by Gavin Chait
Darkness, and then they are in the clear channel leading to the waiting presence of Achenia.
Today, hundreds of similar ships are travelling up from the surface. Each filled with groups of people, their hands and faces pressed against transparent walls, trying to remember everything.
They form a long chain, like a string of luminous pearls, as they hug the elevator cable on their way into orbit.
‘We’ll be landing in Socotra Bay,’ says Kaolin. She is still seated, unmoving, her arms on the rests at her sides. They are in a river of teardrop-shaped spaceships, all having now reached the summit and broken away from the cable. Like a school of silver fish, they flash and fly as one.
‘Stay close when we land,’ says Kaolin. ‘There isn’t anything bad that can happen, but there really will be a lot of people.’
They settle alongside another craft, identical. Another lands beside them. There are hundreds of ships, all across the bay.
The canopy shimmers. Kaolin smiles kindly and gestures for them to follow her. Joshua squeezes Esther’s hand, recognizing the nervousness all must feel. It is hitting them. They are in orbit, 35,000 kilometres from home.
Hesitantly, they follow Kaolin. Thousands of people are following similar escorts from their craft, through the hangar and towards the massive doors in the floor and its spiral gravity-shifting ramp. There is a maelstrom of voices, dozens of different languages, but they realize they can understand them all.
Isaiah grins at a little blonde-haired girl of a similar age being led by her parents in a group just ahead of them. She sticks out her tongue and grins back, waving with her free hand.
Joshua catches a momentary glimpse of Samara, far ahead through the crowds. He is greeting a group there. Three very thin men. They are smiling, laughing together. One presents a shy teenager, perhaps his son? One, an older man, is alone. The third with a stout woman who could be his wife.
The group leaves and Samara turns. Shakiso is just behind him. He sees Joshua and runs towards them. Then there are long embraces, introductions as everyone meets Shakiso, Nizena, Kosai, Shakiso’s parents and Airmid, Samara’s mother. Shyly, Symon and Synthia, and an effervescent Symona, make their welcomes.
Kaolin hugs the children again and vanishes into the crowd.
Daniel seizes Symon’s hands. ‘I never knew what you looked like.’ He grins. ‘You look better than I expected.’ Symon looks embarrassed. Abishai, David, Jason and Sarah gather round him. There is nothing left to say. They are thrilled to see him.
‘Come,’ says Samara. ‘We should be going.’
Kosai and the children have bonded instantly. They are clutching at her hands, pulling her to and fro as she laughs and dances with them. Symona is doing cartwheels and somersaults in the air above them.
‘She would make a wonderful great-grandmother,’ says Joshua.
‘Hush,’ says Samara.
Esther and Shakiso are walking together. ‘What is the ceremony?’ asks Esther. ‘Joshua was not very clear.’
Shakiso smiles, the two women holding hands, old friends. ‘Achenia and all our people are leaving. There is the thrill of the journey, but there is also sadness. The ceremony will permit us to express all that each of us may struggle with alone.’
The current of people is through the acacia trees and into the grassland. The city of Socotra, rising up through red rocks, termite mounds and acacias bowed down with weaver nests, on either side of the wide valley.
People are pointing in wonder. The smell of the savannah, of rich earth and growing things, open space and an endless, wide-open sky.
The great gathering place that Joshua saw on his first visit is filling up before them. He has never seen so many people. Hundreds of thousands are flying in from all along the valley. From the cities all through Achenia.
In the gathering are people from so many cultures and races that they overwhelm the senses. Everyone is talking, catching up, laughing. Some are singing. The Achenians mingle freely.
‘Father, look!’ shouts Isaiah, dragging at his arm.
Through the crowds he sees a group of short, heavyset people. Their clothes are thick cloth. They have dense red beards down to their knees. Their eyes are cloudy blue, their gaze intense.
‘They are the miners! From Romanche!’
Samara takes Isaiah’s arm and leads the excited boy over to them. One holds out a heavy, stubby hand and greets Isaiah formally. The boy looks as if all his birthdays are happening at once. He comes back clutching a rounded glossy-metal helmet he has been given.
Kosai excuses herself, Nizena watching her, his face a mix of adoration and pride, as she goes. She seems constantly dancing, always a cuddle or shared intimacy with everyone in her path.
‘Where is she going?’ asks Hannah, Daniel again attending to the girls.
Nizena points to where Kosai is meeting a man, uncharacteristically all in white. ‘She has a role in the ceremony. The man she is meeting is Ismael, one of the greatest of the griots. He will sing the Song for the Leaving.’
Hannah pulls Daniel’s arm, pointing. The Ewuru feel awe and surprise that their own Balladeer is here.
There are fewer people arriving now. The gathering is almost complete. An ocean of people filling the valley.
Gradually, the talking slows, settles. There is silence.
The meeting space is arranged as a wide, gently sloping amphitheatre. People form an arc about the stage. The back is open to the plains beyond. A breeze runs through the valley, from behind them, shifting the long grasses like ripples on an ocean.
Even here the river Talus runs, meandering through a subterranean cavern and emerging far below the gathering place. In the silence, they can hear the water, burbling and tinkling in the distance.
Kosai is standing alone on the stage. She is dressed all in white, the breeze holding the softness of the fabric against the firmness of her body.
Her head is bowed. She raises it, looking out across the expanse of people. A projection expands from her, a duplicate giant permitting all to see her.
Kosai begins to speak.
Departing Sorrows
Hold my hand,
my love,
for I fear that
we are dying.
I will never let go,
my love,
tell me only
what frightens you.
I see ghosts,
my love,
of dear friends,
long since passed.
It is well,
my love,
they are here
to see us through.
If all we have,
my love,
are departing moments,
I wish only for them
with you.
Come close,
my love,
and we will share our
remaining breath
as one.
And in the sky,
a light,
like a tiny glowing sun,
flashes, bleeds,
and is gone.
Her voice seems to be heard by each person alone. Tender. A lover’s touch. In the vastness, each person experiences a moment of intimacy.
As her words end and her projection fades, there is an awareness of a note. Like the song of a heart. It seems to have been there since she started speaking.
Kosai withdraws and Ismael, white-haired and all in white, floats forward on to the stage. His projection filters above them like white smoke in the sky. He carries a single white cord, stretched tight. With his other hand he is running his pinched fingers along its length, setting a tone in motion.
He plucks at it. Notes infuse through the air. Resonance made visible in the sky as white ripples. He releases the cord. It continues to play, individual plucked notes. Now he is singing, his voice bright, a woman’s soprano. Emotion, like a thread of electricity, tied and pulling on their souls.
Esther is weeping. Joshua takes her arm, pulling her close.
Isaiah is holding his waist. All about him, tears, eyes shining.
The music is gathering now, notes, chords and timbre swelling. Ismael stamps his foot and the earth rumbles. If a planet could sing, this would be the beat of its heart.
Ismael is now adding a man’s tenor. A duet. And more voices. Smoky faces in the sky.
Joshua realizes that a sound is being drawn from him. That he is singing. Harmonizing with all those around him.
Ismael, his wide, sheet-like cloak flowing, is dancing, his arms directing the choir as he moves.
The music falls away, the spray of a waterfall coming to rest in a placid pool.
Only the drumbeat remains.
Ismael is still. His shoulders move, a syncopated rhythm. He beats the air with one hand, then the other. A thousand drumbeats crash, waves against a rocky shore. The storm draws near.
He stamps. A deeper beat. Whispers, the wind through the forest.
A roar. A billion antelope, their hooves thundering on the plains. Faster, faster, faster.
Fog takes shape as animals driving through the audience, chasing for the horizon.
Hearts. Racing. Ismael is jumping. Everyone jumping too.
The drumming is the universe.
It stops.
A single, jangling chord sounds. A harmonica, aching between his fingers. His voice, rich, gravel, singing of a journey. Out into the night.
The crowd, humming, dancing, keeping his rhythm.
Everyone is weeping. Tears, wet against their cheeks.
Joshua has a sense of how painful is this parting. How much must be shed in order to go. That this leaving is not taken lightly. They are saying farewell, not just to the planet of their birth but to their shared experience which led here. Goodbye to uncountable relationships, the intimacy and shared moments that will forever remain unexperienced.
For a new world to open, an old one must be closed.
Ismael is singing alone now, plucking at the cord again in his hands. His voice sweet, delicate, masculine. Notes – clear in the air – rising above his voice, now below, following, leading.
Joshua is sobbing, holding Esther to him, Isaiah tight around his waist. Esther hugs Airmid, and now everyone is exchanging heartfelt embraces. First with those they know, then with complete strangers.
Eventually, there is only a single tone, which gradually, softly, ends.
EPILOGUE
A BALLAD FOR THE RETURNING
We have experienced so much. Seen many things. Met others on similar journeys, so unlike and like ourselves. Now, after almost one thousand years, it is time to go back, to reconnect with the world that will always be our home. We don’t return as part of some final destination. We will linger, reflect on what we have learned, and – in time – we will journey once more amongst the stars.
Shakiso Adaro, reflections on the journey, Achenia, recorded during ‘Sowing the Seeds 1,042’
55
‘Daddy, tell me a story?’
Samara smiles, cuddling the child to him in the small bed.
‘And what story would you like to hear, youngster?’ he asks.
The little girl giggles, her eyes the green-cobalt of her mother’s. ‘I want to hear “The Tail of One”,’ she says.
‘Not again,’ says Samara, his voice an exaggerated sigh. ‘You’ve heard that hundreds of times. Can’t we try another one? Your great-grandmother told us a lovely new one just yesterday.’
‘No. I want to hear “The Tail of One”. It is my favourite favourite favourite.’
‘Very well,’ he sighs, teasing. And begins the story he has told thousands of times. As he finishes, her squirming stops and she is still.
He waits, holding her small warm body in his arms.
And waits.
‘I’m awake,’ she giggles. ‘I’m soooooo awake.’
‘I know, my darling,’ he smiles. Shakiso comes into the child’s room from outside. She joins them, the bed growing to accommodate them all.
‘Are you too excited to sleep?’ she asks.
‘Yes, I can’t wait,’ she says. ‘Will they be there?’ she asks. ‘The children of Joshua?’
‘I don’t know, my love, but I hope so with all my heart,’ says Samara.
She squirms a bit between them, tousles Samara’s sandy-brown hair, presses her nose to his face and grins into his hazel-brown eyes. Then decides. ‘Tell me again?’
‘What, my precious?’ asks Samara.
‘Tell me again about Joshua and Daniel and David and Sarah and Abishai and Jason and Isaiah. And Esther,’ she says in a single breathless burst.
Shakiso grins and Samara bends his head, kissing his daughter on the forehead.
‘Esther, my most darling. For you,’ he says, and begins the story again, of days long ago.
56
A man in a delicately embroidered ochre-brown boubou and matching kufi skullcap is walking through the jungle. His feet are in handmade leather sandals. His every step is a drumbeat. He is singing, and the forest sings with him. Birds fly in the trees above him, monkeys scramble through the branches.
He follows a wide stone road through the trees to the edge of a cliff.
Looking out, he sees a great white city.
The city fills the valley beneath him. It gleams in the sunshine, hundreds of thousands of people in the markets and cobbled roads leading to its centre. Ships are sailing up a wide, clear river, its waters sparkle and shimmer in the glory of the day.
More ships are docked at its vast harbour. Children are playing on the beach upstream, swimming and diving in elaborate postures from a small jetty.
The city rises towards a ridge and, at its crown, on a cliff before the river, is a gathering place. A massive open area, gently sloping and filling with a waiting choir. There is a stage and, behind that, an enormous open-sided building, bronze pillars and an immense wooden slit-drum suspended between them.
Around the gathering space are statues of the heroes of the city. One of them is of a tall, straight-backed man. His hands, their scars telling the story of his life, are open before him. His smile is broad and content.
The man on the cliff is now playing a harmonica, his hands cupped around it, even as his voice continues. He releases the harmonica and the notes drift out over the city. He taps his foot, a gentle rhythm spreading through the earth.
In the city, a woman answers. She stands at the drum and strikes it. The beat continues as she walks out on to the stage.
Her arms are wide. Her voice that of a lover welcoming him home.
He replies, and they sing together. Their voices an embrace. A rejoicing reunion.
Now the massed choir is singing too. Their voices gather and swell, filling the air above the city. Welcoming the sky.
The land sings, the song of return, of renewed friendships, of a journey.
In the sky, a glisten, as of dew, and the horizon is filled with starships. One breaks away, races towards the city.
It lands before the great west gate. Its canopy shimmers, and a man is there, carrying a small child. A woman stands at his side. He holds her hand.
A group of people is running to meet them from the gates.
And the man, the woman and the child step out of the craft, on to the earth, and run towards them.
Acknowledgements
Lament for the Fallen has been a long time coming.
I wrote its first words thirty years ago, when I was twelve, and – while the detail and texture of the story have changed as I matured – it was always about a man escaping from a prison in space back to a planet on the cusp of social upheaval.
Science fiction is at its most beautiful and challenging when it places us within the transition zone between here and there. The technologies presented in the novel are all as expected from any work of speculative fiction. It is less common to place those tools somewhere real, rather than breaking an existing place, and let people behave as they will.
Geographic necessity placed Samar
a’s fall close to the equator in Nigeria and serendipity took me there, to walk the streets of Calabar and meet its people, before I returned to the final writing push.
I drew on a host of sources, and you will find much more of the complexity, wonder and terror of Nigerian culture and traditions in these books:
Cross River Natives, Charles Partridge (1905);
Efik Traders of Old Calabar, edited by Daryll Forde (1958);
Life in Southern Nigeria – The Magic, Beliefs, and Customs of the Ibibio Tribe, P. Amaury Talbot (1923).
Amaury Talbot was a colonial administrator who travelled far and wide in the then British colonies of Southern Nigeria in the very early 1900s. He and his wife photographed and described everything he saw without embellishment and with the wonder and reverence of a truly impressive social historian.
Efik Traders of Old Calabar is something even rarer: the diaries of Antera Duke, an Efik chief and slaver who lived in Calabar, and covering the period of 1785 to 1787.
If you wish to experience the food described, try Arit Ana’s A Taste of Calabar (2000).
While I certainly drank deep from these sources, I have moved things around and restructured the landscape and people to meet the needs of the story. My intention was not to produce a work of Nigerian literature, merely to capture a sense of people and place. The usual storytellers’ prerogative of saying that no names or places should be inferred as being about real people or events prevails here.
I am thankful for where this story has taken me and the people I have met, particularly the kindness and patience of people in Benin City, Calabar and Lagos who, inadvertently or not, helped inform my research. Far too many of the anecdotes featured here are real, and I leave it to you to separate them from the imagined.
If you would like to immerse yourself further, here is the music playlist along with the relevant scenes where they belong:
