The Prophets(73)

He opened the door and walked in. Slow, steady steps, and tracking no dirt on the floor; Amos was careful. Upon reaching the oak door of Paul’s study, beyond which he heard the rustling of papers, Amos noticed a marking. It was small enough to be nearly imperceptible. The scythe and lightning symbol no bigger than a boll weevil carved in the dead center of the door. Amos knew it immediately to be a rune of some kind, perhaps symbolizing the Lord, but hadn’t the Lord asked not for graven images that weren’t of His hand or word? To place no other before Him meant that all old gods, all of them, had to die, whether in who-really-named-it Africa, or Europe, or even in this here place falsely called America.

Hm. Maybe one day he might muster up the courage to ask Massa Paul about it himself. Maybe when Massa Paul was in one of his more somber moods, after having tasted the dazzling warmth of the spirits he took kindly to after a long hard day of telling people to work harder. Yes, that was the best time to find out, when Paul was fine and mellow and a nigger’s inquiry wouldn’t be seen as heresy.

Paul saw me.

A Holy Trinity.

Amos raised his hands in prayer.

Go ’head, Amos, knock on that door. Long ago, Moses also led his people through the furious waters. And they all made it out, cleansed, right on the other side.





Chronicles

The first mistake you made was in trying to reason with it.

Do you hear us?

You attempted to understand the source, hear the beat, find the rhythm for something that sprang from chaos (never, never look into the heart of that which has no heart to speak of). Foolish.

You sought the nature of something that occurred by accident so has no nature at all. Things without a nature always seek one, you see, and can only obtain one through plunder and then consumption. They have a name. They all have a name: Separation.

You have been warned.

In this, there is only so much we can tell you given our purposeful isolation. This is why it is there, you know, the bush: to insulate, to protect. Though as you have already surmised it is no match for curiosity. They tumbled down from the great mountains and they washed up from the wide sea. We were assaulted from both sides. We were doomed.

There are many stories. These stories are far older than we are. We cannot tell you for certain which of them is true. What we can verify is the outcome. The outcome is always the same: in the end, death. But before death, the unspeakable.

There are many stories to tell. Here is one: He was forbidden from engaging in the practices that drew him away from his people and into the lair of his demise, but he was arrogant and refused to heed the warnings. He took women and subjected them to things without their consent. These were among the very first rapes. Born of these colossal blasphemies were children without our marks upon them. This was not their fault, but the blight was undeniable. As horrific as all of that was, that was not even the difficult part.

The difficult part was in realizing that all abandoned children seek vengeance.

And most will have it.





Bel and the Dragon

The ship rocked and made everyone sick, but then the whole thing smelled of sickness already. Birds were confused. The rot had made them believe there was a feast to be had when there wasn’t. Driven wild, they sat perched on masts and pecked at the scent, beaks snapping at nothing at first, then at one another before they finally dove into the ocean and sometimes came back up, their mouths filled with something other than salt water. Happy, then, to fly away, but still confused about the seductive odor of death lingering.

It was coming from the stomach of the ship where not even birds’ eyes were keen enough to penetrate. Hidden, but not a secret to those with other kinds of appetites. The crew, pissy and gruff, sang rough-hewn songs and even those could only reach the bottom by great force. Grief’s melody, in the strange tongue of a ravenous people. Laughter that stung dripped through the boards down onto the chains and onto the flesh not fully digested in the belly. Where is hope? Trapped in the ribs, which held them in place when they longed to be shat out—yes, even shat out would be better than the suffocation that allowed them yet to breathe.

Someone screamed out in the dark, a voice that Kosii couldn’t understand, but its rhythms were familiar, spoke to his blackest parts in the midst of incomprehension. The flashes of light that barged in—when one of the skinless fools came down to check on the chains, and to bring not enough water and inedible slop—allowed him the opportunity to snatch glimpses of his surroundings: other bodies chained to him and around him. Between inhaling and vomiting up the funk, and eyelids squeezed shut from the effort, he opened his and the light hurt, too, but he looked around to see if there were any people marked like him with the Kosongo symbol of eternity: the snake kissing its tail and the woman at the center. But there were too many shadows. There were too many wails and too many men crying and too many women screaming and too many people silent from death. He couldn’t hold on to who he knew he was. There was a puddle of blood on the floor, after all, and the woman next to him, big with child, had her legs spread as far as she could get them, which was not far enough, and the baby’s feet were coming first. If there were midwives among them, they were likewise chained. His mother caught babies and he watched. He could have done it, but he couldn’t lift his hands. So the baby would die and he would watch and wouldn’t even be able to tell the woman that he was sorry for her loss because he couldn’t speak her language and by the time he was able to find a way to lay a hand on her ankle after tugging and tugging at the chains, she would have bled out and he would be touching an uncovered, unoiled corpse, and only elders were allowed to do so. He could only moan his mourning and hoped that in her last moments, she knew that it was for her and her baby.