Scarlet Odyssey

by C. T. Rwizi

  Monti’s aba lets him help carry his son’s burial raft down to the lake. The man has never liked Salo, and Salo can see the embers of blame burning hotly in his eyes, but on a day like this, all differences are set aside in honor of the dead. So Salo carries the raft with Monti’s aba and two uncles, while Monti’s ama trails behind with her only other child—Monti’s older sister—and together they lead the procession of mourners toward the clan’s place of committal.

  The bodies have all been wrapped in hide skins, their rafts covered with white-petaled blossoms. Thousands of voices drift on the wind as the mourners move down to the lake, singing a lament that cuts Salo in half with every note, but he’s too numb to cry anymore. Must be all the nsango he smoked throughout the night. It was the only way he knew to dilute the shock and make himself functional again, to stop his hands from shaking, to blunt the scent of Monti’s blood in the air. Even now, he can still smell it.

  They reach the western lakeshore an hour before moonrise, the suns hanging high just past their zeniths. The clan’s sacred island is a rocky granite mound marring the lake’s pristine surface in the distance, like a rip in a silky, luminous carpet. Salo and the other three men carrying Monti’s body slip out of their sandals and wade into the waist-high shallows, where they wait for the other rafts to arrive. Monti’s distraught ama and sister watch from the bank.

  It takes a while, but all the dead eventually make it into the shallows, and the sheer number of pallbearers lined up along the lakeside drives a shiver of shock down Salo’s numb spine.

  Besides Monti’s family, he barely registers individual faces in the crowd of mourners. Niko is a silent presence nearby. The queen’s towering crown of copper feathers glints somewhere on the lakeshore—her presence was a certainty given the scale of loss. VaSiningwe is next to her, a lean giant in a black loincloth, red steel armor pieces, and a maned leopard headdress. The chief of Khaya-Sibere must be the stocky man in a scaled hyena cloak next to him, and the woman swathed in dark kitenges lurking behind them must be AmaSibere, the Sibere clan mystic. The last time all four of them were here together was for Aago’s committal, two years ago.

  AmaSikhozi was there, too, that day, and she’s here again today to perform the traditional Yerezi honor burial. The totem she flew on from Khaya-Sikhozi, a great metal eagle with a leather saddle strapped to its neck, can be seen soaring on an updraft to the far south.

  The lament goes on for a long while, a mournful song delivered in the full range of voices, and with so many people it sounds like a living thing as it reverberates along the lakeside.

  The singing finally dies down as AmaSikhozi steps into the waters with her witchwood staff raised, her crimson cloak billowing out behind her. She stops shin deep in the clear water, facing the lake’s eastern horizon, where a rosy tinge has just appeared. Her voice carries to all those present when she speaks.

  “Hear us, oh Mother of Sovereigns, oh Great Servant of the Heavens, you who paint the skies in blood and gold. Hear us in our hour of great need, for here lie our beloved kin, who have been torn so violently from our bosoms we will never heal from the wounds of their passing.

  “We come to you in tears, Ama who is Queen, for we know not how else to be in the face of such senseless carnage. Our hearts have been torn asunder and left desolate, and we cannot make sense of it. And so we come to you, Ama who is Wise, and we ask that you remind us that this is not the end. Shine your light upon us and grant us the solace we seek. Let us commit our beloved kin into your embrace so that our hearts may be mended in time. Let them ride your first light into the Infinite Path, oh Blessed of the Skies. Serve them in death as they once served you in life.”

  A flash of light in the east as the half moon begins to rise above the lake’s watery horizon. Salo immediately feels an unseen force tugging at Monti’s raft as the moon’s first rays strike it, and it’s a sharp lance cutting straight into the deepest hollow of his chest.

  Monti is leaving his life for good.

  He thought he’d run out of tears, but now he finds that he has many more to spare. Panic seizes him. He can’t let Monti go like this. There has to be something more he can do, anything, even if it means little.

  While the other pallbearers let go of the raft, he holds on to it for just a second longer, just long enough for him to take off his beaded necklace with one hand and place it next to Monti’s shrouded head. And when he finally lets go and watches the little raft join all the others as they sail farther into the lake and toward the rising moon, something in his chest breaks, and he weeps like a child.

  At that moment, AmaSikhozi raises her hands toward the east, her eyes now glowing like hot coals. The cosmic shards coiling up her arms incandesce like veins of lava as she prepares to complete the burial ritual—a joint spell of Storm and Fire craft. Moon rays pool around the tip of her staff, which becomes a blinding point of white-red light. “Go now, beloved kin of Khaya-Siningwe,” she cries, “you who were sons and daughters of the Summer Leopard. Go now and walk the Infinite Path. Remember the lessons of this life so you may triumph in the next. By the power of the queen who reigns eternally, you are released!”

  A tempest of moonfire explodes across the lake, engulfing the rafts in brilliant red light. It rages silently for a time, giving the lakeshore a glimpse of the Infinite Path’s supreme glory. And then the fires whoosh into nothing, leaving the waters empty and desolate, just like Salo’s soul.

  A long moment of stillness transpires, thousands of broken hearts beating in silence, and then the mourners begin to drift away. Salo wades out of the water with the other pallbearers, and his chest swells with guilt as he watches Monti’s aba bringing his wife and daughter into a tearful embrace.

  I caused that sorrow.

  Someone puts a hand on his shoulder. When he looks, Niko gives him an understanding nod, but he says nothing. Salo wonders why he’s even here, how he can stand the sight of him when he can’t stand being inside his own skin.

  Monti’s ama comes up to them just before they start walking up the bank. She’s hugging herself like it’s cold, and the pain in her eyes makes Salo gulp with fear and guilt. The emotions go down his throat like bags of needles. Niko watches her warily but remains silent.

  “The general told me he saw you with my boy yesterday,” she says. “He said he told you to get him to safety. Is that true?”

  Tears prickle Salo’s eyes. He doesn’t wipe them as they flow down his face. “Yes.”

  She nods like he’s just confirmed her suspicions, briefly looking away as she fights off her own tears. She tucks a stray dreadlock behind her ear and composes herself. “I saw you giving him something, so I have something to give you.” She extends her right hand and unfurls it, revealing a leather wristband. “This was one of his favorites.”

  Salo fails to hold in a sob. “I recognize it.”

  “You do? That’s good. Because I want you to have it.” She reaches forward and grabs Salo’s hand, places the wristband into his palm, and closes his fingers. She traps his closed fist between her hands so tightly it feels like the wristband is biting into his palm. Her eyes blaze with anger and sorrow, her words coming out as a whisper, sharp as jagged glass. “I want you to have it, and I want you to wear it every day until your last breath; do you hear me? I want you to look at it when you wake up and when you go to bed, and I want you to never forget that my son is dead because of you. He loved you like you were his own brother despite what they all said about you. That’s how he was, my Monti, quick to see the good in people, didn’t matter who, and he loved you, Musalodi, and now he’s dead because of it. You let my boy die, and I will never forget it.”

  “Hey, now,” Niko says. “That’s not fair—”

  “Please, let it go,” Salo whispers. “She’s right.” He puts his free hand on top of hers and squeezes, forcing his words out through trembling lips. “I will wear this until the day I die. I wish I was the one on that raft and not your son, and I will spend the re
st of my days wishing it. I will not ask for your forgiveness because I have no right to, but I promise that I will never forget your son.”

  Tears fill her eyes, and she nods. “Keep your promise, Musalodi.” And then she lets go and joins what remains of her family.

  “You can’t take responsibility for this, Salo,” Niko says when she’s gone. “It’s terrible what happened to Monti, but it’s not your fault. You didn’t bring that witch here.”

  Salo twists the wristband between his thumb and forefinger. Monti was wearing it yesterday when he barged into the shed without knocking.

  Another sob threatens to burst out of Salo’s chest. He covers his mouth, and when he gets himself under control, he wipes his eyes behind his spectacles and joins the trickle of mourners heading back to the kraal. Niko follows silently.

  “I may not have brought the witch,” Salo says to him in a low voice, “but Monti died because of my weakness, and you have to let me own that.”

  Worry creases Niko’s forehead, but he says nothing for the rest of the walk up to the kraal.

  PART 2

  KELAFELO

  MUSALODI

  Earth craft—magic of alchemy

  Directing the moon’s essence toward influencing the alchemies of plant life and organic matter. Used by alchemists to prepare medicines and poisons. Also used to engineer new plant species.

  —excerpt from Kelafelo’s notes

  “How many hours make a year? Be quick with your answer.”

  “All right, let’s see: twenty-four hours, twenty-one minutes a day by ten days a week by four weeks a moon by nine moons a year. Gives me . . . eight thousand seven hundred sixty-six hours.”

  “Most disappointing.”

  “Did I get it wrong, Aago?”

  “No, it’s correct.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “That you had to compute it in the first place. Five whole seconds wasted computing something you could have recalled from memory in an instant.”

  “You mean I should, what, fill my mind with trivial facts like this one? But why would I do that?”

  “Why not? Everything you know means less time spent figuring it out when you need it. It might seem trivial now, but who’s to say it’ll stay that way?”

  8: Kelafelo

  Namato—Umadiland

  For Kelafelo, it begins on the night when militiamen wearing red skulls on their faces descend upon her village and take everything from her—everything but the one thing she later wishes they hadn’t spared: her life.

  Fire dances like vengeful spirits across the village of Namato as it burns. Mud-brick huts shrouded in flames cough up glowing clouds of smoke and embers that billow like swarming fireflies. Screams rise into the night as bloodstained machetes bite into limbs and slice throats open, and the skull-faced men laugh in drunken bloodlust over the corpses of their victims.

  Men, women, children—the people of Namato fall indiscriminately, and it seems to Kelafelo that their cries tear rents into the sky itself, for heavy rain soon breaks, even before the carnage is over. She sees it all from where they left her lying on her back by the threshold of her hut, her belly ripped open through her khanga, the oozing wound turned up to the sky like a screaming maw.

  She was trying to block the door so the militiamen wouldn’t get inside; she threw herself at their feet and pled with them, but the men in the red skulls are not men at all, with neither hearts nor mercy. They cut her down and defiled her even as she bled, and then, worst of all, they dragged her four-year-old daughter out of her hut and murdered her.

  Urura. Oh, by the Blood Woman, Urura. Kelafelo tries to speak the name, but a gasp escapes her lips instead. She stretches a shaking hand toward her daughter, whose motionless body now lies on the bare earth to her side, but her fingers are just out of reach. Blood glues Urura’s saffron veil to her head, and the fires consuming the village reflect in the pools of her dead eyes. If she were only a few inches closer, Kelafelo would stroke her cheek, tell her that everything will be fine, that they’ll soon be together again on the Infinite Path.

  “What good thing could ever come of you, Kela?” her aunts-in-law would taunt her, back when she still lived with her uncle and his many wives, before she became fourth wife to a farmer thrice her age. “You are defective,” they would tell her. “Rotten to the core.”

  But when her daughter was born on the eve of her fifteenth birthday, Kelafelo realized that her aunts had been wrong. If something so precious could come from her womb, then she could not be entirely rotten. Urura was evidence that there was good inside of her.

  What is she now that Urura is gone?

  Around the village the cries fade into intermittent whimpers, and then those, too, die out. The laughter retreats into the night. The rain douses the fires and peters out. Damaged rafters groan and collapse; thatched roofs cave in; mud-brick walls crumble.

  And still, Kelafelo waits for death. But death does not come.

  Instead, rage begins to stir inside her. As she lies there with her belly sliced open, waiting to be reunited with her daughter, rage keeps her alive, refusing to let her give up, forcing her to finally confront that thing she has always hidden from, the true reason her aunts despised her, the reason they feared her.

  “Do not think yourself special because you are the daughter of a warlord,” her uncle would say to her. “Your father was a vile monster who forced himself on my sister. You should have never been born.”

  And like an obedient niece, Kelafelo kept her head down. She weathered the scorn of her aunts silently, and later the scorn of her sister-wives. She ignored the heritage in her blood and pretended it didn’t exist.

  Now her rage forces her to acknowledge it, for she will not die this night. Not here. Not like this. Not when Urura’s murderers are wiping her blood off their sandals.

  This cannot be my end. I have war and fire in my veins. I shall make them pay.

  As dawn is breaking in the east, piercing through a silver haze of rain clouds, she sees it: a streak of fire burning across the skies like a comet, making the earth tremble with the thunder of its flight. It is then that she understands what she must do.

  It is then that she finally dies and is reborn as something else.

  The skull-helmeted men have taken almost everything from her. Their mistake was to leave her with her life.

  An old mystic lives in the wilds east of Namato, just a stone’s throw away from a wide meandering river. She is neither warlord nor disciple and claims no land as her own but the land on which her hut stands and the vegetable garden growing nearby. Kelafelo’s people call her the Anchorite.

  In Umadiland, where those brave enough to seek the Blood Woman’s power are often ruthless, egocentric men, free agents like the Anchorite are like para-para antelope without herds: they do not remain free or alive for long. Sooner or later they must pledge allegiance to a warlord or be hunted down and killed. Neutrality is not an option; the warlords make sure of it.

  But the Anchorite has endured as she is for longer than anyone alive can remember, and no one knows why.

  Before the attack she would come to the village on occasion to heal ailments and preside over burial rituals but led an otherwise reclusive life, guarding her privacy with a capriciousness that could be cruel. Villagers who approached her hut in search of healing or divination were often just as likely to wind up cursed with malicious spells as aided free of charge. For the most part, the people of Namato knew to wait for her to come to the village at her own convenience, but sometimes people grew desperate and approached her unbidden. Sometimes they never came back.

  As the suns clear the horizon on the morning after the attack, Kelafelo musters up all her hatred and heaves herself off the ground. Too weak to bury Urura, she drags her daughter’s body back into their hut and covers her with grass mats.

  She can’t even cry. The part of her that would have fallen to pieces at the sight of Urura’s broken body has been ripp
ed from her chest, leaving nothing but a scalding void of hatred. In a semiconscious daze, she wraps her belly tightly with the torn shreds of a khanga, screaming as the pain lances through her whole body. But she finds the strength to keep moving and trudges through the charred ruins of her village, heading east.

  Her wound becomes hot with infection. Nightmares cavort in the fringes of her eyesight as she walks, phantoms wearing the faces of her people, monsters leaping at her from the grasses with teeth meant to tear into her flesh. Still, she keeps walking, each step drawing from the wellspring of darkness that now pervades her.

  The suns arc higher into the skies, bringing with them flies that swarm around her wound relentlessly. She has no energy to swat them off, so they feast on the blood seeping through the makeshift dressing. Vultures fly by overhead, drawn westward by the smell of blood and rot. They, too, will feast today. They will feast on Urura.

  That last thought is almost Kelafelo’s undoing. She sways on her feet, almost tumbling to the ground, knowing that if she falls, she will never rise again. A scream claws at her from the inside. With gasping breaths she holds it in and somehow manages to stay on her feet.

  Time distorts itself. The savannas of the wilds stretch and warp, and mirages bleed into her vision, a personal hell that seems to last forever. But she stumbles onward until she is finally there, by the great twisting witchwood tree looming over the Anchorite’s old hut, pale and leafless.