Beasts Made of Night

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  Someone shouts up ahead, and all of a sudden the line breaks up, everybody pushing one another out of the way. Instinctively, I put my arm out and move Omar behind me, then I shoulder forward. The aki I pass are pretty well marked. I know from experience that not much will set them off, but they’ll fight way too hard for what they think is theirs. I get to the front, where a bunch of aki are gathered. Costa, the lizard-faced redeemer, sits behind a protective steel mesh barrier.

  “That’s not what it says on my marker!” Ifeoma shouts at Costa, who just sits with his arms folded. “I’m supposed to get two ramzi! That’s how it’s notched.”

  Costa leans forward and points to a piece of parchment nailed to the outside of his booth. On one column a list of sins, on the other, a series of numbers. “These are the rates, you ruby-lickers. I do not decide them.”

  “Those weren’t the rates yesterday!” Ifeoma slams her fist against the steel fencing.

  “How’re we supposed to know what all of that means?” growls Sade. “You know most of us can’t read that nonsense.”

  I shove my way to the front and pull my marker out, then smash it against the fencing, right in Costa’s face. “How much does this get me? And don’t you dare say anything less than six ramzi.”

  I wait, breathing hard. Everybody waits. He wouldn’t dare defy Sky-Fist. The Lightbringer.

  Costa bows his head. After a second, I realize he’s chuckling.

  “Gutter-rat,” I shout, hitting the fencing because it’s the only thing I can think to do. “Who changed the rates? How do we know you didn’t just write these out this morning?”

  I keep talking, hoping something will stick. Maybe I’ll say something that’ll hit, that’ll either get him to change his mind or that’ll calm the restless aki behind me. Everybody’s got their eyes on me now. “Some of us got mouths to feed,” I drop my voice low, too low to be heard by anyone but Costa. “We got families.”

  “An aki? With a family?” Costa sneers. “That seems like the answer to a riddle that doesn’t exist.”

  Something snaps inside me. I pull my daga out of its sheath, slowly so that everyone can see. “Pay me what I’m owed, or I cut through this fence like hot oil. Then we’ll see about rate changes. How does that sound?”

  Costa’s gaze darts to the left, past my shoulder, then to the right, and I turn around, too late, and see that there’s half a dozen Palace guards at the back of our crowd, ready to knock our heads in. The fight instantly goes out of me. It’s not worth it.

  I sheathe my daga and slide my marker through the opening in the fence. “Fine,” I growl, shoving my face right up against the fencing. “What does this get me?”

  Costa makes a show of examining it, checking its markings. Then, he tosses me three measly ramzi, and I scoop them up. I wish there were something I could say, some small threat or insult that would hurt him, do real damage, but I can’t think of anything. So I walk away, the look from every aki I pass burning into my back fiercer than any sin I’ve ever Eaten.

  I walk and walk to clear my head and lose track of where I am, but a quick look to the left, and I can see, over rooftops, the ridge that surrounds the northern dahia. I realize I’m close to where Auntie Sania and Auntie Nawal live, two older women who practically raised me after I left home to begin Eating. I smile, remembering how their pockets were always full of chin-chin for young aki, meant to wash the taste of sins out of our mouths. It’s a poor dahia, but it’s far enough away from the Forum and most other parts of Kos that the people here generally get left alone. It’s as quiet a place here as you can find in all of Kos.

  The sound of scuffling draws my attention. I turn to see Omar climbing over a pile of stones in an alley and heading my way. Uhlah, this kid is never more than three paces behind. I keep going, hands in my pockets, pretending not to see him, but he falls right in step beside me. He puts his hands in his pockets too. Sticks his chin up just like I’m doing. We must make quite the picture strolling through the dahia like this.

  I know he’s got a million questions for me, but he’s gonna have to learn to speak up for himself, so we walk in silence through the winding streets of the dahia. They widen, then narrow suddenly, so that if you don’t know your way around, you’re likely to run smack into a wall.

  Then I hear it. Drumming.

  We come to the wide boulevard, and coming around the corner to our right is the first line of dancers. Four of them spread across the width of the street, their brightly colored robes flowing in the wind as they twirl and stomp in unison. Their wrists and ankles and ears glisten with gemstones. The light catches their jewels and makes them look like moving human-shaped stars. Rounding the corner behind them is the first drum line. Their hands move so fast against the massive drums strapped to their waists. Their muscles gleam with sweat.

  Local Kosians come out from their homes and join the tail end, arms swinging with their own dance steps, children doing their best to mimic the adults. I can see where some of the aki get their moves.

  “What is it?” Omar asks.

  I don’t bother hiding my grin. “It’s an Ijenlemanya. A parade.”

  “What are they celebrating?”

  I can feel my heart getting bigger with each second I watch the Ijenlemanya. This is Kos. “It’s a funeral without a body. Odans from south of Kos brought the tradition with them. A celebration of life.” Finally, a tradition that has nothing to do with sins and aki and us bearing the guilt of others. A tradition that doesn’t make me feel like a piece of parchment for others to write their sins on. Or a rubbish bin where they can dump their worst parts. “Sometimes, they do it to celebrate a birth in the dahia. Sometimes, they do it when a child of the dahia scores well in school. Sometimes, to celebrate a marriage.” I shrug and my smile widens. “Sometimes, they do it just because. A celebration of life. That’s why they say it’s a funeral without a body. It’s a celebration. The grave is empty.”

  The air is clearer around the parade, almost as though they’re clearing out the inyo that choke us when we walk through streets they roam.

  The revelers head down the street and slowly disappear behind another corner.

  “Hey, do you see that?” Omar points at a robed figure standing across the street from us. His robe shimmers silver where the wind rustles against him. The gray is darkening, slowly, starting from the cloth at the bottom near his feet and moving upward.

  The call to prayer sounds, and I put my hand on Omar’s head. “Time to go.” Pretty soon, Kosians in every dahia will come back out of their homes and surround the large black Cubes in the center of their dahia and sit in silence to commemorate the Original Storm that created the dahia. They will pray to the Unnamed to protect them from arashi none of them has ever even seen.

  My good mood evaporates. All this fear of monstrous arashi that only appear when there’s enough sin in a city to draw them, it’s all lahala meant to control us. Anybody with half a mind knows that those Mages send us all over so that there will never be enough sin in the entire city to call down their wrath. If there are arashi, they’ve done a pretty good job of steering clear of the Kaya Palace.

  “There are no arashi.” I don’t realize I said it out loud until I catch Omar staring at me. I realize I’m thinking of the question he asked Bo when all the others were eating fufu earlier. “There’s only the way your wet clothes hang heavy on you during a storm and the way your stomach growls when it’s empty. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  The robed man across the street hasn’t moved, but his robe has gotten darker. It’s completely black. Then I listen.

  Wait a second.

  The afternoon prayer call sounded not too long ago. And the sun’s too high in the sky for the next one. Something’s not right.

  “Come with me.” I hurry up a small ladder pressed against the side of a house, then scramble along the roof until I get
to where laundry hangs on clotheslines. Omar’s right behind me. I squint, and that’s when I see them, up on the hills that overlook the dahia. Wreckers. Hurlers. Catapults loaded with brick and stone and burning bundles of wood stand ready.

  The man who stood across the street from us is gone. Uhlah, that wasn’t a Mage. That was a Palace animist. Sent by the Palace to the dahias. It all makes sense now. The way his robes shimmered—it was metallic thread with the power to detect the amount of sin in the air. The darker the robe, the greater the amount of sin.

  That animist’s robe was pure black. My stomach twists.

  This isn’t a call to prayer. It’s a Baptism. The Palace is going to “cleanse” the dahia by razing it to the ground.

  The first Wrecker launches. A flaming ball of wood and stone hurtles through the air, and I’m frozen in horror as it crashes into a home close enough that the impact knocks me onto my stomach. In an instant, I realize that it must have landed less than a hundred meters from Auntie Sania and Auntie Nawal and the orphanage. Omar and I stumble from the impact.

  “We gotta go.” And we set off at a run along the rooftops of the dahia while homes fall to pieces behind us.

  CHAPTER 4

  I KNOW HOW this all goes.

  Every once in a while, when some Kaya feels like it, brigades of Palace guards swarm through the Forum and out into the dahia, where families like mine live in shacks and mud-colored homes.

  Then up on the hills surrounding the neighborhood, Wreckers and Hurlers are wheeled into place, pulled by servants hoping to work off their sins with manual labor. Meanwhile, the families in the slums cower in fear. Some won’t know where to go or what to do; they’re the recent arrivals. Maybe they can no longer afford a place in the Forum; maybe they’re coming from outside of Kos. Maybe they’re just unlucky. Meanwhile, the rest of the dahia will begin packing up their lives and running away. The Hurlers, those massive wooden contraptions, will fling their shots, and stone and brick will arc high into the air then crash into the houses below. Frightened children will scurry, crying for help, and some of them will run straight into the arms of Palace guards and the Agha Sentries lying in wait to round up more potential aki.

  I know how this all goes. Because that’s how they got me.

  A boulder flies over my head and smashes into the building next to me. I dash down an alley and nearly crash into a father racing in the other direction. He stops to pull forward his two sons, their mother following close behind. I look to see what they’re running from, and there it is: the telltale red of a sentry’s robe. The Agha Sentry moves at the head of half a dozen guardsmen, and they stalk down the path like a river that breaks down everything in its way. They’re calm, their eyes sweeping back and forth, looking for new aki recruits. I look back, and I’m relieved to see the family has vanished. But so has Omar.

  There’s no time to look for him.

  I round the corner and run through the market, now abandoned after the warning call sounded. The jeweler’s stall is unattended, but people are too busy fleeing for their lives to steal. The cylindrical books are scattered all over, trampled, their pages exposed and torn. The wind scatters some loose sheets over the ground, unraveling them, revealing the illegal stories the booktraders were hawking.

  Quiet covers this stretch of street. The only sound is the occasional crash of boulders into homes. Maybe the guards and Mages have already been through here. I’m about to leave when I hear something skitter. I stop, look both ways, then spot something moving in a crevice too thin for a body to fit in. It’s not until I’m crouched right in front of the slice in the wall that I see the pair of golden eyes. They shine straight through the shadows. It’s a little girl. I can only see flashes of her face, the dark skin of her cheeks, some of the dust and plaster pasted to her forehead.

  I reach out my hand and let her get a glimpse of the tattoos on my arm so she knows I’m not one of the guardsmen. “Hey, what’s your name?” She doesn’t move. I shuffle closer. “It’s OK. Where are your parents?”

  She’s not crying or shaking. She’s completely still. Maybe she’s in shock. Other than me, she’s the only thing still breathing on this street. In my head, I map out the street I’m on and the surrounding quarter. Behind me, the shuffle of boots against dirt. The guards.

  “Come on,” I hiss. “Come on, we gotta go.” She’s exactly the type of child they’re looking for, the type that gets swept up in these Baptisms. The type the Mages will test to see if she can Eat, if she has aki potential. The footsteps are getting closer. If they find her, I won’t be able to stop the Mages from taking her. From separating her from her parents. If they’re still alive.

  The girl sticks a hand out. I take it, pull her out, and hitch her small body up on my side. She’s wearing a green robe, and one of her sandals hangs loose. Now that she’s in my arms, I see that she can’t be more than five years old. “What’s your name, little one?”

  She turns away, and I think I see a smile. With my free hand, I thumb some of the dust and plaster off her cheeks, but I only end up smudging it further.

  “It’s OK. Now hold on tight.” I shift her onto my back and make sure she’s wrapped her arms tight around my neck. Then we’re off.

  At first, I want to take her to the Aunties. They’ll know what to do, but my gut is telling me to head for the outskirts of the dahia, where the guardsmen are least likely to patrol. The destruction from the Baptism is random. Untouched blocks of houses and shacks one instant, then nothing but rubble the next. Occasionally, we’ll hear screams, and the little girl’ll bury her head in my neck.

  “It’s all right, little one.”

  We’re about to hop out from around a corner when I hear a moan. I freeze. It could be anything. Could be something I dreamed up. Could be the moan of an uncleansed inyo wandering Kos. But I wait. That definitely sounds like a person. Still alive. We turn, and, half-buried by a collapsed wall, a man struggles. He grits his teeth and pushes against the bit of stone wall that pins him to the ground. He’s covered in dust, and broken tree branches and bits of metal surround him.

  I shift to cover the girl’s eyes, but it’s too late. She’s seen him. Before I can stop her, she pries herself out of my grip and lands with a soft puff on the ground.

  “Baba,” I hear her wail through sobs. She tugs at the arms of her father.

  “Sweetheart, let’s go,” I whisper.

  It’s not that I don’t feel for her, but the man is doomed. Guardsmen are coming through for another sweep. There’s no saving that man. But maybe I can save her. As if I summoned them with my thoughts, the good-for-nothing, ruby-licking guardsmen appear and, just off to the side, a Mage. Hunting for someone just like her.

  I don’t know what to do. Leave and live with this girl’s fate on my conscience or sacrifice myself in a fiery burst of heroism—even though after I die, they’ll probably snatch her up anyway. I flick my arm, and my daga slides out of its sheath and into my hand. I crouch into my fighting stance and move in front of the girl and her wounded father. Maybe the other aki will tell stories about me. Maybe they’ll talk about how the Lightbringer gave his life to save a little girl from the clutches of the Mages. The thought of a statue of me being built in a dahia makes me chuckle.

  When the guards see me, they pick up their pace. Now they’re practically charging toward me. I’m ready to spring.

  May the Unnamed preserve me.

  Something heavy rushes right past me, a blur of black and brown, and crashes into the Agha Sentry. The column folds in as several more people rush in to break up the guardsmen. Aki! I shout with surprise when I see Bo leading the charge. He tackles one of the guardsmen, then plows like an ox through the whole troop while the others jump in and cause chaos.

  I turn and see with relief that Auntie Sania and Auntie Nawal have followed them. They crouch down by the girl and her wounded father. I can see dirt under th
eir fingernails where the Aunties probably tried to dig people out from underneath the rubble.

  In the tussle down the alleyway, the Mage gets tossed to the ground. He yelps. The little girl, distracted, lets go of her father, and Auntie Nawal sweeps the girl into her arms. Down the way is a small gaggle of kids, some the girl’s age, some younger, some older. Auntie Sania gives me a familiar look. The kind of look that tells me it’s time to do the difficult thing. While my best friend is fighting off guards, I gotta chaperone a bunch of weepy little kids to safety.

  There are just over half a dozen of them, some in rags, some in dresses. None of them have a speck of sin on them. I catch Auntie Sania’s gaze and nod, then I rush ahead to make sure the path’s clear. When I look back to see what happened to the girl’s father, he’s nowhere to be seen. I pray to the Unnamed that he made it out.

  As our little parade makes its way down the empty streets, I scoop up some of the smaller kids, smiling big to make sure they’re looking at me and not at the crushed remains of their homes or the arm sticking out from under a piece of rubble. Some of them are old enough that this isn’t their first Baptism. Even so, you never get used to this.

  I’m still carrying one howling boy in my arms when I start to recognize the streets. There’s an untouched balcony that still has potted plants on it, and farther down a blanket hangs from a second-story window. It has a spiral painted on it in many colors. Handprints spot it, small enough I know they belong to a kid. Or kids.

  I realize I’m now within an hour’s walk from Mama and Baba’s house. I could go see them. Right now. Go look for them. Make sure they’re OK. I could let them know they don’t have to worry about me, that my money will be coming, same as always. With a little extra this time.