Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

by Kwame Mbalia

  I nodded, though I didn’t entirely understand what he meant. “It was an old story. A folktale, really. About a rabbit, a bear…and a fox. The bear and fox would try their best to catch and eat that rabbit, but he was too smart. He always got away.”

  Brer Fox made a weird noise in his throat. A chattering, whining sort of sound. He shook his head. “Too smart indeed.”

  “So…?”

  “Am I that fox? Hm. I suppose I am.”

  I nodded. “And the rabbit and bear?”

  “I suspect you’ll see Brer Rabbit soon enough.”

  As soon as he said that, I remembered the vision in my grandparents’ car. The large, weary, and bruised rabbit, anxious and jumpy. So had that been real, and not a dream like I’d assumed? My mind reeled. First Gum Baby, now Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit. All of them from stories Eddie had collected, that Nana had told, that I’d read in some form while growing up. And now I stood with the very same characters, plucked straight out of a book.

  Or had I been plunked into one?

  “And the bear?”

  Fox’s tail swished angrily, and he bared his teeth. “Bear isn’t here,” was all he said, and that was that.

  The raft ran aground—now the Midfolk would have to continue on foot to this Thicket place. Wherever it was, everyone seemed eager to get there. I could read the hope in their eyes as they helped each other get ready. Ayanna whispered soothing reassurances, and Brer Fox and I assisted as they disembarked. I kept my face neutral as I took wrinkled paws as well as brown hands like mine and lifted the Midfolk off the raft. An old crow cawed her thanks and flapped ahead with two smaller crows following after her, joining the rest as we started to walk.

  Some of the puddles on the forest floor were too deep for Gum Baby, so she rode on my shoulder, still holding the journal, and shouted encouragement.

  “Pick up them feet!”

  “This ain’t a field trip!”

  “Don’t make Gum Baby put some pep back in your step—Oh, sorry, Ayanna. Didn’t know it was you.”

  With Gum Baby blaring in my ear, I fell back to check on an old turtle the size of a dinner plate (“Call me Tarrypin, sonny. Mr. Turtle is my pappy.”), who was struggling to climb over a partially submerged root. I lifted him over it, then we scrambled after the rest of the group.

  Ayanna shook her head. “How you and Gum Baby paired up should make a fine tale.”

  Gum Baby bounced on my shoulder and nearly fell off as I hurdled a stump. “What, him?” she said. “Gum Baby barely knows the guy.”

  I shrugged without warning her, and the little doll toppled backward. She just managed to grab on to my hood and screamed at me in her shrill voice.

  “BUMBLETONGUE, GUM BABY GONNA WHOOP YOU LIKE YOUR BUTT’S ON FIRE! THIS AIN’T FUNNY! YOU GONNA PAY, YOU HEAR GUM BABY?”

  “Shh, y’all!” Ayanna whispered, but a small smile slipped across her face.

  Gum Baby managed to scramble back up to her perch on my shoulder, where she whispered other gruesome threats in my ear. Then she dropped Eddie’s journal in my hood, jumped down onto Tarrypin’s back, and made rude gestures at me with her little carved hands as the two trundled off after the others. I rolled my eyes and slipped the journal into my cargo shorts’ pocket. Ayanna’s smile transformed into a grin.

  “She’s a trip,” she said.

  “She’s something, all right,” I agreed. We separated for a moment to help the others navigate the trees and branches but were soon running side by side again. I hesitated, then asked the question that had been bugging me.

  “Who are you?”

  She wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion. “You don’t know my name?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but like, all of you. Brer Fox, Gum Baby—you all are from stories, but now…”

  “Oh.”

  I waited, and she dodged a low-hanging branch (I didn’t, in case you cared) and thought about her answer.

  “I’m not sure how to explain it. Brer Rabbit, or John Henry—they normally do all the introductions.”

  I stumbled over a tree root and nearly face-planted in a smelly, squelchy mud puddle. “John Henry?” The giant man from my vision popped into my mind. Of course. If Brer Rabbit and Gum Baby were there, he would be as well.

  “Mm-hmm. Watch out for those roots, by the way.”

  Her sarcasm made my ears burn. “Oh, thanks. I’ll try.”

  She took a deep breath. “I heard you and Fox talking earlier. This world, as messed up as it is right now, is called Alke. We’re in MidPass, an island in the Burning Sea.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “Does that mean we’re trapped here? Surrounded by fire and those bone ships?” Panic started to bubble in my chest until Ayanna grabbed my wrist.

  “We’re not trapped. Just…waiting for the right time.”

  I nodded, though I didn’t really understand, and she let go. We hurried to catch up with the group.

  “The Burning Sea back there cuts us off from the mainland,” Ayanna went on, “but we’re still a part of Alke. A territory, if you want to call it that.”

  “Like Chicago is in Illinois,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Sure, I guess. But, for better or worse, this is our home.”

  “Okay, I get that now. But…” I hesitated, unsure of how to ask my next question. “People and”—I started to say animals, but stopped short—“creatures. From stories. How come?”

  Ayanna grinned. “Okay, I’m starting to see where the nickname Bumbletongue came from.” She ducked a twig I threw at her, then got serious. “The way John Henry tells it, your world and ours are like twins. No, wait, that’s a bad example.” She wrinkled her forehead, then sighed. “How does he put it? Alke…Alke is the dream to your world’s reality. The tales, the fables, the things you think are made up, they exist here. We aren’t just stories—we’re real, with hopes and dreams and fears just like you, and right now we’re all just trying to make it back home before—” She broke off, but I knew where she was going.

  “Before the Maafa, whatever that is, captures us with the bone ships,” I finished.

  “It’s not just bone ships.”

  I stopped. She started to say something more, when a hissed warning sliced through the trees. Everyone skidded to a stop. Brer Fox stood tall, his good ear flicking and his head whipping left and right as he sniffed the air. Ayanna and I crept up to his side, comforting Midfolk as we went. When we reached him, his teeth were bared and his hackles raised.

  “We’re being hunted,” he said, and a chill went down my spine.

  HUNTED.

  By what? I wondered. I couldn’t hear anything. The forest was dead silent. We were the only things breathing or moving. I hoped it stayed that way.

  “There’s a bridge, just up a ways, that marks the edge of the Thicket,” Ayanna whispered. “We’ll cross it, run north as fast as we can, and then other Midfolk should be able to help us.”

  “And if whoever is hunting us follows?” I asked. “What then?”

  Ayanna didn’t look at me. “Don’t. Let them. Follow. Got it?”

  Brer Fox’s mangled ear twitched. He pawed at it, then noticed me watching. “Lets me know when trouble’s afoot, it does.”

  “And?”

  It twitched again, then quivered and went flat. I guess that was answer enough.

  “What are we running from?” I asked. “In the stories—”

  “This ain’t nothing like the stories you’ve heard,” Brer Fox said. “And we try to keep their names out our mouths if at all possible. Seems like discussing them brings them around faster.”

  With that cryptic comment, we started off.

  “The river’s just ahead!”

  The call got passed back like a relay baton, and everyone who heard it found a new burst of energy. A dot of light pierced the gray-green stillness. The break in the forest grew as we sprinted to it like moths to a flame. If we could make it there, it felt like our troubles would—

  A rattling soun
d filled the forest, like a bunch of chains swinging in the wind.

  I slowed to look around and Brer Fox snarled at me.

  “Keep moving!”

  The rattling came again and again from everywhere all at once. Behind us, from our left, from our right—like something was herding us onward. The sounds rolled in on top of each other.

  We all huffed along, wheezing and choking.

  “Quickly now! To the bridge!”

  We burst out of the Drowned Forest into a clearing. There the thick mud had dried to a dark, flaky crust like an old scab, and a layer of leaves covered the ground like a raggedy Band-Aid. We skidded to a stop. A rickety bridge made of split logs and woven vines dangled across a steep, rocky ravine. The largest river I’d ever seen surged along beneath it, roaring and carrying branches over sharp rocks and around twisty turns.

  A high-pitched scraping sound, like nails on a chalkboard, ripped through the air. I clapped my hands over my ears and winced, and Tarrypin moaned. Brer Fox dropped to the ground and yipped in pain. The others reacted similarly. Even Ayanna scrunched down like the noise hurt her. Only Gum Baby seemed unaffected. She ran over to each of us in turn, pushing with her tiny arms, trying to get us to move. She said something, but I couldn’t hear her over the screeching. Finally she gave up and ran to the bridge.

  Near the edge of the ravine, just before it dropped off to the hungry river below, she paused. Something in the leaves grabbed her attention, and she seemed transfixed by it.

  Frozen stiff, almost.

  With my ears still covered, I stumbled over and stopped short of Gum Baby and the steep drop-off behind her.

  “What’s wrong?” I yelled.

  She didn’t answer. Her body jerked—first left, then right—and I squinted.

  “Gum Baby? What are you doing? We need to—Oh my sweet peaches.”

  At first I thought it was a snake. An easy mistake, really. It wrapped itself around Gum Baby, and a trick of the dim light gave it a link pattern, like a rattlesnake.

  But then I realized quite a few things at once.

  First: The “snake” was actually a chain-like creature with a metal shackle for a head.

  Second: It held Gum Baby fast, its cuff-head snapping around her neck like a collar, the long chain attached to it coiling around her tiny wooden body.

  Third: More of those things were filling the tiny clearing.

  Fourth: My shorts were glowing.

  Green light grew brighter and brighter, filling the clearing and dashing away the shadows, and it took me a few seconds to understand that the light was coming from my pocket—from Eddie’s journal.

  Soft moans floated up from the Midfolk huddled behind me, but my attention stayed glued on Gum Baby’s helpless struggles. She jerked left and right, but the chain-thing only squeezed tighter.

  Brer Fox staggered forward out of the cluster into the middle of the clearing, his ears flat to his skull. He was still yards away from me and Gum Baby, too far to help, and he froze when he saw the chain creatures rising out of the grass, dangling from trees, and creeping along the ground. His hackles rose like needles on a porcupine, and he snarled.

  “Fetterlings.”

  “Fetter what?” I shouted back.

  “A type of iron monster.”

  Two of the creatures—fetterlings—swayed from branches just off to my right, near the edge of the ravine, and I got a good look at them. They ranged in size. The littlest, like the one that had trapped Gum Baby, only had the collar head. Their chain links were no longer than my thumb. The bigger ones had the collar, much thicker chains, and chain-like arms that ended in open manacles.

  “See those pincer hands?” Brer Fox said as the fetterlings’ appendages clacked together. “They use those to drag off their victims.”

  I paled and my mouth went dry. “Drag off?”

  “To their leader.”

  I gulped. “You mean the Maa—”

  “Don’t. Don’t say it.” Brer Fox dropped to all fours and called out instructions. “Slowly, and carefully—”

  “One of them has Gum Baby!” I blurted out. I hated the way my voice cracked with fear, and the way everyone seemed to look at me when they heard it. Even the monsters. But it was just the two of us, a boy and a doll, and you know what? It was scary. There. I said it.

  More fetterlings rose off the ground. We were trapped.

  Some blocked our path to the bridge on the north side of the clearing, right where Gum Baby and I stood. Others crept through the grass on the east and west. And back by the forest edge behind us, across the clearing and near where Ayanna had been bringing up the rear, more fetterlings swarmed out of the trees.

  “Ayanna?” Brer Fox called.

  “I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” she said, her voice filled with desperation.

  The fetterlings swayed back and forth as they slipped closer and closer. The group blocking the bridge rattled threateningly, tightening the trap. I prayed Ayanna would come up with a plan soon, but as I looked back and our eyes met, I saw the despair in her face, the same expression she had worn back on the raft when we were above the bone ships. There were just too many adversaries.

  Brer Fox recognized her expression as well.

  His posture relaxed. Suddenly he seemed so old, just a graying forest fox living out his final days, a fact he had made peace with.

  “Make sure Chestnutt gets home safe,” he said to her.

  He lifted his muzzle to the sky and a whining scream ripped from his throat. Then, before anyone could stop him, he threw himself at the group of fetterlings near the forest edge.

  “Noooooo!” Ayanna and I screamed at once, and the night exploded into a frenzy.

  I don’t think the fetterlings expected their prey to hunt them. Fox’s attack took them by surprise, so he was able to dispatch several bigger monsters before they knew what had hit them. His jaws clamped down on one, his claws swiped at another, and it looked like a silver tornado whirled in the clearing as the metal monsters disintegrated into broken links and rust.

  But the fetterlings soon recovered and began to overwhelm him.

  “Go!” Brer Fox roared before he disappeared beneath a wriggling pile of iron monsters.

  The group of fetterlings blocking the bridge swarmed past us to attack the threat, and Ayanna jumped into action.

  “Quickly now,” she said to the Midfolk, her voice alternating between a yell and a sob. “To the bridge. Come on, Tristan!” She ran ahead.

  I stomped my foot on the small fetterling holding Gum Baby, and it screeched in pain. I did it again, then a third time, driving my heel into the thin chain link just below the base of the collar head, until it opened with a small click.

  “Tristan!” Gum Baby cried. I snatched her up along with Tarrypin, who’d disappeared into his shell, and put both of them in my hood. I sprinted to the bridge, covering the distance in a few steps, and skidded to a stop next to Ayanna. The bridge wobbled and swayed under the Midfolk’s rushing feet and paws.

  When everyone else had made it safely to the other side, I set Gum Baby and Tarrypin down and gave them a nudge forward. “Your turn,” I said.

  Yips and howls echoed behind us, and I turned to see fetterlings peeling themselves off the pile to creep toward the bridge. Big ones. They shook and rattled, their lower bodies slithering like snakes while their cuffs snapped and their collar heads clacked.

  A feeble gray paw emerged from the pile behind them, struggling to evade their grasp.

  The green light from Eddie’s journal still pulsed in my pocket.

  A memory unlocked itself in my mind.

  A hand extending from beneath a mangled school bus seat.

  The image hit me square in the chest. My hands trembled, and I started breathing faster and faster. Just for a second I could see Eddie reaching for me on the day of the accident. The day I failed to save him.

  “Tristan? We have to go. Now, Tristan!”

  Two voices echoed in my ear. On
e in the present, one in the past. Ayanna’s…and a teacher’s aide. Both wanted the same thing—for me to leave someone behind.

  “Tristan?” Ayanna called. “What are you doing? Move!”

  But it was too late.

  Two fetterlings dashed forward. One tried to encircle my ankles, while the other went for my wrists. I started to skip backward, but my foot hit something. A third fetterling had slithered through the leaves behind me and tripped me up.

  “Tristan!”

  I landed hard on my back, but immediately I rolled to my right, away from the fetterlings. A collar head snapped shut on the dust where my own head had been moments before. Eddie’s journal kept glowing. I struggled to my feet and was just about to give Brer Fox the signal that I was coming to help, when something slammed into my left side.

  “Ooomph!” The air abandoned my lungs.

  Click

  The fetterling who’d crashed into me snapped a cuff on my left hand, and cold iron bit into my wrist.

  I PANICKED.

  “Get off me!” I battered the fetterling with my right hand. Just when its grip seemed to loosen, another monster curled around my right bicep. More fetterlings slithered forward and tangled up my legs. No matter how much I struggled, I couldn’t free myself.

  A loud scraping screech came from the trees.

  All the iron monsters in the clearing grew still for a moment. Then the group holding me and those locked around Fox hauled us both toward the forest. The treetops rustled and branches snapped as more of the fiendish creatures raced to join the fight.

  “Tristan…” Brer Fox said in a low voice.

  “Don’t say it.”

  “You have to get them to safety.”

  “Don’t say that,” I whispered. “You’re coming, too.”

  “Ayanna!” BF shouted. “I know you’re still there. You never follow your own orders. Tell the others what I did! You hear? Give my story a good ending for once. Tell them I—”

  A fetterling collar snapped over Brer Fox’s mouth. The chain grew taut, and he was yanked off his feet and hurtled into the forest gloom.