Ancient, Ancient

by Kiini Ibura Salaam

  You are singing. For a few seconds I am paralyzed with grief, stricken by the certainty that I will never see you again. Then I see it, a purple mist spreading through the room. Your song seems to beckon to me, growing faint then pulsing in one particular corner. I follow your voice from one end of the room to the other. Every time I think you have led me to the way out, the light I am walking toward dissipates.

  The mist quickly fills the room, growing so thick that I can no longer see. I hear breathing around me. It sounds heavy and panicked. A suffocating sweetness blossoms in the back of my throat. My limbs begin to tingle. A loud chattering breaks out behind me. The last clear thought I have is that if I can find the voices, I can find the exit. I twist around and run. After a few steps, I bang into a probe, then trip over something large. I’m sure it’s a body, but my mind is too jumbled to process the thought. I ignore my mounting hysteria and latch onto the image of me running. I force my limbs forward, but gravity overtakes me and starts dragging me down. My eyes roll back in my head, and my ears stop registering sound. Before I drop, someone shoves me from behind. I stumble and follow the crush of bodies. Suddenly the air is different—sharp, crisp, no mist. A weak thrill vibrates through me, then I fall face-first onto the ground.

  Suddenly I’m lying on a bed of soft green leaves. There’s no noisy, painful time shift, but I’m in a different place. Not home, but my arms are nestled around you. You have flowers tucked behind your ear and gold beads in your braids. You’re holding me with an easy comfort, almost as if you’ve held me many times before, as if you know you’ll be holding me many times again.

  I snuggle closer to you.

  “Time to go,” you whisper before kissing me on my jaw.

  I feel someone shaking me.

  “Time to go,” a voice says.

  Then I hear that wet flapping sound. It whips through me like an alarm. My eyes pop open. I climb to my feet. Dead leaves and dried insect wings flutter off me. I grab my guide in an awkward fumbling embrace. Why am I still here?

  “Let’s move,” he says and hops away before I can ask how he found me. He leans on a branch for balance, moving with surprising quickness for a one-legged man.

  I follow, taking quick glances around while I hustle behind him. On one side of us is the base of a cliff. We are traveling on a narrow path that cuts through a tangle of overgrowth that has managed to flourish in the massive shadow of a mountain. On the other side of us is a dark forest; cool air rolls out from between the tress and licks at our cheeks and ears. Every twenty feet or so, my guide stops and peers into the forest. He’s too far ahead for me to ask what he’s doing.

  A shriek cuts through my thoughts, then I see people running. Without a word to me, my guide races forward, hopping as fast as he can toward a cluster of people staring into the forest. He pushes past them and, by the time I draw near, he has disappeared into the mass of altered limbs.

  I push into the crowd too, struggling to keep pace with my guide.

  “This it?” my guide asks, motioning to a large cave.

  Someone grunts. My guide looks at me. I take a step forward. He stares at me for a few long seconds, then he blinks.

  “Going in,” he says. When he turns away I know that was goodbye.

  He hops into the cave opening. A curtain of pastel-hued light shimmers as he enters, and then he’s gone. My heart goes wild with fear. I don’t think I can take another world, another blow, another scar, but I am instantly overtaken with terror that I’m being left behind.

  When I step inside the cave, I’m assaulted with light. The light is everywhere. The strongest glow comes from deep within the cave where the light’s intensity is amplified by discarded metal rods and glass tubing littering the floor. Shielding my eyes from the glare, I walk deeper into the cave. I feel the temperature drop right when I find my guide. He is standing at the back of the cave in front of an old wooden table. On the other side of the table is the Man—I’m pretty sure it’s the Man. He is massive, intimidating. His dark robes do nothing to disguise the broadness of his shoulders. His head is shaven clean, and I can’t see his eyes—they are covered by plastic welding goggles. He taps his hand impatiently on the tabletop.

  My guide gestures, pointing at something on the table. The Man lifts one hand and shoves the goggles off his eyes and leaves them to rest on his forehead. He says something to my guide. My guide nods. The Man says something else, and my guide says, “I promise.”

  He picks up a cup from the table and drinks from it, then he disappears right before my eyes.

  My heart convulses, but before my thoughts can whip into a frenzy, the Man yells, “Next!”

  He doesn’t bother to look up when I stand before his table.

  “Your things,” he says. I pull out the feather and place it on the table. Pinch by pinch, I pile the sand into a mound. Then I get the cup of perspiration out of my pocket and place it on the table. It has gone stiff in the middle where my guide pinched it. It tilts to the side, but the liquid has not leaked out.

  The Man picks up my feather and inspects it. Its iridescence takes me back to the man with the glossy hair, his watchful eyes, his fierce spirit. The Man sets the feather back on the table and pokes his fingers into the sand, flattening my pile. Memories of the girl who watched her parents die run through me. By the time he picks up the cup, I am remembering the scar that wailed to keep me safe. The Man sniffs the cup, turning it around in his fingers, then places it back on the table. He clasps his hands in front of him.

  “What is freedom?” he asks. He tilts his head back and looks up at me

  I gasp.

  There is no mistaking those features. The thickness of the eyebrows, the thinness of the nose, the full bottom lip, the scar on his left jawline.

  “Grandfather?”

  Not a flicker of recognition passes through the Man’s eyes. He doesn’t repeat his question, but the intensity of his stare lets me know that he is waiting for my response.

  A thousand thoughts go spinning through my head. I don’t want to be afraid, but I am. How much of Grandfather is in this man’s body? I flash back to the rows of men shackled behind me in the courthouse. I remember the long snaking line of women plodding through the desert. I know what freedom is not.

  The man who may be my grandfather bangs his hand on the table.

  “Many are waiting. Do you have an answer?”

  “I’m…” I wet my lips.

  I think about my body, my real body, loose-limbed and free. I remember the Royale, how it always made me feel: flush-faced, high on adrenaline, disconnected from everything ordinary, locked in some ancient formula of ferocity and flight.

  The man with a hand for a tongue didn’t prepare me for this.

  “Freedom is the ability to be whatever you want—without control, violence, force, or limitations.”

  Grandfather takes a closer look at me then. He squints as if sizing me up.

  “Why do you deserve to be free?”

  “Everyone deserves to be free,” I snap.

  A slight smile creases Grandfather’s lips; then his seriousness swallows his pleasure, and he continues his inquisition.

  “What will you do with your freedom?”

  I know what Grandfather doesn’t want to hear. He doesn’t want to hear that I’ll pick up the razors and enter the Royale, he doesn’t want to hear that after decades of bondage, I will choose to squander my freedom by getting myself maimed in a fight.

  I remember the freedom the Royale gave me, a freedom Grandfather will never understand: a freedom of feeling, a freedom of weightlessness, a freedom to be pure motion, to be more than I am. When I try to put my words together, I stumble, blinded by thoughts of you watching me dance, by my need to dazzle you again.

  I look Grandfather in the eye, careful to strangle down all the hatred and anger that I have carried with me on my travels.

  “I will obey my elders and love my friends,” I say. None of this is a lie.

  Wi
thout another look at me, he grasps a glass beaker between his thumb and index finger and pushes it toward me.

  Smoke wafts from the opening of the beaker.

  “Drink,” he says.

  A small dry chuckle falls from my mouth. This is the last of Grandfather’s potions that will ever pass my lips. As I raise the beaker to my mouth, he says, “May freedom be all that you wish it to be. May you be strong under the weight of its burden.”

  I throw my head back and take a big gulp. The potion swells in my throat. I slam the beaker on the table and spit out the fluid that was in my mouth. As soon as I draw my hand away, Grandfather and the table are gone.

  Traveling back home is like being smacked with a hundred small hands. There is nothing to see, but plenty of sound. After my skin has been slapped raw, I begin to tingle all over. An intense tickle starts at the crown of my head and splits my body, traveling right down to my pelvis. Heat spears up my throat and I jackknife forward, gagging.

  When the vomit comes, I am back on the compo, my face a mess of mucus and tears. I force myself to my hands and knees and scramble off the compo. Then I look around me with wild, shifting uncertainty. Pain pulses through me like a mantra, but I cannot let it consume me.

  All around me are the tools of Grandfather’s treachery. My skin bristles at remembering the scars, the mutilations, and the brutalities. I know he will dismiss the idea that I was ever in danger. He’ll crow over the power of his chemicals and insist that he was in complete control.

  The urge to upend his worktable and shatter his beakers overtakes me, but I am too weak to stand. I hear Grandmother moving around in the kitchen overhead. I want to cry out, but I can’t squeeze sound out of my throat. I crawl over to the stairs. When I try to lift my hand to the doorknob, my limbs tremble violently. Hatred for Grandfather burns in my heart.

  I ram my head against the door, blind to everything but the need to be seen, to be held. I bang the door with my head again and again, oblivious to the impact of the wood against my skull. Before blood breaks through my skin, exhaustion consumes me. In its wake, a blackout blankets my consciousness—and without knowing if any one has heard me, I collapse to the floor.

  Ferret

  The ferret’s claws clicked echoes into the silence. I wanted to scream out. Instead I listened to the rasp of grandfather scratching his chin. Everyone’s gaze followed the ferret as it scurried around the compass, but I turned away. Without looking I knew the ferret would be running in dizzying circles. The dull thunk of ferret teeth sinking into wood rang out in the divining room. Grandfather’s robes rustled as he stood.

  It was only compulsion—not faith, not hope—that pulled me toward the compass. I stood behind Grandfather as he leaned over the ferret’s inert body. He unfurled a long bony finger and stroked the ferret’s head. The ferret loosened its grip, and a servant removed the wood block from the ferret’s jaws. My breath caught in anticipation. I hated my body for that. I knew every movement of this divination was empty—useless—yet here were my cheeks, flushed, as the servant hung the block in the space for the speed directive.

  “D,” the crowd yelled in a burst of noise. The servant turned back to the compass. They all watched the ferret begin circling the compass again, but I kept my eyes on the block. After years of use, the letter was almost obscured by teeth marks. I squinted, wanting to be certain the block did indeed have a “D” carved on its face. My scrutiny was aborted by the sound of the ferret sinking its teeth into another block. The servant lifted it and placed it in the space for the direction coordinates. By the time the crowd yelled out “U,” the ferret had already selected the last block: “B”—the distance directive.

  “D—U—B,” my grandfather mumbled to himself as the ferret backed away from the compass.

  He turned to all gathered and proclaimed “Dub!” in a loud voice. The crowd, fools that they were, started clapping. They still believed Grandfather and his ferret avtandi would bring us home.

  Grandfather redirected our aimless little bubble according to the new speed:direction:distance directives, then drifted away from the compass. He called his avtandi with low clicking noises, and I prepared to leave his side. Grandfather held a shaky hand in front of his solar plexus. It took a full minute for the sphere of flesh and organs to detach from his torso. Slowly, the five-inch globe gravitated toward his hand, leaving a circular hole straight through his body.

  The sphere floated silently down to the floor as the ferret approached. The sphere undulated, and the ferret stepped into it. Rather than watch the remainder of the ritual, I fell to the floor, scattering my body into a thousand round molecules and rolling into a distant corner of the divining room. Even so dissolved, I heard the hiss of Grandfather’s sphere engulfing the ferret. I heard the whisper of Grandfather’s hand as he waved his sphere of flesh up from the floor and guided it back into his center.

  A gnawing ugliness had begun to eat at my insides. I was certain the servants’ whispers were true: we were at the bitter end of our five-year supplies. Every day, as Grandfather paced the marble halls of our bubble, I struggled against terrible anger. The reality rested cold and hard inside me: Grandfather would soon decide who would feed and who would starve.

  “Granddaughter!” grandfather yelled.

  I gathered myself up, molecules sliding across the floor to re-form my tall lanky body. Grandfather stood in the middle of the divining room with his avtandi in his hand.

  “I mean to consult the compass again,” Grandfather said.

  The ferret looked at me with beady glimmering eyes.

  “But Grandfather, you just checked it this morning.”

  Grandfather paused and parted his beard obsessively. Then he repeated himself in a shaky voice.

  “Yes, but I mean to consult the compass again.”

  I lowered my head, but I could see Grandfather’s forearm struggling to hold the ferret steady. When the ferret’s claws started rattling, I watched its every move. After it sank its teeth into the blocks and the servant had hung them, Grandfather neared the compass. I followed a few steps behind. The crowd yelled “D!—U!—B!” with the enthusiasm of children, but grandfather made no grand announcement this time.

  “They’re exactly the same, Grandfather,” I said.

  Grandfather said nothing. His fingers returned to his chin to fondle his beard.

  While watching his worried motions, something took over me. Even as I did it I did not know my reasons for my actions. When the ferret scampered away from the compass to return to its haven of grandfather flesh, I placed my hand in front of my belly and coaxed a sphere of my own flesh toward my palm. My sphere drifted to the ground, and the ferret halted, confused. Its beady eyes swung from my sphere to grandfather’s and back again.

  The ferret crawled cautiously toward my grandfather’s flesh, then turned away to sniff at mine. Grandfather watched his avtandi’s confusion impassively. Not one of his bony fingers left his beard to alter the outcome. The ferret’s cautiousness deteriorated into panic as it scuttled back and forth between our spheres so rapidly, it became a blur. I took a deep breath and glanced at Grandfather. His face was marked by a dull resignation I could not stomach. I lifted my hand to retract the challenge, but before I could withdraw my flesh, the ferret veered sharply, and plunged into my sphere.

  My flesh encircled Grandfather’s avtandi; a deep, ragged breath seeped from Grandfather’s lungs. Was that a slight smile creasing Grandfather’s lips? Fear, paranoia, and regret exploded in my chest. Why was it so hard to breathe? Grandfather’s voice cut through my hysteria.

  “It is done,” he muttered.

  Those grave words pushed me into action. I waved my hand over my sphere as if my muscles had performed the task a thousand times. My flesh drifted up from the floor, but Grandfather didn’t bother with his. He left his globe of organs discarded at his feet, preferring to watch me—eyes dark with anticipation—as my sphere refitted into my torso.

  The moment the fle
sh rejoined my body an electric shock ripped through me. I yelled and fell to my knees. My palms and forehead were wet with sweat. The room receded from my eyesight as visions flashed before my eyes. I saw me begging my parents to let me go on a brief day trip in Grandfather’s bubble. My parents arguing about Grandfather’s incompetence. Grandfather intentionally setting the bubble on the wrong course. Grandfather taking this ferret, this same avtandi from his grandfather. Grandfather watching his grandfather die.

  Terror welled in my throat, but my mind—making sense of the visions at a feverish pace—quelled my emotions. When I regained focus, I was staring at the marble floor. A palpable hush filled the divining room; everyone stared mutely. I heard a muffled groan behind me. When I twisted around on all fours, I saw Grandfather, shriveled into a tiny ball, dying just as his grandfather had. I looked into his eyes searching for a flicker of recognition, hatred, pain, but there was nothing there.

  “You…” The condemnation burning in my lungs would not spring from my mouth. Could I blame Grandfather for attempting to escape extinction?

  “I…” I started to claim ignorance for my actions, but the apology died on my lips.

  “How…” I wanted to ask what alternative I’d had, but my need to be proclaimed innocent wilted just as quickly as it had sprouted. We passengers were the innocents here. He would starve us, before taking us home. Those visions did not lie.

  I shook off the last remnants of concern I held for Grandfather and struggled to stand. The unfamiliar weight in my belly pulled me back toward the floor. I strained against the increased gravity and fought my way to my feet.

  “Dub,” I whispered while forcing myself to forget Grandfather’s dying body. There was no time for mourning.

  I shuffled forward, testing the new balance my avtandi-heavy body required. I neared the compass searching my subconscious for a vision of Grandfather navigating the bubble. I almost lost my breath when I mimicked Grandfather’s navigating stance. I bent over, momentarily disoriented. Then I straightened, took a big gulp of air, and set a course for home.