The Prophets(98)

Samuel stooped down. He had never looked this closely into Timothy’s face. It was the first time he had the chance to study a toubab’s face without having to worry about the chaos such a prideful move could bring. Everyone made such a big deal about those eyes, blue as noon sky. Samuel didn’t understand it. They just looked empty to him, bottomless and liable to suck up anything that waded into them. He couldn’t see himself in them. Isaiah had said the same thing, but never with the conviction that Samuel thought it should have.

He left the ax where it was embedded and he stood up finally, rose himself off of his first kill, astonished by how hard he imagined it would be, but how simple it actually was. He thought that he would be plagued by guilt and shame, but he actually felt like he had, in the tiniest of ways, righted a wrong. He would need to claim more bodies before he could feel proud about his actions, though, and there were more bodies to be had. But he was satisfied that if he had died that very moment, he would have forced them to pay at least a portion of the debt owed. They would have imagined that this made them square.

What ain’t nearly enough to us, he thought, more than enough to them. But they gon’ be fixed.

He looked down at his blood-soaked chest and let out a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and amusement. He imagined that he would smile a little bit, but only a tear could come. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. Wiping it away would be to admit that it was there in the first place. So he withheld and it tickled his cheek but didn’t make him chuckle. It ran all the way down to his chin and quivered there before disappearing into the blood on the floor.

There was still so much to know. Like where did Isaiah learn how to cornrow? And why? The singing. How far back in Isaiah’s family did it go? Was the kink in his hair proof that his mother was a warrior?

He would have to creep now, low to the ground like a night mist, not hugging the eager weeds but teasing them with the promise of his moisture, perhaps leaving behind a thin layer, enough for them to get by.

He put his foot on Timothy’s lifeless neck, grabbed the ax by the handle, and pulled it out. Timothy’s head made a tiny clunk, which was followed by the drumbeat of footsteps headed for Timothy’s room.





Lamentations

A separation from your suffering requires a separation from yourself. The blood has been maligned, which means that conflict courses through your very veins.

It was a matter of survival. But time does not function the way you think it does. We knew this before and we know it now. So judgment must come soon because you have made the conflict, which is now your blood, a matter of honor, and this mostly leads to arrogance. This is the thing that pumps through your heart. Or will. Or has. Sometimes, we must remember that you perceive time as three separate occasions, when for us, it is only one. It will be the thing that pumps through your heart, if you are not careful, if you do not heed. Do you understand?

Given over to this raging war inside, you will not be able to attend to your liberation in the manner that will most certainly set you free. You will make something else, something impossible, the priority. In the interest of preserving your reputation among the children of your conqueror—who are also, oh!, your siblings—you will compromise your living and consider half-life better than death when they are truly the same.

We weep for you.

You are the children we had fought for and lost.

You are the offspring betrayed and bemoaned.

The regret, however, is not on your behalf. It is because of what we unleashed. In damning you, we doomed ourselves.

First the external war, then the internal one. The latter much more bloody.

But there is hope.

We have brought storms with us. Followed you across mighty waters and distant lands to a series of stolen places where we owe other peoples another great debt, all of which rests on their forgiveness. And yours.

These are forces created in your name that will be renamed beyond our ability to control. Forgive us.

It is the only magic we have left.





Song of Songs

The sun was burning high when they were walked above onto the ship’s deck. A strange rotation around the ship, and some of its crew spat on them, laughed, and downed libations. They seemed unaware of their own filth as they pinched their noses and frowned. Some of them held on to guns, others had knives. Kosii looked into their faces. He wanted to understand what they were, see if he could retrieve something from them that could explain all this. He saw pits with hands reaching out of them. He saw little skinless girls lined up to sing. He saw boys running into sea-foam and when they turned to wave goodbye to their families standing on the shore, they had everything except faces. Suffocation was their birthright.

Chains rattled as Kosii and the two others he was linked to shuffled around the deck to the jeers of all. Then he saw him, nearby and partially hidden by the glint of the sunlight and the mask of shadow, but recognizable by the tone of his grievances. It was Elewa. In the pit of his stomach, Kosii felt spikes jut out from a sphere. There was a vibration then, which summoned forth the tremors in his entire body, bringing up everything and taking him down to his knees.

One of the skinless said something to Kosii in their jackal language in which everything landed like an insult. But there was another voice coming from that corner of the ship where the sun couldn’t all the way reach. It sounded so near, the voice, and yet he couldn’t pinpoint its direction. It didn’t matter. He recognized its clicks and timbre, its highs and lows, and on them he could climb, reach the frightening heights generally hidden in the mist and shrouded in treetops. A hand. All he needed was a hand, a signal of some kind, a call, permission. In the silence, seven women, linked by the crooks of their elbows, heads newly shaven and breasts firm—the one in the middle ululated. It had begun.