Temper

by Nicky Drayden

  “I’ve never seen anything like this, honest,” Chiso says, pulling from my grip. The meat-men carrying our satchels rile, but Chiso settles them with a half shake of eir head.

  “No, no!” Phila says, eyes wide and rabid. “It’s not a K for Kalukenzua House—”

  “K-House!” comes a chorus from every study nook surrounding us.

  “It’s a K for Kasim.” Phila flinches as he finishes pulling off the bandage. A swatch of yellowed skin comes off along with it. “I did it myself. In the mirror.”

  Chiso pushes Phila out of our way. “Sorry about this, Kasim. Please, don’t let this be your first impression of K-House.”

  Kasim and I exchange a heavy look. Judging from the fetor of Phila’s forehead, I’d give him forty-eight hours till he’s on his deathbed, feverish and delirious. I nod.

  “Good seeing you again, Phila,” Kasim says, shaking the poor kid’s hand. The puffiness recedes, and looks a lot less angry. As for the garish, ass-backward tattoo . . . Kasim can heal a lot of things, but he can’t heal stupid.

  Phila’s eyes brighten. “Yes, yes! Good seeing you, too!”

  Just when we start down the hall and think we’re free of that whack-hat, Phila scampers around in front of us and throws a handful of pepper in Kasim’s face.

  “Guys,” Chiso grumbles to eir meat-men. The meat-men drop our duffels and pin Phila to the wall. Chiso’s voice turns cheery, and gets loud enough to cover up the sounds of a futile struggle as ey leads us on.

  Kasim sniffles, eyes tear up. He puts a finger to his nose to hold back a sneeze.

  “Come on,” Chiso says, tugging Kasim out of the peppery cloud, and ushers us up a back stairwell to a short hallway with several large, intimidating doors. “This is it. Some people say it’s so quiet, they can hear their blood pumping through their veins. Watch this. Attention Kalukenzua House!” Chiso shouts at the top of eir lungs. “We have new residents. Come out and greet them!”

  Not a single door stirs. Not a single “K-House” is uttered. Kasim’s smile goes ravenous. He turns to Chiso. “Can I try one out?”

  “Sure thing.” Ey leads us to the quiet room at the end of the hall. Kasim steps inside and shuts the door. From the outside, Chiso and I take turns yelling, stomping our feet, making catcalls. Seconds erode into minutes, and the novelty wears thin. Finally, we fall silent.

  “Sooo . . .” Chiso says, filling the void. “What do you think of K-House so far?”

  “It’s nice. But honestly, I’m just waiting for the ‘minds.’”

  “The minds?”

  “You know. ‘K-House is a great place to live, if you don’t mind having to get up at 5:00 a.m. to catch a warm shower’ or ‘K-House is a great place to live, if you don’t mind having pepper thrown at you . . .’”

  Chiso sighs. “Yeah, I’m sorry you had to see that. As you’ve probably guessed, Phila didn’t get into Gabadamosi on his mental aptitude. But the Holy Scrolls say that when Grace sneezes, everyone around Him is blessed with health and long life. Phila’s an overzealous jock who thinks Kasim is Grace incarnate. Can you imagine?”

  No. No I can’t imagine.

  “Sure, Kasim has talent,” Chiso says, “but honestly he’s lucky to be in Gueye Okahim’s confidence. No way will a sec-head, no offense, rise up higher than a Vice Cardinal. Six-and-one-tempered twins may be rare in the general population, but Kalukenzua House is lousy with them! Grace? Ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous,” I say. I wish my voice sounded as sure as Chiso’s.

  “That’d make you Icy Blue. Ha!”

  “Ha!” I manage. Then “Huh?”

  “Grace and Icy Blue . . . the first tempered twins? Come on, everyone knows that.”

  I nod, but Chiso must see the confusion bleeding into my face.

  “Seriously, what did they teach you at that comfy school? You know, in the beginning, Grace had all seven virtues. Icy Blue had all seven vices. Then together, they made sets of twins from dirt and clay, their touch leaving their virtues and vices upon us . . .”

  “Right,” I say with a laugh. I’ve got charity as a virtue and Kasim has greed as a vice. Close, but not quite. Then the silence goes thick enough that neither one of us has the skill to break it.

  Finally, after twenty minutes, Kasim emerges, sloppy smile spread across the width of his face.

  “I trust the room is satisfactory?” Chiso asks. “You didn’t hear a thing, did you?”

  “It was satisfactory,” Kasim says. “Did you hear me? I sang a verse of ‘True and True.’”

  “Then we’re all lucky these rooms are soundproofed, cousin.” Chiso lays an arm over Kasim’s shoulder. “Because I’ve heard your singing. Here are the keys to your new rooms,” Chiso says, handing each of us a key attached to a leather key ring bearing the branded K. “Let’s get you two settled in, then you can enjoy all of Kalukenzua House’s amenities at your leisure.”

  “Rooms?” I ask pointedly. And there’s the mind: K-House is a great place to live, if you don’t mind being ripped apart from the person you are closest to in the whole world. “We’re not going to room together?”

  “Of course not! We find that putting twins together stifles their development and we prefer to let them forge a way on their own. Putting individuals with similar talents together has proven highly successful. Over the past century and a half, better than eighty percent of Gabadamosi students taken into confidence have come from Kalukenzua House.”

  I shoot Kasim a glare, but he’s still too deep in his stupor to notice. “By talents, I take it you mean virtues?” I ask.

  “Virtues are a part of the consideration process, yes.”

  “A large part?”

  “If you are so interested in the policies of Kalukenzua House, perhaps you should run for office next year,” Chiso says briskly. “Now, if you would, please follow me.”

  “Actually, I’ve got somewhere I need to be,” I say.

  “But your room!” Chiso says to the back of my head.

  “I’ll find it.”

  In the library, I swallow my pride and wave down an acrobrarian passing above. Ey eyes me, nods, then jumps from perch to perch, until ey’s low enough to climb down the remaining shelves as a ladder.

  “Yes,” ey rasps. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for a book on ancient mythologies.”

  Ey cocks eir head.

  “You know. Stories about Grace and Icy Blue before they were Grace and Icy Blue.”

  Eyes narrow. Arms cross. Biceps flex. Suddenly I get the feeling I’m about to be tossed out on my ass. I backpedal over my request . . . mythologies. I’d basically put eir god on the same level as Nlola, the trickster hare. “I meant mythology in a broader sense . . . religious prehistory? Is that a thing?”

  “Up there,” ey whispers, pointing to the rafters with a feisty smirk on eir face. “Follow me.” I hear a grumble, maybe even a cuss, then the acrobrarian is off. Ey thinks ey can lose me in the climb, clearly not one for the faint of heart. Ey underestimates both my desperation and my determination. I find my first foothold on the bottom shelf. I’ve climbed mountains, I tell myself. This should be easy. I go slowly at first, but the acrobrarian is almost a speck now, so I hurry things up. I find my footing on the first perch, an outcropping of polished, ageless wood, three feet wide and a foot and a half deep. My tailbone itches, wanting to sprout the natural counterbalance I could use right now, but I can’t change, not right here with all these people around. I eye the next perch. It’s far, but humanly possible. I bend my knees, then spring forward, catching myself before I tip over the other side. I jump to another perch, then grab onto a crossbeam and swing myself onto the top of a bookshelf. I make the mistake of looking down. Fifteen feet at least, and I still have twice that distance to go. I run along the top, getting the momentum I need to make the jump across the aisle. I whoop as I land, and at this, the eyes of a dozen acrobrarians cut my way.

  “Shhhhh!” they say in unison.

/>   My acrobrarian looks back as well, half annoyed, half impressed that I’ve made it this far. I smile. Three more jumps, and I’m closing in. We’ve caught the attention of spectators below. It is a game, now. One that I intend to win. We scale another tier, and somehow the perches seem thinner and spaced farther apart. The books are dustier up here, and it’s harder to catch a clean breath, but still I follow. I no longer see the acrobrarian, but I’ve made it this far, and my familiar friend, vainglory, sets in. I’m good. Good enough to make this last jump. I take a deep breath, hold it, and launch myself. I clench all over as I realize I’ll come up way short.

  Well, shit.

  I’ve got two choices: eat floor, or fly. I take a breath, and begin to will my bones to dust, about to sprout wings in front of all these people, but before I can ruin everything, a hand stabs through the gap between books and catches mine. I crash face-first into the stacks, decades of dust caked onto my face. I blow it from my lips, and look up to see my acrobrarian. My savior.

  “I got the feeling that you didn’t much like me,” I say.

  “I still don’t. But I don’t want to spend the rest of the evening cleaning your gut splatter from the spines of priceless books either.” Ey pulls me up with an impressive feat of strength. “The section you are looking for is right behind you.”

  Religious Prehistory, the section header says. I turn back to thank the acrobrarian, but ey’s gone. From up here, I can see every corner of the library. I can see the flaws in the stained glass. I can see the subtle highway of hand- and footholds the acrobrarians use to maneuver around. I pull a few books, and leaf through them, legs dangling over the shelf edge while the rest of the world goes on, insignificantly, four stories below.

  The first three books begin with Grace’s creation of man. The story goes the same in all of them, pretty much as Chiso had told it, but then I come across one book that starts before all that. With the birth of Grace and Icy Blue themselves. I read so deeply, I catch myself leaning precariously forward, so eager to get to the next page that I forget where I am. I push myself back onto the bookshelf top, then sit squarely in the middle, cross-legged, and continue to read:

  The Great Nothingness ended with an immense bang that ruptured time and space, as the Original Twins were birthed into existence. Their afterbirth became the stuff stars and planets are made from. For eons, they huddled together as infants, growing, and learning, and expanding the cosmos around them. They were entertained by the light of newly formed suns. Comets became their playthings. As children, they crashed galaxies into one another, taking joy in the destruction, and sending hot bits of matter farther and farther into space.

  As the Original Twins segued into adulthood, these simple games failed to amuse them, and they found delight in each other’s flesh. It was pure, and right, and it was good. Stars were birthed and destroyed in the span of their kisses, and the stars’ light paled in comparison to that cast by the depths of their love. They were each other’s everything.

  But what was pure and right and good began to turn in on itself as one twin had the first twinge of Doubt. Vice and Virtue were born in this moment. But the Original Twins were still young, still foolish, and continued their ways, and their love became so dense that it distorted the very light around them. One twin tried to warn the other of the strange happenings, but the concerns were smoothed over by the forked tongue of Duplicity. In the wake of their Lechery, they left a deep void that sucked in stars and destroyed everything that ventured too near.

  This new phenomenon rekindled their interest in the cosmos around them. They began to build with purpose. They cracked open stars and used the matter within as their pigments, laying their mark upon the universe in intricately painted nebulas, so bright and vibrant. There was a competition to build the biggest, the most impressive, the most exquisite, and from that sprung Vainglory. Envy ran close behind it. And Greed followed suit.

  They hoarded and flaunted galaxies, each one bigger than the next, until one twin had an idea to go small. Microscopic. He used the dust and clay from a barren planet to mold a tiny creature in his likeness, and with several mighty strokes to his godhood, wished the seeds of life into it. He placed it on the planet, and surrounded it with plants to eat and streams to drink from. And suddenly the Original Twins were no longer alone.

  The twin spent much of his time tending to his new creature and improving upon its surroundings. He made it animals to hunt for meat and pelts so it could feed and clothe itself. He talked with it regularly, of the Secrets of Life and of the Nature of Things, but the creature’s mind was far too fragile to comprehend. The creature grew lonely and lethargic.

  The twin complained to his brother about this, the first words they had spoken to each other in the eons since his new obsession. The brother had also learned of loneliness during the time they’d spent apart. He missed his brother as if a part of his own body had gone missing.

  He had a solution to the problem, though. When he thought his twin not to be looking, he smashed the creature beneath his thumb. His brother, however, heard the prayers called out by the scared creature right before death, and came, too late, to its aid.

  “What have you done?” the brother said, his voice boiled over with his newborn Temper. His fists balled, he punched down on the planet so hard, a giant piece flew free, and the planet’s moon was born.

  “I know what this creature feels,” the other brother said. “It is lonely. As I have been lonely without you.” As he talked, he added in his own equal amount of planet dust and wishing to the mash, and molded two creatures—one as him and one as his twin.

  “No one deserves the pain of coming into this world alone,” he said to his brother.

  They agreed upon this.

  And so it was. More creatures were brought to life, two by two by two.

  I close the book, my face tight with revulsion. Gods and their flaming incest, and again with the body fluids, wishing semen into dirt and clay to create life on a whim! I smack away the sour taste in my mouth, and flip to the last page, wondering who in their right mind would write such incestuous drivel.

  Professor Mane Mbanefo serves as the Chancellor of Arcane Studies at Kadigbo University, and is a leading researcher in the field of prehistoric religion. He is most known for his controversial stances, and eye-opening interpretations.

  A portrait of an aged man, decades past his prime, sits above the text. He looks dignified—glasses, neatly trimmed beard, with a haughty little smirk stretched across his face. I slide the book back into its spot, then wipe my hands on my pants, trying to make the icky feeling beneath my skin subside. I glance down at the four-story drop below me, making note of the suitable hand- and footholds, and jump.

  I prowl the campus deep into the night, eyes wide open. The statues of Grace and Icy Blue seem different to me somehow. I question everything. The statue of them in the quad, the one in blue-and-red glass where they are wrestling—now it seems equally likely that they’re caught in the throes of passion, sculpted muscles tensed, faces contorted in sweet agony. Icy Blue’s hand is at Grace’s neck, but does he like it?

  I look away, embarrassed at my thoughts. I can’t stay out here. The call of the night is too tempting, but I don’t want to go back to my new room, either. My claws flex at the sound of footsteps in the distance. My heightened sense of smell clicks in, and I catch delicate notes of vanilla lavender perfume on a young girl’s wrists, the chalky burn of her pressed hair, and the heavy starch in her recently ironed ciki. She’s the prim and proper sort. She’s also the vulnerable and alone sort.

  Her heartbeat quickens as she notices me. I can hold back my fangs between closed lips, and I can hold my claws behind my back, but I cannot hold back my hungry stare. She hastens her step, which ignites the predator within me. The whole of my body feels as if it’s made from a thousand mouths, each keen for flesh, and it takes all my will not to spring upon her and tear a hole in her throat.

  I have to go back to
the dorm.

  The halls are silent, aside from helpful night staff and a few groggy students lingering about, and I catch sight of all-too-familiar afro-puffs—Sesay, tucked in a study nook with her binder wide open and her nose buried in an old and dusty tome. I grumble, then quickly shuffle through the common area, duck into the hallway, searching for my room. Quietly, I turn the key in the lock and open the door. The lights are low, but on. Chimwe peeks over the edge of eir textbook, then continues reading in bed. I knew ey would end up being my roommate, but there was some part of me that hoped beyond hope that it would be someone else. Anyone else.

  “You missed curfew,” Chimwe says. “You earned our wing three demerits.”

  I shrug eir words off, briefly allowing myself a smug thought about how many demerits I would have gotten for killing that girl.

  “This isn’t like Soyinka House,” ey scolds me. “You can’t come and go whenever you please. This is the High House of Gabadamosi.”

  “No—Chiso and Kasim are in the High House of Gabadamosi. We’re along for the ride.”

  Chimwe slams eir book closed. “Yeah, well I need this ride, because I’m for sure not going to end up living in Chiso’s basement. I’m not wasting this chance like Uncle Pabio did.”

  “There are worse people to be like,” I snap, coming to Uncle Pabio’s defense. People in your own family, I want to add, but the way Chimwe looks at me, I can see the exposed nerve. I won’t be cruel and pluck it, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to play nice. “Besides, what do you have to worry about? You’ll do a few years at university, then end up taking over your dad’s business.”

  “Chiso’s got eir life laid out in front of em. Ey’ll take over our father’s business, even though I’ve got the aptitude to run it with both my eyes closed. I’ve read ahead to university level in economics, accounting, and finance. But then again, I’ve had to. I need to be twice as good as my sib to earn half the respect. Maybe I’ll luck out, and end up with a solid career in midmanagement.”