by Kwame Mbalia
It was like being in the presence of a relic, or even living history. As I stood beneath the shelter of its limbs and the shadow of its trunk, it felt like I was in one of Nana’s stories. I heard something—a whisper, or faint music, maybe even a drumbeat—and it sounded so familiar. The bark on the trunk began to shimmer, like something was hidden in plain sight, and any second it would reveal itself—
“Tristan!” Chestnutt’s call broke the spell. “Hurry, the meeting’s starting!”
I shook my head and looked back at the Tree of Power, but it was no longer flickering. The moment had passed. Still…something lingered in the air, like electricity after a lightning strike. An energy. I could almost—
“Tristan!”
I frowned and, with one last glance at the enormous tree, trotted after Chestnutt to find some answers.
It took me five minutes to decide that maaaaybe going to the meeting was a bad idea.
Don’t get me wrong—I still wanted to find someone who could help me rescue Eddie’s journal and get out of this place. Adventures are cool, just not when three-foot-tall handcuffs are chasing you. But as Chestnutt led me down the gently sloping Thicket tunnel, this one with cherry-red flowers budding along the walls, I heard the echo of Gum Baby’s voice ahead of us.
“And then Gum Baby had to run for her life! That boy chased Gum Baby, screaming and hollering like his feet were on fire.”
“Mmmm,” somebody said. A woman, by the sound of it, and I hesitated. I knew that tone of voice.
“And he started calling Gum Baby names. Horrible names. Too bad to even repeat.”
“Mm-hmm,” somebody else said. Another woman. What was this, an after-church luncheon? “A year, Gum Baby. You were gone for a year. You had one job, simple, and you failed. And then you bring this boy with you—what were you thinking?”
I grinned. Serves the little loudmouth right, I thought, fibbing on me like that.
Chestnutt hopped down the tunnel and came to a stop beside a large entrance cut into the Thicket wall. The conversation continued ahead of us, but I stopped paying attention, because I heard that music again. Drums and rhythmic clapping, louder than before. I shook my head to clear it and tried to focus on what was in front of us. Light spilled into the tunnel, bright and inviting, but I’m no fool. I could see from Chestnutt’s expression that she wasn’t eager to hop through. She twitched her ears in hesitation.
“Well,” she whispered, “I should probably leave you here.”
I looked at her, then at the giant doorway, then back at her. “Nuh-uh.”
“What?”
“I’m not going in there alone. I don’t even know who, or what, is in there.”
“It’s just where they plan strategies and hold meetings and stuff like that.”
“Who’s they?”
We were holding a whispered argument, neither of us in a hurry to attract attention.
“Brer Rabbit and the others.”
“Folktale characters?”
“They’re gods, Tristan! Maybe they were something else in your world, but here, they’re the only ones who can keep us safe. You have to remember that. Like, the Thicket? Brer built it all by himself. You never wondered how all the tunnels are just the right height for whoever’s walking through them? And the thorns aren’t just for decoration, either. Yup, yup, they’re gods.”
My jaw dropped open. In the stories, the Thicket is where Brer Rabbit tricked Brer Fox into releasing him. But it was just a prickly bush thing…. This…this was a whole city of vines and thorns. A citadel. A fortress. It was all so incredible….
And I wanted no part of it.
“Look, I’m done with this,” I said. “I appreciate all the help, and please thank whoever it was that tucked me in, but how about you just show me the exit to this place and we’ll call it a day. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I just want to go home now, so if you—”
A shadow fell across the doorway, and Chestnutt and I shrank back against the tunnel wall. That might not have been the best idea. For little Chestnutt it was fine—she just ducked in between a couple of branches and hid. But me? The tall kid with the too-wide shoulders? Big mistake.
“Gaaaaah!” I shouted as a thorn jabbed me right in the bottom.
So if you ever think you’ve made a bad first impression—maybe you tripped and fell over your own feet, or you had ketchup on your face—just picture me, Tristan Strong, hopping into a room full of gods while trying to pull a thorn out of my butt.
BY THE TIME THE OFFENDING piece of Thicket had been removed from my posterior and Gum Baby had stopped laughing, a trio of adults stood over me with their arms crossed and serious expressions on their faces.
“Tristan,” a massive voice rumbled, “I’m glad you decided to join us.”
Oh my goodness.
And I thought I was tall.
The deep voice belonged to a chest. At least, that’s what I thought, until I looked up…and up…and up…and finally saw the face looking down at me. It seemed familiar. Deep brown, with wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and also on his forehead, like he could only smile or frown.
Right now he was frowning.
“My name is—”
“John Henry,” I blurted out. “I…Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, it’s just…John Henry. Whoa.”
Out of all the folktales, “The Ballad of John Henry” was my favorite. Eddie and I had done research on him once. According to some tales, he hammered steel drilling spikes into granite for a railroad company. At the turn of the nineteenth century, men and women like him carried progress on their backs, laying tracks across America, around valleys and lakes and through mountains. John was the biggest and the strongest, the first to land a hammer blow in the morning and the last to trudge home in the evenings. In the early years after slavery, when Black people were struggling to find their way, John Henry was a rock to his small community. When he accepted a sadistic railroad magnate’s challenge and raced a steam-powered drill through a mountain and emerged victorious on the other side, he became a source of pride, even after the effort stopped his heart and he collapsed dead.
That’s what Eddie and I had found.
When Nana saw what we were doing, she’d made us sit and listen to her tales. Her stories were a little darker.
According to her, John Henry was a farmer, a former slave turned sharecropper, who got arrested for something ridiculous.
“You have to remember,” Nana had said while sitting in her easy chair, a pile of knitting in her lap, “people were in an ugly mood at that time. When they banned slavery, it stripped thousands of plantations of free labor. Now they had to pay us. You think that went over well? Child, please.”
She’d snorted, clicked her needles together, and looked over her glasses at us.
“No, they weren’t going to pay for something they used to get for free. So they invented laws. Then they said we broke them. Tossed us into prison, and guess where they made those prisoners serve time? That’s right. On those farms, or, like John Henry, on railroad chain gangs, hammering spikes from morning till night.”
She’d leaned forward and pointed a knitting needle at us.
“So remember that. A lot of times those little facts get smudged out of the history books. If you gon’ tell a story, you better be sure you’re telling the right one.”
What I’d thought was just a room at first was actually a forest glade, sheltered by a loose weaving of Thicket branches high above that let light in. Butterflies fluttered around flowers that filled the air with light scents of vanilla and cinnamon. A stream bubbled through the middle, surrounding a medium-size hill with a flat top. Two elderly women stood nearby, with Gum Baby between them, and they all stared at me.
And from somewhere, just like when I was beneath the Tree of Power, I heard the faintest drumming. A rhythm that, if I tried to capture it, would disappear. It was infuriating!
But my eyes were quickly drawn back to John Henry, and I forgot e
verything else. I mean, he was huge! He wore blue overalls, one strap undone, and a white collared shirt soaked with sweat, the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. Both arms were folded across his chest, and I couldn’t help but look around for his massive hammer.
He cleared his throat (I thought someone had fired a cannon) and nodded at the hill, the frown fading and his eyes twinkling. “Care to meet with us up top?”
I meant to say something profound. Something along the lines of how much his story meant to me, and how it had inspired me. Something deep and intelligent.
“Gaaaaah.” I nodded and rubbed my sore butt.
Hi, my name is Tristan Please-Let-Me-Hide-in-a-Corner.
John Henry’s frown disappeared completely, and he tried and failed to hide a smile before turning to follow the two women, who were already climbing the hill. They carried Gum Baby by the arms while she swung her legs in the air. I trailed after John Henry, thinking I hadn’t had to jog like this to keep up with someone since kindergarten. Chestnutt struggled to keep pace, too, so I kneeled and she hopped gratefully into my arms.
When we got to the bottom of the hill, John Henry stopped, still towering over the women now on top. He motioned for me to climb up.
No getting around it, I thought, and that made me scowl. As I hiked the slope, I prepared a defense against whatever accusations they were going to make. That’s what this was about, right? I was in some kind of trouble. That’s the reason you get called to a place where you’re the only kid in a gathering of adults.
As soon as I reached the top, where a wide tree stump rested in a clump of tiny white flowers, I said, “Look,” trying to get ahead of the inevitable lecture headed my way, “I didn’t do it. Whatever it is, I’m not sure how it happened. I just want to go home.”
The women parted, and the rest of my words mushed together into a lump on my tongue and refused to come out.
A sandy-brown rabbit reclined on his back beneath the shade of a giant mushroom cap. He used his long ears to shade his eyes from the rays of sunlight leaking in through the Thicket ceiling. Plump berries lay in a pile on a leaf beside him, and he popped one into his mouth. His fur was patchy, and long scars crisscrossed his body. Every so often his legs would twitch uncontrollably, like he was trying to shake something off.
I recognized him. I just didn’t expect him to be so…real.
“You’re…you’re Brer Rabbit,” I stammered out.
“Brer.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Brer. Not Brer Rabbit. Just Brer now—I really don’t see a need to specify anymore, do you? I mean, Bear is gone, and now Fox is gone. It’s just me, old Brer, last of the trio.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m—”
Brer flapped a paw. “I know who you are. You’re the one responsible for the end of the world. So, you know, thanks.”
“Now, hold up. I—”
But two more voices cut me off, and each other. They spoke quickly, in light tones that sounded like birds chattering, and they finished each other’s sentences like twin sisters would.
“What Brer means to say—” the first began.
“—is that you have some explaining to do, and quickly,” the other finished.
A tingling, hot feeling started at the base of my neck. I tried to remain calm as I turned to the two women and really looked at them for the first time.
One was tall, with hair cut lower than mine. She wore glasses perched just at the tip of her nose, and she glared over them at me like I’d tracked mud on her new carpet. The other woman was short with thick dreadlocks that were wrapped in multicolored cloth and piled high atop her head. Their deep brown skin glimmered beneath what at first I thought were black shawls draped over their shoulders.
Then a feather, black as midnight dipped in shadows, fell to the ground.
Those weren’t shawls.
They were wings.
And I knew.
“They say the People could fly,” I whispered.
The women caught each other’s eyes, then leaned forward and stared at me even more closely.
The first said, “It seems we have—”
“—a storyteller,” the second finished.
I looked between them, breathless. Nana used to tell me stories about how, over in Africa, before the horrors of slavery, people used to fly all the time. They’d whisper the powerful words, the phrases dripping in old magic, and shoot off into the sky. Brothers raced sisters. Mothers and fathers carried babies over shining lakes and snow-covered mountains.
Then came the chains and ships, and pain and whips, and the people’s wings fell or were torn off. But the words of power were never forgotten. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, after a brutal day of working in blistering-hot fields, the elders would whisper them into the ears of those who needed it most, and whoosh, off people would soar toward freedom.
I’m not gonna lie—I gawked at the two women. John Henry chuckled.
“Tristan, this is Miss Sarah and Miss Rose.” He didn’t point out who was who, or I missed it, so I stood there confused until the tall, skinny woman with glasses gave a small harrumph and waved at her partner.
“Really helpful, John. That’s Rose. I’m Sarah. Now that the introductions are finished—”
“—perhaps we can get back to who you are,” said Rose, “and just what the two of you were thinking.”
“The two of us?” I looked around, confused, until my eyes landed on the tree stump. There sat Gum Baby. She raised a sticky hand and waved.
“Hey, Bumbletongue.”
“You! What lies have you been telling now? Huh?”
To my surprise, Gum Baby didn’t jump up and start shouting nonsense. She didn’t get angry, she didn’t sap attack anything…. She didn’t even look up at me. She just stared down into her lap, weaving tiny little crowns out of grass and flower petals.
“If you’re quite done with your questions—” Miss Sarah said.
“—maybe you can answer a few of ours,” said Miss Rose.
I flushed and turned back to the women. They glanced at each other—I’d seen that type of look before. Nothing good came after a look like that.
“Questions?” I asked.
John Henry cleared his throat. “Gum Baby here was sent to find…something—”
“I know. The book.”
He frowned, and Brer sat up. “How do you know that? No one outside this room knew anything about that.”
I took a deep breath, paused, then shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.” How could I explain the vision I’d had in the car and the other weird magic Eddie’s journal had?
John Henry leaned forward, and the giant folk hero let a rumbling growl escape his chest. “I reckon we’ll be the judges of whether it matters or not, understand?”
I looked around at all of them, glaring at me with either suspicion or outright anger. There’s a time to be stubborn, and this wasn’t it. “Yeah, fine.”
“Good. Now…what do you know of Gum Baby’s plan?”
I sighed and scratched my chin. “Uh, you and Brer sent her. Y’all were scared of something…” I remembered the sound of clanking in my vision. “The fetterlings, I guess.”
Brer flinched at the mention of the iron monsters.
It was all starting to make more sense now. “You and Brer made a hole—a tunnel—by the Tree of Power and sent Gum Baby through, telling her to find it. Find the book.”
Everyone stared at me. Brer scrambled to his feet and hopped in front of me with one giant leap. “Spy!” he snarled. “How did he follow us? Is the Warren compromised? Who told you where to find us?”
“I didn’t spy on anyone,” I said angrily.
“Liar!”
“I saw it when I touched…” There was no use trying to the hide the truth now. “When I opened my friend’s journal.”
Brer jerked back as if I’d struck him, and he swallowed whatever accusation he’d had on the tip of his tongue.
Ms. Rose
looked at me skeptically. “A journal?”
I nodded.
“This journal…” Brer said slowly. “Did it have a symbol on it?”
“Yeah. Though it didn’t always….”
“Describe it.”
“Um…” I squinted in concentration. “Golden. My grandmother said it was an old African symbol for a spiderweb. Something about being creative.”
Brer hopped back a few paces, wonder all over his furry face. He stroked his ears and nodded at me to go on.
“I mean, that’s it,” I said. “Well, except that it’s been glowing….”
“A green light? Pulsing every three seconds or so?” Brer asked eagerly.
I nodded, and he clapped his front paws and laughed.
“I knew it. I knew it!” He jumped up and punched John Henry in the shoulder. “Didn’t I tell you? I said we’d find it, and we did! Took a bit longer than expected, but we found it!”
John Henry grunted. “Why did it take so long?”
Brer stopped in mid-cheer. “Eh?”
“Why did it take so long? Gum Baby thought she was there for an hour or two, but it was a year. And the flaming tear in the sky—did that have anything to do with it?” He turned to me. “Was that because of you?”
I took a deep breath and described Gum Baby’s break-in, the chase through the Bottle Tree forest, and finally our fight.
Brer tapped his foot impatiently, until finally he flapped his paws and cut me off. “Oh really, John, it’s simple time distortion. Various realms experience time differently—that’s been known for a while. Without proper precautions someone could theoretically live a lifetime in their world and a moment in ours. It’s quite complicated, you know, something I don’t expect you all to pick up on right away. But you add that rip in the sky into the equation…why, all bets are off. Gum Baby pops out in the boy’s realm, spends an hour upworld, but comes back through the tear between realms instead of the spell we cast?” He tutted. “Nasty stuff. She could’ve been smooshed.”
Gum Baby gasped. “Gum Baby could’ve been Gum Gravy?”
Brer waved a paw. “But you’re all missing the bigger picture! We can fix the tear and everything else once we build…you know.” Brer turned to me, his ears practically quivering with excitement. “So, where is it?”
