by Kwame Mbalia
“It is as it should be,” a warm, musical voice said.
When I turned, the goddess was looking at me. Her long blue-green dreadlocks floated behind her as if we were underwater, and her eyes were as hard and black as the stones Junior threw. Seeing them made me think about the boy’s sacrifice for my sake, and I looked away.
“You are worried about someone.” It was a statement, not a question. When I nodded, she turned and stared out over the people living their lives below. Her people. Mami Wata stretched out her arms. “You are right to be. I am worried about everyone. What you are seeing is how it should be, but not how it is.”
I frowned. “Yeah, the lakes are dry back in Nyanza. Everyone is scared, and no one knows what’s going on. What happened?”
“You’ve seen my condition. I am the goddess of the waters. All waters. My rage is that of the Burning Sea, and my tears are the waterfalls in the Golden Crescent. I am tied to them all, and they are tied to me. My people, who carried me in their hearts while floating on my waters, have taken me across Alke.”
There it was again, the concept of people carrying something from one place and taking it with them all over the land. Diaspora. All connected by origin. I remembered Chestnutt saying that Mami Wata was the source of Nyanza. I saw that now.
“So, if you’re being poisoned,” I said slowly, “then so is every water source in Alke. Or they would’ve been, if you hadn’t cut off the tap. And that’s why Old Man River was complaining to Keelboat Annie. You’re connected.”
“We are all connected. What Bear has done threatens all of Alke…and beyond.” The hard black eyes turned on me again. “He knows not the implications if he continues.”
“He’s being controlled,” I said. “By an evil haint.”
“The seeds of hate can only sprout in fertile ground. Do not rush to blame all of this on the haint. But symptoms care not about who administered the poison. If the storm spreads, it will seep into the very fabric of this world and also into yours. It will corrupt all the stories, breaking them into fragments to be spread far apart and never heard again.”
John Henry’s condition flashed into my mind, and a chill wrapped around my spine. “We can’t let that happen!”
Mami Wata nodded. “We cannot. But someone must step up. I kept this fragment of myself isolated from my corporal presence just in case help arrived. You must get me back to the Golden Crescent. Only there, with all the gods and goddesses of Alke present, can we stop the storm.”
The picturesque scene of Nyanza flickered, then began to fade. I panicked.
“Wait!” I said. “How do I—?”
But she disappeared, along with the rest of the world, and I was left in darkness.
I blinked, and the Tree of Power was collapsing around us.
Mami Wata’s grip held me in place.
We had to get out of there, and fast. But still the goddess of the waters held me tight, her deep black eyes boring into mine as if I were the one responsible for imprisoning her.
Which…you know, wasn’t good.
“Uh, this ain’t the time for a staring contest,” Gum Baby said. Ayanna already had the raft floating several inches off the ground, and Gum Baby had hopped on with the SBP in her arms. Anansi looked warily at the sticky hands slipping closer to the screen but opted to remain quiet since he was being saved. “Get on the good foot, Bumbletongue! Whichever one that is.”
“Mami Wata, we need to go.” I gently tugged her arm and the goddess shook herself out of her daze.
“Our world is ripping apart at the seams,” she said, her words thick and full of pain. As if echoing her thoughts, the rotted baobab tree we stood inside groaned again, a thunderous sound that tried to shake my skin off my bones.
I slipped my shoulder beneath the goddess’s arm and she leaned against me. She smelled like lemongrass growing alongside a stream. “And who…might you be?” she asked between gasps of pain. Really? I’d just talked to her—or some version of her. But before I could answer, a giant root as wide as a minivan ripped free of the earth, spraying clods of dirt everywhere.
“My hair!” Gum Baby wailed.
Despite everything, I laughed. “Really? You’re worried about your hair at a time like this?”
“Some of us take pride in looking good.” Gum Baby sniffed. “Not like you’d know anything about that.”
“Hey!”
“Let’s go!” Ayanna shouted.
Mami Wata and I stumbled forward and collapsed on the sturdy magical craft.
“Hold on!” Ayanna cried. She tried to take off, but the giant root had been joined by a second. And a third. I shook my head in disbelief. They were like sea serpents freed from a prison of mud and rock. Tiny fibers covered them all, soil and pebbles tangled in knots. The giant roots wavered in midair like…
A familiar pain started to throb against my left wrist.
I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. It couldn’t be…Could it?
The tips of the roots had an eerie green glow, and I groaned. “For once in my life, can’t things be easy?”
The raft tried to climb, but the roots were too quick, batting us out the air like gnats. We went spinning toward the ground, only just managing not to crash by the skin of our teeth. Well, my teeth, at least. Did spiders and animated dolls have teeth? Maybe if—
“Boy!”
Mami Wata’s voice alternated between the soft babble of a creek and the rushing thunder of river rapids. She stood on the raft, wobbling a bit. The hem of her dress billowed softly behind her calves, rising and falling in waves, almost like the tail of a river dolphin swimming upstream. “The tree has been corrupted. We must—”
The largest of the roots hammered down on the ground next to us, barely missing crushing me like a roach. It was inches away, and I finally got a good look at the peeved appendage.
“Oh no,” I muttered.
Thick chains choked the root, their rusty metal glowing the sickly green of the iron monsters. Even worse, wiggling bumps that oozed greenish-black liquid covered the poisoned tree. It smelled awful, like socks that haven’t been washed in two months. You know the kind—the ones so stiff they can stand up on their own.
Blech.
I started to clench my fist, ready to use the adinkra bracelet to fight, then stopped. Not because of the pain—I could tolerate that now. But then why? What was I going to do, punch a tree? I’d done that once before, to disastrous results. Had throwing myself at Reggie worked? Had attacking Bear head-on worked? No, it hadn’t.
We have to be strategic, Anansi had said.
Okay, then.
If Bear could steal the weapons of other gods to become more powerful, there was no reason I couldn’t give their symbols to one of their own who needed them.
The giant root lifted into the air to join its two other partners in grime. I stood up as tall as I could and glanced at the river goddess. “How powerful are the waters you control? Will they do what you say?”
Mami Wata’s gaze swept the hollowed tree, taking in the poisoned roots hovering menacingly above the ground, the raft, and finally, the three of us. She studied Gum Baby, narrowed her eyes at the SBP in the doll’s hands, and then focused on me. “Never question the power of a goddess, little one.”
CRASH!
Another sharp splinter of bark fell through the dark to land just outside the SBP’s light. I licked my lips and edged to the middle of the raft. Things were getting hairy in here, and I’d just about had my fill of close shaves.
“I’m here to help,” I said. “My grandmother needs me. Alke needs me, even if it doesn’t know it yet. But right now, I need you.”
“The last time someone told me they were here to help, they poisoned my rivers, destroyed my streams, and locked me in a dying tree whose cries of pains were the only thing I heard for days!” Mami Wata glared at me, and when a god or goddess glares at you, you don’t mess around. It’s worse than that look your parents give you when you’re cutting up in publ
ic and they’re silently letting you know that it’s on once y’all get back to the car.
The raft jerked to the left, and the smallest of the root trio slammed into the dirt where we’d been just moments before.
“Do something!” Gum Baby shouted.
“Trust me,” I said to Mami Wata, putting as much honesty into my voice as I could muster.
I pulled the adinkra bracelet off my wrist and held it out for her to inspect. Her eyes widened, then met my own. After a second that felt like an eternity, she nodded. I slipped the bracelet over her hand and she stiffened. Her hair began to sparkle. The brown skin of her arms began to gleam, and her dress whipped left and right around her ankles, as if she were standing in a current.
“I was born in the shallows of a mighty river,” she whispered.
I grinned, despite everything. Despite the roots now constricting the raft like a giant python. Despite Nana not being here. Despite my hardly ever winning a fight. I knew this story. It was embroidered on the ruined quilt in my backpack.
“Or in the maelstrom of the sea,” I said, speaking the next line.
“Or in the hurricane.”
“Or in the lakes of the people.”
“I am Mami Wata,” the goddess said, her words a tide that would sweep aside all who stood before her.
My hand found hers and we spoke the final words together. “And this is my power!”
But when my voice ended, Mami Wata’s rose. It was a slowly building roar, like a swollen river rushing down a mountain, not yet visible but terrifying in its approach. The ground trembled as she spoke. A fissure appeared in the earth just below the raft, the crack racing around us as if an invisible knife were stabbing through the dirt and trying to carve away our existence.
CRACK!
The roots reeled backward like wounded dragons as the earth trembled. The Tree of Power shuddered. With an agonizing rumble and a terrible groan, like it could no longer suffer the torture Bear had inflicted upon it, the evil role it was forced to play in betraying one of its own, the magical old baobab fell in on itself in a devastating avalanche of shattered bark. A dark cloud descended, a last-ditch effort of the poison desperate to smother us. This was it. I cringed, ducking and covering my head with a yelp while Gum Baby and Anansi shouted in fear.
FWOOM!
The ground shifted again and droplets of water misted the side of my face and my arms. I stood for a second, two, three, before realizing that I wasn’t being crushed. I hadn’t felt so much as a splinter. I opened my eyes, confused, then gasped.
The Tree of Power was gone.
Like it had never existed.
In its place, a fountain of water had erupted out of the earth in a perfect circle around us, rising into the air and arcing overhead to fall to the ground nearly a dozen yards away. Where the tree’s canopy had been, there was now a foaming white spray, the leaves replaced by water droplets the size of my fist that fell to the ground so slowly they were like tears trickling down an invisible face. The storm clouds sped away until nothing blocked our view of the sky. We stood inside a shimmering blue cylinder, like a column of glass, a waterfall in reverse. (A water-rise?)
Mami Wata was in the center, her face upturned. Gum Baby scrambled over to me, climbing up to her familiar perch atop my shoulder to get a better view. She handed me the SBP, and I was so entranced by what was happening that I didn’t even grimace at the sticky residue smeared all over the screen.
Even Anansi had been struck speechless by the goddess. That was impressive.
“What’s Water Granny doing?” Gum Baby whispered.
Mami Wata stepped up to the wall of water and plunged her fingertips into it. Then she began to walk through, slowly, while tracing her fingers along the glimmering surface and humming softly to herself.
“Sweet peaches,” I murmured.
“Oh my goodness,” Ayanna said.
Gum Baby just shook her head, tiny droplets of sap splattering my shoulder, and Anansi stared thoughtfully.
Silver words appeared out of the ripples left in the wake of the river goddess’s fingers. Shining cursive letters traced their way up through the wall of water in a spiral. I twirled around, awestruck. The words we’d just spoken, the beginning of one of Nana’s many stories about the water goddess, floated in front of us.
The circle of water dropped so we could fly the raft out of it. As soon as we did, a geyser surged out of the earth where the Tree of Power had been.
“Now, then,” Mami Wata said, wringing out her hair and eyeing the three of us in turn. “United we stand, hmm?”
I stepped forward on the raft and pulled her up. “Yes, ma’am.” From my backpack I fished out the section of the quilt we’d used to guide us here. Parts of the words we’d just spoken still glimmered on the fabric. I shook my head. “I just don’t get it. The SBP—I mean, the Story Box—was supposed to lead me to Nana.”
“May I?”
I handed over the slightly soaked square to Mami Wata. She smiled as she examined it, rubbing the fabric between her thumb and forefinger.
“This is the story I told her.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The goddess pursed her lips and handed the square back to me. Then, out of thin air, she produced a ribbon that looked suspiciously like seaweed and put her locs up in an elaborate bun. When she was finished, she placed both hands on her hips and cocked her head, looking just like Nana always did when she’d come to an important decision.
“I told your grandmother this story many years ago when she came to visit.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised by that statement, but it hit me like an uppercut. Then I recalled my conversation with Nana in her bedroom. She’d been to Alke, and I’d never had the chance to talk to her about it.
I pulled out several more tattered pieces of quilt, sorting them as I searched for the squares with writing on them, holding up one after another as I found them. “Do you recognize these? Did anyone else from here tell her stories?”
“Hmm.” The river goddess tapped an aquamarine nail on her chin as she thought, before shrugging. “Two others that I know of. Their stories appear on those scraps you’ve got there. The boo hag from the foothills…”
“Lady Night?” I asked.
“And the loud woman who talks to one of my oldest rivers…”
“Keelboat Annie!” Ayanna said.
Wow, Nana had a pretty nice squad.
“Yes,” said Mami Wata. “The four of us got together one time and—”
“I hate to interrupt,” Anansi said, “but could you hold this fond reunion some other time, when we’re not surrounded by death and decay?”
I swallowed the hundreds of questions threatening to spill out of my mouth and nodded.
“So the SBP tracked you down with the quilt,” I said to Mami Wata, “because you are one of the authors who contributed to it. So even if we tried again, it might not take us directly to Nana. We’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
“Charge in headfirst like a blunder-head?” Gum Baby asked.
“Ignore the advice of those wiser than you and punch the first thing that moves?” Anansi asked.
“Beg someone flyer than you to save you?” Ayanna asked.
Mami Wata pursed her lips but thankfully didn’t join in.
“NO,” I said between gritted teeth, my neck flushing hot. “We need to find the other storytellers first.”
“But Lady Night might be…gone,” said Ayanna. “We don’t know what happened to…people after we left.”
By people, I knew she meant Junior, too, but she didn’t want to say his name in front of Anansi.
My heart ached, but my voice was firm. “We don’t know for sure, and until we do, they’re still alive. If we can gather her and Keelboat Annie, then maybe…”
Anansi rubbed his chin with two of his six hands. “And, if you’ll pardon my skepticism, just how do you plan on stopping Bear and the storm he is nearly rea
dy to unleash? We don’t even know where he is.”
I grinned a fierce, toothy grin that was more feral than friendly.
“Oh yes we do,” I said. “He’ll be wherever Nana is. I know why Bear kidnapped her now.”
OFF WE WENT.
Mami Wata knelt in the middle of the raft, her lips pinched and a determined look in her eyes. The goddess’s dress had somehow transformed once we’d risen into the air, morphing into an aquamarine pantsuit with emerald bangles above each ankle. Her feet were still bare, but her toenails and fingernails were painted a vibrant shimmering blue. We were soaring over the Burning Sea. Beneath us, the waves were getting choppier, sending flames shooting up as the winds grew stronger. The storm clouds had moved on from MidPass once the tree was destroyed. I had no doubt that was what Bear had intended. The green-veined thunderclouds now raced us across the horizon. I shivered. The poison Bear had inflicted upon the Tree of Power was spreading.
It was headed for the Golden Crescent.
We were, too, but only once Nana’s storytelling squad had been assembled. It was still an absolute trip for me to think about my grandmother as a part of some interdimensional bridge club. (For the uninformed, which until recently included myself, bridge is a card game popular with grown-ups. I think it’s rated PG for Parent Games.)
Right now we were going back to Lady Night’s juke joint—or what was left of it. I had the location loaded in Alke Maps, and Ayanna had the raft speeding through the gray morning sky. I dreaded what we were going to find—or not—but it seemed I had no choice.
“So.”
Mami Wata’s voice dragged my attention away from the coming troubles and back to the present. “I believe some introductions are in order, right, young man? I already know Ayanna. Many times have I seen her flying through my domain.”
“It’s a pleasure to formally meet you,” Ayanna said, managing to look respectful and reverent while also keeping us afloat.
“But the others…” The goddess raised an eyebrow, looking just like an aunt who was chaperoning your first date. The one who pretended not to notice when you did that arm-stretch yawn when she drove you and your date to the carnival.
