Samedi: Kali

If I told you my origins as I am so often asked, you would not know where I am from. You think that hundreds of years would improve speech. But English is not my first language. For that, I am sorry. I come from an island. Long, long time ago. Mangareva. Sweet Mangareva. With water so blue it makes eyes ache.

I was a little girl, there. Born before the French overthrew our people. Born before the United States existed. Born before fall of Roman empire. Egyptians, yes. Egyptians had high power at the time of my birth, though I would never see their pyramids until centuries later. I was born on the Summer Solstice, and christened Kali like my grandmother before me. In studies centuries later I learn that Kali is a Hindu Goddess. Like triple-goddess of Anglo-Saxons and Wicca, but for the subcontinent of India. Yet the concept of the "Triple Goddess" transcends.

Kali is three parts to the Hindu people: creation, preservation, and destruction.

Creation:

As a child I was special. Now they would say I have epilepsy, but in my youth, long before traditional medicine, I was special. I could see the gods in my fits. And I was told I would be the next doctor. Now they would probably call them witch doctors, but they were of the highest esteem. They both healed the sick and injured, and were practitioners of the traditional witchcraft of our people. They were the wise. The ancient. And I was to be the next.

From a young age I studied under Moana. A woman whose black hair had long turned grey. Some of her teeth had fallen out. But her wrinkled hands would hold a frog and say: "Kali, look. Even these small creatures are creatures." And I would nod. She would show me how to mix medicines. She would show me how to heal wounds. She taught me everything I knew.

And when I was only fourteen, and most girls were in love. I learned how to deliver their babies. Girls I grew up with. I saw two of them die, unable to birth the new lives into the world. Death should not have to fall onto those so young. I remember the heartbreak as I cleaned their blood from my hands after the final hemorrhage. I know that there was nothing that I had done wrong…but the guilt was still there.

But I was only sixteen when Moana, my teacher, my mentor, fell to her own deathbed. "Kali, my girl," she said to me on the eve of her death, as we sat on the beach and watched the waves roll in. The sun was setting. Both over the water, and over Moana's grey hair. "Did I ever tell you about my teacher?"

I paused. Had she? "No," I said.

"I spoke with him last night. I told him about you. What a good student you are." Now it was her turn to pause. "He wants to give you a gift. A gift he was too afraid to give me at my prime." She then turned her dark eyes to me. There was a strange shadow in them. Something dark. And then she bluntly asked: "Will you take it?"

"Well what is it?" I asked, cautiously. I trusted her—possibly more than any other person I had ever known. But I still wanted to know what I was getting myself into.

"He will explain," Moana said. "He told me he wishes to speak with you alone. His name is Bembé."

"How will I know who he is?"

"You will know him when you see him, my girl. That I am sure of. But for now…I must lie down. I don't feel well."

Moana died the next morning. We buried her with flowers upon flowers and burned fires for her spirit. We cried and wailed as our medicine woman was taken from us. And suddenly I felt more alone than ever before. But I remembered the pleading in her eyes. Will you take it? Will you take the gift? I promised her I would. I promised myself that I would.

But when he told me—even before he told me, perhaps it was when I even first saw him—I immediately questioned it. "You want to make me like you?" His rotting, dark skin hung off of him in sheets, rotting away from his skeleton, which was exposed in a few places. It terrified me.

"Moana has told me of you," his voice was dark and grizzly, with almost a strange whistle to as it the air in his decaying lungs warbled out of his mouth, "I've visited her the past few nights. She knew she was dying and she wants the best for you."

"The best…" I repeated. He was a rotting body from the grave. I wondered if Moana knew what she had gotten me involved with. But then I scolded myself for questioning her judgment. That woman taught me everything that I knew, and there was no way that I was going to doubt her—especially in death.

He explained the process. My heart raced faster with every word.

"I can give you immortal life, Kali. Take you to far corners of the world. Teach you all kinds of things Moana never could. I will take care of you. You just have to let me."

"But will it hurt?"

"It will be worth it."

Will you take the gift?

"Okay."

Preservation:

The embrace was hard. My skin burned and stung as he bled me. Like fire was poured over me. "It will rot more with time," he told me, holding me after the "gift" was received. He cradled my head gently with his rotting hand, my wavy, black hair scrunching up against his palm. "But you are alright for now."

"It hurts," I moaned quietly, my skin now feeling like it was churning, like bugs were crawling underneath my skin and sunburn consumed the surface.

"I know it does. But the pain will go away." He held me a little tighter, and although was terrified about what was happening to me—though I was too weak to do anything about it—he was oddly comforting. There was something very much in his presence that reminded me of Moana.

"So I will watch all of my friends die? Even the babies here? I will see them grow grey and old, and then they will die, and I will survive?"

"I want to take you away from here, Kali," he said, gently. "Moana told me you are bright. There is so much in the world to know. Let me teach you." And as I looked into the rotting face of Bembé, I could feel the same warmth of the sun that Moana's dark orbs always had. Perhaps that's what drew them together. The strange warmth they seemed to have. It was familiar. And in the warmth of his arms, I wanted nothing more than to sleep.

"It hurts…" I repeated, unable to put my thoughts into words.

"Shh," he hushed, shifting me in his arms so that he could carry me. "I'll take you somewhere quiet where you can rest. But first I have a question. Will you let me teach you, Kali?"

"Yes," I hissed through my teeth as my head grew heavy.

He smiled his rotting grin. "There are people in Haiti waiting to see you."

"Haiti?"

"Haiti, Japan, Egypt, the Nords," he rattled off. "They will all want to meet you. And they have so much knowledge to share."

And so we set off together. Bembé would become my closest friend. He took me all over the world. Our travels far and wide brought us to Greece, England, Russia, Africa...everywhere. Our unique brand of witch-doctoring was a commodity in some places, or a disgrace in others. We are scholars. We are healers. We are students. We are two corpses walking beneath a living moon.

Destruction:

"Bambé!" I cried, kneeling at his collapsed form. "Stay with me, you are going to be alright!"

"I'm dying," he replied, "and they're going to come and finish me off if you do not get out of here." Hunters had been after use for months. And they managed to ambush us and assault us with some kind of horrid 'holy water.' Although it did nothing other than get me rather wet, there was a horrible sizzling noise from Bambé. It boiled on his skin like acid and he screamed in pain.

"I'm not going to leave you," I replied.

"Of course not, Kali. Of course not."

"Then what do we do."

"I'm going to give you instructions, Kali," he said, his voice very stern. "And you are to follow them exactly, even if you don't want to. Understand?"

"Y-yes," I replied, hesitantly.

"This is a very important lesson, Kali. Listen carefully. You are to bite me as if to feed. You are to drink my blood. All of it. And then you are to keep drinking."

"Bambé! NO!"

"You must do it, Kali." He replied. "I want you to."

"But I'm not going to hurt you!"

"I'm asking you to," he replied, as serious as the grave which we had both managed to escape once…but it seemed that I was about to be alone once again. "That way, they never killed me. I don't want them to have the satisfaction, and I am going to die either way—this way you reap the benefits and there's left no trace. I can't get up, and they'll be coming soon. Do it, please. And then as you continue on, I will always be there with you."

I began to cry. "Bambé…"

"Do it, Kali. This is a very important lesson you must learn. It's my last lesson I'm teaching you, and you must pass."

I cried as I sunk my teeth into his decaying arm.

I cried as I fed.

I cried as I felt his blood stop flowing.

I cried as I could feel his essence being ripped from him and into my veins.

I cried as he disintegrated into dust.

And I cried as I could feel his being within me and I fled the scene. Diablerie. His final lesson. I knew that he had both given me a blessing (power) and a curse. For there would be people who want to kill me for what I had just done.

Worse?

I now had to travel the world alone. But in Bambé's honor, and with his spirit within me, I continued my travels around the world, learning things of the occult, healing the sick and injured, and serving an interesting role within the ranks of both the Camarilla and the Sabbat. I was independent—yet both groups found me an interesting correspondent if they were interested in some kind of information about a subject. And information sells at market price. I use the money they give me in order to continue my travels.

I have seen the Tzimisce flesh cathedrals.

I have seen the werewolves of the north.

I have seen the Kuei-Jin temples in the east.

But there are many things that I have not seen.

And I have made it my quest to know all there is to know of the occult. How to heal. To understand our place in the universe. For I have not met all parts of the Triple Goddess. My destruction has not yet arisen on the horizon. But until the day I join Bambé in the beyond, my travels will continue.