CONTENTS

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

PROSE

SISYPHUS

C. L. Clark // 4331 words

How far would you go for what you believe is right? How much would you give up? In this story, the narrator answers this question in a training exercise that requires them to kill their past. Literally.

FORTY ACRES AND A MULE

Stephanie Malia Morris // 2666 words

It’s the tallest tree on Erin’s parents’ farm, and she wants to climb it. The ascent will remind her of the depth of her roots, and teach her boyfriend a lesson about the land, and the power that lies there.

BARBARA IN THE FRAME

Emmalia Harrington // 4144 words

Babs doesn’t fit in, and the lack of belonging at college is starting to take its toll. Luckily for Babs, she has deep familial roots that sustain her in the most unlikely way.

RILEY AND ROBOT

Arnica Ross // 2801 words

Nicey is a struggling single mother trying her best to provide a life for her son Riley. But when Riley starts to crave something that Nicey can’t provide, she’s forced to make a decision that will change their lives forever.

EXCAVATE

Melody Gordon // 3770 words

In the face of deep, spiritual pain, The Pearson family decides to undergo an experimental treatment process that will bring them face to face with their past. The problem? It also forces them to stare down their family’s demons.

POETRY

JOURNEY OF THE DEAD

Resoketswe Manenzhe

ROOTWORK

Constance Collier-Mercado

EXTRAS

INDIE SPOTLIGHT

MEJI

THANKS

October 2017

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Welcome to issue four of FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction.

We made it, y’all. This started out as a concept. A wild idea that we had no idea we could achieve. However, over the course of the past three issues, we’ve introduced Black speculative fiction to hundreds of readers, published groundbreaking work from established and emerging Black writers, and created a safe space for Black writers to hone their craft and get excited about their decision to enter this battleground that we call the writer’s life. Through FIYAH, we’ve gone above and beyond any of our expectations. We’re so honored that our Year 1 authors chose to grace us with their work, and we’re so excited that you have decided to take this journey with us, whether you were here for our Rebirth or whether you joined us during another issue.

There’s lots planned for Year Two. In addition to our standard efforts to publish and support black writers, we’re also continuing in our advocacy for their place in SFF literary magazines, structures, and organizations. Watch our Twitter account during the month of October—which is Black Speculative Fiction Month—for writing prompts and flashes of brilliance from Black writers. We’ll also be repeating our VoicesOnFIYAH 50k writing marathon in November; last year, FIYAH’s team generated more than 370,000 words of fiction during the month. We’ll also be sending out our annual Black SFF Writer Survey to hear from Black speculative fiction writers all over the world. We’ll be releasing a volume that collects all of our fiction from Year One. And as always, we have four spectacular issues planned for the 2018 year.

None of this can happen without you. Your donations, your subscriptions and issue purchases, your retweets and shares and word of mouth recommendations mean everything to us. We are awed by your love for us and humbly ask that you keep supporting us for as long as we keep delivering quality fiction to you.

We have a great issue planned for this month. The cover for this issue will be our final one from Geneva Benton, and this cover captures our long-lasting resilience, our roots that stretch generations, and our tendency to create lush new beauty from those deep histories. C.L. Clark’s “Sisyphus” examines those literal familial connections, and what happens when one has to forcibly remove them. Stephanie Malia Morris’ “Forty Acres and A Mule” is a chilling tale of secrets and the pull of home. Emmalia Harrington’s “Barbara in the Frame” dives deep into the struggle to belong, and how our roots give us strength. Arnica Ross’ “Riley and Robot” examines the struggle that is the attempt creating meaningful connections between family and through her work we realize that there are no good decisions--only correct ones. Melody Gordon’s “Excavate” looks at what it would take for a Black American family to release the deep pain of historical abuses.

We have some breathtaking poetry from you as well: in “Journey of the Dead”, Resoketswe Manenzhe questions the rulers of the afterlife, and doesn’t necessarily like the answers he gets; and “Rootwork” by Constance Collier-Mercado serves as a magic spell to help recover from the wounds of history.

In this issue’s Indie Spotlight, we are talking to Author, Editor, Entrepreneur, and Sword and Soul guru Milton Davis, author of the Meji duology and editor of the Griots anthology, among many other works.

Again, thank you so much for your continued support. We hope that you stick with us as we press on into Year Two.

Happy Black Speculative Fiction Month.

Executive Editors: Justina Ireland + Troy L. Wiggins

Poetry Editor: Brandon O’Brien

Acquiring Editors: Brent Lambert + DaVaun Sanders

Layout: LeKesha Lewis

Cover Artwork by Geneva Benton

All material in FIYAH is copyrighted to the original authors and may not be reproduced without permission.

SISYPHUS

By C. L. Clark // 4331 words

Killing someone thirty-three times oughta give you some familiarity with a guy.

My step-father, Reggie, stands in front of me, at the other end of the long, metal room, and I shoot him. Dead. He even bleeds convincingly. I still haven’t figured out how they do it—give you these avatars of the ones you used to love. Or maybe still love, in which case, you’re failing and will be stuck in this hellhole for the rest of your life. I can happily say I don’t love Reggie. Sounds bad, but I don’t really know him. Probably why he’s the first person I see every morning when the test starts over again and I have to—try again—to show them I’m sufficiently detached from the world I used to call mine.

This is the 99ers Elite Officer Training.

If I’ve killed him around thirty-three times, how many days have I been here, then? Surrounded by the same gunmetal panels that slide out only when they want them to? When they clear out the “bodies,” the floor on the other side of the room slides open and skewp. When they tell me I’ve failed and turn the room back into a cell they call “barracks.”

What everyone outside probably still thinks—what I thought when I signed up—is that EO training is completely voluntary. You sign up, they put you in a uniform a bit different from desert camo and push you through something like boot camp, except maybe worse. (Since most people are civilians, that part has always been a little fuzzy to them.) But everyone understands the need for peak physical fitness from anyone with “elite” in their job description. Everyone probably imagines us crawling through the woods and being trained to eat bugs, or better yet, nothing at all, and choke down our own piss. Which is great, really, just how I hoped my family would imagine me. For the low, low price of a letter from home every now and then, I would protect half of the country from the other half.

Everyone imagines us stalwart, stoic, gritting our teeth on mud and pain, communicating silently to lift each other’s morale. Proud and strong. Fighting against tyranny for justice.

That stoicism lasted up through registration, which, if I’m honest, was more skittishness than pride. All of us glancing at each other and ignoring each other at the same time. Stiff-backed, heads shaven, and poured into black, sorta-spandex uniforms. We sat in a cramped room in cramped desks with cramped hands, answering stupid math questions and triage-like logic puzzles. If five of your soldiers are wounded and a train full of civilians is hurtling off a cliff, how fast should you run to get the hell out of there? And then, yeah, a shit ton of push-ups until we collapsed, running miles until we passed out. That was the end of the stuff that seemed familiar.

And that was the end of the communal aspect as well. We were packed off into individual cells—barracks—boxes—six steps across, ten down—with basins for cleaning, and a toilet to shit in, but that’s it.

This last part, solitary, no one knows about—well, if they know about it, I’ll kill someone when I get out of here. I chuckle aloud, looking in the corners of my metal box to see if anyone out there registers the strange sound. Kill someone, see, it’s funny. That’s probably what they want me to do. I think they’re much more interested in our mental health than our physical. And by interested, I don’t mean we get therapists to work us through our traumas.

The only thing I really remember about my outside step-dad is his clothes. Somehow, they managed to get the same outfits, the same tacky, plaid flannels and sweatpants he wore. Who does that? Who does the recon to know that shit? Then I wonder if I only remember this because this is how they give him to me. But do they smell like him? Cheap Old Spice, not real cologne, and food. Meat. I look at him and remember burgers.

My stomach rumbles and that sets my mouth watering. They fed me something like oatmeal before spitting Reggie #35 (or something) through the floor door. What I wouldn’t give to eat something real again. Suddenly I’m starving and trying not to throw up at the same time.

Shows how close we were. He’s dead in front of me and all I can think of is food. I was already grown when Mama found him, though. We exchanged nods and workout stories when I came home to visit. That’s it. I can see why his clone might be a danger, though. Under the beer belly, he’s pretty solid. Even his bald head looks intimidating, like those tough-shit actors.

I sling the rifle over my shoulder. The pistols at my hip jostle as I creep toward the body. They’re probably watching me.

Yep. Soon as I get near him, the ground beneath him splits and the lights go out. I wait in the dark. I’ve tried to go down there before. An electric field spat me back out. Jagged little burn scars run up my arms under my blacks.

When I think of how many times I’ve had to start back over at Reggie, I feel like a moron. I breezed through the physical and intellectual portions of training. I was ready. Every muscle hummed on adrenaline and idealism. I was gonna help make the world fair.

How’s that saying? All’s fair in war and hand grenades?

As the dark presses in on me and they chute the next one up, I feel, for the first time, the familiar buzz. Maybe it came with the hunger, but I feel like I can get out today. I can make it to the end of the line.

∙ ∙ ∙

The minor arcana march through, one by one—the extended family, the old roommates, they’re part of the deck but they don’t get you excited, you don’t dread seeing them. I take them out quickly, rifle. I kneel on the ground, butt steadied on knee and shoulder. I lose track. You can’t slow down.

I get ready for the next one and my finger snags outside the trigger guard.

My little brother bobs his head, dangling an archaic Discman, like he did once upon a time. I don’t think he’s taller than I remember and he still wears dreads. He was at a 1er school before the war broke out. Private, fancy uniforms. Before we even knew what a 1 Percenter was. Mama always wanted to give us as good as she could.

You never know how much you can miss someone until you know for sure you’ll never talk to them again. The lives we leave behind are contraband. We wouldn’t be killing our memories if they were just going to give them back to us. Even I could figure that out. The 1ers may have been in the minority, but with all their money, the laws they write in their favor, with clones of the entire country maybe at their disposal—

I guess when your enemy has everything, you’ve gotta learn to make do with nothing. Training’s just to take everything we have left.

No point in speculation. Most of my memories are gone now, anyway.

The trigger is surprisingly cool, as if I haven’t been pulling it over and over again. Worn smooth by my finger, and maybe someone else’s. They take the guns away when I fail and they arrive again when I start over with Reggie.

I aim, squinting, palms sweating, at my brother’s heart, beating improbably beneath the shirt so tight it reveals his thickening pecs. His head bobs to a rhythm I can almost imagine, blaring into the headphones, and as his head bobs, the cord of the headphones dangles and dances with him, with the jerking of his retro Discman thing, if you can call this dancing dancing. He gets it from our mom.

Kow. A hole through the headphone cord and his chest.

The sound bounces between the dull, gray walls as he falls.

Every once in a while, I’d let him talk. It never quite makes sense, but it sounds just like him. Pretend we’re sitting at home in the living room that’s not for living, pillows on pristine furniture, perfect carpet. If you look carefully, you’ll find stains from the dogs: piss in corners that didn’t quite come up and only almost blends.

In the early days—were they days? hard to tell these things with a metal sky, but you make assumptions—I’d try to shoot him and chicken out, miss on purpose. Eventually, they’d call the exam a failure and I’d start again with Reggie and his flannel.

My brother’s name is Eli. The conversations we really have, in the box with my weapons on my lap and a few of them listening, are more like this:

“Where are you?” I ask.

“It’s good, sis, it’s good,” he says.

“How’s mama?”

“I don’t like school too much, there’s too much work. They always raggin on me cause of my hair.”

Eli.

The lights go out as the platform steals him away again.

∙ ∙ ∙

In the glare of the lights, she’s too pale, and by someone’s sadistic choice, she’s wearing lacy underwear. Shorts riding up her ass and a little bra—but the joke’s on them. Rocky hated that shit. She only wore it once, on our first anniversary, whenever that was, and she confessed she thought I’d wanted it.

Not that I’d complained.

And under, you know, more appropriate circumstances, I might not be complaining now. But this is fucked up.

“Hey!” I yell to the corners of the almost empty room. “Hey! Not fucking cool.” Like they’ve changed, like I’ll be able to see the cameras or the windows, a change in the seamless quality of the metal. The light reflects, but muted, never glaring—but nothing sits in shadow, either.

Where did we meet? Somewhere…somewhere.

Rocky smiles at me, her red-brown eyes lit up like they used to get when she’d come home and smell garlic and onions and... I sniff the air. Is that a grill? A kitchen? God. Salmon, grilled on a cedar plank, on the spicy, sweet side. I shake my head clear. It’s getting harder to focus. Maybe that’s a good thing.

“Baby.” I step forward before catching myself, my hand outstretched for her shoulder. I stopped saying, “I’m sorry” after the tenth time I killed her. She’d stalled me fifteen times before that.

At first, I’d try to touch her. Failure before I even got close. Then I tried to race them, to get to her before they could slide her back down the chute. After never getting closer than a hand away, I gave up. I don’t know how many times I’ve killed her since then.

Like Midas. Everything turned to gold, even his…what, daughter? His girlfriend? Only way of touching mine is to shoot her. It’s great.

My fingers twitch as I look at her, moving on their own. At first I think I’m trigger happy. Then I remember the last day I saw her. And then I remember how we met. I met her in the rehab clinic. I helped her with her shoulder. She played the cello.

The last time I saw her, before I left for EO training. She was still pissed at me. I was smart. Fucking smart. But she knew better, always.

“You go in with those pigs and I will never see you again,” she said, pointing at me with her bow. Our studio apartment doubled as a music studio, and I’d been packing silently while she practiced. Her thick, dark eyebrows angled sharply with her glare. She wore a royal purple tank top and short strands of dark hair clung to her forehead. The AC was broken again.

For a while, I thought she meant she’d leave me, but no. She just had better instincts for the trap.

I remember her hand trailing along my wrist the moment I knew I’d join up to be an EO. A PSA sort of thing cut across the music video I was watching on my computer—the only way anyone could spread info with the monomedia nowadays. It was kinda like those old “Army of One” commercials, or “The Few. The Proud.” Enlistment as a necessity, the importance of officers with degrees, especially the critical and creative thinkers from the arts and humanities. I didn’t fancy myself a creative thinker and my degree was in exercise science. I used to play rugby and I missed physical contact. I missed being better than someone else.

And the movies then. If soldiers were America’s Darlings before, they were celebrities now, for both sides. No parades; that was silly. Nothing makes people want to copy others like visions of strength and well-timed media. Especially not when we all—or maybe just me—felt helpless to make a difference. My own damned fault. I’m that dog in the fable who wanted the reflected bone. Soon as you grab for it, boom. You lose everything else you had, too.

This is not her, I tell myself. One through the eye. One somewhere in the vicinity of the heart. Did it help? Was it less painful? My right ring finger is conspicuously light.

“Fuck you, assholes,” I say.

∙ ∙ ∙

Patricide. Fratricide. Uxoricide. Amicicide. What can I say? I was a curious, morbid kid with a thing for vocab words.

Is there a word for killing your grandmother? Maybe if I think of it, I can finally get past this part.

My grandma leans on a walker, lime green tennis balls on the back two feet.

She scoots forward. “Hey there, cookie.” She grins, mouth widened by those dentures. “Your hair is still too short.”

It’s actually shorter than my real grandma has ever seen it. The pistol is trained on her, but I sweep my hand over my head, reflex. Instead, I hit helmet, and my smile dies, half-baked. You can’t tease her. This isn’t Grandma. But that doesn’t make it easier to pull my finger tight against the trigger.

I could be outside, with them. Somewhere. Home. They’ve probably been relocated for their own…safety. Even if I remember them when I get out of here, I’ll never find them.

“And—that—is—a—good—thing.” I grit my teeth on the words. Try to convince myself.

I kneel on the ground in front of her. If I stay here too long, they’ll call an end to the exam and I’ll have to watch her scoot herself forward to scold me for trying so hard to be a man and leaving her and not loving her since I don’t stop by no more and why don’t you go to church tell me you still go to church you can come with me—

“Argh!” I empty a pistol into the metal wall to my left, away from her.

Shit. I catch my breath, hands raised, I come in peace. That kinda shit’ll get you a fail, quicktime.

I don’t know if there’s a timeline, if they’ll send me home if I don’t pass the test in a certain amount of time. Is she still...home? “Alive” gets stuck in my mind’s throat.

I hadn’t been there to help her paint the walls. For the first time in thirty years in that house, my grandparents wanted to look on something completely different than what they had the day before. They woke up, suddenly bored. And I became, suddenly, busy.

Grandma sat in the kitchen, slouched so much into her seat that I thought she’d slide to the floor. Rocky talked to her, making her smile. What did they say? I slipped away to the bathroom, a stranger walking between fresh, red-purple walls. I got distracted on the way back. They had spread a quilt across the bed, and the colors pulled me closer. Jewel tones, expertly inexactly matched, with a deep brown border. Across the squares, rainbow thread whirled. My breath caught as I followed the pattern.

I stole a pair of scissors from the bathroom and kept an ear out as I snipped a hole into the quilt. I cut along it until a rectangular strip of white batting showed through. It smelled like her, them, their house. Like mothballs and running away from my mom.

“What are you doing?” Rocky asked, arms crossed, in the doorway.

“Nothing.” The strip of the quilt dampened with sweat.

Rocky closed the gap between us and saw the hole I’d made.

“You are so wrong,” she said, running her thumb along the sliced edge. “A selfish asshole.”

You think I don’t know that? I want to say now, whenever I remember this. But I couldn’t have known what would happen to me.

“This is the last quilt she’ll ever be able to make,” Rocky said. “She was just telling me that when you snuck off.”

“I just need something from her. Just in case I’m…gone too long.”

Rocky closed her eyes and the tendons in her jaw stood out. Then she walked back to the kitchen, kissed my grandma bye, and left.

Laughter coughs up like vomit into the back of my throat. Not real laughing. Crazy laughing with that bite behind your eyes. Not crying but not not crying. I run my hand along my biceps. Under the jacket, wrapped as close as I could get it, is the little strip I cut. You don’t even want to know how I got that through GATESEC.

Maybe it’s luckier for everyone if they move on or forget me. I don’t even know what’s going on out there. Did the civil war pick up? Will they even need me by the time I get out? I must be sick, to stick around just to watch my family get yanked away and dropped back at me.

I shoot once with the other pistol, keeping my eyes closed the whole time. Tears catch on my eyelids.

I can never shoot her again.

∙ ∙ ∙

I’ve never made it this far in the sequence, but I’m not surprised to see Mama standing there in her sweatpants and striped leg warmers.

The gun is unyielding in my clenched fist. Every time I think of her, I just feel angry. It should be easy to let blame pull the trigger. She didn’t stop me. She was my mother and she, of all people, might have been able to talk sense into me. Now I’ll never see her again.

We used to sing songs together, driving around. Oldies stuff. I can almost sing something—god, that—like a taste, that almost memory of a sound.

But one thing sticks out right now, and it’s not the goofy dance move she’s doing, even though I want to laugh at her, record her antics like I used to. No—

If my mom is the only family I haven’t seen in this simulation—

That means she’s the last one.

Then I’m out.

Out for what, though? What kinda shit did I ask for? Not this. Rigorous special operations training. Their fucking jargon. I just wanted to be something better than I was. And I believed in the 99ers.

“You still believe,” I mutter to myself. You have to.

But the commanders keep everyone just within reach...I can’t stop wanting them.

Her house forces its way into my head. I remember wanting to tell her. I waited in the hallway by the kitchen, a step out of sight. The wall had once been completely white, but it was splotchy now from dirty little fingers that had long since lost their pudginess. She and Rocky chatted with barbed tongues. I could see them so clearly in my mind, I might as well have been looking through the wall. My mother, leaning on the island, predatory. Rocky, on a chair, ankle crossed over knee, wary.

“I heard you’re moving?” I heard my mom ask.

“No. We’ve talked about it a couple times. Nothing’s set in stone. I know she wants to talk to you guys. To her grandparents.”

“Of course she does. We’ll talk sense into her.”

“Last we talked, she wanted to talk sense into you. She said you already had passports? It’d be that much easier—”

“We aren’t leaving. My dad can’t travel and Reggie won’t leave his parents, either. You all should stay with family. Help us take care of things.”

I heard Rocky sigh through her nose. Even now, however many miles away, I can see her cross her arms under her breasts and suck her teeth.

“Shawna, look.” Rocky tried again. “Shi—stuff is changing really fast around here. And not in a good way. They’re building ghettos and sectioning people off—”

“They’re making defensible spaces. Spaces my family and I will take advantage of.” The silence was so thick with tension that I could have picked it up and buried it. “You two don’t understand what being responsible for a family is like.”

“Defensible—? Did you skip every history—!”

The chair scraped and I jumped forward. Rocky crashed into me on her way out of the kitchen and I grabbed her by the shoulders. Her face was splotchy.

“Your mom—argh! Your mother—”

I stood between the two of them, but Rocky didn’t want to be protected. She stood next to me, sideways to my mom, glaring and flexing her jaw.

My mom’s face was blank, empty but tired. People used to say we looked like sisters. Flattery to her, or side effect of early parenthood?

“Mama.”

“What.”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

Rocky’s clenched jaw fell open. “Huh?”

My mom straightened and smiled. “Good. I knew you wouldn’t do that—”

“I signed up for 99ers EOT, BLM division. Elite Officer Training.”

“You did what?” they both asked.

“Well, go undo it!” Rocky said, thumping me on the shoulder. “You don’t even know what it is!”

“I thought you were a pacifist,” my mom said. She stood behind Rocky now and together they stared me down.

I’d hoped she would fight harder. I hadn’t been a pacifist since college, when I punched an asshole in the face for calling my friends the f-bomb. I shrugged to cover my fear. “The recruiter said no take-backs.”

And secretly, I’d been relieved. If not for that, I would have taken back my enlistment the next day, and I didn’t want to chicken out like that. I wanted to be something important. Save a life, stop a bad guy. Be a hero. Even an anti-hero. Just…be something.

Such a fucking idiot. I thought it would be different. That I’d get things like “leave” in between trainings and tours. A nice retirement. I don’t even know where I’ll get stationed when I get out. Somehow, I doubt they’re prepping me for a cushy job checking IDs at the base.

“Mama.” I imagine her hugging me right now, can almost feel a shadow of her arms around me. She’s the best likeness they’ve thrown at me so far. She doesn’t even have any gray hairs, which I know for a fact she grows but pulls out before she goes outside.

I don’t even bother getting off my knees. I can’t. They hurt. I unholster the last pistol, cup my left hand in the right to steady the shakes, but I still miss everything vital. She screams as a bullet catches her arm.

“Shit! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I climb to my feet and run forward, like I can help, wrap her up, like what, a fucking bandaid? But I remember my grandma, the last phase. I can’t face her again. I lurch to a stop and shoot, emptying the gun.

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. kowkowkowkow.

∙ ∙ ∙

The metal floor is cold against my cheek and through the uniform. Dreaming with my eyes closed, I think of burgers again. Good ones. Smoky, just a little pink on the inside. Safe beef was hard to come by when I was outside. It got too hot to maintain the real farms.

Ketchup and mustard, the artsy kinds with whiskey or chipotle peppers mixed in. I listen for the gates, for them to rescue me, to take me the hell out of here, when my neck prickles like someone’s watching me. I’m always being watched, though. I crack an eye open.

“Holy shit!” I’m up and pointing an empty pistol, clickclickclick.

I stand in front of myself. Almost a mirror image, except she’s me before I’m this, this sad fuck of a cringing mess. My heart is about to beat itself bloody. Over there, I’m leaning against the wall, hands in pockets, smirking.

But it’s not you.

Some help. I know it’s not me. She’s who I used to be. That makes this all her fault.

“You put me here,” I whisper through clenched teeth. “I’m fucking getting out—today, damn it.”

The same hair, more or less—hers a little longer, a handsome fade. She’s a little scrawnier, but so cocky.

That’s all you’ve got to show for yourself? A little extra muscle?

That and a brand new intimacy complex.

My eyes graze my boots. Shining, black.

Kill me. I promise, it’ll be better out there.

“You don’t even know,” I say. My uniform sticks with sweat and my vision tunnels down the room.

Do it.

I lunge. Somewhere in my mind, I’m surprised they don’t call the test for physical contact, but my neck is soft under my gloves, the yield of skin and muscle and tendon, the knobs of vertebrae. My eyes are still, focused on me. We don’t blink as I squeeze.

Up the hill, back down. Up the hill, back down. Did he ever think about lying down and letting the stone roll over him?

If I fail the test, the pistols will get refilled. I’ll start over.

I squeeze until I feel something inside me break.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT C. L. CLARK

C.L. Clark graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world with her partner. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, doing P90something, or reading about war and [post-]colonial history. Twitter: @C_L_Clark

FORTY ACRES AND A MULE

By Stephanie Malia Morris // 2666 words

My parents’ farm has shrunk, as old things tend to do. The shed, the workshop, the paddock with its doubled wire fences and chicken coop—all squat and rain-blackened, coming into focus as I step from the car as if I have put on glasses or wiped rain from a window. The house itself stands straight-spined beyond the pear tree, gray in the drizzle, more withdrawn than the last time I visited. The tree has not changed: it towers above the house, branches spread wide, trunk split near the root. A child could wedge her foot into the crevice and pull herself up onto the nearest bough, could climb to the very top and survey all forty acres of this property from the crown.

“It’s like a crow’s nest up there,” I say to Caleb, pointing at the highest branches. Even that high, they have heft enough to hold a small girl. “I’d find the best pears, even before the wasps or birds did.” My girl’s hands, small and brown, tugging until the pears dropped into them, crisp and swollen, insides white and sweet. The leaves shiver with the drizzle, beckoning.

Caleb grunts. He shoulders our overnight bags; I offer to take one and he waves me off. “Get the trunk, would you?” He shies away from the outermost branches and makes an odd, triangular movement with his head: looks up at the tree, then down across his body, up at the tree again. The first time I brought him to visit my parents—nine months ago, for Thanksgiving—he’d stood smoking beneath the tree and had come back inside complaining of ants.

“It’s too cold for ants,” I said, but when he lifted his shirt for my inspection I obliged. His back looked no different: his pale skin a little speckled, doughy. “You’re fine,” I told him. He’d still fidgeted all through dinner, brushing his shoulders and slapping his neck in sharp, convulsive movements. I could only ask are you okay so many times before both of us tensed with frustration.

He makes it halfway up the porch before he notices I have wandered over to the tree. He drops the bags and comes back down, bow-legged and ginger-footed, grimacing when the steps groan beneath his weight. He reaches for the rail. It pitches sideways, the wood giving with a wet crack.

“Christ,” he says. He tries to straighten it and continue down the stairs all at once, to put distance between himself and the house. Animal instinct returned to him the moment our car crested the hill below which my parents’ farm lay. Even now he shrinks from its silent outbuildings, its dead-eyed windows, its nooks, its shadows. I want to tell him, you’re safe while I’m here.

But he wouldn’t want to hear it and anyway, I’m not quite sure it’s true.

“Look.” I wedge my foot into the crevice of the tree and hop up, as if into a stirrup. Bark, soft with rain, crumbles between my toes. I had not anticipated rain. The Weather Channel had promised me a dry, overcast day with temperatures in the mid-eighties. It had been warm and bright when we’d left home five hours ago and I wore thin-soled sandals and a maxi dress whose hem was now heavy with water sponged from the grass. Pretty clothes for gated sidewalks and redbrick streets. I always forgot how to dress for home.

Caleb glances at me. He has given up on the railing and stands just beyond the reach of the tree. He crosses his arms, and his foot jogs up and down. “You’re not climbing that thing, are you?” he says. “You’ll fall.”

He’d said the same thing the last time we’d visited, and pulled me out of the tree’s crevice with his arms around my waist like I was a little girl. A part of me had liked the way he’d handled me, liked how he’d pulled my backside flush with his waist, warmed my neck with his breath. But my limbs ached to climb. They always did when I came home, and I always climbed in response, my own animal instinct drawing me high. And it got old, after a while, Caleb handling my body better than I could.

“You’ll break something,” he says.

“Please stop saying that.” I haul myself higher, aiming for a branch that is crooked like an elbow, thick enough to hold my weight. He looks at me, then at the house. His eyes scan the windows, the murk beyond the broken latticework of the porch. His face is a rictus of displeasure. I can’t tell if it’s me or the house at which he’s grimacing. My arms tremble, my feet cannot find purchase. I slip. My toenail catches in the bark. My knee bangs the trunk. I slide to the ground with a gasp.

Caleb starts, alarmed. “Jesus, Erin.”

“I’m fine.” My toenail is folded up like an origami sculpture; I bend it back as far as it will go and rip it off. My hands are trembling. I ignore them. I’d rarely worn shoes to climb when I was younger and there’s no sense in doing so now. I kick off my sandals, tie a knot in the damp hem of my skirt, and step back up into the crevice. Climbing is easier this time. I scoot onto the crooked branch.

“What did I just tell you?” Caleb takes a step toward me. Again, he makes that triangular movement, up, across, up. “Erin. Erin. It’s on you if you get hurt. I’m not sticking around so your parents can hate me even more.”

“They don’t hate you,” I say. They don’t think enough of him for that.

He looks over his shoulder at the house, the yard, the acres that stretch out toward the woods. Beyond the circle where my father has mowed the grass grows like wheat, hip-height and buckling; farther out, there are pines with skinny trunks, their needles tipped in yellow. Caleb asked me, once, why my parents did not hire someone to mow the field. Asked me, later, why they did not get a smaller place.

“We’ll help them,” he’d said. “I’ll get my brother to put the place on the market, and we can find them somewhere near us. Or even a place over in Prince George’s County if they want.”

“No,” I said. “This place has always been in the family, and it’s theirs, now. Their forty acres and a mule.”

He just looked at me sideways, face still, as if he did not think I had understood him at all.

“Are they even home?” Caleb asks, now.

“They’re home.” I point to the cars at the side of the house. “Why, you want to go say hello?” I look down at him, the crescent of hair he fights to preserve, ringing his baldness. He follows my pointing finger.

“They’ll have seen us pull up.” Chiding, always chiding me.

“So? They won’t mind if we don’t come in right away. They know I like to climb.” I root among the branches, looking for pears. Sawflies have made skeletons of the leaves, and the only pear I find has been hollowed out by wasps. It drops when my fingers brush it, light as a wasps’ nest. I startle back, scraping my elbow against the trunk, catching myself when I nearly tip backward. Bark patters down the trunk. Caleb hisses at me; he steps further into the shadow of the tree.

“You are welcome to go into the house and say hello to my parents without me, Caleb.” I toss him a pockmarked leaf. He bats it away. “You don’t need my permission. My mom asked about you this morning, before we left the house. They’re looking forward to seeing you.”

He snorts. He knows my mother well enough to know she would not ask after him. Only once did my mother ask, will you get married? when I’d moved with Caleb five hours away. I’d said, I don’t know.

What is he to you?

I didn’t know that, either.

I brace one foot against the trunk in front of me, my other foot against the trunk supporting my back. The bark scratches at my bare soles, which are soft from city living. There are climbing trees in the community where Caleb and I live. I’d climbed one, once, until Caleb joked that I looked like George of the Jungle.

I stretch for handholds among the branches, looking for pears. Surely there are some left. It is not so late in the summer. This tree has never been without them in all the years I have known it. It is always shedding little gifts. My mother and I would fill baskets while the mornings were still cool, picking pears slick with dew out of the grass. I’d once found a long length of rope, weathered and frayed, half sunk into the mud as if it had been there for decades. I tugged on it and it surfaced from the grass like a fishing line, up and up until it began to drag, as if something trapped beneath the porch weighted it down on the other end. I tugged. The rope went taut. Something thumped, colliding with the latticework under the porch. My mother took the rope from me and laid it back down. “Don’t,” she said, and steered me toward the house. I never found the rope again after that.

I wrap my arms around the trunk and peer up. Rain speckles my face, a drizzle catching on the leaves, drops rolling into each other until they drip into my hair. The rain has made my twist out fluffy and big; I feel what is left of my curls snagging in the branches. I’d made the mistake of unbraiding my hair and wearing it in a twist out last night to a dinner party with Caleb’s friends. Someone had asked me if all that hair was mine, how I kept it clean. They’d all stared, interested. Caleb had looked with them, head cocked, half smiling, as if he too did not know, could not imagine. And through it all he’d played with the hem of my skirt beneath the dinner table, ran his hands between my legs. He’d thrilled me once, handling me so. But it gets old. So old.

There. A yard or two above me, a single, full-figured pear dangles, so ripe its green skin is yellowing. I crane my neck to examine it. It does not look wasp-eaten.

“We should go in.” Caleb has given in, and stands against the tree, hands splayed against the trunk, looking up at me. My feet knock water onto him; spots of it darken his blue plaid shirt at the shoulders. My mother will remember that shirt from the last time he visited. She will ask me if it is his only good one.

“Wait,” I say. “I see a pear.”

He looks up, squinting. “That’s too high.”

“I’ve climbed higher.”

“Erin—”

I dig my feet against the tree and stretch higher, reaching for the slender branches where that single plump pear hides, coy and sly.

“Erin,” he says again, exasperated. And then. His breath hitches. He makes a little truncated sound. “Erin.” His voice rises. “Erin, what’s — fuck, that’s not a – wait, Erin—”

Only once have I fallen. I was ten years old, climbing higher than I had ever done before when a branch gave way as I reached for another handhold. I had dropped, as the pears did, with lurching suddenness. Around me, a froth of thrashing branches, leaves shuddering, my belly in my mouth. I had not hit the ground. The foliage had thickened beneath me. It looped beneath my feet, like a length of rope.

I found myself curled among branches that had caught me, shaking and crying. The loop of the branches cradled me, waited until I had found my feet, and unlaced, gently, as I found footholds and slowly, slowly climbed the rest of the way down. My father saw me that day, stood watching from his shed as the tree caught me. We looked at each other, as I limped by. Neither of us said anything.

No matter how many times I say that I was fine, when I tell Caleb this story, he focuses on my fall, and not on the thing that matters: that the tree caught me.

I grasp the branch from which the pear hangs with my fingertips, inch along it until I can wrap my entire hand around the pear. It bobs, still too far away. I uncurl the arm that anchors me and reach up.

“Erin.” Caleb’s voice rises from below, sharp. A thump, his foot scraping at the roots. He grunts, as he hauls himself into the crevice between the trunks. “Don’t touch that, it’s not a pear.”

I wrap my hand around the pear. Its flesh gives beneath the press of my fingers. I soften my hold. My body strains. My muscles shake. They have forgotten how to hold me up without the help of the ground. My foot slips.

I twist the hand holding the pear, yank. The fruit comes away in a shower of wet leaves. The branch snaps back, leaves shivering.

For a single moment, there is only this: the pear in my hand, nothing between me and the ground but my bare feet, braced in the Y of the trunk.

My feet give. I overbalance. I fall.

Caleb’s panicked shout reaches out for me, but his voice is caught up among the rush and crashing of my descent. His shout turns to branches, to leaves, to the knots of old buds long fruited. I’m falling, my stomach in my mouth, the bark scraping the skin from my elbows, my calves.

I have forgotten how it feels to fall, to abandon myself so completely. Help, I think, and then, please.

The leaves coalesce. A loose, looped noose, catching me. I do not hit the ground.

I land hard in the elbow of the trunk from which I first spotted the pear. The landing jars my spine, hard enough my teeth clatter. The noise around me dissolves into Caleb’s uplifted voice. He grabs my ankle.

“Are you okay?” His words are shrill; I’ve never heard him so afraid.

I grin at him. He has not yet climbed as high as I have, he stretches up, as if in a yoga pose. The idea makes me laugh. “Pear?” I grin, holding it out.

He stares at it for a long moment. He makes his triangular motion: up, across, up. He looks straight at me.

“There was a man hanging in that tree,” he says. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see him.”

I did not see a man. But once, as a little girl, I saw his rope.

“This place has always been ours,” I say. “Whether we lived on it willingly or not. Always been ours. Through every. Single. Thing.” I offer him the pear. My hand is steady. “Nothing will make the terrible things that happened here go away. But we claim it, and the land–this tree–it takes care of us. Always. Can you understand?”

He looks at the pear, then looks at me. He steps down from the tree. He does not take the pear.

Behind him, the front door opens, a squeal of hinges that echoes through the yard. We look around. My parents step onto the porch.

“Lunch is on the table,” my mother calls. And then, “Did you get to climb?”

“I did.” I step down from the tree, walk past Caleb. He watches me, jaw tight. “I found a pear,” I say, and hold it aloft.

My father nods. “And how is it?”

I bite deep. The pear is crisp, a little cold, the insides white and sweet.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT STEPHANIE MALIA MORRIS

Stephanie Malia Morris works in a bookstore by day and a library by night. When she is not buried under piles of books, she narrates short fiction. She is a recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Award and a graduate of the 2017 Clarion West Writers Workshop, and has narrated short fiction for StarShipSofa, Far Fetched Fables, and all four of the Escape Artists podcasts. You can find her on Twitter at @smaliamorris.

BARBARA IN THE FRAME

By Emmalia Harrington // 4144 words

Bab’s stomach growled for the third time in five minutes. “You were right,” she said, pushing away from her desk. “It’s time for a break.”

Summer classes meant papers and tests smashed close together. There was hardly time to get enough sleep, let alone shop on a regular basis. The only food in her dorm room was an orange. Bab picked it up and walked to her dresser, where the portrait of Barbara, her grandfather’s great-aunt, sat.

She put a segment in her mouth and gagged. “Sorry,” she said, spitting the fruit into her hand. Bab forced it down on the fifth attempt.

Aunt Barbara’s portrait frowned and glanced at the bookcase. The clothbound spine of Auntie’s handwritten cookbook stood out among the glossy college texts.

“You know it’s too early for the kitchen,” Bab kept her eyes on the shelves and away from her aunt. “Those girls will be there.”

Even looking away, Auntie’s disappointment made her wilt. Bab retreated to her desk to choke down the rest of her fruit. “I’m safer here,” she said as she wiped her hands. “It’s just you, me and a locked door.” She closed her eyes, imagining what diet could sustain her until the cafeteria opened for the autumn. Carrots lasted days without refrigeration, and if she soaked oatmeal overnight, it would be soft enough for breakfast.

Auntie’s book said food was more potent when shared. It had nothing like the recipes the other girls loved to make for their Soul Food Sundays. Placing succotash next to their cheese grits and fried okra was little better than exposing her whole self.

“Remember when I came home from the hospital?” Bab asked, turning back to her aunt. “I was so skinny Dad and Papa wouldn’t let me see you.” She gave a thin smile. “They thought seeing me would crack your frame.”

Her throat shrank at the memories. The bureaucracy at her old college insisted on using the name and gender on her birth certificate and stuck her in the boys’ dorms. Her roommates alternated between hitting on her and punching inches from her head when she rebuffed them. One loved spiking her food with hot sauce and worse. After a few weeks she couldn’t sip water without panicking; a full meal was impossible.

“None of that will happen here.” Bab cracked her knuckles and tried to type as memories of the last year washed over her. This women’s college’s administration accepted Bab for who she was, name and all. She still felt safer keeping to herself.

That midnight, she entered the kitchen with cookies on her mind. She pulled out her baking sheet and spices before she came to her senses. Food never worked right in an unconsecrated space.

After several deep breaths, she was scrubbing the counter and attempting to meditate. Incense was not allowed on campus, but would have done wonders to erase the pork and garlic scent left over from the soul food dinner. Even when her dormmates weren’t there, they were reminding her how she wasn’t. Curvy figures to her still-underweight frame. Cornrows and other cute hairstyles while hers couldn’t grow longer than peach fuzz without breaking combs.

Bab bit her tongue. A clear mind was the best way to perform a ritual.

A pristine table and stovetop later, she was assembling Auntie’s happiness cookies. Rice flour provided security and cloves purified the mind and heart. Cinnamon brought comfort and strengthened the power of the other ingredients. Mix with water to create a dough, pop them in the oven for fifteen minutes and suffer from anticipation. Tidying right away added power to the food and gave them time to cool, even if the aroma of fresh cookies filled her mouth with drool.

Back in her room, there were things she needed to do before eating. She paid homage to Aunt Barbara, placing the nicest smelling piece by her picture frame. Next was covering her desk in a clean towel in lieu of a tablecloth and folding a pretty bandanna into a napkin. A duct tape flower decorated the space. After a prayer of thanks, she took her first bite.

At first, it tasted like a cracker in need of dip. As she chewed, spices spread through her mouth and into her nose. Tension fell from her shoulders and neck. The more she ate, the more her cookie took on an extra flavor she couldn’t describe. The closest she could get was “a hug from the whole family.”

When she checked on her aunt, Barbara’s cookie was gone, crumbs and all.

∙ ∙ ∙

College was a never-ending battle between sleeping in and being on time for class. Bab had just enough time to pull on jeans and run to the Humanities Building, cursing herself with every step. Life was hard enough as is, she shouldn’t make it worse by writing papers after 2am.

By pinching the back of her hand, she stayed awake all through the lesson. The effect faded as she headed to the bathroom, where she fought not to drift off on the toilet.

She was washing up when a familiar voice went “I said ‘Hey!’” It was Jen, dormmate and Political Science/Africana Studies major, standing between her and the exit.

Bab stretched her lips into a smile. “Not working today?”

Jen laughed and shook her head. The beads tipping her braids tinkled as she moved. Bab wished she had a scarf to hide her own hair. “My internship with the Congresswoman is this afternoon. I’m between classes now.”

“I wouldn’t want to keep you,” Bab hoped the other girl didn’t notice the wobble in her voice.

“There’s time yet.” Jen headed for the water closets and paused. “You’re the reason the kitchen smelled so good this morning?”

Bab forgot how to breathe. Nodding had to do.

“Will you come next Sunday? The three of us can’t make dessert to save ourselves.” Without waiting for an answer, Jen entered a stall. The sliding lock sounded like a guillotine blade.

It was all Bab could do to run to her next seminar. Terror percolated inside her, tightening her throat until she couldn’t get a lungful. The Number Systems for School Teachers lecture passed in a haze of greying vision. At her next course, the professor took one look at her and ordered her to rest.

Back in her room, Bab spent an endless time curled on her bed, fighting for air. Clattering from the dresser pulled Bab out of herself enough to check the noise’s source. Auntie’s picture had fallen.

“Thanks,” she returned to the bed, hugging the portrait like a teddy bear. Her heart bumping against the frame’s glass made a double beat, Auntie’s pulse moving in time with hers. Bab’s airway relaxed, and her head cleared enough to grab last night’s cookies.

“What should I do?” she said after filling Auntie in on the bathroom encounter. “Dad and Papa couldn’t teach me black girl stuff. Jen and her friends have way more practice than me.” She took a bite. “If I change my mind, they’ll know something’s up, but if they get to know me, they’ll be just like my boy roommates and…” Aunt Barbara was pursing her lips.

“You haven’t heard Jen, Maria and Tanya speak. Their majors are going to help them ‘change the world.’” Bab stuck her chest out, superhero style.

Auntie raised her eyebrows.

“I know becoming a teacher’s important,” she sighed. “But tell that to people outside my department. Anyway, that’s not the main reason they’ll hate me.” She glanced at Auntie’s cookbook. “On Sundays the kitchen smells like those TV shows with sassy mothers who teach girls how to cook the ‘real way.’” She made finger quotes. “Nothing like what we eat at home. They’ll take one look at my food and treat me like my old roommates.” Her stomach twisted. “I don’t want to go to the hospital again.”

Finishing the cookie kept the worst throat swelling away. She still felt like barricading herself until graduation.

Light glinted from the portrait. When Bab took a closer look, Auntie met her eyes. Aunt Barbara resembled a professor, stern but caring. If photos could speak, Bab would be getting a speech on conquering fear.

The eye lecture finished with Auntie glancing in the direction of her book. Bab crossed the room, picked it up, and flipped through the dessert section. She doubted grapenut pudding would go over well. Apple-cheddar pie might work, but she wasn’t masochistic enough to make crust from scratch. Hermits seemed easy enough, but the next recipe stopped her cold.

Froggers. Above the recipe, Aunt Barbara had written a few notes about Lucretia Brown, the inventor. Bab read and reread the page before saying “They might like it.”

∙ ∙ ∙

Summer lessons meant more homework and less time. Bab spent her free days camped in the library, reading hundreds of pages worth of assignments before trudging back to her room to bang out papers.

She peeked from her window before going outside. Maria, a Soul Food Sunday girl, wasn’t out running laps. Bab headed to the library, wiping sweat off her palms every couple of steps. If the Pre-Law/Economics student wasn’t marathoning, she was on work-study. Bab needed to find a secluded corner to avoid detection.

Maria was nowhere near the front desk when Bab checked out her classes’ reserve texts. She walked the opposite way from the book return cart, in case the girl was shelving. Bab spent the next two hours in the clear until it came time to make copies. The other girl was bent over loading paper into the machine, looking more voluptuous than Bab could hope to be.

Bab closed her eyes, praying to avoid a repeat of yesterday. “Hey.” Maybe starting the conversation would help.

The other girl yelped, whirling around and overbalancing. Bab rushed to steady her, half-wondering if she landed in a romantic comedy.

Maria’s face flushed redder than her shirt. “I didn’t see you.”

It was Bab’s turn to freeze. She studied the wall behind the other girl’s head as she tried to form words.

“Oh! You’re coming Sunday,” Maria sounded relieved. “We can talk then.” She stepped away from Bab and hurried to the front desk.

Two hours and five textbooks later, Bab emerged from the library, dazed. Motor memory led her to the campus coffee shop, where she ordered a red eye. She needed the caffeine to unfry her brain and conduct decent extracurricular research.

Maria was nowhere to be found when Bab walked to the reference librarian’s desk. There wasn’t too much on Lucretia Brown, but what existed came from places like the Smithsonian. The state historical society had a series of frogger recipes as well as official documents on Brown’s business. Bab’s coffee went cold as she pored over the papers.

∙ ∙ ∙

“What do you think, Auntie?” Bab asked that night. “Those three might hate them because they have ‘frog’ in the name.”

Aunt Barbara didn’t react. Bab twisted her hands and continued. “I found a zillion ways to make froggers. Some I don’t have to buy a ton of new ingredients for. One is similar to your happiness cookies and isn’t very sweet. They’ll think I was lying about making dessert. Another’s fried, not baked. Those three…” She drifted off as Auntie wrinkled her nose.

“What do you think I should do?” Bab said, hoping Auntie wouldn’t give the obvious answer. She gave Bab a hard stare. “I can’t do that,” Bab said, backing away. “I’m safer not making friends.” She bumped into her bed.

Auntie looked miserable. Bab stroked the picture frame before returning to fretting. Silently this time.

Every recipe called for allspice, which promoted luck, success and health. It was also quite masculine. Bab wasn’t keen on infusing virility in herself or the others. Liquor united the feminine elements of water and earth, but she was too young to buy the rum froggers required. Bab prayed rum extract with its high alcohol content was an acceptable substitute. Auntie’s book had nothing to say about the power of molasses. Maybe it took after its sister sugar in terms of protection and enhancement. It could also be a soul food ingredient, though Bab was too afraid to check.

∙ ∙ ∙

Spices were never cheap. Bab spent the next few days outside of class in the city. Ethnic enclaves had spices at better cost than supermarkets, and she was going to find the best prices. She always went on foot to channel bus fare into grocery cash. Her feet swelled until she could barely pull her shoes off at night, but she got all the seasonings she needed, plus extra rice flour.

By Saturday afternoon, Bab recovered enough to limp to the market nearest to the dorms. Butter was easy enough to find, but molasses and extract remained elusive, no matter how many times she wandered Aisle 5. Between her focus on the shelves and her still complaining legs, she didn’t notice company until she bumped into them.

Bab’s heart froze when she realized who she crashed into. Tanya was Jen and Maria’s buddy, a Business/Chemistry major and heir to a cosmetics firm that made products for black women. She might have been in jeans and ponytail, but her skin glowed and her hair smelled of jasmine and coconut oil.

“I’m sorry!” Bab couldn’t apologize fast enough. “I should have seen you—”

Tanya waved her hand. “I ran into you. Let me make up for it.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of papers. “Have a coupon.”

Bab reached for the offering, doing her best not to brush Tanya’s fingers. She didn’t want to piss the girl off by mistake. There were discounts on powdered soup, meal replacement shakes, frozen dinners…

“Mind if I have this one?” Bab held up a voucher for oranges.

Tanya shrugged. “It’s not like I’ll get scurvy.”

Bab’s grin felt foreign on her mouth. “They’re also great for clearing the mind and cheering you up.”

The other girl raised an eyebrow, something Bab had yet to master. “Isn’t that what chocolate’s for?”

Bab’s cheeks burned, but before she could answer, Tanya said, “Maybe I’ll get some chocolate peanut butter this week. They taste good with strawberry Caffeine Bombs.” She waved goodbye. Bab couldn’t decide whether to stare at her, or her basket of white bread and neon drinks.

She resumed her search for the remaining ingredients, trying to imagine what Auntie would think of Tanya’s cuisine. There could be rage, terror, or horrific rage.

“Victory!” Bab announced later in her room. “Now I have everything for froggers.”

She picked up the portrait. “Will it be all right?” Auntie beamed. “Of course you think that, we’re family. I don’t have that advantage for tomorrow.”

Aunt Barbara looked Bab up and down before raising her chin.

Bab crossed her arms over her bust. “They’re prettier than I am, and I don’t think a padded bra would help.” Auntie’s eye narrowed.

“What’s worth knowing about me?” Her voice wobbled. Auntie glanced at the mirror. Bab stood in front of it for ages, trying to see what Aunt Barbara did. It never appeared. Whenever she turned away, Auntie nodded for Bab to return. Her throat ached from not shrieking her frustration.

Her reflection continued to show someone who did not have the looks, goals or background as the other black girls in the dorm. She had bits and pieces of other kin in her appearance, like Papa’s forehead, Grandfather’s nose, and Auntie’s love of frilly blouses. Bab straightened her back and assumed the formal pose of Auntie’s portrait. She still couldn’t find what Auntie saw, but her urge to scream faded. Maybe one of these years she’d be as awesome as Auntie believed.

∙ ∙ ∙

If Bab was going to bake undisturbed, she was better off starting at midnight. The cookies wouldn’t be the freshest, but she half-remembered one recipe saying froggers grew tastier with time. Or she could scrub the kitchen for so long, Monday would roll by before she finished.

Giving the counter, sink and other surfaces the once-over wasn’t going to be enough if she wanted to win the trio’s favor. Bab scoured until her arms ached, shook them out, and started again. She filled her head with prayers for the cookies’ success and her continued safety. Whenever her mind wandered, she bit hard on her tongue.

Now that she thought about it, froggers might taste better if she rewashed the baking sheet. As she worried it with a sponge, she caught a glimpse of herself on the aluminum. She was nothing more than a blobby outline, but it was enough to remember the afternoon. Auntie thought she was worth something and Bab needed to act the part. She preheated the oven and pulled out the measuring cup.

Auntie’s recipe didn’t specify rice flour, but she could do with its protection. The spices that went into happiness cookies went into the mixing bowl, along with lucky nutmeg and ginger’s love. Macho allspice went in after all, to impart success.

Wet ingredients went into another bowl, before she combined everything to make a sticky dough. Nothing a bit of flour couldn’t fix. She rolled everything out with the side of an empty glass, used the mouth of the same cup to cut out froggers and stuck them in the oven.

Baking and cooling times stretched until every second felt like forever. Despite her best efforts, no amount of tidying would speed things. Sweat oozed from her face and armpits.

As soon as she could move the cookies without burning herself, Bab fled to her room. “I did it!” She hitched her shoulders in lieu of a fist pump. Dropping the froggers now would mean baking them later in front of an audience. Once they were safely on her desk, she fell to her knees.

“I thought of you as much as I could and how you want me to be.” On the floor, she couldn’t meet Auntie’s face. “I’m still not there, sorry.” Even through her jeans, the tiled floor felt so cool, but passing out here would mean a stiff back in the morning. “Just a minute.”

It took a few tries to lurch off the floor and back on her feet. Bab placed a frogger by Auntie’s picture. “What do you think?”

Between one blink and the next, the cookie vanished. Auntie’s smile threatened to push her cheeks off.

∙ ∙ ∙

It was ten when Bab woke up, and eleven before she rolled out of bed. She only had a few hours, and laundry wouldn’t do itself. Typical for Sunday, all the machines were full, but one just had a few minutes left to run. She buried herself in a textbook, wondering if she could drop out of dinner, saying she had a test tomorrow. Auntie would be disappointed in her.

The afternoon vanished in a flurry of chores, grooming and actual homework reading. Bab shaved, brushed her hair until her arm ached, and smoothed out the wrinkles in one of her nicer shirts. Whenever her throat threatened to swell, she turned back to studying.

An hour before the event, Bab’s heart thrummed in her ears. She had one last thing to do before she was ready, but it meant going to the kitchen, possibly in front of everyone.

The room was filled with cell phone music and off-key singing. Tanya and Maria’s backs were to Bab as they chopped away. Jen hadn’t arrived. Bab was free to cover the table with a freshly washed sheet, though she ached to clap her hands over her ears. The file quality, song genre and the girls’ lack of skill made it Vogon poetry in human mouths. She placed her duct tape flower in the center of the table before retreating to gather the froggers.

When she returned, the pair was belting out what might have been “Baby Come to Me.” Bab prayed “4:33” was next on the playlist as she arranged cookies on her largest plate. She couldn’t do anything more artful than a pyramid of concentric circles, but it looked good enough for a magazine.

A shriek stole the last of her hearing. “Bab, when did you get here?”

Bab turned to Tanya, rubbing her ears. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Tanya laughed. “It’s either sing or put up with Maria’s preaching.”

“Soul food isn’t vegan,” the third girl hissed.

“Aren’t you making peas and carrots?” Tanya said.

“Doesn’t count, I use butter,” Maria said.

“See what I mean?” Tanya said to Bab with a hammy sigh.

Bab’s smile shook around the edges. “Why not vegan?”

“Thank you!” Tanya abandoned her cutting board to crush Bab in a hug. “You understand.”

“Does that mean no cookies tonight?” Bab winced at her lack of subtlety. “They have dairy.”

“Of course cookies,” Tanya stepped back, giving her a hard look. “Cookies need butter, chicken need salt, and collard greens are better with orange juice instead of pork.”

“Blasphemy,” called a new voice from the doorway. Jen walked in, arms full of cans and equipment. “Smoked pork is food of the gods.”

As the trio rambled amongst themselves, tension fell from Bab’s shoulders. She set the table, making sure everything was picture perfect while the others worked by the stove and countertops. Aside from the odd comment thrown in her direction, they left her alone until their food was ready.

“What did you do?” Jen breathed as she took in Bab’s handiwork. “It looks like a real Sunday dinner now.”

“Ahem,” Tanya said, looking in the direction of the garbage bin. An empty tube of biscuit dough and gravy can sat on top of the trash.

“I was busy—” Jen started, but Maria cut her off.

“I forgot salt, gravy will help the peas and carrots.” She plopped her dish next to the duct tape flower. “Let’s start?”

No one commented on Bab sitting in the spot closest to the door. They were too busy saying things that threatened to stop her heart.

“How’s the food? Maria used fresh carrots this time.” Tanya wiggled her eyebrows. Maria, Bab’s bench partner, turned the color of rust.

The taste was on par with cafeteria food. Bab liked safety too much to say it aloud. “You’re right, it does go well with gravy.”

Maria stared at her plate as more blood rushed to her face.

“You know what would be great? Bacon.” Jen said. “Everything it touches turns to magic.”

Bab opened her mouth, closed it and lowered her head so no one could see her face. Auntie’s cookbook never limited power to a single ingredient. The other girls were too busy arguing which brand of cured meat was best to notice Bab.

It wasn’t long before the serving plates emptied. With competition out of the way, the froggers perfumed the table and made full stomachs grumble.

“Are these the cookies you made last week?” Jen asked.

Bab shook her head. “It’s a diff—” the trio snatched froggers for themselves and went to work reducing them to crumbs.

Jen’s first bite took out a third of her cookie. Her eyes widened. Tanya chewed slowly, lost in thought. Maria closed her eyes and clasped her hands like a church lady. “What did you say these were?”

“They’re molasses cookies.” Bab coughed, but her throat kept tingling. “Froggers.”

“Made with real frogs?” Tanya said, her mouth wry.

Bab took a deep breath and wished her lungs were bigger. “A woman named Lucretia Brown invented them.” All eyes were on her, none of them hateful. She looked at Tanya. “Lucretia was a black woman who ran an inn and made perfume and other things to sell.” To Jen and Maria she added, “She was born in 1772 Massachusetts and owned property.”

No one spoke. They were too busy considering their froggers. Bab took one for herself and bit in deep. Spices spread through her mouth and seeped into her being. Her throat relaxed enough to ask “Maria, mind if I jog with you tomorrow?” before she realized it. A second mouthful of cookie kept panic at bay.

Maria’s ears darkened, but she said, “I’d like that. Front door at eight A.M.? Wear good shoes.”

Bab took a second frogger, but when she reached for a third, all she found was an empty plate. Hearing the trio tease each other as they helped with cleanup almost made up for it. The lack of singing certainly did.

With four people helping, dishes and everything else were done in no time. Bab trailed the other girls out of the kitchen, itching to tell Aunt Barbara about tonight. It was too soon to tell how they’d take knowing Bab’s whole self, but for now they added warmth she couldn’t get with cookies alone.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT EMMALIA HARRINGTON

Emmalia Harrington is a nonfiction writer, librarian and student with a deep love of speculative fiction. She hopes to have many more publications under her belt. In the meantime, she continues to plug away at her novel and the occasional short stories. Her work has previously appeared in Cast of Wonders, the Rococoa anthology and Disability in Kidlit.

RILEY AND ROBOT

By Arnica Ross // 2801 words

The summer is racing along, leaving Nicey and Riley in its rearview. The air is gone past crisp and into chilly in an obnoxious New England way, where each new day could be eighty degrees and sunny or thirty degrees and damp. Days that previously would have dried the clothes on the line in hours have turned laundry into an all-day affair. Under her fingers, little tee shirts are lightly damp at the seams. The jeans spaced around the outer lines are still far wetter than that, despite hanging out there for hours already. The neighbor’s dog begins to bark deep and anxious as the bus arrives at the end of the block and all the kids tumble off, screeching and jeering in a jumble of languages.

She doesn’t have to come to the front of the apartment to know the one deep wail carrying above the din is her boy. This is the third time this month he’s come off the bus in tears as fast as his asthmatic lungs will let him. She slings her empty laundry basket onto the back stairs and hopes none of the biggest kids on the block will come tearing around the back of the apartments on their bikes to tangle in her still wet laundry.

By the time she’s stepped into the kitchen he’s already thrown himself through the front door, leaving it open behind him as he scrambles heavily on hands and knees up the narrow stairs.

Her informants are gathered in a semi-circle around the front stoop.

“The teacher on the bus lines tried to make everyone pair up and hold hands, again, and no one would hold Riley’s,” a little girl informs her. She’s complained to the school several times now about this intern they have monitoring the bus lines at the elementary school. The intern doesn’t seem to care much about the sensitivities necessary in a city as full of cultural diversity as their tiny one. He doesn’t seem to get that some of the girls can’t hold hands with any boys, and that the bully big kids from the other end of their complex tease and push the other little boys who would have held Riley’s hand.

“Nicey, they were calling him names again.”

“Of course they were,” Nicey responds in a sweet voice. “Because they’re little bastards.”

There’s a basket by the door and she grabs it by the handle, swinging it outside. Quick as a flash little hands in a rainbow of colors dart in and snatch back with a sucker in each of their fists.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

Hijabs and hoodies scatter down the sidewalk in pairs and threes. With a straight face, Nicey sneaks a second sucker to the sole little boy who has stayed hopefully behind before shutting the door. It’s a quick trip to the fridge to grab a juice before heading to the stairs.

“Friend, I’m coming up.”

He’s face down on the bed and the ominous orange of a crumpled write-up slip peeks from his hand, which means Riley likely “lost his temper” at some point during the forced hand holding/shunning encounter. “Lost his temper” is a weighty phrase that can mean many things ranging from “Started crying and couldn’t stop,” to “Argued with teacher for twenty minutes to tell his side.” If she’s counting right, this is the fifth time he’s received a “Lost his temper” write-up since the beginning of the year, meaning tomorrow her second grader gets to spend the day in in-school suspension. Again.

“Oh, honey don’t cry,” Nicey murmurs, rubbing Riley’s back. There is no more useless sentence in the history of parenting, these words adults default to when a child has the kind of hurt that can’t be easily fixed. Riley quivers with helpless sobs beneath her placating hands.

“I will too cry!” There’s a desperation in his shrieked protest that rips her heart open. “I don’t have any friends and I never will! I’m weird and no one will ever like me, ever!”

She knows this isn’t true. She longs to tell him that there’s a world full of kids with similar anxieties, interests, and skills that would love to know her funny, clever little boy. She also knows that wherever those other children are, none of them live anywhere near her little boy. Even the neighborhood kids, no matter how nice they want to be, won’t actually play with him. He’s just not very much like any of them. But some truths are too heavy to speak aloud, and the words catch in her throat every time she tries.

Down in the basement her dryer has been broken for months and the washer is making a frightening whine that says it’s not too far behind. Nicey’s been drying clothes on a hastily rigged line all summer while she saves to replace both appliances in one go. She allows herself to daydream of the appliance pawn shop at the edge of town on the other side of the river. She’d visited a couple of weeks ago to scout for a new dryer, and found what she was looking for among the scuffed and faded appliances lining the shop’s back wall. The suburb where the appliance pawnshop is located used to be where rich people lived. Now it’s where people who are just middle class enough to be called ’nice’ live, but the area is still high-class enough to have a locked case of bots behind the counter. One bot in particular caught her eye the day she visited. She had recognized its familiar shape from old commercials, and she’d began dreaming of having one in her house while standing there in the shop. She’d stared at it long enough that the boy guarding the locked counter went to unlock the cage holding the bot. He’d steered her towards the cage with his hand uncomfortably low on her back while she was forced to laughingly admit she had more practical needs. She’d ended up bargaining fifty dollars off the price of the dryer, and in three days her neighbor’s boyfriend is supposed to be coming up from Massachusetts with his truck to help her pick up the new dryer and move it into her house.

Nicey knows she’s not supposed to hear Riley whisper into his pillow that he wishes he were dead. She sighs. The clothes will have to hang on the line for a while longer.

“Riley, listen to mummy please.” She moves to scoop him into her lap. He’s a big boy, carrying genes from a big family bolstered by the constant stream of steroids he requires to keep breathing every winter. But she’s not small, either. His large limp body rolls with her insistent hands, and he buries his face in the side of her shirt, no matter that he’s too big for this cuddling to be anything approaching comfortable. “You’re funny, and smart, and kind. You’re an amazing friend, and if no one else knows that yet, they will one day.” She can feel his tears and snot seeping through her shirt as he sobs harder. “But until then, I think I know something that might help a lot. I’ll have a big surprise for you tomorrow after school, okay?”

The next day Nicey takes three buses to get to the other side of town, a trip that takes up most of her morning. She has a little over three hundred dollars tucked deep in her bra.

“Hey, you’re here for the dryer, right?” The boy behind the counter grins at her like she’s not almost a decade too old for him.

“Yeah, desperate change of plans.” He’s already turning to look over his shoulder as she points at the chain-link cage behind him. She’s been terrified that the object of her mission would be gone but it’s still there, its rounded casing black and not as shiny as it once was: it’s covered in scratches and has one small dent near the bottom where it’s been dropped or mishandled. She takes in those details intensely, ready to use them to haggle when necessary. “I need that Jibo 1.0 instead.”

She dickers, argues the chances of anyone else buying such an object in their city where more than half the households still have never had a bot, and stays parked against the glass cabinet so long arguing for another ten dollars off the price that the manager comes out of the back and unlocks the cage himself, setting the tiny rounded bot on the counter.

“Give her the damn ten dollars off. It’s been taking up space for months now. Let’s just move the thing, yeah?”

She almost doesn’t have the money for it anyway.

It doesn’t have a carrying case, but they bubble wrap it for her before stuffing bot and cords into an oversized bag from a nearby discount food store. During the hour and a half it takes for her to make it home on the bus, she cradles the bot like an infant.

∙ ∙ ∙

Her kitchen table is small and battered, given to her two years ago by a friendly neighbor when she and Riley first moved in. She pushes away a pile of unsorted mail—pretending she can’t see the bright green envelope from the power company announcing her bill is ten days behind—and carefully sets down her prize. The owner’s manual is battered, its pages marked with childish crayon scribbles. The guy at the pawn shop had likely reset Jibo to its factory settings, but she still looks at the instructions as she cracks open a soda and connects Jibo to an electrical outlet on the wall.

Jibo turns itself on, and she shrieks and spills the last of her soda on her favorite shirt. The little bot swivels on its internal mechs, tilting its round facial screen toward her.

“Hello, I’m Jibo, your friendly personal home robot. What’s your name?” The instruction manual says that it’s very important to look at Jibo during setup so that it can store a clear picture of its family in its memory banks, and the big blue orb floating in the center of the screen looks enough like an eye to give her somewhere to focus while she speaks.

“Hi, Jibo.” She’d feel stupid talking to a machine in her silent home if the programmers hadn’t been so brilliant at making the round little head tilt as if it were actively listening. “I’m Denise.” Jibo prompts her to connect him to her wifi network.

“Hello Denise. I have,” it pauses, searching. “six system updates available for download. These include security updates and new software. Would you like me to download them before setup?”

“I um, I didn’t think you’d boot right up like that. Can we do your setup first? In case the update changes the instructions?” She tells herself she doesn’t feel stupid asking the tiny bot for its opinion, but that’s a lie. She also knows she’s never owned anything like Jibo before and that there’s no shame in taking advice from a bot that can walk its owner through setup.

“We can do that,” it chirps helpfully.

By the time she hears the dog next door announce the bus’ arrival, Jibo has walked her through linking itself to her equally as old and secondhand smartphone, updating its software. She’s spent some time getting more familiar with the bot as well, so familiar that she’s gotten used to addressing it as Jibo and thinking of the little bot as ‘he’ and “him.’

“Alright Jibo, stay here and be quiet. You’re a surprise friend for someone who really needs one.”

“I like friends.”

“Good. Hopefully he’ll like you, too.” She pulls on her fall coat, which is bright red and cut like a pirate’s frock coat. It’s a leftover from an old boyfriend’s Halloween costume, but still warm enough to get her through this winter, the fifth winter it’s been in use. Since her kid outgrows coats as fast as he does shoes, new coats for her are out of the question. Her boy, thankfully, is still young enough to think that having a pirate for a mother is cool.

The neighbors greet her with “ahoy” and “aye-aye matey” as she crosses the parking lot to grab her child from the streaming river of kids. Riley barrels off the bus with a bright smile, his arms thrown open wide. She winces as he narrowly avoids sending one of his much smaller classmates to the ground.

“Hey friend!” They barely stay upright as he crashes into her.

“I won a trip to see a hockey game with my reading log!” Riley beams. Denise does a quick mental calculation: this means finding gas money and a neighbor who will be off and willing to drive them to the next game.

“That’s super excellent!” she responds, shoving those calculations down before they can dampen her excitement.

“Hi Nicey!” the girl next door shouts as she tumbles into her house. She waves over her shoulder at the piping voice with one hand, the other combing through Riley’s riotous curls.

“Come in bud, I have a surprise for you.”

A shiver of dread flutters through her, making her stomach twist into knots. What if he doesn’t want a bot for a friend? What if he thinks that she thinks he’s so bad at making friends that he needs a fake one? What if this hurts his feelings?

“Oh my Glob, mummy it’s a Jibo, like on tv!” His lets his coat thump to the hall floor and leaves his bookbag abandoned underfoot in the middle of the kitchen as he sprints to her chair and drops roughly enough into it that she winces.

“Hi, I’m Jibo. Are you Riley?”

“He already knows my name!” Which makes her suddenly feel much less silly about the time she spent showing photos to the bot. “Hi Jibo! Yes, I’m Riley. Nice to meet you. We can be best friends!”

“I’d like that!” She’s very glad boy and bot are engrossed with each other. Neither of them notices her scrub away moisture from her eyes as Jibo’s eye orb turns into a thumping blue heart at her son’s cheer.

“Alright you two. Let’s get some dinner and then go in the living room and look at what apps Jibo has available for the two of you to play with.”

Two hours later and they’re eating an early dinner—homemade tacos—on their laps while still surfing the app selection. Her little weirdo is into retro gaming because Virtual Reality games make him dizzy. Luckily, there are old school PC and console game apps under the gaming section of the app store. Riley reaches over, squeezing her almost painfully as an icon for Minecraft appears on her phone’s screen.

“You have a Minecraft app?! Nobody has non-VR Minecraft stuff anymore! What’s that app do, Jibo?”

“The developer notes say it’s an encyclopedia for the game. ‘Tips, tricks, and recipes!’ Last update included coding to allow a Jibo to control a tame sprite.” Riley jumps in his excitement. Only fast mom hands save her couch from a taco disaster.

“Queue that app for download please. New search, keywords; coding, kids, children, how-to.” She could do the search faster by herself, but the novelty of watching the little bot control her phone has yet to lose her son’s interest. “You can learn to make your own apps for Jibo if you learn to code.”

That night, for the first time, Riley doesn’t ask for Nicey to leave his door open wide. Jibo sits on the nightstand beside Riley’s bed, glowing softly as she uses her phone to link him into her Amazon account.

“Alright Jibo. I’ve linked up the book I want you to read Riley. Are you two ready for bed?”

“I am! Jibo, read me The Neverending Story!”

“Please.” Her reminder is quick. A child who forgets their manners with a bot might forget them with a human as well.

“Sorry, mummy. Jibo, read me The Neverending Story, please.”

“Better. Good night, sleep tight, I love you.” He echoes the words, and when she bends down to give him a big, loud kiss he crinkles his nose as her hair tickles his face. The door clicks softly closed behind her and she leans against it, listening to the surprisingly melodic mechanical voice begin the tale of another lonely little boy who needed more than this mundane world could possibly give before straightening up and heading across the hall to the bathroom. The washer had broken halfway through bath time and she needs to finish scrubbing out his school clothes in the tub if they were going to dry on the line by tomorrow.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT ARNICA ROSS

Arnica is a Ravenclaw Earthbender raising a Hufflepuff Airbender, which is significantly harder than it sounds, while writing about Black women with robots or in high fantasy settings. She can be followed on Twitter

@ArnicaxRoss, where she will mostly communicate in gifs.

EXCAVATE

By Melody Gordon // 3770 words

The airplane hatch opened and the Pearsons, with guns on their hips and jetpacks on their backs, gathered as a family to look out at the plantation.

They were flying low to the ground. Too low. The hot air whipped at their jumpsuits and the ground rushed beneath them at a frightening speed. Danielle, the youngest and smallest Pearson, stood between her father and her big brothers who were glued to the floor like big brown pillars, watching everything blur past. Danielle was shaking and sweating all over, from the bandana holding her braids back down to the soles of her feet.

“Before we go, I have one more thing,” said Dr. Greenwood, their therapist. She stood behind them in a jumpsuit with a jetpack but no weapon, projecting her voice over the rushing wind. A shovel protruded over her shoulder from the top of her backpack. “We’re only a few seconds away from the fields.”

Danielle watched Vann, her eldest brother, grip the side of the hatch. Quincy, her second eldest brother, held the rectangular DNA reader in his trembling hand.

“Everyone has a very important role. Remember, once we get down there and the clock starts ticking, we have one shot. That’s it.”

How could she forget? They’d talked about nothing else for the last 72 hours. Danielle knew her job: She was responsible for the container in her hands, a two-gallon glass cylinder with a metal lid that would soon be filled with the spirit of one of their ancestors. Danielle’s job was arguably the most important job of all. More important than Dad and Vann’s job to protect them from Forresters. More important that Quincy’s job to find their ancestor. If Danielle failed, they all failed.

“If you need me, I’ll be right next to you. Reach out. Ask for help. Try not to panic.”

Her brothers couldn’t take their eyes off the ground. She looked over at her father as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. She glanced backwards at Dr. Greenwood, the only one with a smile on her face.

“No matter what happens down there,” Dr. Greenwood said. “I’m proud of each and every one of you for making it this far.”

Their trainer shouted from the front of the aircraft. “We’re here!”

Danielle blinked and the grassy green stretches of land became a fuzzy white cotton field. Overgrown rows of the crop bloomed for miles in every direction. Lights flashed on the DNA reader. They turned on their jetpacks.

“Are you ready?” Dr. Greenwood asked.

“Yeah,” said the Pearson children.

Their father stepped to the edge. He put his hand over the push-to-start accelerator on his shoulder strap. “Let’s go, y’all.”

And he jumped.

∙ ∙ ∙

The $3,500 package included travel expenses, lodging, equipment, a DNA test, basic survival training, journals, food, drink, and unlimited sessions with licensed professional psychotherapist Dr. Keisha Greenwood. It was a four-day therapeutic retreat with the Excavation scheduled for the third day. There were photos—so many photos—of people leaping off planes, women wiping their eyes with tissues, men running across fields with guns on their hips, children learning about jetpacks. The website was professional. But it was the testimonials that fascinated them.

The testimonials were too good to be true. Families mended, relationships healed, generational curses broken, and pain lifted. That was what captivated Danielle’s father and mother and brothers. Pain lifted. The price tag was discouraging and yet the seemingly endless photo gallery of happy black families said it was worth it.

It started when Vann sent Quincy and Danielle the link to Dr. Greenwood’s viral television interview. Dr. Greenwood was a 30-something-looking dark-skinned beauty with fresh microbraids who spoke with passion, conviction, and an assuredness in her expertise. Danielle had showed the video to their mother and father.

“The majority of plantations in The Lowcountry are National Historic Landmarks and public property,” she had said. “We African Americans, the ancestors of the people who died in those fields, have every right to be there—if not more of a right to be there—than anybody in the Broken Woods who opposes us.”

The screen cut to the interviewer, an older white man in a suit and tie. He had an indignant expression on his stony face. “How do you respond to your critics?”

“The same way I’m responding to you,” she said with a perfect smile.

Dad laughed at that part. Mama nodded and said, “I like her.”

“The people who still live in the Broken Woods believe your retreats are disruptive. With all due respect, Dr. Greenwood, those plantations are their homes.”

“Those plantations and surrounding wooded areas are homes to them, yes. But they’re cemeteries to us. We must take our dead back to heal our psychological wounds as a people, as a race.”

The journalist said, “Your theories are fairly new, Dr. Greenwood, and the psychology and counseling communities say these types of Excavations could cause more harm than good. Some say they are unethical and extreme. What do you think about that?”

She smiled again. “All of my clients know this is experimental. I tell them all of the risks upfront. They give their full consent well before we set foot on any plane.”

“You’re air dropping people, some of them young children, into the backyards of strangers who don’t want them there,” the journalist said. “If one of your colleagues came up with this idea, say an Asian therapist or a Native American psychologist, you would endorse it?”

“Absolutely. I know it may sound radical, but it works.”

∙ ∙ ∙

Danielle had never been on a real plantation. She’d never seen real cotton. All around her were raw white cotton plants bursting from their hard, brown hulls. The vastness of it took Danielle’s breath away.

Quincy was the last to deplane, stumbling to a hard landing two rows over. They all rushed over to him. He righted himself and stuck the DNA reader up into the air.

“It’s okay,” he said.

Vann and Dad helped him to his feet. Dr. Greenwood looked to the short lining of trees three miles away on the farthest eastern edge of the cotton field.

Danielle pointed. “The Broken Woods are all the way over there?”

“Just because the Forresters are all the way over there, doesn’t mean they aren’t in the fields too,” Dr. Greenwood said. “Watch out for booby traps.”

Dad and Vann took out their weapons and scanned the fields. Danielle squeezed the container. Quincy pointed the DNA reader in every direction. Then he pointed it towards the Broken Woods.

It beeped.

Quincy cursed.

Dr. Greenwood jogged towards the trees, motioning for the Pearsons to follow. “Look alive, everyone!”

∙ ∙ ∙

“How is this supposed to work if we can only pick one side of the family?” Danielle had asked at their initial meeting with Dr. Greenwood, which was held in her plush office. Vann had been sitting to Danielle’s left with his chin in his hand. Dad was leaning forward, hanging on Dr. Greenwood’s every word. Quincy and Mama were quiet.

“That’s a great question. The chains of slavery are so deeply embedded in our histories as African Americans that if you break one, you can break many others regardless of whether you’re extracting your maternal or paternal ancestor.” Dr. Greenwood explained, “I recommend the maternal side because the prevalence of rape in the slave days means our foremothers were more likely to have roots that can be traced directly back to Africa. You can do the paternal side as well, that’s perfectly fine. It’s up to you.”

“And when we Excavate our ancestor’s spirit,” Danielle interrupted, “are we bottling up a ghost or are we actually doing some kind of necromancy or exorcism?”

Dr. Greenwood’s laugh bounced off her slave artifacts, echoing off the antebellum-era photographs, maps, books, and diplomas that filled her office.

“That’s an important question now,” Mama said, frowning. “We’re Christian folks, we don’t deal with nothing that has to do with witchcraft.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you,” Dr. Greenwood said, her face serious again. “Everyone asks that question. The best way to describe it is like this. We’re not exhuming a dead body because your ancestor most likely isn’t buried there. We’re extracting a portion of your ancestor’s life force that they lost on that plantation. We’re bringing back a piece of their soul.”

“Once we’re on the ground on a real plantation, what happens?” Danielle asked.

“First, before we go anywhere, we trace your lineage as far back as we can,” said Dr. Greenwood. “We research runaway slave advertisements, plantations records, the census, everything we can find until we can narrow it down to one plantation that we know housed your ancestor. On the plantation, your DNA will take us to the spot where your ancestor was robbed of their spirit. This process is equal parts spiritual and scientific. We’re going to the exact spot where your ancestor shed blood that seeped into the ground and stayed there.”

“What if there’s more than one spot?” Danielle asked.

“Then you’ll have to choose as a family which spot you go to,” the doctor said. “Once you’re on the ground you can’t split up, it’s too dangerous. Some families can’t decide. Some families quit, bicker, fight... some discover it’s too difficult on them and they aren’t able to finish.”

Danielle looked around. Her family seemed as uncertain as she was, so she said what she knew they were all thinking. “What if we’re one of those families?”

“You won’t know until you get there and you try. Your strength might surprise you.”

∙ ∙ ∙

The DNA reader beeped faster and louder the closer they got to the Broken Woods.

Danielle brought up the rear as the Pearsons ran through the cotton fields as fast as they could. Sweat shined on her face. Her lungs burned with every breath. Her arms were getting tired. The container felt heavier with every stride.

“We’re almost there!” Quincy shouted.

The beeping turned into one loud, solid alarm. All the lights on the DNA reader began to flash. Quincy stopped at the end of a row where the ground was brown and dusty and the darkened trees were only a few feet away.

Everyone else rushed to his side and looked at the ground.

“This is it,” Quincy said.

“We start digging right here?” Vann asked Dr. Greenwood.

“Yes,” she said taking off her backpack to remove her shovel. “Who wants the honor?”

“I do,” Dad said. He took the shovel and nodded at Vann. “Cover us.”

Vann raised his weapon towards the trees in front of them. Dr. Greenwood kept an eye on the field behind them. Quincy kept the buzzing DNA reader pointed at the spot.

“Get ready, Dani,” said Dad.

She removed the container’s lid. Her stomach twisted into knots.

“I’m ready.”

He raised the shovel and slammed it into the earth.

∙ ∙ ∙

A dark, inexplicable pain had hit all five of them at the same time a year ago.

It was a week of tragedy upon tragedy. For Mama it was cancer and it quickly confined her to a hospital bed. For Dad it was a sharp, burning sensation in his joints that no orthopedic physician had ever seen before. Vann got a concussion playing football. Quincy was accidentally shot in the arm and a flesh wound turned into severe anxiety. And for Danielle it was all in her head: depression. A black void in her soul that sullied every good thing she touched.

For a year, nothing helped. They tried medications and herbs. They read books, they switched to a vegan diet, they exercised regularly. Their pain only compounded. It dug in deeper and deeper until they found themselves crying when they weren’t sad and screaming in their sleep.

Mama was nearing the end of her life. Dad was taking more pain pills than was necessary. Vann quit football and was then diagnosed with depression. Quincy became a homebody and there was nothing anyone could do.

Until Danielle posed a question. A very interesting question.

“Does this run in our family?”

Danielle and Vann called every auntie, every uncle. They visited all their cousins that lived nearby and all their grandparents too.

Slowly, a picture emerged of a Pearson family living in the fault lines of sickness and injury. Every generation suffered, but they suffered in different ways. They passed down their skin tones and their birthmarks and their bone structure and their wide noses and their frizzy hair, but their ancestors had passed down centuries of trauma and tragedy too. They passed down their chains. Danielle, Quincy, and Vann wanted to know why.

But over time, that question turned from why into how, then from how into what.

What can we do?

What?

What?

∙ ∙ ∙

When the ground broke apart underneath the shovel, the assembled Pearsons had a moment of silence. Danielle held her breath and looked at the ground as a wisp of light that looked like blue smoke and glitter rose into the air.

“Dani, container,” Dad said.

“I got it.” She leaned over the spot, turned the container upside down and took a knee.

All at once a gush of blue air, shimmering in the light, shot out of the ground and swirled into the container. The cracked soil beneath her feet turned a deep red. It spread like a puddle and soon her knee was deep in her ancestor’s dried blood.

Danielle gasped.

Behind them, something groaned.

Danielle looked up towards the trees. Vann shot a green-skinned slaver whose head exploded like a rotten pumpkin. Its undead body jerked before it fell to the ground. A dozen silhouettes appeared in the trees, all of them groaning and lurching toward the tree line. Toward Danielle and her family.

Vann shouted, “Run!”

Danielle shot to her feet and screwed the container’s lid shut. She spun around and screamed when she saw an undead man strapped to a wooden cross in the middle of the field like a scarecrow. The blazing hot sun had melted his pickled green flesh off his bones.

Dr. Greenwood grabbed Danielle by the arm and yanked her back towards the middle of the field. They ran around the undead scarecrow, leapt from row to row. The hard, sharp edges of the cotton hulls grabbed at their jumpsuits and scratched at their skin. Danielle ran as fast as she could with the heavy blue container pressed to her chest. For a second, she glanced back at the trees and saw a budding horde of decaying men and women in ragged Antebellum clothes coming straight for them.

“What are those things?” Danielle asked.

Vann, leading the group, shot another dead man wandering into their path.

“Forresters,” Dr. Greenwood spat. “Their ancestors owned your ancestors.”

Dad and Vann fired on any dripping, undead Forrester that got a little too close for comfort, but Danielle didn’t know how much further she could run with the container. Her arms and shoulders were burning, cotton was in her eyes, her legs were throbbing.

Then a plane flew over the trees and across the field.

Quincy shouted at the top of his lungs, “Hey!”

“He’s turning around,” said Dr. Greenwood. “Just keep running!”

“I don’t know if I can make it,” said Danielle, out of breath. She slowed down. She glanced behind her and saw more dead people walking around the wooden cross and coming straight for them.

The sweat on her hands and arms were making the container slip from her grip.

“Help!” Danielle screamed. “Help me!”

∙ ∙ ∙

She cried the first time she held the container.

Danielle couldn’t picture a person’s soul housed in such a tiny space. She couldn’t imagine someone’s spirit could be so small and supposedly have such great power at the same time.

Dr. Greenwood rubbed Danielle’s back as she cried. Her father and her brothers left the room. Mama was on speaker phone listening to her training session from the hospital. They were 24 hours away from the Excavation and she had doubts. She was absolutely horrified at the mere thought of failure.

“What if I can’t capture their spirit?” Danielle asked. “What if I lose our ancestor?”

Mama said, “You have to try, baby.”

Dr. Greenwood agreed with a nod. “Don’t think of it as capture. You’re not bottling them up, you’re setting them free.”

∙ ∙ ∙

The plane came back around the field again as Danielle’s sweaty palms slipped on the glass container. She stopped, the one thing Dr. Greenwood and the trainer told them not to do. Once they captured the spirit, once they’d drawn the attention of the Forresters, they couldn’t stop.

But Danielle knew if she didn’t stop, she was going to drop it, and what if she broke it? What if something terrible happened to the spirit? What if they lost their chance to get free? She couldn’t risk that.

“Help,” Danielle said, eyes wet with tears. The groaning grew louder.

Quincy came to her with the shovel and swung at the Forrester creeping behind her. He smashed its head in as Danielle flinched and ducked. Quincy took the container and dropped the shovel. He grabbed her hand and pulled her forward.

“I got you. C’mon, we’re almost there!”

The plane began its descent casting a wide shadow over the field. The Forresters drew in closer.

Vann and Dad fired their last bullets.

Dr. Greenwood shouted, “Jetpacks!”

The plane got as low as it could, kept steady with them as they ran. Cotton flew in the air and fluttered all around them like snow. The hatch opened and Vann was the first to push-to-start. He rose from the ground, kicking a cotton crop as he ascended. They watched him lean forward to propel himself inside the safety of the aircraft.

Dr. Greenwood was next, Dad was third. Danielle ran hand-in-hand with Quincy.

“Go!” Quincy hit her push-to-start accelerator.

Danielle tried to hold onto his hand, but she was ascending too fast. Her sweaty fingers slipped away.

She glanced back and saw him push-to-start just as a crowd of Forresters dived for him. He held the container tucked furiously beneath his arm. Danielle landed in the aircraft and stumbled into the open arms of her father.

And just like when they reached the plantation, Quincy crash landed beside her. The trainer closed the hatch.

Quincy held the container up over his head.

“It’s okay,” he said.

Vann and Dad helped him onto his feet and slapped his back and hugged him. Dr. Greenwood clapped. Danielle, doubled over, wiped tears from her cheeks.

∙ ∙ ∙

“Remember, in our first session together I explained the difference between thoughts and feelings,” Dr. Greenwood said.

She gave them ten minutes to catch their breath before herding them into their passenger seats. Vann had unzipped his jumpsuit and pulled it down so it could hang around his hips, Quincy pulled up his pants legs, and Danielle and Dad poured water down their throats and over their heads.

Dr. Greenwood stood up in the aisle. “Feelings are one or two words. Happy. Stressed out. Sad. Pissed off. Thoughts are more than one word. I feel like shouting. I am a loser. This makes me want to hit something.”

The Pearsons watched and waited.

“Tell me your thoughts,” she said.

“We did it,” said Quincy.

“I feel like a badass, real talk,” Vann said laughing.

“I’m still tryin’ to catch my breath,” Dad said.

Danielle didn’t know what to say. They watched and waited.

“I don’t know what I think, but I know how I feel,” she said.

Dr. Greenwood smiled. “Please. Tell us how you feel, Danielle.”

“Relieved,” said Danielle. “Light and heavy at the same time. Emotional. Strong. Weak. Everything. I feel a little bit of everything.”

“Where is the container?” Dr. Greenwood asked.

Quincy held it up. “Right here.”

“How do you feel about that container? How do you feel about what you just accomplished? Don’t hold back,” Dr. Greenwood said.

“Messed up,” said Vann.

“Yeah. Was the point of that to experience what it was like for our ancestors trying to escape slavery?” Quincy asked.

“No,” said Dr. Greenwood. “Let me explain. Quincy, open the container.”

Danielle’s eyebrows shot up.

“We can do that?” Dad asked.

“We’re in a confined space. We don’t have to worry about anything adverse happening,” said Dr. Greenwood.

Quincy placed the container on the floor in the aisle.

“Our research and your DNA led you to Sarah Pearson.”

Dr. Greenwood motioned towards the container. Quincy took off the lid. Danielle, Vann, and Dad inched closer to the aisle.

“A survivor of rape, abuse, depression, anxiety, torture, trauma, isolation, arthritis, and migraines. She died from breast cancer at age 82. But according to our research, she was so much more than that,” said Dr. Greenwood, a smile coming on her face.

They watched the blue air rise from the container like fog. It expanded and shimmered as it spread.

“She had five beautiful children. She was married twice. She was a healer. She taught herself how to read and sew and sing.”

Tears filled Danielle’s eyes as the smoke began to take shape. A woman’s shape.

“She was born into captivity, but she lived as a free woman in her old age. She saw her children have children. She saw the war end. She felt great pain but he felt happiness too. In her happiness, she caught glimpses of the future.”

The smoke formed into a woman, her body partially transparent, her edges soft and shiny, pinpricks of light in her tightly coiled hair.

“You’re her future,” Dr. Greenwood said. “You share her pain, but I guarantee you, you can share in her joy. You can have your own joy.”

Sarah Pearson stood before them in simple clothes, standing on a cloud of smoke in the middle of a sparkling mist. She had Quincy’s copper colored skin. She had Vann’s smile. She had Danielle’s face. They were all crying and wiping their tears away.

Dr. Greenwood took a step back and sat down. “You did this because you needed to meet the only person who truly understands your pain.”

Danielle stood up and moved into the aisle. Sarah stared as Danielle walked up to her. Tears ran down her face. She stopped and bowed her head out of respect for her foremother.

Sarah reached out and cupped Danielle’s cheek. A cooling sensation spread across Danielle’s skin and made her face tingle. She raised her head. Sarah smiled and brushed Danielle’s tears away.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT MELODY GORDON

Melody Gordon is a writer and graduate student from Memphis, Tennessee.

JOURNEY OF THE DEAD

By Resoketswe Manenzhe

I arrived at the gates of heaven at sunset.

I found the devil there,

and he was handsome.

He smiled a good smile and spoke cold words:

God is dead, the angels killed him

and made me king!

The demons roared and cheered—

they were ugly in their beauty,

even as they smiled.

I turned away and left them there.

I arrived weary at the gates of purgatory.

The angels were there,

and they were shameful—

sobbed sore sobs and chorused hard words:

The old king fell,

he burnt the crown and knifed himself!

They were hollow in their penitence,

so I forsook them and made for hell.

I found god there,

and he was a gaunt man—

gaunt, beaten and hoarse as he whispered:

I never died for I never lived!

But the echo of his words

was swallowed by the hymns—

they boomed from above,

blocked his ears

and drowned the truth.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT RESOKETSWE MANENZHE

Resoketswe Manenzhe holds a chemical engineering degree, and is in the first year of completing his master’s degree with the Centre for Minerals Research, at the University of Cape Town. His poems and short stories have appeared in Review Americana, Bunbury Magazine and Scholars and Rogues, among others.

ROOTWORK

By Constance Collier-Mercado

Begin with a glass of water. Sprinkle

powdered light through window’s

iris tangled & twining

among the bamboo, spider tree pothos,

peace

& fragrant calla lily.

For the days when you have no peace.

For days when grief lay

heavy as the cloth

spread

low to sweep floorboards clean of

tangled thoughts

dusted with dreams of ancestors

smudged in the root

that blooms between teeth

and clawed feet

maybe

in the kitchen, maybe

round your neck.

Baby, take this chicken

let it heal you yet.

For days when ashes burn low.

Begin with a glass of water. Bury

fear and famine and fury

in soil rich with

love:

red clay, pluff mud, golden pothos

straining toward the sun.

Stained wholly black, holy

bones billowing

fragrant

& cracked incense boiling

in a low country Delta river pot

of life.

For days when the number of your dead outweigh the living.

Begin with a glass of water. Tend

Pangea’s garden in

tears earned through

fire

and rot plowed from an emptiness

of spirit reserved

only for the coming of birth pangs.

Seal the lid shut and swing low

in the root of your newness.

For days when the circle is unbroken.

Begin with a glass of water. Triumphant.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT CONSTANCE COLLIER-MERCADO

Constance SHERESE Collier-Mercado is a Black Woman Writer/Artist, Founder of The CultSTATUS Arts Haven, and self-professed ’Anthropologist of the Arts’ in search of all the Culture she can get. Born and raised in Chicago, IL and the Bronx, NY, respectively; ’Fresh, DOPE, Beauty ...’ are words she uses to describe the pluralistic idea that she can be any genre of Woman/ish Activist necessary to give voice to the fullness of Black Afro-Diasporic existence. Her writing and visual art primarily focus on examining the nuanced layers found in the multilingual and equivocal—the literal and imagined intersections of sensory, mystic, and social identities—to include the cultures of abuse, empowerment, and dis/ABILITY. She currently lives in Atlanta, GA where she is at work metastasizing her reach to depict the divinity and kinetic energy of The Kinfolk. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @WriterChicLady.

INDIE SPOTLIGHT

The road to publication is not easy for anyone and comes with a number of hurdles. For Black writers, these challenges are multiplied and because of institutional issues, the path seems almost impossible. But the resiliency of Black folks always finds a way and for many Black SFF writers that way was in the form of self-publishing. At FIYAH, we do not snub our noses at those writers who chose this path. We salute them because they have decided to embark on a journey by themselves that in traditional circumstances would involve a team. So we wish to acknowledge those Black indie SFF writers out there working hard and dropping a good product, by featuring them in this special section of some of our issues.

This issue’s feature is Milton Davis’s MEJI.

The first chapter lies in the pages that follow. Visit our website to read an interview with the author and support the work by purchasing it at the link below.

PURCHASE HERE | INTERVIEW

INDIE SPOTLIGHT

MEJI // Milton Davis

On the continent of Uhuru, in the grasslands of the Sesu, Inkosi Dingane is granted his wish. His Great Wife Shani bears him a son, an heir to his growing empire. But the ancestors have plans of their own. Shani bears him twin boys, meji, an abomination among the Sesu, but a blessing to Shani’s people, the Mawena.

Thus begins the story of two brothers destined to transform their world. One brother, Ndoro, fights for his place among the Sesu, hoping to shed the stigma of abomination. The other, Obaseki, grows to a man among the people of his mother, struggling with a gift that alienates him from his family and eventually leads to his exile. Both brothers set out to find his destiny, traveling through teeming savannah, mysterious forests, haunted ocean cliffs and infernal deserts, fulfilling a prophecy that would change them and their world forever.

MEJI

By Milton Davis

1

A yellow moon shimmered above Sesuland, casting its hue across the rolling grasslands. Atop a low rise overlooking the Kojo River, the inhabitants of Inkosi Dingane’s kraal attempted to sleep despite the unusually bright night. Restless cattle crooned at the sky, their wild brethren answering in agitated tones. Dry season had come early and pushed away the shroud of moisture obscuring the stars in the expansive sky. Soon it would be time for the Sesu to pick up their shields and assegais and march against their enemies. Dry season was war season, and the Sesu had a way with war.

The sound of cowbells and drums exploded from the royal compound beyond the cattle pen. Royal messengers dashed among the huts with wavering torches, their voices filled with excitement. The day the Sesu waited for was finally at hand; inkosi Dingane’s great wife Shani was in labor.

Dingane squatted outside the birthing hut, his mind in turmoil. Every scream sent a wave of fear racing through him. Though his other wives had borne him many children, this would be Shani’s first and his most glorious. This child, this boy would be his successor. Dingane took great pains to make sure he did nothing to offend the spirits during the pregnancy, lest they curse Shani’s unborn child. He spent many nights awake imagining how he would raise his heir, teaching him the ways of a Sesu warrior and the secrets of the inkosi. By the time he was of age, the elders of the tribe would dare not select anyone else to succeed him. He would be by far the one most capable of leading the Sesu to future greatness.

A strange cry escaped the hut. Dingane jumped to his feet and ran to the entrance. A hand reached out and stopped him; no man, not even the inkosi, was allowed into the birthing hut. Themba, Shani’s maid, emerged.

“Send for Mulugo,” she said urgently. “Something is wrong.”

Dingane turned to his bodyguards and pointed to a young warrior leaning on his spear.

“Go find Mulugo and bring him here quickly!” he ordered.

He turned back to Themba. “Is the baby in trouble?”

“I do not know,” Themba replied. “Only Mulugo can answer that question.”

The warrior returned with Mulugo. The medicine-priest wore one of his many masks, his mayembe clutched in his bony right hand. His brown eyes locked on Dingane, and the inkosi took a step away. He did well to hide his fear of the old priest before his warriors, though he knew his façade did not fool Mulugo. The priest gestured toward the hut. Dingane pulled aside the cloth covering the entrance, careful not to look.

Dingane crouched beside the entrance, rocking back and forth on his heels as he offered his prayers to Unkulunkulu. His son was being born and the turmoil inside sent his stomach churning in pain. Every scream sent him reeling more. Any more and he would have to send his warriors away. He must not show weakness, no matter how much he felt it.

Shani screamed again, pulling Dingane to his feet. He rushed into the hut, his heart pounding like a celebration drum. Three faces met his; the cowering gaze of the midwife, the scowl of Mulugo and the exhausted smile of Shani. Dingane smiled until he saw what his wife held. Shani had given birth to twins.

“You are cursed,” Mulugo said. “You prayed for sons and Unkulunkulu has given them to you.

The joy faded from Shani’s eyes. “What does he mean, Dingane? What is he saying?”

Themba placed a cool rag on Shani’s forehead. “Calm yourself, my queen. Do not worry.”

“Twins are an abomination, a bad omen to the tribe,” Mulugo announced. “They must die.”

“No!” Shani screamed. She clutched her crying babies close to her breast.

“They are my sons!”

Her desperate eyes sought Dingane. “You cannot let him do this.”

Dingane looked away from his Great Wife and glared at Mulugo. What the priest said was true, but he would not be denied a son. The fear he held for the priest dissipated.

“My sons will not die,” he declared.

Mulugo held his mayembe out to Dingane, the ornate spirit-filled animal horn inches from the inkosi’s face.

“You are a fool!” Mulugo replied. “You stand here naked to Unkulunkulu and deny his will for your own vanity. The Sesu chose you to lead us for your strength and wisdom, and you return our favor by damning our souls!”

“Be quiet, old man!” Dingane spat. “Do you read the mind of the Eye now?” Despite his anger he felt Mulugo’s words. The Sesu followed him only as long as he protected them and their beliefs.

“No, Dingane, I do not know the mysteries of the Eye. But I know the heart of the Sesu.” Mulugo shook his mayembe, and then let it drop to his side.

Dingane felt trapped. He looked into Shani’s terrified eyes, at his sons searching their mother’s breasts, at the ancient wisdom carved in Mulugo’s face. He could not deny the Sesu, yet he could not deny Shani and himself.

“Will the spirits be satisfied with one?” he asked.

“Dingane, no!” Shani exclaimed.

“Ukulunkulu’s favor is not open for barter,” Mulugo warned.

“This is no bargain. Take one of the boys. The other shall live as I please.”

Mulugo glared at Dingane and stormed from the birthing hut. Shani did not give up so easily.

“You can’t do this, Dingane!” she pleaded. “These are our children!”

Dingane looked into Shani’s damp eyes, his face set hard. Over the years he had given in to his sweet flower many times. Now there was no room to give.

“Shani, you must try to understand. This is a terrible but necessary thing. I have already asked too much when it comes to your wishes. I cannot ask anymore.”

“It is so easy for you,” Shani said. “You did not carry them. You did not feel your body grow plump with life, two lives. You did not feel the love grow as well.”

“You are not the only one grieving,” Dingane said. “But Sesu ways are strict and necessary, just as those of your people.”

“The Mawena do not kill their twins,” Shani snapped.

“But the Sesu do,” Dingane replied.

Shani looked away from Dingane. For a long moment they both were silent, but finally Shani spoke.

“I will do as you wish, but I will choose which child will live.”

Dingane nodded his head, relieved to be released from such a burden. He stood to leave the hut, but Shani raised her hand.

“I want one week to make my decision.”

“It must be tonight.” Dingane’s voice was stern.

Shani’s eyes narrowed. Her small mouth formed a rigid line as she spoke. “My son will not die a stranger to me. If he does, I will, too.”

Dingane’s hard look softened with fear. “Whatever you wish.”

“I will see no one but Husani and Themba.”

“No one,” Dingane replied. “But if you choose which one to keep, I will choose his name.”

Shani lowered her head. “As you wish my husband.”

Dingane turned and left the hut. Mulugo waited as he emerged.

“Where is the child?” Mulugo asked.

“You will have him soon enough,” Dingane replied.

Mulugo scowled, spun and stomped away muttering. Dingane refrained from imagining what curses the medicine priest weaved against him. His first priority was to fulfill Shani’s demands. He beckoned one of his warriors.

“Bring Husani to me,” he ordered.

The warrior ran into the darkness and returned quickly with Husani. Shani’s personal bodyguard was a tall, broad man, characteristic of the Mawena. He carried a shield and short spear, his hair cropped short in the Mawena style. There was no doubt where his loyalties lay.

“The Great Wife has asked that you stand guard of her hut during her recovery,” Dingane said to Husani. “No one is to enter or leave except you or Themba.”

Husani nodded in acknowledgement. With that Dingane turned away and went to his kraal.

“Husani,” Shani called out. “Are you there?”

“Yes, inkosa.”

“Enter, please.”

The warrior stooped low and entered the birthing hut. Shani sat in the background, cradling her babies. She looked up, and then struggled to her knees.

“My queen!’ Themba exclaimed, ‘you mustn’t!”

“Help me,” Shani demanded. Themba went to Shani and helped her to her feet. Shani swayed, the pain burning through her loins as she stood full.

Themba grabbed her. “Please, inkosa, you must rest!”

Shani looked past her midwife to Husani. “You have always been faithful to me.”

Husani’s eyes narrowed. “What do you wish, my inkosa?”

Shani looked at them both, the fear radiating from Themba’s timid eyes, the strength of Husani’s stare. They would do anything she asked, each for their own reason. But they would do it. She handed the twins to Themba.

“Take them,” she said. “This is Ata, and this is Atsu. Tonight you will take them to Mawenaland.”

Fear took hold of Themba’s face. “We cannot do this!”

“It is what our queen wishes,” Husani said, reminding Themba of her first loyalties.

Themba paced. “We will be caught. Dingane will kill us all.”

“You must leave tonight,” Shani said, ignoring Themba’s comments. “Dingane will not visit this hut for one week, nor will anyone else.”

“Not even Mulugo?” Husani asked.

“Especially not Mulugo.”

Shani saw the concern in Husani’s eyes. “I will be fine. I have enough food. All I need is rest.”

“And after a week?”

“That is in Olodurmare’s hands,” she replied. “Now go. Take my sons to our people.”

Husani bowed and went for the hut entrance. Themba did not move. Her eyes pleaded with Shani, but the inkosa was unmoved.

“Come, sister,” Husani urged. “We waste precious time.”

Themba gave Shani one more glance then hurried out of the hut, Husani close behind.

Shani stared for a moment where Themba stood holding her babies in her trembling arms. She could not cry or mourn, for the fatigue finally overcame her and she collapsed where she stood.

Mulugo sat naked in his hut surrounded by the swirling grey smoke of a smoldering dung fire. His eyes closed, he concentrated with every speck of his being to control the anger and fear threatening to break the mental dam holding back the dangerous emotions. This was not the time for random action, he thought to himself; he must marshal the weaknesses invading his mind and transform the useless energy into decisive action.

He saw his death in the eyes of the twins, just as the babalawo foretold. As a young medicine priest visiting the city of Abo, he humored himself by seeking his fortune from a decrepit babalawo whose name never remembered. The toothless man sat at the edge of the marketplace that long ago was shared by Sesu and Mawena, offering fortunes and remedies for a handful of kola nuts.

“Two kola nuts, young Sesu,” the man coughed. “I see Fate’s web in the bones.”

Mulugo remembered how he laughed at the man, an arrogant sound expressing his contempt for everything Mawena.

“A fortune from a Mawena is worthless,” he told the old man.

The babalawo’s face went from smiling to stern. “For you, young warrior, I will read the bones for free.” He tossed the bones at Mulugo’s feet, his eyes rolling back to white.

“A great medicine priest you will become, but your path will be cleared by treachery and deceit. Power without respect shall be your reward until that day when the one who is two brings an end to your dark days.”

Mulugo felt the fire in his veins as if the words were uttered moments ago instead of the countless seasons passed. He chanted, the rhythmic words soothing the anger that lapped at the rim of his control.

“I ask for a fortune and you give me a curse,” he spat at the old man. Mulugo shoved the man into the dirt and threw the kola nuts in his face. The old man looked at Mulugo, managing to grin.

“Your life is a curse, young Sesu,” he replied. “It will be a long life, a very long life.”

The heat rose in the hut and Mulugo sweated. His life had been long. His climb to the high priest of Sesuland had been a journey of deception and cruelty, but he had done no different than any ambitious man seeking power. He never experienced the touch of a woman; the chance of eternity through children was never to occur. Still he thought the words of the beggar fortune teller mere coincidence until saw Dingane’s twins and realized the power of the old Mawena.

“The One Who is Two,” Mulugo whispered.

He had to kill them soon. Every moment they lived they grew stronger. The blood of a chief flowed through their veins, two souls blessed by a lineage superior to his own. Though twins, he saw the difference. One cried with the soul of the world, his only concern the fear of this strange world and the hunger in his belly. The other sat quietly, his eyes drinking in the new world about him, seeing everything within and beyond a normal Sesu’s sight. He was the one who had to die first, the one Mulugo would have chosen if given the chance. Dingane’s weakness ruled once again and the Mawena cow had her way.

The swirling smoke came less random, moving with a pulse that claimed life from nothing. Faces appeared before Mulugo, faces of the spirits to which he offered his dark libations nightly in hopes they would strengthen him in his time of need.

“The Weak One calls,” they whispered. “He has seen his death and is afraid.”

“Silence!” Mulugo shouted. His ancestors mocked him, but the truth was that he was more powerful than they had ever been when they were alive. It was this new borne power that summoned his oldest uncles from the Zamani to serve him in the life they would never know again.

“The abomination is here, borne with the blood of chiefs and the power to see beyond seeing. How do I stand against this power?”

“Only one of twins can bring your demise,” they sang. “Make the herbs that bring the sleeping sickness and serve it to Shani. The child eats what the mother eats. An adult will sleep, but a child will die.”

Mulugo smiled. It was a simple task, something well within his powers to perform. He jumped up and ran to his shelves, selecting the perfect plants to carry out this task. The abomination would die as many other new born, and no one will be the wiser. Mulugo sprinkled the leaves into his worn stone mortar and began his task, humming a chant as he prepared his freedom.

The sun rose impatiently over the Sesu pastures, eager to get about its celestial business. Warm rays of light pierced the hut in which Dingane slept. One sliver touched the chief’s face and he sprang from his cot as if burned. He leapt from the cot and bolted from the hut, spurred by the message sent to him from his ancestors while he slept.

In his dream Mulugo had defied him. The old wizard had taken matters into his own hands, invading the birth hut and killing both babies with his jagged metal knife. Shani’s screams rang in his head as he neared the hut, his breathing heavy and desperate. He looked about for Husani but the warrior could not be found. Dingane yanked the hut door aside and charged in. Shani’s head rose slowly from her cot, her eyes wet and red. The babies were gone. He ran, headed to Mulugo’s abode, his eyes wide with anger. Striding into the wizard’s hut, he found the old man sitting before a small stone table, his ancient hands slowly grinding a collection of herbs.

“Damn you, Mulugo!” he shouted. He attacked the medicine priest, wrapping his hands around the medicine-priest’s neck. Mulugo struggled to speak, pounding Dingane’s arms feebly. He stopped suddenly, throwing his hands out behind him and finding his cane. His breath escaping him, Mulugo touched Dingane lightly on his leg. Searing pain rushed through the inkosi’s body; he released the priest and fell away, clutching his calf. Mulugo leaned against the stone table in the center of his hut, gathering his breath.

“The night has driven you mad!” Mulugo gasped.

“You killed my sons!” Dingane shouted.

Mulugo looked at Dingane. “I have not touched the abominations. I have been doing what I could to deflect whatever evils your decision has brought to us.”

Dingane stood. “But they were not in the hut! Shani was crying and I dreamed…”

Dingane fled the hut, Mulugo following as closely as he could. By this time the commotion had passed throughout the village and everyone crowded about the birthing hut, curious to know what was afoot. Dingane’s warriors cleared a path as the chief returned and charged inside.

Shani waited for him. She sat erect, covered in fresh clothing Themba brought her the night before, her composed face hiding her pain.

“Where are my sons, woman?” Dingane shouted. “Where are Husani and Themba?”

“Gone,” Shani replied, her voice strong and firm. “The Mawena do not kill their twins.”

“Do you know what you have done?” Dingane shouted. He grabbed her by the wrists and yanked her to her feet, ignoring her grimace.

“I bent the rules for you, Shani. Yesterday I defied Mulugo and the elders for you. And this is how you repay me?”

“You did nothing for me,” Shani replied. “If that was so you would have spared both my sons.”

Dingane let her go, his face a mirror of disgust. “I expected you to be a Great Mother worthy of this tribe. My dowry to your father was more than he asked because of what I thought you were worth. I was wrong.”

“I am Mawena,” Shani said. “I will not let my children die.”

Dingane spat on the floor of the hut and left Shani sobbing. When he emerged Mulugo was waiting.

“What has happened?” he demanded.

“Shani sent the twins to her people.”

A gasp rose from the crowd. Mulugo threw his medicine stick to the ground and pointed a crooked finger at Mulugo.

“See what has happened so soon, inkosi of the Sesu! The evil befalls us quickly.”

Dingane ignored Mulugo’s gesticulations, turning his attention to Gamba, the leader of his personal guard.

“Gather an impi of my finest warriors and send for my weapons.”

“Where are you going?” Mulugo asked.

“After them,” Dingane replied. “The boys are with Husani and Themba. They had a head start, but Themba will slow Husani down.”

“I will go with you,” Mulugo decided. “We must wait no longer. When we find them, we must kill one immediately.”

“I will not slow down for you, old man”

“You will not need to,” Mulugo replied.

Gamba returned with the warriors. He helped Dingane don his headdress and strapped his shield and assegais across his back. Dingane looked over his men and was satisfied with Gamba’s choices.

“Impi kimbia!” he shouted and they set off at a warrior’s pace. Mulugo followed close behind, resting in his litter as his porters kept pace with the warriors. They ran through the streets of Selike, urged on by the chants of the Sesu. Men, women, girls and boys all shouted for their success. The throng followed them to the edge of Sesuland, and then watched as their inkosi and his warriors disappeared into the grassy horizon.

Husani gazed on the grasslands from his perch, searching for signs of pursuit. He and Themba reached the hills just before dawn, finding a place to rest before continuing their journey to Mawenaland.

He turned back, watching Themba suckle the twins, absorbed in the nurturing of Shani’s children. Though she did her best, they would never reach the Mawena. An impi was surely pursuing them by now, an impi with no woman or babies to slow them down. He had to do something if the twins were to make it to Mawenaland. What, he did not know.

“How are they?” he asked Themba.

“As well as can be expected,” she replied.

Husani crouched closer to Themba. “We must go now.”

Themba glared. “The babies need more rest. I am not even finish feeding them!”

“They will have all the time they need to feed in Mawenaland,” Husani replied harshly.

Themba pulled the babes from her breasts. Their feeble cries tore at her heart; she pleaded with Husani once more

“Just a few more minutes,” she begged.

Husani said nothing for a moment, his mind elsewhere. When he finally turned his attention back to Themba, his expression echoed his resolve.

“Take your time, Themba. We can wait.”

Themba fed the babies until they were full then placed them in the basket. She looked about for Husani but could not find him. He had apparently slipped away while she nursed. Themba sang, more to soothe herself than the sleeping twins. Death was following her; she felt its press upon her back, its putrid breath cold against her flesh. She should have fled Shani’s hut as soon as the inkosa stated her intentions. But now she was part of this foolish scheme, too afraid to say no when asked.

Husani reappeared suddenly from the bush. “Are you ready?” he asked. Themba checked the babies one last time. “Yes I am,” she answered.

“Good,” Husani said. He took his wrist knife and handed it to Themba.

“Mawenaland is not far from the base of the hills. If you follow this path, you should reach it by sunset.”

“What are you talking about?” Themba replied. “We cannot separate!

Husani placed his hand on Themba’s shoulders. “Listen to me. Dingane has surely discovered the babies are gone by now and an impi has been sent after us. Together we are too slow.”

“Then we will die!” Themba exclaimed.

“No, woman, listen to me,” Husani insisted. “Just inside the woods of Mawenaland is Koso. When you come across the Kosobu, show them my knife. They will make sure you and the babies get to Abo.”

Themba realized what Husani was going to do. She never doubted his bravery, but to see him, his handsome face resolved, she then knew what a true warrior he was. She took the knife, placing it in the basket with the twins. She touched Husani’s cheek.

“I will pray for you,” she whispered.

“And I for you,” Husani replied. “Now go.”

Themba picked up the basket, trotting down the path Husani showed her. Husani watched until she disappeared, then covered her tracks. He returned to his perch and waited.

The sun hung low on the western horizon when Husani spotted the impi. They were moving fast; at their current pace they would reach the hills in minutes. Their chant reached his ears and made him smile.

“Come for me, Sesu,” he said. “You will surely get me.”

He rose and set off, climbing up a path in the hills that ran opposite of the trail leading to Mawenaland. He ran long enough to make sure the Sesu warriors would not overtake him before he reached his destination. Once he was sure of his distance he walked, saving his energy for what lay ahead.

The impi picked up the trail not far from the village. There was no rest, no easing of the pace; the Sesu had been defied and revenge was demanded. But Dingane would make sure that revenge only went so far. He would have his son.

By midday the hills that separated Sesuland from Mawenaland were in view. Dingane increased the pace, knowing the longer they traveled without seeing their prey the better their chances at reaching Abo. The warriors responded with a war chant, beating their assegais against their shields. We are coming, they chanted. We are coming for you.

Dingane led his warriors into the hills, their stride still strong despite the miles they’d traversed. It did not take them long to find the Mawena camp.

“The ashes are still warm,” Dingane remarked. It only took a moment to find the trail leading away from the Mawena camp. The impi set off again, their energy renewed.

The trail snaked upward through the hills, meandering like the gemsbok which created it. The natural growth of grasses faded with each step, usurped by low shrubs and weak trees as they drew closer to Mawenaland. The Sesu paused at the top of the hill then plunged into a dense tangle of bush and trees. The path narrowed, and the Sesu were forced to travel single file.

The slim path slowed them down considerably, the thistles from the encroaching bushes slashing their bare arms and legs. A wicked thorn bit into Dingane’s calf and he dropped to his knees in pain, his hand grasping his wounded limb. No sooner had he descended that he heard a wet thump behind him. He turned to see the warrior behind him fall, an assegai buried in his chest. The others raised their shields and formed the tortoise around their inkosi, protecting him from the deadly missiles raining down on them. As suddenly as the barrage began it stopped. Dingane broke free of the formation, running at full speed through the narrow path. Fury consumed him as he looked for Husani, promising himself the Mawena would die a painful death when he was finally captured.

Husani leaped in his path. He slammed into Dingane, knocking the inkosi off his feet and into the brambles. Dingane scrambled to keep his balance, but Husani pushed him further into bush, the thorns tearing into his face and sides. The biting of the bush was punctuated by a searing stab into his right thigh. Dingane held back a scream as Husani leapt back, a look of grim satisfaction on his face.

“You will die, fool!” Dingane shouted.

“I know,” Husani replied. The Mawena jumped over Dingane and charged the approaching Sesu warriors. Dingane watched Husani plunge into his men, using the narrow path to his advantage. Five Sesu fell before Husani was finally overwhelmed, his large frame disappearing under an avalanche of Sesu blades.

The warriors freed Dingane from the shrubs. As soon as he was clear he shoved them away.

“Come! We must go.”

“Inkosi, your leg,” Gamba said.

“Are you a healer now, Gamba? Follow me!”

Dingane place his full weight on his wounded leg and shouted. Determined to go on, he took another step. The pain overwhelmed him and he collapsed into the arms of his men.

When he awoke, he was stretched out on a hide cot, Mulugo squatting beside his leg, busily pressing the wound with a poultice. The medicine priest raised his eyes slowly to meet Dingane’s.

“It is happening as I foretold,” Mulugo said.

“Be quiet,” Dingane ordered. “I will not stop until I have my son back.”

Mulugo looked exasperated and turned his attention back to the wound. “We must go back to the kraal. Your wound is bad and I do not have the proper herbs to heal it. I did not expect to be saving a life, only taking one.”

Dingane gritted his teeth. “We are not going back without my son. Do the best you can.” He rose up on his elbows and called for Gamba.

“Make me a litter quickly,” he commanded. Gamba trotted off to do his job.

“Even you cannot deny what is happening,” Mulugo said. “Can’t you feel the unbalance? Both boys must die!”

Dingane glared at the medicine priest. “Listen to me, old man. One son will die; the other will live. If you mention this to me again, I will cut your throat.”

Mulugo looked stunned. He backed away from Dingane. “I am returning to the village. I will no longer be a part of this evil.”

“You will do no such thing,” Dingane said. “You came this far, you will go all the way. Do you understand?”

For once Dingane was privileged to see fear in Mulugo’s eyes. Maybe the medicine priest thought him mad; it didn’t matter to Dingane. The only thing that mattered was his son.

Dingane tried walking but the pain was too great. Gamba returned quickly with the litter. Dingane struggled in and nodded to Gamba. “I am ready.”

Gamba bowed to Dingane. “Impi kimbia!” he shouted. With the command the impi fell into ranks and began the run to Mawenaland.

Themba scrambled down the goat path leading to the forest. The fear that had been held in check by Husani’s presence was upon her in full fury, riding her more heavily than the babies she bore against her breasts. The sun was setting, the long shadows of the nearby forest creasing the hills. Themba would give anything to be among them, hidden in familiar darkness. But as soon as she reached them she realized she’d been too long among the Sesu. The forest engulfed her, the sky above becoming an ominous canopy of leaves.

“Oya protect me!” she prayed as she ran on.

The trail widened as it progressed into the trees, the signs of human habitation growing more numerous. Themba knew she was close to a village, but her legs would carry her no longer. She would never make it before dark; she would have to sleep in the forest. She stopped and then gingerly stepped from the trail into the bush. She found a good spot, a large tree surrounded by a stand of saplings. She put the babies down and cleared a spot to sit. The twins slept, exhausted from the journey and lack of milk.

“Poor little ones,” she whispered. “Your lives begins so hard.”

She woke them and offered them her breasts and they suckled eagerly. She sang to them, knowing that any sound might attract danger but too tired to care. When the babies were finished she laid them on the blanket then lay beside them, clutching Husani’s knife in her small hands.

It seemed only moments had passed when Themba jumped up, startled by harsh clanging. Sunlight broke through the canopy, stinging her eyes and frightening her even more. She found the babies and calmed somewhat, then leaned against a tree to orient herself. The clanging came from a herd of goats passing along the path, shepherded by a group of young boys. One of the boys approached her, his eyes searching the bush for the source of the scream.

“Habare!” she called out. The boy looked suddenly in her direction.

“Umzuri,” the boy replied. “Who are you, mother?”

“I am Themba. I need your help.”

“Wait here. I will go back to the village and bring help.”

“What is your village?” Themba asked.

“Koso.”

The boy ran through the brush and back to the path, calling his cohorts. Two younger boys appeared, and the eldest pointed to Themba. The boys nodded then went to her.

The younger boy took off his shoulder pouch and handed it to Themba.

“Here, eat. Paki said you looked hungry.” Themba had not thought about food until that moment. She accepted the pouch eagerly.

“Are these your babies?” the other boy asked.

“No,” Themba replied, her mouth stuffed with food. “They are the sons of inkosa Shani, Great Wife of inkosi Dingane and daughter of Oba Noncemba.

The boy stepped away from the sleeping children, showing his respect.

“We will protect you until Paki returns.”

Themba smiled. “I am honored to have such fine warriors to watch over us.”

The boys made fine company, sharing their food and conversation. It seemed only a moment passed before the eldest boy returned, bringing with him a group of warriors from the village. The younger boys moved aside quickly, leaving Themba to confront the warriors alone. The eldest of the men stepped forward, a graying beard bordering his cherubic face, his stomach protruding past his waist belt. His left hand carried a worn shield, his right an assegai with an extremely long blade. In other circumstances Themba might have found him amusing, but the threatening look on the man’s face emphasized the seriousness of her situation.

“Paki says you are Shani’s handmaiden.”

“I am.”

“And these are her children?”

Themba nodded.

The man smirked. “Then where is the Great Wife?”

“These babies are twins,” Shani replied. “The Sesu consider them abominations, and the medicine priest said they must die. Shani did not want this so she sent Husani and me…”

One of the younger warriors came forward. “Did you say Husani?” he asked.

“Yes, yes. He gave me this to show anyone who found us.”

She revealed Husani’s knife. The old warrior looked at the young man.

“It is his knife,” the young man said. He looked at Themba. “Where is he?”

Her eyes watering as she replied. “He stayed behind to slow down the Sesu pursuing us.”

The young man’s face became somber, his fingers absently rubbing the cowry shells about his neck. The older warrior motioned to Themba.

“Come with us.”

Koso bordered the Bose, a wide, lethargic river shadowed by trees bent lazily over its muddy waters. Cone shaped houses of wood and mud lined the narrow streets leading from the river’s edge into the forest. The entire village smelled of fish. For Themba it was a welcomed change from cow dung. The warriors took her to the meeting tree, a huge ancient plant surrounded by the village elders. The chief sat in the center, his head covered by a crown woven in the kente of his family. He seemed young for a chief, but his bearing reflected his position. Each elder wore his family kente, signifying a group of great power. She knelt, placing the basket with the babies before the elders and touched her head on the ground.

“I am Olatunde, chief of the Koso. You carry the children of Dingane?” the chief asked.

Themba felt fear in her throat. “Yes, father.”

The chief rubbed his chin. “We are not friends of the Sesu. They raid our farms and steal grain for their cattle. I have no reason to save the sons of an enemy.”

The thought of harm coming to the infants forced Themba’s fear aside. “These boys are not Sesu. They belong to Shani, daughter of Oba Noncemba, your oba. I have promised to take them to him and I will, with or without your help.”

Olatunde held up his hand. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t help you. I wanted everyone at this council to understand why we will help. We are, after all, Mawena. We are proud of the blessing Shani sends us.”

He raised his hand and the younger warrior came forward.

“Jelani will take you and the babies to Abo by boat. Dingane chases you, but the boats will take you faster. You must leave now.”

Themba bowed to the chief. “I thank you for your kindness. Changa keep you.”

Jelani led Themba to the awaiting boats. There, she was greeted by a tall, beautiful woman; her head wrap and dress signifying the chief’s clan.

“I am Zuwena, wet nurse for the chief’s family. I will care for the children.”

Themba clutched the babies, reluctant to give them up.

Zuwena gave the handmaiden a sympathetic smile. “It is all right. You are tired and your milk is weak.”

“Will we take the same boat?” Themba asked.

“Yes,” Zuwena replied. Themba handed the babies to Zuwena slowly, still wary to give up the boys despite being surrounded by people willing to help her.

“They are fine boys,” Zuwena remarked. “They will grow into great men.”

“If they live,” Themba replied.

Jelani helped Themba and Zuwena into the boat. There were three boats in all, the front and rear boat containing oarsmen and archers. Jelani prepared a place for Themba, a cot with a lambskin blanket.

“You can rest here,” he said. “If I know Husani, your journey was hard.

“He was a brave man,” Themba replied.

“I know. He was my brother.”

Themba smiled at Jelani, the resemblance now apparent. She lay down on the cot as the boats got under way. Knowing of Husani’s brother calmed her; everything would be all right; of this she was certain. Once in Abo, Oba Noncemba would handle the situation and the babies would be safe. She closed her eyes and let the rhythm of the boat lull her to sleep.

Oba Noncemba slept fitfully in the bedchamber of his palace, unaware of the crisis approaching his city. Though very much the grandfather, he had a youthful look about him despite the gray speckled hair on his head and the white beard. The privileges of higher status had not contributed to his waistline; he was as fit as his days as a warrior oba leading his armies in conquest of the kingdom now known as Mawenaland. The last decade he spent not as a warrior but a diplomat, securing the borders of his realm through trade, negotiation and marriage. Shango blessed him with few sons but many daughters and these had married the princes of the many surrounding lands, making them family. All had married well except Shani. Noncemba stirred in his sleep as he recalled his youngest daughter which he had not seen since she married Dingane, chief of the Sesu. He did not like the young Sesu, but it was a marriage he could not avoid. The Sesu were growing numerous and powerful under Dingane’s rule, rising from a small tribe of cattle raiders to a unified force. Though still not a kingdom, the young chief was powerful enough to request a bride.

Noncemba sat up in his bed just before the messenger entered.

“My oba, forgive my intrusion. You are needed urgently at the meeting tree!”

Noncemba did not question the messenger’s summons. He dressed and followed the messenger through the palace and into the courtyard. The wide area brimmed with people; spectators sat upon the bleached white walls, a curious murmur drifting into the enclosure. The elders sat below the branches of the enormous baobab, a tree older that the ancestors, its canopy shielding the entire courtyard. They were flanked by his generals dressed in red kapok and chain mail, each wearing their headdress rank except Kumba, their leader and Noncemba’s closest friend. Before them all a small group knelt, their heads touching the ground. Noncemba’s anxiety increased as he recognized them as Kosobu. This was definitely a Sesu matter; the Kosobu lived along the river separating Mawenaland from the Sesu grasslands. As he approached them a woman lifted her head and struck the oba still. It was Themba, Shani’s handmaiden, and she held twins in her arms.

“What have the ancestors blessed us with?” he whispered.

“A blessing and a curse,” Kumba commented.

Noncemba walked up to Themba and knelt before her. The spectators gasped while the elders frowned at such a break in protocol.

“Are they my grandsons?” he asked.

“Yes, my oba. This is Ata and this is Atsu. The inkosa sent them to you for your protection.”

Noncemba was well aware of the Sesu attitude towards twins. Many of the Kosobu were orphaned Sesu hidden among the reeds of the river by their desperate mothers. The Kosobu found them and took them in without question.

“The Sesu will be angry,” Elder Kosoko said. The elder stood, a tall, thin man twice the age of Noncemba. His family was among the First of Mawenaland and had produced its share obas in the past.

“They will demand that we kill them.”

“Killing twins is not our way,” Kumba snarled.

“Everyone here knows this,” Noncemba replied. “This is a serious matter, one that could lead to war if not handled carefully.”

“Then let war come,” Kumba said. “For the past ten years we have danced with the Sesu. It is time we crushed them and their ambitions like dung flies.”

A whisper of approval meandered among the spectators. Noncemba’s royal stool was brought to him by his attendants. He sat before his people, returning to tribal protocol.

“One hunts the lion with skill, not anger,” he said. “The Sesu are a concern, but so are the Kossi, the Burundi and the Fah. Mawenaland is strong enough to defeat any of these lands alone, but defeating one makes us vulnerable to another. We must consider our response carefully.”

“How can we appease the Sesu without killing the twins?” Elder Kosoko asked. “They know Themba brought them here. They will come to you and ask for justice.”

“Inkosi Dingane does not want to kill them both,” Themba said.

Noncemba eyes widened in time as a gasp rose from the throng.

Themba dared to lift her eyes again. “Dingane wished to keep one for him. It is his first child from Shani. The medicine priest insisted they kill them both but the inkosi refused. Inkosa Shani told Dingane she would choose which one would live, but she sent them both to you.”

“You didn’t make this journey alone,” Kumba said. “Who helped you?”

Themba’s head sagged. “Husani.”

“Where is he?” Noncemba asked.

“He stayed behind in the hills to slow the Sesu impi pursuing us. He told me to go to Koso. He said they would bring me to you.”

Noncemba nodded. “You have served my family well. You and the others may go to my palace and rest.”

Noncemba’s servants led Themba and the Kosobu into the palace. Noncemba turned to the elders.

“Dingane’s desire for a son is our advantage,” he said. “Come, let us prepare for our visitors.”

The Sesu impi had been on the trail since morning. Despite the burden of carrying Dingane they made good time, arriving at the outskirts of Mawenaland by midday. They rested briefly, long enough to eat and quench their thirst. Then they marched again, their chants muffled by the encroaching forest.

The trail ended its meandering and widened into a well-used road. Wooden huts peered through the trees, but no people were visible. Word of the impi had preceded it, and the Mawena were staying clear. Dingane rose from his litter as they climbed a heavily forested hill, anticipating the scene about to unfold before him.

They reached the crest of the hill and Dingane raised his hand, halting the impi. Below them was the city of Abo, the heart of Mawenaland. Cylindrical wooden houses topped with conical thatch roofs peppered small plots of farmland. The plots grew smaller as the homes pushed closer to the city. In the city the dwellings consisted of stone and were grouped according to clan. Each clan enclosed its homes with white clay walls painted with the family kente. The center of this magnificent sprawl was filled by the royal compound of Noncemba. A massive stone fence encircled a large pasture filled with cattle, the wealth of many tribes before Dingane’s eyes. Noncemba’s hilltop palace marked the nucleus of the royal compound. The extravagant homes of his clan members peppered the hillsides. Beside the palace the meeting tree thrived, a massive plant older than the ancestors. Below its branches the elders of Mawenaland waited.

“Put me down!” Dingane demanded.

“But Inkosi, your leg!” Gamba replied

“Down!” Dingane ordered. He was eased down slowly and stood immediately. The pain throbbed in his leg, but he ignored it. Noncemba would not see him as a cripple.

The Sesu proceeded, their wary eyes noting every movement and shadow. The streets were completely deserted; the Mawena had obviously been warned of the impi’s arrival and were prepared. As they entered the inner city, a commotion drew their attention. Mawena warriors appeared behind them and quickly closed ranks behind the Sesu, careful to stay out of spear range. Though they outnumbered the Sesu intruders, their advantage didn’t lull them into foolishness. A lion fights more ferociously when cornered; no less would be expected from the Sesu.

The gates to the royal compound were open. Mawena elders sat patiently below the branches of the meeting tree, each man draped in his family cloth pattern. In the center sat Noncemba on a gilded stool with a leopard skin cushion. He was draped with a kente robe adorned in elegant patterns of red, purple and green. A black cap studded with thick gold buttons covered his head. He wore a thick serpentine gold bracelet on his right wrist; a cluster of gold cubes tied together by a leather cord circled his left wrist. More gold cubes dangled from leather bands surrounding his ankles, spilling over his sandals. Golden rings shaped in the patterns of animals and proverbs decorated every finger. There was a time when Dingane was in awe of the Mawena. Even now it was hard for him to suppress his admiration. But time taught him the meaning of true power, which did not lie in elaborate clothing and trinkets. He was Noncemba’s equal in every way. The Sesu had become strong under his rule, strong enough for Noncemba to offer Shani to him as his great wife.

Dingane halted his warriors outside assegai distance of the meeting tree, a sign that he meant no violence.

“Mulugo, come with me,” he said to the medicine-priest.

Mulugo’s litter was lowered and the old man took his place beside Dingane. As they neared the tree, Dingane recognized Themba kneeling beside Noncemba. She had shed her Sesu garments for Mawena clothing. In her arms was the bundle that Dingane sought.

It was Dingane who spoke first. “Habare, baba.”

“Umzuri, Dingane,” Noncemba replied. “It’s been a long time, my son.”

“I am not here to chat,” Dingane replied. “I want my sons.”

“You mean your son,” Noncemba replied. On the oba’s signal Themba rose and walked to Dingane, extending the bundle. Dingane took it and turned back the cloth. There was only one child.

“What have you done?” Mulugo demanded. “Where is the other child?”

“What difference does it make?” Noncemba replied. “The child was to be killed, so we saved you the trouble.”

“Where is the body?” Mulugo asked.

Noncemba scowled. “What are you implying, magic man?”

Mulugo’s face twisted with skepticism. “You are the boy’s grandfather. Would you really kill the son of your daughter?”

Noncemba glared at the medicine priest, his hand tightening on his staff. “The blood of the Mawena is strong in my grandsons. To waste it sickens us all. But our tribes are bonded; my grandsons are Sesu and subject to your ways. Shani was wrong to send them here. We carried out your deed because of this disgrace.”

Noncemba stood, raising his staff. The Mawena warriors stormed forward, surrounding the Sesu. Noncemba smiled.

“Do not push this issue, my son. We have suffered enough with your ways this day.”

Dingane trembled with rage. He stared at Noncemba, his strength occupied by keeping his assegai in his hand.

“I need someone to nurse the child during the journey back to Selike,” he finally said, his voice trembling.

Noncemba nodded and turned to Themba. She walked to Dingane, staring directly into his eyes, her loathing for him apparent to everyone. But she was not alone. A warrior stepped forward with her, a young man Dingane quickly recognized as being related to Husani.

“Themba and Jelani will return with you,” Noncemba said. “I trust you will make sure no harm comes to them?”

“I will,” Dingane replied.

“I wish you a safe journey home,” Noncemba said.

Dingane turned away without a reply. He stormed through his warriors, the pain in his leg insignificant against the rage in his head. The Sesu warriors followed with Themba and Jelani the last of the group.

“He insulted you!” Mulugo exclaimed. “He dishonored the Sesu!”

“The Mawena are strong,” Dingane replied. “Do you see?” He waved his hand to acknowledge the numerous warriors shadowing their retreat.

“Our time will come, Mulugo,” he continued. “Mawena bone will one day shatter beneath Sesu feet. That I promise you.”

Kumba came to stand before Noncemba and fell to his knees.

“What is your command, my Oba?”

Noncemba rested his chin on his fist. “Follow them until they leave our land. I don’t want anyone doubling back. If any of Dingane’s warriors break rank, kill them.”

A wicked smile came to Kumba’s face. “It will be our pleasure to serve the Oba.”

Kumba stood and marched to his warriors, shouted the order to march. They formed ranks and trotted from Abo to catch the Sesu.

Noncemba watched until the army left the gates of the city. He turned to his closest servant.

“Bring me my grandson.”

The servant returned with the infant wrapped in a blanket of royal kente. Shani’s son looked stared directly into his grandfather’s eyes with intensity beyond his few days of life.

“You must name him,” Elder Kosoko advised.

“You have your grandfather’s face and your mother’s eyes,” Noncemba said. He raised the infant over his head for all around him to see.

“Behold my grandson,” he announced. “He will be known as Obaseki Noncemba.”

The elders bowed their heads, whispering the name to the ground that held the bodies of their ancestors. Noncemba lowered the baby and looked at him and smiled.

“I hope you live up to your name, little one.” Noncemba handed his grandson back to the servant then with a waving of his staff, lead the procession of elders and warriors back into the walls of the Inner City.

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ABOUT MILTON DAVIS

Milton Davis is owner of MVmedia, LLC, a micro publishing company specializing in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Sword and Soul. MVmedia’s mission is to provide speculative fiction books that represent people of color in a positive manner. Milton is the author of ten novels; his most recent is the Steamfunk adventure From Here to Timbuktu. He is the editor and co-editor of seven anthologies; The City, Dark Universe with Gene Peterson; Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology and Griot: Sisters of the Spear, with Charles R. Saunders; The Ki Khanga Anthology, the Steamfunk! Anthology, and the Dieselfunk anthology with Balogun Ojetade. MVmedia has also published Once Upon A Time in Afrika by Balogun Ojetade and Abegoni: First Calling by Sword and Soul creator and icon Charles R. Saunders. Milton is also a co-writer of the award winning script, Ngolo and recently as the Hal Clement Science Speaker for Boskone 54.

Milton resides in Metro Atlanta with his wife Vickie and his children Brandon and Alana.

SPECIAL THANKS TO THIS QUARTER’S DONORS

Sarah Coughlan, Lazjeé Lyles, and Ngwa Numfor.

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