by Dilman Dila
He turned and fled.
“Hey!” one man shouted. “Don’t run!”
“What’s that?” the radio said.
“The leafy man ran,” Japia heard the reply coming out of the radio, and from behind him.
“He what?”
“He ran,”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He just saw us and ran.”
Japia was weak from hunger, but he was faster that the four men, who were burdened by the heavy tanks on their backs. He knew it was foolish to run. They probably meant him no harm, they might have come to rescue him, but he could not trust them. Not after what they had done to his village. When he was a little boy, his father had campaigned against birth control pills. ‘It makes our women barren,’ his father had said. ‘It’s a trick of the white man to wipe out the black man.’ Japia had dismissed his father’s argument as ridiculous, but with Miss Doe blanketing the sky, he could again hear the old man’s warning, and he used all the strength left in his body to run. Stumbling, falling, the chemical stinging his eyes, nearly blinding him. He ran back to the square, to his bicycle.
“Come back!” the men were shouting at him. “We won’t hurt you! We came to rescue you! Don’t run!”
A strong wind rose. The smoke started to clear. Japia now saw the walls of the town, about eighty meters away. He heard Miss Doe stirring, the irritating buzz that in the past had given him sleepless nights and at worst a bout of malaria, but now amplified a billion times, humming a song from hell.
“Oh fuck,” one man shouted. “The bugs are descending.”
“Spray more H4,” the radio said.
Japia noticed that his oranges leaves had slightly shriveled. Had the chemical killed his shield? He did not want to find out. The mosquitoes were coming back. Fifty meters to the market. A few more seconds of flight, if his strength could hold, but Miss Doe needed only a few seconds to kill.
“Stop!” a man behind him shouted. His voice came from further away. The distance between them was increasing.
“We have to go back to the chopper,” the radio crackled. “The wind is too strong for H4 to stay on the ground.”
“Don’t leave without the leafy man!” Japia took this voice to be that of the man commanding the mission, from a safe place far away.
The breeze turned into a gale. The mist thinned very fast.
“Fuck!”
A black cloud appeared in front of Japia. It flew out of the town and zoomed straight for him. Japia froze. He looked at the shriveled orange leaves, wondering how much power they still had, if they could still protect him. The cloud stopped about ten feet away from him, a lot closer than before. The orange shield had weakened.
He heard a hiss. A jet of white smoke shot past him, and hit the cloud. The mosquitoes broke up, and scattered, and fell to the ground, rolling about in a daze, but not dying, and not fleeing away. They jumped back up into the air, and regrouped into a cloud, painting a huge black spot in the white smoke.
“What the fuck!” the voice came from both the radio and the real world.
“What’s happening?” the commander said.
“H4 isn’t chasing them off!”
“Nonsense,” the commander said. “H4 works. Get the leafy man.”
A man screamed. Japia turned to see Miss Doe descending like rain, falling into the white mist, no longer deterred. She had already overcome her fear of the chemical repellent. A cloud fell upon one man, who crumbled to the ground as if under the weight of the cloud. Screaming. The man vanished in the mist. The other men sprayed him with the chemical, but black clouds were swooping down on them as well. One abandoned the cause, and ran, trailing a thick cloud, which overtook him. He fell, screaming.
“What the fuck is going on down there?” the voice in the radio screamed.
The helicopter jumped into the air. Miss Doe gathered around it, enveloping it in a cocoon. The down draught from the propellers could not drive her away. The chopper released more H4. The cocoon broke up, the insects flew about. For a few seconds Japia could again see the chopper, through the black veil. Miss Doe soared above the propellers.
Something bit Japia on the shoulder. It felt like a knife had stabbed him. His shoulder was exposed, without the protection of the leaves. A fat mosquito sat on it, drinking his blood. He slapped at his shoulder. Blood exploded. The mosquitoes were now so close that he could feel the wind from their wings on his face. The shield was weakening. Only a few seconds now and he would be dead.
Not if he reached his bicycle.
He had fresh leaves on the bicycle, unless the chemical had spread into the market and destroyed his only hope.
He ran. A sudden surge of energy boosted him over the tall bushes like an antelope fleeing a lion. A cloud chased him. Another insect drove its proboscis into his shoulder. It felt like a dog had bitten him. He did not slap it away, that would slow him down making him lose precious seconds.
He ran into the market. He flapped his hands wildly, to beat off the insects as they stabbed him in the back, in the face, in the legs. The orange leaves had completely shriveled. The shield had broken down. But he got a fresh boost of energy when he saw that H4 had not touched the square. He ran faster. The bicycle was only ten meters away… the vampires flew after him. He did not stop running until he reached the bicycle. He collapsed at the wheels, and wept.
Screams came from the radio. Voices tumbled out of the speaker like voices whirling inside a madman’s head. It reminded him that there was still danger outside. If those PGCC fools sprayed more H4, it would destroy the leaves on his bicycle… Japia threw off the ruined leaves and draped fresh ones on his body.
He rode fast out of town, passed the chopper and the PGCC men battling Miss Doe.
“The bugs are in the chopper!”
“What the fuck,” the commander said.
“Echo One. This is Bee. What is happening?” another voice said. Japia had not heard it before. He thought this person was in the command centre somewhere far away.
“The bugs are in the chopper!”
An explosion rocked the world. Japia stopped. He saw flames leaping high into the sky, consuming whole clouds of mosquitoes. Fire can kill her, he thought. The chopper crashed. It was burning. H4 was flammable. The whole area beside the town was burning, the flames consuming more clouds of Miss Doe.
“Holy fuck!” the commander said in the radio. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Japia could hear something else above the panic of the voices in the radio, a mighty roar that he mistook for a hailstorm. A dark cloud was spreading above the town. It looked like rain falling in reverse, from the ground toward the sky. Miss Doe was fleeing the flames. She was so thick under the sky that darkness fell upon the world.
#
Japia reached the orange grove a few minutes later. He was afraid that the fire would run out of control and destroy his shelter. It however comforted him that H4 had not spread to a great distance, and that it was the wet season. The vegetation would not burn easily. He crept into his shack and hugged the little boy.
“Do you see him?” the commander said in the radio.
“No sign of him,” another voice said. “He could be in any of the little forests.”
“We must nuke this place.”
“No. She mutates each time we use chemicals. Nukes might not be a good idea.”
“Fuck!”
“The leafy man is the key. We must know his secret. We have to find him.”
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Japia turned off the radio. He would not let them see him again. He would stay hidden, and go to town for more food only in the night. He would work alone to reclaim his village from Miss Doe, for he knew the weapons to use. Oranges, and fire.
The Healer
A whole year had gone and it still hurt him. His hair had turned gray with mourning, though he was barely forty. He sat on a rocking chair, drinking banana wine from a green gourd, his eyes closed. The rain had just s
topped. He listened to the music of water dripping off the grass roof. It rhymed with the zephyr rustling through the mango tree. He played an imaginary harp as he composed a tune for his dead wife.
She came to him every night. He recited poems for her, he sang her songs, and he laughed at her jokes. But he could not touch her. They could no longer sit together under the cool mango tree in the heat of the dry season, and listen to parrots calling their names. They could no longer walk hand in hand by the river bank, in open defiance to a world that refused to recognize their marriage.
A rattling erupted.
His eyes flicked open. His nape tickled with the sensation of approaching danger. Wings flapped. A bird sped through the chilly noon. Little Acii. An ajwaka, like him, but one who the ancestors said would lead their people, the Twa, out of slavery. She seemed to be running for her life.
Benge placed the gourd on the table, slipped into a pair of wooden sandals, and hurried out of the door. He stood on the verandah, scanning the sky. Wet leaves sparkled in the cool sun, which peeped like a shy ghost from behind a gray cloud. A lot of birds flew about. He could not tell which one was Acii until a brown parrot landed at his feet, and materialized into a twelve year old girl. She was a little too tall for her age. Her hair was plaited into four neat rows of hills.
“They are coming!” she said, breathless.
He opened his inner ears, and heard the robot horses charging on the road. They were still three miles away. They had been hunting him from the day his wife had died. They wanted to re-enslave him and take the six square miles of land that she had left him.
“Somebody kidnapped a child,” Acii said. “They think it’s you.”
“A child?”
“Yes. Raluf.”
Benge remembered, Raluf, a slightly overweight boy who had tasted death after a snake bite. The Oksian priest and Cuku doctors, in spite of great advancements in science, had no solution for the venom. They could only watch as the boy’s life slipped away. His mother had secretly brought him to Benge, and then the boy had survived. The miracle had softened the hearts of a few more Cuku towards Benge. Some talked about converting him to Oksism, so that he could use his magic in line with their religion. Without the support of these liberals, who sneaked him supplies in the night, Benge would not have survived this long. If it weren’t for these liberals, he might have been convinced to become an Oksian so he would not have to live in hiding and to appease the conservatives. But they wanted him to serve in the temple as a slave. He could not agree to that.
The Cuku and the Twa had been enemies for centuries. The Cuku had skin the color of ripe bananas, and bright red hair that grew straight and stiff like grass. They believed Oks had created the world and given them dominion over all living things. They saw themselves as superior to the Twa, whose skin was the color of roasted coffee and whose hair grew thick like sheep wool. In the past, a great, impenetrable desert had separated the two nations. Then the Cuku invented flying ships, crossed the desert, conquered the Twa and enslaved them. After four centuries, some Cuku had started to protest against slavery. His late wife, Lachila, had gone a step further to free all her slaves, and even marry one. But the moment she had died, the conservatives put them back in chains. Only Benge remained free. He used juju to hide himself and his home. The Cuku never stopped hunting for him. He could hear them screaming for his blood as their metallic horses charged towards his land.
“I can strike them,” Acii said. Her eyes turned reddish, resembling that of an eagle, as she summoned storm clouds. Lightning was her favorite weapon.
“Stop it,” he said.
She was the slave of an old couple. They were cruel to her. Ever since the jok possessed her, and transformed her into an ajwaka, three months ago, she craved for revenge. Benge struggled to restrain her, to teach her that revenge was evil. She had to keep her powers a secret until the time was right for her to lead the Twa out of slavery.
“Why do they think I took him?” he said.
Her eyes changed back to normal, but the storm clouds stayed in the sky, prowling about like eager soldiers waiting to defend their master.
“A juju carriage took him,” she said.
It had happened a little over an hour ago. A black substance had covered the sun, plunging the day into night, like an eclipse. Benge had not seen the darkness, though his home was only a few miles from the town. Six horses, real flesh and blood horses, had charged out of a dust devil, dragging a carriage, a green box with gold-framed doors and windows. It had no driver. A panel on the sunroof opened, a noosed rope flew out and snared the little boy. It sucked him into the carriage, which vanished into another pillar of dust.
Benge could understand why they suspected him. The few liberal Cuku who consulted him traveled to his home in a juju carriage, which he provided. That way, they were never able to figure out the exact location of his home, though they knew it was somewhere within the six square miles that his late wife had left him.
“Let’s go to town,” Benge said.
“But they are coming,” Acii said. “They’ll burn your house.”
He smiled. He started to sing, as he faced the house. He had built it as a grand Twa palace. It was round, with ten rooms and a grass roof. Clay and ash gave the mud walls a red and white color. The windows and doors were blue, fashioned out of papyrus reeds. As he sang, the house vanished. A bush sprang up, wiping out the pathway, and all signs of habitation.
“You didn’t teach me that!” Acii said, sucking her teeth.
“Meet me in town,” Benge said. “Stay out of sight.”
“You hide from them like a coward,” she said, sprang into the air, turned into a parrot, and flew away.
She favored an all out war with the Cuku. Benge was against it. Though it could lead to victory, it would do nothing to convince the Twa to return home. Many had become ardent followers of Oks. They interpreted many verses in the holy book to mean that they, not the Cuku, were the true children of Oks. They relished their status as slaves because of one verse; ‘And Oks shall bring his lost children back in airships, and they shall be sold as slaves for disobeying him and wandering away from home.’ They believed if they obeyed their masters, they would live forever in paradise. Benge knew Cuku priests had added that verse four hundred years ago to subjugate the Twa. The jok had showed him all these things. But many Twa believed in Oks and considered ajwaka, like him and Acii, to be evil. They had murdered their own children who had become possessed with the jok. Before they could defeat the Cuku in war, they had to first decolonize the minds of the Twa.
Benge closed his eyes, chanted a spell, and teleported himself to a wet, gray road. It ran from the town and passed by his land. In earlier attempts, the Cuku had charged into his property and scoured every bush, but he had temporarily blinded them with juju. They could see, but not understand what they were seeing. He made them roam about in circles until they found themselves back in town. They had then tried to set his land on fire, but he summoned a big storm to put out the flames. They knew the hunt was futile, yet they never stopped trying to find him. He could now hear their robot horses with his corporeal ears. The hoof beats grew steadily louder as they charged up a steep slope on the other side of the hill. Soon, a head appeared at the top of the road. It wore a black hat with a red sun painted on it. The mayor.
When the mayor saw Benge, his robot horse stopped so suddenly that sparks flew off its hooves. Its silver body gleamed in the sun. Its eyes glowed green like emeralds. An engine whirred inside its belly. The mayor was a liberal. He secretly visited Benge in the wee hours of the night to talk to his dead wife. But now Benge could see disappointment in his eyes. His face clouded in anger. He pulled an arrow gun out of his hip holster.
Benge threw his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t do it,” he said.
The mayor’s gun beeped as he switched it on. A red light blinked just below the barrel, and a red dot appeared on Benge’s forehead.
“Where’s h
e?” the mayor asked.
A parrot squawked. It was perched on a wire pole. Acii. The storm clouds hung low. Thunder crackled. A breeze rose. When she was in a transformed state, he could not speak to her. He hoped she would refrain from doing something that would give away her secret.
“I didn’t take him,” Benge said.
The other Cuku came over the hill. There were twenty of them. On seeing Benge, they stopped behind the mayor. They aimed their arrow guns at Benge.
A priest appeared last. His horse stopped beside the mayor. He wore a black flowing robe and had pinned a tongi on his chest. It was a powerful Oksian symbol of a heart and four arrowheads.
“Kill him,” the priest said.
Lightening struck a nearby tree, setting it on fire. The thunder that followed deafened Benge for several seconds. Several men fell off their horses, clutching their ears in pain. Benge cast a warning glance at the parrot. Acii wriggled her tail as though to say it was just as a warning.
“I can help you find him,” Benge said to the mayor.
“Just tell us where he is,” the mayor said. His finger trembled over the trigger button. Sweat dripped off his chin.
“I don’t know where he is,” Benge said. “But I can help find him.”
“Kill him!” the priest screamed.
“No!” the mayor shouted.
He switched off his gun, and turned his horse around to face the other Cuku. They were recovering from the freak thunder, picking up their guns and remounting their horses. One or two were still deafened.
“We failed to find his house before,” the mayor continued. “If we kill him, we might never find the boy.”
The priest’s eyes turned as red as his hair. “Are you disobeying Oks?” He spoke in a voice that reminded Benge of a cat’s purr. “Are you siding with the evil Wiir?”