Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

by Kwame Mbalia

  I turned in circles, stunned.

  Thandiwe and Ayanna were surrounded up on the ramp. I watched them swing and connect, sending bug after bug tumbling to the ground. But there were dozens—no, hundreds of the insects—so many that soon I couldn’t see the two girls anymore.

  A brand fly zoomed at my face, but just before it landed, a glob of sap splattered on its wings and it crashed in a tailspin.

  Gum Baby had flipped into the air and landed in my hood just in time. “Well? Get a move on, Gum Baby ain’t got all day.”

  I sprinted toward the ramp. A bug whizzed past my cheek, and I ducked and put on a burst of speed. Somebody screamed behind me, and I winced but didn’t stop. I cursed myself. Why hadn’t I listened to Ayanna before?

  A cluster of Ridgefolk tried to barricade themselves inside a storeroom near the winding ramp. They piled tables and chairs and forebears in front of the door before closing it. I thought about trying to squeeze inside with them but then saw a brand fly land, tuck its wings to its back, and wriggle through a tiny crack at the bottom.

  The screams inside would follow me forever, it seemed.

  I ducked my head and ran up the ramp. Gum Baby flung sap at anything that got too close. Fetterlings were on our tail, and she knocked several backward with well-aimed shots. Brand flies were sniped out of midair, each hit punctuated with an insult.

  Ping

  “You ain’t nothing!”

  Ping

  “Tell ’em Gum Baby sent you!”

  Ping

  “Ow!”

  “Well, move your big head, Bumbletongue, Gum Baby trying to save your raggedy butt.”

  I rubbed the back of my head and kept running. We’d just rounded the final curve, heading toward the thinning cloud of brand flies near the tram entrance, when a scream split the air.

  My blood chilled. “Ayanna.”

  Several flies dive-bombed us as we got closer, and I swung my loaner kierie like a two-handed sword, batting them back. More peeled away from the cloud around my friends, buzzing and rattling and keeping me away. The floor began to tremble beneath my feet, and I felt my knees go weak as a fresh horde of fetterlings charged through the destroyed main entrance. Some split off and snapped up fallen Ridgefolk—no doubt hauling them back to the Maafa and Uncle C. The rest stampeded up the ramp after me and Gum Baby.

  Enemies in front.

  Enemies behind.

  Enemies—

  A three-fingered hand the size of a minivan crashed down on the ramp between us and where Thandiwe was huddled over Ayanna, swatting metal bugs left and right. I couldn’t see Chestnutt anywhere. The hullbeast’s ugly face peeked over the ledge, growling and smelling like a kindergarten bathroom.

  Gum Baby tugged my earlobe. “Bumbletongue, Gum Baby sure hope you got a plan. ’Cause, uh…it ain’t looking good.”

  Hearing the normally brash pint-size peashooter so worried made me realize just how much trouble we were in.

  As if the humongous iron monster hadn’t made that clear.

  Fetterlings screeched and thundered up the ramp. Brand flies dipped and swooped, buzzing overhead. Thandiwe met my eyes as I dropped into a crouch with her kierie, preparing to make our last stand. I’m sure my face looked as hopeless as hers did. There were just too many of them, and not enough of us. The reinforcements had never arrived. The Ridgefolk had been either sedated, hauled away, or barricaded behind stone doors. We were on our own.

  Drumbeats sounded, faint and distant, like someone was playing somewhere out on Isihlangu. Maybe it was a distress call. The hullbeast raised his arm and easily swatted aside hundreds of brand flies. Two more swings and the air cleared. Thandiwe lay on the ground, covering Ayanna, shielding her from the flies. Miraculously, though dozens and dozens of dented metal bugs lay scattered around the entrance to the trams, the princess’s skin was clear. But Ayanna’s…

  “No!” I shouted.

  As the fetterlings turned the final curve, I sprinted toward my injured friend. But the hullbeast was faster. Its massive arm stretched toward the prone figures, and I felt my heart drop.

  I wasn’t going to make it.

  THE DRUMBEAT GREW LOUDER, AND the sound of flapping wings floated past my ear on a faint breeze. As the hullbeast reached for my friends, as fetterlings stormed after me and brand flies circled the silver gem lights like vultures, the drums pounded harder and harder, and I stopped running.

  A crow cawed and thunder clapped, and everyone in Isihlangu froze in time.

  “Seems like you in a spot of trouble, sure it does.”

  High John stepped out of the fold of Old Familiar’s wings, his footsteps sending little twisters of dust spinning down the ramp. In one hand he held an ax with a head that glowed like an angry red coal. I swear I saw a face on it winking at me.

  “You came back,” I half accused, half sobbed.

  “Thought I wouldn’t?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I pointed to where Ayanna and Thandiwe lay just past the motionless arm of the hullbeast. “Please, you’ve got to help them! Ayanna’s been branded, and maybe Thandiwe, too, and I can’t tell if they’re moving, and the hullbeast is gonna swallow them and drag them away if we don’t—”

  “Okay, okay,” High John said. “We’re gonna do this together. All right?”

  I took a breath, then another, and nodded. High John grinned, clapped me on the shoulder, then backed up and turned to face the hullbeast. He eyed it, then patted the head of his ax.

  “Okay, love, seems we need to go to work again.” High John took a few steps back down the ramp to where the charging fetterlings were suspended in time. He motioned for me to follow. “You come help me with these fancy contraptions, let Old Familiar take care of those poison flies, and my ax will handle that giant over there, sure it will.”

  “Your ax will…?”

  My voice trailed off as High John tossed the ax in the air AND IT STAYED THERE.

  I licked my lips. “She gifted John a magic ax,” I recited.

  “Hey now, I know that story.”

  “I can’t believe it’s true!” One of the many stories Nana used to tell us about High John was how he fell in love with the devil’s daughter. In order to win her hand, the devil told him he had to clear an enormous field, plant corn, then harvest it, all in one day. The devil’s daughter, in love with the man, gave High John a magic ax and plow to complete the task.

  “Where’s the plow?” I asked.

  High John raised an eyebrow. “You want me to plant some iron monsters?”

  “No, I guess that wouldn’t make sense.”

  “I reckon it wouldn’t. Now, you got any more questions, or can we mosey on about our business?”

  I raised my fists and nodded. He snorted, then tilted his head at Old Familiar. The giant crow cawed once and flapped its enormous wings. The air in the great hall shimmered and rippled, like a pond when you skip stones across it, and the world came back to life.

  The next few minutes were a blur.

  I punched left and right, nonstop, knocking fetterlings off the ramp or smashing them into the wall. High John danced between the iron monsters, tangling them up as they lunged at him and leaving them twisted in rusty knots, juicy targets for my hooks and uppercuts. The ramp was just wide enough for High John and me to defend. Nothing got past us.

  Chop chop chop

  High John’s ax went to work on the hullbeast. I caught a glimpse once when I spun away from an attack. It wasn’t pretty. You ever see a twig get caught beneath a lawn mower? Or tree branches fed into a wood-chipper? Yeah.

  Chop chop chop

  Meanwhile, Old Familiar cawed and hunted brand flies. Though the bugs swarmed around him, the poison didn’t seem to have any effect on the shadow bird—his black feathers just absorbed it like ink into the page. Then, with a clack of his beak, the flies were gone. I even managed to punch a few knotted-up fetterlings into the air and watched as Old Familiar snapped them up, too.

  “Last
one,” High John called, kicking a wriggling and screeching tangle of fetterlings down the ramp toward me. I sized them up, gripped both hands together like a club, and grinned.

  “Fore!” I shouted, then belted the iron monsters clear off the ramp.

  “Nice!”

  I grinned, but the smile fell off my face when I heard a moan of pain. High John and I sprinted up the ramp, kicking aside battered and deformed brand flies, and slid to a stop next to Thandiwe. Chestnutt lay on Ayanna’s chest, listening. The tiny bunny lifted her head slowly, like it weighed twice as much as usual, and her eyes glistened.

  “She’s not breathing,” she whispered, and my blood froze.

  “CAN YOU HELP HER?” I asked. My voice cracked and I didn’t even care.

  High John looked worried as he pulled the root bag from around his neck and laid it above Ayanna’s heart. “This poison, it ain’t something of the body.”

  “What?”

  He pointed at the brands that marred her brown skin—dark and angry blue-purple welts. “No fever, no twitchin’—just these marks, looking like they’ve always been there. She’s still alive, but…” He shook his head. “This is beyond my conjure, I’m thinking. I’ll try, though. Just not here. I need Old Familiar for this. Let’s go.” He gathered Ayanna in his arms, then stepped off the edge of the ramp.

  Thandiwe gasped, then gasped again when Old Familiar rose into the air with High John on his back. I immediately jumped on too, with Gum Baby in my hood.

  Thandiwe took a deep breath. “You need my help,” she said, more to herself than to me. “This fight is not over.” She strapped her forebear to her arm, picked up Chestnutt, and joined us.

  I managed a smile—leaving home was not an easy choice to make—but my eyes never left Ayanna.

  Thandiwe settled behind me and asked me a question.

  “What?” I hadn’t heard her. My attention was on High John as he laid Ayanna down on the broadest part of the giant crow’s back and secured her with rope.

  “I thought you didn’t like flying,” Thandiwe murmured, eyeing Old Familiar cautiously.

  “I don’t” was all I said.

  “Y’all best hang on,” High John called back, and then the crow gave two powerful flaps and rose in the air.

  “Tristan! Wait!”

  The Amagqirha waved from the floor below. She climbed onto the stage with Nyame’s Story Box in her arms. Old Familiar spiraled down, and I reached for the now irrelevant piece of junk when we got close enough.

  But instead of giving it to me, she put it down and grabbed my wrist. “May your ancestors guide you. And remember—all of Alke is with you.” Her eyes flashed silver, like the twists in her hair and the beads around her wrists and ankles. The Amagqirha stepped back as Old Familiar lifted into the air again, the crate in its talons, and flew out of the main entrance. I looked over my shoulder to see the diviner holding up a hand in farewell as she, the Ridgefolk, and the mountain they lived inside dwindled in the distance.

  Thandiwe, sitting near the giant shadow crow’s tail feathers, cradled Chestnutt, who seemed to be asleep. Gum Baby sat in Thandiwe’s lap beside the little rabbit and spoke to me without looking up.

  “Chestnutt’s gonna be all right, right?”

  Oh no. “Is she…?” I asked Thandiwe.

  “Looks like she was stung, too,” said the princess.

  “Stupid bunny,” said the doll. “Gum Baby should’ve been there, should’ve been protecting her. Bunny can’t fight, she knows she can’t fight. Why’d she think—?” She broke off, crossing her arms and shaking her head.

  I didn’t say anything as I kneeled by Ayanna’s feet and held on to the rope tied around her ankles. Tears welled in my eyes. Uncle C was living up to his promise of taking everything from me.

  We shot out of the mountain like a bottle rocket aimed at the stars. Outside, the sky glowed around the edges, moving from a rosy pink above Isihlangu to an angry red smear on the western horizon. The tear in the sky had spread like a crack in a windshield and was boiling the lands below with its glare. Hurry up, then, and put us out of our misery, I said silently to the haint.

  When Old Familiar straightened out, I heard Thandiwe say behind me, “Ancestors, help us.”

  The mountainside below the Shield lay in ruins. Every sentinel tower was shattered. Glittering black fragments dotted the land, winking at us as we soared overhead. Deep gouges ran for yards, as if the iron monsters had taken out their wrath on the earth itself.

  Thandiwe hissed in pain. I was about to go console her when High John called me from the front of the bird.

  “Tristan, come here, would you?” His voice sounded calm. Like, too calm.

  I stood up and took another glance around. Thandiwe, mourning her home. Gum Baby, hurting for her friend. Chestnutt and Ayanna clinging to life. Everybody fighting to hold on to something precious, at risk of losing it forever.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, carefully shuffling past Ayanna and over to High John.

  “Two things.” He cleared his throat, then spoke in a lowered voice. “Ayanna’s fading fast. Nothing I’m doing is helping, boy, it sure ain’t. I’m trying, but I reckon I don’t got the conjure for it.”

  Fading fast. His words punched me in my throat, and I couldn’t speak.

  High John looked out over the foothills. “She ain’t gonna make it to MidPass, Tristan. Not like this. But…”

  Something in his voice pulled my eyes toward his.

  “But there may be someone—someones—in that shiny Alkean city yonder.”

  I followed his finger as he pointed to the north and west. “You mean the Golden Crescent?”

  “That’s the one. I know some folk who got stronger conjure than I do. Might be they can save our pilot if we can get her there in time.”

  I chewed my lip. “We were going to see Nyame anyway.” I explained our plan to ask the sky god to repair the Story Box. Then I studied him. “You said ‘two things.’ What’s the second?”

  He crouched by Ayanna and pointed to the conjure bag he’d laid on her chest. “Like I said, this ain’t doing much. It’s supposed to keep her spirit close to her body, help her fight off whatever poison those metal creatures put in her soul. But she needs more—she needs your help.”

  “What can I do?”

  He patted a spot next to Ayanna. “Sit awhile. Talk to her. You’ve got the spider god’s gift, boy. Might be you can reach her where the conjure bag can’t.”

  “You want me to tell her a story? What kind?”

  “Just talk to her. What about don’t matter much to me. Speak to her soul, distract her from the pain.”

  Speak to her soul. Right.

  But I sat down and nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

  He clapped my shoulder and moved up front to guide Old Familiar. I sat there, crisscross applesauce on the spine of a giant crow, staring at the unconscious form of the girl who’d had my back from the start. No questions asked—well, lots of questions, but never about whether she should help me.

  What to say?

  What would…? What would…? I gritted my teeth, forcing the name of my best friend back into my head. Eddie. What would Eddie say if he were here?

  Eddie would…

  He’d…

  A slow smile crossed my face. Eddie would introduce himself.

  Alke rolled by beneath us as I gathered my words. Isihlangu’s misty peaks occasionally popped into view, like EKGs by a hospital bedside. The wind pushed and pulled at Ayanna’s twists. I tucked a loose one behind her ear, then cleared my throat.

  “Hey. It’s…it’s me.” I took a deep breath. I couldn’t lose another friend. I just couldn’t. “High John said you…you’re still there, that I should talk to you, like you can hear me. Because you can hear me. So…I guess I’m gonna talk.”

  Old Familiar rose and fell with each powerful beat of its wings. The up-and-down motion reminded me of a ship fighting against the current. It should have made me feel n
auseated and tense like it normally does, but my fear for Ayanna outweighed my fear of heights.

  “You asked me why…back there…why I always look for a chance to be a hero. Well”—I inhaled, sucking in as much air as I could, then let it out in a rush—“the truth is, the one time I should’ve saved someone, I panicked. I…messed up and they…they died. And it haunts me. That failure haunts me every night.”

  Uncle C thought he was smart. The haint had left me with the one memory I hated most. The memory of Eddie’s death. Well, all memories serve a purpose…. What are memories except stories we tell ourselves, right?

  “We were coming home from a field trip to the museum,” I went on. “In Chicago, middle of winter, so the roads were a bit icy. We were so close to making it back to the school—I think we were only a few blocks away—when we drove over a bridge and hit a patch of ice. The bus…the bus spun around one hundred eighty degrees and we slid into the other lane, right into the path of a truck.”

  I sensed someone moving next to me on Old Familiar, but right then I could only see snow flurries trickling through a shattered window and flashing red lights against a gray sky.

  “The impact smashed the rear of the bus, where we were sitting. We always sat in the back so we could talk our nerdy talk without anyone looking at us weird. The emergency exit door was knocked off, and the floor was cracked, and exhaust was pouring in, making it hard to breathe. But I could see…I saw that the bus was hanging over the edge of the bridge….

  “All the kids were screaming, and I kept hearing adults shout, ‘Hold on, we’re getting help, just hold on.’

  “Eddie was in the back corner, trapped between two seats, struggling and failing to free himself. He asked me to save him. ‘Tristan, pull me out. Tristan. Tristan.’ I still hear his voice. I still see his hand reaching for me. I didn’t move. I was so scared. I was scared of falling, of drowning in the water below. I didn’t wanna die. I didn’t wanna die, and that’s all I could think about, that I didn’t wanna die. And Eddie called me, and I didn’t wanna die.”