The bracelet was torn from Africa’s arm, and her daughter stared in awe as her mother lost her shape.
Alone on the planet, the girl considered the shape she would take. The night comforted her like the pitch black of space, her playground. She slipped on the bracelet as she draped the blackness around herself to form her body; then took starlight for eyes. When daylight came, she grew a glorious patch of tightly coiled hair to shield her head from the sun.
She gave the land she walked on her mother’s name; Africa, the cradle of creation. Her reflection in the water revealed she was creating a beautiful people. Her fingers caressed the deep hue of her skin. She would call them hue-man because they would be a colorful people. She was suddenly melancholy, realizing she would watch the death of this world and many more to follow. She pushed the painful thoughts aside so they wouldn’t pass to the new creation.
Impressions from her sixteen years of solitary existence,
her limited knowledge of the universe,
love for playing among the stars,
and capacity to empathize
would all genetically pass to her planet’s descendants.
At the end of her sixteen lonely years, the girl descended into the ocean and seeded the planet, transforming it into a world. She crossed the divide and returned to her plane.
The Eternals, their touch heavy with hope, raised her arm, the bracelet now deeply embedded.
They spoke: “This world will bear your name … Earth.”
It was an honor never before given.
They lifted Earth so she could better view her fragile creation.
“Do you see?”
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
Soulless Cargo
Balogun
“We done missed the train ’cause o’ y’all!” Harriet hissed. “Now we gots to wait three days befo’ that train fly back ’round to get us!”
“We sorry, Moses,” a man said, rising from amongst the frightened men, women, and children huddled at the back of the barn. “But the new massa and his overseer kill us all if we even thank about runnin’!”
“There are twenty grown folk in here and y’all scared o’ two men?” Harriet asked, shaking her head and frowning in disgust.
“They ain’t no men,” an elderly woman replied. “Massa look like a skeleton with a blanket o’ cow-skin pulled over it; and that overseer? Lawd … he twice as big as a old bear on two legs. And got a arm made of a iron whip that spit white fire when it hit a slave’s back.”
Harriet shuddered. The barn suddenly seemed very cold. “The massa … what’s his name?”
“Bell,” the old woman said. “Massa Aleister Bell.”
“Damn,” Harriet whispered as she ran to a leather rucksack she had laid at the opposite end of the barn. She placed her lantern beside it and snatched the bag open.
“You right, Aleister Bell ain’t no man,” Harriet said. “He a lich. A wizard who dead but ain’t dead--all ’cause he eat the souls of the livin’. Y’all ever seen a bracelet o’ his? Gold … with strange markings carved into it?”
“I have,” a young woman replied. “I’s Flora Jean, Moses. I works in the house. I seen him put that bracelet behind a shelf in the library.”
“That bracelet is the mouth he feedin’ y’all souls to,” Harriet said, removing a fistful of large bullets from the bag and tossing them on the floor. It’s drainin’ y’all as we speak. Did the same on a plantation in Mississippi ’bout five years ago. Left all the slaves like statues … standin’ in the cotton field ’til they just wasted away. Been huntin’ him ever since.”
Harriet drew a large black steel revolver from her rucksack. The weapon possessed two barrels and a drum-like cylinder that contained twenty chambers, in two rows.
“And what about the overseer,” Flora Jean asked. “You ever seen him?”
“Her,” Harriet replied, loading the large rounds into the revolver. “The overseer is a her … I killed her mate back on that plantation in Mississippi.”
With that, Harriet flung open the doors to the barn, stepped into the shadows of the night, and raised her face skyward. “Lawd, once again you done led me into battle with your enemies. I pray that I finds mo’ favor with you than with Old Scratch, Lawd, ’cause I shol’ done sent mo’ souls his way than yo’s. Amen.”
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
Ouroboros Rising
Thaddeus Howze
“Apprentice.”
“Yes, master.”
“It’s time.”
I help him up and walk him into his study. He is paper-thin, light like a bird, a wisp of the force I remember from my youth. I can feel the fire burning through him. My second sight, even shielded, cannot block the visions of his power. I help him to his workbench, central seat of his gift.
Only as we draw close can I sense it.
The bracelet. It shimmers in darkness the way his power glows brightly. A cool black metal that flickers like glass, lit from within with a sinister madness. This is my last time to say no.
He sits. His palsy stops once he picks it up. His eyes harden like flint, and his gaze beckons me to sit across from him. The light from the power within him dims. “Once you put this on, you will enter our Order. There is no release, no resistance, no rest from Ouroboros. Her power is complete and unending. Do you understand?”
Of course I do. This is what I trained for the last fifteen years. This decision marks my journey to true power.
“I know that look, boy. You think you are getting what you want. Do you think I don’t know what you’re feeling? I sat there once.”
“Master, I am just eager to begin our work.”
“Don’t be in such a rush to go out and subjugate the world.”
“Master ….”
“Spare me. Your lust for power was the reason you were chosen. Ouroboros requires strong passion, better to harness your gift.”
“Harness my gift?”
“Give me your hand, child. This is not a toy, nor just a tool. It is a weapon coupled with your intent. Fail to harness your intent and it will kill you.”
He rubs the bracelet and taps it on his stone workbench. He taps it again. And again. The flat sound echoes across my senses, first a ripple, then a tide. Then a crack appears in the surface of the stone. Ironwood, once living, now a metallic stone, one of the hardest natural substances, cracks, splinters to dust, with a sound like the world ending. He grabs my hand and his grip is as strong as it was weak moments earlier. The bracelet, now expanded, slips easily over my hand.
All I can feel is the power.
All that I thought I knew about power is erased. My inner energy is as a candle compared to this burning sun. He was right. I had no idea. The things I would do. The metal burns my flesh as it closes tightly on my wrist. As my power grows darker, I can suddenly see his. Always there, it usually could be seen only for a second whenever he would pass before a window and the light hit him just right. Now it is alive, visible, and its energy flies toward me.
“Yes, you can feel the power of Ouroboros and you think, I can do anything. And you are right. But with light comes the darkness. Ouroboros is between all things, so I now give unto you the other side of power: responsibility. The chains that bind this power to your very soul. Each time you partake of her power, you are dying. You will do great things. But whenever you reach beyond what is yours, and ask her for power, your sacrifice will be your time left to live. And you have much to do.”
The black shadow falls on my bracelet, and its light diminishes, flecked with nuances and shades of gray. My vision returns to normal. His grip loosens, and he falls back into his chair, boneless and still. I leap to him over the remnants of his work desk, its power drained into me.
He looks at me, then down to the bracelet. He smiles fiercely. “Chained you again. He’s a strong one. Your scourge will be contained, for a time.” He lifts his head, his eyes rheumy with age. “I’m sorry, Kal.”
His whisper barely reaches me.
He dies slumping forward into my arms.
“He was a bitter old man. We will do great things, you and I.”
I could feel her coiled around my heart. Squeezing and settling down like a snake. Making my power her own.
All that light. A radiance that dwarfs my own. It is the life energies of mages she’d claimed before me. I am insignificant to her. She thinks to use me up. I am no more than food to her. I may never be able to be free of her, but I certainly don’t have to give her what she wants. She will earn every meal.
“They all said that. All fell before me. Ambition is a hard taskmaster.” She pauses to let me think on that. She continues: “We have time; there is no rush to get back to taking your world for my own. Let us get to know one other.”
We conspire deep into the night.
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
The Family Circle
Rasheedah Phillips
It was all her mother had left her: the box and a choice of whether to open it or wait. Her memory was fuzzy, but she remembered that her mother would carry out a nightly ritual of opening the small box. She never saw what it held.
She convinced herself that her mother would have wanted her to open the box on her twenty-first birthday, which was the age her mother had been when she took her own life.
She looked at the box again, then back at her own daughter. She caught her little girl’s eye and smiled at her reflection in the mirror. She wondered if her little girl could see the soft tears dotting the corners of her eyes. Her thoughts shifted to the room around her. She was fascinated by how closely it resembled the kind of bare, lifeless, boxlike rooms she and her mother had to live in when she was young. She felt ready to open the small box, ready to find a lifetime worth of answers inside.
She opened it. Gleaming in the dark was a silver charm bracelet. She lifted it with two fingers and inspected it. The bracelet had twelve linked charms. Each charm bore an engraved astrological sign. The bloodstone Pisces symbol glimmered. This charm stood out, she knew, because she, her mother, and her daughter--all born on dates within a week of each other--were all Pisces. Like her mother, she had birthed a child at the age of fourteen. Her own daughter would turn seven years old, seven days from today.
This was what she had carried for fourteen years, to the day. Her mother’s bracelet.
She couldn’t resist the urge to slip the cool metal onto her left wrist. As soon as it made contact, it attached itself, becoming uncomfortably tight, squeezing so hard that her pulse throbbed. She doubled over, but it loosened, the pain dissolving into a phantom lightness. She looked at herself in the mirror: She could see herself clearly and her daughter at play on the bed.
Back in her body, she remembered. There would be only a few moments. She spun away from the mirror to look at her daughter directly. She knelt down to her daughter and kissed her on her forehead, mouthing the words:
“I love you. Break the cycle.”
The little girl did not understand the words, but she would always remember the way each word felt as her mother pressed them into her forehead.
The little girl watched her mother walk to the dresser, slide something off her wrist and drop it into the special little box she kept there, as she did every night before bed. The box was an object she wasn’t allowed to touch, even when mommy would let her play in her makeup.
Her mother walked into the bathroom and locked the door. When mommy came back out, several hours later, she was being wheeled away on a stretcher, eyes wide, staring into oblivion, dead.
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
Set Him Free
Valjeanne Jeffers
Mona, a mahogany-colored young woman dressed in a smock with a matching jacket and bustle, waited at the turnstile. Her miniature top hat sat cocked at a rakish angle atop her braided hair. First impressions were so important.
The train was late, and she dug her nails into her hands in an effort to quiet her nerves. If I don’t fix this they gonna kill him!
Fifteen minutes later, a whistle loudly announced the train’s arrival. Mona gazed along the tracks, wishing she could hurry it into the station. It pulled in, and folks carrying cardboard suitcases, hatboxes, and small children stepped off.
Mona watched a heavily built honey-brown man in a tweed suit stop in the doorway of the first passenger car. The blue cap she sought perched atop his wooly head. He held his only luggage between his big hands: a black jewel box.
He lifted a big hand to his cap. “Miz Mona …?” He had deep, booming voice.
“Yes, that's me.”
“I’m Charles Dubois. Am I too late?”
Mona barely restrained herself from hugging him in relief. “Naw, but we got to hurry! I got a car waiting!”
“Let’s go.”
They walked—almost ran—to the waiting steam-car. He turned the crank for her, and she drove them through town, past wooden houses and glass storefronts.
“This man they got, what is he to you?”
Mona swallowed and said nothing.
“Oh, I see … they got him for marrying your mama?”
Mona couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear to see judgment in his eyes, too. “Yes, suh.”
Charles chuckled. “You ain’t got to ‘suh’ me, and I ain’t judging you--not your mama or your papa, either.”
They came to a stop in front of the sheriff’s office. John opened the box. A gleaming gold bracelet lay inside, atop a bed of velvet.
Charles gingerly pulled out the bracelet out and handed it to her. “This ain’t gonna last forever,” he said. “It’ll soften their hearts for a while, but y’all got to watch the signs. If you can’t change their hearts, then get in the wind--and that right quick! You understand?”
Mona nodded. She took the bracelet from him and hid it in the folds of her dress. She went inside. A red-faced man wearing a silver star sat at the front desk. He glared at her, then leisurely got to his feet.
“Afternoon, suh.”
“What you want, gal?”
“I came to see … the prisoner.”
He eyed her contemptuously. “Go on to the back.”
Mona walked past him to the cell. A silver-haired white man waited inside for her. His face was covered with bruises. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the sheriff wasn't watching. She slipped the bracelet over his hand, kissed him on the cheek and walked away.
As she reached the door, she heard: “Henry? What you doing locked up?”
Mona smiled and went outside to thank the hoodoo man … and to wait for her father.
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
Neck Less
Margaret Fieland
An ornament, band for the arm
intended to adorn or charm,
made out of silver, gold, or wood,
that hopefully looks really good.
A pair of handcuffs for attaching
a thief whom I am bent on catching.
Clamp them on, take him to jail
where someone listens to his tale.
Perhaps a collar on a dress
to fold or roll or sometimes press,
sometimes too loose, sometimes too tight.
It’s rarely that they get it right.
A band, a necklace, garland too,
in pink or purple, green or blue,
that you may hate or may adore,
seen in the window of a store.
A band around a horse’s neck
meant to restrain, retain, or check,
so that it cannot run away,
or bite or nip, or nibble hay.
A piece of hardware, shaft, or rod.
I found the definition odd,
involving sizing of a band
that I did not quite understand
A cut of meat, a piece of bacon,
at present in the fridge, forsaken,
meant to go into some penne,
a piece or two or maybe many.
To seize, arrest, perhaps detain
some person whom you must restrain,
reach out and grab them by the collar
and listen to them yell and holler.
There are no words that rhyme with bracelet,
not even one that sounds like facelet,
and definitions, but a few,
That’s why I wrote of collars, too.
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
The Scarlet Bracelet
Nicole D. Sconiers
Of all the things Jemory remembered about the body hanging from the tree, those yellow baby doll shoes haunted her the most. They were patent leather and newly polished, as if the dead woman had been on her way to a dance. From where Jemory stood at the edge of the crowd that day, she couldn’t make out the woman’s features. The dead woman’s sleek black wig was askew, caressing her broken neck. Jemory wore a similar wig. The only adornment on the woman’s lifeless arm was a thin red bracelet, the size of a hospital wrist band. The mark of an outlaw.
Jemory let herself into her apartment. She locked and bolted the front door. As she headed to the bathroom she unpinned her wig. Her scalp itched. She longed to scratch it, to knead the knotty tendrils. She dropped the wig on the counter next to the sink, then she undid the braid that circled her head like a bristly crown. Several strands caught on her scarlet bracelet, and she yanked it free.
She removed a small, unmarked jar from the breast pocket of her jacket. She scooped out a dollop of pale yellow paste and massaged it into her hair. Jemory bought the shea butter for a hundred dollars from a gap-toothed Nigerian man on Crenshaw who sold it on the black market. It was pure, unlike the chemically enhanced stuff the salons and beauty supply stores sold before they were shut down. She had watched as he kneeled by a wooden table in his kitchen, spoke a few words in Arabic, and pounded the nuts with a mortar and pestle. The constant thwok-thwok-thwok sound of shells being crushed was somehow comforting. Finally, he rose to roast the kernels in a large metal pot. It was such an intensive process for so small a bounty.
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