by Kwame Mbalia
“Because of the Shamble Man?”
She stopped in her tracks and grabbed my shoulder. “What did you say?”
“The Shamble Man.” I twisted my head and frowned. “And how he injured John H—mmghg!”
Ayanna clapped a hand over my mouth and dragged me next to the keelboat. For a person who only came up to my shoulder, she moved me with ease. I saw the fury blazing in her eyes and gulped. Reggie had been a marshmallow in comparison.
“How do you know about that? Huh? Nobody was supposed to say anything!”
“Mmghg ffmmmg ghmmm,” I said.
Ayanna removed her hand. “What?”
“I said, the Shamble Man came here. Just a few hours ago. He took…” But I couldn’t finish.
Ayanna loosened her grip on my arm. “Took what?”
I inhaled, then said, “My grandmother. Said he wanted me to know how it felt.”
“You two know each other?”
“NO! I don’t think so….”
I quickly explained the confrontation, and with each passing second Ayanna’s face grew more and more worried. When I finished, she pulled her staff off her back and squeezed the handle, staring into the carved golden face on its end. Finally, she looked up at me.
“This is bad. Really bad. First the attack on John Henry…Nyame and the Flying Ladies are trying to keep it quiet so no one panics. Then the Riverfolk. Now this. It’s like we can’t catch a break. I’ve got to tell Annie.”
“The Riverfolk?” I asked, but Ayanna had already walked away. She marched back around the keelboat and I followed, confused. Annie still stood in the middle of the clearing, the towering trees of the Bottle Tree forest leaning ever so slightly away, as if scared to provoke her temper. The SBP rested in the giant palm of her hand, and Anansi was hiding behind the Contacts app.
“Messin’ with people’s lives like that,” Annie was grumbling as we approached. Her gaze landed on us. “Now, what’s eating you two? River snake nip your behinds?”
“No, but, Miss Annie—” I started to say.
“Just Annie,” she interrupted. She winked. “I don’t miss.”
“Oh, uh…”
Ayanna rolled her eyes. “There’s a problem.” She explained about the Shamble Man’s attacks on John Henry and my grandparents.
Keelboat Annie pursed her lips and frowned. “Sure you right, that is a problem. Well, we’ll get to them eventually—”
“Eventually?!” I blurted. “I need to save my grand—Ow!”
Ayanna shut me up by jabbing my foot with her staff. “Don’t interrupt the goddess,” she hissed.
Annie’s glare at me hurt even more. “As I was saying, first we got to finish the job we were in the middle of before Mr. Six Legs here started making with the magic. We got some more passengers to drop off. Y’all hop aboard and get yourselves settled. Old Man River ain’t gonna wait forever, and I sure as shuckin’ ain’t gonna lay up in this place. No, ma’am. I can feel the spirits clawing at my bones.”
We all climbed aboard using a ladder on the side, and Annie stood up straight and rerolled the sleeves of her shirt. Her forearms were like the tree trunks surrounding us in the Bottle Tree forest. “Hold tight, y’all, we’re going cruising.”
It felt like I’d joined some weird field trip. In fact, when I saw the rows of benches stretching from under the tent to the back of the boat (“The stern,” Ayanna corrected), I immediately envisioned a group of kids being shuttled to some riverside school. I’m not sure what I’d expected a keelboat to be. Instead of oars or a sail, you were supposed to use a long wooden stick called a keel pole to push it along.
The giant goddess stomped by as she took a survey of the boat, double-checking everything, then triple-checking, peering over the sides and talking to herself. “Sometimes it’s something deep in the water that’s stirring things up on the surface.” Yep, she definitely seemed worried. Which didn’t exactly make me feel any better.
I mean, if you were getting on the school bus and the driver started eyeing the steering wheel suspiciously and muttering threats at it, you’d be on edge, too. Then again, I didn’t have a good history with school buses.
Meanwhile, Ayanna was coiling rope and making sure all the supplies were tied down tight. When she moved closer, I got her attention.
“Why is she so nervous?” I whispered, nodding at Annie.
Ayanna glanced over, paled, and swallowed. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said, putting a cheerful tone in her voice. “The last few trips have been a bit…rough.”
“What do you mean ‘rough’?”
“Don’t worry! I’m sure she’s got the trouble figured out by now.”
“Trouble?” I hated the way my voice squeaked, but I also hated surprises. Especially the kind that ended up with me running—or swimming, in this case—for my life. The last time I’d taken a swim in Alkean waters, giant ships made out of bones had tried to swallow me whole and make me a permanent passenger.
Ayanna didn’t elaborate, so I changed the subject.
“And what’s up with her and John Henry?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “It doesn’t sound like she cares about him much.”
Ayanna winced. “Yeah. We haven’t really talked about it, but from what I can tell, Annie doesn’t think he and some of the other gods did enough to save the Midfolk from the iron monsters.”
“What?!” I asked, outraged on his behalf. “He literally pulled them to safety in the Golden Crescent!”
“That was at the end. Before that, the gods of MidPass told everyone to hole up and hide in the Thicket. While Annie and a few other gods sailed up and down the rivers trying to rescue folk, like she’s doing now.” When Ayanna saw my face, she added, “I’m not saying I agree with her, but—”
Before she could go any further, Keelboat Annie shouted, “Hold on to your dirt-lovin’ derrieres!” She lifted something from the rear of the boat and I gasped.
“Sweet peaches!” I said. “That’s a whole log!”
Ayanna snickered. The log was Annie’s keel pole. The thing looked like someone had uprooted a tree. I couldn’t get both of my hands around it, and yet one of Annie’s hands easily slipped into the finger grooves at the top. There was a seam in the middle, as if the pole had been split in two, then glued back together.
“This here pole has kept me moving along for as long as I’ve had this boat,” Annie said proudly. “Kept more than a few varmints off my back when the going got tough, too. A whack from this and you’ll think twice before sneaking up on Annie.” She scowled slightly. “Now it’s the only thing that ain’t acting all out of sorts! But that’s all right. Park your posterior anywhere you please, I gotta get Old Man River up here.”
I gripped the edges of my seat as she raised the keel pole high, then jabbed it into the ground and shoved. The bottom of the boat scraped against the floor of the Bottle Tree forest and we lurched into the rolling carpet of mist that had slowly begun to build up again. I winced each time a rock or root scraped at the wood, but before long the sound changed. It sounded almost like…
“Water?” I muttered to myself. I leaned over the side. Sure enough, the pole now splashed instead of thunked. We were floating!
When Annie saw the amazement on my face, she smiled and patted the railing next to her fondly. “Old Man River and I have an arrangement. Anywhere I need to go, he gives this old barge a lift. All over Alke, as long as there’s a river or stream nearby, Keelboat Annie can get you there.” As Old Man River continued to swell around us, lifting the boat and easing us forward through the forest mist, Annie talked about her life on the river.
“In the days of the iron monsters, boats like this used to carry a bunch of things across MidPass.” She squinted at a chipped section of the keel pole, decided it was still seaworthy (river-worthy?), and dusted off her hands. Annie towered over me and stretched, then pointed at the rows of seats on the boat. “And folks. People, creatures, even a few spirits. For thems that couldn’t
sit, they stood the whole journey. You believe that? Stood. Some holding babies, some clutching everything they owned in a sack in their arms, all of them with an idea of a new beginning in their hearts. Leastways, that’s what I like to think.” Annie motioned for me to follow as she moved to the next inspection point on the boat.
The SBP was in my pocket, and I thought about something Anansi had said earlier. “Annie,” I asked, “did people carry stories with them, too? When they moved from one place to another, I mean.”
“Shoot, of course! You bring whatever makes you comfortable. Maybe it’s your auntie’s favorite skillet for biscuits, maybe it’s your daddy’s stories. And you know, stories are easy to carry. Don’t weigh nothing. Don’t cost nothing. Just a little bit of space up here,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “Bit by bit, piece by piece, folks carried a little bit of home with them when they moved. And then you throw someone like you in the mix.”
“Me?”
“Yessir! An Anansesem. You collect them stories, right? It ain’t just about us gods and goddesses and everyone beyond that binary! Naw, you pulling stories of families, of sisters and brothers and cousins, and taking them with you, too.”
“On the phone, you mean?”
“No, inside you.” A giant finger poked my chest, right above my heart. Annie raised both eyebrows. “That there Story Box thingamajig is just a tool to help you—you—do your job. Don’t rely on that thing more than you have to. No matter what old Web Butt says. Hear me?”
I nodded, just as Ayanna called out that the river was ready. Before I could ask what that meant, Annie moved to the rear of the keelboat, leaving me to think on what she’d just said. It sort of reminded me of what Anansi had been talking about earlier, that idea of a Diaspora. Carrying stories on journeys, planting their seeds in new grounds, connecting us all. I needed to think about that some more, especially since as an Anansesem I was supposed to be doing a lot of that carrying and planting.
Responsibilities, man. They never let up.
Thump thump
Something rattled against the hull near me. I looked around. No one was close by—everyone else was occupied. Annie pushed us forward, which confused me. Where were the passengers we were supposed to drop off? Ayanna stood at the prow checking for obstacles, calling out directions so Annie could steer us around them. I didn’t know how either of them could see, though. The mists had completely engulfed us now, surrounding the boat in milky-white strands of clouds that dissolved as we passed through them and re-formed behind us.
Thump thump
There was that sound again…. It came from right over the guardrail.
I got up to take a look. The noises grew more frequent. It wasn’t just thumps now, but all sorts of scrapes and knocks and scratching noises, as if…as if there was something climbing up—
I peered over the rail, straight into the hollow eyes of a grinning skull.
THE SKULL AND I STARED AT EACH OTHER. MORE THUMPING AND rattling echoed across the boat, and I fought down a wave of panic as dozens—maybe hundreds!—of skulls inched up the hull. Some large, some small, all bleached white. And when they saw me, they began to shake and rattle, as if in warning. My body locked into place. They were like tiny, ghastly crabs swarming toward us. Just when I opened my mouth to either shout in horror or…Well, no, that was it, I was only going to shout in horror. Just then, the first skull beat me to it.
“Save me,” it whispered.
The scream died on my lips. “Uh…” I said. We stared at each other.
“Save me,” another skull said. Then another. And another. Soon all the skulls were talking, their collective whispering like a faint breeze moving through dead leaves.
“Save me. Save me. Save me.”
It almost sounded like the spirits back on Nana and Granddad’s farm. Their pleas grew louder as they inched closer and closer, and my body was still frozen in shock. In my mind, I saw other creatures made of bones. Larger and scarier, surging toward me. The bone ships, the haunted vessels that had roamed the Burning Sea. I fell backward while shouting a wordless warning.
“Tristan!”
Ayanna caught me before I hit the deck, and I pointed at the hull in terror. “They’re back!”
“Who?” she asked.
Keelboat Annie moved past us quickly in a giant stride that rocked the boat from side to side, wielding the keel pole like a baseball bat. She peered over the side, then let out a hearty chuckle. Ayanna joined her, and—to my extreme surprise—squealed in delight.
Squealed.
I’ve never heard Ayanna make that sound. You would’ve thought she’d found some kittens, not legions of creatures that belonged in a horror movie. But she was laughing like she’d reunited with some old friends. Then, get this, she had the nerve to turn around and gesture for me to come over as if nothing was wrong.
Nope. No way. At least, I wasn’t planning on it until Anansi called to me from the SBP. It had fallen out of my pocket and skidded across the deck.
“Hey, hero of MidPass, is your wrist burning?”
“What?” I asked. When I picked up the phone (no scratches, Nyame screen protectors FTW), Anansi was swinging gently in a spiderweb hammock, a straw hat tilted over his eyes. He raised an arm and tapped its wrist with the other hand.
I looked down at my wrist, confused, then felt the air whoosh out of my lungs as I realized what he was referring to. “Oh,” I said, feeling a little foolish. The Anansi adinkra on my bracelet wasn’t glowing or hot. We weren’t under attack.
“Are you coming?” Ayanna called. “Don’t be rude. I mean ruder.”
I trudged over cautiously. There weren’t any bone ships coming our way. Those had only been in my head. Ghosts of the past.
Once, when I was in one of my therapy sessions with Mr. Richardson, we’d talked about how our fears and memories could haunt us, even into the future. We were eating popcorn mixed with M&Ms and drinking hot cocoa when Mr. Richardson said, “Ghosts from the past are like scars. They heal, and some even fade over time, but they never truly go away. They’re reminders of trauma.”
There was that word again: trauma.
“Tristan, come on!”
When I peeked over the edge, I still saw skulls, but now their bottoms were just stuck to the side of the boat like limpets. (I looked up limpets one time. Have you ever seen one? They’re like a snail that has a seashell for a hat. Amazing.)
Keelboat Annie shook her head and headed back to her position in the stern.
“Did they talk to you?” I asked Ayanna.
She raised an eyebrow and cupped a hand around her ear, pretending to listen. After a moment she shook her head. “Nope. Nothing.”
I glared at her, then looked at the first skull I’d seen, the largest one. It clung to the wooden hull, silent. I tapped it gingerly with one finger, recoiling immediately in anticipation. Nothing happened. I frowned, then poked it harder. “Come on, say something. Whisper for help like you did before!”
A noise that sounded suspiciously like a muffled snicker came from behind me. When I turned around, Ayanna was trying to keep a straight face, but she burst into laughter as soon as we made eye contact. From the back of the boat came a giant “HA-HAAAAAA” as Keelboat Annie shook the vessel with her own guffaws. Even Anansi was laughing. I could feel the SBP vibrate in my pocket in time with his chuckles.
Finally, Ayanna flapped her hands and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry. But it was too funny. See, it’s happened to all of us.”
“What?” I asked.
“The Talking Skulls. They do it to every new person they meet.” She finally stopped laughing and stared quizzically at my confused expression. “You’ve really never heard of them? I would’ve thought that you of all people…”
I bit my lip and shook my head.
Once Ayanna mentioned it, I did recall Nana telling me a folktale about a man who found a Talking Skull on the riverbank. But wh
en he brought others to listen to it, the skull remained silent, and everyone made fun of the man. At least that’s what I could remember. I didn’t want to admit that ever since Nana had been taken, I was having trouble feeling stories.
Ayanna shrugged and extended her arm over the side. The skull closest to her rattled up the hull, and she grabbed it. She walked it over to the rows of benches in the middle of the boat and set it down before repeating the process with another skull. After a second I started helping her.
We worked in silence. There had to be thirty to forty skulls hanging on as Keelboat Annie steered us through the mist. Every so often I thought I saw low shapes cruising alongside us, just out of sight. Other boats, but not bone ships, luckily. Faint snatches of song echoed across the water. Chants, maybe. A group of voices keeping time as Annie poled.
“Hup-one, hup-two, carry me on the way.
Hup-one, hup-two, lookin’ for a better day.”
“Do you hear that?” I whispered.
Ayanna nodded. “You hear it when Annie gets in a groove. She says—”
“She says,” Keelboat Annie boomed behind us, “to stop with the jibber-jabber and get our passengers aboard! No cause to make these fine folk wait.”
Ayanna scooped up five more skulls and sat them on the bench, and I grabbed the last straggler, the one that had first spoken to me, and gingerly carried it to the final seat.
Keelboat Annie nodded and said, “Now. Sounds like someone missed a tale or two about our passengers. Is that right?”
I nodded, avoiding Ayanna’s stare.
Keelboat Annie lashed her pole to a rail to keep it in place and then joined us. “Well, no one knows how a Talking Skull gets where it does—it’s just there when you least expect it. And if you get the fool notion to start talking in front of them…well, they’re gonna chat right back. But see, that conversation is just for you. It ain’t for you to go spreading. Try to involve someone else in what y’all supposed to keep betwixt yourselves, and them Talking Skulls will go silent as a stone.”
