“Son, I’m telling you.”
“Pass me that jar, old man.”
In prurient anticipation of disaster, ten brothers leaned as one to watch when Faedou handed over the jar. Demane lifted it and sniffed. Elsewhere in the world, one cur of a famished pack was sniffing at strychnined meat, and suffering the very same qualms as Demane. Poison, said these fumes; but look at all the others partaking. Was it not primitive and backcountry, then, always to be trusting one’s own senses? Thus, even forewarned, dog ate, man drank. Bad water in a ditch where geese, crossing the continent, alit to crap, bears stopped to piss, and up through which foul gas, clots of oil, were burbling from the green sludge of the bottom; and this whole foul brew—thanks to a storm last night, some lightning strike—set on fire . . . That Demon was so much worse than this. Demane gagged. He wheezed breath in. He hacked it back out.
Brothers fell out laughing.
Faedou retrieved his jar. Cumalo beat upon his brother’s back. “Told you not to be messing with it.” Hangdog and gasping, Demane could only cough upon his knees and shake his sorry head. Which he lifted up, as some fresh stir moved through the gathered brotherhood.
“By the Holy Recital of Life and Days, looky here,” said old Faedou, eyes on the piazza’s crowd. “Bet your ass, this is some trouble coming.” Brothers with backs to the view turned around, Demane among them. “Here come the king and prince of chuckleheads, bringing us some news. Ain’t no good news, though! Watch.”
It was Xho Xho and Walead, at a dead run. “Yo! Yo! Sorcerer!” The boys were beside themselves. “So this man. This bad man? This man we had ran into, right? He sold Messed Up some qaïf.” So wicked and busy a fellow is This Man We Had Ran Into! Has anyone else ever stirred up such trouble across all worlds, from the deepest past to the very days we are living in? “So then, Messed Up was smoking with dude, right?” But not, one could hardly fail to note, smoking alone. For a mighty funk of burnt herb had come wafting in with Xho Xho and Walead, and their eyes were droopy, awfully bloodshot. “It was that good shit, Sorcerer. Everything, chill. So then why did dude have to just up and say something to Messed Up like that? You know Messed Up don’t be tryna hear it! Now that nigga STRAIGHT BUGGING. Yo, Sorcerer, you gotta come quick—fore Captain or the fo-so get him!”
Having just set the house on fire, two boys would raise the alarm with this same whine and dance. Demane let himself be pulled up and dragged (a skinny brother at each hand) through the riotous boogie and bounce on the piazza. Coming and going in the heatless glare of the greatorch, his sight was a sometime thing. Every other brother, of course, pushed along through the revels too, all save their eldest, lame and dying.
Conjoined in violence to the familiar gargantua, a little stranger fought to free himself. Messed Up righthandedly flung about and shook his most unwilling detainee, while lefthandedly trying to inflict fatal damage on another—any other—from the usual heckling monkeyhouse of fightwatchers.
The wrappings of Messed Up’s loincloth showed, his robe was so far ripped down. Teeth had worried his right forearm to gruesome effect. Nose freshly pulped, the face of This Man We Had Ran Into was a monster mask of blackslimed teeth. Messed Up screamed pure madness.
“Ahm bout to WHOOP somebody ass! Who else want some? You? You, then? How come y’all running—stop running! Ain’t NOBODY here wont they ass whoop? Awls ah see is a buncha scaredycat jumpback turntail COWARD RABBITS.”
Demane, sick and tired of the bullshit, nevertheless waded in.
Making twelve, he added four limbs to the brawl’s previous eight. Though a man speaks only wisdom—even shouts it—does the mudslide, avalanche, cyclone choose to heed? Next Demane tried to pry the stranger loose. Clinging like a fanatic to his relic, Messed Up committed both hands to retaining the prize.
“You motherfuckers must think Messed Up care.” He clarified his position: “Messed Up DON’T care! Messed Up don’t give a shit!”
Even the world’s strongest man has a hard limit. This he cannot do: overcome another very strong man supercharged with hysteria, unless he cuts loose. In case of which, be ready to accept punctured lungs, a spine stove in, spleen ruptured, or neck snapped. Said otherwise, Demane’s choice was to talk Messed Up down, or else kill him. No third option.
He’d never cut loose in his life, and was hardly going to do so tonight, against a brother. For a ridiculous eternity, then—while strangers jeered and the brothers put their loudest faith in Demane—the three men waddled side to side, back and forth: one bawling swears, one sense, one silently biting. Then a boy or woman screamed—it was Walead, in fact—splitting the crowd’s hoarse noise with a treble axe.
The captain was come.
The heel of a bloody hand blew past Demane’s shoulder, staunching the flow of Messed Up’s raving upon impact. That clobbering strike knocked the colossus of the riot slack in Demane’s arms, and loose from the stranger—who absconded. Quick as that first blow, another came just behind. Demane pivoted, taking the captain’s fist on the hard meat of his shoulder, lest Messed Up’s lolling head receive a lethal excess. That hurt. Both big men sagged toward the ground. With all the gentleness he could, Demane laid out Messed Up’s deadweight. The brotherly part of the crowd surged inward.
“Damn it, Captain, he down!”
“Why you hitting him again? Dag!”
“Cain’t you see the man out cold?”
Captain spun on them, his seeing eye wild. Got whoop-ass to go around! Who else wants some?
Not a brother did, and they swept—tidelike—out again. Demane got Messed Up turned on one side, the red flux of his nose wetting the cobbles, no longer drowning him.
“It’s all right now, Isa.” Demane caught the hem of Captain’s robe above a sandaled foot. “I got him. Won’t be no more trouble out of him or nobody. I mean it.” He let go, and patted the instep.
At that touch strange sound and overheated odor bloomed into the night from the captain, recollections of some long-ago event. Demane caught his breath at the intensity. He smelled seabrine, waterlogged wood; he heard combers foaming, surf breaking. Trade winds blew in from the austral continent, full of spice and pollens unknown to him. And what stench was that . . . the bloody ordure of a market butcheryard? The site of some big-game slaughter, buffalo or elephant? No; already attuned to the scent of Captain’s blood, and Messed Up’s, Demane recognized this vast spilled quantity as human blood . . . several dozen men, gutted, all of whom had died within moments of one another. The corpses overcrowded some tightly enclosed space near the ocean . . . rocking atop it: a ship. The captain stood tottering over him, and shed these remembered sensations so potently, Demane could have pointed to where each phantom body lay, eviscerated in the suffocating swelter. There was a scent-memory of the captain as well among those massed corpses, his unearthly blood leaking, the signature tattoo of his strong heart feeble and stuttering . . . Then it broke, whether rapport or fugue, whatever that nightmare had been. Demane was again at the Station of Mother of Waters, fifteen hundred miles from any ocean. At the edge of the desert this warm night was cool—sweet indeed—beside that memory out of Hell.
Captain looked down at Demane, then all around. Who are you? Where am I? said these looks. The backsplash of other men’s blood freckled his face, which was some stranger’s, it was so pummeled and cut. His cyclopean left eye glared, his right one swollen up blind. The knuckles of his hands were raw gore, the flesh stripped in spots to glimpses of bone. By slow changes in stance and expression Demane marked the captain’s return from wandering among ghosts and memories, to this night, these people. He stepped away from Demane’s hand. He slumped to one side, swayed as though to fall and then, catching himself, painfully stood back upright.
Of course a doctor who was also lover would wish for nothing except to say, Let me help you. But more forthcoming than anything a man can ever say aloud—whether you may care for his wounds, whether you may watch over his sleep—is the silent testimony of his bearing an
d demeanor. For the body tells all to him who knows the language, and doesn’t lie. The captain would sooner have leapt into the fiery lake atop Mt. Bittersmoke than accepted even so much as a shoulder to lean on.
Captain staggered off, one-leg-dragging, into darkness and glare. Brothers flushed from his way like pigeons from a loose dog.
Messed Up mumbled and stirred.
T-Jawn knelt beside Demane. “I should be only too happy to fuck right off again, if you are still wroth with me. But, please, Sorcerer, permettez-moi: shall I take feet or shoulders?”
“Salright.” Demane lurched to a squat and then—making faces, all a-tremble—came to standing: hefting Messed Up in his arms. “I got him.”
“Mais, mon vieux! Are you quite sure . . . ?”
“Yeah, Jawny. Just get em out the way for me.” Demane nodded toward the brothers uselessly crowding in. And to that most useless pair:
“Xho, Walé!” Demane called. “Tell me where y’all staying at.”
Nearby, in some travelers’ barracks. The adobe hall was low-ceilinged, the doors narrow, and most of the brothers shared the biggest room in back. Men dropped onto their pallets, and into sleep within a breath or two. A few sat up whispering in the dark, rehearsing the night’s events to one another. He laid Messed Up on the pallet nearest the window. Demane blinked to clear his eyes.
No longer bleeding, the nose was swollen tight as if to burst. He propped Messed Up’s head on a rolled sheet, broached a jar of sterile water, and washed away caked blood. Flexing tiny muscles, praying under his breath, Demane began to nurse down a precious drop of ichor from his third eye. Forgive me this venom. It is weak and will save a life, taking none. In TSOA they say, Let us hasten to the heat death, for its arrival is inevitable. Yet in TSIM we say, No; we shall keep on fixing the machine unto the last moment. So then account me TSIMTSOA, spinning on the Tower’s right. Forgive me this venom . . . Those brothers still awake gaped blindly toward this catechistic mutter. The light too dim for their eyes, they started at the little sounds Demane made, taking from his bag and putting back.
He prayed, blinking, and then at last his tongue deliquesced. It split into tapered, coiling halves: the hot prehensile right, the cold secretory left—from which expressed a droplet viscid as quicksilver. Demane scooped up the mercurial drop in his venom sac, and faster than eyes rewet themselves with a blink, lashed half his tongue across a full yard, stroking its load precisely across the crushed bridge of Messed Up’s nose. At once the black swelling went brown. Demane, blinking, allowed the vitriol a moment to anesthetize, to sink as deeply as bone. Then he pinched the nose’s jumbled rubble back into order. His tongue sealed and shortened, trembling and achy. Estranged from his own emotion and fatigue, he cleaned wounds, sewing some. He kept having to blink to clear away his leaking tears. And why tears? Why not? This night had been long, trying, and widely various in its trials. And now that the last of the fires was all put out, he must not forget to grab by the neckscruff the rascals who set this blaze, and make them contemplate the smoky ruins.
“Xho and Walé, you two listen up.” Demane began to pack up his medicia. “What happen is, sometimes qaïf can go bad, see, and [mycotoxic fungus] grow on it . . . like a rot, you understand? That’s why you don’t smoke it. Shouldn’t. Smoke some bad qaïf, and it [can induce choleric schizophrenia] . . . mess up your head for good. That’s what he done a long time ago, what messed him up in the first place. Qaïf poison, very dangerous. It’s [an insult to the homeostasis of body and mind]. You understand me?” Well, how can they, fool? You’re speaking half in your own language!
Anxious to demonstrate rehabilitation, Xho Xho and Walead said, “We ain’t smoking no more.”
“Nope. Not again, uh uh.”
“I don’t even really like qaïf, never did. You, Walé?”
“Hell no—I hate that shit!”
There was a bit of back-and-forth over whether that one dude, or Messed Up, or indeed some other dude, had first thought it a good idea to do something so bad—“Myself, I was like, ‘I don’t think we should, though, y’all. I don’t think it’s right.’”—but certainly neither of them, the two boys concurring here, had been the original instigator.
Such eagerness to create space between present self and past sins obliges adults in the room to wonder whether callow youth has really wised up. “What if the fo-so had showed up?” Cumalo spoke harshly from the dark. “What if Captain had gone upside y’all peanut heads hard as he did Messed Up?”
“He has before.”
“Yup! Cause, remember that time? I couldn’t see straight for days . . .”
The noise of frustration Demane made turned to a huge yawn. His burning eyes, all at once, would hardly stay open.
T-Jawn groped for Demane’s shoulder. “You sound all done in, Sorcerer. Vous pouvez partir, and take your rest. Messrs. Xho Xho and Walead shall retire for the evening, while Cumalo and I keep our eyes on things. I daresay no further mischief can be forthcoming from our sleeper—not tonight, non?”
So Demane left.
There was to be, after all, no rendezvous, laid up together under palm tree fronds on the banks of Mother of Waters. That hope had always been a mirage, though anticipation of it had carried Demane through all the weeks of the desert crossing. Now he’d find some spot in the open air to sleep beside the lake. But not quite yet: a night so evil required exorcizing before sleep. Wise words, or even the company of wisdom though nothing was said, would be enough. Along empty alleys, Demane returned to the piazza. The throngs there had become stragglers, and the awful fluorescence of the greatorch banked down to a sulfurous glow. And yes: Faedou and his jar even now sat against the wall. Demane took seat beside his elder brother. Content to say nothing, they watched the remnants of the night revels.
A lone drummer beat his jimbay with closed eyes, inspiring the feet of the last score dancers. Two of the caravan’s merchants, Qabr and Iuliano, slowstepped tiredly and in synch among those final revolving few. The two men possessed the same fine manners, eloquent hands, and trim small size: alike as twins, though obviously not kin—the one being pale and sharp-featured; the other dark, full of mouth and nose. What a blessing, what wonderful good luck, Demane thought, to make this long crossing with such a friend to share the travails. Never did you see those two apart! One night years ago perhaps they’d twirled through the piazza’s crowd and bumped into each other for the first time. And now, in memory of that first night perhaps it was their habit to dance away another whenever passing through town—
“Tch.” Faedou sucked his teeth, scowling. “It ain’t right.” He nodded toward the merchants dancing. “You know them two be smoking, right?”
Demane shook his head. “No, Faedou, not those two.” Men of such quality would never touch qaïf, and he said so.
“No, man.” With thumb upright, Faedou pursed his lips and crudely mimed the act he meant. “You know—’unnatural connections.’” He turned his head aside and spat. “Faggits.”
“Slate,” Demane said finally (for you need to be braced when such a roundhouse comes in, or else it knocks the breath right out of you). He clapped hands down against his knees. “Bout time for me to go lay down.” He stood and while turning away tapped Faedou’s shoulder. “Don’t be out here all night, old man.”
Demane made his way to the lakeshore. The moon had set. Passing the canvas slums, his steps in the gravel brought some lady to a tent’s open flaps. She was about the age of his own mother. From within, he heard her pickney sleeping, a child’s slow, even breaths. The matron could have made out his silhouette, nothing more, in this dim starlight; still, she called to him, “Sex you, poppy?” as he went by.
By Mother of Waters he unfolded a buffalo hide onto the sands, and stretched out. The lake breathed coolly over his skin. The sand beneath his groundsheet leached heat up into his body. An unbroken field of stars, the sky glittered without a single spot wholly dark. His blood whispered to him of the first Home, there, a f
lickering as yellow as firelight, no brighter than ten billion other stars. Demane might still have people up there. Cousins.
¹ Of all words, none more purely distills the futility of human hope, mortal dreams. Did we but know the end is foreordained and soon, who could go on making such tender plans—someday I shall run my fingers through my lover’s hair—when the very next step we take shall pitch us into the sinkhole, there to be crushed to nothingness, smothered in an instant, by a thousand tonnes of earth? “Someday.” Ha!
And with her to marshal us, we then were able to bind the wild depths of time and space, as well as those [anachronisms] and [extradimensionalities] that had come ravening therefrom. We asked, How shall we call you, and she answered, Howsoever; for my name has no acoustics but is rather [scent-pheromone-fragrance] and you lack the faculty to [utter] it. So we named her Preema because she was first in power. Preema, before taking leave of us, said let one of you magi forsake your Enclave and assume dominion over that place. For the Wild Depths cannot remain so but must needs be mastered. Before any could obey her, we were beset by the dragons that burnt Daluz, and iron dogs which came out of the eastern bush; there was also war with Hell, with the so-called Children of the Lie; and earthquake and plague and famine racked our friend and neighbor, Great Olorum: so that for all of a generation, and much of the next, the talents of the magi were sore-tried. By the time of the Respite, no magi living knew how to effect that mastery which Preema had enjoined; but anyway the Road was still holding safe three centuries after laying the greatwork, then as now.
from [ancestral eidetic memory] of the magi of the Ashëan Enclave
Fifth of Seven
Hey, I gave you the choice, didn’t I? Sit jawing or make love. And you didn’t choose “talk,” so don’t try to change it up now.
Southbound from Mother of Waters, eldest brother rode his burro between the two youngest, and told them tales—filling up the green brakes and jungle the caravan approached with a tribe of rapacious cannibals.
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