by Kwame Mbalia
Chestnutt looked at each of us and twitched her nose. “Okay, listen up. This is how it’s going to go….”
The plan went down the drain fifteen minutes in. Our group split up, with each pair taking one of the two main avenues leading to Nyame’s estate. I got partnered with Gum Baby.
Typical.
Instead of creeping stealthily down an unfamiliar street surrounded by unfamiliar buildings while trying to steal the most valuable treasure in an unfamiliar city, guess what I was doing?
Yep.
Arguing with a ten-inch doll.
“No, you cannot leave a sap trail!” I hissed as she moped behind me. “Now come on.”
“But what if monsters chase us through the city and we need to find our way back? Huh? What then? You ain’t heard of precoffinary measures?”
“First off, it’s precautionary measures—”
“First off, sap attack, Gum Baby know the phrase, but if you don’t wanna die, it’s precoffinary. Fool. Gum Baby know what words she wanna use.”
I gritted my teeth and wiped off the ball of sap she’d flung at my face. “Just…come on. We’re almost there.”
We walked up a slight hill, following a simple map Chestnutt had drawn on a scrap of paper. We’d passed several palaces, each grander and more luxurious than the last. But it was all very eerie.
The streets were deserted.
No people poked their heads out of their massive homes to investigate the intruders.
No kids ran along the streets playing with their friends.
No gossip or chatter or movement in the streets or market-day traffic or block party or any other community-based event. Nothing.
Gum Baby’s voice broke the silence. “Hey, look at this.”
She had climbed the stairs to a vine-covered palace across the street and stood peeking through the towering front gate. A small copper statue of a girl stood on a tiny ivory column, both hands frozen on her hips. I know it didn’t make sense, but I felt eyes on me as I walked up the steps, and I looked over my shoulder uneasily.
“Gum Baby,” I said, from several feet away, “I don’t think we should—”
“Too late,” she announced loudly, and she rapped the base of the statue. “You too scared, Bumbletongue.”
“WHO GOES THERE?”
Gum Baby squeaked, scrambled up the statue, and hastily clapped a sticky hand over its mouth, shushing the indignant copper girl doorbell.
“Shh! Sap attack! You gonna get us in trouble. Two sap attacks!”
The statue seemed to glare at us from behind a layer of sap covering her face.
“Gum Baby, get down from there,” I stage-whispered.
She flapped a hand at me, sending sticky drops of sap everywhere. “Come over here,” she said impatiently.
I growled something I probably wouldn’t say anywhere near Nana and stalked up the rest of the steps. Two more statues posed on either side of the gate, and they made my neck itch—I felt like they were watching me trespass. I crouched down beside Gum Baby and tried not to gawk at the size of everything around me. The entry arches, which stood as tall as John Henry, were copper trees with silhouettes of tiny people in motion on the top.
“Look.” Gum Baby pointed beyond the arches to a courtyard, where there was a small grove of real trees. A monstrous sycamore stood in the middle, so large that it shaded the entire grounds.
I cocked my ear. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Faint whistling sounded from deep within the tiny forest. A lot of whistling. It was like birds calling back and forth and then joining together in a loud, trilling chorus.
“That,” I said.
Gum Baby shook her head. “Nope. Clean your ears, Bumbletongue, and maybe that’ll fix it.”
The whistling grew louder and closer, and I licked my lips nervously. “Something’s coming.”
Then Gum Baby did look around uneasily. “What is it?”
“I don’t know—maybe we should go.”
“Don’t worry, Gum Baby will protect you.” But as she said that, she tried to hide behind my legs.
I was already backing away. That forest felt ancient. Neither good nor bad—but powerful. I wanted no part of that right now, not with everything else that was going on. My feet were turning to the street on their own, and who was I to stop them?
My name was Tristan Nope-I’m-Gone.
“Bumbletongue, quit being such a scaredy-cat! Bumbletongue! Ooh, Gum Baby gonna get you! Don’t you leave Gum Baby alone in here!”
We met up with Ayanna and Chestnutt at a giant plaza filled with fountains disguised as statues, and flowering bushes shaped to look like animals. Gum Baby was still fuming, but I felt nothing except relief. A boy can only take so much.
The air was filled with the aroma of springtime, and if it weren’t for the overwhelming silence, it would’ve been peaceful. Our footsteps echoed as we met in the middle of the open space.
“Guess we didn’t need to split up,” Ayanna admitted.
I’d like to say a smug smile didn’t appear on my face, but you take the wins you can get.
“Finished marking the trail back to the plaza,” Chestnutt said. “Just in case we’re chased and get lost.”
“Oh, did you?” Gum Baby said in an extra loud voice. “Would you call those…precoffinary measures?”
Chestnutt paused, then started to giggle. “Yup, yup, I guess I would.”
I could feel Gum Baby’s eyes lasering the back of my head. “Okay, so what’s next?” I asked, trying to move on quickly.
“That’s the entrance to Nyame’s estate over there,” Chestnutt said, flicking her ears toward the far end of the plaza, where two towering marble pillars marked an exit. Between them—
“Do y’all see that?” Gum Baby asked.
“It’s a gate,” Ayanna said.
“Gum Baby knows what a gate looks like. She’s very familiar with them. That ain’t no gate.”
“It’s Nyame’s gate,” Chestnutt said. “And that’s where we’re heading.”
Between the pillars, the air shimmered, gold flecks occasionally winking into existence like jeweled fireflies. The palace grounds beyond looked distorted, as if we were peering through frosted glass.
We stopped in front of the pillars. Ayanna looked at me, and I rolled my eyes and sighed.
Leadership is tough, man.
I hefted the empty satchel around my shoulders, took a deep breath, and stepped through the twinkling gate.
NYAME’S PALACE GROUNDS BLEW MY mind.
My brain was toast—burnt toast that your mom scrapes so you can still try to eat it for breakfast, but there is no saving it.
“That is one giant driveway,” I said.
The paved road in front of us, lined with glittering ivory bricks on one side and edged with golden stones on the other, curved around ripe orchards stuffed with fruit trees I never knew existed. It skipped over hills greener than fresh twenty-dollar bills.
Sunlight splashed in from overhead, bright without being too glaring, and my tension drained away. A gentle breeze carried the smell of spring turned to summer—fresh-cut grass, the ocean, and wildflowers newly bloomed.
“This place is incredible,” Chestnutt whispered.
Ayanna nodded but kept her eyes on a swivel. Always the pilot. Her eyes met mine and we exchanged a look of disbelief. This paradise felt too good to be true.
Gum Baby ran up a slight hill before the rest of us and froze.
“What is it?” I asked, following.
Gum Baby shook her head and backed up. My fists clenched and Ayanna reached for the staff slung across her back. Chestnutt dropped behind us as we crested the hill.
Everything we’d seen so far had been impressive. Clearly the palace estate had been designed to draw in visitors and astound them with the splendor and glory of the Golden Crescent. Nyame knew how to wow a crowd.
But after those appetizers came the main course.
Massive statues of people I didn’t recognize lined the path leading to an enormous golden domed palace. Some pointed at the horizon, or lifted children high into the air, and others carried spears and shields. The closest one was a woman with a stern face and a golden stool under one arm.
As we walked by, I swear her eyes followed us.
Ayanna raised an eyebrow as I quickened my pace, but she didn’t comment. Nobody wanted to talk near these statues that seemed to be watching our every move, so silence fell over us until we reached the entrance to Nyame’s palace.
And what an entrance it was.
“A waterfall,” I mumbled to no one in particular. “The entry is a waterfall. What is with this city and its weird front doors?”
The doorway, which looked large enough for one of the statues to walk through, was framed with stone that had been carved with symbols—more adinkra. A curtain of water streamed out of a slit on the top, falling in a perfect sheet like a single pane of glass, and the same winking flecks of gold from the front gate appeared here. I couldn’t see inside.
I took a step forward, and a seam appeared in the middle of the waterfall.
“Wait, wait,” Ayanna whispered. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I took another step and the seam widened at the bottom, like a curtain being drawn at the start of a play. “I think it has a motion sensor? Alkean smart-home technology. Who’d a thunk it?”
Ayanna rolled her eyes. “Just be careful, flyboy. You’re our ticket out of here.”
“I’m touched by your concern.”
“Gum Baby gonna touch up your chin if you don’t get a move on.” The little loudmouth used my legs as cover, peeking out from one before diving behind the other.
“Okay, okay.” I scooted closer and the seam in the waterfall opened even farther, so I could peek through and check the ground ahead. No immediate sign of a trap. I can do this, I thought. I took a deep breath and leaped through the doorway with a holler.
“HAH!”
Nobody jumped out at me. No monsters, no weird statues, nothing. Instead, I stood in a massive rectangular room—an audience chamber, from the looks of it. Polished marble floors reflected the golden plaques hanging from the walls.
Gum Baby came in behind me. “Where’s the ceiling?” she asked in a hushed whisper.
White marble pillars towered over us. They ended high above where the ceiling should have been, as if they held up the sky. Each had an image of life in the Golden Crescent painted on it—families sailing in the bay, children playing in the palace gardens, men and women in formal dress in this very hall. All of them with deep brown skin like mine. All of them happy.
None of them anywhere to be found in real life.
The pillars lined both sides like sentinels all the way to other end, a full football field away, where a statue sat on a golden throne. More waterfalls spilled out of holes in the walls, and they splashed into oval pools as blue as the sky. Silver lily pads with ruby-red flowers floated on the surface of the water.
Everything looked so…
“Beautiful,” I said out loud. Ayanna, who had entered after Chestnutt, moved to my side. “Where are they?” I asked her. “Where did all the people go?”
“Brer said the Golden Crescent was the first to be ravaged by the iron monsters,” she responded. “Maybe they’re all in hiding. Or…”
She didn’t finish, but she didn’t have to.
Maybe they’d all been taken.
“Hey, these statues are different.”
Gum Baby’s voice echoed from the other end of the hall. She stood near the statue on the throne, her silly cape fluttering in a gentle cross breeze, and pointed at the two figures flanking it—one of a large leopard in mid-leap, the other of a python lashing forward. I joined her in examining them. Both looked so fierce, so lifelike, that I could almost hear their snarls and hisses.
“Freaky,” I mumbled.
I moved closer to the throne, eager to get away from those creatures. The statue in the huge chair was just as detailed—a man staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the armrests, with bracelets on his wrists and anklets above his bare feet. His head was balding, and around the detailed crown of curls, he wore a circlet studded with large jeweled insects.
I could feel it again—that weird energy, like an electric bass line trying to get out of my skin. The waterfalls splashed in time, keeping the beat. There was a story here, somewhere, itching to be told.
My eyes fell to a circle in the floor right in front of the throne. “Hey now. What’s this?”
The others crowded around as I dropped into a squat and stared at faint indentations that were covered with sandy-brown dust. I blew gently across the surface, then leaned back in satisfaction.
“It’s a door,” Ayanna breathed.
“Do you think—?”
“It has to be.”
Could the Story Box really be under there? This was almost too easy.
I looked for a latch I could pull to lift the circular trapdoor, but there wasn’t one. We had nothing to pry it open with, either.
Ayanna turned to me. “Remember what Brer said? When the Anansesem tells a story—”
“It will be drawn to the Story Box.”
“And vice versa,” said Ayanna.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well?”
“Um, right.” Story, story. Needed a story. I could hear the faint rhythmic beating in the background. But what story would be appropriate for summoning a magical treasure chest?
My eyes flitted around the chamber, seeking inspiration. Finally they landed on the figure seated on the throne. An old man, almost larger-than-life, presiding over the room like a king. Or a god…
“I got it,” I said.
“’Bout time,” Gum Baby grumbled.
Ayanna shushed her and motioned for me to continue. Chestnutt hopped closer.
Concentrate on what you’re speaking about….
I took a deep breath, stared at the circle in the floor, then began to talk slowly, shaping the story with my hands as the words gave it form.
“What if I told you stories didn’t always exist?”
The light in the room faded. The grooves of the trapdoor began to glow, illuminating our faces. Sand swirled gently as I spoke, spinning into pillars, walls, and waterfalls, until a small replica of the throne room appeared in front of us.
“Once, Nyame, the sky god, owned all stories. He kept them in a magnificent chest, woven from light and dreams. He kept them in…his Story Box.”
I twirled my fingers, and a small figure stepped out of the whirling sand and took his place on the miniature throne. He pointed at the floor, and the circular door slid open. A glimmering chest rose into the air, spinning slowly and opening to reveal an emerald-green glow.
The same glow that had come from Eddie’s journal.
“But Kwaku Anansi, the spider god, wanted—”
A scraping sound interrupted me. At first I thought Gum Baby had fallen, but…no, there she was, sitting on my foot and staring intently at the sand.
The scrape came again.
This time Ayanna heard it, too. She frowned and looked around. “What was—?”
A groan filled the hall, and every muscle in my body locked up. Dust fell off the three statues—the leopard, the snake, and the god on the throne. The bracelets on his wrists and ankles jangled.
The statue’s head swiveled in my direction. Its eyes narrowed in anger, and a booming voice echoed in my skull.
LEAVE!
I STAGGERED BACK. THE VOICE had sounded loud enough to shatter stone, and yet no one else looked concerned.
“Everything okay?” Ayanna asked.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Gum Baby and Chestnutt paid me no attention—they were still fascinated by the whirling sand story. Ayanna cocked her head, but before I could try to speak to her again, the booming voice echoed.
They cannot hear. But you
can. Why? Why are you here?
I gulped and turned to the statue on the throne. Dust and sand blew off of it in spiraling streams to reveal…
“Gaaaaah,” I spluttered.
That was no statue.
Brown skin. Fuzzy graying hair. Piercing brown eyes flecked with gold. A chain necklace with a symbol I’d seen before. Not Anansi’s symbol, but another adinkra even more familiar. Nana used to knit it into her quilts all the time.
“N-n-nah,” I stuttered. “It’s…You’re…”
Speak! Have you come to torment me further? Does your master need more of my pain? Were my people, my heart, my home not enough?
I licked my lips. This was going all wrong. One, Nyame wasn’t supposed to be here. It was just an in-and-out mission. Grab the Story Box and go. No one had said anything about having to convince an angry god you weren’t here to destroy his culture.
Two, how do you address the sky god?
“Your Honor—”
That didn’t seem right.
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
LIES!
I staggered back from the verbal assault. Ayanna grabbed my arm before I could fall.
“Tristan? Are you okay? Who are you talking to?”
I shook my head at her. One conversation at a time.
“My Lord, we’re here—” I broke off. What could I tell him? We were here to steal from him? That much was true, no matter how worthy our cause might have been.
Nyame swiveled his head, and this time Ayanna noticed. “By the wings,” she said in a breathless whisper. “Is that—?”
Take what you will, usurper, but your time will come. You cannot hold us here forever.
I blinked. Who was this “us” he spoke of? For the first time, I took a longer look at the two statues on either side of the throne. The lifelike leopard and python…Could it be? Were they—?
Ayanna had stumbled back, clutching her head in pain, but now she moved forward again, nearly collapsing against my shoulder, and pointed. “The…bracelets!”
I followed her finger and my hands curled into fists.
Of course.
Nyame’s bracelets and anklets were fully visible now. They weren’t made out of gold, like most of the Golden Crescent’s beautiful creations. They were made of iron and connected to—
