The Prophets(76)

Slowly, they went down the line of chained people trapped in the rib cage, moaning and gasping for air. One of them banged on a person’s foot and then held it. The other one with the jangling metal in his hands came behind him and unlocked the shackles from the ankles, the hands, and the neck. They pulled the lifeless body from its unrestful place. They were mean about it, not handling the woman’s remains with any delicacy whatsoever. Ruffians about their task, they seemed to revel and complain at once about what they had been charged with doing. They carried her, uncovered, up into the light. One kicked the door closed behind him.

The ship bellowed before it dipped down and then back up again, and things rolled from one side to the other. Kosii listened to the cycle. Something, maybe a cup, clinking then rumbling to the opposite wall and clinking again. Perhaps in another place, at another time, the noise would soothe him, be some sort of nighttime song into which he could dream. And in the dreaming, he and Elewa led the hunt, capturing grand and succulent pheasant, which they cleaned and made into stew. Uncle Ketwa had taught him how to season and so every bit of meat was sucked from the bones and there wasn’t a drop of stock left. They fed each other roasted banana, which Elewa liked smashed and mixed with mango and coconut water. They were too tired to clean up, so they left the mess for tomorrow and gazed at each other lazily, smiling like drunkards, until the darkness and the smell of impending rain had pushed them into each other’s arms.

“What shall we do with the feathers?” Elewa asked.

“Let us make you a crown.”

But it was daytime and the light once again barged into the room and the two skinless men stomped down the stairs and surveyed the captives. They walked all the way over to the far end, holding their noses, walking uncarefully, not paying attention to whom they climbed over or stepped on. One of them moved ahead, into the far corner where the light couldn’t reach, where rats played, where there was human silence and the air of rot.

Body after body hefted and carried out to be tossed aside like food gone sour. Not even the dignity of a pyre. He counted the bodies. Three. Eight. Twelve.

Then number seventeen.

And the words couldn’t leave his lips. Stuck in the crevices of his mouth and tying his tongue. He wanted to scream, but a lump lodged itself in his throat and the air couldn’t flow. He coughed until the tears, finally, from somewhere, somehow, ran and the saliva, too, leaked, and his face pulled itself into foolishness.

Elewa’s body had managed to maintain its beauty. Aside from some bruises and his half-open eyes, he looked like he was enjoying a princely slumber. Had he been carried higher, above their heads, it would have taken on the character of a celebration—reaching puberty, the first hunt, the calling of the ancestors, the crowning of a king. Kosii stretched out his arms as far as the chains would allow before the rusty metal dug into his wrists and droplets of blood hit the floor. It was almost intentional, the arc the spilling blood formed. The perfect circles themselves forming a larger circle. Almost a head. Almost a tail. Almost infinity closing in on itself, just right there at the bottom, beneath all notice.

They were jumbled when they came out, his words. Mixed in with his dribble, they were only clear to him.

“A curse. A curse upon you and all of your progeny. May you writhe in ever-pain. May you never find satisfaction. May your children eat themselves alive.”

But it was too late and the curse held no meaning because it was redundant. Kosii’s hands fell to his sides. Disaster, he thought. A pure, plain disaster. Not only because of what he had already lost, but also because of what he would have to lose.

He had, after all, made Elewa’s seven aunts a promise.





Paul

Paul was just a boy, no more than seven or eight, when his father, Jonah, led him into the middle of everything and exhaled. Jonah made a full spin and spread his arms open wide. Then he laughed. He laughed and laughed and then patted Paul on the back before resting his hand on Paul’s shoulder.

“See, boy? Look,” Jonah said, pointing.

Pointing to what? Treetops? Tall grass? A deer that stood frozen in his gaze? All of it, Paul figured. Yes, Paul saw those things. But what he saw most readily was his father’s hand on his shoulder. It was warm and firm and sent a charge through him. Had his father forgotten himself? This was their first intimacy, and Paul had, for the first time, felt like the blood of his father’s blood: his living, breathing offspring: his son. Paul looked at his father and his father looked back at him and smiled.

“This is everything,” Jonah said, looking out at the land that was his because—because God willed it.

And Paul had watched as the very land turned Jonah from a miserable man—who barely spoke, who was spiteful and covetous, not even softened by the forgiveness of his wife, Paul’s mother, Elizabeth—into the father Paul had always hoped would show up. How, then, could it not be worshipped? In their joined grasp, not unlike hands pressed together for morning grace, it had been razed. Yes, raised up in their very hands, together. The most important thing now, his father told him: Grow. Gather. Keep. Because then, in the echoing halls, and even in future whispers, they will build monuments in your honor and you will be remembered not for your failures—not for your stumbles or your transgressions or your kills—but for only your greatest triumphs.

Paul didn’t doubt that this was true, but it was Elizabeth whom he watched till the fields until her body could take no more. When she took ill, laid up in her bed, almost motionless if not for the smile that rose across her face whenever he came in to see her, Paul had never before lost anything, and the thought that he could lose his most precious thing—the one who had given him everything: life, milk, and a name that was her father’s—made something inside him crumble.