by Kwame Mbalia
Sometimes you just have to fight off your brain.
“Who are you?” I asked the girl as I began to pull up the rope that had saved me, coiling it around one arm. “Where did you all come from?”
“Why are you so nosy?” she asked.
“Sorry, I—”
“Never mind, we don’t have time for this. Just be quiet before I throw you back.”
I obeyed.
One of the cloaked figures in the rear shifted. “Ayanna, we must go.”
The girl huffed and turned. As she walked by, I felt Gum Baby jerk up in my hood. “Ayanna? Is…is that you? How…? Why…? You’re so big!”
“Gum Baby!” Ayanna dropped to her knees and swept the doll out of my hoodie and into a huge hug. “How did you…? Where have you been? We looked everywhere for you. We were worried sick. You were supposed to come right back!”
“Gum Baby only meant to stay for a few hours, but Bumbletongue here was selfish and insisted on tagging along. And then there was the whole fight over this book”—she held up the waterlogged journal—“and—”
“A few hours?” Ayanna held Gum Baby at arm’s length and looked at her. “Gum Baby, you’ve been gone for a year. What—?”
“Ayanna! Bone ships!” The tallest passenger leaned over the side of the raft and pointed to the Burning Sea beneath us. “There!” he called in a pained yip. Others craned to see, but I stared at the one who had called the warning.
I must have been tired. Half-asleep, even. His arm looked like it was…covered in fur.
But there was no time to linger on that. Ayanna put Gum Baby down, and, with a promise to talk later, dashed to the rear and jammed her staff into a knothole.
“Hold tight!” she called.
Everyone grabbed the ropes, and my eyes grew wide.
“Wait—”
But it was too late. With a thrust of Ayanna’s stick, the raft jerked forward and I toppled head over heels, landing in a pile of cloth. What is propelling this thing?
“Oomph!” Someone pushed me off them. “Watch it!”
“Sorry,” I muttered, but when I turned to meet the eyes beneath the hood, I froze. They glinted yellow. And was that a…snout?
“What the—?”
But the person—it had to be a person—turned away as a bright orange flash seared the night sky.
Ayanna blanched. “Why are there so many ships?” she whispered.
I looked at her face, swallowed, then scooted back and peeked over the edge of the raft.
“Sweet peaches,” I said under my breath.
Bone ships swarmed beneath us like sharks smelling blood. The Hands, the Ribs, the Jawbone—they were all there, but there were more, too. They fought and jostled to get right underneath the raft, as if at any moment we’d tumble out of the air. The sea flared with light every time one ship crashed into another, and the impact sounded like a crack of thunder. Flames shot up like lava from an erupting volcano, and more than one scream echoed around me. Ayanna tried to swerve and keep going forward, but another blast nearly singed the front of the raft.
“Toss some of those supply bundles overboard,” Ayanna instructed someone. “We have to get higher. I’m cutting off the search and heading home.” It looked like the words pained her as she turned the raft around.
The search? What were they searching for? Not the journal…
Gum Baby was still holding it under her arm as she clung to the handrail, looking around in confusion. “Gum Baby was gone a whole year?” she muttered to herself. “That ain’t right.”
I leaned over to look down at the violent sea, then sat back in a hurry and prayed we would go even faster. “Gum Baby, how long did it take you to get from…this place to my grandparents’ farm? Did it take months?”
“No! Seconds—minutes, maybe. Gum Baby told you she move like the wind.” She rubbed her face in confusion. “It don’t make sense.”
“Well, where are we going now?”
“Back,” she said, her squeaky voice low and sad. “Back to the Thicket.”
“Where’s that?”
Gum Baby pointed to a smoky white line in the distance, barely visible beyond the flames on the water. From here it looked like a mere smear on the horizon.
I bit my lip. “It’s too far away,” I said. “The ships will get us before—”
Gum Baby shook her head. “Ayanna can make it.”
“I hope you’re right,” a low voice behind us muttered.
All the passengers held each other as Ayanna coaxed and pleaded with the raft for more speed. The bone ships moved slowly, but others kept popping out of the deep on either side below us. Just when it looked like we’d left some pursuers behind, another three or four would lurch out of the water like the unearthed remains of prehistoric monsters. Or sea zombies. Yeah, sea zombies. They moaned with hunger and joined the chase.
Finally, after the last supply bag went over the side, and just when I was wondering how far a drop it was to the ocean, we began to pick up speed. The bone ships drifted farther and farther behind us, until eventually they disappeared into the flames. Several passengers exhaled in relief, but my muscles wouldn’t relax, and I started to shiver.
“You cold?” Ayanna asked. “We have blankets—”
“No, I’m good.” I didn’t want to tell her the real reason I was shaking. I don’t do heights. Especially not on a flying raft with no seat belts and flimsy ropes for railings. But it felt silly complaining about that after nearly being swallowed by an oversize science-class skeleton.
We kept gliding until the line of smoky white became a cloudy smudge, then a curtain of fog. Finally, the vague outline of a coast appeared. It stretched far and curved slightly in the distance, disappearing into mist.
Once everybody had settled down, and a few passengers even began to chat among themselves, I scooted closer to Gum Baby and leaned over. “Those ships back there…What…? How—?” I broke off, trying to get my words together and my shivering under control. “What were those things?”
Gum Baby picked at a smear of sap on her pants. “Everybody just calls them bone ships.”
“But what are they?”
“Scavengers,” Ayanna broke in. “Vultures. Miss—uh, someone I know calls them echoes of a nightmare from another realm. But still, they’re more of a nuisance than a real danger. At least they used to be. I’ve seen them group up before, but never like that.”
“But the sounds. The people I heard moaning—”
“Those are just echoes. Nothing is alive on those things, trust me. You just heard memories from a different time, a bad time.”
“Memories of what?”
But she waved me off. “Not now. We’re almost there.”
The raft slowed and started to drift lower and lower. As we sank through wispy white clouds, leafless dead trees appeared, leaning out of the water like spears. Ayanna beckoned us all close. “Gather whatever you have left. We’ve made it to the shallows—we can wade to shore from here. I’d rather land now than try to navigate through that mist and those trees. Leave what you can’t carry, or anything that would bog you down. Head for the trees, follow the signs, and we’ll be back in the Thicket before you know it.”
I started moving to the back of the raft to get out of everyone else’s way, trying not to rock it. Ayanna looked at me, then at Gum Baby, who’d climbed up on my shoulder, and shook her head. “I don’t know what y’all did, or where you came from, boy, but you might as well come with us, too. If Gum Baby brought you, that makes you one of us.”
I coughed, and Gum Baby shifted on my shoulder, but neither of us tried to argue with her. I met the little doll’s eyes, and an unspoken agreement passed between us. Get to safety, and then we’ll explain everything. I got the impression from Ayanna’s reaction that Gum Baby had done a bit more than she was supposed to.
Ayanna stared at the sea. “I’ve never seen the Maafa’s minions act like this.”
“The Mafia?” I looked from
her to Gum Baby. “Why would—?”
The raft touched down on the sea with a bump and a splash, making me stumble. Ayanna clapped her hand over her mouth, like she’d said something she shouldn’t have, and moved to the center of the raft, calling out instructions.
“Gum Baby?” I asked. “Why would the Mafia—?”
“Not the Mafia, the Maafa!”
“Oh. What’s the Maafa?”
“Shh.” Gum Baby patted my head absentmindedly and scanned the area. The curtain of fog hung about a hundred yards away. So close, yet so far.
“Boy! Hey!” Ayanna motioned to me. “We need your help.”
“The name’s Tristan. Not boy.”
“Tristan, then. We made the shallows, but the water’s still too deep for some of the Midfolk.”
“Midfolk?”
She gestured at the cloaked people gathering their things. I shrugged. Whatever the weird cult members wanted to call each other made no difference to me. But a few of them were on the small side, and I didn’t want a current to drag them back to where the bone ships waited.
Sometimes you just have to join the party, no matter how strange it is.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked, rolling up the sleeves of my hoodie.
“You and BF hop over the side. You two are the biggest. I’ll keep the raft clear of the flames—y’all take the rope and haul us to shore.”
The person with the yellow eyes came forward, carrying a bundle in his arms. Ayanna stepped close to talk to him.
“Be careful,” she said in a low voice. “If you get tired—”
“I will do my part,” the person said. It sounded like a snarl, but Ayanna didn’t look offended. She just nodded.
The person held the bundle out to her. “Watch Chestnutt, will you? She hasn’t recovered yet.”
“Of course.” Ayanna accepted it and cradled it like a mother would a baby. “Is she—?”
“She’s fine. She just…scares easily.”
Gum Baby stood on the edge of the raft and cupped both hands around her mouth. “Bumbletongue! Head into the trees!”
“My name. Is. Tristan.”
“Tristan, Bumbletongue. It all sounds the same. Gum Baby can’t keep track.”
“Just try and keep the journal out of the water this time,” I said. It had already gotten wet once, and while I couldn’t believe I was actually trusting her with it, I needed both hands free.
“BF,” Ayanna said, “give me your cloak. It’ll drag you down.”
The person named BF nodded, then shrugged off his garment. My jaw dropped and I choked on my words.
“Sweet. Peaches.”
The yellow eyes.
The snout.
The person Ayanna spoke to…wasn’t a person.
My mind turned to goop.
“GAAAAAH,” I SAID.
A reddish-brown–furred fox, easily as big as Ayanna herself—the largest I’d ever seen—dropped his cloak on the raft. It—he—stood on his hind legs, and his muzzle twitched in wry amusement.
“I think I broke him,” BF said to Ayanna.
BF. Brer Fox.
“Gaaaaah,” I said.
Gum Baby shook her head. “See? That’s why you’re Bumbletongue.”
Ayanna tossed the rope toward me. The end smacked me in the forehead and fell across my outstretched arm, which was pointing at the walking, talking animal in front of me. In fact—I took a quick glance back at the other cloaked figures and inhaled sharply—he wasn’t the only one. A tail poked out here. A wing there.
“Gaaaaah.”
“Did he do this with you, too?” Brer Fox asked Gum Baby.
The little doll nodded sadly. “Gum Baby worries about him. He’s so fragile.”
Talking dolls.
Bone ships.
Burning seas.
Flying rafts.
Human-size foxes.
“Gaaaaah.”
Brer Fox slipped over the side of the raft with a wince, then grabbed the other rope that Ayanna tossed to him.
“Well,” he said, his whiskers glistening in the night, “shall we save ourselves?”
The long, mournful moan of a bone ship floated across the waves. The sound jostled me to my senses—sort of.
“Gaaaaah.” I nodded, and we both began to wade through the waist-high shallows, fleeing the desperate haunted ships behind us.
We slogged through the foggy shallows. The height of the water slowly dropped until Brer Fox and I splashed instead of waded. We grunted and snarled (guess who did which) as we dragged the raft forward. White mist hung in the air like frozen spiderwebs, and the roaring flames of the Burning Sea faded as a blanket of eerie silence covered us.
“Where are we?” I asked Brer Fox.
“The Drowned Forest,” he said, his breath coming fast and heavy. “For obvious reasons, wouldn’t you say?”
The marshy water, thick and clouded with dirt, leaves, and branches, smelled and looked awful. My socks squelched, my shorts were turning slimy green, and I didn’t even want to think about what my Chucks looked like. Mom was gonna kill me when I got home.
If I got home.
Something snagged my ankle and I nearly fell.
Mom was gonna have to get in line.
“Just a bit farther,” Ayanna said from the raft. She spoke in a whisper as she steered around a jagged tree stump, but the sound carried over the still water like a shout. “Keep close, everyone. Cloaks off. We need speed now. No time for stealth.”
Gum Baby hopped up next to her. “We’re safe here, right, Ayanna? They’ve never come this far into the trees.”
“Who’s they?” I asked. “The bone ships?”
Ayanna winced, someone gasped, and Gum Baby shook her head. “Not unless they grow some legs. Naw, it’s the—”
“Hush now, Gum Baby,” Ayanna whispered.
She glanced back over her shoulder, and I did the same, trying not to gawk. Some of the Midfolk were watching us, while the rest pretended to be busy. They had discarded their cloaks to reveal other furry faces, along with three feathery ones, and even a turtle. There were a couple of human children as well. I took a deep breath, but surprisingly, that was my only reaction. At this point they all could’ve started doing the electric slide and I would’ve shrugged and joined in. The mind can only take so much weirdness before it accepts it as a new normal.
Ayanna turned back to me. “Enough questions. You’ll scare the others. Just get ready to run—we can talk all we want back in the Thicket, I promise. But right now? We need to move.”
I tried to nod calmly, even though my face was burning. I turned back around and resolved to keep my eyes forward. A chuckle sounded to my left. Brer Fox licked his graying muzzle, and his left ear twitched forward. The right one was mangled, as if something had once chewed on it.
“You’re not from ’round here, I suppose,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but I shook my head anyway. “Where, then, if I may ask? You’ve the look of the Ridge people—or maybe the Crescent folk, now that I think about it.”
I bit my lip and kept my eyes straight ahead. See how you’d feel, talking to a fox. Gives you all sorts of willies.
“I don’t know any of those places,” I said.
“You don’t know the Alke territories?”
“Who’s Alke?”
This made Brer Fox stumble. He huffed and chuffed, emitting a yipping cough, and it took me a second to realize he was laughing.
“Who—who’s Alke. Oh, that’s…that’s a delight.” His laugh turned into a raspy wheeze, and he stopped hauling on his rope to hunch over and cough. When it didn’t stop, I quit pulling as well.
“Brer Fox?” Ayanna called, worried. “You all right?”
He waved a paw at her, but it was another minute or two before he could stand upright and breathe without coughing. He took a deep, whistling breath, then wiped his muzzle. He picked up the rope floating near his hind legs and began to pull again.
Afte
r a few moments, I cleared my throat. “I’m serious. I’m not…I don’t know this place.”
“Where are you from, then, if I may be so bold?”
My eyes flicked up to the sky, to the hole that burned like a second sun, and he followed my gaze. He stiffened and his ears flattened to his skull. The look he turned on me, as if he was struggling to hold back a snarl, made me flinch.
“You don’t believe me?” I asked.
“No.” The word came out almost as a bark. “No, quite the opposite. I do believe you.”
“Really?” I pulled the raft in silence for another few seconds, then sighed. “I don’t quite believe it myself right now. I just…I just want to get back?”
He didn’t answer, though from time to time he’d glance up at the sky, then look around. I took that to mean he didn’t have a clue as to how I would do that, and I trudged along in a sour mood.
The water was only ankle-deep now, and the mist cleared a bit to reveal glimpses of a sprawling forest of moss-covered trees. Vines dangled from low-hanging branches, and roots dipped in and out of the water, while the treetops disappeared into blurry white, as if some supreme cartoonist had forgotten to finish drawing them. The air felt thick and humid, and my neck tingled like someone was watching me.
Brer Fox stared at me as I tried to shake off the feeling. “Good. You sense it as well. Be wary, my boy. We’ve not escaped just yet. That hole in the sky is causing creatures far worse than bone ships to go into a right frenzy. You want to know how to get back to wherever you tumbled from? Stay alive.”
I swallowed hard, and we entered the forest.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye. In his prime, Brer Fox would have been glorious and fearsome. Even now I could see traces of his red-and-silver fur through the gray. His tongue lolled out as he panted with exhaustion, and his teeth still looked wicked and sharp.
“My friend,” I said suddenly, “used to tell me a story.”
“Good friends will do that,” he commented. “But I’d be wary of telling the full tale here. Stories are powerful magic. You’ll find that out soon enough. Best only summarize.”