Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

by Kwame Mbalia

  “Are you…dressed like Miss Rose?” Chestnutt asked.

  That was it! The black outfit, the feathers…. Gum Baby had a new mentor, it seemed.

  “No,” Gum Baby said. “Just thought feathers made Gum Baby look fierce.” She struck a pose, flexing her biceps and shaking her back so the feathers wiggled.

  Chestnutt, Ayanna, and I looked at each other and tried not to smile.

  “Okay,” Ayanna said, “but what are you doing here? I thought you were on kitchen duty.”

  Gum Baby sank to the floor of the raft and fiddled with the empty supply sack. “Gum Baby thought if she got another chance, she could prove she could be a part of the team.”

  Ayanna’s face softened. She bit her lip, then sighed. “You can’t just insert yourself, Gum Baby. You have to give it some time. Miss Rose and Miss Sarah and the others will come around. But sneaking off on a mission you’re not supposed to be on isn’t going to help. You know that.”

  Gum Baby slumped even lower. Any farther and her face would be on the floor.

  “What does she want to do?” I whispered to Chestnutt.

  At least I thought I had whispered. Ayanna looked up with a frown. What had I said wrong this time?

  “She wants to be a pilot,” Chestnutt answered. “Like Ayanna.”

  Gum Baby sighed and stared at her wooden hands, then reached behind and pulled the feathers from her back. She crumpled them and tossed them away, then drew her little knees up to her chest.

  “Gum Baby thought she could do it. Go on adventures, find others, lead them home and be a hero, yay. Gum Baby worked so hard. She trained. She studied. She thought she was ready. Gum Baby begged and pleaded. But no, they said. She was too small, or too sticky.”

  We all watched her—even Ayanna turned toward her. It wasn’t normal to see Gum Baby like this. She was always energetic, never sad.

  I thought I was the sad one.

  Turns out other people—even dolls, I guess—have issues, too.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  She looked at me. “Finally, after Gum Baby stuck herself behind John Henry’s ear and whispered for a few days, they agreed to give Gum Baby a test. Said if she passed, Gum Baby could go on a ’frobation as a pilot.” She patted her curls and sighed. “Even had Miss Rose work on the hair.”

  I winced. “You mean…probation, right?”

  Gum Baby’s eyes grew wide, then she dropped her face into her hands and started wailing. “Gum Baby got this ’fro for nothing? Do you know how hard it is to get sap out of an afro? Do you? DO YOU?”

  Chestnutt patted her on the back as Ayanna gave me an exasperated look.

  I raised my hands defensively. “I’m sorry! I just thought she should know!”

  “You could’ve said it later,” she muttered.

  After a few moments Gum Baby calmed down and sniffled. I handed her a paper towel and she blew her nose. Have you ever seen a doll full of sap blow her nose? Um…trust me, you don’t want to.

  “So, Gum Baby,” Chestnutt said, trying to change the subject, “what mission did they send you on? How’d you do?”

  Gum Baby shrugged. “Ask him,” she said, pointing at me. “He was there, too.”

  “What?” I said. “What did I do?”

  Gum Baby sniffled again. “You didn’t let Gum Baby have the book!”

  I gawped in disbelief. “You’re mad because I didn’t let you steal my best friend’s journal? You’re the whole reason I’m stuck here!”

  “No, you’re the reason you’re here. Nobody told your big head to chase Gum Baby. You could’ve let her have it. You were just being selfish.”

  “Of all the—I mean, how—? I can’t even begin—” I spluttered in frustration. Chestnutt and Ayanna looked back and forth between the two of us.

  “I never heard the full story,” Ayanna said thoughtfully. “How did you and Gum Baby end up destroying the lives of everyone in MidPass and possibly Alke as well?” I winced, and she shrugged. “I call it as I see it.”

  Chestnutt hopped up and down. “Oh, a story, a story!”

  Gum Baby started jumping up and down as well, and I wrinkled my forehead at her. “You know the story. You were in it.”

  “Gum Baby just likes stories,” she said.

  “Well, I’m not telling one.”

  “Why?”

  “Yeah, why?” Ayanna said, and she grinned when I rolled my eyes.

  “Because weird things happen when I tell stories, remember?”

  “Mm-hmm. But you’re an Anansesem, right? Isn’t that what Brer and John Henry and Miss Rose said? You’re supposed to be superspecial when it comes to telling stories. Are you saying you’re really not that special after all?” She smiled and raised her eyebrows.

  I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore her.

  “So…you’re not going to tell a story?” Chestnutt’s voice sounded smaller than normal. When I looked up, both she and Gum Baby looked disappointed.

  I sighed. Maybe nothing bad would come of it. And if it did, well, then at least I’d be diverting iron monsters from the Thicket. Yeah. I’d be doing the gods a favor….

  To be honest, I did want to try out the Anansesem powers again, just so I could get into the rhythm of telling stories to groups of people. If was going to help, I needed to practice.

  “Fine. I’ll tell a story—but not the one about how I met Gum Baby. I saw what happened when I talked about that.”

  “Oh? Then what are you going to share with the class today?” Ayanna pitched the raft upward slightly and we popped into clear sky. The cloudbank drifted beneath and we floated on a sea of white.

  I stuck my tongue out at Ayanna before turning to Chestnutt and Gum Baby, racking my brain. What story would be safe to tell?

  Another pocket of mist and clouds drifted up past the raft and over our heads. Chestnutt giggled as a white sphere settled between the tips of her ears, then yelped as Gum Baby popped it.

  I could feel a rhythm in the raft.

  More cloud bubbles rose, floated around us, and burst into joy. Laughter and shouts. I heard children calling and playing.

  I grinned.

  “Okay,” I said in a loud voice, clapping my hands. I could sense energy in them, like when I made the butterflies tell the story in the Thicket glade. It was still a bit strange, but the feeling was lighter this time, less like needles and more like a buzzing.

  Everyone looked at me, then settled down and waited. Even Ayanna seemed curious.

  “One time, Eddie and I made our own super soda.”

  The rhythm was in my fingertips now. It felt like I could shape the story, work the words like clay and sculpt a tale for everyone to see.

  “It started as a dare. A prank, really.”

  The story materialized with little effort this time. Maybe because I wasn’t angry or threatened. Either way, everyone on the raft oohed and aahed as the bubbles of mist surrounding us swirled and stretched into a diorama. Two cloud boys—one slightly larger than the other—crept into a large nimbus of a building. We entered, too, and watched the mischievous boys as they laughed and huddled together in a fluffy white cafeteria.

  I felt a tug of sadness—I’d nearly forgotten this memory.

  “Our heroes thought they were alone in the building. It was a Saturday, nobody was at the school, and the lights were off. Little did they know…”

  A tall woman with silver-stratus dreadlocks and wearing a cirrus-cloud dress marched down the hallway to the cafeteria. The larger boy didn’t hear her—he was buried in chemistry, mixing sparkling water and food coloring and fizzy candy in six different sports bottles, and his back was to the door. At the last second, the smaller boy sounded the alarm—someone was coming! The boys hid, their delicious project perched precariously on the edge of a tabletop. The bottles started bubbling, gently at first, but then they began to shake faster and faster until the whole table jitterbugged.

  The woman, with a cumulonimbus frown that grew darker and
darker, investigated the commotion. While her back was turned, the boys snuck out, their little legs churning and kicking up puffs behind them.

  I closed my eyes, remembering the breathless laughter, the whispers, the anticipation. I could hear Eddie hissing at me to slow down and wait for him, feel my ribs splitting with laughter as I ran.

  I didn’t have to open my eyes to see what happened next. It unfolded in my mind.

  The soda bottles launched into the air and sent sweet suds bursting out of every window in the cafeteria, and one bottle zoomed down the hallway and out the front door. Kids playing blocks away said they saw it whiz by, and legend has it that people fighting in the burger joint parking lot stopped to watch. By the time all the soda had fizzed out, the two sides couldn’t remember what they’d been fighting over.

  When I opened my eyes, a cloud bottle streamed across the sky. Chestnutt, Gum Baby, and even Ayanna watched it. It flew toward us, soaring just above the raft before bursting into twinkling vapor and misty streamers.

  But my attention stayed on the diorama. On the two boys and the way the smaller one clapped the larger one on the shoulder. Even if no one else could hear them, the words he spoke still rang clear in my mind.

  I got your back.

  A flare of anger spiked through me.

  Eddie wasn’t around anymore. He couldn’t have my back. He wasn’t there to get me in trouble, or get me out of trouble, or do anything. The memory was just a reminder of something that could never be again.

  “Hey, what happened?”

  Chestnutt’s voice broke through my thoughts. I realized that the diorama had frozen—the boys were in mid-stride. I struggled to recapture the rhythm, to get the feeling of creation in my fingers, but the anger had disrupted everything.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Is that it? Did they get away?” Gum Baby hopped up and down in frustration. “You can’t leave Gum Baby hanging like this. Stupid cloud people! Never can tell with them.”

  Ayanna studied me. “You okay?”

  I didn’t answer. The drumming had stopped, and my old anger and resentment had returned. But this time, the tingling remained in my fingertips, like that sticky feeling you can never get rid of after touching honey or syrup.

  Just to see what would happen, I conjured an image of Eddie in my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut, reached out toward the mist, and tried to bring the little cloud boy back.

  Nothing.

  I let my hands drop in disappointment.

  Concentrate on what you’re speaking about, and learn control.

  Miss Sarah’s words echoed in my ear, and I frowned. Concentrate and control….

  I hesitated, then reached out again. This time I kept my eyes open, and I whispered to myself, “Once I had a brother and friend….”

  My fingers buzzed, and then the small boy made of mist and mischief climbed out of the clouds.

  I smiled.

  “Heads up, everyone,” Ayanna called. The solemn expression on her face wiped the smile off mine. “We’re here.”

  Gum Baby rushed to the edge of the raft. Chestnutt and I stayed put. My stomach flopped as we tilted. Ayanna, steering from the rear, nodded toward the front.

  “Go look,” she said.

  I shook my head. “I’m good right here.”

  “Aw, don’t be like that. Trust me, this is the best view you’ll ever see.” She studied my expression, then raised an eyebrow. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about your fear of heights, huh?”

  I hesitated, then gave her a few short, jerky nods and waited for her to laugh at me. But she didn’t say anything else. She just turned back to her glowing staff, made minute adjustments, and stared at the mist like a psychic reading tea leaves.

  As we descended, Gum Baby rejoined Chestnutt and they whispered excitedly to each other.

  “Last chance, flyboy!” Ayanna called. She didn’t turn around. “If you miss this, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

  “If I fall, I won’t forgive myself,” I muttered.

  But as I spoke, the mist took on a golden sparkle, as if the bottom of the clouds had been dipped in glitter. Pinpricks of light speared up from the ground like miniature searchlights guiding us in for a landing. The raft swam in a golden pond for several seconds. Chestnutt started hopping back and forth—so fast that Gum Baby had to tell her to settle down.

  “Calm down, bunny, this ain’t hopscotch!”

  The anticipation was contagious, and my curiosity eventually outweighed my allergy to plunging to my death. Barely.

  I scooted to the rear edge on the seat of my pants, ignoring Ayanna’s mocking look as I eased up next to her.

  “About time,” she said.

  “View better be worth it,” I grumbled.

  She snorted. “Oh, it will be. And when we land, you gonna apologize for doubting me.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see.

  But as I spoke, the final remains of the glitter-dusted clouds faded, and my jaw dropped so far I thought I’d have to duct-tape it back to my face.

  “Holy—”

  “We’re here!” Gum Baby and Chestnutt shouted.

  Ayanna smirked.

  “Welcome to the Golden Crescent,” she said.

  WATER AS BLUE AS A summer sky stretched beneath us, and giant ships dotted the sea. Yachts and super-yachts. Ocean liners and huge oval hoverships with domes that sparkled and rippled like bubbles in the sun—every single one of them large enough to make the Titanic blush. Ruby-red symbols on their sides blazed when the sunlight reflected off them, but they were too dazzling to make out.

  And that was just the driveway.

  “Are those palaces?” I asked. My voice came out in a whisper, as if I didn’t want to interrupt the painter who was creating the scene below.

  “Yep.” Ayanna’s voice sounded grim for some reason, but I didn’t ask why. I stared greedily, drinking in the glamorous world we were descending into.

  The Golden Crescent wasn’t a place. It was a spectacle. The coastal city was shaped like an arc that grew thinner on both ends until the tips stabbed into the sea. Two pearl lighthouses with massive crystals on their tops stood at the end of each crescent point.

  Dark mountains rose out of the horizon—angry, sharp peaks that chewed at the sky, a mouth threatening to devour the glistening jewel in front of it.

  And I mean, this town glistened.

  Rose-gold sand met the turquoise sea in a clash of vibrant fury. In the distance, near the city center, spires of midnight black and dream silver stood proudly next to ivory domes and marble castles. Massive homes, bigger than any mansion I’d seen along Lakeshore Drive at home—bigger, in fact, than the museums we traveled to on field trips—lined city streets so wide you could play football from curb to jewel-encrusted curb.

  The streets curved up and around as the ground rose away from the coast like a spiral. And there, at the top of a hill, the grandest palace of all awaited.

  We angled down toward a giant marina, where more yachts of weird shapes and sizes floated. One had two stories, like a double-decker bus, except the windows were see-through bubbles. Inside, a waterfall splashed in a grotto, while a spiraling waterslide connected it to the bottom level, where a miniature beach awaited.

  “That’s so cool,” I said as we passed it. “If I had that, I’d never leave Lake Michigan.”

  A winding road led from the marina to a huge square of polished marble, and that’s where Ayanna steered the raft. More symbols, like those painted on the sides of the ships, were carved into the ground. I gulped as I recognized one—an adinkra, the same as on my bracelet, and on Eddie’s journal.

  The raft settled down in the middle of the landing space with a gentle bump.

  “Let’s go,” Gum Baby said, but Ayanna shook her head.

  “Not yet.”

  “But—”

  “We’re not dashing off anywhere. You could get lost, or something even worse might happen.”

  Ayanna passed out gear a
s we waited, and I raised my eyebrows as Gum Baby scampered behind a pile of supplies. Ayanna nudged my arm and handed me an empty satchel.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “For the Story Box. I’m not carrying that thing.”

  I crossed my arms. “Oh, so I have to carry the stolen goods? Nice. Real nice.”

  “Well, Gum Baby ain’t doing it, Bumbletongue,” the doll said, popping back into view, “so don’t even fix your mouth to suggest it.”

  I began to snap at the little loudmouth but stopped when I saw what she was wearing.

  Ayanna noticed it at the same time. “Um, GB…”

  “What?” Gum Baby was now in a black cape over tiny black pants and a thin black blouse. Her hair was pulled back in a tiny bun, and she posed dramatically with the cape extended.

  “Don’t let Gum Baby scare you,” she said. “It’s just for stealth. Gum Baby gonna be the wind. No, lightning! Wait, is lightning stealthy? Wind makes a whoosh sound, but lightning sorta cracks, don’t it? Yeah, Gum Baby is wind lightning. Gonna whoosh-crack all over the place.”

  She ran around the raft making whoosh sounds, and I sighed.

  Chestnutt stood on her hind paws and dropped the pencil she had been using to sketch on the raft. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  A map of the city covered the wooden planks, and I whistled silently at the amount of detail Chestnutt had managed to fit in. Palace-lined streets, parks and fountains, spires and towers—all were labeled in neat and legible handwriting. Arrows pointed toward one palace, larger than all the others, so large it took up half the map, and I gulped.

  This was becoming too real.

  We actually planned on stealing a god’s treasure. Nyame, the sky god. The one who first created stories, and who’d awarded them to Anansi after the Weaver had completed three seemingly insurmountable tasks.

  I rubbed my forehead and took a deep breath. Man oh man.

  Ayanna slipped on her backpack, then stepped on Gum Baby’s cape to stop her zooming. Ayanna wagged a finger at her and said, “Hush. Time to plan our attack.”