by Oumar Dieng
Sali and the Five Kingdoms
Oumar Dieng
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Contents
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1. Calamity Knight
2. Graduation
3. The Eyes Are Useless
4. Mystery Man
5. Orientation
6. Garage Board
7. The Cabin
8. Beyond the Event Horizon
9. Centaura
10. The Crowning
11. The Traveler
12. The Crystal Necklace
13. The Kingdom of Garabon
14. The Council of Elders
15. The Protector Awakens
16. The Rise of the Naaju
17. The Gift of Cloth
Epilogue: Dinkytown
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In memory of my father, gone too soon.
1
Calamity Knight
Memories are a gift and a curse. Right then, it felt like they were a horrible, unbreakable curse. It was as if an evil sorcerer had uttered the darkest incantation known to man and summoned the vilest outcome one could ever imagine and willed it into my life, altering its course forever.
Grandpa and Grandma came into the living room accompanied by a police officer. Grandma sat next to me on the couch. She pulled my hair back, exposing my wet cheeks soaked by the near-perpetual lachrymose state I was in.
“Honey,” she said softly, “we need your help. We need you to tell the sheriff what happened. Will you do that for me?”
I dropped my head and remained silent.
“Honey. We really need you to try. I know this is hard, but we need to find your mother,” said Grandpa.
I finally mustered the courage to speak. “We left the barn with the horses. Dad was riding ahead of Mom, and I … I challenged Mom to a race to catch up with Dad.”
At that moment, I realized that I had instigated everything, and that realization was hard to accept.
“Oh my God! It was my fault!” I said, tears streaming down my cheeks. “If I hadn’t raced Mom, none of this would’ve happened!”
“Don’t say that, honey,” intervened Grandma and Grandpa in unison. “You did not do this.”
The sheriff, who had been quiet until now, jumped in. “So, you were racing on horseback? What happened after that?”
Wiping tears off my face, I continued sharing what I could remember. “We caught up to Dad, then passed him. Mom was so excited. She was riding the new horse—”
“Calamity Knight?” interrupted Grandma. “That mustang has barely been broken in! What was your mother thinking!”
“Let her finish, Solange,” said Grandpa. “We need to get to the bottom of this.” He kneeled in front of me, at eye level, and urged me to go on.
I continued. “Something spooked Mom’s horse. It stood up on its hind legs, and then Mom fell, and then she was just … gone!”
“What do you mean, gone?” asked the sheriff. “Did she get hurt?”
“I mean, she just disappeared. There was a bright flash … It looked like water was just floating in the air. And then the horse took off running.”
The sheriff looked at my grandparents. They exchanged looks without saying a word. Then the sheriff broke the silence. “Where did this happen?”
“Near Plymouth Creek.”
The sheriff forced a smile out and patted my back. “Don’t worry,” he said as he got back up. “We will find your mom, OK?” The sheriff put his hat back on and stepped outside, where several patrol cars were parked.
Suddenly I was overtaken by a flood of emotions, and I realized that Dad was not in the room. “Where’s Dad?” I looked at Grandma. “I want to talk to Dad!”
“I’m sorry, honey. Your dad is showing the police where to go. I will have him come see you when he gets back.”
A sudden urge to cry engulfed my entire body, causing me to break down once more. Grandma, who already had an arm over my shoulder, held me closer, while Grandpa repeatedly touched my shoulder in a gesture of solidarity and support.
For a few hours, the police swept the area, looking for any clues that could shed light on Mom’s whereabouts, but nothing turned up. The search continued the following morning and the morning after that.
Over the course of several weeks, volunteers from the neighborhood organized around our family. Search parties looked in the surrounding woods, lakes, and streams to no avail. Pictures of Mom were plastered in local grocery stores and coffee shops to get the word out. Local media picked up the story. They even featured Mom’s picture on TV and in the local town’s paper. However, we were never able to get local police to truly get involved. Their help was negligible at best. Because there were no signs of foul play or struggle, the authorities did not consider the case a priority. “It is not a crime for an adult to leave her family without telling them where she is going,” they said.
Only that’s not at all what had happened, and it was extremely frustrating knowing in my gut she was out there somewhere, waiting to be found.
Dad did his best to keep fighting to continue the search. At times, it felt like he was doing all of this to keep his mind occupied. If he stopped for a moment, he would have to face the bitter truth that Mom was gone.
After about six weeks, people stopped volunteering. The parade of neighbors offering sympathy, home-cooked meals, and baked desserts dried out. To make matters worse, the media attention backfired. Someone started a rumor that Mom may not have been very happy in her marriage with Dad and that she left to start a new life on her own.
“Mom did not leave us!” I’d say to Dad. “Who the hell would make up such a messed-up story! God, I hate this town!”
Dad was trying hard to ignore the ever-growing gossip. But I could tell that it was getting to him. He spent less time with me. As time passed, he withdrew into a self-centered one-man crusade to find out what happened to Mom. He spent a lot of time around the place where Mom disappeared. At first, my grandparents thought it was therapeutic, that it helped him grieve and heal faster.
Around the same time, Dad started traveling more for work, a lot more. Eventually, he was traveling so often that my grandparents, who visited to keep me company, decided to move in rather than fly back and forth to Florida. They sold their retirement rambler and drove up to Minnesota. The day after my grandparents moved in, Dad was scheduled to fly to Helsinki for work. This was the first of many flights to come. Grandma later told me that the house reminded him of Mom and that those memories were too painful to bear.
People disappear all the time. We only care if it hits close to home. The world does not stop because you are grieving. Life must go on and so it does. It is the nature of things, and it is a universal truth that time stops for no one.
I finally learned to live with Mom’s absence. My grandparents had been worthy substitutes; they filled the void left by my parents whether intentional or not. However, deep down, I never believed that Mom was dead. As for Dad, I was pissed at him but learned to direct my focus on school.
2
Graduation
I picked up the old, uneven picture frame from the mantel above the living-room fireplace and studied it carefully. Memories of my childhood flashed before my eyes. Every imperfection, every line, every crooked nail reminded me of Dad. This was th
e first thing we had ever built together. I could smell the wood dust mixed with machine oil filling the air in his workshop.
I had wanted to make a birthday present for Mom. Dad had been excited to see me take an interest in the work he did, so he had helped me measure, cut, sand, and glue the pieces together.
“It’s crooked, Dad!” I had said.
“No, honey. It’s perfect. Your mom will love it!”
Dad had added a bouquet of wild bougainvillea, sunflowers, and a few wild roses, and a signed card.
Mom had thought that the gift was great but that it was missing something. So she had sat next to Dad and me on the couch and snapped a photo of the three of us, which she had used to fill the frame. She had then hung the picture next to the mirror in the master bathroom.
“To remind me of the two most important things in my life, every time I wake up,” she had said.
I was suddenly startled.
“Sorry, dear,” she said, “I did not mean to scare you.”
I had not realized that Grandma Solange was behind me. Apparently, she had been trying to get my attention for a few minutes to no avail. Her eyes locked on to the frame, still in my hand.
“You miss them, don’t you?”
I pretended not to hear her, turned around, and placed the frame back on top of the fireplace, next to Grandpa’s World War II picture.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know.” She gently pulled my hands toward her, stepped closer to me, and repeated herself. “What happened was not your fault. You need to know that …”
“Grandma, I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”
“At some point, you are going to have to forgive yourself and move on. This pain that you have bottled up inside of you is not healthy. It’s a burden.”
“Grandma, please can we not do this right now?” I said firmly as I started to get irritated.
“Very well. But if you want to talk about it later, I will be here for you.” Still holding on to one of my hands, she pulled me toward the center of the room, where the morning sunlight was illuminating the carpet through the skylight. She walked around me, completing a full circle, scrutinizing every inch of my black gown. She adjusted my cap and moved the orange-colored tassel to one side of it. “There!” she said. “I think we are ready.”
Right then, Grandpa poked his head through the door, visibly rushed. “If we are going to make your graduation, we need to leave now, and I mean right now!”
I sat amidst the crowd of undergraduates. I looked around for a familiar face, although I was not sure why, since most of my communication with classmates at the university revolved around group assignments when we had no choice but to talk.
Man. No one, huh? I thought to myself. Well, I am glad my grandparents showed up.
They sat further back in the auditorium, several rows behind me, with the rest of the relatives who had come to attend the graduation ceremony. I saw Grandma overly gesticulating in my direction. “Love you, honey! Congratulations! Woohoo!”
Tsk. Typical Grandma, I thought while forcibly smiling in her direction as I became aware of students in my immediate surroundings looking at me.
While Grandpa customarily gave me a thumbs-up and a controlled grin, Grandma was always excited to the point of overdoing it. But she meant well.
After Mom’s incident, Dad took refuge in his work.m Despite the fact that I was only ten years old at the time, I could see that Dad had changed. He became more reserved, even though he tried not to show it. Especially on Mom’s birthdays. Our father-daughter bond had taken a fatal blow. The rituals we had done together were the first things to go. Our wood carving sessions had stopped. This I understood all too well; the last custom carving we gave to Mom was the picture frame for her birthday. As for the horses, he couldn’t stand being around them. They roamed the property, well cared for but mostly unridden.
A few months before I had turned eighteen, Dad had taken a job in London. It was supposed to be another temporary assignment.
“I should be back in a couple of weeks,” he had promised. “We can celebrate your birthday then.”
But weeks had turned into months. Months into years. He’d call from time to time and talk to Grandma, in the beginning. But as it had become evident that he was not coming home despite Grandma’s pleas, Dad’s phone conversations with Grandma had quickly turned into arguments.
“The poor child has suffered enough without her mother,” I had overheard Grandma say once. “What is so darn important about your work anyway? I raised you better than this!”
After that exchange, Grandma’s conversations with Dad had been terse. He would talk to me briefly, then ask to speak to Grandpa. The latter would always go into the study and close the door behind him or start whispering when Grandma was around, which drove her crazy.
“You better not be talking about me!” she’d warn Grandpa, who’d often come back with, “Solange, this has nothing to do with you. Can I please talk to my son without being interrogated?” He’d escape to the closest room and, as always, shut the door behind him.
Grandma had tried to shield me from all the drama, at least in the beginning. However, she felt that keeping me in the dark would do more harm than good. I believed this to be only partly true. I believed that she felt outnumbered and disconnected from Dad. Naturally, this made her want to confide in me. Personally, I did not care what her motivations were. After Dad had left, things had got rough. I blamed myself for his absence just like I felt it was my fault, at least in part, that Mom had disappeared. I didn’t talk about Mom’s disappearance around Grandma, as she strongly felt that Mom had just got bored and left without telling anyone. This misguided belief made it difficult to be candid with her about what had happened that day. Nevertheless, I needed her support, especially in the early days after the incident.
The announcer called my name again. “Sali Fairchild Chevalier, magna cum laude.”
Somehow I hadn’t heard the announcer call my name the first time. I had had a lot on my mind.
I stood up quickly and sidestepped my way out of the row where I had been sitting. A marshal waiting in the aisle pointed her arms to show me the way to the stage. As we approached the stage, I kept thinking, Don’t step on your gown. Don’t step on your gown! Baby steps, baby steps.
I stepped onto the stage; the spotlight shone on my gown as I walked toward the program director for the university’s College of Science and Engineering. We exchanged smiles. I shook his hand firmly and posed for a picture. As I proceeded to walk off the stage, I noticed a man hanging back off to the side of the stage. A brief wave of premonition traveled down my spine. For a split second, the world around me faded as my gaze caught his.
Although I felt it was odd, I did not give it much thought. After all, there were a lot of people backstage making sure that the event ran smoothly. He must have been one of them. We had gone past a lot of people back there on our way to our seats in the auditorium. Volunteer and university staff had prepared a long winding path through the hallways of the Communication Department, across a courtyard, through the Theater Department, and finally backstage and into the auditorium.
The graduation ceremony had come to an end. Students and their relatives were invited outside the auditorium, where refreshments were served. There was a lot of exaltation and joy on the faces of new graduates and parents alike. Several groups of people stood in clusters across the college grounds. Some were gathered around the refreshment tables, while others conversed and laughed out loud. Some of the officials who had presided at the ceremony mingled with faculty and parents.
My grandparents, who had also made their way outside, were waiting for me.
“Congratulations. You did it!” said Grandpa. “I am proud of you.”
“Thank you, Grandpa.” I paused for a second, then asked, “Should we head out?”
“What do you mean?” said Grandma. “This is your day. You should enjoy it! It’s not every day that you gradua
te from college. Don’t you want to be around your classmates?”
“It’s not that, Grandma. You know I get a headache when I am around large crowds, especially loud ones.”
“Well, OK then …”
Just then, someone called me. “Sali Chevalier!”
I turned around. “Professor Minz! Hi. How are you?” I shook his hand.
“Doing great. I was hoping to catch you here today.” He stopped and acknowledged my grandparents with a quick nod.
“Oh, sorry,” I intervened. “These are my grandparents. Solange and George.”
Professor Minz greeted my grandparents and continued. “I have some good news for you, Sali. Remember the internship at BRIT?”
“Yes, I do,” I said, hiding my excitement.
“Well, you are in! They selected three students from the school, and you are one of them.”
“Seriously? That’s amazing!” I put my hands to my mouth in genuine shock.
In my excitement, I failed to notice that Professor Minz was looking to me for a response. He finally asked, “So, what do you say? Are you still interested?”
“God, yes. Yes, of course I am! This is a dream come true. Thank you!”
“You are welcome. I will send you the details.” He excused himself and left.
I turned to my grandparents, who looked confused about the exchange they had just witnessed. “Yes!” I exclaimed.
“What was that all about?” asked Grandma.
