to feast, but my sisters are locked in a tiny war for a light-skinned girl’s skin.
In an instant, I recognize Giselle pulling away from Lourdes, and she quickly descends to the ground, as flame, then as firelight, then as soul. The skin suctions around the soul, and it fits like a sock to a foot. Skin doesn’t discriminate. It needs a soul, any soul, just like a soul needs skin so it can become fully human.
Lourdes flies away, and I am left alone to watch Stefanie’s skin become Giselle’s body. She curls herself into a fetal position on the ground, hunger gnawing at her core because she hasn’t feasted, and she begins to weep.
There is nothing left for me to do but to fly into the night, feast, and gain some energy to deal with this at dawn.
The very old are not as sustaining as the very evil. Vengeance is not in my soul when I find a grandfather wandering the hills at night. I don’t eat the full meal of life force and memories. I take tiny sips or a small bite only, leaving my victim with a fever and shortness of breath. They don’t see us coming, you know. Maybe they notice the light, then the unbearable heat. The older women think it’s menopause. But it is us. We shift from flame, to firelight, to smoke, to heat in seconds. We wrap ourselves around their skin and inhale deep-deep. My inhalations are shallow. I don’t seek death. Then we rise as smoke and shift back to firelight, then to flame, gaining more and more energy as we fly. I pray that my victims survive. Thank Goddess, they have strong, wiry spirits that can bend away from death.
I am not like the others. I have mercy. I show restraint. And I am not afraid of being charred by the sun, if it comes to that. I am not ashamed of my black fireskin. I know that this is the source of my power, our power. This is why I lead them.
Still, after my small meal, I aim for our beloved sun. He’s at the tip of the horizon now, and the other soucouyant are waiting for his arrival, too. One of us circles the air with such energy, such velocity that I’m sure it’s with the Don’s soul stirring in her fire belly. It’s Martine. Of course.
As soon as the sun hits the horizon and the edge of the sky lights up, Martine zooms toward him until she is so close, we can’t tell which is flame and which is sun.
I begin to lose strength. I can feel my flames becoming smaller, weaker. I let my fireball self fall and fall, until I am firelight, smoke, soul, skin, and finally body. My feet are now firmly planted on the ground. I am upright and half-human again. Half-girl.
And so is Giselle-in-Stefanie’s-skin.
We are all back in our own skins now, and some of us have to catch our breaths and gather our thoughts. Only one flame is left in the sky, circling the hill with an anger so hot, she can easily aim for any one of our souls right now.
So I grab Giselle-in-Stefanie’s-skin to shield her.
“What is going on?” Veronique asks. “Why are you protecting that yellow girl? She didn’t even race like she said she would. She was down here all this time.”
Before I can answer, Lourdes appears. Her face tells the story—eyes narrow, lips pursed. “I should kill you!” she hisses, looking directly at Giselle-in-Stefanie’s-skin.
“I won fair and square,” Giselle says.
“That wasn’t the game you were supposed to be playing,” Lourdes says.
“It doesn’t matter. I won!”
“Wait. What is Lourdes talking about?” Martine asks, appearing before us with her skin darker than it’s ever been. Clearly she won the real game. She kissed the sun. But no one cares, because they’re slowly figuring out what Giselle has done, what Lourdes intended to do, and what Stefanie truly is.
“Life is the game I’m playing. Life here on this island,” Giselle says, tossing her new long, curly hair back over her shoulders. She looks at her hands and arms as if they are brand-new clothes. “I never wanted to hurt Gerard, really. Or that old white man. He’s done nothing to me. I don’t care. But now . . .” She twirls, whipping her hair around to make her whole self spin like a tiny hurricane. “Look at me! I am pretty-pretty. Now Gerard will love me and only me!”
The girls gasp and mumble among themselves.
“Wait, now!” Martine shouts. “She did not . . .”
“She did,” I say, quiet-quiet.
But a loud screeching makes us all turn to see Giselle’s actual body speeding toward us. “Give me back my skin!” Stefanie-in-Giselle’s-skin shouts.
Before I can protect Giselle, Martine pulls me away so that Stefanie lunges straight for Giselle. Lourdes jumps in. I try to stop them, but all my soucouyant sisters are holding me back now.
“Stefanie, you’ll be hurting your own body, you know!” I yell. “Giselle can always fly out of that skin, and you won’t have one to get back into!”