The Alchemists of Kush

by Minister Faust

  Rap gestured, whispered, “‘Sand the floor. And don’t forget to breathe.’”

  After three hours Mr. Ani told them to go home.

  On the third day, Saturday, Mr. Ani “greeted” them at the door again: “Hm. You two again.”

  He pointed them to cleaning out the garbage in the back.

  There was a newspaper open to the City section, with a story about how the police were getting bad press all over the world for beating and Tasering their rescuer.

  “Damn,” said Jackie Chan. “Looks like Brotherman been Youtubed into an international celebrity. Like Nelson Mandela with nunchuks.”

  Rap laughed again until the old man poked his head in long enough to glower at them.

  When he was gone, Rap folded up the news story into his pocket.

  On the fourth day, Mr. Ani said at the door, “You two just don’t quit, do you?”

  The boys spent two hours washing the walls. When the first wall was dry, they primed it. Mr. Ani sent them home after four hours.

  On the fifth day, all Mr. Ani said at the door was “Hmph.”

  When he was out of the room, the two boys quickly got bored and tired moving the ladder, going up the ladder, taping the corners of the walls, coming down the ladder, moving the ladder again, blah-blah-blah.

  JC: “Dude, fuh real, how long we gotta keep coming here?”

  “I’m not the boss of you,” said Rap. “Who’s making you come here?”

  On the sixth day, Mr. Ani just shook his head when the boys arrived, then pointed at the paint cans.

  They left after five hours.

  On the seventh day, neither one of them showed.

  13.

  On the eighth day, when they appeared on time, Mr. Ani blocked the door.

  “You were supposed to be here yesterday!” His eyes lasered them to pieces. “Not only did you not show up, you didn’t even call!”

  “I’m, I’m . . . we’re sorry, Mr. Ani,” said Rap, “but, but we don’t even have your number, and—”

  “There’re two types of people in the world. Those who do what they say they’re gonna do, and everybody else. What I wanna know right now is, are you like everybody else? Because if you are, you should stop wasting my time!”

  “Look, Mr. Ani, we read those books, just like you asked us to,” said Jackie Chan. “We even read more. I read another one, and Rap’s read two!”

  “Actually three!”

  “And you never even asked us about em,” said JC. “I thought you were gon teach us some martial arts or culture or history or suh’m. And then, we come here, we work for you, for free. And, okay, we said we’d do it, outta of respect for you, you saving our lives, but—”

  “But what you’re saying is,” said Mr. Ani, “you want me to say I excuse you from ever having to come back here, right? That your debt’s over and your guilt’s excused?”

  “No! We’re just sayin, we’re just sayin . . . it’d be nice if you didn’t, y’know, act like you hate us an shit. Excuse my language. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Five seconds. Ten.

  Fifteen.

  Mr. Ani cleared his throat.

  “Well for your information . . . I had a whole meal here for you two knuckleheads yesterday! Goat, sabaayat, injera, chicken suqaar, ater kik wot,” he said, rattling off Somali and Ethiopian delish-dishes until Rap’s and JC’s stomachs went even-Steven in a squawk-off.

  “Fuh real?” said Jackie Chan.

  “Which I ended up eating by myself. So if I get fat, that’s on you two.”

  “Damn,” said Jamal. He looked up quickly. “I mean, ‘darn.’ Mr. Ani.”

  An eyebrow put a nail through the darn.

  “Martial arts takes discipline, smart ass. You can’t expect me to train people who don’t even show up.”

  “We had to study for finals yesterday, Mr. Ani, sir,” said Rap, laying on the guilt extra thick with the sir. “We were here all weekend, every day after school . . . but we still have school responsibilities.”

  “Yeah,” said JC.

  “Well,” said the old man. “School is important.”

  “Yes sir, it is.”

  “ . . . C’mon in.”

  Inside, everything was painted. A gold wall elbowed a red one. The third wall was a fresh white. Mr. Ani chaired the boys, then opened his fridge and toaster oven and came back with bottles and a plate of sambusas. “This’s all that’s left from yesterday.”

  “Thanks!” they said, tearing into the palm-sized crisp pastry triangles of curried ground beef, peas and potato. Steam rose out of the innards, and the boys they laid into them.

  “You ever try this?” asked Mr. Ani.

  They looked confused. The man was offering them beer?

  “Nothing haram,” said Mr. Ani to Jackie Chan specifically.

  He doesn’t know JC very well, thought Rap. To him, everything’s halal. He was eating a bacon cheeseburger just two days ago.

  “It’s Ting, a Jamaican pop. Unless you prefer ginger beer. I have that, too.”

  “No, this’s great!” said JC, munching sambusa.

  All three men ate together, and then Mr. Ani put on some jazz, this time below the ear-splitting volume he’d played it the other day to screen them out. “Pharoah Sanders,” he explained.

  There was a woman’s voice in it, welcoming the audience, inviting her listeners to dance and sing and rejoice with the band, accompanied by jangling xylophone and sand-shaker percussion that felt like warm remembrance. It wasn’t a party as much as a joyful prayer.

  Rap’s mind fireworked while listening to it. He vowed to seek it out at the library—Mr. Ani said the album was simply called Rejoice.

  Together they all painted the back room and talked about books.

  When it was time to go, Mr. Ani reached into his pocket. Rap’s heart leapt: money? Was he revoking their volunteer-slave status and now actually paying them?

  But it wasn’t money. It was joints.

  What the hell? thought Rap. Thought this guy was . . . .

  But the small white roll-ups in each hand weren’t twisted shut at each end.

  The boys realised it at the same moment: they were scrolls.

  They looked up for permission. Mr. Ani nodded it.

  They read tiny, laser-printed figures in an 8-point font:

  Alphabetical Alchemy

  A Africentric

  B Build

  C Create

  D Divine

  E Evolve

  F Family

  G Geometry

  H Hero

  I Individuality/ Intelligence

  J Justice

  K Knowledge

  L Liberate

  M Minister

  N Nature

  O Orbit

  P Power

  Q Question

  R Revolution

  S Simultaneous

  T Truth/Transform

  U Unite/Universal

  V Victory

  W Wisdom

  X X-ray

  Y Yam

  Z Zenith

  Numerical Alchemy

  1 Resurrection

  2 Revolution

  3 Triumph

  4 Ancestor~I

  5 Mother~Sister~Daughter

  6 Father~Brother~Son

  7 Replace~Elevate

  8 Righteousness & Mastery

  9 Create~Supreme

  0 Peace~Life~Eternal

  At the door, Mr. Ani actually put a hand on each boy’s shoulder, although at six feet, he wasn’t much taller than either of them.

  Rap flinched and stepped back. Mr. Ani let go of both of them to gesticulate through his points.

  “I’m giving you a few days off to study and finish your exams. Work hard and do a good job. Come back to me when you know all the power-words from the Resurrection Scroll, in order, by heart,” he said. “Then we’ll talk about that martial arts training.”

  Instead of saying goodbye, he said, “Nub-Wmet-Ãnkh.”

 
More mysteries.

  Out in the street, a block away, Jackie Chan exploded his best Bruce Lee wail and a jabbing, kicking, seizure-style dance.

  Rap laughed. He didn’t care about martial arts one way or the other.

  But that list—two codes, one of letters and one of numbers, each composed of power-words, each a chamber of mystery he was about to unlock. To explore.

  Felt the weight of it: that “scroll” was a whole world rolled up inside his palm.

  14.

  That night, after an hour studying the French Revolution for his Social final, Rap devoted another hour to running the mysterious list of numbers, letters and names in his head, testing himself against the scroll.

  Two days later, after proving himself a fifth time with a perfect score, he realised something that snapped his attention like an elastic band against his neck.

  Whenever he ran the code aloud or silently in his mind, the burn across his body … disappeared.

  Three:

  Triumph

  The Book of Then

  1.

  I woke up, barely . . . .

  And for almost an entire breath, I didn’t remember.

  I didn’t feel magnificent or soaring or glorious, but because memory hadn’t choked me yet, I felt the simple calm of being not-hunted, not-miserable, not-terrified, and not even realising it.

  Didn’t remember I was a lone child lost in the Savage Lands. That I’d lost my mum, all our adults, and then all the kids I’d saved. That my best friend Shai’d gotten impaled on a monster’s tusk. That our fishing-chief Jedu, the kid who’d kept us all fed, had drunk the water from the Swamps of Death and become a burnt-eyed corpse that kept on walking.

  The breath ended, and I was awake.

  My body ached from having slept all night in that tree.

  White mist clutched everything. Made everything look like it wasn’t there. Dead trees with their bare branches drowning in the fog, like huge black spiders boiled in pots of milk.

  I climbed down.

  I had to eat. I needed a camp. Something I could hide in and defend.

  But I couldn’t find a cave. So on top of a low hill at the base of the biggest tree, where the soil had pulled free of the roots, I found a hole. I took some vines and made a curtain over the entrance.

  My home.

  I was starving. I found slugs and centipedes. The first meal I’d had in a week, and the slugs were so moist and juicy I almost forgot how thirsty I was. But the centipedes were dry and salty.

  I tried conjuring a plan, how to rescue the kids who’d slogged away with dead-alive eyes, a plan for how to smash the curse of the swamp water, a plan for how to find my mum. But my head was buzzing from thirst, my stomach was still aching, and I could barely think. So I tried sleeping in my hole.

  2.

  The sound of kids screaming woke me up.

  Night. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I grabbed the fang-shard I’d torn from the monster’s mouth, turned myself into a shadow, and tried to find the source.

  Down at the Swamps of Death, the sludge-water was the yellow-beige of puke, but glowing.

  A pack of kids. Six of them were mine, and there was maybe another dozen I’d never seen before. All of them were kneeling around the edge of the Swamp, leaning down and lapping up water like dogs.

  And then the biggest one stopped drinking, stood up and looked down at the second biggest kid who was right there next to him, and kicked him in the face.

  That kid rolled away from him, and his attacker howled like a monkey. His teeth—I could see his teeth from the white-yellow glow of the Swamp—were green and rotten, nubby. Half his teeth were missing, and his gums had gone white. The cratered skin on his neck and back was oozing pus, white over brown.

  The biggest kids joined him howling, turning on the smaller kids and beating them till they were sobbing and pissing and shitting from the pain.

  And they dumped them into the Swamps to drown.

  “Stop it, you assholes!” I shouted, and they all turned their burnt-out eyes on me.

  My shadow was gone and I couldn’t bring it back—was I too hungry?

  Shoving my fang-shard in my vine-belt, I jumped into the evil water and jammed shut my mouth. I grabbed the little kid closest to me, pulled him to the edge, threw him on the shore and went back for the next one.

  All the while, the Swamp-drinking monkeys on the shore were screaming and howling, stamping their feet, shaking their fists and baring their scummed-over, nubby teeth at me.

  And then they all backed way the hell off, and I knew I was in massive danger.

  White crocodiles, a dozen of them, cut into the Swamp like daggers and headed straight at me.

  I reached the edge, released the kid I’d pulled with me, and then bracing my feet against a rock on the swamp’s slimy bottom, I shot forward.

  Ripping the arm-long fang-shard from my belt, I sliced downward through the lead crocodile’s snout just before it could open.

  It cracked open all the way into its brains, like a pot left in the fire far too long. Hot gore sprayed all over and burned me, sizzling where it hit the water.

  The two halves of the monster’s head dipped in death. Bowing to me.

  I had no idea I could do that.

  In that stone-still moment of shock, the crocodile’s angry brothers ripped the other kids in the water into bloody mash. One swept up beside me, clamping onto the left arm of the kid I’d just pulled out of danger. He screamed and I grabbed his right arm to pull him away, but the crocodile was too strong, and I lost him.

  I scrambled out of the water, turned back to see the Swamp boiling with blood and bone and thrashing tails and claws and rows of jagged teeth.

  There were no kids left to save.

  And the god-damned drunken monkeys were gone. I would’ve taken my arm-length fang to their throats if they hadn’t run away. Run away leaving me to deal with those monsters alone.

  I couldn’t stay, not with the crocodiles raging to make me their dessert.

  I ran from the white-yellow glow of the Swamps of Death to find my nest.

  Down in my hole, I failed to fall asleep. Too much howling and screeching and the sight of the smallest kid being ripped to bloody chunks.

  3.

  I woke up exhausted. Again.

  I didn’t know how long it’d taken me to fall asleep or how long I’d been down. Starving so much my gut hurt.

  My head ached from thirst, like a knife in both eyes.

  And no slugs around for a quick snack and slurp.

  So I went out foraging.

  I found a mound of dropped fruit in the mud, which almost made me cry I was so happy. But when I reached for the mangoes I pulled my hand back from a lagoon of orange slime, maggots throbbing over the island pits.

  Slugs and centipedes, fine. But even starving, I couldn’t make myself eat maggots.

  That’s when I heard the marching.

  Sounded like a whole army, the clanking of a thousand weapons.

  I tried turning myself into shadow, but in the white-fogged daylight, weak as I was, I couldn’t. So I hid behind tree trunks, massive stones, mounds of earth, looking for a place to spy on who was out there while hoping with hammering heart they weren’t after me.

  I scrambled up a hill, hid inside a knot of trees, peered down. I saw them.

  Kids. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.

  Chained.

  Not moving their heads. Not talking or crying. Just marching.

  Maybe they’d been drinking swamp water… but then why the chains? To keep them from killing each other? Or themselves?

  And then I saw the brutes leading them.

  Even at a distance I could see their markings—tattoos and body paint of an anteater-man with squared-off ears.

  The night-raiders.

  I waited for them to pass, then trailed them for a distance.

  When the raiders stopped to eat, they fed the kids just enough to keep them marchin
g—crusts from bread sacks the kids themselves were hauling.

  When they were gone, I scrounged whatever shreds and crumbs I could. Bread’d never tasted like this before. Sweet. Rich. Almost meaty.

  But it left me thirstier than ever, and with a mouth full of glue that took me forever to swallow.

  4.

  I tracked them until dusk, every step of it strangling my gut.

  These kids had no fight left in them at all, but if any of them stumbled or fell, the shackles took down a whole bunch with him, and then the soldiers beat them raw.

  Broken bones hardly made them march faster. But they never even screamed.

  If there were just one or two of those bastards guarding the kids, I could’ve sunk Fang right through their bellies. But there were dozens. They would’ve beaten or hacked me to death, and for what?

  Finally we entered a grove of caves, where the soldiers detached a few hundred kids from the chain-line and sent them down inside. Other kids were climbing out from the cave-mouths, girls and boys hauling basketsful of rocks and dumping them in piles. Yellow hunks glinted under the torchlight.

  The guards orderd the kids to lie down. They piled together like puppies and fell asleep immediately. That was the only time they made a sound, wheezing and whimpering in their sleep.

  I found the camp guards’ provisions, stole whatever food I could carry, then found a hiding place.

  Roasted rat—delicious! Sucked the blood out of three oranges! Ripped the guts out of a watermelon! First time I hadn’t felt hungry or thirsty in weeks. And my headache finally went away.