by Kwame Mbalia
Copyright © 2019 by Cake Literary
Introduction copyright © 2019 by Rick Riordan
Designed by Tyler Nevins
Jacket art © 2019 by Eric Wilkerson
Jacket design by Tyler Nevins
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.
Created in association with Cake Literary.
978-1-368-05441-6
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For the stories untold
and the children who will tell them
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
1. The Car Ride
2. The Bottle Trees
3. Gum Baby
4. Fight in the Forest
5. Haints and Bone Ships
6. The Raft
7. Iron Monsters 101
8. Fetterlings
9. The Paper Giant
10. The Thicket
11. The Gods of MidPass
12. The Butterfly Whisperer
13. Anansesem
14. Growing Desperate
15. Fuel for the Gods
16. The Warren
17. The Worst Plan Ever
18. The Adinkra
19. Attack!
20. The Bossling
21. Brand Flies
22. Legend of the Bottle Rocket
23. The Golden Crescent
24. Nyame’s Palace
25. That Was No Statue
26. Bronzey to the Rescue
27. Nyame’s Charm
28. Anansi’s Lair
29. Rock Lasers
30. Into Isihlangu
31. The Elders
32. Spirit of the Imbongi
33. Abiyoyo
34. High John
35. A Different Perspective
36. The Man of Fire and Smoke
37. Missing Memories
38. The Story Box
39. Unwelcome Visitors
40. Hullbeasts and Brand Flies
41. The Magic Ax
42. Hoodoo and Confessions
43. The Mmoatia Forest
44. We’re All Broken—Story Box, Too
45. Flight of the Midfolk
46. A Dangerous Bargain
47. King Cotton
48. Last Stop
49. Tricking the Trickster
50. Reveal
51. Good-byes and New Lives
About the Author
Keep reading for a sneak peek at The Storm Runner by J.C. Cervantes!
Keep reading for a sneak peek at Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee!
Keep reading for a sneak peek at Sal & Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez!
Don’t get me wrong, Greek myths are great! But you can’t swing a gorgon’s head in any bookstore without hitting at least a dozen Greek-myth-inspired books.
Try finding great adventures based on Western African gods like Nyame or Anansi. Try finding stories about modern kids who encounter African American folk legends like High John, John Henry, and Brer Rabbit. Those books are a lot harder to locate, despite the fact that millions of kids would relate to those gods and heroes even more than they would to Hercules and Perseus (sorry, my Greek dudes).
Can you imagine what it would be like if you could find a book that wove the whole brilliant, beautiful tapestry of West African and African American legend into one magical world? A world that made young African American readers think, Yes! This is MY awesome mythology. This is MY magic world to explore, and these heroic kids are just like me! A book that left all readers thinking, Wow. Why didn’t I know about these amazing stories sooner?
Kwame Mbalia has written that book. You are about to discover Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, and your world will never be the same.
I won’t even try to describe all the incredible adventures facing Tristan Strong in this debut novel. That would spoil the fun! But when Tristan accidentally punches a hole into the sky of the MidPass, the world of African American legends, he starts on the most epic of quests. Awaiting him are a malicious haint, relentless iron monsters, creepy bone ships, flying rafts, burning seas, talking animals, ancient gods, and more.
But for all its great fantasy elements, what I love most about this book is its human side. Tristan is struggling with grief after the death of his best friend. He has just lost his first boxing match, thereby disappointing his father’s and grandfather’s hopes for him carrying on the family legacy. Sentenced to a summer at his grandparents’ farm in rural Alabama, this Chicago city kid is struggling to figure out who he wants to be, and whether his parents (and society) will let him be that person. Tristan is tough but tender, smart but cautious, courageous but insecure. He is someone every kid will relate to, and you will immediately want to be his friend.
I’ll tell you a secret: I cried while reading Tristan Strong. Several times, I just got overwhelmed with happiness, thinking about what this book would have meant to many of my students back when I taught middle school. I was delighted to see old friends like Brer Fox, John Henry, and Gum Baby in such a fresh, modern, page-turning adventure. I felt grateful to Kwame Mbalia for writing it so that new generations of young readers could grow up with Tristan and get to know the rich stories of West Africa and the African Diaspora. In a lifetime full of highlights, I have to say that helping to publish this book is right up there at the top!
I know you will enjoy Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky. I envy you reading it for the first time. As for Tristan’s further adventures, the sky’s the limit. Wait, no. Tristan punched a hole in the sky. There are no limits.
THERE WAS A RHYTHM IN my fists.
Pop pop
It told a story.
Pop pop
Everybody thought they knew the story. They’d seen it before. He’ll get over it. It’s a phase. Give him space. But they only knew fragments. They didn’t want to hear the rest….
Oh, you do?
Hmm.
Well, what if I told you that I went to war over my dead best friend’s glowing journal? Or that I battled monsters big and small, with powers I didn’t know I had, with gods I didn’t know existed. Would you believe me?
Nah, you wouldn’t. You got your own problems. You don’t wanna hear about my struggles. Right?
Oh, you do? Well, I gotta warn you, it’s a wild ride, so buckle up, champ.
Let me give you some truth, and I hope it returns back to me.
“Tristan! They’re here.”
Pop
Mom’s shout interrupted my groove. I stopped pummeling the small punching bag Dad had installed in my room and loosened the straps on my boxing gloves with my teeth. The gloves fell on the bed, and I dropped down next to them. Eddie’s journal sat on my tiny desk in the opposite corner. Still glowing. Still unopened since his mother had given it to me after the funeral two weeks ago.
My room was so small I could’ve reached out and grabbed the leather book, but that would mean dealing with it, and who deals with their problems by choice?
Pffft. Not me.
“Tristan Strong!” my dad yelled from down the hall.
I hated that name.
It made me appear to be something I’m not. My name should’ve been Tristan Coward, or Tristan Failure, or Tristan Fake. Maybe Tristan
How-Could-You-Lose-Your-First-Boxing-Match.
Anything but Tristan Strong.
Mom’s footsteps echoed through our tiny apartment, and then soft knocking sounded on my door. “Tristan, baby, did you hear me?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
The door opened and Mom peeked in. She was still wearing the TEAM STRONG T-shirt from last night. I don’t think any of us had gotten much sleep after we came back from my first bout. I stayed up nursing my pride, the only thing I really injured. My little fan club—Dad, Mom, and my grandparents on Dad’s side—had tried to cheer me up, but I could see the disappointment written on everyone’s faces, so I pretended to go to bed while they held whispered discussions into the wee hours of the morning. And now it was dawn, time to get this show on the road.
Mom’s eyes took in the organized chaos of my room and crinkled when they landed on me. She crossed the floor in two steps—avoiding yesterday’s untouched dinner in the process—and sat down on the mattress. “It’s only for a month,” she said, not even playacting that she didn’t know what was wrong.
“I know.”
“It’ll be good for you to get away.”
“I know.”
She rubbed my head, then pulled me into a hug. “The grief counselor said it would be good to get a change of scenery. Some fresh air, work around the farm. Who knows, maybe you’ll find out you were meant to work the land.”
I shrugged. The only thing I was sure of was that I wasn’t meant to be a boxer, despite what Dad and Granddad thought.
I pulled free of Mom’s hug, stood, grabbed my duffel bag, and headed out to start my month of exile.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Mom asked.
I turned and she held Eddie’s journal out to me. Her hand and wrist were bathed in the emerald-green glow that was coming from the cover. But, like everyone else I’d shown the journal to, she didn’t notice any strange light.
Mom mistook my confused frown for apprehension as she slipped the book into my bag. “He wanted you to have it, Tristan. I know it’s tough, but…try to read it when you can, okay?”
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I nodded and headed to the front door.
The decision to ship me to Granddad and Nana Strong’s farm down in Alabama had been made without my input. Typical. My parents had talked about it a few times before, but after Eddie’s death, and my third school fight in the final two weeks before summer break, well, I guess the time was right.
At least I’d held my own in those school fights. Unlike in the ring last night.
It was just my luck that my grandfather had been there to witness my humiliation.
“You outweighed that other kid by seven pounds!” Granddad had said after the match, in his growling rasp of a voice. “Set the family name back by a decade.”
That’s me—Tristan Disappointment.
Son of Alvin “Wreckin’ Ball” Strong, the best middleweight boxer to come out of Chicago in nearly twenty years. I had Dad’s height and Granddad’s chin, and boxing was supposed to run in my veins. I’d worn Granddad’s old trunks, and Dad had worked my corner. The Strong legacy was expected to take another leap forward during my first match.
Instead, it got knocked flat on its butt. Twice.
“You’ll get him next time” was all Dad said, but I could tell he was let down.
And that hurt almost as much as getting punched.
An early summer heat wave greeted me with a blast of humidity as I left the apartment building with my backpack over my shoulder and my duffel bag in hand. Thick gray clouds huddled in the distance, and I added that to the list of totally not ominous things. Glowing journal? Yep. Storm on the horizon? You betcha.
Dad and Granddad stood at the curb while Nana (no one ever called her Grandma, not if you wanted to eat) knitted in the car. Dad towered over his father, but you could see the family resemblance. Deep brown skin like mine, a wide jaw, and a proud stance. I got my hair from Mom’s side of the family, thankfully, because both Strong men had identical bald spots peeking through their short afros.
“Get him in the fields, put him to work,” Granddad was saying. “That’ll put some fire in his belly.”
Dad shrugged and said nothing. To be fair, no one did much talking when Granddad was around. That old man could yak a mile a minute.
Nana saw me coming down the stairs, dropped her knitting, and rushed out of the car. “There he is! How you doin’ today, baby? Are you sore from last night?”
She gave me a hug that muffled any answer, then shooed Granddad to the side. “Get the boy’s bag, Walter. Alvin,” she said, addressing my father, “we’ve got to hit the road before that thunderstorm hits.”
Granddad looked me up and down. “Is that all you kids ever wear?”
I glanced down. Black Chuck Taylors with gray untied laces. Loose khaki cargo shorts, and an even looser gray hoodie. That hoodie went with me everywhere—it had a picture of a flexed bicep on the back in faded black ink. Call me sentimental, but it’s what I always wore when Eddie and I were hanging out. He called it the Tristan Strong uniform of choice, perfect for all occasions.
So yeah, I wear it a lot.
Nana shushed him and pulled me into another hug. “Don’t listen to him, Tristan. I can’t wait to have you back with us on the farm. You were so little last time, but them chickens you used to chase still haven’t forgotten you! I packed a lunch and even rustled up a new story or two for the ride….”
And so, just like that, with a clap on the shoulder from Dad and a hug from Mom, I was someone else’s problem for a month. Good-bye, Chicago, and all your glorious cable TV, internet, and cell phone service. I hardly knew ye.
One thing became very clear during the twelve-hour car ride to Alabama—I was never going to do this again.
Never ever.
Sitting in an enclosed space with Granddad was like wiping your tears with sandpaper. Painful—excruciating, even—and you wondered why you ever thought it was a good idea.
Oh, think I’m playing?
Ten minutes into the trip: “When I was your age, I had a full-time job and I’d already fought in two title fights.”
Three hours in: “Oh, you’re hungry again? Did you bring some stopping-for-snacks money?”
Six hours in: “Man, I shouldn’t have ate those leftover beans for breakfast.”
Eight hours in: “Can’t believe I drove all this way to see a Strong boy fight so soft. That’s your grandmother’s side of the family. Ain’t no Strong ever look like that in the ring. Why, I remember…”
Anyway, you get it.
By the time we crossed the Alabama state line, I was ready to claw my way into the trunk. I don’t know how Nana could just sit there and hum and knit for most of a day, but that’s what she did. The Cadillac rumbled down a two-lane highway, kicking up trails of dust and exhaust, a dented rocket ship blasting through time in reverse from the future to a land that Wi-Fi forgot.
I’d put my earbuds in somewhere back in Kentucky, but the battery on my phone had long since run out. I just kept them in so no one would bother me. Nana kept knitting in the passenger seat, and Granddad tapped a finger on the steering wheel, humming along to a song only he could hear. Things seemed more or less calm, except for one thing:
Eddie’s journal sat on the seat next to me.
Now, I could’ve sworn I’d stuffed the book under the clothes in my duffel bag. Which Grandad had put in the trunk. And yet here it was, waiting on me to do something I’d put off since the funeral. The late afternoon sun, occasionally peeking out from behind the storm clouds, made the journal look normal, ordinary. But every so often I’d shade the cover with my hands and peek at it while holding my breath. Yep, still glowing.
Why not open it, you might ask, and see what’s inside?
Well, believe me, it wasn’t that simple. Before Eddie’s death, the cover of his brown leather journal had always been blank. Now a weird symbol appeared to be
stitched into it, like a sun with rays that stretched out to infinity, or a flower with long petals. The same symbol was embossed on a carved wooden charm that dangled from a cord attached to the journal’s spine. I’d seen the tassel before—Eddie had used it to mark his spot, or to flick me in the back of the head—but the charm was new.
And, even more weirdly, the trinket pulsed with green light, too. I’d been staring at that book every day for minutes on end, but the glow always stopped me from opening it.
I mean, I knew what was in there anyway. The stories Eddie had jotted down in his goofy, blocky handwriting, from his own silly creations to the fables Nana used to tell us when we were younger, when she’d come up to visit. John Henry, Anansi the Spider, Brer Rabbit’s adventures—I’d read them all. Our end-of-semester English project was supposed to be a giant collection of stories from our childhood. Eddie was doing the writing, and I was going to give the oral presentation. Then the accident happened. The counselor Mom took me to every Wednesday had said I should try to finish the writing part, even though school was now over for the year, as a part of healing and other stuff.
(Before you say something slick you might regret, Mr. Richardson is pretty cool for a counselor, you get me? We play Madden while we talk, which means I can focus on running up the score on his raggedy Eagles squad and not on being embarrassed about answering questions. It helps…some. If it gets too tough, he knows when to back off, too. So you can keep your Sensitive and Man up comments to yourself. Chumps.)
To avoid thinking about the haunted journal, I watched the weather outside the car window. The clouds had never let up, even once we were in the Deep South. They just switched from hurling lightning bolts at us to hurling fat drops of rain that splattered across the windshield like bugs. Everything everywhere was miserable, and that pretty much summed up my life at the moment.
I took off the earbuds and sighed. Nana heard and turned around in her seat to look at me.
“You hungry, sweetie?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“No, ma’am.” Granddad’s deep voice rolled back from the driver’s seat. “You answer ‘No, ma’am’ to your grandmother, understand?”
