The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021)

by Oghenechovwe Ekpeki

  A splash sounded behind us, and we turned as one toward the central pool at the end of the hall. One acolyte thought to usher me forward, but now I did not want to move. Their grip was tight on my shoulder at one of the places where the god had pierced me yesterday, but now the site hurt like a wound.

  A dark hand gripped the stone edge of the pool, then another. A black-clad figure hauled themselves from the depths. The Temple Mother. Long braids swung heavy with water. Lengths of fabric hung stiff and trailed behind her. Skin, hair, clothes dripping water, leaving a trail of darkened stone in her wake.

  She appraised me with eyes the colour of the lost clean ocean. I had never seen someone like us with eyes like hers. Some of the rare pale merchants had blue eyes, but none as blue as hers. None as blue as oceans. So struck by her, I almost forgot the desiccated arm in my grip.

  Until she said, “I’ve never known a child to kill a god.”

  * * *

  The Temple Mother took me to a small inner room and asked me to recount all that had happened. She’d taken the arm from me and cradled it like a child.

  I could not tell if she was angry or not. Two candles on the table, lone sources of light, cast shadows across her dark face. She sat like a statue and did not blink. She’d not bothered to change her soaked robes, did not even seem to notice that they were wet.

  The temple air still felt too cold. I struggled to hold her gaze.

  “You refused your god its request?”

  “I didn’t— I didn’t refuse, I just . . .”

  “You told them you would not go to the ocean.”

  I looked down to my lap. “I told them I wouldn’t leave my parent alone.”

  “That is refusal. You are not careful with your words.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. Clenched my hands in my lap. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve never seen this. I’ve never known someone to refuse a first request. I’ve also never known a god to ask something so dangerous of a child. Ocean must have thought highly of you, but the force of your denial ruined this godform. I will not entrust you with another.”

  The candle flames flickered, smoked, steadied.

  Without the god years, I would never get the ink of passage. I would never be considered an adult. No one would take me as an apprentice to learn their trade, and I would never be able to support Cheypa as I had planned. One decree from the Temple Mother and my future fell to dust.

  “I will not entrust you with another,” she repeated, “but you must restore this one. Losing godforms weakens an already frail Ocean.”

  “How do I heal them?” I asked. Eager, mouth dry.

  “When Ocean was young, they were strengthened by sacrifice that melded the human and the divine. They are strengthened by expressions of love and beauty.” The Temple Mother returned the dried arm to me. “You have altered the course of your journey so that I cannot predict its path. Now you must interpret these things. Ask Ocean for guidance.”

  I did not look at the arm. “But how can I ask if my god is . . . gone?”

  “Ask Ocean for guidance. Not the smaller consciousness of the godform.”

  “I thought you were the only one who could talk directly to Ocean.”

  “I think Ocean will be looking to hear from you now.”

  The Temple Mother guided me to the meditation pool she’d emerged from only an hour before. Her cold hand on my back, she gestured to the pool. “Rest until you have answers.”

  I nodded, though questions spun my thoughts. She took the arm again. I sat at the edge of the shining pool. Swung my legs over and into the water. Let go and sank. The bubbles of my exhale tickled my face as I kicked to the pool floor. I swam a slow, lazy circle around the perimeter. I didn’t need to breathe.

  The shadow of the Temple Mother withdrew from the edge of the pool, and I was alone.

  When Ocean spoke, they spoke in image. An ornate glass-woven vessel. A heart beating outside its body. The grey arm. Together in the saltwater of the vessel.

  * * *

  Cheypa sat upright on their cot when I returned. Their pouf of hair was flattened on one side. “Where is your god? Why are you soaked?”

  “I was at the temple.”

  “That answers neither of my questions. And you left the light on while you were gone! Do you know what that will cost us?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You will explain. Explain everything.”

  “I lost my god.”

  Cheypa put their hand to their chest and stood.

  “I lost my god and I talked to the Temple Mother and then I talked to Ocean and now I have to make a sacrifice.”

  Cheypa shook their head and didn’t stop.

  “I can restore the god I lost.”

  “Ocean has not asked for a sacrifice in decades! And you are a child. What can you offer?”

  The vision Ocean had given was clear. I told Cheypa. I said I didn’t think it would hurt. I felt calm about the image of the heart.

  “I will talk to the Temple Mother,” said Cheypa, moving for the door.

  “I want to try.”

  “You didn’t want to go to the ocean, but you will take your heart out? I will surely lose you now.” They returned to their cot. “Why does Ocean demand death?”

  “It’s not death. It’s something else.” I tried to find the right words for how the images had felt, but my mind fed me images of water arcing, leaping for the sky. I couldn’t translate them, so I said again, “I want to try.”

  * * *

  Not even legends existed about anyone putting their heart in a glass jar of saltwater. When I went to the glass-weavers’ corridor in the market, none understood my request. “I need a jar that will hold my heart,” I told them. Some showed me elaborate vases. The most practical among them offered me squat jars meant for storing food for many seasons. The last glass-weaver I found was at the end of the lane, her cart shadowed by a tall building.

  Her glass creations spiralled like windstorms and surged up from their bases in waves of colour. They were not containers or jewellery or windowpanes as the others had.

  “What are they for?” I asked, reaching out and letting my hand hover near a spike of translucent green.

  The woman’s arm bangles clinked as she moved. She was younger than my parent but not a child. She wore the face ink of an adult who had only recently returned their god to the temple.

  “Joy,” she said.

  “I mean, what do you use them for?”

  She smiled and stepped around her cart so that the array of coloured glasses no longer fractioned and magnified her face. “Are you here for a gift, perhaps?” But then she stopped. “You’re the child from the street yesterday!”

  I took a step back.

  “No, no, don’t leave. Are you okay?”

  “I need to buy a jar.”

  “Did you come to the market with a parent?”

  “My parent is too sick for the market.” I glanced back at her wares. “Will you help me? I need something like a jar. Something that can shut. But also, it should be pretty.”

  She disappeared behind her wares again, carefully setting aside crates and wrapping and unwrapping the scarves she used to cushion each piece. She came back with a cool sphere and dropped it in my hand. Inside the glass, an orange seashell, forever suspended. I could almost close my hand around it.

  I marvelled at the trinket, turning the glass in the light, peeking inside the sloping fissure in the shell as if something might still live there.

  “Now for this jar? I don’t have anything like that, but I could make it.”

  “I don’t have much money, but I could work for you to pay for the piece. If that would be okay.”

  She looked me over again. “You seem young. Around the age you would receive your god.”

  I hesitated. “I did. Two days ago.”

  “Where is your ink? Where is your octopoda?”

  “I made a mistake. Now I need something beautiful t
o make it up to Ocean.”

  “To provide for Ocean is payment enough. If you give me three days, I will craft for you a work of art.”

  * * *

  “I will not go with you to the temple this time,” Cheypa said on the morning of the ritual. They kept their gaze on their beadwork. “I can’t see you through this. I can’t see you do this.”

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t know why the Temple Mother is allowing this. It’s not tradition.” They yanked at the thread and fed another clear bead along the line. “The lakesiders already think we’re—” An untied portion slipped and scattered beads across the floor. Cheypa clapped their hands into their lap and huffed. I picked up the fallen beads and poured them into the cup of Cheypa’s waiting hands. Their lips trembled. They squeezed their eyes shut.

  “I’ll be okay. I’ll come back. I promise.”

  Cheypa put their beadwork aside. I left with the glass-weaver’s jar safely cushioned in my pack.

  The entire way to the temple, I kept my hands over my heart.

  A sensation like rising, like swimming up, like being buoyed by water, filled my chest. And there was my heart, beating, beating, beating with each step. Here was Ocean. Visions rose like bubbles to the water’s surface, a mosaic of past and—future? A city by a clear ocean. I did not know if this was Old Limsa or Limsa to-be.

  The Temple Mother stood at the doors when I arrived. I’d never seen her outside. She did not sweat, only glowed in the sun. She did not shield her eyes with goggles, didn’t blink, didn’t squint. Her robes pooled around her feet in the dust, and her braids, as before, dripped water.

  Locals bowed to her. Travellers stared. She acknowledged none of them.

  I took her hand when she offered it, and we entered the cool dark of the temple. She told me I had nothing to fear, removed a bundle of cloth from her robes, and unrolled it at the edge of the pool, revealing three knives of different shapes and sizes. I went for the jar in my pack in order to avoid looking at them and held out the swirl of glass to her. She admired how its curves caught the candlelight; the blue of her eyes seemed even brighter when I saw them through the glass.

  “The water will accept you now,” she said.

  * * *

  I woke in the temple’s central pool. My chest was light but not pained, and there was no evidence of incision. Cool water lapped my skin. The Temple Mother loomed statuesque at the edge of the pool. Between her hands, the glass-weaver’s jar—and inside that, my still-beating heart. I sensed the black octopoda, restored, on her shoulder before it moved its arms, climbing down to wrap itself around the jar. Depths, it whispered to my heart, conveying Ocean’s new name for me. I grasped the edge of the pool as I’d seen the Temple Mother do, and the water seemed to push me up, to lend me its strength. I splashed out onto land like a sea creature having just gained legs. The Temple Mother gave me the jar, and I was instantly steadied.

  “Keep it close,” she said, then reached again into one of the folds of her robe and withdrew a string of beads. I instantly recognized the style, the pattern. I could pick out a piece made by Cheypa in any market display. The pattern was the distinctive alternating black and red given to new adults leaving home for the first time. A blessing. The Temple Mother slipped the necklace over my head with the ceremony of a coronation.

  “See them before you leave,” she said. “We will care for them at the temple while we await your return.” And then she bowed to me, fully kneeling so that we were the same height.

  * * *

  I walked into the desert, clutching the jar against my chest and occasionally glancing down to marvel at how the heart still dutifully beat. Cheypa’s beads clicked against the glass with every step. The octopoda, carefully bundled in a sling of scarves, nestled against the glass.

  Old Limsa’s skeleton broke the horizon.

  I pulled along a small cart that held our rowboat. We’d brought no provisions. Would not need them.

  Cheypa’d been confused, had tried to give me dried fruits and hard flatbreads for the trip. They’d wondered where I would restock. How I could carry enough drinking water. I’d held their hands, and they’d stopped fretting and said, You have eyes like the Temple Mother. You’re beyond us. No longer a child. Not a human at all, are you?

  I would row across the ocean, and when it was clear, I would come back for Cheypa. I would carry them to the clean water and make them strong.

  You’re not Ocean, but you’re next to the divine. Your presence is heavy and fluid like water.

  I am Depths.

  Cheypa’d backed away, tried to bow, but I gathered them in a hug.

  During my human life, I never knew the sea as anything other than a grey-green mire, but now the possibility of what it could be flashed in my mind like a memory: rippling, ecstatic blue like the lakesider women’s scarves in the wind. For that future, I had the strength to row forever.

  5

  “The ThoughtBox” © Tlotlo Tsamaase

  Originally Published in Clarkesworld (Issue 163, April 2020)

  The ThoughtBox sits planted to the wall next to the distribution box. It’s a slim, expensive hand-sized model that you brought home (stolen) for our anniversary. I heave out a breath. Relief. You step into the kitchen beaming. You’re happy. Happy is good. You have a gorgeous smile; I don’t want to turn it into a sulk. You’ve just had a fresh cut, what some people call a fuck-boy cut. You’re experimenting. Your eyes aren’t their typical lazy, half-lidded and red-eyed gaze, which means at least today you didn’t come home high. At least tonight, you’ll stay awake. As usual, you offer your hand to the ThoughtBox first. I glare at it as if it were your mistress.

  I remember the first time you brought it home, pushed it onto our living room floor like it was a pet: “Now we get to hear each other’s thoughts. Good for our relationship, don’t you think?” You smiled so widely, I was afraid to say no. “Remember that night you were crying? I couldn’t understand what you were saying. You wanted so badly for me to understand what you’re going through. Remember, love?”

  I remember. That night, lightning stroked the clouds, sunset-tinged. I’d picked you from the airport, our aircar rattling, chugging on low fuel through a chockful of air-traffic. I stared at the fuel meter, biting my lip, needing you to assist financially in fueling the car, but our journey home was overwhelmed with your incessant ringing cochlear phone: troubled clients, work issues—your earlobes burned the entire ride. Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I’ll ask. You’d returned from your two week long work trip strained and morose. When we got into the house, you dumped your bags on the floor, threw your clothes aside and sank into a warm bath. I cleaned up after you, pushing time, waiting. Then I heard you yell out, “Where’s my towel?” in a grumpy tone, which I handed to you like a hotel room attendant.

  You’d trained me well. By the time you strapped your gown on, your plate of paleche and oxtail stew was waiting for you by your laptop tube, which you unrolled into A1 size verifying the drawings for your family’s design firm. It reminded me of our varsity days, of the traditional black-and-red storage tubes every artist student carried everywhere and where we’d keep all our drawings during our studio days.

  You were sitting at your desk when I approached you, trying to ease into the conversation because every breath in this relationship escalates into an argument, and I don’t know how to maneuver breathing anymore. “How was the trip?” I asked.

  On our wide desk, you stared at your hologram screen, tweaking through the formidable and anachronistic archibus software, hunchbacked, eyes tense. I once asked you why you always kept quiet when I talked to you or asked you questions, you’d said you were still thinking of a response until, after a forever-wait, I requested your response. It turned out you weren’t listening at all. It’s that passive expression you have. That doesn’t reveal anything, not even to me. I just don’t want my emotions all over my face, love, you once said. For people to read me. Because that’s how they dest
royed me to begin with.

  And people reveal secrets about themselves by what they say, don’t they? Because my emotions are always wet across my face, and you snort them, getting high off them. So I sat at the edge of the table and refilled your glass. “How was your trip?” I repeated softly. Silence. Waiting, I stared out our window: no trees, no expansive land, just a boundary wall. A rabbit warren, this place was.

  That pensive stare. The glass on the table, I could slog you with it, break that skull and perhaps see your emotions bleed all over our floor. Taste your blood, see if it’s human. I pinched the skin between my eyes. Something was terribly wrong with me. How could I think like that about you?

  You reached for the glass and took a deep swig. “It was fine. Boring. Just training how to operate this new software for the clinics.”

  I leaned forward. “This it?” It looked like the old, way-back-when 3-D software that designers used to draw up mansions, strip malls, prison facilities. A mall. “When was the last time we went on a date? Did something nice?”

  “I don’t get to be like you, sitting around at home all day.”

  Your body was a state of calm, which is always the case when you dismember me and minimize what I do. But a chord snapped in me, sirens of pain flared up. I didn’t want to shout, no, because you find it disrespectful when I raise my voice. A woman shouldn’t do that. Shouldn’t talk back to her boyfriend. I get it that things are done differently in your family, but do you know how disrespectful it is the way you talk to me? you’d warned me once. Where I come from, we value family, and when we are married, you must be up before my grandmother wakes, make sure the house is clean, and you must cook for my grandfather, you’d continued.

  I keep doing things for you, how are you taking care of my heart or my family? I replied weakly. And you just walked off. Is that really a future I want? I know I was having this argument alone in my head, recalling things. This is the way things work, I need to grow up and accept that’s what marriage will be. I can’t marry into families and just shit on tradition. It’s fine, I thought, I’m sure I can manage.