by Leye Adenle
Ahead, the boulders shone brightly and the ground reflected the light of the beast. I flew over a great crater several miles wide and landed in its centre. My cloak had completely burnt off me. As the giant approached, the shadow of the crater swept over me. The beast jumped into the crater with one leap. It straightened itself and continued to march towards me.
I fell to one knee and spread my fingers into the sand. The beast stood over me. My head, my back and my neck, exposed to it, began to flame.
My fingers became wet, then my knee, then my legs, then the water rose like a wave up from the ground and fully submerged me. The giant turned to run away but the water rose to its feet and the flame sizzled away. The water continued to rise. Its surface bubbled and steamed as it ate the beast. With one final hiss, the monster was totally extinguished.
I rose to the surface of the water. Where moments before there had been a crater, a lake now shimmered, calm and clear. I walked on the surface of the water to the shore. There, robots had gathered to watch.
Behind them the three tall ones stood in a row. As I stepped onto the land, the robots parted. I walked towards the three giants. I felt they still had some fight in them.
One by one the giants charged. They formed a straight line as they came for me.
I stopped and spread out my arms. Blue flame formed over the front of my body. It felt as cool as a Harmattan breeze blowing across my face. The blue fire stepped away from my body, walked towards the approaching robots and inflated in size until it was as large as them. The first robot ran through the body of fire and stepped out through its back. It lifted its foot to take one more stride but its steel body melted to the ground. The next robot tried to stop, digging its feet into the soil, but it continued sliding forward. The blue giant punched a hole through the centre of its chest. The robot slumped onto its slayer’s body and huge drops of molten steel fell from its head, its shoulders, and its chest.
The third robot managed to stop. It watched the second robot melt down to its waist before the rest of it toppled over, and it turned round and ran. The blue giant leapt up. With one bound it sailed over the fleeing robot and landed in front it. The robot turned to run the other way but the burning giant flew towards it, caught up with it and wrapped its arms around it from behind. The fleeing robot threw its hands up as it melted in the fiery embrace. The blue giant walked up to me and stood in front of me. Its beam on my face was cool and comforting. The worker robots stood far from us and watched. The giant’s body of brilliant blue fire broke into a million tiny sparks that floated away and rose upwards as they died. Behind it, where it had stood, a dozen figures dressed in black floated forward just above the ground. The magicians. Titus Titus floated in front of them. As I watched, more of them floated forward. Together they formed a chain over a hundred magicians wide, and behind them several hundreds more floated out to join the army.
The robots backed away from me, and the magicians sailed forwards.
Chapter 56 The Moon Revisited
The magicians formed a large circle around me. They were all ages, all colours, all shapes, and all sizes. They were men and women, boys and girls. That I was naked and they were clothed made me uncomfortable, but I did not feel vulnerable. I was not afraid of them.
Titus Titus floated forward and stopped halfway to me. His face did not have its smirk. His tattoos did not move on his skin. His presence did not oppress my spirit. I was no longer afraid of him and he knew it.
We looked into each other’s eyes. Not a sound could be heard for miles on the moon. Robots and magicians stayed perfectly still, the former standing, the latter floating, all watching and waiting.
‘You cannot be here,’ Titus Titus said. ‘You made your choice. You are one of them. The truce is broken. You have broken the truce.’
He turned to the magicians. ‘The truce is broken.’ He turned to announce the news to another section on his fellows. ‘The truce is broken.’
A murmur grew and spread amongst the magicians, then suddenly there was a loud noise like the continuous blast of a horn. The noise was so loud that it made the rocks vibrate and the sand leap from the ground, and its resonance reached inside my body and shook me to the core. It was coming from everywhere, from all directions, and it filled me with pain.
Space ships slid in sideways through a slit in the middle of the dome and descended. They floated above the magicians. Hundreds flew in from the darkness of space. They lined up over the magicians. They let down beams of light that carried the magicians up to their ships, then the ships slid out of the dome through the slit at the top from where they had entered and vanished into the dark vastness of space.
In the end, only Titus Titus and I were left facing each other, and his own ship rotated in position above his head. He spoke to me but I couldn’t hear him over the terrible noise. The sound had made me fall to my knees and my hands were pressed so hard against my ears that it felt like I was crushing my own skull.
He wanted me to hear what he said and he repeated it again. In agony I concentrated on his lips as he spoke. He said, ‘It is your fault.’
A beam of light poured out of his ship and sucked him up.
His ship slipped out through the slit in the dome and the glass closed up, and after that the sound died away.
I got to my feet. I was alone on the surface of the moon. Even the robots had fled. The magicians had deserted their place of exile. Titus Titus had fled with them.
But what he said stayed with me: ‘It is your fault.’
Even though his face had lost its power to scare me, something in his words was terribly unsettling and I knew I should be worried.
It was my fault. What was my fault?
I thought of the women underground. Had they heard the terrible noise too? I had to return to them. I had to let them know it was safe to come out now. I also had to find all the other caves where all the other people were hiding. But I had no ships with which to return them to their homes.
Titus Titus said it was my fault. What was my fault?
The robots came out from the places they had gone to hide, under rocks and under the road. Some tapped on their ears. Some spun their heads around. They had also suffered from the noise. Slowly, cautiously, they gathered round me. They were the answer to my second problem. I turned on the spot. I looked each one in the eyes. Their non-human minds were mine to control. But just before I flexed that power again, I remembered how I had made them kill one another and how, in witnessing the ferocity of their battle, I had noticed that they knew what they were doing, for they could think and reason, feel pain, and be pained by death. So I spoke to them instead.
‘I need your help,’ I said. ‘There are people like me, and some not so like me, under this ground. They were taken from their homes. They are sick and they are afraid. I wish to return them to their homes. I need ships that can travel that far. I need pilots to guide those ships. Can you build me some, please?’
They were silent. They turned to one another and communicated without making a sound. A black sphere floated up from their midst. It was the red eye. It flew above them, lowered itself to the level of my head, and floated up to my face. Its metallic body opened up to reveal the red beneath and it spoke, first in the voice of Titus Titus, ‘We...’ Then it said a garble of unintelligible words in different voices, male and female. Then it continued in the voice of a child, ‘We will return them to their homes.’
‘Thank you.’
‘What about us?’
‘You?’
‘Yes. Us. What will you do to us?’
‘Do to you? Nothing. I will do nothing to you. You are free. You can do whatever you want. Whatever pleases you. Provided you stay on the moon. Is this what you want?’
‘We want.’
‘What?’’
‘We want.’
‘Yes. What do you want?’
‘We want.’
‘I don’t understand. What do you want?’
In
one voice the rest of the robots spoke. They said, ‘We want.’
I was surprised that they all could speak. I did not know what they wanted, so I could not give it to them. Perhaps their synthesised intelligence had reached the limit of its ability.
‘If you return the people to their homes, and you stay on this moon, and you never take any more people from any planet, then you can have what it is you want.’
The red eye blinked.
‘How can we trust you?’ it said. ‘You promised the masters you would not return but you did.’
‘I promised?’
I immediately understood. I had been to the moon before. I had been there as my father. I had made the truce with the magicians, the truce to which Titus Titus referred. The same truce I had just broken. The magicians were free to return to Earth now. Titus Titus was leading them there. That had been his plan all along. They would reveal themselves to the world, and they would display the vastness of their powers, but this time they would not be burnt at the stake. This time they were returning for revenge, and it was my fault.
Chapter 57 Alien in the Window
‘I need to get to Earth right now,’ I said.
The robots stared at me. I expected them to understand that I needed a spaceship immediately. The red eye hovered in front of me, just below the level of my face. It didn’t blink.
‘Now,’ I said.
‘Will you return?’ the red eye said.
‘No. I won’t have to return because you will have returned the people to their homes. But I have to go now.’
‘Ok.’
Still, not one robot moved to get me a ship. Maybe they expected me to know where they were kept. The ships that had taken the magicians away had come from beyond the dome. Perhaps even from beyond the moon. I had allowed the robots free will, and it now felt as though I was surrounded by people, rather than dumb machines. I did not want to revert to controlling them, but I had to get to Earth, pronto.
‘If I do not get to Earth on time,’ I said, ‘they will bring more people here and I will have to come back.’
‘We understand. You should go now. We hope you never return.’
They did not go to get me a ship. They just waited for me to leave. I finally understood. They had seen me come and go before, and I did not need a spaceship then.
I let myself rise gently and keep rising. Beneath me the robots closed in on the circle they had formed around me. I finally saw just how many there were. I looked at the looming curve of the dome. I took my time getting to it. I searched for the opening in the glass where the spaceships had poured in. There was no sign of it. I remembered how I had seen doors in the glasshouse open by themselves for Professor Ochuko, the very great magician of the highest level of all magicians. The dome had better open for me in the same way – me, Osaretin Osagiemwenagbon, the son of a Most Grand Magician of the First Order. And open it did, when I was still a few metres away. It was huge. What had seemed like a slit was in fact an oval-shaped opening the size of a canyon. The glass dome itself was a metre thick, and within its thickness, fist-sized veins ran, criss-crossing over one another, carrying pulses of blue light all around the dome.
Beyond the dome I saw millions and millions of stars so bright and so close together.
As I rose out of the dome, the opening sealed behind me from one end to the other like a ziplock. The further I went, the harder it became to make out the dome over the beautiful side of the moon. The dome was both a support for life and a disguise for it. In time all I could see of where I’d been was darkness, formidable and unyielding.
I had held my breath when the dome opened. I exhaled again when it closed and I discovered that I could breathe in the vacuum of space.
I did not know which way home lay. I flew away from the dark side of the moon till I saw the blue glow of Earth and I flew towards it.
I had no clothes to flap against me to hint at the speed of my flying.
The stars were so far away they moved ever so slowly against my changing position, and I did not feel the rush of wind against my face or my body, for there was no air for that. From the darkness of space, a tiny black dot crept slowly into view against the brightness of Earth. I had no idea what it could be. As I got closer, its shape became clearer and I suspected it was a satellite. When I got closer still, I realised it was far too big to be a satellite. I soon realised that I was flying towards the International Space Station. I wondered whether the astronauts had seen the spaceships, or worse, whether the magicians had also come across the human outpost and chosen it as their first port of call.
I slowed down and circled the space station. I found a hatch that opened up like a flower with huge metal petals beneath the station. Under the metal doors, glass sections were arranged to form a window for astronauts to gaze out from. Earth was its view. I flew in front of the glass. An astronaut in a blue polo shirt saw me and tumbled back- wards, bumping her unprotected head against equipment the walls of the cramped space. I turned and flew on towards Earth, hoping I wasn’t too late.
Chapter 58 The Return
Several kilometres beneath me an asteroid pierced the Earth’s atmosphere at an angle. A shell of orange flame enveloped the rock and stretched out behind it into a pointed tail. As the asteroid continued its fiery journey, it began to disintegrate into smaller pieces, each with its own red flaming tail. These pieces continued splitting until eventually they were just tiny sparks, none of which could compete with the furnace of re-entry.
I had survived the vacuum of space, but witnessing the light show gave me pause. I shaped my body as though I was diving, stretching myself out straight and pointing my hands and fingers in front of me, holding them together side by side over my head, which I tucked into my chest as I closed my eyes. I felt my fingers punch through the atmosphere. There was a familiar feeling of wind brushing against my skin. I opened my eyes. A beautiful jet of orange light was washing over me and I couldn’t see out of the fire. I emerged into a clear blue sky over clouds that hung just beneath the tops of a belt of snow-tipped mountains. I was so glad to be back within the Earth’s atmosphere again. Home suddenly had a new meaning. Earth was home, all of it, not just Lagos, or Nigeria, or Africa. The entire globe was home. In spite of borders and religion, and war, and politics, and entry visas, and economic landscapes, the world was home to all its inhabitants equally. I was home.
I flew around the globe several times, searching for the magician’s spaceships. I circled the globe again and again. I crossed day and night in minutes. I flew over cities and slums, oceans and deserts, storms and famines, wars and forests, floods and earthquakes, icebergs and tundras, pyramids and jungles, but I did not find them.
I landed in the backyard of a log cabin in the middle of a pine forest, where I had spotted clothes my size drying on a line. I flew out again in a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a black t-shirt. I couldn’t afford to waste time searching for the magicians. I had to tell everybody what had happened, and warn them of what was to come.
Thankfully it was night in Nigeria, and together with a power failure, my descent from the sky onto a sidewalk in Lekki was without witness. I walked barefoot to the car wash.
I knew that Ali, the tall, slender attendant would be there. He was the keeper of the gate that led to the glass- house through the car wash machine. And if he wasn’t there, I would go through all the same. I was confident I would come out on the other side, onto the road in the desert that led to the house.
A guard at the entrance woke up and watched me walk into the compound. I noticed him looking at my bare feet.
He got up to follow me as I walked towards the machine. Ali came out of nowhere, or out of shadows – only the former now made more sense to me. He walked towards the night guard who had got to his feet and picked up his baton.
‘Bro, it’s ok, I know him,’ Ali said, but he only managed to startle the man.
The guard held his baton tightly in both hands and alternated his attent
ion between Ali and me.
‘What are you doing here at this time?’ the guard said to Ali. ‘When did you return?’
‘Return? I never left.’
The guard took one hand off his baton which he kept pointed at us as if it was more than a piece of wood and it could shoot bullets, and he searched under his chin for the string from which his whistle hung. He brought the whistle to his lips.
‘Look at my hand,’ Ali said. ‘Here.’ He pressed a finger into the middle of his left palm. He closed the fingers of the hand over the finger in the middle and the guard’s eyes closed as well. So that was how they made me sleep.
Ali caught the man before he slumped. He lifted him as if he weighed nothing and carried him to the bench by the entrance and placed him on it, making sure he was in a comfortable position, and then he turned to me.
‘Top to top,’ I said. I remembered what Adesua had said to him when we used the portal.
‘I know who you are,’ he said. ‘They are waiting for us.’
‘They?’
‘Yes. We are the only ones left here. The rest have gone to join the war. They told me to wait here for you.’
‘War?’
‘They said you broke the truce. The others have attacked and they have become more plenty and more powerful. When they defeat us, they will come here.’
‘If they defeat us,’ I said. ‘Show me how to use this thing.’
Chapter 59 Red Rain Day
We flew out of the other side of the car wash machine into daylight on the desert road that led to the glasshouse. The beautiful blue sky above was full of clashing magicians in the distance. Beneath them, a rain of blood fell from the savage battle.
We flew side by side in heavy silence towards the war.
Lifeless bodies fell from the battle in the sky.