Imaro: Book I

by Charles R. Saunders

  “Can you show us one of your dances?”

  Neither the tone of the mku’s words, nor the words themselves, bespoke anything other than a simple question. Even so, Imaro sensed he was being put to a subtle test in the eyes of his hosts – a test that would determine whether he would be a true guest of the Mtumwe, or only an interloper.

  Then, perhaps born of the many gourds of ndizi-pombe he had swallowed, an idea came into his mind. He would show the Mtumwe the dance that had been denied him because of the mchawi of Muburi and Chitendu – the dance he had now twice earned the right to perform, having slain Ngatun, and now Mjino the crocodile, a beast that was more than a match for any lion.

  Imaro rose to his feet. If the ndizi-pombe he had consumed had affected him, it didn’t show as he walked toward the open area that was the kijiji’s dance space. The crowd of dancers gave ground as he approached, making way for their guest from afar. Soon enough, the drumming subsided to a low, background mutter as Imaro stood alone in the fire-lit dance space.

  For a long moment, the warrior remained motionless, as though gathering energy into himself. Then, without warning, he sprang so high into the air it seemed he had disappeared. Even the drumming halted as the astonished Mtumwe waited for Imaro to return to the ground. And they wondered how he would manage to land without injuring himself.

  When Imaro descended, however, his feet touched the earth as lightly as those of one of the small forest cats that lived in the shadow of Chui the leopard. Now he crouched in a fighting stance: one arm extended as though he were wielding an arem; the closer to his body, in the position of a shield.

  Then his feet began to move, carrying him forward like a predator stalking prey. Tentatively at first, then with greater confidence, the Mtumwe drummers picked up the rhythm of his movements, and their beats kept up with the warrior as he suddenly began to leap and whirl and thrust with his imaginary spear.

  As Imaro’s motions became swifter and more fierce, the drummers quickened their beat. And Imaro wielded his unseen weapons not only against Ngatun and Mjino, but also against all the other foes he had faced during his short lifetime: N’tu-mwaa, Kanoko, Muburi, Chitendu, the misshapen creatures of the Place of Stones… he slew them all, again and again, as he danced.

  He ended the dance with a final, prodigious leap that again carried him almost out of the sight of the watchers. When he landed, he raised his face to the night sky and uttered the cry of victory and vindication the Ilyassai had denied him until it was too late to matter.

  The drums fell silent as the echoes of Imaro’s wordless shout died away. The Mtumwe were silent as well. They gazed at Imaro as though he truly had fallen from the sky… a being of wonder, but of danger as well.

  Amid the crowd, one person caught Imaro’s eye. It was a woman, of an age with Busa’s father, Najimu. Imaro had noticed her before. From the deference with which she was treated by everyone – including Najimu, for all that he was chieftain – the woman was obviously a person of great importance in the kijiji.

  Amulets carved from wood and bones were looped in myriad strings around her lean body, which was otherwise unclothed. During the entire festival, she had not spoken. And she had not taken her eyes off Imaro.

  Earlier, Imaro had asked Busa who the amulet-clad woman was. Busa told him her name was Ariathu, and that she was the nganga – the shaman and diviner – of the Mtumwe.

  On the surface, Imaro remained impassive upon learning that the Mtumwe harbored a person whose role was similar to that of the oibonok among the Ilyassai. Still, he found that knowledge disquieting, as was Ariathu’s constant attention, and the evaluative glint in her eyes.

  His dance done, Imaro made his way back to his place beside Najimu and Busa. As he sat down, the drumming began again, and the Mtumwe resumed their dancing. However, their movements were more subdued than they had been before. Many of the dancers stole glances at Imaro – glances that were a combination of curiosity… and fear.

  Leaning over to Imaro, Najimu said, “You have shown us more than just a dance.”

  Imaro did not respond. His eyes searched for Ariathu. And her eyes were still on him…

  CHAPTER SIX

  Imaro woke to sounds that were at once familiar and unfamiliar: the chatter of the Mtumwe as they went about their morning tasks, the yapping of dogs, the clucking of the guinea-fowl the Mtumwe kept in place of cattle; the rhythmic clatter of poles on pestles as the women of the kijiji pounded vegetables into the paste that was the staple of the river-people’s diet.

  When he opened his eyes, the sunlight that filtered through the thatch of the dwelling that had been set aside for him filled his vision. When he rose to his feet, the top of his head nearly touched the roof of the building.

  Memories of the night before dominated his mind.

  Thus, Imaro was not surprised to see Ariathu waiting for him when he emerged from the dwelling. With her were Najimu, Busa and Msuli. All four Mtumwe bore solemn expressions on their faces.

  In her hands, Ariathu carried an object Imaro had not seen the night before. It was a staff made from the wood of the ebony tree. Its surface was covered with carvings of spirits, as well as beasts that could exist only in the imagination. White feathers decorated its tip. The nganga used it as a walking stick – but it could easily be employed as a weapon as well.

  The sounds of the kijiji had abated upon Imaro’s emergence from the thatched dwelling. The people of the tribe gazed quietly at the huge, smooth-skinned form of the stranger from beyond the Kajua.

  Imaro waited for one of the others to speak. It was Ariathu who broke the short silence.

  “Man-from-afar, there is another among us who must greet you,” she said in a low, almost masculine voice.

  She turned and walked away then, not bothering to look back to see whether Imaro was following her. Her amulets rattled in rhythm with her stride as she walked. After a moment’s hesitation, Imaro did, indeed, follow, with the other two men falling into step beside him.

  No one spoke as the nganga led the way through the kijiji. The Mtumwe gazed at Imaro as he passed, but he could read nothing in their eyes. Imaro and the others followed Ariathu through a tangle of pathways between dwellings. The warrior noticed that the kijiji was far more extensive than it had appeared to be from the vantage of the riverbank. Finally, they stopped in front of a structure that was different from any other in the village.

  It was smaller than the typical Mtumwe dwelling, and was open-sided, with its poles bent to form a thatch-covered arch at the top. But the structure was not what caught Imaro’s attention. As the nganga drew him and the others closer, he blinked in the glare of sunlight reflected from the object the structure sheltered.

  The occupant of the structure was an effigy, human in shape, but with un-human proportions. Its torso was long and tubular; its limbs stubby; its head large, with grotesquely exaggerated features. Imaro could not discern the substance from which the effigy was made, for its entire surface with bright spikes of gold that resembled the spiny hairs of a hedgehog. This was Imaro’s first sight of the precious metal that incited avarice in the lands beyond both the Tamburure and the Kajua. To him, it looked like iron of a strange color.

  Although the effigy was slightly more than half Imaro’s height, it stood on a wooden pedestal raised its head to a level with that of the warrior. A frieze of unfamiliar designs was incised deep in the pedestal’s surface. Imaro looked directly into the face of the sculpture. The only part of it not pierced by the golden spikes was its eyes – blank, empty sockets that nonetheless seemed to stare back at Imaro.

  As he continued to gaze into the large, round holes that were the effigy’s eyes, Imaro began to experience a sensation similar to the one he had felt when he had been drawn against his will to the Place of Stones.

  Is this mchawi? he thought in sudden unease. Just as he tore his gaze away from the darkness that beckoned in the effigy’s eyes, Ariathu spoke.

  “Man-from-afar, this is
the Afua,” she said. “It was here when the Mtumwe first came to this place, and it will be here after we are gone. Since we have been here, the Afua has brought us good fortune. Our fish nets are always filled. Our crops never fail. No enemy has ever attacked us.”

  She looked at Imaro again, in the same intense manner that had marked her observation of him during the festival of the night before.

  “And it brought you, man-from-afar, to save Busa and Msuli from the jaws of Mjino. The Afua welcomes you. The Mtumwe welcome you. I welcome you.”

  Imaro forced himself to look away from the Afua, and turn to the nganga. No longer did she look at him appraisingly. He could still see a glint of curiosity in her eyes. But the skepticism was gone.

  Imaro nodded once in acknowledgment of Ariathu’s words. He was relieved when she led him and the others away from the Afua, and he resisted the temptation to look back at the gold-spiked effigy, even though he could sense the continued stare of its empty eye-sockets. Uncomfortably, he wondered what would have happened if the Afua had not “welcomed” him…

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Imaro crouched behind a screen of foliage, spear-shaft gripped tightly in one hand. His friends, Msuli and Busa, were there as well, although they were positioned out of his line of sight. Three other Mtumwe men hid nearby. All were involved in a hunt for the bongo, an elusive forest antelope valued for its hide, which was cinnamon-colored with delicate white stripes. Najimu had ordered the hunt because such a hide was needed for a complicated bargain with an upriver tribe.

  A bongo hunt required much patience. But that was a quality Imaro was beginning to lose.

  For two cycles of the moon, he had lived among the Mtumwe. During that time, he had learned a great deal about his hosts, the river and the woodland. No longer did he feel imprisoned by the gigantic trees that surrounded him. And the sounds of the forest were no longer alien to his ears. His kufahuma, the sense that attuned him to his surroundings, had been honed in the Tamburure. Now, it was beginning to adapt to his new environment. But his woodcraft remained rudimentary compared to that of the Mtumwe.

  And about the Mtumwe, he had much still to learn. His adjustment to the kijiji and its people was proving to be more problematic than learning the ways of the woodland. His proficiency in the language of the river people had improved, but conforming to their culture was much more difficult, for their customs were those of farmers and fishermen, not the herders and warriors among whom Imaro had lived for most of his life.

  It had not taken Imaro long to realize that the Ilyassai would have had felt only contempt for the Mtumwe and the other tribes of the Damba Bolong – people without cattle, and therefore, without wealth; people who did not make war on their neighbors, and therefore were without courage. They would have wondered how such a people could have survived.

  But had the Ilyassai not also disdained Imaro? And had Imaro not rejected them in the end?

  Imaro shifted his position in the brush and, to his satisfaction, made no noise in doing so. He scanned the lush foliage for even the slightest sign of a bongo. But he saw nothing. And in truth, the hunt was not foremost on his mind. Even if it proved unsuccessful, Imaro was glad that Busa had suggested it, for it provided him a reason not to be in the kijiji.

  His thoughts drifted to the women of the Mtumwe, with the decorative scarifications on their skin, and the endless variety of spikes and braids into which they sculpted their hair… hair that would have been absent from their heads, had they been living on the Tamburure.

  More than a few of the Mtumwe women had cast gazes of admiration – and longing – in Imaro’s direction, even though, or perhaps, because, he was unlike any man they had seen before. And a familiar stir awakened within him as he looked at them in turn, for all that they would have seemed as out of place among the Ilyassai as a fish from the Damba Bolong on land.

  But those stirrings were always circumscribed by an image that interposed itself like a barrier – the image of Keteke, and the Place of Stones.

  A slight sound broke Imaro’s reverie. He could not even be certain he had heard anything. But his kufahuma had stirred, and it told him the noise had not been made by a bongo, nor by any of his fellow hunters.

  Imaro’s muscles tensed, and his grip on his spear tightened as he listened for a repetition of the sound. Had any of the others heard it? He could not see them. If he called out to them, the Kajua would explode with the cries of birds, monkeys, and ground-dwellers, and if a bongo was indeed nearby, it would quickly disappear, and that would be the end of the hunt.

  Now, though, his kufahuma was growing in urgency, and he could not discount the warning it was giving. The meat and hide of the bongo were no longer important; his sense of danger had not flared this intensely since his encounters with the mchawi of Chitendu and Muburi.

  Rising from his hiding-place, Imaro was about to cry out a warning when he heard a sharp exhalation of breath. Then he felt a sting at the side of his neck. Immediately, his blood turned into fire and his thews slackened. A moment later, he toppled and his spear fell away from his nerveless fingers. Before his consciousness fled, Imaro saw several bushes detach themselves from the rest of the Kajua’s foliage and move, as though they were walking.

  And walking, indeed, they were. For the foliage was actually camouflage, maintained by sorcery that served to conceal the presence of men who were, like Imaro, intruders in the Kajua. Now, more and more of them were appearing, as though conjured into existence by the same sorcery that had kept them hidden.

  Some of the intruders stooped to examine Imaro and his fellow hunters, all of whom had fallen when the tiny darts the strangers had shot from blowpipes pierced their skin. The victims of the poison that had been smeared on the tips of the darts lay as though dead: eyes closed and limbs so slack they seemed boneless. But the slow rise and fall of their chests indicated that life, if not awareness, remained within them, if only tenuously.

  The camouflaged intruders lingered over Imaro longer than they did any of the Mtumwe.

  “Ever seen anyone like this one before?” one of them asked, his bare, brown arms visible as he gestured toward Imaro.

  “No,” another replied. “Bet he’d fetch a good price at the markets, though.”

  “Never mind that,” a third intruder snapped in an authoritative tone.

  The other two backed away deferentially.

  “That’s not what we’re here for, and you know it,” the man with the commanding voice continued. “Now, let’s get moving.”

  The others pulled their arms back into their leafy concealment. Only hints of their bodies and weapons could be seen beneath the elaborate lattices of leaves and vines that covered them. Scores of ambulatory bushes began to move away from the place where the hunters had been brought down. It was as though part of the Kajua itself was on the march.

  Soon, the last of them was gone, and Imaro and the other hunters were left behind, immobile and insensate.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Like a wave of foliage, the invaders made their way through the forest, toward the Mtumwe kijiji. They encountered no other villagers along the way, for Imaro and the others were the only ones who had ventured into the Kajua that day. They moved confidently, fearlessly, as though they believed nothing could harm them.

  Despite their elaborate camouflage, the progress of so many intruders should have generated enough noise that they would have been heard long before they were seen. Yet their movements were almost soundless. And the wildlife of the Kajua fell silent as well at the outlanders’ approach, as though even the insects had been ensorcelled by the magic that suffused their disguises.

  When they reached the outskirts of the kijiji, the intruders waited until they had all gathered beneath the shadows of the huge trees that formed the village’s boundary. The Mtumwe saw nothing; suspected nothing. Then, to their disbelief, the forest that was their home attacked them.

  Like images from a nightmare, moving mounds of foliage descended
upon the Mtumwe. Before any of them could fight or flee, they fell, even though no visible weapon had been directed against any of them. The invaders attacked relentlessly, coursing through the Mtumwe like lions in a herd of antelope.

  The Mtumwe who had not crumpled to the ground, struck down by the unseen force the invaders wielded, swiftly succumbed to a panic that stole their wits. Men, women and children alike howled in sheer terror as they fled in all directions – some into the forest, others to the riverbank and into dugouts that they paddled frantically downriver. The courage of even the bravest of the Mtumwe evaporated in the face of this sudden, unfathomable assault. It was ujuju – deadly, evil magic against which they had no defense.

  The intruders allowed the villagers who had not fallen to escape, for their purpose was neither conquest nor the capture of slaves for the markets of the great cities of the coastal lands. Instead, they ranged impatiently among the dwellings in the kijiji, seemingly certain of what it was they hoped to find.

  Their search ended when they came to the shrine of the Afua. There, they saw not only the gold-spiked statue, but also the only Mtumwe who was willing to remain behind to defy them: Ariathu, the nganga.

  As she faced the intruders, Ariathu held her ebony staff in front of her, its tip pointed straight ahead in a warding stance. The staff did not waver in her grasp. If fear of the ujuju she faced lurked within her, she hid it well.

  Ariathu glared at the intruders a moment longer. Then she thrust her staff forward, as though it were a spear. As the amulets at the tip of the staff rattled, the nganga spoke a single word in a strong voice:

  “Begone!”

  A sharp bark of laughter was the invaders’ only response to Ariathu’s command. Then, with a loud crack, her staff split in two, and the top section fell to the ground. Ariathu’s eyes widened in shock, and her fear finally betrayed her. She opened her mouth to utter a cry of hopelessness. But before any sound could emerge, she felt a slight sting at the base of her throat, and she collapsed, as had all the other Mtumwe who bore the brunt of the invaders’ assault.