CONTENTS

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

WITH THESE HANDS: AN ACCOUNT OF UNCOMMON LABOR // L. H. Moore

Simeon is a free man in a time when many of his people are not. When he meets two strange men with strange abilities, he learns just how far some people are willing to go to free themselves from bondage.

BONDYE BON  // Monique L. Desir

Heloise’s mother has a secret locked away. When the strands holding that secret in place start to unravel, Heloise will do anything to stop her life from unraveling with it.

SURVIVAL LIES  // Irette Y. Patterson

After her life implodes around her, Cynthia takes a trip back to the country, and to her family home. Will the truths that she uncovers there set her free, or will they send her deeper into despair?

THE EPIC OF SAKINA  // Shari Paul

A strange scholar. A shipwrecked survivor. When these two beings converge on Sakina’s island village, the djeli is placed in a life or death struggle against an evil that she never could have dreamed possible.

BLACK EMPIRE: GEORGE SCHUYLER, BLACK RADICALISM, AND DIESELPUNK  // Essay by P. Djèlí Clark

INDIE SPOTLIGHT : COLBY R. RICE        

THE GIVEN         

THANKS         

© FIYAH Literary Magazine, 2018

www.fiyahlitmag.com

January 2018

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Welcome to Issue five of Fiyah  Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction.

If you’ve been rocking with us since Year One, welcome back! We’re so glad that you decided to hang in there with us. If this is your first time reading an issue of Fiyah, we’re glad to have you. We hope that we give you a reason to stick around with us.

We’re turning our sights to Year Two, and Issue Five is our first, tentative step into that domain. Over the course of Year One we gained a lot of experience, learned a lot of lessons, and yes, we grew up a little bit. Now, we’re applying everything that we’ve picked up, while still retaining our mission of publishing, incubating, and supporting black speculative fiction writers.

This issue’s theme is “Ahistorical Blackness,” born out of the gigantic fake news dumpster fire that was 2017—but more specifically, this theme came out of a swarm of frustration surrounding the development of HBO’s Confederate, a show with an uninspired premise that circulates tired and predictable speculative thought experiments at black peoples’ expense. We requested ruminations on alternate histories from our authors, stories that examined more than the same clichéd, tone-deaf alternate histories that we get from mainstream culture. We can safely say that our contributors delivered on this point.

This issue’s cover comes from Trevor Fraley, and it captures every single thing that I’d love to see in our futures: truth, diversity, and lush, vibrant life. Our fiction this issue is on point too. LH Moore’s “With These Hands” shows us that for those enslaved, no price is too steep for freedom. Monique L. Desir’s chilling “Bondye Bon” transports us to an alternate Louisiana where we learn about secrets, power, and legacies. Irette Y. Patterson’s “Survival Lies” shows us the power of family histories, how complex they are for Black Americans, and how far some of our families will go for the sake of survival. And Shari Paul’s “Epic of Sakina” is a fantastic tale of empire, belief, and beasts.

We don’t have poetry in this issue, but don’t despair! Instead, we are reprinting an essay from our very own “ Minister Editor & Self Lord And Master of Getting People to Essay Stuff,” Phenderson Djèlí Clark. He takes a deep dive into George S. Schuyler’s serial novel Black Empire  in his essay “Black Empire: George Schuyler, Black Radicalism and Dieselpunk.”

In this issue’s Indie Spotlight, we are talking to Colby R. Rice, author of the Books of Ezekiel  saga and the Hitmen of Happily Ever After  series.

Thank you for continuing to support Fiyah  Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. We hope that you enjoy the issue.

Executive Editors: Justina Ireland + Troy L. Wiggins + Brandon O’Brien

Acquiring Editors: Brent Lambert + DaVaun Sanders

Layout: LeKesha Lewis

Cover Artwork by Trevor Fraley

WITH THESE HANDS: AN ACCOUNT OF UNCOMMON LABOR

By L. H. Moore

George Town, 1800

It is with a trembling hand that I write this. Given the color of my skin and the simple life that I have led and tried to create for myself so far, many would be surprised that I could write this at all. A breeze from the open window overlooking the river port makes me pull my woolen blanket closer about me. It is usually more normal than not for this swamp of a place to be humid during this time of year. I am relieved to have an unusually crisp early autumn night, but the chill I feel comes from another source.

        The light of my candle is dimming, the tallow becoming low, but this must be recorded. There is an ivory trinket sitting here before me on the windowsill. It is precious to me. How it made its way to me is of no import, but the fact that it did at all is what drove me to tell this tale. I once bore arms in our war of independence and faced redcoats and fear itself, but this?

This is something else.

∙∙∙

It was the year 1796. I heard someone singing in Gaelic in the distance, their notes strong and clear and filled with longing. So many of those working here were from elsewhere, with homelands and families and loves either left behind or the reason behind such toil that they endured. So many sounds in the night. So many sounds in that place we were creating. European and Black craftsmen, artisans, and labourers both free and bound, all had been working for years on a symbol of a new country— our  country.

We still had much to do as we worked to build the President’s mansion, or “palace” as some had taken to calling it. There were no buildings as tall around these parts, so the project loomed over us all though we had not completed its construction. General Washington himself chose the site and even drove in the stakes with the Irish architect Hoban at his side. All around us, this new federal city was a collection of farms and rolling fields and still more infested marsh than town. When I would get the chance, I would take a moment from my bricklaying to sit up high on the unfinished second floor to enjoy the view of the Patowmack River as the sun began to set. The noise of the other workers—their shouts, exertions, and work-songs—ceased as I watched the colors settle on the shimmering water. Despite all the din around me, for a moment and only a moment—even if only in my mind, I was surrounded by quiet.

∙∙∙

 “Simeon, come, you must join us,” Eugene Hope said, waving me over. His brother Clifford stood next to him and looked at me with a huge smile. Both were tall, their skin flushed deep golden-brown from working in the hot summer sun. Where Eugene was dark-haired and dark-eyed, Clifford was fair—his eyes gray and hair light. Both had easy laughs and I had worked with them almost since the cornerstone was laid in 1792. They had come with Williamson, the master stonemason who trained them as stonecutters. They had also worked at the quarry in Aquia, learning how to manipulate the sandstone blocks that would cover the bricks I was laying. Unlike I who chose this work, the brothers were on hire from their owner, a wealthy planter from across the river in Virginia near the quarry. Some, the brothers included, said that this planter was also their father.

 “When I am finally like Free Simeon here, I am travelling the world! I am going to hop on one of those ships like we see on that river over there and sail to places no one would even think are real,” Clifford said, holding out an ale-filled tankard.

“We are going where there are beautiful ladies with silks and rubies,” Eugene said with a grin, taking the tankard from his brother. “Hell, we  can be covered with silks and rubies ourselves!”

“I have heard there are buildings even larger than this palace we are building that are encrusted with jewels and gold. I am going with my chisel and mallet ready!” Clifford said, passing the tankard to me. “What is next for you Free Simeon?”

I thought for a moment as I took my sip. “Maybe I will meet a nice, good woman and settle down. Be happy with her. Have children. Live a decent life.”

“Here we are talking about silks and exotic lands, and this man is talking about babies!” The brothers started laughing, but Clifford's face then became serious as he looked me square in the eyes.

“We cannot go on like this, Simmie. This building here means freedom, but I am not free. Neither is my brother. There must be a way to not be bound any longer. It is easy to think of children when you do not have to worry about them being enslaved,” he said.

“Why you chose to come down here from Boston and Philadelphia, I do not know. Why bring yourself closer  to all of this?” Eugene said with a wave of his hand. “At least away from here we could be our own persons, so that when we finally settle down, our children can be their own persons too.”

Two of the other labourers had been lingering nearby—a little too close given the things Eugene and Clifford were saying. One spoke up and came over.

“You wish to be your own person? That can be arranged, my friend,” he said, clapping his hand on Eugene’s forearm congenially. The moment his hand touched Eugene’s skin, the man's hazel eyes turned black. It was fleeting, but I am certain I saw it. How did no one else?

“Just talk, that is all. Only talk.” Clifford said to them, understandably nervous. I realized that the second man looked exactly as the first—twins. Of a similar height with those hazel eyes and dark, wavy hair. One nodded to the other and spoke to him, the language one I did not recognize.

“If you do change your minds, we will be at the small grog shop nearby,” he said as they walked away. He clapped his hand on Clifford, who flinched slightly. I could not believe what I was seeing. It happened again. A touch and blackened eyes. How were the Hope brothers not seeing this too?

As we watched them leave, we all seemed a bit shaken. “That was rather odd, no? Where did they even come from?” Clifford said. “You do not think that they will say anything do you?”

“I somehow get the feeling that they will not,” Eugene said, still watching them as they walked off to the opposite side of the work site. He groaned slightly, touching his hand to his head. “Does anyone else feel a little unbalanced? Perhaps it is the ale gone to my head.”

“I feel a little off too brother,” Clifford said. “This place and its heat!”

“Are you going to go and talk to them?” I asked.

They looked at one another and then at me, “Of course! These liquor rations we get just will not do. We are only going to the tavern to refill our tankard. That is all.” We all started laughing, but inside, I found no humor. Not due to what I heard, but what I saw, and what I saw? That I could not explain.

∙∙∙

The grog shop was a plain wooden building with one room furnished with rough wooden chairs and tables. Eugene called out to a barmaid rushing by with mugs in her hands. The curls of her strawberry blonde hair were barely contained under her cap. She stopped to look at him and rolled her eyes.

“The Hope Brothers. What are you two doing in here?” she said, handing her customers their drinks before coming back over to us.

“How’s business, Mary?” Eugene said as she looked him up and down.

“As good as it will be,” she huffed, pushing a stray curl back into her cap. “Now Clifford, you  can visit anytime. This brother of yours though, well…” Mary raised an eyebrow and pointed at Eugene with a smile before turning towards me. “And you.

Mary looked at me, her slate blue eyes crinkling with laughter as I put my hands up in protest. “I do not know how these two have wronged you, but do not look at me! I am just here for the ale.”

 “Only teasing. As for that swill? You are more than welcome to it. Nothing personal love,” she said with a wink at the barkeep, her husband Sean. A burly man with a long scar on one cheek, he just laughed at her joke and shook his balding head.

The brothers looked around and saw the two men sitting in the rear of the tavern.

“Simmie,” Eugene said, “We will be right back. We would just like to speak to them. Hear what they heard and what they are talking about.”

Mary brought me my own mug and I stood sipping as I watched the conversation from afar. Once again, the men clapped the brothers on the forearm where their sleeves were not covering their skin. From where I was I could not see if their eyes had that same strange effect. I continued to drink, still watching them, and soon all four got up and walked towards me. I started to go towards them as well, having already paid, but Eugene put his hand up and looked at me with a smile. Clifford was smiling at me too. “Take care. Watch yourself,” he said, nodding towards me. I assumed he meant my ale and the speed with which I was consuming it.

“I have drink,” I said. “I am fine!”

One of the men looked at me and asked “Friend, are you sure?” I raised an eyebrow, held up my mug, and waved them off, watching them walk out of the door.

∙∙∙

 The following morning, I awoke with a start, surprised to have slept in a bit longer. Normally, the brothers awoke earlier than everyone else and enjoyed forcing me to be awake with them. I got myself together and walked over to the small wooden building the brothers shared with some of the other workers. “Good morning! This toil is not going to do itself!” I said, using their customary wake-up greeting. Clifford came out first, after shaking his brother. They looked at me blankly for a moment, and then laughed.

 “We must have had too much yesterday!” Eugene said, as Clifford nodded.

 “Too much? Is there such a thing?” Clifford said, laughing.

 We walked away from the rough shelters towards our work areas. My day would be a hot one spent at the brick kilns, and the brothers would be needed to help cut stone for the Scottish stonemasons and their apprentices. As they parted from me, I overheard one of them say to the other "So much stone to cut. And Fitzgerald is worse than Imhotep himself. Do you remember when..." and then their conversation trailed off.

Im-ho-tep?

Away from the gregarious brothers, I had a moment to think about their question regarding my future. Being free, I had a small place where I had been living in George Town, but staying there would have made me expend quite a bit of time travelling to work in Washington City. It became more convenient to live close to the project with the other workers. My parents had seen to it that I had some measure of education and apprenticeship. I had been trained as a bricklayer and thought my skills would serve me well. But then the War happened and I ended up living in Philadelphia. I had not given that much time to thinking about what was next for me.

Perhaps I should have.

∙∙∙

The year was 1799. I was happy to be working on the second floor. So much progress had been made. It would not be much longer until the stonework laid over the brick was completed. They were already debating the lime whitewash to be put over that as well. Work had begun on the roof and the exterior would be finished. As I worked high on the second floor I looked out over the work site area. In the north clearing before me I could see the brick houses Hoban had built for himself and his assistants and the simpler wooden ones for the rest of us. I smiled as I took pride in hoping that someday when I was long gone, this structure I helped erect would remain.

There were many other things that I could have been doing, but for that moment, watching the Patowmack sparkle behind me as I worked was enough.

I was broken from my thoughts by Jack Smith, one of our foremen, calling up to me. I had another task to do and another labourer took my place as I made my way to the scaffolding. As I did, he began to scold one of the sawyers—a German fellow—for a minor mishap. You could see on the man’s face how diminished he felt as the foreman's voice became louder.

I saw Eugene nearby as he came close to Smith. He acted as if he was clumsy and stumbled against the man, grabbing hard onto his arm as he did so. He held Smith's arm tightly there for a moment, and then righted himself. I could hear him apologizing profusely and I expected to hear the foreman scold him as well.

 It never happened.

I saw Smith put a hand to his head and mumble, his words muddled and confused. He leaned against a stack of bricks for a moment before excusing himself and quickly walking away. I did not understand what I was seeing. The man below who was being scolded had been watching it all with a look of confusion as well. He looked up, saw me looking on, and hurriedly rushed away.

The next day Smith did not show up to his post at work, having said that he was too ill to be productive. It was suggested that he have some rest, as he complained of feeling depleted and lacking entirely of vitality.

I did not mention what I saw.

∙∙∙

Months later, the building was now a gleaming white. We had been celebrating the exterior’s completion with extra whiskey rations after a dinner of salt meat, bread, and tea from the camboose. I took a moment to sit by Eugene and finally got up the nerve to ask him what had happened. Especially given that he had taken quite a chance with what he had done. "I must ask you. The other month…with the foreman. What was that all about? That does not seem like you to interfere with someone else's reprimand."

I saw him shoot a look at Clifford before he answered, and said, "This is not the first time. I have done it so many times for so many others before."

By night’s end we had all consumed a lot, which made for loose tongues. So much so that even Eugene and Clifford’s Virginia accents seemed to slip a bit. We told one another raucous stories, each one more outrageous than the next. But that night the brothers told fantastical stories of incredible columned temples and pyramids with steps, grand libraries, and other ancient places of wood, of stone, of earth. Of palaces and fortresses, humble huts, and gleaming, gilded domes. Of master builders and masons and soaring cathedrals.

"Realities can be both destroyed and made. We build because we can, and because it is what we have always done," Eugene said dramatically, holding his hands out with his palms up as we all cheered. "It is with these hands that we can create a new world such as this.”

         I wanted to blame it on the drink. I wanted to take it as more of their imaginings. Their dreams of a future denied. They asked me more about myself and the family of which I was now the only member. The places I had seen in my own travels that had led me to this point. I could not remember ever having a conversation of such depth with them before. Clifford watched me intently. "Simeon, are you sure you do not wish to see more yourself? You must want to be more than this."

"I am content with the life I have for myself right now, but only for right now. Perhaps I will return to Philadelphia," I said to him. "Although there is work here, I constantly find myself increasingly unnerved by the state of my enslaved brethren."

"As am I," he said. There was none of the strong sentiment of previous conversations as he said this, but in its simplicity I was reminded of my own fortune and status. He looked at me again, "There are many who would give anything—including themselves—for a chance to be free, Simmie."

∙∙∙

 Our work on the exterior was done and much fuss was made when the Hope brothers disappeared. Their master would not be happy to have lost both the wages he made from them, as well as the skilled labour and training. There was much speculation as to how and when they slipped away, but I finally knew all was not as it seemed.

Just before they left I received a package. Upon opening it, I found an exotic trinket that was surely from a land filled with rubies and silks: A small statuette of a seated four-armed elephant with one tusk and a large belly. I peered more closely at it and saw that its hands held different items: a bowl, a noose, an axe, and its own broken tusk. Upon the underside of its base the initials "E & C H" had been roughly carved.

It was then that I was certain.

I remember how the two men smiled as they saw me with it, my face dumbstruck as I turned the bauble over and over again in my hands, staring at the inscription. I still do not know how it made its way to me, but it did. My voice quavered a bit as I whispered to them “What…what are  you?”

A question they would not answer, saying that they had no answer.

To this day, even as I sit writing this account, I shall never forget the simple statement I was told when I asked my other question: “Why?”

"For freedom, we took their place."

—END—

ABOUT L. H. MOORE

LH Moore's historical speculative fiction has been published in all three Dark Dreams ( Dark Dreams, Voices from the Other Side, and Whispers in the Night ) anthologies of Black horror writers edited by Brandon Massey; Sycorax's Daughters (co-edited by Kinitra Brooks, Linda Addison and Susana Morris); and the upcoming Chiral Mad 4  anthology edited by Michael Bailey and Lucy A. Snyder. Moore also had a poem ("Vox") published in the April 2017 edition of Apex Magazine and contributed articles to the African American National Biography (Harvard/Oxford U. Press). Moore is a historian with a Master's in historic preservation and it informs her writing. A Washington, DC native exiled in Maryland, she also loves classical guitar, graphic novels, and video games. Ask her nicely and she might tell you about her night in the "Hut O'Terror.

BONDYE BON

By Monique L. Desir

There’s a monster masquerading as a man in Manman’s  bedroom. Sometimes I hear Manman speaking to him, their voices hushed in the night. She’s warned me not to enter her bedroom. Up until now, I’ve obeyed her. It wasn’t always her room. A year ago, it belonged to the master of this, the Andre Plantation: Mr. Louis DeVille and his pinch-faced wife.

But they’re dead. Dead by my Manman’s  hands. Dead by the hands of the people that they had once “owned.”

I turned thirteen a week ago, and everything feels so different. I feel like there is a weight on me, like there is a chain around my leg that I cannot see or touch. Manman’s  face has the lines of a woman who carries the same weight, who keeps many secrets. She thinks that I don’t know about this man in her room. But I do. I am learning her secrets.

And I intend to learn more.

The floor in front of her room is cold beneath my stockinged feet. I jiggle the doorknob and it twists side to side with ease. Unlocked?

I press my lips together, running my tongue over them as I enter the room.

An uneasy part of me wonders if Manman  has deliberately left her room unlocked. Her room is enormous. Across the floor is a carpet of rich, deep red whose colors match the velvet bedspread, the silk throw that tops the bedside table, and the curtains’ trim. I’m drawn to a glass-front bookcase filled with porcelain figurines and books. One of Manman’s  oil paintings adorns one of the walls. It’s a self-portrait and her dark eyes stare at me. Warning me away? Despite this, I press on and enter, stiff-legged and cold.

I proceed on tiptoe where the carpet gives way to hardwood flooring. Her closet is the size of a small chamber, and inside sits a man. A white  man. When I look in his gray eyes it is like I am staring into my own. We share those eyes, we have the same curl and blond color to our hair despite his being stringy and rank. The familiarity of his face frightens me. He is dressed in ratty clothes: a grimy black shirt with frills at the throat and his sleeves with their stained ruffles set off the sickly paleness of his skin. He doesn’t try to move — no point in doing that, his wrists are shackled together with a chain, connected to a bolted plate in the wall. He looks up at me, eyes bright in the dark and smiles, baring his white, straight teeth. I flinch, snapping backwards.

“Fine seeing you this morning, Heloise,” he rasped. “You are  Heloise Delville, aren’t you?”

Heart racing, I thrust myself out of the room, dashing to my bedchamber where I crouch down in a dark, safe corner. My thoughts scurry like wild, deadly things.

He’s a prisoner, I think. What is there to smile about? And why are his eyes like mine? And he knows  my name!

As I climb into my own closet to hide, and perhaps sleep, realization settles on me: That man is Louis DeVille, the former master of this house. And Louis DeVille is supposed to be dead.

∙∙∙

“Heloise!” Manman  calls. I hurry to her. Today, she’s hosting a Quilting Bee. It’s some boring social event where local gentlewomen get together in their fine party clothes just to make a quilt. Sometimes I help at Manman’s Quilting Bee by serving tea, lemonade, and other refreshments like tea cakes. In between serving I sneak in a few sips and nibbles.

Oh, but the quilts! Some of the women’s quilts are abstract, with unexpected colors and surprising patterns. Other quilts tell stories of weddings, funerals, and births. My favorite quilt is the one lying across my bed. Not only because Manman and I made it, but because of the Senegalese girl we embroidered piece by piece on it. Her dark brown arms are lifted to the blue sky. Birds fly around her and flowers bloom at her feet.

Jean-Marie is always at every quilting bee. She’s one of Manman’s  rivals, and she speaks flawless French, enunciating each vowel-laden word. Jean-Marie isn’t a great beauty. She isn’t even ugly. She’s what Manman  calls “tragically plain,” with a straight nose and eyes that are too round. Her skin may be several shades lighter than Manman’s —or as the white people used to say, “brighter”—but she’s missing something, some spark to take her past plain into beautiful. I’ve overheard people talking because sometimes I listen to grown folks’ conversations even when I’m not supposed to, so I think the real reason these two are like water and oil is because of Charles Deslondes. He used to be the most eligible man (colored or white) until he and my mother freed our people and fell in love.

Today, Jean-Marie’s lustrous, kinky hair is adorned with peacock feathers. It’s no match for Manman’s  hairdo though; her hair is bright and dark, and held up with pearl pins like a crown. Only a few of the other guests—mostly older women—are showing off elaborately tied tignons, or scarfs, over their hair. Even though the days of the Tignon Laws that made black women wrap and cover up their hair done gone, some women hold onto their tignons as if still in rebellion to the whites who wanted them to hide their beauty.

While handing out tea cakes, my mind goes back to the White man in my mother’s closet. Whites weren’t to be trusted. Especially the poor ones. Though the rich ones who thought they owned her had whipped my mother’s back, leaving terrible, deep scars; it was the poor ones who feared that once we slaves were free we’d take the little that they had.

Hmph. Little did the white man know about the power of women. Especially colored women.

Jean-Marie cuts her dark eyes to my mother as she stabs her needle into the quilting cloth. “ Être con comme un balai.”

Dumb as a broom, she says, seemingly in Manman’s  direction.

I must’ve missed something while I was deep in thought. The two women often argued, but Jean-Marie is usually not vicious enough to send cutting words toward Manman  in full view of the public.

Jean-Marie tilts her head to the side and laughs, all the while giving Manman  the side-eye.

Without missing a beat, Manman  grins, countering in Haitian Creole, “ Pal franse pa di lespri pon sa." I duck my head, hiding my snickers at my mom’s retort: Speaking French doesn’t mean you are smart.

Manman  isn’t Haitian, but she and most of the people of the United Tribes of Mother Africa, (formerly the southeastern part of the United States of America) speak Haitian Creole in honor of Haiti’s (formerly called Saint-Domingue) successful slave revolt, a revolt that has been mirrored in New Orleans and throughout all the southeastern United States.

The other women burst into laughter, nodding, their voices rising in excited “ahhhh, ahhhhs.” With an elegant nod, Manman  gestures at Jean-Marie. “I’ve told you before, I don’t want to hear you speaking that shit language here. It’s not allowed. You’ll respect my house, or you’ll leave.”

Some of the women nod as they continue drawing their needles in and out of the fabric. Jean-Marie sucks her teeth. “Such senseless pride, Seraphine. What’s wrong with speaking French? We won! 'Dieu est bon  or Bondye se yon bon bagay!' What difference does it make? God is good no matter what language we confess it in. The whites are gone. Utterly exfluncticated! Who cares if we use their language?”

My mother narrows her eyes. “I don’t need to answer to you. Or anyone.” She thrusts her needle at Jean-Marie. “Sew. Or get out.”

Jean-Marie shrugs. “I don’t know why you just don’t get over what has happened. It’s in the past. Besides,” she continues, brandishing her own needle, “you were able to bear two beautiful—”

Like the coming of a storm, my mother rose, quiet and intimidating. She’s not a tall woman, but her presence emits what I can only call power.

 “Jean-Marie, get out,” she commands through clenched teeth. Her voice is as cold as a punchbowl of ice. “You’ll never learn. I’m done with you. Out.”

Jean-Marie seems stunned and doesn’t move for several moments. I fidget in the sudden silence, my stockinged legs terribly itchy. I scratch at the back of my calf with the toes of my shiny black dress shoes. A couple of my Manman’s  guests shift their weight in their wooden chairs. The only sound in the room is the whispering of needles as they are threaded with expert precision in and out of the layers of fabric.

Jean-Marie lowers her part of the quilt and rests it in her chair. She stands up, hands clenched and stalks towards the front door. I follow her and open the door. It’s the polite thing to do.

“Good-bye, Madam.”

She looks me full in the face and for a split second, narrows her eyes, then parts her lips as if to say something. With a shake of her head, she falls silent, then leaves.

I close the door behind Jean-Marie, but my mind is wide open with questions.

∙∙∙

By the time we light our candles and settle into our late evening routines, Manman’s  Quilting Bee friends are all gone. Manman  dips her paintbrush in water before turning back to her project: a watercolor portrait of my brother, Etienne, and me. Etienne is gentle strokes of warm, tan tones and swirls of lustrous black curls crown his head. And me? In the painting, my hands rest protectively on my little brother’s shoulders, my gray eyes peeking like rainclouds under a sunburst of dandelion yellow hair framing a heart-shaped face.

Her vivid paintings stir great feelings in me. It’s as if she has touched, caressed, and analyzed every shape, wrinkle, and curve of our being with the tips of her skilled fingers before capturing the images on the canvas.

“Tell us a story,” my brother Etienne pleads, clapping his hands.

“What kind would you like to hear?”

“A folktale!”

Manman  regards her painting before looking at me. “I’ll tell you about how Charles Deslondes and I saved our people.”

Etienne waves a dismissive hand. “Oh no, Manman!" he whines in a squeaky voice that could have only come from a spoiled five-year-old. “We’ve heard that story about you and Papa before! It’s so old!”

I scowl at Etienne. He can be so thick sometimes. Everything in the room feels tight and hot. I want to scream, Tell us about the man hiding in your closet. Tell us what Jean-Marie was talking about. Tell me, is that man my father?

Etienne huffs and crosses his arms against his chest. Papa, he said. He’s been raised to believe that Charles Deslondes is his father and I don’t blame Manman  for letting him believe this fantasy. Etienne and I don’t share the same surname, and mine—Delville—doesn’t mean devil, but it’s only a few letters shy of it. If I could cut off that part of myself I’d be much happier.

Our mother smiles. “No, my sweet. You do not know the whole of it. You were too young to understand. But now,” she pauses, rising to her feet. “Yes. Now, I know  you are ready.” Her dark brown eyes seize mine and dread fills me because I know her last words are meant especially for me.

∙∙∙

“On January 8th  Charles Deslondes, a mulatto slave driver, and 25 slaves slaughtered Gilbert, son and heir of the Andre plantation. Ours was the first plantation we hit, Gilbert the first white man we killed. I was with Charles. I fought alongside him. As I have always said, Heloise, these people are not to be trusted. Ever.”

Next to me, Etienne yawns. We could always count on Manman’s  soft voice to make him sleepy. I am not sleepy at all, though. I feel like I have swallowed a star, my chest is so warm. Etienne snuggles up to me and I lean into him. Manman, her lips tight, continues.

“As Deslondes and his men moved toward New Orleans like magnets, more men and women joined them. Songs of Creole protest swelled around us. Everywhere there electric feeling of hope was so potent, everybody could taste it.” Manman  paused, nearly breathless in her memory. “This hope nourished us. Onward, we marched, men and women pillaging plantations. Five hundred strong, we pressed on, killing whites who had tried and very nearly succeeded in murdering our souls.”

Etienne’s snores were soft against my arm, his breath hot and wet. I wanted to move, but couldn’t.

“Did I ever tell you how I used to dream?”

I shake my head. “You told me that Grandma used to dream.” My grandma had been a slave from Nigeria and died shortly after giving birth to my mother. Other than that, I knew nothing else about her, except that when Manman  mentioned her she grew quiet and misty-eyed. Even though I’m thirteen and nearly grown, my mother is a mystery that often causes me to question myself. Right now, I want answers more than ever.

“Now, Heloise, let me tell you about who you truly are,” Manman  says, as if picking up my thoughts. She hoists sleeping Etienne on her shoulder, beckoning me to follow with her free hand.

∙∙∙

We tuck Etienne into bed upstairs and say a prayer over him, hoping that the good God blesses him with sweet dreams. Afterward, we return to the parlor downstairs. “Weeks leading up to the war, we used crows,” Manman whispers as she lights candles to ease back the dark. Moonlight bleeds through the large parlor window. She pats the chair next to her, inviting me to sit down. I sink into the chair and we both prop our feet on the generously stuffed ottoman.

I feel like I’m going to burst and finally blurt, “What’s that white man doing in your closet? How long has he been there?”

Shouldn’t he be dead?  I wonder, but am too afraid to ask aloud.

She slowly raises her bowed head and lifts her index finger to her lips. The pearls in her black hair shine in the moonlight. “Shush. I’m getting to that, Heloise. We used crows,” she repeated, “to send messages. Most of us couldn’t read. Nor write. So, we drew symbols, pictures. Drawings of where to hide tools like machetes and hoes to use as weapons. Freedom or death. We would have one or the other.” Smiling, she laughs now, like a little girl who has discovered a delicious secret. “I find it funny that the very bird those white people feared as a symbol of death is the same creature that helped us into gaining our independence.”

Manman  stares off into the distance, tilting her head as she studies the wall before her. I wonder if she’s seeing something that I can’t.

“A week before Charles began our revolution, I had a nightmare. I dreamed that we ran out of ammunition,” she says. “In quick succession, whites executed over 100 survivors in retaliation. The last thing I remember before I was frightened out of my dream was the decapitated heads of fellow slaves I had once known. They were erected along the road to New Orleans, looking like crows sitting on long poles. I told Charles none of this. I didn’t want any doubt to spoil his mission. But I knew that when the time came, I’d have to intervene.

“It happened in the swamps behind the Picou and Trouard Plantations. We were outnumbered. It was well before the sun was due to rise, and the world was dark and heavy. Hungry, we hunted and found a wild pig. It would’ve been our last meal, except I think God intended it for something else. You see, I also had visions of Charles being shot, tortured, and burned alive. I couldn’t let that happen.”

She shakes her head, her dark brown eyes wide, and continues. “I raised my machete to the sky and lifted my trembling voice into the night. Heavy with fatigue, I shouted my pleas: ‘Father God, Bon Dye, we reject the white man’s gods of torment and death. We turn our backs on them. We lift our voices to you. Bring us aid. Give us victory.’ I turned and nodded to Charles. He slit the pigs’ throat. Its cries…it reeked of blood, but we were determined. ‘Give us aid!’ I continued to cry. It was raining, but we were also weeping. I couldn’t tell the rain on my face from the tears. We kept praying.

"'Bondye, allow our murdered brothers and sisters to avenge themselves.’ I slammed my hands on a patch of land, squeezing mud between my fingers.” She looks at me with tears in her eyes. “Heloise, something was there, I am telling you. I could feel it. A vibration or a humming against the palms of my hands. Bondye’s  response was swift and at first struck fear in the hearts of all who stood there.”

Manman  hands me a brush and removes the pins from her hair. I take the brush and slip out of my seat, pick up nearby a jar of palm oil from the incidental table and dip my fingers into it. I section her hair into four parts, loving the feel and warmth of each coiled strand through my fingers. She falls silent as my expert fingers knead and manipulate her hair.

One of the lights on the candelabra whispers away. Manman  stops me and crosses the room to relight it. “We had to win. And I knew that God was on our side. Not the god of the white man that drank our blood and mocked our tears. So, when the dead began to rise from the very soil beneath our feet, I knew my cause was just.”

I stare at Manman. “You raised the dead?”

She shrugs her narrow shoulders as if this supernatural feat was some small thing.

“There’s a Haitian Creole saying about the undead and white teeth, Heloise. Dan blan tankou zonbi.  The dead rose. They didn’t stink of rot. Their limbs were intact. Even corpses centuries old moved with full use of their limbs. I’ll never forget the look on Colonel Manuel Andre’s face when he showed up with his guns and militiamen. For what could he and his mere mortal men do against a blessed legion of dead?” Manman threw back her head and laughed. “By daybreak, not one white person remained. Those who chose to be wise, fled to New Orleans. But not wise enough. I wasn’t finished. Oh no. We marched on and took the city. And I had no intentions of stopping there. Once word got out that we had revolted, more whites would come. And fearful Blacks would join them in the fight against us. I had to end it all. End. It. All. There and then.

“I split my energy, my very spirit into several directions. Like fog, it traveled over the ground, awakening the dead and calling them to fight. I wasn’t a puppet master and these newly raised bodies weren’t my marionettes. I was their leader and they were my soldiers. And as their catalyst and conduit, we acted with one accord and with one goal:

“To kill as many whites before they had a chance to regroup and slaughter us.”

"Bondye granted me sight. I was able to look through the eyes of one newly resurrected body, who relieved a white planter of his gun, broke his neck, and crushed his skull with the heel of his own weapon. Through the eyes of another, and another, and another resurrected body, I could see the battlefield more clearly. We slew whites still asleep in their beds. We spared the cattle, the sheep, and other livestock because we would need them for ourselves later.

“After a while, I realized that there was only so much my mortal body could withstand. I was drawn back to my body, opened my eyes and there was Charles, leaning over me and caressing my face. ‘We did it!’ he was crying. ‘We made it! New Orleans is ours. The soldiers are abandoning the city!’”

“But how?” Is all I’m able to say. My breath is gone from my chest. Manman  kisses me on the forehead.

“I had arrived in this world stillborn. Some say that it was the dip in ice water that shocked my heart into beating. Others say that it was my mother’s—your grandmother’s—doing, for my mother prophesied “She will save our people,” shortly after giving birth to me.

“I have lived with this gift, these visions, just as my mother had, and her mother, and all of our mothers since this gift came to us. I know that my mother saved me, for her words lived on, and so did the power that she gifted me.”

Manman  reached out to me, stroked my face with a finger.

“In our homeland, our mothers were vodun priestesses, great in power and humility. I am my mothers’ legacy. You will inherit that legacy. If you are so willing.”

My eyes are full of tears. I open my mouth to speak, but I only yawn, long and loud.

“And now you must sleep, ti cheri." Candelabra in hand, she holds my arm and leads me to my bedchamber.

∙∙∙

It’s still dark, not quite morning, when I am awakened by the shattering of glass. Voices carry down the hallway.

“I wanted her to see you for what you are. Helpless. As helpless as I was when you—” Manman’s  voice is loud and shrill, no longer having any trace of softness.

“You won’t win. Not forever,” another voice says. I recognize this voice—it is the same one that said my name, the same one hidden behind those stark white teeth.

There is a snapping sound, like glass being broken, and then several loud bumps, all from the direction of Manman’s  bedchamber, which is three doors down the hallway. For several moments, I cower under my covers before I swallow my fear. I hurry first to Etienne’s room and see that he’s sleeping. I wake him up and tell him to hide in his closet. I seize up one of the wooden toy guns that he has lying around his room and rush out.

Once I make it to my mother’s room the coppery scent of blood dizzies me. I push open Manman’ s door and see her writhing on the floor in a struggle of life or death against Louis DeVille, the dead man in her closet.

My racing heart threatens to pound out of my chest as I watch my mother wrestling with the monster, blood slick against her dark skin. He pins her to the ground, wraps his white-knuckled hands around her long, slender neck and squeezes.

“No,” is all Manman can manage to gurgle. Her eyes flicker to me and before Louis DeVille can react, I bash the back of his head with the wooden gun. Whack-whack! It takes two more strikes before he lays still.

Manman  rises and smooths the wrinkles out of her nightgown. She puts her hands on her hips and sucks her teeth.

"Manman, this…man,” I almost choke on the word, “is my father, isn’t he?” I don’t include Etienne in the question. Just in case he’s listening, I don’t want him to know. Not yet.  My voice drops to a low whisper: “Did he force us on you?” I can’t look at her as I ask it. I know a little about how babies are born. My stomach aches and bile rises in my throat. I’m sick. I hate Louis. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!

Manman turns to me and strokes my cheek. For a long while, she doesn’t speak. “I love you both. I don’t blame you for what he did to me.”

“Why is he still alive?”

“Because I wanted revenge.” A horrible light shines in her eyes as she speaks, and she pulls her lips back over her teeth like a struck dog. “So, I resurrected him. I burned him with cigars. I beat him. I spewed spirits in his eyes. I retaught myself that he was just a beastly man and he learned to fear me.”

Louis lies prone on the floor, his skin ashen. “But tonight was different. He attacked you. He no longer fears you.”

Manman  goes silent again, thinking deeply before she nudges the side of Louis’ head with her foot. "Okontrè, cheri mwen, when the mouse attacks the cat, it’s not being brave. It’s impatient and desires only to speed death along.”

I look to my mother. “What now?”

∙∙∙

It takes Charles Deslondes less than an hour to arrive. In that time, Manman  and I have cleaned up our bodies and our spirits.

“That was a fool thing you did, Serpahine,” Charles chides my mother after he loads Louis DeVille’s unconscious body into his brougham. “Keeping that white man? For two years? Though I don’t quite understand  why you did it, I know  why you did it.” He chucks her under the chin and they stare into one another’s eyes. He’s the first to look away. He regards me with a curt nod. “Good thing you came to the rescue, Heloise.”

I don’t smile, nod, or even reply. Things could have gone very differently for Louis DeVille if Manman  had been able to make it one of the stashes of weapons that she and Charles Deslondes keep throughout the house…just in case their ghosts come back to haunt them. My fingers fidget around the handle of something hard and deadly in the deep pockets of my riding cloak. In a silence of understanding, we three travel far from the Andre Plantation while Louis sleeps off his injuries.

“Okay. This is a good spot,” Charles says, drawing the horses to a stop. We have come to the wild lands at the edge of the Andre Plantation, where no one will see us. First, he eases Louis out of the carriage and lays him on his side on the soft earth. Then, Charles slaps Louis across the face, jolting him awake. Louis struggles in his bonds, teeth bared like a wolf. Spots of spittle dot his chin.

“We’re leaving you here,” Charles says, his voice bouncing from the trees. “You have a choice: go your way. We don’t care where you go, but you must go and leave us in peace. Or, we’ll have to kill you. Understand?”

Louis inhales a deep, shaky breath. He seems to relax. “I understand,” he replies in a whisper. Then, suddenly, his voice is harsh and grating. “I understand that I won’t rest until I have your heads!”

He keeps snarling, crying about what we’ve taken from him and how he wants his life back. I step from behind my mother, pistol in hand. With a smile, I point the gun at the man who sired me. “Keep talking. Give me an excuse to end you.”

“Heloise,” Manman  pleads, reaching out to lay her hand on me but drawing it back at the last second. “Don’t do it. Death is too good for him. I’d prefer he suffer knowing that our lives will continue. But,” she pauses, bearing her teeth in a contemptuous grin at Louis, “if living proves too difficult for him in this new world then by all means he’s welcome to eat shit and die.”

Manman’s gaze returns to me and she knows what I’m capable of. I glare at Louis, who is trembling, his brow glistening with sweat, eyes filling with water, and most likely praying to a god that no longer hears him. He couldn’t possibly be crying. And if he is? I don’t give a fart. His remorse isn’t remorse at all. He’s crying for himself and his pathetic, little life.

I draw back the trigger and fire. Louis sags at the crack of the shot. The bullet smacks harmlessly into the tree behind him.

“Go on,” I command. “Go your way. We’ll go ours.”

Manman rest her hands on my shoulders and Charles’ strong arms embrace us both. My mother kisses the top of my head and gingerly removes the pistol from my hand. “You heard her. Do what you want with your life. The life I  gave you.”

We board the brougham. I watch my “father”, a kneeling mass of contradictions, until he’s nothing but a tiny speck in the distance. We are free and Bondye Bon. Yes, God is good.

—END—

ABOUT MONIQUE L. DESIR

Monique L. Desir, daughter of West Indian parents, (Haitian and Jamaican) teaches reading in Florida. Her best story ideas come from dreams and sometimes nightmares. Her debut novel, Forbidden: Book One of the Gabriel Lennox  series, is an urban fantasy for older readers who hate to love or love to hate the creeping creatures of the night, and her first middle grade book, Moonstruck: Book One of Waking Dream Series are both available on Amazon or B&N. Find her on Twitter @moniquedesir or at   moniquedesirauthor.com. She also blogs at   https://adaratrosclair.wordpress.com

SURVIVAL LIES

By Irette Y. Patterson

She came to me during the twilight - that time of morning when you’re not quite sure if you’re awake, when you can convince yourself that the things you see aren’t real and when you might be able to accept that they are.

She stood before me: a young woman with long, dark hair twisted in braids that hung down to her waist wearing a white dress that covered herself from neck to bare feet. She looked like a woman from a squared, yellowed photograph, the kind with a white band around it, with wrinkles from age.

Her long white skirts brushed against the quilt I’d kicked off during the night as the heat waves rolled through the shack, her presence smelling of wet, red clay after a thunderstorm.

She was my comforter, and in some ways...my accuser. The shack always chilled when she visited, dragging me from sleep to the inconvenient reality of day when she arrived.

She opened her mouth, but before the sound that left her lips could make it to my ears, I’d wake up, the humidity stifling, the t-shirt sticking to my breasts with sweat. In this balmy South Carolina summer, I’d been using a t-shirt as a nightshirt even though it would make sense to just sleep wearing nothing.

There was no one there to see me, after all. But my mother’s voice rang in my ears – Appearances, Cynthia. Appearances were important even though there was no one to see my state of dress or undress, whether I wrapped my hair for the night or let my natural hair crush against the cotton pillowcase. Appearances were important even though there was no one lying beside me to complain or complement.

Appearances. I still carried that dictate. It was like the nudge in the back of your mind when you’re idling at the red light in the morning on the way to work, thinking Did I leave the iron on?

Today, though, when I opened my eyes, she was there. She was actually there  for a moment. Real. Solid. Whole. When I reached out to touch her, she disappeared, leaving the slight relief of heat pressing in from the outside as the only evidence she’d visited.

I was alone. That’s why I was here in this cabin that was only large enough to hold a double bed, a desk, a trunk and a black, wood burning stove that I’d remembered as a child. Back then it filled the room with smoke as we huddled in there with Granddad Tom and his ever-present black and white TV - scratchy with a Braves Game droning on in the background.

My feet hit the floor, the hardwood squeaking underneath the rug that my mother insisted that I put there, when she thought time in the ancestral home  would do me some good. The dogs barked outside letting me know that Auntie Lynn, technically my great-aunt, was up. But I’d have to wait until she knocked on the door to let me know that it was all right to come outside so the dogs wouldn't attack me. They still didn’t know me and wouldn’t for a while. I was a stranger to them. Some person who had invaded their territory. Someone to be tolerated until I left. I was a danger.

I couldn’t say I disagreed with them.

I padded around to the heavy trunk I’d brought with me. I opened the lid and pulled out some khaki capris because they covered everything and a fresh t-shirt even though it would probably be soaked in the few minutes from the short trip from the shack to the small, brick ranch where Auntie stayed. I bound my breasts. I’d need to look presentable to go take a shower.

Auntie had already looked up at my curly hair and shook her head, but she couldn't say anything about it. My parents paid the taxes on this land to keep it from the County just like they did for everyone else down here in South Carolina. Letting their desperate daughter stay for a moment wasn’t much of a hassle.

But as I gathered my towel and lavender-and-shea butter soap (the only luxury I allowed myself) for my morning shower at the big house, I couldn’t help but think what hiding my morning visits from my aunt could possibly mean.

Mental illness was not something that I was familiar with. I believed and knew that people needed help... in theory. Other people. Not me. I was fine. I was going to be OK. Freemans don’t break. That’s what my mother said. That’s what my grandmother said. We don’t break. Period.

Too bad I was a Washington.

Seeing an apparition was one thing. I could convince myself that was just an overactive imagination. Seeing a solid woman? Now that was a couple of steps from falling apart. I certainly couldn’t let anyone see I was broken. They might suspect it, but they didn’t know …and if it were up to me, they never would. It was time to head back to my real home. Being here hadn’t helped me.

∙∙∙

The smell of salmon patties frying convinced me to abandon the warm shower. I toweled off, slathered on some cocoa butter lotion and dressed. The sizzling of the pan grew louder along with the background buzz of the radio. My brain clicked back into place with calculations of the costs of leaving. Things in the real world cost.

I just couldn’t leave. The best way to get a flight with the least amount of money was to wait three weeks. I could take the bus back to Philly, but that would mean an overnight trip somewhere in a darkened bus station and if experience had proven accurate, the bus station would be in a bad part of town, smelling of stale urine. I didn’t feel safe about it.

As I strolled into the kitchen, Auntie Lynn was there frying the salmon patties in a cast iron skillet. Her face was as round as the skillet before her and just as dark. She was in the house dress with the powder blue cornflowers and the pink Chenille slippers that left tufts of themselves around the house, her feet in socks.

The heat was starting to come in, but the air conditioning clicked on, a central air conditioning system my dad had put in a couple of years back when his company was still giving him bonuses. But those had gone the way of the dodo, like so many other things when it came to working in corporate America.

“Hey, Auntie,” I said, smiling. She was old school - nice, kind, and simple. Just what I thought about when I thought of the South. Not too smart. She’d stayed here after all when her brother, my great-uncle, had offered to fund his sisters’ relocation up North. My grandmother and the rest of the sisters had taken him up on the offer. Not Auntie Lynn, though.

She turned her head. “How you, Cynthia, baby?” Her eyes narrowed as she moved the salmon patty around the pan with the spatula and then flipped it. “You don’t look too good.”

Tell her? No need. “I’m good,” I said. “You need help with anything?”

“Grab them plates,” she said, “and set the table. Bowser is supposed to be coming for breakfast.”

As if there was a day he wouldn’t come. Bowser was her oldest grandson and seemed to always be over, eating a meal, her slipping dollars to him. It was pathetic and, well, it wasn’t going to be my problem much anymore. It was never my problem to tell the truth.

I went past her to reach into the cabinets for the plates.

My head dragged down, my fingers on the knob. Should I tell her about the ghost? I straightened up, getting the dishes out the cupboard, as they clanked against each other.

No, no that would not be a good thing.

I took three plates down for me, her, and Bowser.

“Anyone else coming?” I asked. It was a valid question. I had relatives who lived on all parts of this property that had been gifted to us by a Confederate officer generations ago. The family story was that he had taken a liking to one of my ancestors and left us the land in his will. We’d been living on it ever since. What that meant, however, was that it was easy to drop by. There might be separate houses on the land, but the fact of the matter was that the door was always open.

Well, their  doors were always open. I was a city girl. And like all city girls, I kept my doors latched and locked against the world.

“We just need the three,” Auntie said sliding the salmon patty with a metal spatula from the skillet onto a paper towel lined plate. “Or we would, but Lizzie don’t eat.”

“Lizzie?” I asked. A cousin I hadn’t heard about. There were so many of them and not eating could easily meant that she didn’t eat pound cake for breakfast as coffee cake. In other words, nothing. Still. It wouldn’t be good to make assumptions.

I opened the cabinet again. “I’ll take another plate down just in case she’s hungry.”

“I don’t think you don’t need to be doing that,” a laugh escaped her. “Lizzie don’t eat cuz she can’t eat. Being a spirit and all.”

My hand stilled on the plates. “Spirit?”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ve seen her around,” she said. The plate now held four salmon patties and the spatula she’d use to flip them. She took the hand towel that was on the handle of the oven, wiped her hands before draping it back on the handle.

“I’m sure you met her,” she said.

My hand gripped so hard on the plate that the sound of it breaking came to me from far away…and then there was the warmth of Auntie Lynn wrapping that towel that was once around her hands around mine.

She led me to the kitchen table that of high backed chairs and wood. Real wood.

“You want to tell me about Lizzie?” I asked.

“I thought you’d knew about her, being out there,” she said. “She likes to keep watch over us.”

She pressed the towel around my hand. “Now keep this up,” she said. “I’ll get you something to drink. To stay hydrated.” She gently pushed me down in a chair.

As she left, I didn't know what I was more surprised about - that we had a family ghost or that no one had told me about her.

∙∙∙

“Lizzie,” Auntie Lynn said, bringing me a tall glass of ice water to drink. She’d cleaned the wound. I was sporting a band aid stretched across my index finger, its beigeness contrasting with my brown skin. Auntie Lynn was always moving. I hadn’t seen her sit down once since I came in the house that morning. She’d been up earlier than me and would go to bed later.

A motorcycle rumbling in the distance made her glance behind me at the door, likely to look for Bowser. After the shock wore off, my hand throbbed with pain.

“I’ve ruined your towel,” I said.

“It'll come out,” Auntie Lynn said dismissing it with a wave of her hand.

“Who’s Lizzie?” I asked.

“Oh, she’s the Indian in our family.”

I’d heard stories about that, too. That we had Native-American blood. The older I got, the more I doubted. Oral history could  be accurate, but something wasn’t adding up here. Everybody in the South couldn’t have Cherokee blood.

I took a sip of the water, ice cold with the ice cubes bumping up against my lips. “Really?” I asked.

She nodded. And then she reached toward my hair. “That’s where you got your hair from.” Auntie Lynn sighed. “Anyway, she likes to visit. The first house on the property was that old shack. She just likes to see what’s going on.”

“How come no one told me this?” I asked.

She snorted. “Would you have believed it?”

Truth was, I wasn’t sure if I still believed it, but I gave her the answer she wanted. “I would not have.” And that was also the truth.

“Thought you would have had more of an imagination, being a writer and all.”

Failed writer. Failed teacher. Failed wife. Hence the backwards, last ditch effort to make a go of it in the backwoods of South Carolina. My own little private residency.

“Well,” I said, “fiction has to make sense in a way. Real life doesn’t.” And then the stress left my arms. “Have you ever seen her?”

She shook her head. “Never been out there long enough to.”

I took another sip of the water. It was just what I needed. I hadn’t realized that I was so parched. Is there some magical mojo that aunties have? Knowing what you need before you need it? I put the glass down and looked into her patient dark brown eyes. She’d wanted to know about Lizzie.

“Well,” I said, “she certainly had her hair like a Native American would wear it.” I said. “I think. I don’t know. Hair parted in the middle with long braids.”

“Hmm, hmm,” she said. She went back over to the stove, returning with the pot of grits, its lid askew from the wooden spoon sticking out of it, in one hand and the plate of salmon patties in the other. They were on a new plate, one that wasn’t cracked. She set the pot on a trivet in the middle of the kitchen table, the plate of patties beside it. “Sounds like her. You should be honored.” She stabbed a patty and put it on my plate. “Besides, I think she did you good. Brought you some excitement. I suspect that we’re a little bit too slow for you,” she said.

“You took me in,” I said. It was the truth. If she really hadn’t wanted me here, my dad would not have gone against her wishes…even if he was the one that was paying the bills.

“You’re family,” she said. “We always take care of each other.”

Behind us, the screen door whined open and then slapped back into place. Browser walked in with his standard pressed jeans and wrinkled, short-sleeved plaid shirt, sweat beading on his brow. As he bent down to kiss his grandmother on the cheek, a musk met my nose, the kind you’d smell riding on the train after work during the summer when either peoples’ deodorant had given out or some hippie naturalist had decided to leave the house without using deodorant at all, subjecting everyone to their “natural scent.”

“Gramma,” he said as he swiped a salmon patty from the middle of the table where a pot of grits sat on a trivet,

She smacked his hand playfully. I’d seen them demonstrate their love in the same ways over the past two months that I’d been here. My mom had suggested a change of scenery, some place slower, a change of pace since my life, my carefully cultivated plan was dissolving before me.

I’d wanted a good career, a good life which included a family. Marriage arrived on schedule at 28. I’d known Robert for forever. I lived next door to his aunt growing up and we went to the same schools. After graduation he’d gone into the military and I’d gone to Temple for teaching. He’d been home visiting during the annual block party and when he turned and smiled at me something clicked. I felt the gears of my life sliding into the proper place. I saw how our life together would be.

After he got out of the service, he’d take a federal job. I’d teach for a few years until I was ready to have children and then I’d stay at home until they were in school. Maybe embrace my literary dreams, pecking at a laptop at 4am before starting my day. We’d be happy – Saturdays with family and Sundays at church.

It worked out just as I’d planned until I couldn’t get pregnant. Robert faced the double whammy of a hiring freeze at the V.A. and more claims to review, but no change in required review times. I delved deeper into the fight for local control of schools for the kids that I cared about who were right in front of me. I thought marriages were forever, so I didn’t even know I needed to protect mine.

I came here broken, thinking that I would be able to rest away from people who knew me too well. I had a summer vacation to do it - childless, husbandless. All the checkmarks of being considered a successful Black woman in America...gone. I was starting over at thirty-seven and had wound up back here where everything had started.

Bowser took the seat beside me. His eyes lingered on the band-aid but he didn’t say anything. He just reached into the pot with the wooden spoon and doled out some white grits onto his plate. I was still getting used to those. They were less substantial than my preferred oatmeal and probably less nutritious.

He stuffed a spoon full of grits in his mouth, holding the spoon the same way he held the handles on his motorcycle. At his mother’s admonition he said, “Your food is so good, Gramma,” he said, “I can’t wait to sit down to get a taste.”

Auntie Lynn’s face beamed from the attention. She was such a good woman. And a strong one. Tears started to well in the back of my eyes. I looked down, squinted to keep them in. Where in the world had that surge of emotion come from?

“Sweet talker,” she said, but her eyes shined when she said it. “Cynthia here done seen Lizzie.”

He looked up at me, spoon halfway to his lips. “Lizzie? You believe in that? I thought you were supposed to be educated.” He let his spoon clatter to his plate.

I cringed at his accusation like education was something to be run from. And there was no benefit in getting into an argument this early in the morning, but I couldn’t back down. Never let a predator see your weakness.

“I did see her,” I said.

He whooped.

“Be respectful,” Auntie Lynn said, the trace of pampering all gone from her voice. “She’s family.”

He rolled his eyes and sat back in the chair, his hands over his belly. “Lizzie’s pretend. Make believe.”

Auntie Said, “She’s come to visit for generations. Just because you can’t see her don’t mean she’s not real.”

He shrugged and picked up his spoon again, but my eyes drifted to my aunt. Her oldest grandson and this  is what he came to be? But he had potential. Most Black men did. Heck, I’d married one with potential, and he’d made good on his. I’d already graduated from the How To Support A Brother Institute, though, and had no interest in taking another course.

Auntie, however, had been nothing but kind and gracious and she also did most important thing that you can do for someone when they’re rebuilding their life after it burned down to ashes - she didn’t ask questions. I wanted to do something for her before I left. Well, anything.

I stood up from the table. Auntie wrinkled her brow but didn’t say anything. I know that it was hard for her, but you don’t call a thirty-seven-year-old woman back to the table to reprimand her for not asking permission to leave. I knew that. I crossed the kitchen to the refrigerator where pictures of her grandchildren were stuck with magnets from the sheriff’s department. They still had direct emergency lines—the department hadn’t made the switch yet to 911. I reached for the pad and the blue ball point pen stuck up next to the photos.

Already Auntie had started a list in her thin, cursive script. Eggs. Frosted Flakes, and something else that I couldn’t read. Beautiful writing, but beautiful writing doesn’t mean that it’s legible.

I turned to a blank sheet on the pad and sat back down at the table.

“Tell me everything about Lizzie,” I said.

Bowser snorted. “Why do you want to know?”

I ignored his accusation and just went with the first part of the question. “I’m going to find her,” I said. Then looked at my Aunt. “You said that she was family. So there has to be a record of her somewhere, right?” My brain went to all those genetic testing kits. That would be one thing that I could do and, yeah, it would cost money – something that was tight because I was about to pay a whole lot for a divorce lawyer - but it was could also be a gift to Auntie Lynn. It would give me some information that I figured I could use toward actually finishing something real.

So, what did you do during the summer?

Oh, I spent the summer at a private residency in rural South Carolina writing a novel based on my family history. Very exclusive. Invitation only. It’s currently on submission to agents, you know.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It sounded so much better than, I stayed in a shack that my Grandpa Tom lived in, staring at a blank Microsoft Word document in between spats of crying. I grasped the pen tighter. “Tell me what you know about her.”

∙∙∙

The internet is a wonderful thing. And one of the most wonderful things in the world is the trial period. I know that it’s something to hook you in, to snooker you in hopes that you would forget that they have your credit card in their system, but that’s fine. I would only need seven days. The real stories wouldn’t come from pages of a Census.

I just wanted to prove Lizzie existed. So, the next morning after the conversation, after I’d taken all the notes from Auntie Lynn, Lizzie’d come to me again in the twilight and disappeared just as quickly, I swore that maybe I saw a smile on her face. Maybe it was my imagination.

The problem was that Auntie didn’t have internet service. It would have been hard to get reception out there in the woods even if it were offered. As it was, the money wasn’t good enough for the service providers to make a profit and it turns out that the state passed a law a couple of years back preventing the government to provide the service. Something about it being an unfair advantage.

No matter the reason, it left a lot of folks out in the dust, and it led me to the library where the other thing that I needed to do was to connect to the internet. Sketchy as hell, if you want to know the truth. Unsecured connection where any hacker with nimble fingers could swoop in and steal my personal identity. Good thing it wasn’t worth much.

My mind went back to my dream, to my plan and how it deteriorated over one bright spring morning when the cherry blossom tree in Rittenhouse Square had just started to bloom. I remember thinking how pretty it was as we drove back home from church on that Sunday. At least he had kept up appearances for that long. I remember the smell that greeted me as we walked in our house, when he’d told me: we’d made stew meat in the crock seasoned with bay leaf. He’d said words, but I really don’t remember them.

When your life, the carefully crafted fiction that you’d created and held on to crumbles, it doesn’t pay to have any doubts. Any doubts, any cracks, such as your husband coming home later and his collar smelling of perfume when you can't stand the stuff because of your allergies. When his eyes slide over you, past you like you’re a vagrant on the street and he’s focused only on his destination.

You don’t want to see things. Then it ends, and you can remember some of the words, words like sorry  and authentic self  that puncture through the haze you’ve formed to ease the pain.

Shortly after, the high school I taught at was shuttered. It needed to be consolidated because Philadelphia was becoming less of a community of families and more positioning itself as friendlier to the techy crowd of startup-minded graduates Penn pumped out on a regular basis. Then I didn’t have the energy to generate the haze. Even that light hurt my eyes. Darkness was better.

The Green Path County library was the type whose top attendees were crochet and quilting circles. It looked like a residential brick house. I was used to the stony historical edifice with columns in the front and marble steps leading up to elegant brass double doors that was a staple of my time in Philadelphia. I doubted they offered audiobooks or eBooks for checkout. It did provide me what I needed though: a chair, no matter how uncomfortable it might have been, an internet connection, and space.

I ran my search, clicked through the pages. It was easy to find my grandparents in the Census records. No one in my family had left here from Emancipation to the time my gramma and her sisters had left. There we were, right there in Green Path County: Abbie, Auntie Lynn and Grandpa Tom, my great-grandfather. Our family name, Freeman, was a name that I suspected was going to give me trouble. Auntie Lynn said that we’d changed our family name after Emancipation.

Census records for African Americans only went back to right after the war. Before then, enslaved were only listed by sex and age in the Slave Schedule of the Census. If you didn’t have family oral history or an ancestor wasn’t listed in someone’s will as property by name, you would quickly come to a dead end.

But for now, I searched for my people armed with a name - Lizzie - and that she was Native American. Depending on the Census, I was finding people were listed as races and it wasn’t long before M  showed up for Mulatto. That would give credence to the story that Lizzie and we had Native American blood. Maybe.

The further back I went the more difficult my search became. I knew the names for Gramma Abbie and great-grandad - Grandpa Tom, Gramma’s and Auntie Lynn’s father. The names got to be a bit confusing because the male names repeated every generation. There was a Tom in every generation, but the women’s names weren’t the same. They could be anything.

I knew a woman whose every woman in her family had the same middle name - Ann. I didn’t have anything like that to hold onto, but still was making good progress.

After a few hours in that hard-backed chair, my back started to throb. I stood up and stretched. I was off to a decent start. It was just a matter of time before I found Lizzie. Thank goodness, I didn’t have to go searching down to Good Hope, the family church, to look at graves. It was just a matter of time, digging and a bit of luck. I’d find her.

∙∙∙

I found Lizzie the day after the DNA testing kit arrived in the mail. She showed up as widowed in the 1920 Census. There. Done. She was real. I could print out the record and shove it in Bowser’s face. Except I wanted to learn more.

How far back could I go? Lizzie’s estimated birth year was 1853, meaning that she would have been 17 in 1870. Could I go all the way back to Emancipation? I was already at the library and had nothing else to do. More digging wouldn’t hurt.

I came to the fabled 1870 Census - the first one taken right after the end of the Civil War - and a dead end. No Freemans. Maybe my family had not have taken on that name yet.

One thing that I did have in my favor was the family story of the old Confederate who blessed my family with land and that we’d lived on ever since. Rule 1: Do not sell the land. The land came from Lizzie’s side of the family. Maybe I could find Lizzie by searching for the folks who lived around them in 1920. Census workers went from door to door and that’s how they listed folks on the form. The form also said if they were renters or owners. If I could track the ancestors of the folks who owned land around Lizzie, maybe I could find her.

I dug around some more through the Carters and I thought that I found her in 1870, 5 years after the Civil war. She would have been 17. The name was right. The age was right, but the household? That didn’t look right.

There was a Lizzie listed as the head of household at 17 with a 3-month old daughter. By herself. I knew that kids had to grow up fast back in the day but that just looked strange. Surname - Miller. Race - Mulatto. I looked at the folks who lived around her.

In this case, or just above Lizzie on the census form there was a family. Last name Miller. Race - white. Older couple with two children - a son and a daughter who were about Lizzie’s age.

That was strange. Where was her family? And why in the world was she living surrounded—I went back and checked, yep— surrounded  by white people? That didn’t make any sense.

Family? The kindly Confederate who deeded my family the land where I was currently living? I got up and turned away from the screen. I wanted to pace, to do something with the excess energy that was coursing through me.

I always thought better when I was walking. There was a park with a walking trail across the street from the library. The fresh air would do me good.

I logged out of the website and shutdown my laptop, dumping it in my faux leather work tote that was a glorified tote bag I had picked up on sale at the Center City Macy’s.

On my way out, I saw the knitting club pile out - a bunch of silver haired white women with full bellies, dressed in t-shirts, cardigans and capris, and carrying tote bags of their own—except that theirs were patchwork stitched by their own hand. They’d come from down a long hallway, one that I’d never noticed or even been down in all the time I’d been here. I’d always come straight into the library, straight to where I needed to be. No checking left or right or looking anywhere except my destination.

Focused.

But the hallway was long. I was new to the library despite my family living in the town for generations. I was also the only spot of color in the building at this time of day. Other Black folks were working. At least I had known enough to show up wearing a sundress that I’d brought for church for when or if Auntie Lynn ever got tired of me and demanded that I go and sit listening under the tutelage of a pastor who preached using the same cadence that black pastors have been using since slavery days.

Miller. It sounded familiar. Wasn’t the library named after a Miller? I walked back to the main part of the building. It was a new building and there was a portrait, one of those sepia colored ones that were old photographs, with an impressive gilded frame around it. It looked like the 1960s from the horn-rimmed glasses that the subject sported. White man, but there was something about the face that I’d seen before. I stepped closer to the photograph, hoping that maybe I could figure out the secrets in the lines around his mouth or maybe in his eyes...

“Can I help you with something?”

I stumbled away from the picture. Heavens, I was almost nose-to-nose with the man in the photograph.

“No,” I said. “I—I’m fine,” I said.

The librarian was an older white lady with crow’s feet just beginning to radiate from her eyes. She seemed nice. Her expression was curious, not accusatory. I could tell by her low-maintenance-but-still-cute short haircut that she was a parent, a mom whose kids were probably out of high school and out of house. An empty nester, but, judging by the conservative gold necklace around her throat, well off by Green Path standards. She was probably responsible for keeping the contents of the library safe.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just admiring the picture, but I guess that’s obvious.” I gave a small laugh, something I did often when I was nervous. “The man in this photograph just looks so familiar.”

“You aren’t from around here, are you?”

“I’m visiting my aunt for the summer. She’s Lynn Freeman down off Bell Road.” The easiest way in a small town to identify whether you belonged or not was to give a name, to state your connections.

“You’re a Freeman,” she said.

I wasn’t ever a Freeman. Gramma was a Freeman who married a Robinson. Mama was a Robinson who married a Jackson. I was a Jackson who married a Washington, but in this case, I guess that I was a Freeman. “Yes,” I said.

She smiled and then looked up at the painting. “Then you should ask your aunt about Mr. Scott here.”

“Scott?” I looked down at the nameplate. There it said in that old black-speckled brass: “Miller Scott” in fine cursive script.

“You’ve probably noticed all the Miller names around here.”

Actually, I had. “I had just figured that it was like that in a small town. I’m not from here. I mean, my family is from here, but I grew up in Philadelphia.”

“Oh,” she said. “So you wouldn’t know about the Millers. They owned quite a bit of land around here and donated part of it for government buildings. They were very civic minded,” she said.

“I’m sure,” I said and then looked up at the picture again. “So, he’s a Miller.”

“On his mother’s side,” she said. “There was quite the scandal when Elizabeth, his mother, married some Yankee,” she said. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“I’m a bit a historian when it comes to our town, and there are so few people who are interested in the past…but we have to remember the way things were or we risk forgetting their truths. And if we do that, it is as if they never happened.”

“Sometimes…some things…you would rather forget, though.” I managed, my chest tight. I couldn’t look her in the eyes.

“After the Civil War, we were decimated. The troops, either burned everything down or stole livestock, stole everything. But we didn’t leave. We stayed. Your family stayed.”

“Yes, we did,” I said. At least I always had a home.

“And so did the Millers. You know, it was quite the scandal when that land was willed to your family.”

“You know about that?”

“Town Historian,” she said, raising her chin with a smirk. “Sometimes learning about the past is better than catching Days of Our Lives, once you know the ins and outs.”

My eyes were drawn to the picture again. Those eyes. That nose. I let my head dip to the side. I knew exactly where I had seen that face before. No wonder it was so familiar. I saw it every morning just before I woke up. Just before it faded away.

∙∙∙

I paced the length of the cabin. In three strides, my hands hit the newsprint serving as wallpaper. Then I turned around, walked in the other direction.

Lizzie being family to the Millers certainly made more sense than a white man doing my family a solid right after a war that probably destroyed the only life he had ever known.

I paced the cabin back and forth, the movement helping the blood flow to my brain, helping me think.

It was the only thing that did  make sense. Of course, I could be wrong. Lizzie might be part Native-American. I looked at the DNA kit that sat on the desk. I hadn’t opened it. In the whole scheme of things, the cost, while I squeezed ten cents out of one, wouldn’t hurt.

One doesn’t plan for their life to fall apart. One doesn’t plan for total decimation.

I laid my palms flat, the moist air surrounding me. The dirt. This line of the family owned land. Farmers, they were called in the Census record.

My hand flew to my hair - pressed against the soft curls, the type that Black women used to stop me on the street to ask about: “ Girl, how did you get your hair to look like that? ” All the while not saying what they really wanted to ask. My brown skin, dark eyes and flat nose screamed regular ole, African-American.

“How do you get your hair to do that,” they’d ask without asking, “ You of the non-apparent biracial lineage who looks like me? How is  your hair like that?  That hair belongs to multiracial women, not the typical African American whose family is Black all the way down the ancestral line no matter how light the skin or eyes, who may have European heritage but no one who would claim them?

I’d wanted the truth. But did I? When you’re hurting, the truth can wait until you’re strong enough to handle it. But when you’re just surviving…

When you’re just surviving, sometimes lying is the way you survive.

What would it do to know the truth? What good? Maybe… I clicked the kit open and took out the tube. I read the information in the slick three-color brochure and then read it again. Hmm. It seemed simple enough - spit into the tube, seal, and return. I spit it in the tube then closed it, sticking the tube into the plastic bag with the red biohazard symbol on it. Sealed. There.

I had been—I was—running, not looking at what was really going on had already cost me. But now, I wanted to know the truth— this  truth. I might not be able to handle anything else in my life, but this? This. I could do.

I’d ask Auntie Lynn. She had to know something. The DNA results would provide more information. No matter what, I’d beaten Bowser and would be able to leave with a good story, a good excuse for being here.

∙∙∙

The next morning Lizzie seemed a bit more solid than usual, her face more pronounced. She even hovered a few moments and didn’t do her fading act as soon as I opened my eyes. Her eyes, her nose, those were the same as those I had seen on the photograph Mr. Scott in the library.

I leapt out of bed, throwing on my clothes for the morning breakfast to tell Auntie Lynn about Lizzie. She was real. She might not have been who everyone had said, but that didn’t matter.

You can lie to folks, but you can’t lie to yourself.

At breakfast I told Auntie Lynn about what I had found.

“I found Lizzie,” I said. “In the library. Census records.”

“Really?” she asked.

She set the stack of pancakes before me and I took one and put them down on my plate. They were light and fluffy. She made them from scratch without the powdered, pancake mix like the ones that I’d grown up on.

She slid into the chair next to me. “I knew that she was real.” she said, forking some scrambled eggs onto her own plate. She’d dumped a spoon full of grits as well.

She’d left the pancakes alone, though. There were three of them left - enough for me to have another one, her, and Bowser to each have one. Or Bowser to have two.

I started cutting the pancakes. “But did you know that she was a Miller?”

“She was on the plantation. The Millers had that big one that owned all the land. How come you don’t know this?”

I sighed. She wasn’t getting the point. “No, you don’t understand. She was a Miller.”

“Of course she was.”

She rolled her eyes. Was it possible that the Census was wrong? They weren’t known to be accurate—especially when they weren’t from around the area, but the picture of the man with the dark suit and the horn-rimmed glasses – Miller Scott - came back to me.

No. I was right. Everything pointed to it. “No. I mean, she was a Miller. That’s the reason they gave us this land.”

“Silliness,” she said, picking at the scrambled eggs.

She wasn’t excited? “Do you know what this means?”

“It means that you were wrong. You didn’t tell anyone else what you think you’re talking about, did you?”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“People gotta live here after you leave. After you’ve had your exploration, and this is not a game. Folks won’t take too kindly to what you’re saying, and neither do I.”

I dropped my fork. “It was so long ago.”

“You got a lot to learn, little girl.”

“It’s the truth, Auntie Lynn!”

“Cynthia Freeman Washington.” Turns out Lizzie wasn’t the only one who could make the temperature drop. The kind eyes faded. This was a hard woman before me, eyes steady as she tightened the fork in her hand. I dropped my eyes.

The door whined open and Bowser sauntered in. “Hey, Gramma. Pancakes. My favorite.” He gave her a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“Sit down now,” she said. “You look like happy this morning.”

“Got a job interview,” he said.

And just like that I was dismissed. She was really going to pretend that it wasn’t real. That what I’d found wasn’t true.

I sat back in my chair, cutting my eyes at her.

“It was a long time ago,” I said.

Auntie slid pancakes—the rest of the stack—onto Bowser’s plate. “Here you go,” she said. “You need strength.”

Strength for what? He lived out in a trailer. He came in here every day and his grandmother looked at him like he hung the moon.

Did delusion run in the family?

I was suddenly driven the urge to let the whole thing go, as Bowser hummed and smacked his lips. I looked down at the plate. The butter had stopped melting and now was congealing on my pancake.

“Auntie,” I said, “Lizzie.”

Bowser snorted. “You a little off if you’re still talking about her.”

“She’s real.” Even as I said it I felt like a pouting child sitting in the corner with her arms crossed and her lips scrunched up.

“You ain’t right,” he said. Then he changed tack, shoveling another piece of pancake into his mouth, leaving a bit of syrup in the corner as he smirked at me. “So, how’s that book coming?”

“Same as your job seeking, I guess.”

“Then it must be going mighty well,” he said. “So nice that you had the time to come on back down here. Not many people would. And on such an important matter.”

“Bowser -” Auntie started.

“Tell us all about how things are done up there. I wouldn’t see why you would ever want to come back down here with the heat and the mugginess. A place where you can’t even get internet reception at home.”

“The library suits me just fine.”

“That it do, I bet,” he said. He scarfed down the rest of the food, dabbed his mouth with a paper towel and stood up. “Good as always Gramma,” he said. “Don’t want to be late. I got somewhere to be. Cousin Cynthia.”

 “Bowser,” I returned.

He left as quickly as he’d entered.

Auntie Lynn took his plate, empty except for a thin coating of syrup. “You shouldn’t antagonize him like that.”

“What?”

She shuffled onto the sink. “He’s trying.”

“You’re enabling him. He’s a grown man still living off the family.”

“Family just ain’t about accepting you when you’re all nice and done up. Family is here when you need a helping hand, when you’re broken.” She turned on the faucet and ran water over the sticky surface, then scrubbed it with a bit more power than was necessary. “He just needs some time.”

“Sometimes people need the truth to help them live.”

She didn’t respond, letting my words hang in the air. I stabbed my eggs, shoved them in my mouth.

“Sometimes, Cynthia, the lies are the only way that you can get through.”

I finished my breakfast, letting her words turn over in my mind. It wasn’t just Bowser she was talking about. Lizzie, neither. I can understand not being able to see something when you’re right in front of it. Maybe after generations of telling a lie you forget what the truth is. you do start to believe that lie. It’s more convenient. It’s the survival about it.

I picked up my plate, scrubbed it with a soapy sponge, rinsed it off, and placed it in the mustard colored rack next to the sink.

“How’s the book coming along?”

I knew it what it was - an offering to bring the discussion back to familiar, friendly tones rather than the heated ones of before. The sweetness in her voice, though, seemed too much like the voice she used to ask Bowser about his job search.

The appropriate lies sprung to mind. I was fine. The book was going well. I would get another teaching job. My marriage was over, but then I could start over…

Except I wasn’t fine. Yes, sometimes you have to lie to survive, but sometimes those same lies can destroy you, too. I wasn’t okay. I really, really wasn’t and I wanted someone to know that.

I took a deep breath. “The book isn’t okay. I’m not okay, Auntie Lynn.”

She pulled me into her arms. She smelled of dial soap and ultra-sheen grease that she had probably used on her scalp that morning.

My body started to shake as I gasped, trying to keep the hurt in. My aunt rubbed soothing circles on my back with her hand. And I let go of all the pain, the tears falling, hacking, wetting her ironed, starched housedress.

I pulled back when I settled down. She let me go. I opened my mouth, but a hiccup escaped instead of a word. We both laughed at the same time. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I’m sure they were red. “Thank you.”

“That’s what we do. We hold the broken pieces until you’re strong enough to be whole again. Everyone needs someone who sees them as they are.” And I hadn’t thought she was smart – this woman who saw everything and knew when to speak and when not to. I wanted to know more about her, not because I could spin it into a tale that would be acceptable to the church folks back in Philly, but because I wanted to learn about her and this place.

“Auntie,” I said. “Is it all right if I move in the house?”

“I was just waiting for you to ask,” she said. “You can go ahead and move on in now.”

 I nodded and I stepped outside, listening. No dogs barked. I guess they had gotten used to me. When I entered the shack, Lizzie was there waiting for me at the foot of the bed. Light was streaming in the window, shining right through her. She was waiting. My hand reached out to the desk to steady myself. This wasn’t normal. It wasn’t twilight and I wasn’t waking up. My fingers hit the kit. I’d never mailed it off to get scientific evidence of where we came from. I didn’t need it.

I knew who I was. I was a Freeman. I knew whose I was. I was one of Lizzie’s children. And I knew who Lizzie was. As Auntie Lynn held my truth for me, I could hold hers. I took the kit and dumped it in the trash can next to the desk.

For about the first time that I had since I’d gotten on the plane headed here, armored in sunglasses to hide my red-rimmed eyes from crying, I smiled.

“I see you,” I said. “I see you.”

It wasn’t a beautiful history, it wasn’t a convenient one, but at least it was the truth. At least it was honest. And it was ours. Other family members lived in the shack after me, but no one ever saw Lizzie again. I hope she found peace.

—END—

ABOUT IRETTE Y. PATTERSON

Irette Y. Patterson is a native of Atlanta. Her stories have appeared in People of Color Take Over Fantastic Stories of the Imagination as well as on  saturdayeveningpost.com. She is a Voices of Our Nations Arts alumna. You can find her online at  http://www.iretteypatterson.com  and on Twitter at @Irette.

THE EPIC OF SAKINA

By Shari Paul

The moon was a pale, golden disc in a lavender sky. Sakina, in a brilliant blue caftan that brought out the colour in her skin and eyes, strummed her kora a few times to check the tuning. At her ear, an ancestor whispered, “He is quite brazen to be out here when the moon is full…or powerful enough to resist it.”

Sakina looked over at the tall, thin man sinking into one of the dougou-tigui’s fine silk cushions. Asif the alim looked as if a stiff breeze would knock him over, the skin stretched tight over his bones. Asma had called him a ghoul and Sakina agreed. He noticed her stare, smiled, and said, “Of all the djeli I have met in my travels, you are by far the most captivating.”

There were a few titters from the assembled guests, wealthy merchants, fellow djeli, and the imam of the Cunapo Mosque. Their host, the dougou-tigui Hussain, coughed lightly, embarrassed, and said, “My nephew, Farouk, certainly thought so. He could not have found a more beautiful wife.”

“Yes, yes,” said Asif, still smiling at Sakina. “And then he left her to go travelling with your maghan. If I had found a wife as lovely, my journeys would end.”

“They are young, they think they can do whatever they like,” said Hussain with a chuckle, jiggling two of his three jowls.

Sprawled beside Asif, surrounded by trays of fruit and starches and spiced teas, the dougou-tigui was the larger of the two but he sat considerably higher in his seat than the smaller scholar. The ancestor continued at Sakina’s ear, “See how the mass he does not show nevertheless affects the environment around him? The beast he becomes must be strong.”

“Tell me they at least have a son, something to hold her attention while he is away,” said Asif, popping another date into his mouth.

Sakina hoped he choked on it. Was that a flash of gold in his eyes when he lifted his gaze to her? Alas, he merely sucked away the fruit and spat the seed into a bowl near his feet.

Hussain sighed heavily. “Their time together as man and wife was, perhaps, too brief.”

“Oh dear,” said Asif, giving Sakina another appraising look, his eyes amber.

Sakina forced herself to focus on the kora in her hands until she could calm her racing heart, then looked up and said, “Apologies for the delay. Shall we begin?”

Early evening in Cunapo village was cool and quiet and the sky was clear, so the doors to the great room of the dougou-tigui’s manse had been thrown open to the central courtyard and its spectacular fountain. Carib and African servants flitted back and forth amongst the guests with trays of coffee or the Aztec chocolatl, or assisting with galyan pipes. A group of musicians had been playing earlier, but had given way to Sakina when she arrived. The alim had wanted to hear stories of the Niani in the isles so the dougou-tigui had summoned the djeli. Sakina, who had been hoping for the request, had graciously agreed though she joked about not being a dancing girl. The men had laughed, and she settled on a beautiful Persian rug to play.

But it was all a diversion. There were only a few hours left until the attack and Sakina welcomed the distraction of her work in the face of her worry. Her uncle Suleiman, the farin, and his men should be well on their way back to the village with reinforcements, and Leif would meet them to head it off. Sakina’s role was considerably easier: distract the esteemed alim for a few hours until she heard the signal—a howl that would call to the monster hiding in the scholar’s blood—and then call the man out. This also made it the most dangerous part of the plan.

“What are you going to sing for us tonight?” asked Asif, still smiling at Sakina. He let his dull gold gaze drift over her form again.

Another ancestor whispered at Sakina’s other ear, “Those who induce the wolf are considered especially dangerous. They claim that the wolf is noble, like lions are noble, but ignore its other nature. No one chooses to become a monster unless it is the truest expression of themselves.”

She repressed a shudder, and replied to Asif, “This was my favourite story when I was a girl. After the Mansa Abu Bakr’s arrival in these isles, he and our people endured many hardships to form a place for us. They would have died if not for one Taino woman who accepted the teachings of the Prophet and later become the Mansa’s wife, Aaliyah.”

Asif, as expected, sniffed a little and said, “I have heard this story.”

Hussain wrinkled his nose too, and said, “I hardly think our guest would like a story about these native monsters.” To Asif, “It is a children’s tale popular with nursemaids to frighten their charges into obedience. Sakina…needed to hear it more than most but still took the wrong lesson from the story. She found the creature fascinating.”

Asif sat up straighter on his cushion. “Our most popular tales are children’s stories. And you claim that your djeli has the best voice in all the islands.”

Hussain smiled. “Allah has blessed our Sakina in many ways.”

“Then who am I to refuse His gift?” Asif said. “Sing, please. Let me hear you so that I might tell the world of the night that I met tranquillity in Al-Tanan.”

Sakina resisted the urge to gag. She was a married woman. The sooner they got this over with, the better. She did not smile at Asif’s statement, but struck the first chords of the song on her kora. Sakina was the djeli of this village and Asif was going to find out exactly what she was willing to do to protect it.

∙∙∙

One week earlier, a man wearing nothing more than a wolf pelt washed up on the beach near the village.

Sakina had spent the morning in the great library of her father’s house with their students, going over observations of the weather and the storms that the native peoples had blamed on their god, Houracan. She had first heard the story of the angry, one-eyed god as a child from her nurse, Asma. The woman had been reluctant, but Sakina had insisted on its retelling until she could recount it by heart. Sakina tried now to incorporate many of the native stories in her lessons, particularly since her classes were mainly with young children. Her father frowned upon the idea.

“While I agree that it is important to preserve as much as their knowledge as we can, you understand that not everyone agrees with this, yes? You are wading into a controversy that started long before you were born.” Her father had said. “You thirst for knowledge as badly as your mother, but you lack her caution.”

But her father had gone to hajj and without Farouk to enforce his rule, Sakina had done as she pleased. Ironically, the most resistant to the idea was a native student called Ali, who had even threatened to report her to the imam. After a morning of the boy’s vocal disapproval, an afternoon walk on the beach was a breath of fresh air. Until Sakina nearly tripped over a half-naked man on the shore.

He had been mixed up in a pile of debris, driftwood, and bits of sargassum that stank of sea salt and decay. Sakina had tried to laugh through her embarrassment, but when Ali poked at what he thought was a dead animal in the rubble with a stick, it moved. His horrified shriek had brought the other students running, and jerked the man under the pelt fully awake.

Delirious, sunburnt, and naked, the man yelled at them in what might have been Norse or English, before promptly fainting again. Sakina checked at once that he was alive, and then checked him again for any wounds while the group excitedly speculated where he might hav come from. His breath was faint, and his heartbeat raced. She sent one of the other students to fetch the doctor and ordered the rest to bring him into the shade.

The doctor, Ismail, brought the farin with him and a handful of soldiers, a necessary precaution with the constant threat of the Christian kingdoms and their pirates. Ismail examined the man right there on the beach while Sakina tried to keep the other students from crowding him, and declared the man severely dehydrated but otherwise unharmed. Suleiman then detained him at once, though the doctor requested that he be allowed to treat the castaway at the hospital, and escorted them back to the village.

The man woke up again as they approached her father’s house, eyes shining gold, and looked directly at Sakina. In her ear, she heard an ancestor whisper over the wind, “Demon.”

Sakina started, surprised, and nearly fell out of the cart. The others turned to look at her, but she was focussed on the man. She tried in English, “Who are you?”

He stared at her for a beat longer, then closed his eyes and lost consciousness.

Suleiman had not been pleased with this, and told her so before he left her and the students back at her father’s house.

“As a matter of professional courtesy, I would prefer it if you left the interrogation to me,” he said.

Sakina looked at her uncle and asked, “Do any of your men speak his language?”

Gaze narrowed, he replied, “No. But I’m sure we can wait for a translator from Mucurapo to speak with him.”

“Why, when I am right here?” Sakina asked, smiling at him with her eyes wide.

His nostrils flared, and he folded his arms, lifting his chin away from her. Sakina bit back the smile, and said, “Something about him…piqued interest. This isn’t an ordinary man, uncle.”

Suleiman glanced back at the cart where his soldiers sat with the man, and said, “More reason for you to stay away from him.”

“Perhaps,” said Sakina, nodding. “But if you are there with me, what do I have to fear?”

“I told you not to try those games with me, girl,” her uncle snapped.

Sakina straightened, trying to ignore the sting of the scold, and said, “I’m not playing a game. You are my father’s brother. You know what we are. If I told you that the ancestors were interested in that man, do you think that’s a joke? There is something about him that is familiar to them.”

Suleiman dropped his gaze away, exhaling heavily. Then, “He needs rest. I will call for you when we are ready.”

“Thank you, commander,” said Sakina with a respectful nod.

The next two days would have been torturous if Sakina had not spent every free moment trying to figure out why her ancestor called the man a demon. Her family’s compound, which her father had converted into a school after his marriage to her mother, had the largest library on the island of Al-Tanan. Most days it was packed with former students, djeli and scholars visiting from more rural communities. Her father had stated that he wanted his library at the edge of the world to rival the great ones of Timbuktu. When Sakina walked through their doors after sending her students off for the day, the manuscripts had called to her.

“The Norsemen made a failed raid on the then Emirate of Cordoba in year 229. You will need this account of the warriors that the Emir’s men met.”

“They are mentioned here in two sagas, translated by an alim travelling through their region around the years 730 to 733.”

“There are accounts of wolf warriors in many cultures. The Romans are well-known for their claim that their city was founded by twin brothers suckled by a she-wolf. You should read this translation…”

Sakina pulled down the manuscripts as they came to her. Her father had once travelled as widely as her husband but most of his books had been specially ordered from Granada and Baghdad. The ancestor that had first identified the man repeated only one thing as she went about her research, “Demon! Demon! Demon!”

By the time Sakina left the library again, night had fallen, and her maid Asma greeted her red eyes and great yawns with disapproval. Sakina let her fuss over her as she prepared for bed, but when she lay down to rest, she said, “Can you tell me the story of the kanaima again?”

Asma, halfway out the room, stopped and looked back at her with wide eyes.

Sakina sat up at once and said, “You heard about the man we found on the beach.”

“He is not one of them,” said Asma firmly. In another life, Sakina had been told, Asma had been the daughter of a shaman. She still practiced some of their rituals, though Sakina had never seen her do it, and would not ask. She preferred to leave the religious quibbles to the imam.

“I know that,” said Sakina. “But he’s something like it, isn’t he? A man that can draw on the power of beasts when he needs it.”

Asma took a breath and said, “Anyone who does that is evil.”

“You told me of men who did it to avenge murdered families,” said Sakina.

“And those men died for it. Pray that your uncle executes him as quickly as possible,” said Asma.

Sakina said nothing, and Asma quietly left.

∙∙∙

The next day Naima arrived almost before Sakina could finish breakfast.

“Saki! Saki! Oh, where are yo—there you are!” Naima cried as she burst into the room.

Sakina soaked a piece of bread in her soup, glanced up at her friend’s flushed face, skin shining with sweat and slightly-dishevelled dress, and said, “Your husband has finally found out about your lover, and you need me to hide you?”

“Pshh,” Naima scoffed, fanning herself with her hand and straightening her clothes. “That old bastard wouldn’t notice if I had my own harem. This is what I married for? Gah, why can’t he go travelling like yours?”

Sakina pressed her lips together, stomach clenching, but Naima continued without noticing, “Tell me everything.”

Sakina shook her head and said, “Where is my greeting?”

“The Norseman, Saki! Tell me everything. I’ve heard his eyes are blue and his hair is white,” said Naima. She took a seat before Sakina and poured herself a cup of coffee.

Sakina sighed. “His eyes are not blue, and his hair is black.” In fact, now that she was thinking about it, his skin had been darker than she expected.

“So, the rumours are true then,” said Naima.

“Rumours?” asked Sakina, only half-listening. She wondered what else she had missed while her ancestor fussed over demons at her ear.

“They say that he might not be a Norseman after all,” said Naima. “They say he’s actually a runaway slave.”

Sakina considered this. Bare as he was, Sakina had not noticed any brands or scars. To Naima, she said, “If he is, then he is a free man now. The Mansa declared that there are no slaves in the Niani Empire in the West.”

The man being an escaped slave would also save him from execution. Though now that Sakina had mentioned the ancestors’ reaction to the man to her uncle, well, his freedom was another matter entirely.

“Doctor Ismail attended to him personally at the jail and your uncle put only his trusted men at the door,” said Naima with a pout. She looked up at Sakina. “You need to go see him. Your uncle will let you in.”

Sakina scoffed and sipped her coffee. Naima glared at her, “If your father was here, they would not hesitate to consult him.”

“This may be bigger than a runaway slave. For that, the dougou-tigui will want to consult someone higher ranked than him. The kafo-tigui or the dyamani-tigui himself, who might then talk to the mansa. They will not want the word of the djeli of Cunapo, and a woman at that,” said Sakina.

“Do you think he is dangerous?” asked Naima.

“I do not know,” said Sakina, honestly. “Demon,”  her ancestor whispered at her ear.

Naima nodded at this and said, “Speaking of the dougou-tigui, his esteemed guest has finally arrived. I was on my way to open the shop when I overheard talk. You should receive your summons this afternoon.”

Naima was not wrong. Sakina had just finished the morning classes and let the students out for lunch, when Asma announced that they had a visitor. It was Chidi, Hussain’s errand boy, who ran everywhere he went. He was hopping about when Sakina went to him at the door, and he greeted her with a smile and said quickly, “Master wants you.”

“Hello, Chidi,” said Sakina. “Did he tell you why?”

“The alim wants to meet the djeli and that’s you,” said Chidi, spinning in a circle.

Sakina thought of the afternoon classes and research she had to do before she went to the barracks the next day. Even if he had agreed before, her uncle was still going to give her a fight about the prisoner. But ignoring the dougou-tigui’s summons was not an option. He was also her uncle by marriage. She said, “Tell your master that I shall be with him in an hour.”

The dougou-tigui’s compound was on the other side of the village from Sakina’s family compound. She was not surprised to find a litter waiting for her when she stepped out the gate, though she would have preferred to walk. Farouk’s uncle liked to show off his wealth.

The village of Cunapo had been built on the site of a Carib settlement, near a river that famously ran red as blood and had been the subject of the wildest tales from Sakina’s childhood. The Caribs had been re-settled further south. At the centre of the village, a great mosque had been built in the Granada-style, in plaster-covered stone, where the Carib longhouse had once stood. Over the centuries, the mosque had been surrounded by numerous low mud-brick buildings, the homes and businesses of her ancestors and the others who had flocked to the isles after the rest of the Dar-as-Salam learned of the Niani Empire’s discovery.

The Mansa Abu Bakr had stated that he wanted to recreate and exceed the grandeur of Al-Andalus in the isles, and to an extent he had succeeded. The Niani Empire in the West stretched well into the northern and southern continents. They had traded successfully for centuries with many native tribes and kingdoms, spreading the teachings of the Prophet wherever they went, and had made many powerful allies. But not all who they encountered welcomed them, and the Christian kingdoms were envious. The Niani Empire, with the support of Granada and Baghdad had been at war with the Christians almost from the beginning, and though the Christians had gained some territory in the north and south, they could not overrun them.

The barracks that housed the farin and his troops was set to the east of the town, closer to the sea, and there was a fort further north near the fishing village of Toco. Sakina had spent much of her childhood watching ships sail past the lighthouse in the town, under the guns of the guard of Al-Tanan. She had seen ships from as far east as Ming China and the Mughal Empire, and once, a pirate ship captured from the English. She had never ever seen a ship from the Norsemen though, and according to everything that she had read, they should no longer exist.

The dougou-tigui and his guest were having tea when Sakina finally arrived at the house. Sakina walked into the sitting room to greet them, smiling at Chidi when she passed him, then looked up at the two men and felt her blood run cold.

“Monster!”  an ancestor screamed into her ear.

“Demon! Demons in Al-Tanan!”  cried another.

She froze, unable to get out even words of greeting. The alim’s eyes glowed a dull amber at her for a moment, before he blinked, and they were plain brown. The dougou-tigui, oblivious, said, “Here she is at last, my niece by marriage, Sakina.”

The alim stood to came to greet her, smiling broadly, “You did not mention that she was also lovely.”

“The women of the Niani Empire prefer to be known for their quick wit and cleverness,” said Hussain, with a dismissive wave. He smiled at Sakina and added, “It has been too long since we last saw each other.”

The ancestors were still screaming at her ear. Sakina swallowed and walked forward to greet them, “And you, Uncle. I am sorry that I have kept away, but you understand. With Farouk gone, I could not stay in that house by myself. Besides, his brother does a fine job of overseeing the family business.”

He hugged her close and turning to the alim, said, “My niece’s mother’s family is descended of the djeli that accompanied Mansa Abu Bakr to the isles. Anything that you need to know of our history, you can ask her.”

“Is that so?” asked the alim. “I am Asif al-Idrisi. It is an honour to make your acquaintance.”

He extended his hand for hers and Sakina allowed him to take it, even as her every instinct recoiled. She had to make this meeting short.

“Come, come and sit with us. Dinner will be ready soon. We are having a Carib delicacy, pepper-pot, and Asif was telling me of his last visit to Christian lands. Were you invited to the court of the King of England?” asked Hussain.

Sakina settled on the other side of the dougou-tigui, and though Asif glanced at her, he said, “No, no, they would never allow one of us ‘Moors’ in their court. But I have met with nobles, and briefly, their cardinals in Rome. These Christians firmly believed it is their right to establish their will over the world. In the name of Allah…I am forever grateful that we have managed to hold them away from this land. Let them fight over the old one.”

“They have attacked us before,” said Sakina.

“Yes, but without success. It is good to have powerful friends,” said Asif.

“And a powerful army and the will of Allah behind you,” said Hussain.

“Yes, yes…I noticed the barracks, and the fort as we were sailing in. It is a shame that these things are still needed,” said Asif.

“It is good that the farin isn’t here, he would think you’re trying to get rid of him,” said Hussain, chuckling softly.

“I would not dream of it. Someone has to protect the most beautiful djeli in the isles,” said Asif, smiling at Sakina again.

It was going to be a long night.

∙∙∙

As promised, her uncle sent for her early the next morning. Sakina had returned to her family compound rather late, but she had refused to sleep under the same roof as the alim. It did not matter. That night, her ancestors’ warnings and her research gave life to her fears in dreams. Great dogs with glowing eyes charged out of the bushes to tear down the village, crushing children underfoot and snarling at her in their foreign tongue while all she could do was scream. The third time she jolted awake, she walked out to the central courtyard to watch the sun come up, the ghosts of ancestors whispering reassurances at her ear. Sometimes, Sakina hated that she had been born a djeli.

Naima arrived with daybreak and a litter to take them to the barracks, though Sakina was very sure that her friend had not been requested. The streets of Cunapo were already bustling with activity, despite the hour. Vendors called to them from their stalls along the narrow streets, the smell of fresh bread and coffee reminding Sakina that she had chosen a light breakfast. Pedestrians scurried out of the path of the litter, though sometimes someone would stop and try to peer in. Naima had drawn the blinds against them, but she could not help poking at her friend whenever an interesting specimen walked past their window. Sakina’s father always said that Naima was a woman on the verge of scandal, and sometimes it was difficult to doubt. It was no secret that Naima did not love her husband.

The doors to the barracks opened for them without the usual hassle. When they stopped before the entrance, Sakina realised why. Suleiman was waiting for them himself.

Naima whispered into her ear as Sakina stepped down from the litter, “You must tell me everything. He’s awake this time and clothed.”

Suleiman exhaled heavily when he noticed Naima, but said to Sakina, “Thank you for arriving promptly, and your assistance. We do need help with translation and I know from experience that you were a quick study as a child.” His tone was conciliatory but gruff.

“My mother insisted on it,” said Sakina.

“Yes, well,” said Suleiman and he turned and led the way in, calling over his shoulder as he went, “The prisoner speaks very little Arabic, but not enough, and my translator does not understand the form of the Norseman language that he speaks. He said that it was ‘old’.”

A young soldier appeared and deposited a sheaf of papers, ink, and pens into Sakina’s hands. Sakina supposed she was to be scribe as well. Suleiman glanced at her expression and said, “Our usual scribe is ill. You do not mind, do you?”

She did not reply, and they continued their way. Sakina’s father had first brought her to the barracks as a very young child, and she was still awed by the massive walls—almost as high as those of the mosque—and the many rooms therein. She had played in the courtyard, imagining herself defending the town against great monsters. She supposed that it was fitting that she was doing the same now.

The prison was set to the back of the barracks, a long, low building with stone walls and high, small windows. She had never been allowed to play here, but Sakina knew it too. Here was where she learned that fear had a scent.

She wrinkled her nose and Suleiman said, “Do not let him see that you are afraid. They thrive on fear, these foreigners. Keep well out of his reach. If he gets his hands on you, he will tear you to shreds.”

There were moments where Sakina wondered if her uncle forgot who she was. She was the one who found the wretch.

Hussain was waiting for them at the cell door. He lifted an eyebrow at Sakina but to Suleiman said, “He does not look like much. Is all this necessary? Can’t we just set him on a ship and send him on his way?”

“Let us first be sure that he is not a threat,” said Suleiman. To Sakina, he added, “Hussain has told me that he has a famous alim visiting, though I’ve never heard of him, so we must never hint that our town has trouble.”

Sakina wanted to say that the ancestors were convinced the visitor was trouble, but Asif had done nothing to warrant her uncle’s interest except for his unwanted advances. Instead, she said with a smile, “What are you talking about, uncle? Our town has no trouble. If we did, no one would be talking about the man we found on the beach.”

“If he is trouble, just execute him. Do keep me updated,” said Hussain, and he walked away.

The Norseman was huddled in a corner when they entered his cell. They had taken his pelt and had given him a peasant’s rough, cotton caftan. Clean and rested, it was clear that the man had light brown skin and long, loosely curling hair that formed a thick, dark crown around his head. His eyes lit up when his gaze fell on Sakina and he stood and started in English, “Where is this place? Am I in Africa?”

Stunned, she stopped and stared at him.

Suleiman had paused too when the Norseman stood up, wary of attack, but then glanced between the prisoner and Sakina and said, “Ah, so he remembers you.”

Sakina glanced at the commander and said, “He was barely awake when we found him. I thought the sun had driven him mad.”

“What are you talking about? Can you tell him that I mean you no harm? My ship was blown off course by a storm…I suppose my crew is dead,” said the man.

Sakina looked over at him, then back to her uncle and translated for him. Suleiman stared at the man for a beat, and said, “I think we should all sit.”

He sat down on the floor at the edge of the prisoner’s chain. It was a small cell and the chain was barely ten links long. How the prisoner manoeuvred in the tight space, Sakina could not guess. Sakina joined her uncle, and the prisoner carefully lowered himself to the floor. In the light of the lamp her uncle had brought in with them, Sakina saw an ordinary-looking young man, perhaps around her age or older. The ancestors had not reacted as strongly to him as they had to Asif, anyway.

Suleiman began, “Tell him exactly what I say: I am the Farin, Suleiman Yusuf, and this is our djeli, Sakina. I have asked her to come here to help us communicate. I would very much like to know where you came from.”

Sakina repeated this to the man. He nodded and said, “My name is Leif. I…I was born in England, but my father is from Norway. My uncle and I were heading to Africa for trade when we encountered the storm. I thank you for saving me and I promise that I am no threat.”

“Demon,”  said the ancestor.

Sakina looked at her uncle for approval, and said, “You are in Al-Tanan, an island at the tail end of the Niani in the West. Do you know what a djeli is?”

Her uncle snapped his gaze to her, but Sakina was watching for Leif’s reaction, so she noticed when his eyes widened. Sakina said, “You do. Then you know that we are not just, what is the word for your travelling musicians? Minstrels? We are not one of those. Depending on what you tell me, you will either walk out of this cell a free man, to offer your services to whichever captain will take you back home, or you will be executed. You know that your people want us gone.”

Leif said nothing. Sakina asked, “What are you?”

Leif exhaled heavily, but before he could reply, Suleiman said, “While he rested, we sent word to others asking if they had found wreckage or men. They had, though only two men like him wearing animal pelts, drowned in the storm. They also reported that a few fishing villages had been attacked in raids from the south. Though not by Christians, but for the first time in ages, native tribes. I cannot help but think those things connected.”

Sakina repeated this and watched as Leif gave a relieved laugh, then sighed. Finally, he said, “I had hoped we were in Africa.”

Sakina looked over at her uncle, who was studying Leif with a stony expression, waiting. Leif looked back at him and said, “We are mercenaries, available for whatever you need once you pay well enough.” He shook his head. “My uncle was hired by a nobleman and a Moor hoping to earn the king’s favour with a risky venture. My mother was a kind of djeli too, though our ancestors had left Africa centuries ago. My father on the other hand…do you know what an ulfhedinn is?”

Sakina had read the accounts. Men who wore wolf skins into battle and fought like monsters, fearless and nearly invincible. She explained for her uncle’s benefit, and Leif said, “It is my father’s legacy. His family were supposed to have converted generations ago but, well, you understand how we can keep these things alive. This was also something one could not exactly…leave behind.”

“Your people attacked us?” asked Suleiman.

“We were advised that there were native tribes to the south that would be willing allies. We were part of a small fleet, no more than five ships, but that is more than one hundred men. I…steered us into the storm, but some may have gotten away,” said Leif.

“Why should I spare you?” asked Suleiman. His expression had not changed much since Leif started talking. “My niece said that the ancestors call you a demon and you just admitted that you were hired to kill our people.”

“But I didn’t,” said Leif. “I’m not a monster. I want to help you.”

“Why?” asked Sakina. She glanced at her uncle and said, “What do you want?”

“To stop my uncle. He believes that God has mandated him to rid the Carib lands of the Moors and heathens. And he also knows that he will be rewarded richly for it, and he cares more about the money than anything. When my father died…my uncle threatened to throw my mother out of our home, sell her to the slavers. He only stopped because I told him I can Change. That I had been dreaming of the crow and the one-eyed man and the wolf threatening the moon. I was a child, saying anything to save my mother and he believed me. If he were to die here, my mother would be safe,” said Leif, looking directly at Suleiman though Sakina knew her uncle only understood half of that.

“They would kill you if they found out,” said Sakina.

“Then I die, but my mother is safe,” said Leif.

Silence reigned in the cell for several minutes after this. Sakina contemplated the paper in her hands, and her uncle. Then her uncle asked, “You said you were hired by a ‘nobleman and a Moor’?”

“The nobleman is some distant relative of the king, or so he claims. As for the Moor, I never met the man personally, but my uncle knows him. He said he was a scholar travelling the world to teach his people about the Christians. He’s also a terrible gambler who owes a lot of money. He was supposed to meet my uncle here,” said Leif.

Sakina bit back a horrified gasp. Both men noticed though, and she said, “Hussain’s visitor…there was a reaction to him too.”

“Why did you not mention that before?” asked her uncle.

“I was going to,” she replied. She asked Leif, “Is this man like you? Is it something that someone can…learn to do?”

“Yes. Or so I was told. Now it is not encouraged. There are so few of us to keep the bloodline pure,” said Leif, a little bitterly.

Sakina turned to her uncle and said, “There is a dangerous man in our midst.”

Suleiman said, “I cannot accuse a highly-respected scholar on the word of an admitted mercenary, whom I barely believe as it is. And your word, Sakina, will not be enough.”

Sakina sighed, feeling her lack of rest bearing down on her, and said, “This should not be too difficult to prove. You already have a prisoner and warning of another attack. We just need to get the alim to expose himself.”

Suleiman narrowed his eyes at her and said, “You will not endanger yourself, nor will you make any such accusations.” To Leif, he said, “I must have proof of your story. You will remain here until then, and you will speak to no one of it except me.”

“And me,” said Sakina.

Suleiman said nothing. Leif looked at them both and nodded. Then Suleiman said, “Give him a pen and paper. I will take his confession now, but he will write only what I say.”

∙∙∙

The ride back to her father’s house had never felt so long, doubly so under Naima’s interrogation. Sometime during the wait for Sakina’s return at the barracks, Naima had spoken to a few of the guards and decided that Leif was a djinn. It was a welcome distraction, as she teased her friend and gave her only the vaguest answers. This was not something she could share, and once Naima realised this, she changed tack anyway, instead telling Sakina about the business at her store.

Sakina went straight to the library when she was back at the house, ancestors whispering in her ear. It was time she started a record of this. As she sank into her chair though, someone knocked at the door.

She looked up and a shiver coursed down her spine like lightning. It was the alim.

“Greetings. So, this is the famous library of Cunapo? It is larger than I thought,” said Asif in the doorway, looking around.

“Get him out! Get him out!”  the ancestors shrieked in unison at her ear. The library was deserted at midday, for most of the usual patrons were out to lunch. While she had a fairly good idea of what Leif was now, she had no idea of Asif. There was also no one for her to call for help, not even soldiers lingering about on her uncle’s orders.

Sakina stood up awkwardly, one hand on the blank pages she had taken out for the record. Her voice broke a little as she replied, “My father wanted to outdo the glory of Timbuktu. I imagine that he has many books on the way here from his travels.”

“I can imagine,” said Asif, walking towards the shelves. “I have acquired many things in my travels as well, though I pack lightly now.”

Sakina offered a small smile and said, “It must make travel easier. By the time he returns, my father should have bankrupted us.”

“And your husband should cover it. A djeli and a trader?” asked Asif.

“He is more a trader and traveller, than djeli,” Sakina replied.

Asif nodded at that and asked, “How long have they been gone?”

“Less than a year,” said Sakina, and felt an ache in her heart. She missed Farouk and her father. At least the students kept her busy.

Asif averted his gaze to the floor, “How terrible for you.”

“I have responsibilities,” said Sakina with a dismissive wave. “Is there…anything that I can help you with?”

Asif’s eyes were dark gold when he lifted them to her. Sakina felt her hair stand on end, suddenly cold. She did not know how fast Asif could move but she had spent much of her childhood outrunning maids, teachers, soldiers, and Farouk. She would get to that door before he got to her, she knew she would. He smiled and said, “I have met djeli before, in the ‘Niani across the Sea’ as you call it. Is it true that your source of knowledge is your ancestors speaking to you?”

Sakina offered him a small smile and said, “You know I cannot tell you that. There are some things that we do not share with others.”

“I am your brother in Islam,” said Asif.

“And this is not a tradition of Islam,” said Sakina.

“Ah yes, I have heard that you are quite the scholar on traditions and native beliefs…especially monsters,” said Asif, lifting his gaze to Sakina’s.

The gold had not faded away, but instead seemed to grow brighter. Sakina dug her heels into the floor and said, “These things are very real to the people who believe in them, that should be respected.”

“The Niani Empire is so tolerant. Jews and Christians live here as comfortably as they once did in Al-Andalus, or so I’m told.”

“I do not know, I am not a Jew or a Christian, and there are few in this town,” said Sakina. “I could tell you some of the native stories sometime.”

Asif gave a little smile and said, “That is actually why I am here. Well, I did want a tour of your library, but your uncle wished to invite you to dinner on al-ahad.”

Just over his shoulder, Sakina noticed Asma hurrying over from the main house. She must have just discovered where the alim had gone. Sakina allowed herself to relax a little. To Asif she replied, “I will be there.”

“There you are, sir. I’m sorry, mistress,” said Asma politely, bustling into the room, breathing heavily.

Sakina smiled at her and said, “It’s all right. The alim is free to visit the library, as are all visitors.”

Asif’s eyes darkened to dull brown in a few blinks, and he smiled at Asma and said, “Do not trouble yourself on my account, I must be on my way anyway. Sakina the djeli, I look forward to seeing you at al-ahad.”

“I shall bring my best stories,” said Sakina, smiling at him.

As soon as he had disappeared across the courtyard again, Asma turned to her and said, “Now you know what I mean when I told you about such men being evil?”

Sakina thought about Leif in his cell. The ancestors were wary of him, even if she was not. She said, “Is that what they’re like?”

“Not exactly,” said Asma. “He is more one of your ghouls than a kanaima. Avoid him while you can.”

If she closed her eyes, Sakina was sure that she would see those glowing eyes. She nodded.

∙∙∙

Sakina had never seen her uncle more upset. For several minutes, they simply sat in his office. Sakina had no idea what had happened, so she could not offer comfort. She had been preparing for bed when the summons came. And then Suleiman lifted his head, revealing eyes wet with unshed tears and said, “An entire squad of men, gone. A village burned to ash, though most of the inhabitants escaped. We are under attack.”

“Just the Caribs?” Sakina asked, because she had to.

“No, something else. These wolf men…do they eat human flesh?” her uncle asked, forcing the words through gritted teeth.

“I do not think so, but there are stories of some among them…” she said. “I would need to speak with him further.”

Suleiman nodded and took a few deep breaths before saying, “They have been working their way north through the forest instead of by sea, which makes sense because if they had gone by sea they would have been spotted by now. We will also need reinforcements and whatever our prisoner can tell us about his uncle and his men.”

Sakina realised what he was saying and said, “If what I’ve been reading is correct, we may need his help as well.”

Suleiman closed his eyes and exhaled. Then, “Yes. But we must not alarm our dougou-tigui’s guest, not until the last minute. By now he may have heard of the man we found on the beach.”

Sakina looked out the window of the office at the moon, nearly full in a dark blue sky, took a deep breath and said, “The prisoner has confessed to a plot against the Niani. He must be executed.”

She met her uncle’s gaze and held it for a beat before he asked, “Is this the recommendation of the djeli of Cunapo?”

“The ancestors advise that he is a demon or has consorted with them. That he is descended of a line that has attacked our people in the past. He is also a Christian and will not live in peace among us like others in his community. For the safety of the Niani Empire in the West, this man must die,” said Sakina solemnly.

Her uncle studied her expression for a moment, and then said softly, “Then he will.”

∙∙∙

“They executed that man they found on the beach,” said Asma, when Sakina sat down for breakfast.

“Oh no,” said Naima, once again having her share of Sakina’s breakfast. “And I heard that he was quite handsome too. What a waste.”

“He was a pirate,” said Sakina. “The waste is that you are married to a man willing to spoil you and all you can talk about when we are together is your shop and other men.”

“I’ll have the store long after he’s dead,” said Naima with a dismissive shrug. Then, “Oh, what are you going to wear to that dinner party for the alim? Your in-laws will be in attendance and will need proof that you are miserable without your husband.”

“I will not insult my father’s household. I need something that shows me as I am, a young woman in the prime of health,” said Sakina.

Naima laughed and said, “I told you that you need to live a little.”

∙∙∙

The howl sounded just as Sakina was finishing her second song. Gasps filled the room. Everything came to a halt. Sakina looked over at Asif, who had gone still.

∙∙∙

Suleiman gave Sakina the keys to unlock Leif’s shackles. Leif watched her do it, then looked up at her uncle and said, “If you want to stop this attack, you need more men than you have here.”

“That is already being taken care of,” said Suleiman.

Leif dropped his gaze back to Sakina and said, “You need more men than that.”

Sakina glanced at her uncle and replied, “Tell him.”

Leif sat up straighter in his seat on the floor and said, “My father’s ancestors followed a one-eyed god who thrived on war and bloodshed. They called him Odin, but he has many names. They prayed to him for success, and carried his symbols into battle on their shields. In turn, he rewarded some of the warriors with the traits of the fiercest animals they knew, the bear, the warthog, and the wolf. My father showed me our family’s shield once. It was an ancient, grey thing, even the bloodstains, but strong. I could still see the wolf eating the moon carved into the boss and the bitemarks my ancestors had left along the edges. I remember asking him why it looked like some of our ancestors were dogs.”

∙∙∙

There was a second howl and this time, a tray slipped from a servant’s hands, dropping with a clatter. Asif lifted his head to look at the servant, his eyes glowing. Sakina took a breath, and Hussain said, “Someone get that silly girl out of here, and clean up that mess.”

His voice was shaking.

∙∙∙

Leif smiled softly, gaze distant as he continued, “I thought my father would give me a good one about the back of my head for that, or just laugh, but he replied, ‘This is the most valuable piece of your inheritance. Among our people it identifies you as one of the wolves, not dogs. We are ulfhednar, Odin’s special warriors, who run into battle at his side. One day, like your uncle and I, you’re going to turn with the moon.’”

Sakina translated this for her uncle and the farin put his hand on the sword at his hip and asked, “What does that mean?”

∙∙∙

The ancestors were whispering fervently at Sakina’s ear, “Everyone in this room is a hostage and a target. The most vulnerable must be sheltered.”

“Outside it is easier for him to slip away. The wolf does not know these woods, but he knows how to hide himself in them.”

“Demon! Demon! Demon!”

At the third howl, closer now so that Sakina could tell that the creature that made it was big, she stood and said, “We are under attack.”

“What?” Hussain sputtered, standing as well. “What are you talking about? No. Sit down, woman.”

∙∙∙

Leif stood and reached for the collar of his caftan. Then he glanced at Sakina and said, “Do you still have my wolf skin?”

Sakina asked her uncle who sent one of the soldiers at the door for it. While they waited, Leif said, “Perhaps you should wait outside while I show your uncle what I mean.”

Sakina scoffed and said, “I am the djeli of Cunapo. Whatever you tell him, you can tell me.”

The guard returned, and Sakina handed Leif the pelt herself. He hesitated again with his hands on his collar, but she stared until he pulled the caftan over his head, and replaced it with the pelt. Almost as soon as he pulled the hollowed-out wolf’s head atop his own, his eyes glowed grey-white and he dropped to all fours.

“What is he doing?” her uncle cried, alarmed, backing into the door.

“Wait,” said Sakina.

Leif turned to them when her uncle spoke and walked forward. Suleiman stood his ground, lifting his chin though he was gripping his sword hilt so tightly, his fingers paled. The pelt melted over Leif’s form, spreading thick black fur over his arms and legs. Between one step and the next, the man became a massive black wolf. Suleiman’s mouth fell open, his eyes wide. The ancestors at Sakina’s ear were almost speaking over each other.

“See how his body redistributed his weight to accommodate the difference in size between the man and the animal?”

“Keep calm, it has all the senses of the animal and the intelligence of the man. If it senses that you are afraid it will rip out your throat.”

“There are few things that can harm this creature, but you wear a silver chain. Keep it close.”

Sakina remembered Asma’s stories and asked, “How many of you did your uncle bring?”

The wolf turned its piercing stare to her, but backed away from her uncle and Changed back to a man to reply.

“Not very many, though there were not a lot of us to begin with. We can pass this gift to our children, but not all of them, or we can make someone like us with a bite. But outside of the battlefield, it’s not a very useful gift. Our people were traders by nature, and adventurers. They met others who lived differently and moved away from the old gods. The oldest Clans, made of families who passed it through their bloodline, did not and were forced underground or scattered. Others, like the family my father came from, were made up of people who had been bitten and Changed. The Clans hated them, called them Packs and the name stuck. I was born this way, but we are no Clan, no matter what my uncle wants.”

“The alim is like him,” said Sakina to her uncle. “I’m sure of it.”

∙∙∙

Asif stood when Sakina spoke and said, “You sang beautifully of the creature…the kanaima. I’ve always found it fascinating how, no matter where you are in the world, little girls love monsters.”

He met Sakina’s gaze directly and as she looked at him, his eyes grew bigger, his mouth widened, and jaw elongated. Her heart started racing. Hussain, who still had not noticed anything, was ordering the servants around. The guests, not at all reassured, were trying to make their way out, but guards directed them further into the house. Then came the fourth howl and Asif, almost as if he could not help himself, threw his head back and answered.

Someone screamed. Hussain jolted away from Asif, stumbled over his own feet, and fell. Sakina squeezed her hands into fists and said, “What have you done to yourself, Asif al-Idrisi?”

He dropped his gaze to her and said, “I like monsters too. Tell me, djeli, did your ancestors warn you what I was when you met me? I do know some things about your kind, you see. I told you before, I have been to Timbuktu.”

Sakina did not reply, watching for the others now scurrying out the door. Asif followed her gaze and said, “It does not matter whether they leave or not. They will not survive tonight anyway.”

∙∙∙

“With enough of your soldiers you could probably take care of the others. I have done nothing for the past few days but sit in this cell eating and resting, but they have been marching and raiding. They will be tired, which is good for you, but the moon and the Change will have a stronger hold on their minds, which is not. Your men must not hesitate to attack, and it is best to cut off their heads because short of that or impaling their hearts, they will heal and come again,” said Leif.

“The attacks have been following a path that leads here and at that rate, we only have a few days until they’re at the door. I will go get the reinforcements myself,” said Suleiman.

“In the meantime, it is best that your alim not suspect trouble,” said Leif.

“Of course not,” said Sakina. “That is why you must die first, tonight.”

Leif reared back, then dropped his gaze. Clearly, he had been hoping to save himself with his story. Sakina said, “It is best that it happens here, quietly, to avoid a spectacle. The body will be buried with the other prisoners behind the barracks, where there also happens to be a large, thick forest that the Caribs insist are full of monsters.”

Leif lifted his gaze back to her, brow furrowed in confusion.

“A huge black dog should hardly be out of the ordinary for them,” said Sakina.

“We will need a body,” said Suleiman.

“And a stray dog for the pelt,” Sakina added.

∙∙∙

“Those ancestors did warn me, and I’ve been reading since you arrived. The Christians you betrayed us to have written many books. What could you possibly gain by aligning yourself with these people?” asked Sakina.

“So now I am your brother in Islam,” Asif snorted. Then, “Their victory is inevitable. I have seen their armies, I have met their leaders. While ours squabble and waste, they have been building their strength.”

“On the backs of our people, whether in Al-Andalus or fields to the north and south. But we have met every one of their attempts and we’re still here. The only thing that seems inevitable is their failure,” said Sakina.

“Our people?” asked Asif, with a laugh. “Granada and Baghdad are no different. Your mansa may have outlawed slavery in these lands, a political ploy to weaken our enemies, but our cousins have always enriched themselves on the trade. My dear girl, you know the words, but you do not know the song. Even in your supposed paradise, I have seen that your natives and foreigners alike must pay jizya to the Mansa. I have seen plenty when I am not in your in-law’s sight. Did you really execute that prisoner?”

“I gave my opinion to the farin, and he did what he thought was best,” said Sakina.

Asif nodded and said, “I liked Leif. His uncle is an animal though—you heard those howls. A shame the boy was the one that died.”

Suddenly, the front gate of the compound burst open and her uncle’s soldiers rushed in. Beyond, they heard a battle: the clash of steel and the thunk as it cut into flesh, the aborted cries of men and animals, and more howling. Her uncle had not been able to stop the attack from getting into the town then. Sakina tried not to move, but Asif advanced on her and then he had her by the throat. She grasped his hands to stop him from choking her, but he laughed and said, “Did he tell you a few secrets before he…died? That was not very kind of him. Where is he?”

Something slammed into them, sending Sakina sprawling. She screamed, startled, but then a soldier was pulling her to her feet. When she looked back at the courtyard, a great black wolf was snarling at a tall, thin man with deformed legs and black-clawed fingers. It stood almost as tall as the man, its eyes a ring of greyish-white light round fathomless black, and its blood-stained jaw the length of Sakina’s forearm. There was blood on the wolf’s paws too, leaving prints all over the patterned tile. Asif noticed it and said, “Did you kill your uncle? Of course you did. And you told the djeli and her people of my plan too. You are all fools together.”

He lunged at the wolf. It leaped out of the way then launched itself at his back, snapping at his throat. The soldiers kept their weapons up, and pushed Sakina backwards. Asif shook the wolf off, slashing at its sides. The wolf snapped at his fingers, then pounced at his throat again, sinking its dagger-like teeth into Asif’s shoulder as it forced him to the ground. Asif yelled, then laughed and shoved the wolf away. The wound on his shoulder was black, the blood oozing. More than one of the soldiers around her was shaking so loud, their weapons rattled.

“It fears fire,” whispered an ancestor.

Sakina looked around for a lamp, and spotted a large, colourful one that Hussain had boasted of importing from Morocco. She pushed her way through the soldiers at once.

“I am so much more than anything you have ever faced. Do you know the monsters that live in the shadows of this world?” asked Asif. “Did you think that you all were the only ones?”

The wolf was circling him, and Asif turning with it. Sakina grabbed the lamp and nearly fell over at the weight. Thankfully the soldier next to her noticed, and helped her lift it. Then he realised what he was doing and said, “I cannot let you do this.”

“You better help me do it,” Sakina snapped. She pushed forward, and he went with her.

The wolf had just aborted another lunge for Asif, whose back was to them. Sakina and the soldier swung her hand back and forth for a count of three, then threw the lamp forward on the fourth. It shattered just inches from Asif’s feet, and he leaped away with a yell, but not before the flames rushed up his oil-spattered leg. The soldier grabbed Sakina by the arm and dragged her away from the flames.

The wolf took advantage of Asif’s distraction too. It pounced, and grasping him by the face and neck, slammed him to the ground. Asif screamed and slashed at the wolf’s jaw, but it tightened its grip and shook him until they heard a sharp crack and the alim went limp. The soldier tried to shield Sakina from the carnage, but she pushed him away. The wolf ripped the scholar’s head clear off, tossed it into the flame, then lifted his head and howled at the moon.

∙∙∙

Sakina woke late the next morning, the ancestors silent for once. Naima was waiting for her.

“I heard that the scholar was killed last night in the attack. This is going to create all sorts of trouble, and business from the curious coming into town,” she said.

“Good to see that your priorities are in order,” said Sakina, sipping her coffee.

“Yes, yes, it was tragic, but none of our people died, and your uncle is going to get a promotion. I have even heard that the mansa might want to meet the djeli who helped him figure it out,” said Naima, smiling at her. “It’s a shame that we could not have spared the man who brought the news to us.”

“He was part of it, remember?” said Sakina, shaking her head at her friend.

Naima was unapologetic, “All the same, I could have done with a hand in the store.”

Sakina scoffed and said, “Tell you what, if I find another man washed up on the beach, I will tell you first, so you can make your appeals to my uncle.”

Later that day, when Sakina went to visit her uncle at the barracks, she found a large, black dog resting comfortably near his feet.

“This will not do,” Sakina scolded as she entered the room and took a seat. “You’re scaring your soldiers.”

“They will have to get used to it. This may not be the last time we are attacked like this and my new friend here has knowledge that we can use,” he replied without looking up from his papers.

“What are you telling your superiors?” she asked.

“The truth: we were set upon by mercenaries, and saved by the quick thinking of the djeli of the Great Library of Al-Tanan. It would be just our luck that you get your own epic out of this,” Suleiman said, grimacing lightly before returning to his papers.

“It already sounds like a classic,” said Sakina, smiling at him. “Father and Farouk are going to be jealous.”

“They’re going to scold me for allowing you to get yourself in trouble,” said Suleiman.

“They’ll be too busy getting to know your new pet,” said Sakina, looking down at the wolf.

It growled at her and she said, “Watch who you’re growling at. You need us as much as we need you.”

Leif went silent. Sakina continued, “Besides, I’ve been thinking of how we can make you less conspicuous and my friend gave me an idea at breakfast. If your mother can make her way to the port, we can arrange to have a ship bring her here. It’s much easier than getting you out and we have new settlers arriving with almost every ship. How does that sound?”

Leif met her gaze for a few beats and then shifted closer to rest his head near her feet. Suleiman watched him go, and said to Sakina, “You’re a djeli, not the dyamani-tigui. You cannot just decide such a thing.”

Sakina looked back up at the farin and said, “He saved us. The very least we can do is reward him by saving his mother. The mansa has already declared that any who could make it to our shores are free, and if his mother is safe here, what reason does he have to leave?”

They both looked again at the wolf. Leif kept his head down, and looked off into the distance. Suleiman sighed and asked, “Is this the decision of the djeli of Cunapo?”

Sakina smiled at him and replied, “Don’t worry uncle, I’m sure there shall be songs about you too.”

—END—

Glossary:

Alim – scholar

Dougou-tigui – village master

Carib – one of the pre-Columbian tribes of the Caribbean

Djeli – griot/griotte

Dyamani-tigui – province master/governor

Farin – military commander

Kafo-tigui – county master

Kanaima – creature of Carib folklore

Maghan – prince

Mansa – king of kings/emperor

Niani Empire – Ancient Mali

ABOUT SHARI PAUL

Shari Paul is 31 and from Trinidad and Tobago where she is earning an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of the West Indies. Shari has mostly written fanfiction, and she’s also self-published one novel online. She is currently working on a young adult novel, learning French, and working to reach her next belt level in shotokan karate.

ESSAY

BLACK EMPIRE: GEORGE SCHUYLER, BLACK RADICALISM, AND DIESELPUNK

By Phenderson Djèlí Clark

Editor’s note:   This essay on alternate histories and black counterfactuals originally appeared on P. Djèlí Clark’s blog: pdjeliclark.wordpress.com. It has been lightly edited.

Sometime in the 1930s, a black journalist is kidnapped in Harlem by the charismatic Dr. Henry Belsidius, leader of the Black Internationale–a shadowy organization determined to build a Black Empire and overthrow the world of white racial hegemony with cunning and super science.

Journalist George S. Schulyer’s fantastic tale was written in serials in the black Pittsburgh Courier between 1936 and 1938 under the pseudonym Samuel I. Brooks. It quickly found a loyal following among African-American readers, who saw in Dr. Belsidius and the Black Internationale a heroic, sci-fi tale of black nationalism, triumph, and race pride. The newspaper was surprised at the serials’ growing popularity, and pushed for more–sixty-two in all. Yet no one was as surprised at the story’s success than George Schulyer who, disdaining what he saw as the excesses of black nationalism and race pride, had written Black Empire as satire.

George Schuyler was probably one of the premiere black journalists and satirists of his day, writing for established black magazines like the Crisis, Messenger  and Negro Digest, as well as more mainstream white-run publications including The Washington Post, The Nation  and, most famously, American Mercury. Schuyler’s politics was in constant flux during the years and in this heady day of black politics, social movements, and culture he found his beliefs undergoing several phases. Starting out with an interest in Marcus Garvey’s  “Back to Africa” Movement and the UNIA, he eventually dissented, joining A. Philip Randolph’s organizing group, the Friends of Negro Freedom.

Throughout his tenure as a journalist in the 1920s he wrote numerous articles on black life in the North and South, always offering his strong opinions–laced with satire and skepticism. At one point he dismissed the Harlem Renaissance  flowering about him as mere “hokum” and “hullabaloo,” which could not be counted as actual art because it allegedly segregated itself. He chastised black organizations like the NAACP and figures like W.E.B. DuBois, especially their notion of a Talented Tenth, all part of a black bourgeoisie political machine whose notions he found elitist and ill-suited to the “Negro Problem”–if, he seemed to suggest, there really was such a thing. He was particularly critical of organized religion, most pointedly Christianity, which he believed to be filled with huckster preachers that allowed ignorance and racism to flourish. He called instead for a cadre of black atheists who would reject a god forced on them through slavery, one that “permits them to be lynched, Jim-Crowed, and disenfranchised.”

In one of his most radical works in 1929, he wrote a pamphlet that called for mass racial inter-marriage as a solution to the race problem. Yet, in what was often a conflicting pattern, Schuyler found himself supporting black outrage and activism over the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and years earlier intimated strong Pan-Africanist leanings, praising the deported UNIA leader Marcus Garvey as a man with a “vision:”

He sees plainly that everywhere in the Western and Eastern hemispheres the Negro, regardless of his religion or nationality, is being crushed under the heel of white imperialism and exploitation. Rapidly the population of the world is being aligned in two rival camps: white and black. The whites have arms, power, organization, wealth; the blacks have only their intelligence and their potential power. If they are to be saved, they must be organized so they can present united opposition to those who seek to continue their enslavement. (George S. Schuyler, Interstate Tattler, August 23, 1929)

Schulyer’s brand of “unique,” at times contradictory, left-leaning politics ended abruptly sometime after WWII. Having spent near a decade working for the NAACP, he became caught up in the Red Scare  hysteria of his age and–denouncing socialism–took a hard turn to the right. In 1947 he would pen The Communist Conspiracy against the Negroes and even contribute to ultra-right groups like the John Birch Society.  The emerging Civil Rights movement became a favorite target, and no one was spared–including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Stiffly opposing King’s awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, Schuyler wrote a scathing letter calling King a fraud and comparing his message to a disease: “Dr. King’s principal contribution to world peace has been to roam the country like some sable Typhoid Mary, infecting the mentally disturbed with perversions of Christian doctrine, and grabbing fat lecture fees from the shallow-pated.” The editorial was so inflammatory, the Courier  refused to publish it. In 1966 Schulyer detailed his emergent political philosophy in an autobiography, Black and Conservative. By his death in 1977 his views, and his often scornful rhetoric, left him largely disconnected with the larger African-American community and his name mostly disappeared.

Yet, Schulyer couldn’t be forgotten altogether. I first learned about him in the 2000 excerpt of his story of race and satire Black No More  which was included in the anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. Originally printed in 1931, the novel tells the tale of an inventor named Dr. Crookmore who creates a “black-no-more” treatment, allowing anyone to change their skin-color from black to white–down to their features and hair texture, which is made over as blonde. In short time, the United States is populated by all white people–leading to a massive identity-crisis and series of unforeseen events. Predating Dr. Seuss’s children’s tale of star-bellied Sneeches by thirty years, Schulyer’s satirical tale of mad-science gone wrong doesn’t fail to disappoint in its controversy. Unsparing in its condemnation of both blacks and whites, the story creates caricatures of well-known black activists and even seems to compare the KKK and the NAACP, as huckster organizations who used race their own ends.

It is in this vein, as the leftist critical of the black political institutions and movements of his era, that in 1936 Schulyer began publishing his serials of Dr. Belsidius and the Black Internationale. Pulling once more on speculative fiction, Schulyer tells his story (fittingly) from the perspective of a black journalist, Carl Slater. By random chance, Slater witnesses the murder of a white woman by a black assailant who then kidnaps him. The murderer is Dr. Belsidius, who is in the habit of seducing wealthy white women for his diabolical aims. Slater is persuaded to work for Dr. Belsidius (declining the offer means death) and is introduced to the secret underworld of the Black Internationale.

∙∙∙

In Black Empire,  Schulyer’s political and social ideologies are recast in myth and metaphor. Dr. Belsidius, is both a megalomaniac and a genius, a shrewd towering figure of black masculinity able to manipulate with his wit (he uses dashing white women as secret agents) and capable of ruthless brutality in pursuit of his aims–like some fantastic blending of Marcus Garvey with the fascism that Schulyer would have seen sweeping much of the world at the time. Dr. Belsidius is the founder, creator, and leader of the Black Internationale, a group whose sole aim is to unite the black world to overthrow white racial hegemony. This begins by a meeting of the diaspora, pulling together blacks from the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe and colonized Africa. Dr. Belsidius presents his plans to them without a chance of refusal; those blacks who are skeptical he labels as race traitors, who are subsequently killed.

Dr. Belsidius is an inventor extraordinaire, utilizing super science in the form of solar power, underground aircraft facilities, hydroponics, eugenics and death rays in his plans of world conquest; there is even the prediction of revolutionary new inventions like the fax machine, and on a much more somber note, the gas chambers of Nazi Germany–essential dieselpunk in all its wonder and horrors. He even invents a religion to help unify black people the world over. Pulling on his beliefs in the innate simplicity of the human psyche, Dr. Belsidius creates the Church of Black Love–complete with a set of tenets, prayer and idol. Its adherents are lulled into acceptance of its orthodoxy by the release of a gas, that renders them so giddy they roll around on the floor and shake and speak in tongues.

Throughout the story we are treated to Dr. Belsidius monologues as he explains in blunt terms the logic of his plans:

…all great schemes appear mad in the beginning. Christians, Communists, Fascists and Nazis were at first called scary. Success made them sane. With brains, courage and wealth even the most fantastic scheme can become a reality. I have dedicated my life, Slater, to destroying white world supremacy. My ideal and objective is very frankly to cast down Caucasians and elevate the colored people in their places. I plan to do this by every means within my power. I intend to stop at nothing, Slater, whether right or wrong. Right is success. Wrong is failure. I will not fail because I am ruthless. Those who fail are them men who get sentimental, who weaken, who balk at a little bloodshed. Such vermin deserve to fail. Every great movement the world has ever seen has collapsed because it grew weak. I shall never become weak, nor shall I ever tolerate weakness around me. Weakness means failure, Slater, and I do not intend to fail.

Seeming to predict WWII, Schulyer writes Dr. Belsidius as a mastermind who foments war and tension in the United States and Europe, all meant to weaken the colonial hold on Africa. The Italians play a key role as the enemies of Africa (no doubt an allusion to the Italian conquest of Addis-Ababa, which would have been popular in the minds of readers) and bear the brunt of Dr. Belsidius’s wrath. In time the Internationale is triumphant, and Africa is liberated–only to fall under the control of Dr. Belsidius, who becomes both ruler, god and tyrant.

To understand Black Empire,  one has to understand Schuyler. As you read his work, you realize early on it is satire, and bitingly so. The Black Internationale is no vision of utopian black nationalism or Pan Africanism existing on a higher moral plane. In its Machiavellian motives, it is as amoral and oppressive as that which it fights against. It paints the black struggle, black race consciousness and race pride as the work of charlatans and flim-flam men, peddlers of fantasies and snake oil. The Black Internationale, like the Church of God, are really machinations of one twisted mind, tools towards an ultimate goal. And its black adherents are superstitious, pliable, gullible and easily manipulated.

Yet at the same time, Schulyer can’t help but instill some form of grudging admiration for what he mocks. Dr. Belsidiuis is smart enough to outwit his white enemies; the black scientists and inventors he recruits are able to achieve wonders beyond the white world; and, probably most important, the Black Internationale is brilliantly effective. It is Pan-Africanism, black nationalism and race pride–which he often ridiculed in real life as impractical–working (in its own way) and exacting change for black people.

In a sharp analysis and overview featured in the afterword of the reprint, Robert Hill and Kent Rasmussen suggests that this was no coincidence, hinting that Black Empire  may have been a type of mask for Schuyler’s own radical vision. In Dr. Belsidius and the Black Internationale is a form of black radicalism that moves beyond the passivity he saw in the Black Talented Tenth and the impractical pomp of Garvey and the UNIA. It is a tale that fits Schuyler’s own hopes for black mass mobilization, the type that if effective would have found a way to liberate Ethiopia and fight against global discrimination.

As if channeling his own dichotomous nature, the narrator of the story, the journalist Slater, is often at once fearful and admiring of the mad scientist and his plans. Dr. Belsidius himself turns out in the end to echo Schulyer’s own hopes. With the enemies of Africa defeated and the continent on ascendancy to world dominance, the ruthless tyrant makes a surprising appeal of moral transcendence to his followers:

And now, a word of warning to the black people of the world. You have a great empire created out of black brains and strength…. You must not make the mistake of the white man and try to enslave others, for that is the beginning of every people’s fall. You must banish race hatred from your hearts, now that you have your own land, but you must remain ever vigilant to defend this continent which is rightfully ours. I have led you to victory…. Now I shall lead you to a higher civilization than Europe has ever seen, with your consent. The glory that was once Egypt’s and Ethiopia’s and Benin’s and Timbuctoo’s and Songhoy’s and Morocco’s shall again make Africa first in the family of nations.

It is on this note of denouncement of white hegemony, and the possibility of a black run world cleansed of race-hatred, that Dr. Belsidius, and by extension Schulyer, ends his tale. The last words in the story are of Slater’s description of a white woman, Martha Gaskin, one of Dr. Belsidius’s key agents, shedding tears and wringing her handkerchief at their leader’s words. We are left to ponder the reason for her tears. Is she crying because she knows her part in the overthrow of white global dominance? Or is she equally overjoyed at the end of the burden of white supremacy and the possibility of a world cleansed of racism?

The reception and success of the serials of the Black Internationale left Schulyer in a conundrum. On the one hand, here was his chance to lay out his thoughts (tongue-in-cheek and laced with mockery) of the many popular black political strategies and philosophies of the day. On the other hand, black readers were eating it up; he was making popular precisely that which he disdained:

I have been greatly amused by the public enthusiasm for ‘The Black Internationale,’ which is hokum and hack work of the purest vein. I deliberately set out to crowd as much race chauvinism and sheer improbability into it as my fertile imagination could conjure. The result vindicates my low opinion of the human race. (Schuyler to Prattis, April 4, 1937)

And perhaps indeed, the last laugh was on Schulyer. Black Empire  remains one of his most popular remembered works of fiction, and saw a reprint in 1991–in part with the help of none other than the Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project at the University of California. Dr. Belsidius, the ultimate mad genius, may have in the end outwitted his own creator.

_______________________________________________________

References:

George S. Schuyler, Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, AD 1933-1940  (1st ed. 1931)

George S. Schuyler, Black Empire  ed. by Robert A. Hill and Kent Rasmussen (Northeastern University Press, 2000)

Robert A. Hill and Kent Rasmussen, “Afterword” in Black Empire by George S. Schuyler (Northeastern University Press, 2000)

Oscar R. Williams, George S. Schuyler: Portrait of a Black Conservative  (University of Tennessee Press, 2007)

ABOUT P. DJÈLÍ CLARK

P. Djèlí Clark is an author of speculative fiction whose writing has been published in online venues such as Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Lightspeed, Tor.com and in print anthologies including Griots  I & II, Steamfunk,  and Hidden Youth. His work has also been included in the 2016 Locus Recommended Reading List and among the Notable Stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2017. When not writing speculative fiction, P.Djèlí Clark is a professor of history who focuses on issues of slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic World.

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.

This issue’s feature is Colby R. Rice’s THE GIVEN:

Welcome to the Alchemic Apartheid...

For over one hundred years the Civic Order and the Alchemic Order have held a shaky truce, peppered by violence and mistrust. But when Koa, a Civilian-born insurgency, bombs an Alchemist summit, the truce is shattered. Now, Koa is rising. War is coming. And all sixteen-year-old Zeika Anon can do is keep moving as she watches the lords of alchemy slowly overtake her home.

But when clashes between Koa and the Alchemic Order put a final, deadly squeeze on the remaining Civilian territories, Zeika finds herself in the crosshairs of fate. She must walk the line between survival and rebellion against the Alchemists. On one side of the line awaits death. On the other, the betrayal of her civilization, her loyalties, and herself.

CONTENT WARNING - Contains coarse language, intense violence, adult / suggestive themes, and aberrant behavior. Reader discretion is advised.

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.

AVAILABLE VIA AMAZON, B&N, and iBOOKS  |   KOBO   |   INTERVIEW

THE GIVEN

By Colby R. Rice

PROLOGUE

Shadows flittered in the night, and Xakiah jerked his head up, his eyes automatically tracking the movements. The light was sparse, but even from the passenger seat of the truck, his eyes could outline the three distant figures in the dark. About thirty yards away, the shadows of the hunted jerked and twitched with a contained haste as they assembled themselves in their sedan. It was time. The driver would be first.

        He lifted the rifle and anchored the butt in the soft of his shoulder. He lowered his eye into the scope, positioning the crosshairs over the figure settling into the driver's seat. As he began to depress the trigger, he wondered how exactly the man's head would splatter— when the tires of the sedan screeched  against the asphalt, and it shot off into the dark.

        "Shit," Xakiah hissed, letting the scope drop. "Gun it, Joseph!"

His body felt slick with a cold sweat as their truck roared to life and lurched forward. Joseph jammed his foot down onto the gas pedal, pushing nearly one hundred as the truck's tires kicked up the slag of the country road.

        My mission. Mine.

        His jaw ached beneath the grind of his teeth. Their hubris was surprising, that they fancied even for a moment he'd let them get away after what they'd done.

        A sharp clack  of a round being chambered ricocheted through the truck as Bly, a teammate sitting behind Joseph, prepared to shoot. The only man in the van who didn't move was the one sitting directly behind Xakiah, silent beneath his hood and cloak. He looked out of his window, even, his chin on his knuckles, as though enjoying a slow Sunday drive.

        The fleeing sedan far in front of them turned and reeled off the dark path, clunking across the vast stretch of green that separated the road from the main highway.

        " Don't  lose them, Joseph." Xakiah said, his voice low in the dark.

        "Y-yes, sir!" Joseph said, a whimper choking his voice. He veered off the road, leaves and branches snapping in dry whispers as he leaned in harder on the gas, following the hunted across the soft, mushy green. Both cars' headlights made yellow eyes in the growing dark, like one nighttime monster chasing another.

        Xakiah grinned, joy swelling under his frustration. They were going catch them. He  was going to win— and he felt himself nearly thrown into the driver's seat as Joseph yanked the steering wheel, sending the truck into a hard lean.

        The truck's tires lifted a couple inches from the ground, and the far right side of the windshield exploded open, fragments of glass flying inward as hot metal grazed the SUV in a messy swarm. A rogue in the scattered cloud clipped Xakiah across the high crest of his cheek, kicking up a curl of flesh, a splash of blood. As his mind made sense of the pain, his joy eroded. Bullets. The thieving bastards had the audacity to shoot …

        He focused his thoughts on the wound, and his flesh began to heal itself. "Vassal—?"

        "I'm fine, Proficient," the man behind him cooed.

        Joseph jerked the truck to the side again as more bullets whined in the night. They were already just a couple minutes off the freeway, which budded with shining cars and vans.

        "Christ, Joseph! My granny burns rubber better'n you!" Bly shouted from the backseat.

        "What the hell are you waiting for, then?!" Joseph cried. "Shoot back!"

        Bly leaned out his window and sprayed, aiming for the tires of the fleeing sedan.

        The truck lurched from side to side as Joseph avoided the returning gunfire. "We're losing ground!" He yelled.

        Xakiah leaned forward, realizing that he was right. The rebel's muscle car skirted the mud with ease, whereas their truck was in danger of toppling over if Joseph made another turn like that…

        "That Page is the heart of the Order, Proficient."

        The simplicity of his Vassal's statement threaded calm through the dark belly of the car, but the threat in his voice was unmistakable.

        Xakiah locked his jaw, nodding as much from obedience as from the tightness in his throat that had stolen his voice. If they didn't get the Page back, he'd be punished. But far worse than that, his Vassal would be disappointed. He wouldn't fail. He couldn't …

        "Take them out," his Vassal murmured. "I know you can."

        Xakiah swallowed and nodded at him, fear and pride swelling in his chest. He rolled down the window, and wind blasted into the truck. With a smooth slide, he navigated his body through, positioning himself on the ledge.

        White bursts of fire lit the night as Bly's shots knocked out one of the sedan's tires, slowing it down. Thirty seconds until they hit the freeway.

        "Steady, Joseph," Xakiah said, lifting the rifle scope to his eye. He focused his thoughts on the driver's head, searching for it in the long dark stretch in front of him. He had homed in on the driver right before they sped off, and he could do it again. He just had to feel it.

        He stared down the scope, letting it drift across the swerving sedan, and something aligned, linking his slamming heart, the rifle, his eye, and the bobbing head of the driver far in front of them. He pulled the trigger—

        Shp!  —and the driver's head snapped forward, slamming into the steering wheel. Metal squealed high, and rubber peeled from the rims of the sedan as it veered off its path. It crashed into the bordering thickets of the highway, the hood folding in on itself like an accordion, crushed.

        Bly roared with triumph, slamming his fist into Joseph's headrest. "Xakiah, man, you're an animal!"

        Xakiah frowned as he looked back at him.

        "Uh, I mean—" Bly stuttered. "Nice job, Captain."

        "Badges," Xakiah commanded.

        "Yeah. Right."

        Joseph maneuvered the truck a few feet away from the crash. They had barely rolled to a stop before Bly popped open his door, jumped out, and ran over to the wreck. Joseph hurried after him, his gun up.

        Xakiah followed, holding up his rifle, aiming at the overturned car. The fools. The hunted could have any number of traps prepared, and the young rookies were ambling over, hooting in celebration. He, on the other hand, kept his distance, and his eyes remained ready for even the slightest movement. Joseph and Bly were good cops, for what flatfeet were worth, but neither of them understood the true magnitude of this mission.

        Behind him, Vassal Moss seemed to glide out of the truck, never once making a noise in the night. The leaves didn't even crunch beneath his feet as he followed them to the crash.

Bly and Joseph had already made their ways over to the steaming wreckage and were fumbling with something in the front seat. There was scuffling, and a scared whine wound its way out of the twisted metal as the two agents dragged something out of the front passenger seat. One of the hunted was still alive.

        Bly threw the rebel to the ground and spat on its shadow. "Lay down, scum!" he snarled.

Xakiah tightened his grip on his rifle. Bly, like a jackal, was stealing his  kill.

        "Calm, Proficient," Vassal murmured from behind him.

        Xakiah nodded tightly at the warning. His Vassal knew him well, too  well, but he was right. Closing out this mission was more important than a few seconds of glory. Resigned, Xakiah slung his rifle on his shoulder as he approached the two agents.

        "Only one survivor, Captain," Joseph announced. "The driver's head is dog meat, and the one in the back died in the crash."

        Joseph tossed him something, and Xakiah caught it, already knowing what it was. A porcelain mask, just the bottom-half of it, hard and smooth. A tell-tale trademark of the Knights of Almaut— Koa— terrorist dogs who fancied themselves men.

        Xakiah cradled the mask in his hand, feeling the ridges of the molded nose, cheeks, and mouth, all of them together barely the size of his own palm. It was the captive's. He looked up at the squirming rebel, finally noticing the long red hair that spilled out onto the grass—

        A woman.

        He smiled, somehow feeling impressed amidst his annoyance. Her face was speckled with a constellation of freckles, acne  even. She couldn't have been any older than 16.

        "Show her to me." The soft command had come from the shadowed man at Xakiah's heels, the Vassal.

        Joseph and Bly hoisted the rebel to her knees and lowered their heads in the Vassal's direction. Xakiah cast down his eyes and stepped to the side, allowing his Vassal to pass before he lifted his gaze again.

        The Vassal stood before the captive, staring at her with soft eyes. Finally he spoke: "How young. I might have known Koa would send pups to do a dog's work. What should I do with you, I wonder? What purpose will you serve?"

        "No purpose, sir," Bly said. "I say kill the Koan scum."

        "No. We'll do no such thing. We are to honor the Articles39," the Vassal replied. He turned to Xakiah. "The car."

        Xakiah nodded and went to work. He tossed the sedan, cast the corpses aside, ripped up carpet, gutted the trunk, seats, and glove compartment, or what was left of it. Nothing. There weren't even any signs  of it. No traces of energy, not even a ripple in the air where it might have passed through. Nothing betrayed its location.

        He frowned, turning to his superior. "Vassal. This faction must have been a decoy so that the real transport could get away." Bitterness coated his tongue, almost forcing the words back. "They've hidden it somewhere else."

        His Vassal's cold gaze flickered, and Xakiah tensed, expecting words of admonishment or worse, disappointment… but to his surprise, the Vassal said nothing. Instead, he turned to the rebel.

        "Lift her up," he ordered.

        Joseph and Bly hoisted the woman to her feet so that her gaze was level with his.

        "You Azure bastards can go to Hell," she said, the pubescent snarl clear. "You can't kill me. Even your own code won't allow it."

        "Oh no, we aren't going to kill you at all," Vassal agreed. "That's barbaric."

        The man balled up his hand, and— schhhleck—  the girl's face fell from her cheekbones and cartilage, slapping wetly against the grass. She howled, a long wailing sound that whistled from the milky shine of her jaw. As she screamed, the large white balls in her eye sockets rolled, like slippery hardboiled eggs, and her teeth, exposed to the gums, clacked together with frenetic snaps.

        "Xakiah, if you please," the Vassal said.

        Bly and Joseph's faces paled with terror, but without so much as a flicker of disgust, Xakiah scooped the dripping wrinkles of skin from the ground, gripping it in a fist.

        "Display, please."

        Xakiah held the sagging flesh in front of the woman's eyes. The cheeks and lips of it drooped, as though lamenting the girl's disfigurement.

        "Three cc's of morphine, please, Joseph."

        Trembling, Joseph pulled the kit from his side pack and began to prepare the anesthetic. Bly held her, still turning his eyes away as Joseph slid the needle into the base of her neck and emptied its contents. Then the Vassal stepped forward, bringing his nose close to her face.

        "I can imagine that you are in incredible pain," he said. "The morphine is to numb that for you so we can talk."

        "Ooou astards!" She screamed, but without lips, the curses just sounded like angry jibberish. She began to sob.

        "Not to worry, my dear. You are going to get your face back. How much of it is returned, however, is up to you. Now. I am going to ask you some questions. For every answer I think is a lie, my Proficient is going to slice away an inch of your face and burn it." The Vassal motioned to Xakiah, who still held the sagging flesh in the moonlight.

        "Lllease… llease don't…" Her sobs crescendoed, forming echos in the night, and her body heaved with each cry.

        "And we'll begin," And with almost a lover's touch, he took her chin in his thumb and forefinger. "Now. You tell me. Where is the Final Page?"

∙∙∙

A shameless nerd and bookworm since the age of five, Colby R. Rice is the author of The Given and The Taken, the first two novels in The Books of Ezekiel, a dystopian sci-fi and urban fantasy mega-novel decalogy. She was an Air Force BRAT born in Bitburg Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany and came to the States at the age of one. Colby bounced around a lot but finally settled in Tucson, where she could at last deal with her addictions to writing, legends & mythology, filmmaking, creative entrepreneurship, motorcycles, and traveling.

Now, armed with a mound of animal crackers and gallons of Coca-Cola, Colby takes on the fiction writing trinity (novel writing, screenwriting, and game writing) in a fight to the death!

Current creative projects include the next six novels in The Books of Ezekiel series, the first novel in a New Adult cyberpunk series, the first novel in an urban fantasy crime noir(e) series, the development of her first horror feature film, and the growth of her media f’empire-in-progress, Rebel Ragdoll, LLC. Stay tuned to her website colbyrrice.com  for updates on her creative projects!

Special thanks to this quarter’s donors:

Constance Collier, Sarah Coughlan, and Bethan Scott

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