"Another friend like Jana?"
"No. Nafasi is," the old man seemed to hesitate for a moment, "he is like a laibon, except that the Makonde do not have laibon in the same sense as the Maasai. The Makonde do not have much of anything except one particular skill."
She recalled the conversation with the owner of the craft shop in their Nairobi hotel. "Woodcarving."
Olkeloki nodded. Oak dodged around one small tree and ran over another. "Yes. That, and the fact that they know the shetani better than anyone else in Africa."
Vegetation pressed uncomfortably close around the car. It was like driving down a green tunnel. Oak had to do some tricky maneuvering. He was expecting to find some kind of bush village at the end of the track.
There was no village. The Land Rover emerged into a clearing only slightly more devoid of trees than the surrounding forest. Chickens pecked and scratched in search of centipedes and other morsels. A milk goat grazed quietly nearby, hardly bothering to look up as the heavy vehicle ground to a halt.
In contrast to the bare yard, the house was substantial. It had concrete block walls, glass in the windows, and a tile roof. Steps led up to a raised covered porch. Four healthy-looking children materialized to stare silently at the visitors out of deep, dark eyes. They were either well trained or else used to company.
There were no dogs, of course. As Oak and Merry had already learned, Africans hated dogs. A stray was likely to end up in the family cookpot.
The fine house bespoke wealth on the local scale, but the true indication of the owner's success sat under a connected carport where not one but two late-model Honda dirt bikes stood parked. One was equipped with automatic transmission and a radio-cassette player.
They piled out of the Rover and stood next to Olkeloki. "What now?" Merry asked him.
"We wait. It is best not to disturb Nafasi when he is working. He will greet us when he is ready."
"Is he a woodcarver?"
"Yes, a woodcarver. A special woodcarver. One might go so far as to say a unique woodcarver. The carvers of the Makonde put their heart and soul into their work. Nafasi adds something more."
So the four of them stood there waiting while the children stared down at them and the chickens pecked around their feet in search of any bugs they might have stirred up. The goat allowed himself a single desultory baaah.
It was still early enough to be cool, though it was a humid and sticky coolness. Oak found himself glancing nervously at the dense woods, though there was no reason for anyone else to be uneasy when Olkeloki was relaxed. Still, he felt exposed out there in the open.
Eventually a slightly built ancient came out of the house. He ignored the rest of them while he squinted at Olkeloki. Then a wonderfully youthful smile split his face above a curly white beard. He picked his way down the steps and the two old men embraced. Olkeloki dwarfed the woodcarver.
"Habari," Nafasi said.
"Habari aku." Olkeloki spoke to him in Swahili for a bit. Then he gestured for them to follow him inside.
The house was quite large. There were no interior doors. An old woman looked out at them from the kitchen. Nafasi led them through a sparsely furnished den or living room into a big converted porch which served as the workroom. Two younger men, one burly, the other tall and slim, looked up from their work. Nafasi introduced them in Swahili.
"These are his sons," Olkeloki explained. "The little ones out front are his grandchildren. He welcomes us to his house."
Nafasi shook each of their hands in turn, beaming last at Merry. "Si kitu. Nafurahi sana kukuona. Mama wazuri."
"He says you are welcome and that he's pleased to make the acquaintance of such a fine-looking woman."
Merry grinned down at the elfin woodcarver. "Is that why he left his wife in the kitchen?" Olkeloki translated this and Nafasi laughed delightedly.
Oak was examining the extensive workroom. Recently felled trees stripped of branches stood propped against one wall. Other chunks of half-finished sculpture stood on rough wooden tables. In a back corner on a solid ebony table stood a selection of finished, highly polished pieces, awaiting inspection by potential buyers. Oak recognized one as the creature he'd seen skittering across the floor of a certain Washington restaurant, oh, a century or so ago.
Shetani. Rendered with supreme accuracy, though not life-size. As Nafasi later explained it was usually impossible to render a carved shetani exactly as it was in life because the ebony and blackwood trees rarely grew to more than a foot in diameter. The majority of the sculptures, many of which involved several connected figures, averaged five or six inches across and one to two feet in height.
The exception was a single piece that dominated everything in the room. It stood off on a pedestal of its own, three feet high and almost a foot in diameter. Once it had formed the base of an ebony tree, for unlike the other carvings, which were perfectly vertical, this one branched off at the top into a huge black root. The root had assumed the likeness of a monstrous, toothy face with jaws that would put a crocodile to shame. Doglike ears dangled from a skull which looked too narrow to support such jaws while bulbous eyes bulged from either side of the head. The jaws were four times the size of the head, which in turn was twice the size of the hunchbacked body. Carved fire and smoke rose from the two nostrils at the end of the upper jaw while a third nostril gaped empty and open between them.
Oak found that no matter where he went in the room, those bulging orbs seemed to move to follow his progress. If this behemoth among shetani sculpture was in proportion to the rest of the carvings, how large would the shetani itself be?
One of Nafasi's sons noticed the direction of Oak's stare and said in quite good English, "Spirits of the Earth. Father did that one all by himself. He wouldn't let anyone else touch it. He worked on it off and on for several years and finished it only this past month."
"It's beautiful. Grotesque, like a Giger painting, but beautiful. And I wouldn't have it in my house."
"It does not matter. Father won't sell it. As you can see, all the other carvings are straight. It is very rare anyone finds a large ebony root like this attached to the heartwood. Father says it's full of power. He keeps it to protect the house."
"Interesting. What do you say?"
The younger man smiled softly. "I say that I am still learning about such things." He nodded to where Olkeloki and Nafasi were engaged in animated conversation.
"We tell the foreigners who come to buy carvings that these are the spirits of the ocean or the forest, the animals or the sky. But you have seen them, as have some of us, as they truly are."
"That's right," said Merry. "Not only have we seen them, we've fought with them."
"So the laibon says. Word has come down to us of the battle that took place on the slopes of Ol Doinyo Lengai. The Maasai are a great people."
"So are the Makonde, judging by the quality of what's in this room."
He shrugged. "The Maasai fight, we carve. No one carves the shetani properly but the Makonde. My name is Paul, by the way. My brother is Samuel. We are Christian, though father is not."
"Are most of the Makonde Christian?" Merry asked him.
Paul shook his head. "This is a difficult country to be a Christian in. Many are Muslim or animist."
"You're converted, yet you carve these things," Oak said.
"We carve what we know to be real." His expression turned wistful. "Someday I would like to take our carvings to America. The laibon says that we would do well there, but father will not go. He says only muzungu like yourselves can take the carvings out of Africa. We are too close to the shetani and he says they would stop us."
"Maybe things will change when Olkeloki finishes his work," Merry suggested.
Paul grew serious. "They must change! If the laibon does not succeed there will be no more sculptures, no more carving. The shetani do not like to be revealed."
"It is time to leave." Olkeloki beckoned and everyone followed Nafasi to the back of the workroom.
>
Merry drew in a breath as the old carver dragged a dropcloth from a hidden mass. It was an enormous and very old wooden chest fashioned of ebony slats too tough for termites or wood ants to penetrate. Every inch had been carved into intricate patterns and whorls. Ivory and brass inlay gleamed through the dust. A fat iron padlock of ancient design secured the lid.
"Zanzibar chest," said Kakombe. "The design is very old but it shines like new."
It did more than shine like new, Oak reflected. A glow seemed to emanate from the black wood, as though a faint electric charge were running through it. Though he did not recognize it, it was the aura of history.
Nafasi bid them all stand back. Then he produced a key the size of a railroad spike and inserted it into the padlock. A musical note sounded as he turned key in lock and the air in the room seemed to darken. Merry unconsciously moved a little closer to Oak.
The old woodcarver raised the lid. A tiny shower of particles erupted from within; splinters, or tiny things with legs and arms. A glow came from inside the chest and threw the carver's features into sharp relief. Bending over the pulsing chest there in the darkened room he looked more than ever like one of his own ebony carvings.
Oak stepped forward before anyone could stop him and peered into the chest. His eyes bulged.
The chest had no bottom. He was looking through the rectangular window of a spacecraft into the emptiness of the abyss itself. Stars and nebulae glowed beyond. A thin gust of vacuum struck him with a chill so deep it froze the saliva in his mouth. He could feel himself falling, falling, not down but out, could feel the surge of weightlessness as he started to tumble into the open chest.
Hands grabbed him by the arms and pulled him back. The coldness receded. There was ice in his throat and around his lips. He blinked at Samuel.
"Father keeps everything in that chest. Everything. It is dangerous for someone who is not used to handling everything to look upon it."
Everything? Oak wondered, dazed. He looked back toward the open chest. But the chest had no bottom. It was full of vacuum. Vacuum, and a universe.
Fog and swirling particles obscured the chanting woodcarver. Oak was afraid what he'd seen inside might come out to swallow them up, but it stayed within. Something else did emerge from the chest, however.
Nafasi straightened, holding an armful of carvings. These he laid on one of the worktables while Paul secured the chest. Oak noted that the younger man kept his head averted and did not look into the chest.
Light returned to fill the workroom. The particles that had enveloped the old carver in a dark cloak fell to the floor. Oak scuffed at them with a shoe. Ebony sawdust.
Samuel handed his father a towel and the old carver proceeded to wipe sweat from his face and upper body. Then he spread out the objects he had taken from the chest. Four wooden knives lay side-by-side with a trio of long-bladed blackwood spears. The knives were shorter and thicker than those carried by the Maasai. The wood gleamed with a sheen richer than that adorning any of the other carvings in the room. It was not the product of polish as much as it was an inner glow that emanated from the wood itself. Oak reached down to pick one up.
Nafasi put out a hand to block Oak's. The carver seemed to have aged several years in the space of a few minutes. He shook his head warningly.
"Ji hadari!"
"He is telling you to be careful," Olkeloki explained. "Pick them up by the handle only."
The master carver hefted one of the wooden spears and caressed it lovingly. Then he pointed to a bench top fashioned of two-by-fours that lay propped on its end against the far wall. Drawing back his arm, he threw the spear with surprising but not exceptional force. Oak half expected the shaft to splinter against the bench top or at most stick a couple of inches into the softer wood.
The blade went clean through one of the two-by-fours and continued on to bury half its length in the wall beyond. Satisfied, Nafasi recovered the weapon and offered it to Oak—handle first.
An awed Oak held it up to the light, but squint as he might he couldn't see where the blade ended and the air began. A faint rippling clung to the edge of the blade, like the heat distortion one sees above a highway on a particularly hot day. Very slowly, very carefully, he touched the sharp edge with the middle finger of his left hand, then brought it away. He'd felt no pain on contact, but when he looked down at his finger a thin red line was visible. It was like a paper cut, only there was no pain. A clean, almost magical cut. He might as easily have placed the skin in the path of a surgical laser.
"How the hell," he whispered in disbelief, "can he put that kind of an edge on a piece of wood?"
Olkeloki cleared his throat. "Nafasi says now you will be careful not to pick up by the blade."
"Tell him I'll treat it like the detonator on a bomb."
Nafasi listened to the translation, looked satisfied. Then he passed out the rest of the weapons; knife and spear to each man, knife alone to Merry. As he did so he passed his hands over each blade and murmured softly. Paul brought wooden sheaths of thin ebony to slip over each weapon. As he watched him work Oak was reminded of a falconer slipping hoods over his favorite birds. Or an Indian snake charmer hooding his cobra.
"These can't just be ordinary wood," Merry murmured.
"They are wood, but they are anything but ordinary. There are no other such weapons anywhere in the world. They are blackwood plus history, blackwood plus a little of every weapon that has ever been. There are the spears of the great Zulu impis in each edge, the power of Tamerlane's hordes, the thrust of Caesar's legions. On the very edge of each swim things that cannot be seen except in circles of great magnets that race the components of existence around racetracks on which the beginning and end of the universe is the bet. They contain weapons that have not been and weapons that will never be. They are blackwood plus all that plus Nafasi. Into them he has put his heart and soul and much more. They will cut well. I think they will even cut a shetani."
"Weapons of worth," Kakombe added.
Before they departed, Nafasi went to each of them in turn and clasped their hands.
"He is entrusting you with his skill and says he hopes you will use what has been given to you well. He would come with us, but he is a builder, not a fighter."
"Tell him thank you, and that we'll try to put his spearpoints where they'll do the most good," Oak replied.
The expression on the old carver's face showed that he was content.
Nafasi and his sons stood on the porch of the house and watched as the two Maasai and the two ilmeet departed. Chickens and children whirled around them. Oak glanced in the rear-view mirror and for an instant thought he saw instead of the tin-roofed simple structure a formidable redoubt of dressed granite and steel, but when he looked back over his shoulder there was only the one-story building surrounded by trees and brush. No moat, no gleaming towers, no exotic guns poking their snouts through slits in the walls.
Sunlight in the mirror, he told himself, and concentrated on the narrow road ahead.
They had turned west on the main road when Oak thought to look sharply at the old man riding next to him. "Those weapons were waiting for us."
"Nafasi has kept them for many years. You saw yourself, Joshua Oak, the age of the chest in which they were stored. Do you think such things can be fashioned in a day or two, a week, a month? Too much is invested in each blade. They are not like the toy spears one sees in the tourist shops which everyone makes to sell to the visiting ilmeet."
Oak refused to be put off. "He knew we were coming, damnit. How did he know we were coming?"
Olkeloki devoted his attention to the road ahead. "Pay attention to your driving, Joshua Oak. The way will become uncertain."
Merry was turning her sheathed blade over and over in her hands. "What am I supposed to do with this? I've sold plenty of knives: hunting knives, fishermen's knives, Swiss army knives, but I've never used one on anything bigger than a trout."
"If a shetani springs at you waving its
long arms and dripping black spit from its teeth you will know what to do with the knife, Merry. No one will have to instruct you." Kakombe had laid his own set of weapons on the floor beneath his feet.
"I don't feel comfortable with it. Maybe you ought to take it, Kakombe."
"I already have a knife. And a spear."
"We all do," said Oak. "The old boy gave it to you, Merry. Hang on to it. If nothing else it'll make a great conversation piece when you get home. That sucker'd do a roast turkey in three minutes."
"Okay, I'll keep it, if you'll stop talking about real food. I've about had it with milk, and dried jerky and goat curry."
"When the task is done we will make a great feast." Kakombe's eyes shone. "We will slaughter many cattle. It will be a celebration to sing of."
"I hope we'll have reason to celebrate." Oak indicated the towering green-clad mountains that now dominated the southern horizon. "We go up through those?" he asked doubtfully.
"The Ulugurus," said Olkeloki. "No, the road continues west. We will not begin to climb for many hours yet."
"I wish you hadn't mentioned that damn roast turkey," Merry grumbled.
McFARLAND, Kansas (AP)—A Union Pacific train carrying binary nerve gas derailed east of this small farming community today, scattering potentially lethal canisters of gas for hundreds of feet on either side of the tracks. Army representatives succeeded in separating the components before high winds could combine gas from broken canisters and sweep it eastward. Major Nathaniel Davis was quoted as saying, "If the decontamination team had been ten minutes late in getting there, we could've lost half the population of Topeka."
ELECTRIC CITY, Washington (UPI)—As spiderweb-sized cracks in the face of giant Grand Coulee Dam were being repaired today, a major hydroelectric turbine tore itself apart, requiring a full shutdown of the facility that resulted in loss of power to six Northwestern states. "It was just as if somebody had tossed a girder into the blades," one of the plant's technicians was reported as saying. No such object has been found, but the possibility of sabotage by some unknown subversive group is not being ruled out, says Washington's Governor Shackleford.
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