Ancient, Ancient

by Kiini Ibura Salaam

  A chattering of far-away voices disrupts K-Ush’s calm. She clenches her eye tightly trying to keep the ki-ra-he’s embrace. She feels her body rising horizontally against her will. The warmth dissipates. She finally opens her eye to see the ceiling of the dogra drifting jerkily past her gaze. She feels fingers biting into her wrists, waist, and ankles as seekers hold her over their heads. The dogra is in chaos. Panicked faces surround her. All those patient seekers no longer sit in ordered rows. They swarm out of the exit, rising water rushing around their heels.

  K-Ush tries to sit up, but the grip of insistent hands holds her prone. She tilts her head back and looks around. At the back of the dogra, the wall is destroyed. A huge hole bursts with furious streams of water. Suddenly K-Ush becomes aware that a terrible rain is pounding the exterior of the dogra. She feels a tingling—it is the ominous gathering of humidity and agitated air. The storm! The storm Sheya promised would be catastrophic. The storm K-Ush refused to prophecy about.

  K-Ush twists her head around looking for Sheya. Her gaze bounces around the dogra, zigzagging with the frenzied movement of seekers. Then she sees her. Occupying a sacred space of stillness, Sheya sits cross-legged and silent. Her head leans against a still-intact wall. Her large eye is closed in rest. K-Ush howls her name, attempting to rouse her from sleep. Sheya doesn’t move.

  K-Ush screams words, then sounds for Sheya, the old one who became her mother once she took oath. No one reacts to K-Ush’s hysteria. She beats at whatever flesh she can reach with her fists. The seekers take her blows, but they do not put her down. Suddenly she knows that Sheya cannot be awakened. Her voice dies in her throat. Her lips form the words of an ancient mourning song. Sheya’s corpse sits quietly in the rising waters, her posture erect as if she is watching over K-Ush as she always has.

  K-Ush has never seen this much water. It is waist-deep and rising. A hastily crafted vessel bobs in front of the dogra waiting for K-Ush. She sees seekers wading in every direction. Some have village valuables bundled on their heads. Others ferry shivering families to safety. And there are those nearby, watching over her. She does not resist when the seekers place her in the rickety boat. Dampness soaks her thin robe as the seekers row her to the focor: the tallest structure in the village. The seekers motion frantically for K-Ush to leave the boat. She surveys them passively, then stands and hovers. The minute her feet no longer rely on the boat for balance, the seekers row away, returning to the dogra to save others.

  K-Ush, misjudging the weight the rain has added to her heft, drops heavily onto the roof of the focor. Almost blinded by the diagonal assault of raindrops, she feels the seekers gathered on the roof turn and stare. For K-Ush, their awe is more assaultive than the rains. She folds her lips into a tight grimace and lifts her head in a regal attempt to hover, but the wet anchors her feet to the ground. She wraps her arms around her body and strides past them. In a remote corner, she turns her back to the seekers, pretends she is in her shro, and curls up to sleep.

  The water swallows everything. After devouring the dogra, the storm turns to the focor, flooding the roof where K-Ush is recovering from seven days of offering prophecy. Even after the seekers who waited with K-Ush on the focor’s roof have been rowed away, K-Ush does not stir. It is as if she cannot feel the floodwaters licking at her curled up legs. She has completely surrendered to post-prophecy sleep.

  A small band of seekers intent on saving the wero dare to lift K-Ush’s inert body, even though Sheya is not around to give them permission to do so. They settle her in the bottom of the last water vessel headed for unknown parts. But the storm is faster than they imagined. With a huge crack, water slams against wood, rousing K-Ush from sleep just before the vessel overturns and she is flung into the floodwaters.

  K-Ush gasps, throat burning with unwelcome gulps of water. She kicks her legs wildly trying to propel herself toward the bobbing boat. The current drags her under, but a wero is built to endure. Using her large hands and feet she pushes herself up to the surface. She is dragged under again and again, but each time, she resurfaces, spitting out water and gulping for breath whenever her mouth meets air. Then survival is handed to her—the floodwaters slam her into the clutches of a tree.

  Minutes slip by, but she does not move. She holds onto the tree, trembling. Finally, she clutches an overhead branch and hoists herself out of the water. She finds a foothold, then rests, gripping the tree tightly. Below, skik pots, farming tools, body coverings, xopas, everything that makes a home rips past on rushing currents. The branches beneath her feet bounce and sway. Then the bodies come: the bodies of seekers—beings who once prayed for her guidance—drift past, nothing more than useless hulks of flesh, face down in cruel waters.

  Time passes on that treetop like it passes when she trances. K-Ush isn’t sure if she’s been clinging to the tree for minutes or hours. She is certain only of her exhaustion. As she wrestles with her weariness, she sees something distinct in the distance: a bloated carcass crowned by four stiff legs. As it drifts toward her, K-Ush feels a tingling at the top of her spine. The tingling shoots straight down her back when the creature is an arm’s-length away. The creature’s dead eye stares at her, its mouth open and that fearsome green tongue hanging out. K-Ush involuntarily draws herself up, away from the waters as if they will contaminate her with the ki-ra-he’s bloodlust. Then she laughs a laugh tinged with bitterness and self-ridicule. The wero, great saviors of the people, trained to resist the ki-ra-he, but with no plan in the event of a cataclysmic storm.

  She is ready to surrender to the churning greed of the rising floodwaters, ready to slip down to the bottom and take a rest that does not stink of ho-resh-li and death, when a boat approaches. K-Ush hesitates. She is not certain that safety is what she desires. She does not lust to resume her task of feeding on seekers and giving prophecy, but something about the cloaked figure at the far end of the boat draws her away from the tree’s embrace. The figure beckons, and K-Ush steps onto the boat.

  After she sits, she notices the strength of the rowers, the smooth synchronized movement of their arms, and, finally, she notices the holes. Each rower has two or three holes cut into his flesh. K-Ush looks up at the cloaked figure. One hand emerges from the cloak and throws back the hood. The cloaked face is angular, the head is bald. A second hand emerges to extend a dry cloak to be passed, from rower to rower to rower, to K-Ush.

  “Who are you?” K-Ush asks as she presses the dry cloth into her lap.

  “I am the last wero,” the figure responds.

  “I am the last wero,” K-Ush says angrily.

  “You are the last wero of legend,” the figure says with an amused smile. “In our village, we have no need for the term wero.”

  “You sent the boy.”

  “Yes, and you devoured him.”

  “Was he not a gift? Was he not offering ho-resh-li?”

  “He was, but you did not have to take him.”

  “I learned to take ho-resh-li from Wa-Sheya, the most revered wero of recent times.”

  “Sheya is a parasite,” the figure growls. “Swallow her lies and you die a bitter and twisted being.”

  “You know Wa-Sheya?”

  “I asked her for you many times; she preferred to keep you ignorant of life.”

  The revelation of Sheya’s secrets burns in K-Ush’s chest like hot bile. She would like to speak in Sheya’s name, say something, anything to silence this angry wero, but she finds she cannot speak of Sheya.

  “Why do you come looking for me?” K-Ush asks.

  “We know, K-Ush.” The wero leans forward as if she is peering into K-Ush’s soul.

  “Know what?”

  “How you feel about prophecy, how you feel about ho-resh-li.”

  “And you have come to save me,” K-Ush says sarcastically.

  The wero draws back, barely masking the flash of anger in her eyes.

  “Would you like us to return you to your tree?”

  K-Ush is silent. She fingers the dry robe
and stares into the distance.

  “You are wondering if what I’m offering is worth it. You are thinking death is a more delicious option to life with us.”

  “Must I hate Wa-Sheya to come with you?”

  “We will leave that to you.”

  Staring past the wero’s shoulder, K-Ush nods. The wero returns to the sanctuary of her hood, but not before her lips twist up into a smirk that suggests she knows better than K-Ush how this legend will end.

  Bio-Anger

  rattling. rattling snaking around my ears. echoes of rattling erupting in my temples. i hear a pop like the little explosions of air that punctuate my ear canals when i’m nearing the ocean floor. reflex. by reflex, i try to turn toward the sound, but my head is tethered in position. the rattling dies out with a slithering hiss. sharp parallel bands of light cut across the room. my head jerks back when light hits my eyes. behind me, somebody lets loose a low, raspy laugh.

  “A little jittery, ain’t you,” the laughter mumbles. doesn’t bother with volume, doesn’t separate his words; just lets them tumble out any which way, leaving me to pick meaning out of a jumbled mass of sound.

  “So it was a bio-anger, then?” another voice asks. clipped and precise tones dart around my head. a man slides across my view. i see the darkness of his pants leg skim the floor. i can’t make out a chair. looks as if he is gliding on air. been Under so long, everything on the Surface strikes me as strange.

  man stops in front of me—face so close to mine, i can see blueness of veins, redness of vessels just under his skin. fold my lips together; try to speak. try bringing up the “b” in “bio-anger,” but my jaw is so tired. my lips fall slack before I can get any sound to part them.

  “Won’t speak, huh?” those clipped tones don’t reach my ear until after the man’s lips stop moving.

  i set my jaw, try to squeeze out a “c.” CAN’T SPEAK, I yell in my mind. can’t even get a sound to whisper out of my mouth.

  “Nothing wrong with her vocal cords.” so says the mumbler. “Had ’em checked. Only part of her in good shape.” chuckles, but stays out of view.

  metal grate of an old machine lays dead in the corner. at first, the blank wall behind the clipped-tone man has nothing to tell me. then the banner blinks on. top fourth of wall glows red. bold white letters scroll across the red: 0.74 millimeters of coastal loss since 10 a.m., 22.6 million square miles of land remaining.

  “Knew it was broken,” mumbler says.

  “Your banner broken?” clipped-tones asks.

  “Yeah, this morning when I left, said we had 24.2 million square miles. Knew something had changed. What about dead zones?”

  “Don’t know…don’t fuss over any of it. Nothing but a bother. Can’t fix Earth. Wish I could turn mine off.”

  “Wish I had yours. Can’t sleep without the latest. Look, no Earth Strikes for 24 hours! Thought for sure the night shift would have gotten one.”

  “Why do you think we’re working this one over. Word came from upstairs. Can’t let another 24 hours pass without a report. Have to deliver one tonight.”

  silence falls. the feel of the mumbler eyeing me trips across the back of my neck. feel a nervous tingle in my eyebrow. my knee jerks up. surprised my feet aren’t tied.

  “Won’t work, sweetheart,” clipped-tones says. twirling a small square mirror in his hands.

  a burning ache starts biting at the bottoms of my feet. fingers twitching now. thin, sticky fabric stretched across my thighs catch on my peeling fingertips. clipped-tones notices.

  “Had to dress you. Your clothes were in bloody shreds. What did this to you?”

  i tune out. let the words fall around me undeciphered. wonder: can water slide over these thin, sticky tights. if i escape, could i wear this to get back Under?

  when i don’t speak, clipped-tones slides the mirror between my face and his. i draw away from the face in the mirror.

  “No sense hiding from it. Hurt’s been done.” so says the mumbler.

  i steel myself and turn back to the mirror. the face i see is not my face. purple-black bruises flowering around the eyes—no big surprise. headache splitting my skull can’t be from a bug bite. slowly turn my head. ragged smear of tiny punctures—neatly gridded—crawls up my left cheek. a thin bloody shadow blankets the wounds. other side of my face, no better. a wide gash—dry, but glistening—cuts across my right cheek. puffed and pimply skin bloating around my mouth. salty water rises, clawing its way to my eyes. i will it back down—ain’t the place to shed a tear, even if it’s for my own flesh.

  “So, coordinates. Where did it happen? People need to know.”

  shake my head. from what i hear, a bio-anger is nothing like they make it seem on the Net. just because an Earth Strike breaks a few bones doesn’t mean Earth is angry. once you been Under, you stop thinking Earth even notices you. we can’t make Earth angry. we’re about as important as globs of spit.

  “What’s this then?” clipped-tones asks. I hear the mumbler clicking away on his hand-unit just behind my head. taking notes? sending messages? preparing a profile to send to the NewsNet? the mirror shifts from my face to flash on my neck and shoulders. first real mirror I’ve seen in a long time. clipped-tones tilts it, showing me a deep groove splitting the flesh above my breasts. thick and hard in some spots, too dry to be new. don’t need a mirror to see it cut across my chest, arc over my shoulders, rip across my upper back.

  wet my lips. try to push out “Und-” but my mouth is useless. lift my hand. try pointing down. ragged fingernails scratch at the sticky fabric on my legs.

  “What’s she trying to say?” mumbler asks from behind me.

  clipped-tone man shrugs.

  bang my feet on the floor. UNDER, yelling in my head. thought everyone on the Surface knew about us. Under. I’m damn near a lifer down there. been wearing the tank so long, the edges of the headgear grew into my flesh, got a little more comfortable—you could say. never mattered to me. better fit means less accidents. less accidents means more runs. more runs means more money i can send up to this damn air-breathing place. don’t expect no enviro-cop to ever understand that. us who live Under were born with hard choices to make, that’s all. some people end eighteen years of hard labor tied to a chair with a busted up face, others get to slide by them waving a mirror around. just the way it goes on the Surface.

  new sound behind my ear. shrill, metallic. sounds like the arms or legs of a machine clicking into sharp-angled positions. something cold and rigid presses on either side my neck: the metal was clicking for me.

  “You sure you have nothing to tell us?” man with the mirror asks. nervous edges flutter in his voice. sounds scared of what’s about to happen. “Look,” he says, drops his voice down to a whisper, slides closer. “We don’t have to link you up. You just cooperate, and we won’t have to extract the information. It’s easier if you talk. Can’t run your story without full details.”

  something heavy and round pushes against the base of my skull. panic wells up in my chest. gulp wildly. try to suck up enough air to force sound out of my mouth. Can’t speak! Can’t speak! Can’t speak! strain so hard my body jerks against the restraints. veins and vocal cords bulge in my throat. feet pound the floor.

  “I know, I know,” clipped-tones says spreading his hands out. “Just stop. I know you can’t speak. We just… We’re going to have to…”

  “Enough with the warnings. Just get on with it already,” mumbler says. “You know the drill. Let’s move.”

  “She can’t speak,” man with the mirror says. looks over my head at his partner.

  “Don’t matter,” says the mumbler. “They want the story by 8, it’s going to run at 10. They’re already advertising.”

  a few drops of water fall out of my eyes. “extract information.” they’ll dig through my memories like starving squatters clawing through a garbage dump. grab my emotions, download them, dress them up, and beam a tearjerker to the NewsNet. who cares if there really was a bio-anger.
there will be one now.

  flash of light—blinding—rips across my vision. inhale deeply. “Pain,” i think. “That was pain.” was pain? hear a tortured yell. behind me, the mumbler is losing it. wet, feral screams splattering against my back. clipped-tone man jumps out of his chair. his mouth moves but I hear no words.

  something is wrong.

  no more pain. splitting headache, gone. heat rests weighty between my legs. arms and hands don’t feel like mine—they feel thick and heavy. the room, the clipped-tone man, and the NewsNet banner all melt away. i am sitting in nothingness. nothing around me but a table laden with piles of ghostly flesh. not meat, not food—human bodies. curves of elbow and knee jut out from a sea of skin. here and there an ear, a chin, a pair of lips poke up from the jumble. my mouth moves easily. i lick my lips. no pain in my jaw.

  i am aroused.

  when my mouth moves, a voice trickles out. the voice is disembodied and tangled—and it is not mine. it is the same voice that has been muttering behind me since i woke up tied to this chair. the mumbler’s voice pours from me, stream of broken diction rambling about women and the marks of saliva he’s left behind on their skin. this is the mumbler’s voice; this must also be his tongue. his tongue resting in my mouth. his tongue moistening at the thought of ghostly flesh made real.

  odd memories begin to rain through my body. i am seeing and remembering parts of the female body that i’ve never touched. salivating for the crease of a breast resting on a fleshy torso, longing to push apart meaty female thighs. i fall back into my body for a split second. the room is just as i left it—stark, bright, unadorned. i am still tethered to a chair, and the mumbler is still yowling like an animal. clipped-tone man is behind me now, speaking to the mumbler in a voice that pulses with both worry and soothing. then i understand:

  that cold metal circle. the pressure at the base of my skull. the wrong source—it’s tapping into the wrong source.