by Kwame Mbalia
No, I’m not talking about me, I’m just being hypothetical.
Anyway.
I cleared my throat and pointed around the raft. “That’s Gum Baby holding the phone—sorry, the Story Box in phone form—and inside the phone is Anansi.”
“The trickster?” She raised an eyebrow imperiously, like a queen studying her subjects. “Yes, I believe I did hear something about his…new form. And Gum Baby, your name has been spoken in my halls for some time. Impressive.”
The little terror actually blushed. Blushed! Who knew sap-covered wood could do that? But before I could drag her for it, the river goddess turned to me.
“And you…Tristan Strong. You are your grandmother’s descendant through and through. Stubborn. Hardheaded. Impulsive.”
I cleared my throat but remained silent. It didn’t seem like a good time to open my mouth. Things usually got worse when I did.
“And yet here we are.” Mami Wata stared out over the sea. After a couple seconds, she shook her head. “Well, I’m glad you’re stubborn.”
Wait, what?
“I’m sorry…Did you just…Happy I’m stubborn? Being hardheaded is a talent now?” I couldn’t believe it. Those words needed to be written on a T-shirt that I could wear twenty-four seven. It was the ultimate permission slip I could use anytime I wanted to do—
Mami Wata frowned, and her eyes flashed blue-green in warning before returning to their natural black. “Don’t get carried away now, hear me?”
“Of course not,” I said, straightening up, even though I’d been doing exactly that.
“Good.” Then, after a few seconds: “Your grandmother would be proud of you. Is proud of you. You’re the only thing she ever wants to talk about, you know. ‘My grandbaby did this, or went here, or helped with that.’ She loves you.”
Something prickled the corners of my eyes. “I’m going to get her back,” I said softly, not meeting Mami Wata’s eyes. “I swear it.”
She nodded. “I believe you. It’s not everyone who would give up their powers to save someone else.” And with that, she gave me back my adinkra bracelet. Apparently, now that she was free and restored to her former glory, she didn’t need it anymore. I thanked her and slipped it back onto my wrist. I flexed my wrist tentatively…. It still hurt, but I could manage.
We sat there in silence, the wind rushing around us as Ayanna angled the raft south. Gum Baby had stuck the SBP to the floor of the raft beneath her, and occasionally she and Anansi would shout at each other about directions before relaying them to Ayanna. Those two, I swear. Some people argue for no reason.
“Why would Gum Baby make a left turn there? The directions say go this way!”
“Because, my young sap-prentice, that way is a shortcut.”
“Who you calling short?”
While they argued, we left the Burning Sea and crossed over rolling hills. Our shadow rippled on the landscape, and at any other time it would’ve been beautiful to watch, our height notwithstanding. But there was a growing tension that gripped my chest, like my nerves and dread were doing a group hug with my lungs.
Something bad was about to happen.
And when the compound with Lady Night’s juke joint appeared on top of a hill in the distance and everyone on the raft gasped in horror, my fists clenched so hard I thought my palms would bleed. I realized then just how bad things were going to get.
The juke joint was no more.
Lady Night’s juke joint had been obliterated. The walls had been blown apart, ripped to kindling and strewn up and down the hillside. Musical instruments lay scattered among the wreckage. A tuba. Half of a kick drum. I even saw the splintered remains of the stage at the bottom of a grassy slope.
Thank goodness Lady Night had gotten all her clientele out in time. But had she herself escaped? When I glanced up and met Mami Wata’s eyes, I could tell she was wondering the same thing.
Ayanna set us down in one of the few spaces not covered in wreckage, and we stepped from the raft carefully. Gum Baby scrambled up to my shoulder, which Mami Wata raised an eyebrow at but didn’t comment on.
I held up the sticky SBP so Anansi could get a good look, too. He scanned the area desperately. “I don’t see him.”
No one had to ask who he was referring to. I swallowed a lump and cleared my throat. “Maybe someone came to their rescue.” I still hated the fact that we hadn’t stayed to fight to the end.
“But how do you know?”
I’d never heard the trickster god’s voice filled with such uncertainty and pain. I didn’t answer but clenched my fists even tighter. From my vantage point on the hill I could see most of Alke and the storm gathering overhead. The poisonous clouds crowded over the Golden Crescent, flashes of green lightning illuminating them from within. We had to hurry and find everyone before it was too late.
“Tristan!”
Someone called my name from down the hill. I picked my way through large wooden beams and piles of trash to peer over the side. A giant sigh of relief escaped and some of the tension drained from my body.
Lady Night and a crowd of others waved from beneath a small copse of trees in front of the Isihlangu foothills. In fact…I squinted, then my eyebrows shot up in surprise. A few folks in the crowd were carrying familiar shields and beautiful clubs that ended with polished stones on the end—kieries.
It appeared Isihlangu had arrived to help.
I searched the crowd as I walked down toward them. My expression must’ve been pretty desperate, because when I reached the bottom of the hill, one of the Ridgefolk warriors stepped forward to say, “The princess isn’t here.”
I tried not to look too disappointed. Thandiwe would have been really helpful at the moment, but it seemed she was still on her mission with High John. Another god we could’ve used in the fight against Bear.
Lady Night greeted me warmly, then—to my surprise—strode forward and hugged Mami Wata fiercely. “How are you feeling?”
The water goddess squeezed the boo hag, then shook her head. “Better, thanks to the timely assistance of this boy here. If not for him and his…friends, this world and his would be doomed. Now at least we have a fighting chance.”
Lady Night smiled at me, and my face got hot.
“Boy, is you blushing?” Gum Baby rapped me upside the head. “Act like you been here before.”
I tried not to think about picking her up off my shoulder and throwing her into the trees. Instead, I looked around. The damage was sobering, almost depressing. No, it was depressing. “Junior?”
The boo hag hesitated, then shook her head. “While he was fighting Bear, I left to get help. When we came back, there was no sign of either one of them. Maybe…”
Her voice trailed off, but my mind finished her sentence. Maybe he’d survived and escaped. It was unlikely, but it was all we had.
Bear was responsible for all this.
The thought made my blood boil. And yet what could I do? Coming up with a plan that would save Nana, defeat Bear, and stop the poisonous storm from weakening and eventually severing the connection between my world and Alke—it seemed almost impossible. And time was running out, so every second mattered. The storm of the century was blotting out the sun, and lightning strikes cut through the air with searing flashes.
Mami Wata sighed, then turned to me. “We should summon Annie.”
“Oh, right.” I pulled out the SBP. Anansi made a voila gesture at a newly recharged Riverboat Rideshare app. The crowd begin to murmur as a familiar mist began to creep along the ground, spilling out of the trees and hiding the juke joint’s wreckage from view. They shuffled closer, peering at the spectacle, and a worrying thought leaped to the forefront of my mind.
“Everyone!” I shouted. “Move up the hill if you don’t want to be carried away.” Just as I yelled the warning, a boat’s horn blasted. The sound of trickling water emerged from the mist, and Mami Wata’s face lit up as an enchanted keelboat launched out of the treetops.
Laun
ched. Out. Of. The. Treetops.
“YAHOOOOO!” a voice boomed from the helm of the wooden boat, and the vessel landed with a mighty crash in the misty river. Keelboat Annie stood on the deck and waved to everyone. She wore overalls again, this time with a ripped pink collared shirt. Annie hopped down and—with a few giant steps—met us. To my surprise, the first thing she did was sweep up Mami Wata in a huge bear hug and twirl her around.
“Well, if this don’t beat all,” she said with a beaming grin. “And here I thought the old gang had seen its last days. Ha! Can’t keep a good story group down.” Then, as the mist faded, Annie saw the devastation around her and her eyes grew wide. “I didn’t do that just now, did I? Sometimes I get carried away with my entrances and I have to tell myself, ‘Annie,’ I says, ‘don’t go too overboard with the shenanigans.’ But I get so excited—”
Mami Wata caught one of Annie’s massive wrists and patted her hand gently. “No, cousin, that wasn’t you. It was the Masked One. Bear.”
Lady Night shook her head, then embraced the two of them as well. It was a reunion I’d never thought I’d witness. But one was still missing. As if the thought had struck them all at the same time, they separated, their faces solemn.
“The gang isn’t all together yet,” Annie said with a frown. “We need our fearless leader.”
My grandmother.
Mami Wata turned to me. “Well, young man, you’ve brought us together. There’s a plan, isn’t there?” Annie and Lady Night looked at me as well, and so did the former patrons of the juke joint and the warriors of Isihlangu. Then there was Ayanna, Anansi, and Gum Baby. They were all counting on me.
“There is,” I said grimly. “Everyone is always telling me Alke is a story. My grandmother, the gods, you all. And Bear knows that, too. Your world is connected to mine by stories. Bear wants to destroy that connection. His storm is filled with the essence of the iron monsters who devour stories. If that storm washes over Alke—”
“The whole realm will be consumed,” Anansi finished, his eyes filled with anger.
I nodded. “We have to get all the gods and goddesses together and—”
But before I could finish, a giant thunderclap rattled the sky and shook the ground. Seconds later, green lightning stabbed downward from the largest group of clouds hovering over the Golden Crescent. A bright flash lit up the evening, and everyone flinched.
Bear’s storm had finally arrived.
“SO LET ME TRY TO UNDERSTAND THIS SCHEME OF YOURS.”
I kept my eyes glued to the screen of the SBP, ignoring the trickster god swinging in a hammock in the top right corner. I couldn’t help it. The Alke Maps app was open, and I finally had a reason to use the weather-radar feature. Dark-green splotches spread from the west, creeping across the map in real time. It was little comfort that the storm had avoided MidPass. Mami Wata’s fountain must have been protecting the deserted island.
“You want to enter a city at the center of a storm to confront a powerful villain who thinks you’re responsible for everything bad in his life?” Anansi shook his head as he hopped down from the hammock and paced back and forth. “That boy Reggie must have knocked your brain clear out of your skull.”
“It will work.”
“And what’s with the quilt?”
“It’s filled with Nana’s stories. She once told me that in order to repair it, we’d have to start from the beginning. I thought she meant just starting fresh with new squares, but now I know she meant recording the stories that she’d heard from these goddesses before. If we can use something powerful of hers, we might be able to break her out of Bear’s story chains. It will work.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
I didn’t respond. It had to work. I knew Anansi was worried about his son, so I was trying to keep his mind off the worst possibility, which forced me to mull over my own options. What if something went wrong? What if we weren’t strong enough to challenge Bear?
I shook my head. We were strong enough. We had to be.
The storm-cooled wind ripped around us as we soared toward the Golden Crescent, and I had to struggle to keep my balance, even while sitting down. Ayanna’s magical raft could expand when necessary, but still it was crowded, what with Mami Wata, Lady Night, Keelboat Annie, Ayanna, and myself taking up the front half with Nana’s quilt sections spread out between us. I didn’t know sewing was so tough! I’d pricked myself with the needle several times already, and I was struggling to maintain pace.
“Does he always talk this much?” Lady Night asked. Anansi was still muttering to himself and stalking back and forth across the SBP’s screen.
I snorted. “You have no idea.”
“Both of them are yappity-yaps,” came Gum Baby’s voice from behind us. She was standing on the rudder, steering the raft by leaning from side to side. I just…Sometimes I just can’t with her. I shot her a halfhearted glare and then returned to the quilt sections in my lap.
My job was simple. Well, not that simple. But it was definitely easier than everyone else’s, and I took a moment’s break to watch them work.
Mami Wata whispered as she touched each square, infusing each individual image with the power of the sea, of a people stolen but unbowed, of a million faces gazing up from beneath the water. Blue-green crystals and emeralds materialized as she spoke quietly to the quilt, sweeping across the squares like a miniature tidal wave.
Lady Night sang softly as she sewed, and wove the song of Alke into the tapestry we were making. It was a wordless song, and yet one I instantly recognized. The drumbeat. The melody. The centuries of power and resiliency distilled into a rhythm that could be playing on a church piano or booming from someone’s subwoofer. Everyone’s head lifted a bit higher as she sang, and the quilt seemed to respond as she worked. Each square began to shimmer, the patterns and images shifting as I watched.
Keelboat Annie laughed as she stitched. It was like she was listening to a comedy routine in her earbuds and it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. Her laughter was the kind that felt like it would split your ribs and make your face hurt. It was the sound of unworried determination. The sound of someone who had been told for years that she couldn’t do what she had already proved she could, that she couldn’t wear what felt comfortable to her, that she didn’t belong. Her laugh gave the quilt strength. It wouldn’t tear again, I was sure of it.
Ayanna, like the pilot she was, connected everyone’s squares so they moved in the right direction.
And me?
I worked on the border that would hold it all together, all the while telling the quilt a story. I whispered and shouted and laughed and cried, willing each emotion into the fabric that represented Alke. I told a story relayed to me by a powerful woman who’d witnessed so many struggles, who’d given so much of herself, who’d empowered so many. And another tale about two plat-eyes desperate to reach their loved one.
The stories in each quilt square were unique, representing different places and experiences. The Diaspora. But when they were collected like this, they came together to make a beautiful artifact we all could appreciate. And the act of sharing it made us stronger. I had to make sure Bear understood that. I had to make sure Alke understood that.
If I didn’t, we’d be torn apart, just as the quilt had been.
“Tristan?”
I looked up, my hands clutching a square of fabric. Everyone was staring at me. Was my fly open? Was there something on my face? Could it be—?
Mami Wata cleared her throat and nodded down at the SBP, where the Alke Maps app showed that we were nearly on top of the dot representing the Golden Crescent. I peered down from the front of the raft. Sure enough, we were flying over the bay. The few ships below were still moored, but the storm was tossing them about like toys, and trees were bent over nearly sideways as the winds howled. Gray-green clouds blotted out the sun and covered the land in shadow. Lightning struck an ivory tower, leaving black scorch marks and the smell of something burning in the
air.
And there, in the middle of the beach, high waves battering uselessly against his armored form, stood Bear. John Henry’s stolen hammer was clutched in his paws. But my eyes were focused on the person sitting on an overturned rowboat in front of him, her head held high and her hands folded calmly in her lap, staring straight ahead.
Nana.
“Take us down,” I said quietly to Gum Baby. My words were nearly lost in the wind, but for once the little doll and I were on the same page. We spiraled down and landed in the shallows, just as fat droplets of stinging rain began to fall. Everyone piled off the raft, spreading behind me in a semicircle.
Bear stepped forward, the mask of King Cotton shifting as he sneered. “Little hero, grum grum, I was getting worried you wouldn’t make it. Welcome!”
I took a deep breath, then waded toward him.
No turning back now.
Who’s that young girl dressed in blue…?
The choppy sea sent waves to batter my calves and ankles. It took all my strength not to fall flat on my face, especially since I was holding the quilt above the water and my eyes were locked on Nana’s. Bear loomed ominously behind her, squeezing John Henry’s hammer, glaring at me through the eye holes of the poisoned mask.
It look like the children coming through….
I don’t know why that old spiritual was filling my thoughts right then. The marina gleamed in the eerie light of the stormy sky, and I could see Nyame’s palace on the hill above. If I couldn’t stop Bear in time, John Henry would…
I shook my head clear. Stay positive.
You don’t believe I’ve been redeemed….
I mouthed the words as I continued to march across the beach. Nana was ten yards away. Eight. Five. Three. We were separated by mere feet and her eyes still stared blankly at something no one else could see. My fists clenched.
“Well, well,” Bear rumbled as he stepped around the rowboat to stand in front of me. “What does the little hero have in his hands? A burial shroud? A sheet to drape over your body once I pound it into the sand, grum grum?”