Chains of Time

by R B Woodstone

  I don’t want him to know that I cannot see. “Because I don’t want to look at you. And because I’m conserving my strength…”

  “You have no strength, Amara. I had the nurse show me your chart just before I forced her to lead me to your room. You were unconscious for hours, and they had to cut you open just to get the baby out. They call is a cesarean section. You’re so weak you probably can’t even muster the force to stand up, let alone fight me. Somehow you’re blocking me from getting at your thoughts. But I can tell just by looking at you that you’ve got nothing left to use against me.”

  I can hear him moving closer.

  “Now I’m going to take the child and…”

  The baby screams, and I hear Van Owen exhale strangely, as if stunned by something.

  “How did you do that?” he asks through labored breaths. He grunts as if he's struggling against something, as if he’s unable to get any closer to my child and me. “What are you doing? How are you putting up this…this wall, this invisible wall? Tell me how!”

  I wonder if he’s gone mad, if his own guilt is somehow keeping him locked in place, unable to get to the baby. I hear that strange high-pitched hum. He’s going to use his—Kwame’s—lightning. In my arms, Rolanda twists and shrieks. I can imagine the terror of seeing this hideous man with electricity crackling from his fingers. I feel an odd vibration as if I’m leaning against a motor of some sort. I wonder if my senses are so skewed that I can’t even feel Van Owen’s lightning coursing through me. He mutters incoherently like a weightlifter striving to use every last vestige of his might to raise an object that’s simply too heavy. He’s still trying to get to me—to us—but somehow he can’t. Then I remember my father, who could wave his hand and hold off an army. Against my chest, Rolanda twitches as if she’s struggling too. Her little body shakes. And then I’m certain. The wall is real. And Rolanda has erected it. It is she who is defending us against Van Owen. She has been born with an ability. Even fresh from the womb, her first instinct is to protect herself against Van Owen. From the floor, I hear a moan. Ray is still alive!

  “Let go of me,” Van Owen cries. Ray has grabbed him. I hear a dull sound as Van Owen is pulled to the floor.

  “Help us,” I shout. “Someone please…”

  The lightning hums. The baby screams. Ray howls in agony. The smell of burning flesh fills the room. Then the door bursts open.

  The doctor is the first one to speak. “Oh my God…”

  I can only imagine what he sees—my husband burned and smoldering on the floor, Van Owen shooting electricity from his hands, and a baby shrieking in its mother’s arms.

  A nurse screams. There are footsteps outside, lots of them. People are running to my room.

  “Get out of my way,” Van Owen yells. I hear a commotion—people shoved, equipment knocked aside as he races out the door. The woman keeps screaming, but the baby is cooing quietly. I rock her softly, trying to block out the smell of death in the air, the weakness that pervades my body, the fear that makes me quiver. I focus on nothing but Rolanda’s tiny noises.

  I can hear the doctors trying to find Ray’s pulse. They won’t. I’m reaching out for him with my mind but finding nothing.

  Soon the police will be here to investigate Ray’s death. They’ll ask who the murderer was. I’ll tell them to fetch today’s newspaper, to look at the picture on the front page. The doctors and nurses will corroborate. They all saw his face. The murderer was Donald Van Owen, newly appointed chairman of the National Tobacco Corporation. In the coming years, there will be many more newspaper and magazine articles speculating as to why a white business leader stormed a hospital room to murder an unimportant Negro man, and to try to kidnap a newborn Negro girl.

  Van Owen will return, I know, perhaps with a new name or title, and he will live for generations. In this era, though—in this identity, which he clearly worked so hard to establish—he’s finished. He will not be a leader or a famous or celebrated man. He will be a known criminal, forced into hiding, relegated to anonymity. And, blind or not, I will be ready for his next lunge at infamy, and so will my daughter.

  Twenty-Five

  Carl Kelly slammed his cell phone down on the dashboard. Jerome was still not answering. “Where the hell are you, son?” he shouted to himself.

  As he raced his car across Macombs Dam Bridge and toward the stable to find Jerome, he eyed the return traffic—two lanes packed solid—and wondered how he would make it back to Manhattan. Then he remembered that there had been a Yankee game that afternoon. The team was in a pennant race and was playing its chief rival, the Boston Red Sox. He thought of how his father would react to his son’s apathy about baseball. Barton Kelly had been a man of many passions: baseball, horses, his wife, and, most of all, training his only son to be ready to face Hendrik Van Owen someday.

  Carl thought of the stories his father had told him—stories that Carl had told to his sons Warren and Jerome. The legends had been passed down through five generations of male descendants, each one trying to maintain the original tale, reciting it word for word while adding his own story at the end. Carl suspected that much of it must be myth, but it was the only family history he knew.

  First there was Tongra, chieftain of the T’mikra clan. They were a peaceful people. There was harmony until the three white men came. They called themselves explorers. They said they had no desire to conquer the T’mikra; they wanted only to study the tribe and how they lived. Tongra allowed the three men to live among the T’mikra for one day only. He shared food and drink with them, allowed them to partake in the T’mikra rituals—even to smoke of the tribal pipe. Then, at night, after the rest of the clan had gone to sleep, the three white men shared with Tongra their own smoking pipe. In the morning, when the white men departed, Tongra was altered. Overnight, he had changed. His mind was addled. His thoughts were jumbled. Over the next several years, he seemed to age decades. Believing that his death was near, he knew that he must name a successor. So he sent his twin sons Merlante and Mkembro on a quest into the wilderness, declaring that the one who returned first with the fabled Keema root would be declared leader upon the chieftain’s death. The Keema root grew only in the depths of the haunted cave atop the region’s highest mountain. The root was imbued with ancient power, power that Tongra had discovered decades earlier.

  Mkembro and Merlante were sent on different paths for the weeklong journey, but they arrived at the mountain at the same time. Defying their father, they refused to race against each other to determine who would reach the Keema root first. Instead, the brothers decided that they would seek it together and decide later which one would return with it. So they scaled the mountain and entered the cave together. They descended into its caverns for two days, defeating serpents and dark spirits and wild beasts. Then they came upon the Keema, a blue-leafed root growing from the cave floor. It was surrounded by a ring of blue fire that rose from the ground and flared nearly to their shoulders. Each brother tried to pass through the flames but could not. The flames did not burn them but instead formed a sort of shield—a barrier that prevented the two from crossing. So the brothers came up with a plan: they would traverse the barrier together. From opposite sides of the ring of fire, they stepped toward it as one and passed through the flames unscathed.

  Together they knelt to tear the Keema from the ground but quickly discovered that the root was not a root at all for it was not planted. It simply rested on the ground. The Keema was not in fact a plant but instead a living, pulsating blue flame that swirled in arcs, forming leaves of lightning in the air. The flame was always in motion, always changing. As the brothers moved and spoke, the flame veered and the lightning sparked in response. But when each brother knelt to touch it, the flame vanished, only to return when once the brother moved away. So they tried the same approach that had worked on the blue flame barrier. Together they knelt. Together they touched the Keema. And together they felt lightning course through their bodies.

  Insta
ntly, their minds were filled with confusing visions—dreams that lasted years but played out in mere moments, showing them different possible futures. In some visions, Mkembro ruled the T’mikra tribe; in others, Merlante did. Each stream, though, was marked with discord and strife between the brothers. In one where Merlante ruled, Mkembro was so envious that he murdered his brother and took over the village. In another, Mkembro ruled but had such desire for Merlante’s wife that he banished his brother and took the wife for himself. In another, Merlante raised a great and brutal army that pillaged its way across the continent. In others, their rivalry, always fueled by jealousy or envy, was so intense that they killed each other or were driven mad with hunger for power. But in the last vision, the sons ruled together, and only then was there serenity.

  Finally, the visions stopped, and the brothers let go of the Keema and were tossed backward out of the fire ring. At once, Mkembro and Merlante could feel the first embers of the strange power that they had been given. Mkembro could move objects with his thoughts and cause the winds to blow with the wave of his hand. Merlante could enter the minds of others, even animals, and he could not be harmed by anything physical. And they both could cast lightning from their fingertips. They gloried in their newfound strengths, and, throughout the long journey back to T’mikra, they tested their powers and expounded on the myriad ways they could use their abilities to help their people. They accepted the wisdom of the visions—that their plan could flourish only if they ruled T’mikra together. They spoke of the kingdom they would build—a magnificent, tranquil land where there would be no fear, for its leaders would be united.

  However, when they returned home to their father without the Keema root, and they recounted their plan to rule together, Tongra grew enraged. He called them cowards, declaring that it would have been better had they died fighting each other for the mantle of leadership rather than return with foolish dreams of sharing power. He demanded that they fight then and there for the right to rule. They refused, and so Tongra banished them from the village, commanding that they go off in opposite directions, cursing them that if they were ever to unite, they would bring a great scourge on all their people. Again, the brothers refused.

  Before the entire village, Mkembro and Merlante renounced their father, declaring him mad and unfit to rule. They told of their newfound powers and described their plan for the tribe. Tongra became livid. He spread his arms wide, calling down the winds to beat his sons into submission. But Mkembro held his father at bay with his own mastery of the wind. Furious, Tongra declared that his sons were unworthy of their powers and that they must die. He rained lightning from his fingertips, trying to murder them. As the village watched, Merlante and Mkembro released their lightning as well. They tried only to deflect their father’s attack, but they were young and inexperienced with their powers. When they attacked in unison, their lightning was fierce—too fierce. It struck their father and burned him to death.

  The T’mikra people were terrified. They trusted in Tongra’s curse. “You see,” they said, “when you united, you murdered your own father!” The people declared that they would not live in a village ruled by both men—that Merlante and Mkembro must separate forever in order that the T’mikra people could be safe from the curse. So the two brothers followed the wishes of their people and separated. Half of the village went with Merlante, half with Mkembro. They left T’mikra forever to find new lands on which to build their own villages.

  So it remained for ages. The Merlante and the Mkembro peoples stayed apart from one another, each flourishing in its own smaller village far from the other. Eventually, the history was forgotten by most. After many generations, the Merlante and the Mkembro believed that the two clans had always been enemies—forbidden to fraternize with one another. Only the elders and the chieftain families themselves knew that the two peoples had once been one.

  Then Glele, a tyrant leader of an enemy tribe, made a pact with a white slaver named Van Owen from the land called America. In return for jewels and the safety of his own people, Glele led the white slavers to other African clans—small, hidden clans. For years, Glele helped the slavers pick away at the Merlante and Mkembro and others. Afeard that their people were vanishing, some of the tribes formed pacts of protection with one another. Communication began even between the Merlante and the Mkembro. The Merlante leader, Berantu, sent a message to the Mkembaro leader, Warrendi, suggesting that they join together to fight Glele. He proposed that, as a sign of trust, his son Kwame would marry Warrendi’s daughter Amara. Warrendi agreed, and the wedding ceremony was planned. The two peoples came together at Mkembro. The people marveled that their rituals, their languages, their songs were eerily similar. A glorious unity was in the making. But as the ceremony began, Van Owen arrived with his army of slavers, for Glele had met them on the shore and led them to the wedding. The tribes were unprepared for battle and could not defend against the interlopers’ guns. Berantu and Warrendi were killed, but their offspring rose to avenge their fathers. Just as Merlante and Mkembro had pierced the ring of fire together generations earlier, Kwame and Amara charged at Van Owen together. When the two betrotheds touched Van Owen, their powers were kindled, and Tongra’s curse was fulfilled once again. Kwame and Amara had never used their powers before and could not control them. Their attacks flowed through Van Owen and struck each other, weakening Kwame and Amara but empowering the slaver. The two collapsed, beaten, and Van Owen stood triumphant, having gained the abilities of both Kwame and Amara.

  Van Owen slaughtered and captured the rest of the two tribes, taking many of them aboard his ship. Amara was placed in a cage on the deck; Kwame was thrown below with the rest of the prisoners. But when the ship docked in Boston, there was a revolt, and Kwame broke free and dove into the water. He swam and ran for 12 days. Fatigued, he was captured in West Virginia and brought further South, where he was forced to be a slave at the Dunwoody horse farm in Mildred, Tennessee. On that farm, he was given a new name, Charles. And a man named Kelly taught him the skills of blacksmithing and horse rearing. When Kwame escaped and headed north during the Civil War, he took the name Kelly as his surname, calling himself Reginald Kelly.

  After the war, he searched the South for any sign of Amara. He traveled to the Van Owen plantation but found that it had been taken by the Union army and converted into a military training base. Amara was nowhere to be found.

  Kwame remained in the South, working as a blacksmith on several farms. Eventually he married and raised a son, Graydon Kelly. Graydon, like his father, was born with the power of lightning. He, too, worked with horses. One day in Memphis in the late 1890s, when Graydon was still a teenager, he was walking home late at night. He saw two thieves attacking a white aristocrat. Graydon was about to intercede to help the man—but the man rose up and knocked them back seemingly just by staring at them. The man looked around to make sure that no one was watching. Seeing only Graydon—a Black youth—the man turned his attention back to his two attackers. Grinning with delight, he released lightning from his fingers, incinerating the two assailants. Then he approached Graydon. The aristocrat was tall, gaunt, pale. All sinew and vein. His eyes were piercing blue. Graydon recognized him in an instant from the stories his father had told him: it was Hendrik Van Owen, but somehow—though decades had passed—he had not aged. While Kwame had died young, Van Owen was still the same age he was when Kwame and Amara passed their powers on to him. Somehow, the joining of their abilities had not only empowered Van Owen, but it seemed also to have made him immortal.

  As Van Owen approached him, Graydon was frightened, but he readied himself for battle, even as he knew he was too young and inexperienced to challenge the slaver.

  “You look familiar,” Van Owen said, perhaps noticing unconsciously how closely Graydon resembled Kwame. “Do I know you?”

  Graydon could feel Van Owen trying to read his thoughts, so he focused his thoughts only on horses and nothing else, and he nodded no.

  “Do you l
ike living?” Van Owen asked him.

  Graydon nodded yes.

  “Then do it somewhere else,” Van Owen told him and walked away.

  So Graydon left the South. He traveled all the way to New York, to Saratoga, where he took a job as a horse trainer. Eventually, he bought a small plot of land in the town of Hamlin. He was urged by many to start his own business, but he preferred to stay in the shadow of others and live his life unnoticed—to keep his name off all public records. He married and had a son, Cameron. He passed on to Cameron the stories that had been told to him by his father, and he passed on his lightning power as well. He raised Cameron to stay hidden but taught him how to use his power. After the horses were tended to, Graydon and Cameron would spend hours training, in case they should one day cross paths with Van Owen.

  Cameron married and raised a son, Barton, who also wielded the lightning, and Cameron prepared Barton for the day when he might have to use it against Van Owen.

  That was where the story had stopped, for Barton was Carl’s father, and he had died when Carl was only a teenager, when Carl’s powers were just beginning to surface. So Carl had taught himself. And he tacked his own name to the end of the story when he told it to Warren and Jerome. He had not shared the tale with Terry or Regina. How could he? Terry was physically weak and had never exhibited any sign of special abilities, and Regina was a girl—the first ever in the Merlante line—and she was frail like Terry. She had even lost the power to speak.

  As Carl thought of his two endowed children, he wondered whether he had been rash in sending Warren off when a conflict was brewing—especially when Jerome couldn’t be part of this fight. He was needed elsewhere.

  “Wake up,” Carl shouted as he tugged on Jerome’s shoulder.

  Jerome rolled over in the pile of hay and sat up. “What time is it?”

  “Van Owen is here in New York. He’s taken Terry. I’m going after him…”