The Prophets(27)

She turned to see the guards in various states of disarray. She banged the dull end of her spear against the ground and suddenly, they all came to attention. She cautioned the guards not to go near the strangers and to avoid touching them. Grateful for her wisdom, they surrounded her in a protective half circle and pointed their spears at the intruders.

“Are they dead?” Muzani, the tallest, asked.

“Move away,” the king ordered, not at all masking her irritation at their forgetting she was the greatest warrior among them and could readily protect herself, even against the unliving. She looked down at the Gussu who knelt before her.

“I’m confused,” she said as she dug her spear into the ground. “Your position indicates respect, but you brought pestilence to my village. Explain yourself immediately or you and these demons shall suffer together.”

She would have expected such things of the mountain people with no name, who had once come down from their perches in the clouds and attacked her village unprovoked. She was a girl then but remembered them clearly because of their sharpened teeth and the white paint that garishly adorned their faces. The no-name mountain people more than liked war; it seemed for them a kind of religion, the thing that defined them. To remove war from their hearts would be akin to removing the ancestral bonds from her own people. They would merely dissolve and all that would be left would be smoky wisps and a foul odor. But none of that meant that the Kosongo wouldn’t fight back. On the contrary, the king’s mother led the charge against them, her spear held high as though she had grabbed lightning from above.

“Not demons,” the frightened man said in serviceable Kosongo tongue. “Friends.”

He signaled for the demons to bow and they did. They were less ugly in that position. The king ordered the guards to lower their weapons but to also exercise caution. With an easily understandable hand gesture, she instructed the intruders to stand. She couldn’t stop staring at them. They had hair the color of sand. She looked each one in the eye. One wore a curious object over the eyes that made them look small and beady. And her initial assessment was correct: all three demons were missing skin. One of them opened its mouth to speak. Broken as it was, she recognized it and suspected bad magic.

“Greetings,” it said. “I am Brother Gabriel. And I am here to bring you the good news.”





Beulah

Wide as two women, Beulah—now Be Auntie—had the space to dream when everyone else on Empty knew better. The smile on her face wasn’t permanent and it wasn’t an indication that she was witless. Rather, it was a kind of armament against the sorrow that bending over in the cotton field, and in other places, rubbed into the skin. It wasn’t a perfume, and yet it had its own scent. Smelled like something buried for a long time and then dug up. Now exposed to the sun, the thing didn’t begin to resurrect itself, but it did unfurl its stench—old, rotting, sharp—inspiring gagging and heaving, but also telling you something about itself, about whoever put it there, and about who uncovered it.

She felt like she was that buried thing. Covered up against her will. For so long forgotten. Left to decay. Discovered too late, but still useful to thieves who fancied themselves explorers. All of this left her in a very delicate condition. The forbidden dreams that had once been the source for the jubilation of she didn’t know how many people, singing in a key that made her feel fine, had begun to fracture such that they sat side by side with some other discordant thing that likewise doubled her. Not just her body, though, but also her mind, heart, and, she would like to believe, soul (she had one—two!—despite toubab telling her she had none). What choice did she have but to burn every slight until it shined like a comfort?

She didn’t mean to give herself to Amos, not at first. Essie was with child and they still had her out in the field. Essie couldn’t sing to keep everyone on rhythm; it was just too much. Be Auntie told a rhyming story to make up for it. Something about a town down in a valley and how the people were going to prepare a banquet even when they knew a storm was a-coming. Not only that, but Be Auntie (or maybe it was Beulah) picked her share of cotton and half of Essie’s too so that Essie would avoid the lash. Yes, ma’am, they would even whup a girl plump with child, which made no practical sense. If the goal was to magnify your glory, why would you take your blessings out two at a time?

“You still trying to climb on top of her, after what she been through?” she was bold enough to ask Amos after the horn sounded and the sun mellowed.

“She my woman. I do anything for her. Trying to make her forget. Trying to make her know tain’t a ounce missing of her beauty.”

“And you doing that by going to her instead of letting her come to you?”

Be Auntie knew it was futile by the confusion on Amos’s face. She knew men, ones in heat or ones who had something to prove, were senseless. They would rearrange land and sea to get them both to lead to satisfaction when one was enough already. Afterward, when their minds returned to them, the kind ones experienced regret, the cruel ones sought more cruelty, and the two were indistinguishable to her. It didn’t have to be some grand act. All they had to do was look at her like they were disgusted by her for the act they just committed. They get on up from the pallet and walk out of the shack without so much as a “thank you” or “evening,” not even a “beg your pardon.” She thought they could at least act like they were forced to sometimes and give her the redress she was rightly due. Instead, they left her to lie there in her own stink and theirs like doing so was the gift she was waiting on. And so often, she was just there crying on the outside and hoping that what they left inside her didn’t catch, and if the blood came, then mercy somewhere had heard her.