Ancient, Ancient

by Kiini Ibura Salaam

  My eyes swing back up to the woman’s neck. Foreign memories flash in my mind. Men with black-lined eyes breaking into a family camp. A man—who must be this new body’s father—bloodied but fighting. A woman—who must be this new body’s mother—lying with her throat ripped open, a bloom of blood haloing her head. The bite of sand on palms and knees as this body crawls to safety, crawls like a dog, choking on fear. I shake the scene from my head and stare at the back of the woman’s neck again.

  “You must forget there was ever anything called home,” a voice whispers. Your voice. I feel a gasp of panic explode in my head. You can’t ask me to forget home. I won’t forget home; I won’t forget you. Anger chases away the panic. Grandfather, with his reckless lessons and self-righteous speeches. Doesn’t he know what everyone whispers behind his back? That one, they say, pointing their chins at me, that one gets his wildness from his grandfather. Is he punishing me for being like him?

  My arm swings up in an arc, muscles twitching with memory. It’s the block I should have thrown in my last Royale, the arm flick I could have used to knock away the razor and avoid getting cut. The repeated sway of my arm is numbing, like a narcotic. For a few blissful seconds, I’m not on a long desert walk to enslavement—I’m nowhere.

  After my arm grows tired, I let it fall limp by my side. I notice two small mounds rising from my chest. Breasts. I touch them with the back of my hand. My sleeve rolls back to reveal the ridges of a scar on my forearm. I push the sleeve up further, there’s a crude X burned into my arm. When I look up at the woman in front of me again, I understand why I’ve been staring at her. It’s not her neck I’m looking at, I’m staring at the scar burned on her back—the top edges of an X visible above the scoop of her robe.

  I peer ahead. An indigo-draped figure rides a camel. The set of his shoulders tells me that he decides my next breaths. Whip gripped in hand, lazily swatting air with a motion that cools him and flaunts his power all at once.

  What has Grandfather done?

  I step out of the snaking line, and look back. My gaze is darting around, looking for more guards when, thwack, something hard cracks against my jaw.

  I don’t fight the fall. I don’t even feel the impact when my body crashes against the hot sand. I lay there, motionless, aware of nothing except the sun’s searing heat and the parade of feet stepping over me as the women plod on to their terrible destiny.

  I can smell death rising with the heat around my body. It smells like decay, a tinge of sticky sweetness mixed in with a rank earthy scent. I feel a blow to my side, then another. I allow my body to rock with each kick. A thought rips through my mind: If I die here, will my life end? I would rise and fight, but why? Whether I lay here until death claims me, or I stand and walk toward my own slaughter, I will die anonymous and unloved. No one among these trillions of grains of sand can see my true face, and no one knows my name.

  “I know,” your voice says. “I know your name. Come home.”

  At first I feel a flush of pleasure: you want me. Then that bitter rage flares again and extinguishes my pleasure. You want me, and I am powerless to join you. Coming home is not up to me. This is Grandfather’s game.

  The army of feet trod on, kicking up tufts of dust, coating my face with grime. The sun is so merciless that the blazing heat begins to feel physical. The idea of releasing my grip on life is seductively sweet.

  “But we have not yet tasted each other,” you whisper.

  A small sound that doesn’t know if it wants to be a laugh or a sob pops in my throat. Not even your voice—with its melodies and catches—can stop me from thinking about committing my body to the earth. I want you, but I also want to break into a million pieces and melt into the sand. I want to stop the procession of roughened heels and downtrodden women. I want to die.

  “Dance,” you say. Your voice has taken on a depth I have never heard before. You have pushed beyond laughter and flirtation, scattered gravel and broken glass in your voice. Then I understand. You mean not to entice me, but to compel me. You are trying to awaken the warrior in me.

  Another kick catches me. Pain implodes in my side. My body lifts up from the ground, then falls limp. A captor yells something over me—something rumbling and fast. More of them come. They turn me over. I don’t blink. I’m not even sure that I’m breathing. I lay face up, eyes glassy and blank, limbs splayed crucifixion wide.

  You want me to rise, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to rise from a bed of my own blood, from a stretch of earth made soft by the pummeling of my limbs. I don’t know how to stand and dance, not even for the Royale. Not to join a caravan of the enslaved, not to travel toward a tomorrow of torture and death. No, not even for you.

  “You will dance,” you say, and suddenly violent retching tugs at my throat. Grandfather’s magic must be stuck or broken, or else it’s incredibly cruel. Something is pummeling me, piercing my skin with pinpricks. I don’t know if it’s another time shift, abuse from my attackers, or you trying to rouse me.

  I lift a weak wrist and for a brief second there is relief. Then the pain returns—like a million tiny axes chopping at my organs. I throw open a thigh to ward off the trembling. There is no faith or courage here, just feverish desperation as I move through the Royale.

  I imagine Grandfather’s unsteady fingers working to bring me back. A gritty moan rustles in my ears. At first I think it’s my voice winding out over the sand flats, but then I realize it is you, reaching down deep to pull out a wailing too gutbucket for your small frame. It is the straining in your voice that hooks me. I tilt my head back and gulp down deep raggedy breaths. I open my mouth; nothing but dry rasping comes out. I work at it anyway. I search for a part of me that is unbruised and untouched by pain. I open my mouth again, struggling to thrust out a mangled yell that can match your wailing. Then the sands of time grind at my bones, and everything goes dark.

  “You have the things?”

  I blink and look around. My body lurches forward. For a few brief seconds, it feels like I’m hurtling through space. I grab onto a pole overhead, than drag myself back to standing.

  “Keep tight! What were you thinking?”

  I look at the person speaking to me and almost gag. I look away, but a glance around the room sickens me further. The room is crawling with mangled people. No facial feature is where it should be—limbs are attached at odd angles on all the wrong parts of the body. I force the muscles in my face to be still. Then I look again. It is a man speaking to me, was a man. Now I don’t know what he is. He has eyes on either side of his mouth, and his nose sits at a violent tilt. The space where his eyes should be is covered with a huge, lumpy scar. Even as I am battling revulsion, I can see that his oddly-placed eyes are flicking appraising glances, sizing me up.

  I look around again. Through the narrow mesh platform beneath my feet, I see more of them—the mutilated—packed in like cockroaches. There are so many of them that they look like rashes or rust corroding the metal walls. Besides the revolting people, everything in the room is metal—metal walls, metal poles, metal mesh flooring.

  When I look up, a few droplets of wetness fall into my eyes. I shake my head and blink it away. I look up again. A clump of blistered kids are wedged between the overhead poles and the ceiling. The realization rises in me slowly: I must be disfigured too. I look down at my body. I see my shoulder just beneath my chin, and my arm jutting out from where my chest should be. What kinds of freaks are we?

  When next I look at the man, the air around me seems unstable. The fearsome roar that rings through the room starts to echo in my ears. My eyelids droop, and my muscles start to go slack. The man opens his mouth, a tiny wet hand emerges. He wipes the bottom of my nose with it. A moldy scent bursts in my sinuses, and my eyes pop wide open.

  “You gonna make it? Ain’t no short trip!”

  I nod mutely, revolted and relieved.

  “You have your things?” he asks again.

  I shrug. He squints at me. I can tell h
e thinks I’m a waste of time.

  “You know about the things, right?”

  I shrug again, this time nodding.

  He turns his head and opens his mouth. Out comes the hand again. It feels along the pole we’re hanging on. He picks at something flat that’s stuck there and rips it off. I hadn’t noticed it before, but only one of his arms ends with a hand, the other ends with a foot. He only has one standing leg, and it’s keeping him balanced on the platform beneath us.

  He waves it under my nose. It’s an old tattered label.

  “Mmmm-mmm!”

  It takes me a few seconds to realize he can’t talk and hand me the label at the same time. I grab the label.

  “Not going to ask. Why you don’t know what we’re doing here is none of my concern. How you got on the transport without knowing about the things ain’t my trouble.” He looks around. “But you better learn fast. There ain’t no return trips. At the end of this, either you’ll get out or you’ll die.”

  I can tell by the hard edges of his words that he meant to scare. Instead I’m thrilled. Could this finally be the end?

  “You need three things. Three. You got them?”

  I began to feel around my body, awkwardly learning how to use my rotated arms.

  “Pocket the label.”

  “What?”

  The guy’s eyes roll up like I’m useless. “Pocket the label, it’s your pass.”

  I look at the label. It’s grimy and stiff. Though it’s ripped I can read something on it: “Regiment Green: Disrespect on a cellular level.” Reaching around my hip, feeling for my back pocket, my hand catches on an opening in my clothes. It’s a pocket. I drop the label in and feel around the rest of my clothes. I’ve got pockets all over.

  I poke around in the pockets, unsure of what I’m looking for. My fingers happen upon something stiff in the fourth pocket. I pull it out—a shiny black feather. The man makes a weird fluttering sound with his mouth. I imagine that wet hand flapping against his moist jaws.

  “Don’t show me. Don’t show anybody except Him when you get there. Got it?”

  I nod and keep feeling around, but the rest of the pockets are empty. After I check all my pockets twice, I realize that my fingers are covered with grime. I put my hand back in a pocket and pinch at the bottom. When I draw my hand out, there’s something grainy sticking to my fingertips. I hold my hand up to my face—desert sand. I start grabbing pinches of sand wherever I can find it.

  “Tighten!” the guy yells.

  I grab on with two hands. The transport dips, then turns sharply. My feet fly off the platform, and a burning flares across my palms where they rub against the overhead pipe.

  I hear a yell, then two bodies drop down from above. The yelling fades and is replaced by a sinister hissing. The air fills with smoke, and a high-pitched wailing rings out.

  “Don’t lose your grip,” the guy mutters.

  “What’s down there?”

  “Engine.”

  Fear bubbles up in my throat, but I choke it back down. I focus on the impossible task of filling one of my pockets with sand. When I’ve piled all the sand I can grab into one pocket, I let out a relieved exhalation.

  But the guy breaks into my relief. “You need three things. Two’s no good. He won’t send you if you don’t have three.”

  My thoughts run around my mind in panicked loops. Who is this person and where will he send me? Will this take me home? More moisture falls on me from above. I’m suddenly aware of my armpits and my crotch. They are soaking wet, my entire torso is wet—I am terrified to the bone.

  Suddenly I know what my third thing will be.

  “What if I want to bring liquid? What can I hold it in?”

  The guy doesn’t answer. He throws his head back, barks something guttural and fast. One of the children wedged in overhead shimmies forward on the pole. He almost cracks my knuckles in the process, but I don’t cry out. He reaches up, grabs something white and cup-shaped from the ceiling. He brings it to his mouth quickly, gulping something down. Finds another cup-shaped thing from the ceiling and grabs it. He passes them down to the guy, whose head is thrown back, lips spread wide as the wet hand is outstretched waiting for the cups. When he has them, he flicks them at me.

  “Won’t last forever. You better hope it holds out till we get to the Man.”

  I nod. I see him staring at me curiously. I tilt my head forward, hold the cup underneath the tip of my nose, let my sweat drip into it.

  “Tighten!”

  I throw my hand over the pole and yank on it with my wrist. We careen backward this time. I lose all my sweat but I hold on to the cup. It takes me three more tries, but I finally fill the cup.

  Something like admiration creeps into the guy’s eyes.

  “Pass the empty,” he says.

  I pass it. With a flick of his wet fingers, he turns it upside down and holds it out to me. I fit the cup filled with sweat to the empty one. He pinches the edges of the two cups with his tiny hand. I take the cups back and drop them into my pocket.

  A ghostly sensation washes through my body. At first I think it’s relief, but then I feel it fluttering in my chest. I look at my guide with new eyes, eyes that are probably now as wet as my skin. I haven’t caught a glimpse of the outside, but I know from my brief time in the bowels of this machine, this world isn’t a pretty place. Surrounded by all these damaged cells, in the middle of this ocean of desperation, my guide suddenly seems holy. Before I can hold it back, reverence and gratitude pour out of my face. My emotions register in his eyes, and he turns away.

  After my flush of emotion, “Tighten!” is the only word he says to me for the rest of the trip. In the absence of his gaze, the balancing act becomes routine; I find myself oddly acclimated to periodic peril. Soon I’m dozing off between veers and drops as the drone of the engine soaks through me. By the time the engine room shudders and slows, I have become what everyone else is: a jumpy, sweaty fugitive—frightened, yet determined to survive.

  A grinding sound parts the damp heat around us. Everyone begins to chatter in different tones and pitches, and the transport jerks to a sudden halt. I look up just in time to see hundreds of thin metal shafts shoot down from the ceiling. The noise is deafening. I feel the whoosh of wind slap my cheek as one of the spinning metal shafts rips through the air next to me. A dizzy panic whirls through my gut. I grip the pole tighter and pray not to faint. When I regain my balance, I look at my guide for reassurance, but his eyes are closed and his mouth is moving steadily. Is he talking to himself?

  A thin drizzle wets my cheek. I touch it—it’s not water. It’s thick and green, and it stings my fingertips. The green gel splatters through the room sounding like footsteps or bloodshed. Then a pounding roar drowns out the splattering. My stomach clenches. What is coming for us?

  I glance at my guide again—he’s standing stock still, eyes closed. Some of the others have let go of their poles, but not my guide. As the roaring grows louder, I nervously gnaw on my shoulder. All around me people are leaping from perches and diving from ledges, green goo lashing against their bodies as they plunge.

  Just when I think I’m going to bite through my skin, my guide opens his eyes. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. His mouth moves again, and he pitches his body forward. It looks like he’s saying “Jump.” My muscles tense as I prepare to leap. My guide opens his mouth and extends that small wet hand. He puts one finger up, and I hear a deafening crack. It sounds like the whole room is going to split in two. My guide nods, we leap.

  The freefall makes me feel like vomiting. Instead of crashing on the engine, we land on a wave of green gel. It is washing through the engine room in rivers now. Those who did not leap are engulfed by it. Those who leapt too soon lay broken somewhere on the engine below.

  The gel hurries forward, carrying me at a frightening speed straight at a wall. I shut my eyes tight, but I don’t but slam into the wall. With a whir, a circular door opens before me, and I
surf through it into darkness. My eyes—useless. The gel bobs gently, misleadingly—as it is rocking me, it is searing my skin. People call out names and numbers. Some voices are frantic, others pleading. A crackle that sounds like electricity silences them all. Light flashes, and I see that everyone is looking up. I look around wildly for an exit or a sign—something that can tell me where to go before we are plunged into darkness again.

  When next the light flashes, everyone is still looking up. Probes, shiny and bulbous, start to lower from the ceiling. Darkness comes, forcing me to calculate how long the probes will take to get to me, and how far I need to move away so as not to be crushed. I feel a ripple as the probes slide into the gel. Another flash, and I see bodies scrambling up onto the probes. I feel around blindly until I touch something cool and hard. I grab onto the probe. It crackles and a gentle electric current rolls through my body. Before I can climb all the way onto the probe, it starts to lift.

  The burning on my skin cools as soon as I am out of the gel. I allow myself a few seconds of relief as the probe lifts through the ceiling into a new room and a floor closes underneath us. The thump of people dropping down from the probes is the first thing I hear. Then feet scattering.

  “Run!” people start to yell, “Ruuuuunnnnnn.”

  They scatter—hopping, crawling, rushing. No one seems to know which way to go. I can finally use my feet, but I am faltering. I turn around in circles, looking for a door, a window, a hint of light, anything that can show me the way out. But all I see is rows and rows of probes hemming us in; I can’t even figure out the shape of the room we’re in.

  I hear a faint sound.

  “Ahhhh-lay-lay-lay. Ah-la, lay, lay, lay. Ahhhh-lay-lay-lay. Ah-la, lay, lay, lay.”