Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

by Kwame Mbalia

  “Some did get away,” I said. “They fled to MidPass. But now they and the Midfolk both face the same trouble there.”

  Nyame glanced at me, and I swallowed at the intensity of his gaze. It was like being held in place by a huge magnet.

  “The monsters still lurk here, too,” he said. “I’d hoped that their appetite would be sated by now, that my people could return…”

  “But can’t you help them? You’re the all-powerful sky god. Can’t you defeat the Maa—er, you-know-what? Can’t you fix the tear?”

  Nyame sank down on a stone bench and put his head in his hands. “I wish I could. I do not have the strength. My powers have been sapped.”

  “So we should all just suffer? There’s nothing you can do?”

  He shook his head.

  “What about those statues? The sentries? We could take a couple to help fight.”

  “Only Kumi could stand up to this threat, and her strength is tied to mine. The rest…they are barely enough to protect the Golden Crescent,” Nyame said sadly. “Even if they were stronger, I cannot spare them now, not when I’m so weak.”

  I sank down next to him on the bench. “So we’re doomed, then?”

  The sky god turned back to the view. The sun winked behind a bank of low-hanging clouds, turning their undersides rosy pink.

  He sighed. “Not yet. I may not be able to give you the help you seek, Anansesem. It will be some time before I am myself, but I can give you something else. It may increase the chance that my people will eventually be restored to their homes…to their lives, their happiness.”

  I watched, confused, as Nyame stood up and plucked a rosy cloud from the sky.

  Yeah, that’s right.

  He plucked…a cloud…from the sky. Like it was a flower from one of the trees in the garden. He rolled the wisp between his two palms. Then he pressed both hands together and whispered something between them.

  He extended his hand. “Your bracelet, please.”

  I clutched the tassel from Eddie’s journal, not wanting to part with it.

  Nyame smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. “No harm will come to it. I may be suffering from brand-fly poison, but I can still imbue a charm or two.”

  I untied it and passed it over. Nyame took the tassel and tied a small charm onto it. When he handed it back, I gawked at the rose-gold adinkra resting next to Anansi’s symbol. It matched what was painted on the yachts in the marina, on the front of the palace, and on the arms of the statues.

  “Gye Nyame,” I whispered, and the sky god nodded.

  “You already have Anansi’s adinkra, which brings power to your stories. That is important—Alke is woven with stories, and the threads exist all around us. You can hear them sometimes. Music. Chanting. Rhythm.”

  I inhaled. “I thought I was hearing things.”

  “You were. The heartbeat of this world. If you concentrate, the sound can become so vivid you can almost see it.” Nyame sighed wistfully before pointing at the adinkra he’d just bestowed to me. “I cannot give you one of my sentries, Anansesem. But I can give you this charm. It will bring focus to your surroundings, and help you gain clarity. You’ll find the mysteries of Alke a bit…easier to solve.”

  I looped the bracelet around my wrist and studied the silver and gold charms. They looked nice together. But how would they help us repair the hole?

  “You’re wondering what good a little charm will do.” Nyame clasped his hands behind his back and tipped his head for me to join him. “Come, walk with me.”

  We strolled around the garden. On the opposite side of the roof, facing southeast, Nyame stopped and stared at the dark, jagged mountains ringing the Golden Crescent.

  “Alke is a land divided,” Nyame said after a moment. “The great cities do not share as they once did. The iron monsters only pushed a wedge into a fractured landscape that already existed. We used to meet every season, to swap ideas and music and stories. To exchange culture. Our sons danced with their daughters and their sons danced with ours. Our mothers taught their children and their mothers taught ours.”

  “And with the tear and the iron monsters,” I finished, “you can’t make things better. MidPass and the rest of the Alkeans will always be divided, even if we huddle together, hiding from the same threat.” I shook my head. “It really needs to be fixed now.”

  “It does. And I agree with your goal, if not your plan. Anansi, if he can be found and bribed, could weave the hole shut and greatly diminish the power of the iron monsters. But after that they’d still need to be defeated once and for all. Them,” he added grimly, “and this haint that’s tormenting you.”

  At this Nyame’s face twisted into anger for a brief moment. Then he exhaled and pointed to a palace with seven towers, off by itself in the foothills of the soaring mountain range.

  “That is Anansi’s palace. If you want a clue about the Story Box’s whereabouts, I would start there. Do not mistake me, Anansesem—this will be no easy quest. If you continue, you will be risking your life and the lives of your friends. But you must try, and so I give you these words of advice.”

  I stood up straighter, ready to receive some profound words of wisdom.

  “Those who help you may not be on your side, and those who oppose you can be your greatest allies.”

  I waited for more, but Nyame just clasped his hands again and stared out, wise and all-knowing, like he’d just dropped some crazy freestyle bars and the crowd was going wild.

  Nah.

  I cleared my throat. “Um…is that it?”

  He turned, surprised. “Yes. Do you need me to repeat it?”

  “No, but, like…can you elaborate?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean, why does everything gotta be so mysterious? Can’t I get a clear instruction or something? A manual? A step-by-step guide to being a hero?”

  “But…that’s not how this works.” The sky god looked confused.

  “But you’re a god, right? Can’t you just abracadabra me a quest translator so I can make sure I’m doing the right thing?”

  “No! Heroes don’t—”

  “I’m not a hero. I’m a boy with a crew straight out of a dusty fairy-tale book, and everybody expects me to confront beasts and monsters and fly around on a raft. I don’t even like flying. I’m scared of heights. There, I said it.”

  “But—” Nyame looked worried now.

  “And I don’t even get a sword or a spear or a magical slingshot?”

  “You’ve got the adinkra of the gods! What more—?”

  “Man, you gave me a charm from the department store. Dad gives those to Mom when he forgets her birthday, and you expect it to make me clairvoyant against evil. Okay.” I shook my head. The confusion in Nyame’s golden eyes as he watched me walk away nearly made me laugh.

  It would have been funny if my life wasn’t on the line.

  EVEN FROM UP HIGH AND at a distance, Anansi’s palace lured your eyes. Partially hidden in a valley on the outskirts of the Golden Crescent, near the intimidating mountain cliffs of what Chestnutt called Isihlangu, it was surrounded by seven spiraling towers made of ivory and gold. Ayanna had to circle a few times to find a place to land the raft among the foothills. If Nyame’s magnificent home displayed the sky god’s wealth and power, Anansi’s emphasized his cleverness.

  “How do we get in?” Ayanna asked when we were on the ground. She whispered a soft, musical phrase and the raft shrank down to a size she could carry on her back.

  Chestnutt spread out some papers she’d brought from the Warren to study, while Gum Baby snoozed under a blanket on the grass nearby.

  Anansi’s adinkra was front and center on each tower, painted in a shiny gold that drew your attention. But the most amazing feature was the braided silk that linked each tower in a glittering web. If you looked at them from one angle, the threads were invisible. Turn your head a bit, and suddenly they—and white fuzzy lumps scattered along them—popped into view.
/>   And, at the center of the web high above us, in the middle of all seven towers, sat the palace.

  I mean, Chicago had some impressive skyscrapers, but this was incredible.

  “How do we get up there?” I asked Chestnutt.

  The little bunny continued to rifle through her notes, but she kept shaking her head.

  “I don’t know. The only thing I see mentioned is that no one has ever gotten inside. Ever.” She looked up and rubbed at her whiskers in frustration. “The Warren rates this place a five-out-of-five-paws difficulty.”

  I glanced at Ayanna. “Can we just fly up there on your raft?”

  “I don’t know.” She chewed her lip. “Something about this bothers me.”

  I studied the courtyard, with its marble flagstones, several of which were broken. Giant scars sliced through one spot, as if an oversize claw had ripped the earth. More of those weird lumps were scattered here and there.

  The obvious treasure dangled just out of reach. A desperate person—say, someone trying to get the spider god to fix a mistake that had stirred up monsters—why, that person might try anything to get to Anansi in the palace above. If someone tried just a little harder, maybe attempted to climb the towers, or use a magic raft…

  “It’s a trap,” I said slowly. “That palace is bait. I bet…I bet if we looked carefully, we’d find more of those threads all around the clearing. And that means those lumps—”

  Ayanna’s eyes widened, then she wrinkled her nose. “Oh, gross. Are those…?”

  I nodded. “People who tried to find Anansi, got wrapped up in the web, and…”

  “People…or iron monsters.”

  “Those, too.”

  As if on cue, one of the lumps on the ground wriggled, scaring the mess out of me. I might’ve squealed. But it was only Gum Baby throwing off her blanket. She sat up and hurled a sap ball at my head.

  “SAP ATTACK! Who need hurting? Who dead? What happened?”

  I rubbed the stinging, sticky spot near my ear. “Nobody. Go back to sleep.”

  “Shoot, you ain’t gotta tell Gum Baby twice. Y’all boring anyway.” Sure enough, three seconds later the little loudmouth was back to snoring.

  Ayanna chuckled, then sighed. “Okay, so now what? I don’t see any way we’re getting in.”

  “Yeah, I don’t—” I stopped and stared at her, then held up my wrist.

  Nyame’s adinkra dangled from my bracelet, and the sky god’s words echoed in my ears.

  It will bring focus to your surroundings.

  “I think I have an idea.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Anansi’s palace had hundreds of stories whispering all around it. I could hear them, feel them, and more important, when I gripped the Gye Nyame adinkra tight and opened my eyes, I could see them.

  “Sweet peaches,” I whispered.

  Anansi’s threads crisscrossed the valley, and they were anchored everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Boulders, bushes—some smaller strands even clung to our clothes. They shimmered and rippled, and when I looked closer, I realized that the threads were fragments of stories—actual lines from tales I vaguely remembered—spun into golden silk.

  “Tristan!” Ayanna’s eyes widened when I turned to her, and Chestnutt squeaked in surprise.

  “What?”

  “Your eyes…They’re glowing!”

  I began to splutter in protest, but something shiny caught my attention. Behind them, a giant cylindrical boulder was gleaming as brightly as the towers in the valley. As if…

  “That’s no boulder,” I said, realization smacking me in the face.

  “What are you babbling about, Bumbletongue?”

  Oh, no, that wasn’t realization. That was Gum Baby whacking me upside the head as she climbed onto my shoulder with a yawn.

  I rolled my eyes. “I said, that’s no boulder. It’s another building.” I ran up to the half-buried structure, and after a quick search, found a hidden door that we’d walked right past, except now it shimmered like sunshine on water. “Follow me,” I said, and stepped into Anansi’s home.

  The descent into the underground lair took longer than I thought it would, partly because the curving staircase was covered in invisible booby traps. If it weren’t for Nyame’s gift, which enabled me to see them, we would’ve been splattered across the stone walls several times over.

  Also, every ten seconds or so, Chestnutt wanted me to stop so she could take notes. “They’re sure to let me into the Warren Society after this,” she said when I asked what she was doing. Even though I was impatient to find out if Anansi was hiding below, I bit my tongue and let her do her thing. There really wasn’t any reason for Chestnutt to be excluded from Brer’s army of bunny spies—from what I’d seen, she was more than capable. He was just being his typical annoying self.

  We reached the bottom of the stairs like a slow-moving train of caution. I clutched the Gye Nyame adinkra, Ayanna clutched my arm, Gum Baby rode in my hoodie, and Chestnutt brought up the rear. A thick wooden door awaited, covered in cobwebs and dusted with golden Alkean greetings, and I eased it open, flinching as something tickled my head. I peeked inside, yelped, and quickly shut it again.

  “What? What is it? What did you see, Tristan?” Ayanna whispered.

  “An iron monster!”

  “What?”

  I hid behind the door, my heart thumping in my chest, as Ayanna and Chestnutt huddled next to me. Gum Baby crawled carefully out of my hood and put her ear to the door.

  “Why ain’t it trying to attack?” she asked.

  I looked over my shoulder at Ayanna. That was a good question. There was nothing but silence inside. I cracked the door open and peeked in again.

  Nyame’s adinkra gave me the gift of sight, but it framed everything in golden words that told Alkean stories. Anansi’s table was outlined by a snippet of a fable. A bed was covered in a spread made of lullabies. The cooking pots and the kettle were rimmed with opening prayers.

  But the object that had frightened me half to death, standing right in the middle of the room, was the golden silhouette of a fetterling, poised to attack, with legends coiling around its chain body.

  We tiptoed inside, and I found a torch lying on the floor. Ayanna lit it, and light flickered in the abandoned tower.

  “Sweet peaches,” I breathed.

  Ayanna pursed her lips and didn’t speak.

  Chestnutt started scribbling furiously.

  Gum Baby hopped down and stomped across the floor. “Is this what Gum Baby thinks it is?”

  I let go of Nyame’s adinkra—the strain of seeing so much detail was giving me a headache. My vision slowly returned to normal. “If you’re asking me Is that a fetterling tied up in a spider’s silk, then yes. If you’re asking Are those more fetterlings tied up next to the table, with what looks to be notes, also yes.”

  Ayanna moved farther into the room, carefully. “Anansi was studying the iron monsters? Why?”

  The fetterling in the center of the room looked like it belonged in a museum. The Weaver’s silk held the monster tight, its manacle-hands in mid-attack, its collar-head in mid-snap. Several others were in various stages of dismantlement in the corner, and bits of chain were scattered across the table.

  “I don’t know,” I barked. “But he’s not here. Which means we’re stuck. Again.” A wave of anger boiled in my stomach, and I slammed a fist onto the table, scattering papers and chains onto the floor.

  Chestnutt started rustling through Anansi’s notes while Ayanna sighed.

  “What do we do now?”

  I threw up my hands. “I don’t know! This whole trip has been one failure after another. That stupid haint has my friend locked up in ghost prison, and I’m never gonna get him back. And I’m also never getting home at this rate!”

  “Hey—” Chestnutt began, but Ayanna cut her off.

  “It’s not all about you, flyboy! We’re losing our home as we speak!”

  “I know that—”

  “Well, then thi
nk of others before you start complaining.”

  Chestnutt hopped closer, holding some papers. “Um—”

  I gritted my teeth and glared at Ayanna. “How about you get off my back?”

  Her hands went to her staff, and I gripped the gloves in my pocket, just as two large balls of sap pelted us both between our eyes.

  “Y’all being rude!” Gum Baby aimed another glob at us. “Gum Baby always gotta be the mature one. Chestnutt is trying to educate your ignorant butts. Now stop fighting and apologize.”

  Ayanna and I eyed each other. Gum Baby raised her sap balls higher, and I sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m not the only one who’s lost something.”

  Ayanna grunted. “Yeah. I’m sorry, too.”

  Gum Baby lowered her arms. “Good. Now sit on the floor, crisscross applesauce.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “You heard Gum Baby!”

  Ayanna shook her head. “I’m not sitting in this—”

  “GUM BABY SAID SIT CRISSCROSS APPLESAUCE, SO YOU DO IT, OR GUM BABY’S GONNA TURN THIS WHOLE TRIP AROUND! NOW SIT!”

  Somehow Ayanna and I were sitting, hands in our laps, and Gum Baby sniffed. “Good. Chestnutt?”

  Chestnutt looked embarrassed, but she stood on her hind paws and held up a note. “I…I think I know where the Story Box is.”

  I gawked, and Ayanna choked on air. “Where?”

  “It looks like Anansi was studying how and why the iron monsters are drawn to stories, and he even managed to capture a few, but…I think something went wrong. More of them came and attacked him.”

  A chill went down my spine, and I examined the room as Chestnutt continued. It looked like a meeting had taken place there. Several dishes and cups were knocked over. Whatever had happened, Anansi and his guest had been interrupted, and judging from the mess, a great struggle had occurred. But who—?

  The answer struck like lightning.

  “Brer Rabbit,” I whispered.

  “What?” Ayanna looked around. “Where?”

  “No. He said he and Anansi were working on a project for the Story Box, and then iron monsters attacked.”

  “According to this entry here,” Chestnutt said, “something stronger than fett—those things over there came along, and Anansi fled. I guess Brer Rabbit did, too. But before they did, it looks like Anansi sent the Story Box somewhere impenetrable. Where no one could get it until he was ready to retrieve it.”