Curse of the Pogo Stick by Colin Cotterill

in the flame of the Zippo.
    “Actually I do,” he told her. “A pogo stick. How did it get here?”
    “Shh, Yeh Ming. Not here.”
    She lit a candle, placed the incense in a jam jar in front of the toy, and pressed her palms together in supplication. Siri wasn’t about to join her.

9
    FRIENDLY FIRE AND BRIMSTONE
    “S o, what was all that about?” Siri asked.
    They sat on a log in front of the shaman’s house.
    “It’s not my place to talk about it,” she told him.
    “Really? Well, Long is unconscious so that only leaves you to explain all this,” Siri said. He could feel her reluctance to speak. “And don’t forget I’m an honoured guest.”
    She looked at him at first with a rebellious expression that was soon melted by his magical eyes. She sniffed and gazed out at the eastern stars in the black map of the universe.
    “We were just another village,” she began. “Families, happy enough, working hard but surviving. We weren’t interested in anything outside this mountain or the mountain before it or the one before that. Whatever place we chose was our world. But your world kept bumping into ours. You made us grow opium, then taxed us for it. You counted us and put our names in a book and forced your ways on us. It wasn’t fair. We didn’t interfere with anyone. But then the Americans came and asked us to give them our strongest men. Why? We needed them to work the fields but the Americans offered them money and that money bought silver. It was a fortune to us. And they gave the men guns and pretty uniforms, so they went. And some trained to be warriors, and when they came back they brought us beautiful things – coffee and sacks of rice and medicines we didn’t have any idea how to use. And they brought candies for the kids and coloured posters of big movie stars. It was like heaven had sprung a leak and all the good things rained down on us.”
    Siri held Bao’s hand as she shook.
    “Then it started,” she said. “Chia’s elder brother came home with that toy. He said he got it from his American buddy. The kids loved it. They fought over it. Brothers and sisters who’d never argued in their lives fell out over it. Even I queued up to have my turn on it. It was like a drug. My father refused to let me and I went into a sulk he never forgave me for. The stick became the centre of gravity in our world. By then, the curse was already on us. News came that two of our men had died fighting for the great American cause. Chia’s brother was one of them. A recruiter came and had no trouble at all signing up six other men to join General Vang Pao, the head of the Imperial North American Force.
    “They were used up in no time and the recruiter came back. He lowered the enlistment age to fifteen so our brothers went with him to get their gum and their girlie magazines and their Zippo lighters. That was when my father realized what was happening. The stick had brought a curse to our world. Since it arrived we’d lost our men and our boys and our souls. He confiscated it and the younger children hated him for it. Never before had children dared speak like that to a shaman. He knew then that evil had been reincarnated in the frame of the jumping stick. At first he buried it and used his strongest spell to remove its power over us. But still the recruiters came and this time they took our younger brothers, only twelve and thirteen. And they were all used up too.
    “The stick was stronger than my father. It couldn’t be destroyed. It had to be adored. For the survival of the village we had to pay homage to it. It had stolen all our menfolk and our boys. If we didn’t worship it, my father was sure it would take us all. He had us line up and beg the stick to spare our lives. And it seemed to work. There were no more reports of deaths and no more recruiters came. But it needed just one more sacrifice to satisfy it. So it took my father.”
    She sighed as if she’d been allowed to put down a heavy pack