by Tim Kindberg
“I have business to attend to. You will find my son.” He walked away. Two men appeared from nowhere to lead Chemchi back to her cell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AS SHE WALKED between her guards, Chemchi looked them up and down. She thought about the scorpion girl in the box. Morchid knew she’d seen her, when he made his threat. It didn’t matter how hard she had tried not to show it. Her face must have confirmed what he had wanted to know: that she could see what others cannot see. What is in front of our eyes, but nonetheless hidden.
She had kept hold of the pencil-torch he had given her. When she had seen the shadow carpet, it was because it had wanted to be found, according to Morchid. And yet it had also shrunk back from her beam, as though it was afraid of her power to see behind the shadows it was woven from.
“Let me have a look at you,” she said to the men and shone the faint beam up and down them one by one. It was a puny beam out in the lamplit streets. You could hardly see where its light fell.
“What are you doing, put that away!” one of them said, his face contorted with hostility.
She switched it off.
“I needn’t have bothered,” she said. “You are what you seem to be. There’s nothing more to you than meets the eye. You’re brutes.”
The men stopped and faced her. “What were you trying to do — are you some kind of witch?” said one of them. “If Morchid didn’t want you safe from harm, why I’d —”
Chemchi kicked him where it really hurts, as hard as she could. She had chosen her moment carefully, as a white van passed nearby, probably carrying more slaves. She ran across its path. With a screech of brakes, it came to a sudden halt beside the men as she cleared the front of it. She ran down a narrow alley that she knew soon forked round a bend, and took the left path. She remembered a dangerous exploit as a young girl, when she had climbed onto the roof through a narrow gap in the netting. This she now repeated, although she was much bigger now. There was a tense moment as she squeezed through the gap she had easily cleared as a little girl, her legs kicking for a foothold. Eventually she felt a ledge and pushed. The starry night met her as she emerged above and quickly scrambled to where she could not be seen from below. Panting, she lay against some masonry to get her breath.
There was no reason to trust Morchid. But if she were to find his son, and could prove it without letting him know where he was, then she could bargain. He’d have to stop his slavery, she’d tell him, if he wanted to be reunited with his baby. And he’d have to give her a pointer to her mother. What if she were bound up with him in some way through her ‘conscious light’ — if it were his conscious light, too? The thought made her cringe. And why had he put the baby down there, and why did he want him back now? Supposing he meant the baby harm. Well, she wasn’t necessarily going to hand the baby over. She was only going to find him.
She inched her way across the rooftops of the souks. The sky was moonless. The milky way stretched across it, a spill of stars.
From somewhere below, a sweet scent of cinnamon rose. This was where she had mostly grown up. It was familiar and yet what did she know of it, really — ensconced in the riad, watching her films? Suddenly it had become a place of great danger. Morchid and his men would know all the nooks and crannies she knew. But what about the magical places? The boxes in Morchid’s cabinet? The chamber with the carpet?
The shadow carpet was intoxicating. The chamber beckoned to her, its candle-lit scene of disused furniture and the crowd of shadows on the carpet like a dream. What did she have to lose by going down there? Morchid wanted her to go through so she wouldn’t be stopped, even though she had escaped. Obviously there was a way back, for she and Akimbe had witnessed someone de-shadowing, apparently unaided, as Camel-breath had watched. Morchid knew this, too, for otherwise there was no sense in asking her to look there.
And so she found herself pushing through the velvet drape in the dead of night. As far as she knew, she was the only one apart from Akimbe who knew of that entrance, and she could creep back out again in case anyone was waiting. Her heart thumped as she arrived at the chamber, pressed against a wall. The carpet lay in the light from the candles that never seemed to burn down. The hulks of furniture cast their shadows. She stopped and listened but there was complete silence.
She looked for Camel-breath’s shadow but it was gone. Did that mean that he had emerged again? No trace was left, either, of the man they had witnessed de-shadowing.
She walked around the furniture, shining her pencil torch everywhere and opening and closing the cupboard doors as quietly as she could, but found nothing more. She was just wasting time, gathering courage.
At last she walked onto the carpet and switched off her torch. Glinting threads appeared and reached at her feet. Then more, and more. She stepped back off it.
Crouched on all fours beside it, she looked closer, and found herself staring at her own candle-shadows projected onto it. They were not blank like a normal shadow but filled with slowly swirling splotches of light, just the way the curtains appeared from this side.
A voice spoke from deep in the shadow lights. It was her voice, but beyond herself.
“Pass, and return. Pass, and return. Return from this place. From this place.”
She laid a forearm on the carpet, which took it gently, and let her pull it back. It felt as she imagined it would feel to immerse her arm in the deepest, warmest ocean, and she wondered what lived beneath.
She moved onto the carpet, lay on the grateful threads, and sank below. It felt merciful, and she felt grateful in return. In the chamber, the shadow she left behind was perfect black. The network of glinting threads was cut off there where it lay, but almost at once the carpet began to sew itself around the new shadow like a vine of gold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WHEREVER CHEMCHI WAS, Akimbe had also been — and survived without harm, as far as he knew. But where exactly had he been in the under-carpet world? He remembered a desert. Was it like landing on Earth from another planet, visiting a single person in a tent in the middle of nowhere, and reporting back that people on Earth were friendly and there were no dangers to speak of?
His head was turning to mush with so many more questions than answers.
As he walked on the bustling Marrakech streets, packed with tourists and locals and all manner and means of transporting goods around — bicycles, donkeys, mopeds and bags — Akimbe saw Ali. He was perched on a stool near the barely noticeable alley that led to the riad, watching the world go by.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Akimbe stood close and tried not to embarrass them both by letting his anger show. “I’ve found what has happened to Chemchi. But do you even care?”
Ali wouldn’t look at him but continued to watch the passers-by, saluting those he knew. And he knew many.
“I’ve talked to Morchid’s people,” Ali said. “They say she’s gone on an errand for him. That it was urgent and she couldn’t let us know. They say not to worry.”
“Not to worry?! I’ve seen her. She’s a shadow, like I was.”
“A shadow? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You two never really told me what happened in there, remember? Morchid’s people wouldn’t lie to me, Ali of the souks. You’re mistaken.”
“I’ve seen her with my own eyes.”
“Her? You said a shadow. How many people can cast a given shadow.”
An absence, and yet a presence. Somehow Akimbe knew it was her by the shape alone — and Camel-breath had confirmed it, hadn’t he? He hated referring to the mouthings of such a vile creature.
He shook his head. “Very well, Ali, you just stay here on your stool and let the world walk past you. You must excuse me, I’m off to find Chemchi and my family.”
“Wait a minute.” But Akimbe turned away and walked off.
He showed the address Camel-breath had given him to a passer-by. The man pointed, gestured, span around, explained again, pointed again, until Akimb
e could remember nothing more than the first two turnings, and set off.
He lost count of the false turns he made. The city confused him, to be sure. Equally, he wondered whether some of the people who ‘helped’ him were actually making him lost, although he couldn’t understand why they would do that.
Eventually he came before double doors about twice his height, painted a shabby red. The house blended into those around it. Its roof high above was barely visible in the narrow street. No one else was around.
There was no answer to his knocks. He was about to leave when he heard the sound of a moped approaching. He waited while the spit and zing turned corners barely wide enough for one person, went faster to a whine on straight stretches, and twisted round a corner again.
Finally a figure approached, wearing goggles. A scarf covered his nose and mouth. He was too big, and dressed too thrillingly, for such a puny machine.
But that was of far less significance to Akimbe than what he noticed most of all about this rider: the frizz of tight curly black hair was much longer but could have been Akimbe’s own, or at any rate one of his people’s.
The moped stopped about five metres away. Was this the rider from the souks? Akimbe readied himself to dart to the side. He listened to the rise and fall of the engine pitch as the rider tweaked the throttle repeatedly as though in preparation to move towards him. The doorways were almost flush with the walls. There were no recesses to protect him.
Little of the face was visible to judge the rider’s intentions. His posture gave no clue either. He sat about as straight as someone of his large frame could manage on the moped.
“Well, are you going to drive at me or aren’t you?” Akimbe shouted, holding out his hands in invitation for the rider to do his worst. When he didn’t respond, Akimbe took a few steps towards him. The rider pushed himself back with his feet. Encouraged, Akimbe strode forward, but to one side in so far as he could, to show that he meant no harm. The rider now seemed more scared of him than the other way around. He dragged his machine to the side as Akimbe passed.
“No, wait! Come!” The youth pulled down his scarf and called back to him. Then he drove the moped onwards and stopped at the double doors where Akimbe had knocked. The youth, in his late teens, dismounted and unlocked the doors.
“Come! Come inside. You were waiting for me, weren’t you?” He beckoned. Akimbe felt he had nothing to lose.
Inside, the house was similar to Ali’s riad, with a table in an atrium reaching up three storeys to the blue enamel sky. As always, something nearby was being cooked, something sweet. The sun swept down but there was plenty of welcome shade. The youth propped his moped in the hallway and continued through, raising his goggles onto his mass of hair and pulling the scarf below his chin. A pale blue robe hung off his thin frame. His nut-brown skin was lighter than Akimbe’s, but black still. There were no ritual marks on his face, unlike Akimbe. He was from a different part of Africa. Or from somewhere else altogether.
“Please, sit,” the youth said.
“Look,” said Akimbe. He realised he didn’t have a name for Camel-breath “… a man who … a man gave me this address and said — well, I suppose he implied — that I could get help to find Chemchi and — you don’t know who that is, do you? — and my parents and my sister. But I don’t trust him so I don’t know what I’m doing here or who you are. Just because you have a key to this address doesn’t mean you’re who I came to see. Can I speak to whoever’s in charge here?” Akimbe had to draw a breath.
The young man had an air of grace and fragility, standing with his arms by his sides while he listened to Akimbe’s stumblings. He had an unearthly air, which was increased by the sight of the great ridiculous goggles squashing his huge sphere of hair. Like someone from the air who had landed, out of kilter, into a strange world, Akimbe thought: landed into a strange world, just like me. Except when I emerged, upwards, from the carpet I felt squashed, very small, not myself. Whoever this is, he is lost in himself.
“Why, no one is in charge here. Unless I am in charge, by virtue of living here alone.”
“Do you know the man who sent me here?”
“As far as I am aware, no one knows I live here.”
“But evidently someone does.” The young man shifted, almost invisibly, in reaction to Akimbe’s logic.
“I am Deobia, by the way.” He held out a hand on the end of a thin arm.
“Pleased to meet you. I am Akimbe, son of Shango. “
“I can help you,” the youth said.
“How do you know you can help me? I’ve told you that I’ve lost some people, nothing more. You really know nothing about it.”
“But I know all about the lost, the missing, the trapped in Marrakech,” he said.
“You can’t know all about the lost and missing, otherwise they wouldn’t be either of those things, would they? But go on.” Akimbe thought: now I sound like Chemchi. All logical.
“But I do. I work for the traffickers.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“YOU WHAT?” AKIMBE spat the words at him.
“I know where the slaves and the slaves-to-be are, where they’ve come from, where they’re going to, who is bringing them, who is taking and using them.”
“I can’t believe you work for those pigs. Are you their slave?”
“Yes and no. I’m useful to them doing what I do, but it requires freedom for me to operate on their behalf.”
“And what is your ‘operation’ exactly?”
“Intelligence, mainly. The enslavers want to know as much as they can about where the slaves come from, and get the most profit out of selling them on. I speak many languages. Ones I don’t know I pick up fast. Also, unlike just about anyone else, I can read and write. I talk to buyers. I talk to traders — the traffickers, that is. I talk to the ‘goods’, the ‘cargo’, who become farm-hands, servants, cooks, cleaners. And some used for sex, even children, by dirty old men.”
Akimbe couldn’t believe his ears. The young man was using words as though they had no real meaning. “I’m still waiting to hear how you justify it.” Akimbe said. “You’re betraying all of us, me included. As if you cared.”
“These people are powerful. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else like me. And in the meantime maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for. I don’t know where I come from, you see. It’s just a blank. I meet so many of them, from all parts and tribes and peoples, every day. Bit by bit, I learn about them and what becomes of them. And the routes the traffickers take in and out of Marrakech. I listen on the grapevine. I become more and more trusted. One day, perhaps I’ll find —”
“What were you doing searching around the souks? It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Even in my spare time I look for the unusual.”
“Why are you telling me all of this? You don’t know me.”
“You know the girl. I’ve seen you together. And I was there when she saw Morchid.”
“Chemchi. What did you see?”
“She was with Morchid. I didn’t see exactly what became of her but it was obviously a trap. These are dangerous people. Perhaps more than you realise. And clever, very clever. At least, Morchid can outwit anyone around him. I saw you looking for her. I know of the place, the hidden place in the Criée Berbère. I saw your feet disappear.”
“And what do you know about a carpet — does your ‘intelligence’ include that?”
“What kind of carpet do you mean?”
“A shadow carpet.”
Deobia paused. “I have seen such a carpet.”
“And did you emerge from such a carpet?”
Deobia paled, his brown skin washing out. He put a hand on the table to steady himself, trying to make it look casual, then forced a smile.
Akimbe said: “Why should I trust you?” And yet he did, instinctively: he was telling this young man everything. He looked at the young man with his goggles and the hair escaping from his head and — he couldn’t quite put
his finger on it — something lost inside this crash-landed but cerebral youth. He’s from another planet, Akimbe thought: a planet of brainy people who could melt into air whenever they wanted. Brainy, but with no sense. He knows but he doesn’t see.
“She’s gone in,” Akimbe said. “I’ve seen her shadow.”
“Her shadow…” Deobia’s eyes rapidly searched the air in front of him, as though thinking through all the possible consequences of what he had just heard. “We can go through the carpet, after her.”
“Do you even know what I’m talking about? We don’t know how to get out again. If I knew that, I’d get Chemchi out. She knows how. She de-shadowed me. By shining a light. This one.” Akimbe showed Deobia the battered torch he’d found near Morchid’s stall.
“How could a light help?”
“It … reveals things. I’ve seen her do it, with this ordinary torch. But I’ve tried and it doesn’t work for me.”
“And what do you remember about inside?”
“Fragments, pieces that don’t make sense. Like a dream. Like I’d been in there a long time. A hundred years, Chemchi says.” Longer than his family could have survived. No. She must be wrong. He must be just confused. Everything seems strange, that’s all, after whatever happened in the under-carpet world.
Deobia seemed not to notice the strangeness of the things he said, seemed to accept them. Just as he apparently accepted his role with the traffickers, as though it was just another job. He said, “Tell me about the fragments. Was anyone else there?” His searching look was deepening.
“I remember a house alone in a desert, and a man living there; with a kind face.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like no one else I’ve seen. He always carried a worried look — perhaps more than that, a little unbalanced. But he was my teacher. Or my master. Or something.”
“What did he tell you?”
“I don’t really remember but I think he was trying to prepare me for something. To protect me, maybe.”
“Try to remember. We need to know what we are getting ourselves into.”
