Refuse to grasp the golden chain
and die. Choose to and live!
I released the savaged corpses, wrapped my ravaged hands around the chain, and Master Jehu pulled me from the scalding cauldron, my flesh attached by agony alone to my bones, my lungs emptied of screams.
He laid me on the stairs, spoke a word-of-power and broke off a length of chain as easily as tearing leaves from maize. He looped the shining gold, a sun-ray curved upon itself, and placed it on my heart.
“Hold this talisman,” he said, placing my ruined hand upon it. He whispered to me a word-of-power.
“Close your eyes. Breathe as deeply as you can. Sing inside your heart the word I’ve given you.”
I did.
The silver swamp drained away down holes inside the rocks.
My pain was gone.
And my body was whole again.
“Master . . . what . . . how?”
“This is where your souls have been trapped,” he whispered, but this time, the echoes scattered like dewdrops from shaken leaves.
“Whenever your souls fall to drown in the Swamps of Death,” he said, “clutch this ujat, breathe from belly’s base to the peak of your skull, speak the word I’ve given you, and free them.”
“But . . . how can the Swamps be here?”
I saw myself, twinned and tiny, inside the Master’s onyx eyes.
“The Swamps of Death,” he said so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him, “are everywhere.”
Into my spine, like an arrow, and then silver flowed scaldingly again from the stalactite, so much faster than the first time that we’d both burn and drown.
“What is it?” yelled Master.
I didn’t want to say—surely that couldn’t be it? “I don’t know, Master!”
“Tell me, Hru!”
I choked out, “Why did Falcon leave me, Master?”
“Remember what I taught you!”
I clutched my ujat, breathed from my belly’s base to my skull’s zenith, invoked his word-of-power, did as he said, and the silver stopped spewing . . . but it remained below us in the bottom of the basisn.
“All things,” said Master Jehu, “meet the wind eventually.”
He clutched his own ujat and continued.
“Since I became a man, I’ve found and gathered children wandering the Savage Lands. I’ve fed them, given them Instructions, watched them build cities, sometimes seen them burn them. And I’ve grieved for all of them.
“We must go back, Hru, to the world of tears. The both of us. Our compound in the Savage Lands isn’t enough for all the children lost in pain. We built a wall to protect everyone inside it. Now we have to do the same for everyone outside of the wall.
“The compound can’t last, and can’t do what must be done. So you must build a Golden Fortress, one that will last forever, that will shine in the sunrise as a beacon to the universe.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Not by yourself, of course, but with others. And you, because of who you are, are indispensable.”
“But Master . . . with what I’ve done . . . how could I . . . I don’t deserve to—”
“I’ve healed you because all people deserve to be healed, Hru. But I’m sending you to build a Golden Fortress because the cosmos needs it. And because of your debt and your guilt, you must be the first mason to hew and lay its stones.”
“How?”
“Go back to the compound with me. And every place you find a rotten wooden beam or crumbling, sunbaked brick of mud, insert a stone you’ve cut and baptised in molten gold.”
I took his hand in one mine, held my ujat with the other.
We breathed and whispered, and the silver drained away below us.
We ascended to the Silver Desert.
Master Jehu invoked words-of-power I’d never heard before. He stood before me, a black ibis with gold-rimmed eyes, and I was a black-feathered falcon with golden talons.
We flew among the stars until we found ourselves again inside the Savage Lands at night.
I told the Master how I planned to start my labours, and he gave me benediction.
5.
Out beneath the white-fogged sun and among the dead-black trees around the Swamps of Death, I wielded Fang, the bringer of death, the agent of a son’s worst crime.
Skeleton-trunks and -branches crashed where my arm made wind. I gripped their bases, hurled them, cleared a highway.
Crocodiles formed an army round me, hating me for their brother I’d killed those brutal years ago.
I held my blade towards them. It shone no longer white, nor pink, nor even silver.
But now a gleaming gold.
“Find another place to haunt and hunt,” I warned them. “I won’t invite you a second time.”
Some crawled away among the vines. Others sank into the Swamps and disappeared.
I sank Fang into the soil, cutting mud and roots and rocks, sweating and hurling rubble to the west, digging my channel to drain the Swamps of Death.
The Book of Now
1.
“Welcome in,” echoed Moon’s voice from the bottom of the stairwell.
Raptor: fussing, hustling serving dishes of greens and candied yams and carved turkey from kitchen to dining table, and the steaming bean pie straight. His drum-n-bass heart skitter-scattershot on every step.
And then there she was.
Top of the landing in the suite above the Hyper-Market, putting down a bag, sliding a Saran-wrapped bowl of salad onto the counter, brushing snow from the shoulders of her coat like it was totally normal for her to be there.
Hadn’t expected her to dress like this tonight. Sure, sometimes she got lucky at Good Will or caught a sale at Zellers. Figured she’d be formal or maybe plain, not this blue satin fitted-blouse trying out out-sheen her hair, not dark pants spotless and iron-creased.
Yeah, he’d seen her since he’d moved in with Moon, but at this moment his eyes had hit Reset. He saw her the way Jackal’d described her months ago: like Iman.
Her: left foot. Right foot. Again. Small gesture: handing him the bag she’d just put down. Nodding. Sad/resigned.
“Merry Christmas, R-r-raptor. And happy eighteenth birthday.”
Took it from her.
Moon pointedly left to hang up his mother’s coat.
“He really helpedt you cook all this?” Araweelo sat, admiring the remains of the wealth spread across the table. She put her napkin beside her plate. “It was all delicious.”
“Your son’s a very intelligent young man. Picks up things quickly. I showed him a few things in the kitchen—”
Raphael: “I love cooking!” Too quickly, too loudly. A pre-emptive strike. He was sure she was gonna say something like How come you never cooked like this at home? Or at all?
Then again, she herself hated cooking. Maybe she’d never regarded his lack of interest as a failure.
Been two months since she tried guilting him into coming home. Hadn’t criticised him or complained once during dinner. Briefly inspected his spotless room at Moon’s loft, saying she was impressed how responsible Raptor was. But that was it: only sign she was checking up on him.
Been ready for all-out combat that night. In September she’d yelled at Moon in person and on the phone. Since then, ice replaced fire after Raptor’d finally told her he wasn’t actually living with Jackal, but with Moon.
Her, then, almost pleading: “How do you know he’s nott a draak dealer? Or a pedophile?”
But time rolled. And eventually so did she. Even met Moon twice for tea. To discuss terms of her surrender.
Now she was here, and nobody was yelling. Fact, she was even smiling.
“You big into Christmas?” asked Moon. “I mean, for a Somali?”
His mother gave that look, flame-sizzling Raptor’s neck.
“Dependts what you mean by ‘big.’ For an atheist , yes, I guess so.”
Moon chuckled. “I hear that.”
And then she chuck
led too, and that was that.
Conversation. Laughter. Finally Moon put on music, and Raptor and Araweelo eye-mailed each when the shuffle mix landed on “100 Yard Dash” by Raphael Saadiq, the retro rhythm-and-bluesman after whom Araweelo’d named her son.
Didn’t know if it was the turkey’s tryptophan, or maybe the carb-overload from the bean pie that’d steamed its vanilla-pecan cap into a lagoon, but Raptor’s head, chest and limbs were humming. Like falling asleep on a bus next to the radiator after walking half-an-hour through a blizzard.
Coffee and tea stoked conversation. Araweelo told Moon how back in the camps, she’d earned the name “Madame President” because of her advocacy of fellow refugees.
“But what they didn’t understandt,” she chuckled, “was that I stayedt busy to keep from going ‘cuckoo.’”
Moon laughed at the word, but for Raptor, that one sentence hyperlink clicked him through a gallery of his mother’s committees, meetings, workshops and other busy-ness that consumed her since they’d landed.
Moon, quieter than usual. But smiling. Listening to how she co-edited an online newspaper by, for and about South Sudanese women, one of the only online papers of its type in the world, and was helping a local Dinka mother promote her PC-built CD. Smiling every time she produced a Dinka term from her word-forge. Raptor, for the first time, clutching each expression to his own spine, hammering it till it rang and echoed.
Dheeng: a mindset of dignity.
Other topics that meant little to Raptor, but crackled like popcorn between the two adults: how Moon didn’t give two breaths for pseudo-revolutionaries waging online wars instead of organising in their own neighbourhoods, beret-wearers lost in rhetoric while “waiting for the Red Rapture.”
Araweelo cracked up at that. She said after she got to Canada, she read Mao’s Little Red Book in English for the first time, and then burnt it. Did the same with al-Qadhdhaafi’s Green Book.
“Once I foundt out the truth about the ‘strong men’ back home, how many people they butcheredt, how many lies they toldt” (her eyes: like she was calling down lightning) “there was no way I was ever goingk to believe in ‘strong men’ again!”
And she and Moon ripped into bitter eulogies for a dozen fallen gods.
Raptor cleaned the table, washed the dishes. Minding and rewinding the strong man his mother’d lost while racing with her baby towards a boat on the river to nowhere. Thinking how despite her boast, she’d never stopped believing in strong men, had chained herself and her son to a brutal-mouthed adultering drunk for years.
She could brag all she wanted about destroying pyrite idols, but she was the one who’d thrown open the gates so the Destroyer could enter their land.
“Young bruh,” whispered Moon, while Araweelo fussed her coat and scarf into place, “I think your mum seriously needs you to come along for the ride. It’s Christmas. Come on.”
For Moon—under protest.
Pulled on his coat, grabbed a sabaayat he’d pan-fried hours before, and scrolled the flatbread into in his pocket.
Sat chewing it in the back seat of Moon’s spotless gold-and-black Sunfire.
Rolling down Khair-em-Sokar—118th Avenue—Moon and Araweelo chattering. Raptor couldn’t really hear them, what with Zuhura Swaleh’s sweet wails and the Mombasa band’s keyboards sparkling over Moon’s sound system. Sat watching streetlights streak past like falling stars.
Finally pulled up in front of Al Hambra apartment across from the 7-11.
Moon leapt out of the Sunfire to open Araweelo’s door, then walked her to the front entrance.
Raptor took his bitter time getting out of the back seat.
His eyes froze.
On Al Hambra’s landing. The two adults hugging in the street-lit darkness. Breath misting away from each one’s face as they pulled back. Raptor’s stomach boiling Christmas-birthday dinner into brine soup.
Wasn’t like she held him that long. Just too long.
Moon passed him on the way back to the car, giving him time for his own goodbye.
“Kinda surprised you even came,” Raptor blurted at her. “Never thought Doctor Liberia’d let you. Figured he’d want you waiting for him after his family dinner ended—”
“—Jacob and I aren’t seeing each other anymore, Raptor.”
Stood silently staring at his mother. All out of ammo.
“I’m hoping,” she whispered, “that, well . . . it’s almost the new year.”
She leaned in to kiss his cheek before he could pull away. Put one hand on the door before slipping inside, turning: “Let’s findt a way out of this wilderness we’re in, all rightt?”
Closed the door, probably so she could pre-empt whatever nasty shit was gurgling in his guts.
And she woulda been right.
2.
Raptor wanted to rush the older man.
Wanted to.
February 6, 6 PM, everything but carlights black through the window of Data Salvation Laboratories. Moon waited until the last customer hit the street and the quiet Rwandan NAIT student Hakizimana began cashing out.
Finally, finally, he opened Raptor’s report card.
Raptor’s lungs, like balloons, ready to pop.
Moon, eye-cannons swiveling right onto his skull.
His hammer-fist up beside his temple—
Moon: “Transformed!” And slow-mo John Henrying a dap down to Raptor’s fist.
“Seventy-five percent! On your first stint in academic English!” shouted Moon. Brother Hakizimana worriedly peeked around the corner.
“Here,” said Moon, handing him a package from below the counter. Raptor opened it, but had no idea what it was.
“It’s a model rocket,” explained Moon. “It actually flies—hundreds of metres, straight up. I bought myself one, too. We’re gonna build em! It’s a great hobby. Usedta launch these when I was your age.”
Raptor thanked him. “Is this supposed to be a metaphor or something?”
“You damn right it’s a metaphor!” He slow-punched at Raptor, who ducked gra-a-a-acefully.
“Next up, Grade 12 English . . . and we’re gonna make sure you get an honours mark!”
And Raptor—remembering the many nights they’d worked together on his assignments and essays and how many times, when he was seven seconds away from quitting Moon said, “Just gimme seven more minutes. If you don’t get it in seven, you can quit”—Raptor believed him.
3.
“On behalf of my fellow young Alchemists,” said Yibemnoot onstage, looking strange without her rhinestone Playboy hoodie, “and because I even got a score of 880, I dedicate tonight’s transformation to the double righteousness-and-mastery of Brother Malcolm X, who dwells eternally in peace.”
She’d gotten the top score at Afro-Quiz but lost the crowd in her victory speech.
The MC, a Malawian systems analyst and community activist named Siyani, explained to the crowd why the young sister was highlighting February 21, saying how impressed he was by how educated and conscious the new generation was.
Then the crowd gave Yibemnoot her props, and Raptor struggled to keep the fireworks from his eyes.
In the basement of the Stanley Milner, outside the theatre where they’d just been doing battle, young Alchemist contestants double-armed their trophies and prizes, while families and fellow Street Falcons surged forward for bumps, daps, soul-shakes and hugs.
Jackal: “Damn, son. You seem them other contestants? Jaws all hanging slack like broke jock straps?”
Raptor laughed. “They looked like we pantsed em or suh’m.”
Thandie, the tall, pretty Falcon with a perpetual orbit of boys, held court in the corner. She’d gotten eliminated in the second round. The questions weren’t fair: a whole category on Nelson Mandela? Sister Ãnkhur giggled compassionately, reminding her that everyone’d gotten the same study package. She backed off when Thandie unsheathed her eyes.
Raptor, who’d won second place, refocused on his mother and Brother
Moon (a super-smiling Moon kept repeating, “You lit em up!”), excused himself to slide over to champion Yibemnoot inside a forcefield of friends.
But no family.
Dropped congrats, waited for the other Falcons to move on.
“Sister ’Noot. Um, a few months ago, I was kind of an idiot. Y’know, about—”
“—about my digital colour-job on your artwork.”
For real, he was actually hoping she’d forgotten, that her silence since then was just shyness. Nope.
“Right. So, I’m sorry I didn’t express myself very well. Wasn’t that I didn’t like what you did. Actually, if you wanna know the truth, I . . . I loved it, in fact. I’m just . . . well, honestly, I don’even know why I—”
“Maybe it’s because you’re so used to being alone.”
That damn near knocked him over.
“Huh?”
“Drawing. You’re used to doing it all yourself. I wasn’t trying to steal your credit, brother.”
“I know. I mean, I know that now.” Apologised again. “But when you said I was used to being alone, I thought you meant—”
“I meant that, too.”
“Whoah—”
“You don’t need to deny it, Raptor,” she said, twirling a finger around one of the dangles of her relaxed hijab. The other dangle was draped over a turtleneck and the kind of vest favoured by local Muslim girls. Looked less like chastity-armour and more like a bustier.
“Yeah, but how’d you—”
“‘Like detects like.’”
Looked at her a long time before nodding.
Then he explained his proposition to her.
“Especially,” he said, “you know, after tonight—”
“No, that’s totally geometrical!”
“Great! So . . . when would you like to . . . y’know . . . . ”
“Tomorrow? Wait, is that even too soon? Yeah, of course it’s too soon! How about, no, I mean, like, when would you like to, y’know—”
“No, no, tomorrow’s good—”
Stumbling over each other like a couple of morons for another minute until, thank god, Jackal came over and started cracking on some damn thing and babbling about Golden Eye and the Kush Party and how it was all gonna be so gold, it’d be the party of the millennium.
The Alchemists of Kush Page 24
