Chains of Time

by R B Woodstone

  As I watch Carl weep and Regina cower as Van Owen approaches her, I yearn to comprehend all of the torment that Van Owen has caused. What is it that drives such a man? Why, after all these years, does he still chase us? Why—after a lifespan three times that of most men, and myriad victories—why does he still find the urge to press on, to hunt, to strive, to live? Our magic—Kwame’s and mine—gave him his power. But I can recall no Mkembro legend of anyone who lived for eons without aging. What is it that makes Van Owen immortal? Is there something in the rage burning within him that fuels him, compelling him to fight against his mortality, against nature, against time even? Or is it something unconscious? Some lesson taught to him by his father and his father before him, telling him to despise all those who look different from him, drilling it into him that his only goal should be to rise by climbing over those weaker or gentler or more innocent than he?

  When I watch Carl, I can sense the maxim that guides him: By any means necessary. For Carl, these are words of inspiration from his youth, the words of Malcolm X, who was able to put voice to the day-to-day struggles of Africans in America. This credo represents the depths Carl will go to, the forces he will face, the energy he will expend to keep his children safe. Can it be, I wonder, that Van Owen lives by a similar credo but that he applies it differently—to self-centered ends?

  All creatures are driven to live, to stay alive. If we could, we would all cauterize our wounds with lightning and seal our blood inside us so that it can never trickle away. How much of ourselves, though, would the rest of us be willing to sacrifice in order to go on living? What piece of our souls would we sell? How many lives would we be willing to destroy to extend our own?

  Most of us are repulsed by such questions while others like Van Owen never consider asking them.

  As much as the internal currents of Kwame’s and my power keep Van Owen alive, I know there’s something more: Van Owen yearns to conquer, to take, to own, and—most of all—to force his will upon others. It is these deeds that feed him, the hope for new conquests that drives him. It is only when those things that he feels belong to him are taken from him that he is weakened. He feels pain at the thought that he no longer possesses me. He feels rage that he can’t own my children and their children, as he once owned me. He’s whole only when he’s stealing freedom from others, inflicting slavery on them or polluting them with drugs. And he feels fear only at the thought of losing his own freedom, as he confided to me when he first spoke to me on his ship. Perhaps it’s time, then, that he remembers how it feels to lose that which was once his. And I, too want to will myself to have the power to make it so. By any means necessary.

  “Run, Regina, run,” Willa whispers.

  In his glass room, Van Owen is still dazed from the light. He staggers, trying to find his footing. And Regina looks so frightened, so young—younger even than I when I faced the madman for the first time. She turns toward the door and then to Jerome’s unconscious body and then to Willa’s broken one. Her lips tremble.

  “Run,” Willa repeats. “Now, while he’s dazed.”

  But Regina remains calm. “No,” she says.

  Van Owen turns, his interest piqued at the sound—the tone—of her voice. Suddenly, his expression takes on that hungry affect it had when he came to my cabin to rape me.

  “You must go now…please…” Willa pleads, her voice weak and fading.

  “No,” Regina repeats. Her saucer-like eyes drill into Van Owen’s as she raises her voice louder, speaking in my Carolina accent. It isn’t the voice of a Harlem child. It’s the voice of an West African princess who has seen her parents killed, her village destroyed, her life and her people ravaged, her descendants hunted. It’s the voice of resilience, of righteous indignation, of vengeance. It’s my voice. “I’m not leaving. Amara will help me.”

  “Amara?” Van Owen laughs. “She’s been dead for fifty years.”

  “No,” she tells him calmly, “she’s right here with me. Aren’t you, Amara?”

  So she senses me. Somehow, she knows I’m watching. But what can I do—here from decades previous, dying on a snowdrift in 1956? She’s facing Hendrik Van Owen half a century away, and yet she seems absent of fear. Why? Does she know something that I don’t? Has she had a vision of her own? Does she know that I can do something to aid her in some way?

  What is it, Regina? What can I give you? Tell me…

  She blinks. She tilts her head to the side. She hears me. And she answers. “Amara, you know what to give me—what you tried to give me once before, but I was too young to understand. Your history. Our history.”

  My history? Was that it then—was that the purpose? Was that the reason I was given the power of prophecy all those years ago on the day of my wedding? Were the visions not meant only as portents? Was I not meant simply to watch the visions so that I could plan ahead and try to avoid tragedy? Am I not simply an African Cassandra, doomed to know the future but powerless to affect it?

  “No,” Regina answers me.

  She’s right. I will not be Cassandra. I refuse to be Cassandra. Cassandra was a pawn of the gods. I am Amara, princess of the Mkembro clan, and I am no one’s pawn.

  With one word, Regina has told me what I couldn’t learn in all these years. The visions weren’t portents; they were portals. For those brief moments when I saw them, I was granted connections to my future and to my past. I was being allowed to communicate with my descendants—to teach them, to show them what had come before, to help them learn from the past. To give them a connection to their heritage. I just didn’t understand. I watched the future play out, thinking it untouchable. It isn’t.

  I feel the numbing snow and remember where I am—dying on a mountain. The cold spreads over me, but I will myself to hold off death for just a few more moments. I will myself to live and remember what has gone before:

  I see my father and Kwame’s father at the mouth of the cave, making the nuptial pact. I see my mother preparing me for the ceremony, coating my face with the fruit paint—I can taste its sweetness even now. I see my father leading me through the village. Kwame coming toward me, young and strong and beautiful. Van Owen tearing through our jungle with his machete, killing my father and my mother, slaughtering my people, taking us. I see my cage on the ship. I see Kwame escape. I see North Carolina, with its wondrous fields and scents, all marred by hatred and slavery and hanging trees. I see decades of struggle, of my people—the Africans and the African-Americans—fighting for survival, for self-respect, for life. I see Van Owen pursuing me, hunting me, hunting my family. I see him injured and bleeding. I see him running. I see him murdering my daughter. I see him hating, always hating, always fighting to hold us back, to keep us from living with dignity, to keep us apart from one another, to keep us from learning from one another, to keep us from being a family, to keep us from passing on what we have learned—our stories, our knowledge, our past.

  I see. I see it all. I hold all of it in my mind for an instant, remembering it, cherishing it, cleaving to it.

  And then I let it go.

  I send it all to Regina. I show her everything. I give her all I have and all I am. I give her what she asked for: our history.

  The girl’s eyes shut for just a trice as her mind fills with my memories. Her head rocks back as she struggles to grasp the stream of knowledge that flows into her. Van Owen jumps on the moment and strides toward her, but Willa is ready. Pinned down and dying, the old woman draws on her last bit of strength. She waves her fractured arm toward the hundreds of shattered chandelier crystals, raising them from the floor and sending them flying toward him like knives. The crystals tear at him, scraping and lacerating and puncturing. Blood streams from him in a hundred new places.

  Immediately, he shuts his eyes and begins to radiate lightning from his hands. He touches the sparks to his skin, sealing the wounds—cauterizing them—one by one.

  “Hendrik,” Regina shouts at him in my voice, “you don’t have time for that now. You
need to run. The pirates are here.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see them?” she asks. “Are you blind?”

  With only a thought, she infiltrates his mind with visions. She has reached into one of my earliest memories—on Van Owen’s ship, when he came to my cage and told me of the Barbary pirates who kidnapped him when he was a young man, the one time in his life when he knew the fear of slavery, the horror of captivity—and she has thrown it back at him.

  Van Owen reels. The wounds begin to drip again. In his mind, he’s a young man. The room has become the vessel Antares. The pirate ship has pulled alongside it. The Barbary corsairs have stormed the ship; they’re beating him, taking him, locking him in a cell, chaining him to a galley oar, forcing him to live as a slave.

  In the present, he rocks backward, weak, but doesn’t fall. His eyes dart around the room as he lives out his most harrowing memory, his darkest moment, his greatest fear.

  He struggles to catch his breath, whispering, “I know what you’re doing, Amara, but visions can’t hurt me.” He takes one step forward, then another, and then he stares out, cognizant again, the visions spirited away. He glances down at Willa and speaks in a guttural tone: “Your grandma’s dead, little girl.”

  “Grandma?” Regina cries out, her concentration broken like shattered crystal. She is a child again, small and frail. She looks down and sees that Willa is indeed dead, and it breaks her. She falls backward against the steel office door. For all of her wisdom and poise and strength, Regina is still just a motherless child, and I have failed her. Everyone has failed her. Van Owen has killed her mother, her grandmother, and all the women in the family line before her. He has beaten her brothers and her father. She is all alone in the world now, and I am decades away.

  Van Owen draws a white handkerchief and wipes the blood from his face. “You speak like Amara. You look like Amara. You lash out at me with lies just as she did. You’re just like her—a little African girl who needs to be taught who her master is.”

  He begins moving toward her again, but Regina doesn’t look frightened. A thought has entered her mind—a vision, in fact. She stares into his eyes, looking confident somehow.

  “Why are you smiling, child?” he asks her.

  “Because,” she says, “I know what’s going to happen.”

  And then she begins to sing:

  Mai Wa kmaro

  Mai Wa kmaro

  Dji mi sarro ti kee la ti na-arro

  “What is that, child,” Van Owen asks her, “some African prayer?”

  She doesn’t answer. She just keeps singing, repeating the last line of the song again and again.

  Dji mi sarro ti kee la ti na-arro

  Dji mi sarro ti kee la ti na-arro

  Dji mi sarro ti kee la ti na-arro

  It’s the song from my wedding day. I can remember walking to my ceremony with my father, hearing both clans—the Merlante and the Mkembro—singing it together, attesting that the two tribes had once been one, affirming that they were destined to be one again, that they must be one again in order to face the direst of threats.

  I have little life left in me, but I finally understand. I have finally played my role and passed on what our people have always lacked: our history, our past. And now Regina knows what has happened and what must happen—she knows what I must tell her even before I know it. And she waits now only to hear me tell her what she already knows she must do.

  I give my last thought—my last words—to you, daughter of my daughters. I call to you across five generations: “Open the door, Regina. Let your brother in.”

  Thirty-Seven

  Open the door, Regina. Let your brother in.

  Terry heard Amara’s words echoing in his mind, just as his sister did. Regina spun on her heels and pulled the three bolts across, unlocking the door. She turned the handle, and the office door slid open. Terry watched it sweep outward, and he sprang to his feet. He could see Regina in the doorway. He could hear Van Owen threatening her, ordering her to shut the door.

  ​“Regina!” Carl shouted. He forced himself up to one knee, but his bloody leg gave out, and he dropped down again. “Terry, help me get over there.”

  ​Terry didn’t answer. He was moving too quickly toward the door.

  ​“Terry,” his father called, dragging himself across the floor after his son. “No, Terry! Don’t…you can’t…”

  ​“Yes, Pop,” Terry said, “I can.”

  ​Even before he reached the door, Terry could hear Van Owen’s voice. “Are you trying to run away, little girl?”

  ​“No,” Regina told him. “I don’t need to run away.” And she went back to her singing. Dji mi sarro ti kee la ti na-arro.

  ​Van Owen’s face sank at the sight of Terry entering the room, the gag removed, his voice no longer fettered. The boy stepped in front of his sister, and Van Owen pointed a glowing hand at the two children, preparing to strike.

  ​“No,” Terry ordered. “Lower your hand.”

  ​Van Owen’s hand fell to his side. He opened his mouth to speak, to threaten.

  ​“No,” Terry told him calmly. “Don’t speak.” He paused for a moment to dwell on the vision that Amara had passed on to him two years ago. He’d tried to lock it away, but the image had returned to him in nightmares so many times: that ghostly white man, blood spilling from his chest, electricity crackling from his hands. Fifty years ago, in the snows of Maine, Amara had shot Van Owen again and again. He had lain there in the snow, bleeding, weakening, nearly dead. Terry had been so confused by the image. Who was this man? What does this nightmare mean? But he understood it now. And he knew how to end it. His memories of Regina’s birth no longer buried, he remembered the pale man who came to his mother’s bedroom to steal Regina away. Terry had beaten Van Owen then, sent the villain away simply with the power of his voice—by speaking up, by telling Van Owen to leave. As a four-year-old child, Terry had defeated Van Owen with only a few words. This day, he would need only one. He stared into Van Owen’s twitching eyes and gave the order: “Bleed.”

  ​Van Owen stood completely still for a moment. Then his body began to tremble. He looked down at his hands and tried to scream, but no sound came from his throat. He could only watch as the blood started to trickle from his cuts. Even the cauterized wounds began to burst, blood bubbling to the surface and dripping in slow streams. It fell from his hands, his arms, his mouth, his eyes. It oozed down his shirt, his pants, into his shoes—filling them until it spilled out again. He shut his eyes, trying to concentrate, trying to will the blood to stop. When he opened his eyes again, though, the blood was gushing even more. His shoulders slumped. He began to collapse. He tried to clutch the wall, the door—anything—as his body shook violently, the blood draining faster and faster, covering the floor around him in an inky, bilious puddle.

  The sight was horrific, but neither Terry nor Regina turned from it. Through Amara’s memories, each had seen what Van Owen had done to their family. This was a fitting fate.

  Finally, Van Owen plummeted to his knees. The veins on his forehead swelled and ruptured. His white hair, wet with blood, fell from his head and slapped against the floor in wet clumps. He opened his mouth, trying to let loose one final threat, but there was no strength left to push the words out. Exhaling a serpentine gasp, he collapsed forward into a lake of his blood. But it still kept streaming from him, spreading out over the floor of the office, pouring through the floorboards, dripping away. As the last ounces of sustenance left his veins, his skin began to collapse inward, his aged bones began to crumble. Soon, all that was left was crimson ash and blood-stained clothes.

  ​“Terry?” Carl asked, his eyes wide as he crawled through the doorway and saw what was left of the slaver. “You did this? But you…”

  ​“We did it, Pop. We all did it.”

  The police were easily misled. When they seemed skeptical, Regina made them feel calm. She didn’t speak. As Terry and she had planned, she gave them vis
ions, showing them what she needed them to see: a kidnapping, a rescue attempt by the family, a building full of drugs, full of dead and unconscious criminals. No more explanation was needed. None of it would ever make complete sense—the detectives and the press would wrestle with it for weeks, ever eager to link the narcotics operation to Warren, the drug-addicted older brother who seemed to have escaped before the police arrived. In the end, though, the rest of the Kelly family would emerge unscathed, Regina promised Terry. “Trust me,” she told him, speaking aloud. “I know.”

  ​Terry and Regina watched the medical examiners as they wheeled Willa’s and Marco’s bodies out of the stable and into the ambulance, side by side. As the driver tried to shut the door, Regina stepped in front of him. She reached under the sheet and touched her grandmother’s hand. It was stiff and cold and lifeless.

  ​“It’s not her anymore,” Terry told her.

  ​Regina seemed not to hear him. She leaned in close to Willa’s ear and whispered, “Goodbye, Grandma.”

  Jerome was awake but still dazed, insisting he didn’t need medical attention. When the ambulance team argued that he’d been unconscious for twenty minutes, he suggested that they instead tend to his father. There were already several paramedics working on Carl, most of them perplexed by the odd scar tissue that had already formed over his wounds.

  “He heals fast,” Jerome told them, but his eyes were staring off, locked on the pile of ash where Warren had been. Jerome knelt and ran his hand over it.

  “Your father’s leg looks bad,” a paramedic interrupted him. “Damage to the muscle, probably. Might have to stay in the hospital.”

  “Where’s Hippolyta?” Carl called out suddenly.

  “She’s fine, Pop,” Terry told him. “I already checked her out. The police are taking her back to your stable.”