by Kwame Mbalia
“Gum Baby,” I said slowly. “Did you…see anything weird when you fell into the Burning Sea?”
“Flaming death?”
“Well, yes, but anything else? Did you…see a shadow in a room?”
Gum Baby shook her head. “Nope. Why?”
The haint’s cackling laughter echoed in my ears again, along with his warning.
Don’t you tell a soul, boy….
“Just wondering.”
She patted my cheek and went back to looking for anyone she might know, while I grimaced and wiped off her sticky residue and wrestled with secrets.
The haint had fallen through the tear, too. I knew that now. The presence in the Bottle Tree forest, the shadow that had seeped out of the bottle, the weird conversation with Uncle C…each encounter had involved the same evil aura that lingered like a bad aftertaste or that weird smell in my gym bag. And now he was lurking somewhere out there, doing gods-knew-what with Eddie’s journal. He had seemed eager to possess it, and now he did, as much as it pained me to admit that. I had to get it back.
But how? I stared at my hands, then flexed my fingers. Apparently butterflies were at my beck and call, so maybe—
“Stew?”
The question startled me, and I blinked. “I’m sorry?”
The girl manning the cook pot sneered. “Do you want stew or not?”
“Oh, uh, yes. Please.”
“Bread?”
“Yes, please.”
She handed me a rough clay bowl full of steaming vegetables, seasoned rice, and a crusty chunk of bread, and I thanked her and moved on. I found a seat near the back of the room, at the edge of a table, and sat down next to a family of Midfolk with four children, each of them staring at me. They really stared when Gum Baby hopped off my shoulder and stuck her face into my food. The little terror even had the nerve to hum to herself while she scarfed my meal.
I ate from the other side of the bowl. The vegetables—onions and celery and something that resembled a purple carrot—were spicy and made my eyes water. It was also delicious. I devoured it, dipping the steaming bread in the remains to sop up every trace.
“Daaaaang, Bumbletongue, you were hungry, weren’t you? Gum Baby wanted your bread, too. Now she’s gotta get up and go ask for some more. You just selfish.” Gum Baby walked down the table, scrounging for leftovers.
I looked around. Everyone was watching me, and my face got so hot with embarrassment my cheeks could’ve started a fire. One of the younger kids snickered before being shushed by his older sister, who looked to be around my age.
She smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I know how it is—you don’t realize how hungry you are until you sit down in front of food.”
“Yeah.” I studied the bowl, eyed the piece of onion in the bottom, and decided against slurping it up.
“My name’s Netta.”
“Tristan.”
“You just get here?” she asked. One of her siblings climbed into her lap, and she began to rock him automatically.
“Yeah. Well, yesterday. Apparently I slept for a while.” At the mention of sleep, a yawn forced its way out, and I blinked in surprise.
Netta grinned. “Beds are too comfortable after nights spent on the soggy Drowned Forest floor.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Sorry for all the questions. It’s just…not a lot of kids our age make it to the Thicket.”
I looked up, confused. Netta shrugged and nodded at the crowd. “You didn’t notice? Look around. Those iron monsters seem to prefer us older kids for some reason. Nobody knows why.”
I scanned the room. She was right—all the kids, apart from a few like Netta and myself, were younger. Children who, back in Chicago, would be in kindergarten. Why? I felt sick to my stomach.
I’ve been waiting for you, Uncle C had said.
Netta frowned. “You okay? You don’t look so good.”
I got up, jostling the table in my rush. “Sorry, I…I gotta go.” I hurried through the jam-packed chamber, mumbling apologies as I squeezed through, until I reached a clear space against the wall and bent over, my hands on my knees.
All those people. All those families, ripped apart and hounded through the forest, just because of me. That haint had been hunting Midfolk, somehow working with the Maafa, whatever that was, and sending iron monsters searching for me, but taking everyone they captured and…I felt like I was going to vomit everything I’d just eaten. How soon before everyone made the connection? How soon before they figured out it was all my fault?
I sank to the floor and laid my head on top of my crossed arms. A wave of exhaustion swept over me. I just wanted to sleep and wake up and the nightmare would be over. I’d be back in Chicago, Eddie would be knocking on the apartment door, and everything would be back to normal.
I just wanted to sleep.
Sleep…
Darkness.
Two torches burned on either side of me, barely illuminating a long, damp corridor. The kind of space you walk away from, not into.
But I couldn’t walk away.
Something wouldn’t let me.
One foot moved, then the other, and I stepped into the gloom. As I walked, the torches floated alongside me, and faces appeared in their dim light. People and animals looked out at me from inside the semitransparent walls, their horrified expressions lining each side of the hallway like twisted portraits. Manacles held them in place, and their mouths moved but nothing came out. I passed two or three before I came to one I recognized.
“Brer Fox?” I tried to stop, but my feet wouldn’t obey my commands, and I kept walking. When I looked back, his silver muzzle moved as he tried to respond. “Brer Fox!” I yelled.
He was alive! There was still a chance to save him.
This thought dominated my mind so thoroughly that I didn’t notice when the darkness began to lighten. Water dripped and things scurried past my feet as I trudged down the hall. Whispers echoed, and I heard a nasty laugh. Just when I thought I’d be marching forever, a door emerged out of the darkness.
I wanted to turn around, but my hand moved on its own and I couldn’t stop it from pushing the door open. My feet took me through.
“Hey now, hey now. Look who it is! Where you been, Tristan?”
The shadow from before, the one I had seen when I was falling through the hole, stood in front of me. It had a form now—a body. I could see it outlined, though only in parts, as if someone had just started drawing a monster with ink and anger.
A single eye blinked open, and the haint smiled, showing a row of perfect white teeth. “You ain’t avoiding old Uncle C, are you?” Something dropped out of the shadow—something I couldn’t make out completely, but it looked like a flower with fuzzy white petals. It immediately withered in the darkness.
“What do you want?” I whispered.
“You ain’t been square with me, Tristan.” The shadow sounded sad. Betrayed. Like I’d stolen a dollar from it. “Naw, you ain’t been square at all. After I saved you, this is how you treat me?” A lantern flared to life, and I saw more shriveled flowers on the ground. Next to it was a book full of warped pages with a water-stained leather cover. Eddie’s journal! Somehow, someone had put it back together. I squeezed my fists so hard my fingernails bit into my palms.
“That’s mine!”
The shadow’s edges hardened, and just for a second I thought I saw a full face glaring at me—one-eyed and scowling.
“This ain’t what I thought it was, but you knew that. Where’s the magic? I can’t do nothing with this mess. I should burn this piece of trash!”
“No!” I shouted.
“Well, then you should’ve been square with me!”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But as I said that, the story scene from the Thicket glade popped into my mind.
The lantern flared again, and the smell of old rot nearly choked me. “You know exactly what I’m talking about! You made a fool out of me. But I’m a
kind uncle, yes, I am. You know what I need, and you gonna get it for me. I want that spider’s power, and you gonna bring it to me, or I’ll light this wad of toilet paper on fire and come find you. And when I do find you, I’m gonna put an end to everythang and everybody who ever helped you or looked at you or even thought nice things about you. I’ll bury them all!” The lantern flickered as the haint spat out, “You hear me? I WILL COME FIND YOU!”
The words punched me in my chest, and suddenly I was flying backward, yanked by an invisible string through the door and down the hallway, until I was abruptly dumped at the entrance.
Get me Anansi’s power, boy, or this journal of yours and everything else is kindling.
The threat followed me, or maybe it was burned into my head. I had control of my body again, but as I turned, another voice stopped me in the darkness.
“Hey, nimrod, you’re talking to the wrong one.”
The breath left my lungs, and I whirled around. I recognized that voice. I just never expected to hear it again. “Eddie?”
“You’re talking to the wrong one.”
“Eddie! Where are you?”
He didn’t answer, though. My best friend’s voice just kept repeating that phrase, and I gripped my skull as panic and confusion and helplessness pulled me in seventeen different directions.
“EDDIE!”
Nothing.
“TRISTAN?”
My eyes snapped open. Ayanna stood over me in the crowded common area, her eyes narrowed. I stood up and swallowed a few times.
“Hey. Where’ve you been?” I asked her.
She watched me, then glanced at the people trying not to listen in. She turned and beckoned me to follow. “Not here. Somebody wants to speak to you. Come with me and I’ll explain.”
Curious, I followed Ayanna through the Thicket’s shadow-filled tunnels. Slivers of sunlight squeezed through the cracks in the branches, and I caught a glance of cloudless blue skies more than once. MidPass should’ve been a peaceful place, somewhere you could play, grow up, sing, dance, and let the magic of the world carry you along.
Instead, it was horror.
Nightmares.
Because of me.
What did the haint want with storytelling magic?
I needed to find a way to fix this. Maybe if I explained everything to John Henry and Miss Rose and Miss Sarah, they could somehow take the Anansesem power away and I’d be free to go.
“I had to go talk to some of the Midfolk,” Ayanna said suddenly. I looked at her, confused, and she sighed. “You asked me where I’d been. I had to tell some families that we weren’t able to find their loved ones.”
I winced. “That sounds hard.”
“It is. And it never gets easier. I don’t know how Brer Fox did it….”
Brer Fox. I wondered if I should tell her he was still alive…somewhere. But then I decided against it, remembering Uncle C’s threat against anyone who even looked at me.
“And after that I had to try to convince Miss Sarah to let me go out on patrol one more time. There are still Midfolk out there we can save, I know it!” She pounded her fist into her hand. “There have to be.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. We walked in silence for a long time until Ayanna slowed, and I realized we were back at the indoor Thicket glade where John Henry and the others had quizzed me earlier. She turned around before we stepped inside and studied me again.
“What?” I asked.
“Did you really do it?” she asked.
My heart skipped a beat. Did she mean the tear in the sky?
“Do what?”
“You know. Bring that story to life. With magic.” She said it with a bit of anger, as if I’d betrayed someone.
I let out a breath of relief. “I don’t know. That’s what the gods told me.”
“I’m not asking them, I’m asking you. Apparently you can hear things, too?”
“I don’t know, okay? I sense…something. Drums, clapping, faint music…I can’t explain it, other than to say it’s like having a memory just out of reach.” I balled my hands into fists and sighed in frustration. “I don’t know if it’s that Anansesem thing, but…”
Ayanna continued to watch me. “I hope so,” she muttered. “We need all the help we can get, and maybe…just maybe, with your help, we can tip the balance in our favor for once.” She offered me a small smile, then walked inside.
I waited for a moment. She wanted my help…. Even after everything I’d done, and all the problems I’d caused, I could still make this right.
So why did that thought paralyze me with fear?
“Tristan?”
I exhaled and followed her inside.
We walked past the hill, crossed the stream, and headed toward the trees in the back, where a large boulder sat between several trunks. At first I thought there was a breeze, because of all the motion in the treetops, but then one of the many leaves separated and fluttered down to us.
“The butterflies!” I said in hushed awe.
The trees were covered with the butterflies from before. They’d made their homes in the branches, folding and unfolding their wings, until it looked like the entire grove was a living painting. I held out a finger and the largest butterfly I’d ever seen landed on it. Sky-blue wings splashed with yellow and white dots flapped slowly before the insect took off to flutter elsewhere.
“Peaceful, ain’t it?”
John Henry’s voice rumbled out of the shade. What I’d assumed was a boulder was really the giant folk hero sitting against a tree trunk. Now he turned slowly and looked at me, and my eyes widened at the hundreds of butterflies covering his arms and shoulders.
“Come here to think sometimes,” he said. He glanced at Ayanna and smiled. “Thanks for bringing him. Sarah and Rose went to do a flyover of the Drowned Forest, see if they can find any stragglers. You get something to eat?”
She shook her head. “Later. I’m going back on patrol. I’ll take the east side.”
John Henry’s eyes grew sad. “Ayanna, Rose said—”
“I’m going on patrol,” she repeated stubbornly, and after a brief standoff, he sighed and nodded.
She looked at me with that almost-pleading expression again, like I was the answer to an unspoken question, before gripping her staff and stalking to the exit.
“Sit down, Tristan,” said John Henry. “We need to talk.”
I eased down opposite him and leaned my head against the tree trunk. John Henry watched Ayanna leave, then turned and studied my eyes. I avoided his, choosing instead to gaze at the butterflies flying above us.
“These iron monsters are killing us slowly,” the big man said grimly. “It’s getting to the point where folks can’t step outside the Thicket without one of us gods escorting them. Even then it can get iffy.”
“But,” I said, “you’re John Henry. You’re all heroes, gods! Right? How can they—?”
“Easily. All it takes is a bunch of those sneaky metal creatures to suck up our attention, and then other ones start snatching folks left and right. They’re smart—smarter than they should be. Smarter than they used to be. The Ma—their leader is devious in ways we never could’ve imagined. They’re learning, and they’re taking our people. They’re even taking our children. Our CHILDREN!” John Henry pounded his fist on the ground, sending tremors through the whole forest, and I flinched as hundreds of butterflies took flight in a flurry of silent wings.
“Who’s their leader?” I asked.
He rubbed his forehead with his eyes closed for several seconds. “It ain’t really a who. It’s more of a feeling. Of devastation and destruction, hunger and greed. It’s pain, and that’s what it survives on. It came here with the first of us, with me and Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and the Flying Ladies. The sadness to our joy. We managed to defeat it once. We thought if we let it sink to the bottom of the Burning Sea, and stayed vigilant, and forbade anyone from mentioning or even thinking of it, we could live peaceful lives.” He look
ed up at the sky. “But something’s brought it to the surface again, worked it up into a right fury, and it’s sending everything it has after us. All the iron monsters it can dredge up from the depths are headed our way.”
When he stopped speaking, I struggled with the enormity of his words.
Something had disturbed a monster it had taken all the gods to defeat.
That something was me…and the haint I’d brought along.
John Henry cleared his throat. “Brer says he has a plan. And you’re part of it.”
I frowned. “But…”
He winced. “I wish we could keep you out of it, but I don’t see how we have a choice. We need your help.”
There it was again. That word.
Help.
I started to shake my head. “I don’t think I can…”
“Tristan, an Anansesem…that’s something special. You may not realize it, but this world and yours are connected. The legends, the fables…all the tales you heard growing up, they give us strength. They’re like fuel for us folk heroes here, the reason everyone calls us gods. And when an Anansesem tells them, they’re even more powerful. You are linked with Alke more than any of us, because you carry the stories that brought us here—stories from your world and mine.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. How was I supposed to respond to that? Suddenly all of my excuses sounded trivial. I closed my eyes and squeezed my fists tight. Everyone was after this power that I didn’t understand. I just longed to get rid of it, not save the world. But if I wanted to get home, what choice did I have?
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
IF YOU TOLD ME A dude John Henry’s size could squeeze through a tunnel of thorns I had to duck through, I’d laugh in your face. But somehow the Thicket seemed to shift and grow and stretch around him. Chestnutt had said the Thicket had magic woven into its vines, but it was still amazing to watch as we made our way through the maze of hallways unimpeded.
We found Brer sitting in the middle of the floor in a dome-like room. Small holes dotted the space from floor to ceiling, and behind the walls I could hear the sounds of scratching and scampering.
