Page 2 of Ghosts and Ginger Tea

I glanced ahead, knowing the village was so close.

There is no such thing as ghosts and night marchers, I repeated in my mind, but then the breathing started, as if someone stood behind me, their hot breath on my neck.

If my grandmother were here, or even my little sister Kiki, they’d drag me to the ground with them. I could just see Kiki’s eyebrows raised in fear as she screamed, “Get on the ground Oli! It’s the night marchers!”

Though Kiki was nineteen, only three years younger than me, she would sound like a child again.

I did not move.

The night marchers? That’s silly. Even as the words formed in my head, I looked behind me at the mist, my eyes betraying me. There seemed to be warm lights bobbing up and down. Torch lights.

They were like the first sparks of a bonfire on the beach at dusk.

It can’t be. My eyes narrowed, and just when I saw a figure step through the mist, every inch of my body went cold. From the crown of my head to the tips of my toes, I told myself this wasn’t real, but it seemed so real.

The figure was tall, with a bare chest and a skirt around his hips. Tattoos covered him–the sort that once adorned chiefs of old. Beneath the gourd helmet that covered his head, his face remained hidden in shadow. Even despite the light coming from the torch.

Impossible.

I should have stuffed my practicality and obeyed Kiki’s screaming voice in my head.

“Lie down, Oli!”

But Kiki was not here, nor was my grandmother.

The figure stopped and, if he had eyes beneath that helmet, he was probably looking directly at me. I froze in place, as if the roots of the earth below were twisting around my ankles and squeezing them. My clammy hands trembled as I held my lantern up, casting more light on the ghost-like figure before me.

Run. I turned and bolted along the path. I was quicker than a fish darting to hide when a person swam close to them. Within minutes, I reached the town.

Only when my boots touched the dirt path, woven between the shacks, did I let out a breath and dare look behind me. My face was white as the clouds on a bright day, and the tightness in my shoulders would not go away.

Yet as I searched the path behind me, only the darkness of the night greeted me.

I was delirious; I told myself, but the image of the warrior, dressed in the attire of our ancestors, lingered in my mind.

I’m taking too long, I chastened myself and knocked on the kahuna’s door. Mother needed medicine.

Now.

Whatever specter I saw just minutes ago had to be figments of my imagination.

The kahuna opened the door, his face weathered from years in the tropical sun, his brown eyes wise, and his hair strikingly white. For a moment, he looked impatient. How many times had I stopped by his hut in the last couple of weeks? He knew how direly sick mother was.

Without waiting for me to ask for what I needed, he brought me a small glass bottle of medicine. “Have her take this,” he said, his voice raspy like the crackling of lava. Before I turned, he grabbed my wrist. “And Oli… be careful out there,” he added. “Night marchers roam at this hour.”

My hair stood on end, and my toes curled. But I feigned a smile, hoping he wouldn’t see through my disguise that, perhaps, I had bumped into a night marcher that night… “That’s just superstition.”

The man tutted and shook his head. “Children no longer heed old warnings.” He motioned for me to leave, though he continued to watch, a wary look on his face, as I returned onto the path.

I took a deep breath, medicine in hand.

“Ghosts are not real, and therefore, night marchers don’t exist,” I said, my voice quiet. But as I ran home to deliver the medicine to my mother, the heat on my neck and back seemed even more intense. Though I continued to tell myself otherwise, deep down in my na‘au, there was the lingering anxiety that whatever ghost I’d seen earlier, the man in the ancient warrior attire, was not just a figment of my imagination. He was real.

CHAPTER TWO

In waters deep, her soul finds peace,

Yet dreams she holds, they must cease.