Rococoa

by Balogun Ojetade (ed)

  “No one,” snapped Boniface with a sharp rap on the table, “can find them.” The inquisitors felt no need to answer. This was not their failing. “Yet they have no problem finding our ships and tributes?”

  “It is not often they leave survivors to provide counsel, Imminence,” said the captain of the ship Boniface called home, given leave to speak by the tilt of Boniface’s grizzled, quizzical visage toward him. “They are ghosts.”

  “You speak the words of heretics and savages and fools,” said Boniface. “Increase patrols threefold. I will have no more of our ships scuttled or I will have all our ships’ captains put to death.”

  “Yes, Imminence.”

  Boniface ignored the man. He looked at the small, coal dark eyes of War, Famine, and Pestilence: the Inquisitors Three to his fourth. Rarely were they all in the same place, but this summit required a deeper, more prayerful meeting than they could accomplish alone. “Are we agreed?” he asked each, knowing that as Hell he would receive the assent he requested.

  “Send word to begin burning all Moor libraries. Kill anyone who speaks of research. This comes from the throne itself. We will not be humbled by a single boat of heathens.”

  The captain bowed and left.

  Hell looked to his brethren. “This ends.”

  The Apocalypse nodded.

  ####

  He had grown a rough, beady beard in the three months of building. It looked good on him. Except for when he ate. “We have plenty of food,” his sisters teased. “You don’t need to save some for later.”

  Vingree watched a speck of bread dangle at his upper lip as he spoke. The urge to swipe it was overwhelming but he was too animated to interrupt.

  “This is propulsion anywhere, my heart! Land, water.” He pointed upward at the open sky and nodded at her. “Eventually. It needs nothing but removing this separating barrier to start and stop or regulate speed. I have built smaller ones to power our lights, cooling urns, and the sound boxes.”

  “I don’t like your sound boxes.”

  “They work over greater distances now.”

  “I know but there are times I do not want to hear your voice.”

  “Ha!”

  Astarte’s head appeared over the side of the ship. She spotted the two on the ground. “Bilo, stop showing off! Our daazeet could have built this herself.”

  Vingree smiled widely at Bilo. Nothing but teeth.

  Bilo, knowing any battle with the ladies was already won by them, touched his heart and head to both.

  “I have checked everything,” Astarte said. “The crew is learned to my satisfaction.”

  “Then we leave at first moon. I want it to taste the night before the day,” said Vingree. She was quite happy. “It’s been a while since we’ve had a good test.”

  When night fell, the electromagnetic hum chased the insects away. The ship, freshly tarred and oiled, made no more noise upon the waves than the waves themselves. Vingree didn’t want to use the lights until they were major leagues away from their base of operations, but when she did it was glorious. The ocean was lit by dozens of lights bolting outward, positioned in such a way as to be frightening and confusing: a beast of light with eyes of red. The sea was where she lived, and if she was to be considered a monster it would be as one of the old ones caretaking all of creation.

  She spoke into the sound box for Bilo in the engine room below. “Bilo… Make us fly!”

  She could practically feel his smile through the decking and see him nodding to his disciples as they put their bodies into throwing huge levers and watching tension levels on springs and pulleys. It was a dance to him, a magnificent, life-giving ceremony of thanks to the All. It was no wonder she cherished him so.

  All lights on the ship flared a moment, then the vessel kicked at the water and surged so suddenly Vingree lost her footing and wound up laughing on her ass. The ship moved like an eel! She whooped and stood, arms wide to catch the spray. “Faster, Bilo!”

  Voyages that would have taken weeks? Mere days now. A fleet of these ships? She and her beloved would change the world. Balance would be restored.

  The ship shuddered and groaned a bit until it found its rhythm, then the speed became part of it. The prow lights shone ahead of them, lighting the stygian ocean beneath the canopy of a billion fresh stars and the blade of a crescent moon. The entire crew was shouting and laughing. Even the joy of the ancestors was palpable. Materials would not be so hard to come by now; this ship provided greater reach and scope. The gold and precious metals of both throne and papacy—taken from villages too poor to educate their children beyond servitude—were theirs to take and transform into life. Vingree said a prayer and a greeting to the stars. The Igbo people spoke of their other home somewhere among the sky. We, Vingree greeted, will join them.

  ####

  When word reached them of the third library burning, Vingree convened their war session.

  “How do we fight an enemy,” said Tanit, “that does not exist? They are everywhere, and as such are everything.”

  “They have commanders,” said Vingree. “They have ships. We shall seek ships that rarely pull into dock. Large ships. They are not fools. They mimic our wisdom of being constantly on the move. If we shake their nest, they will come out to attack.”

  “You are sure of this?” said Astarte.

  Vingree nodded. “It is what they are trying to do to us.”

  ####

  Bilo walked Morocco’s dizzying lanes, his head and face wrapped, his loose clothing blowing in an unusually high wind. To any glancing, he seemed to walk alone. Nothing was further from the truth.

  The wash of colors here always infused him, not only of people but of cloths, smells, words and even souls. He sensed things here that he experienced nowhere else, not even at home. This mélange was where the gods did business. He listened as he walked.

  “…no one knows who is burning our libraries…”

  “…cattle slaughtered because they thought Vespucci had something to do with it…”

  “…rumors and dangers are being spread…”

  A wise one collected information not by treading water but by riding the currents. The wharves were the busiest and liveliest of Morocco’s gathering spots. Their interceptor had arrived under cover of night and was well-hidden; even better guarded.

  He rounded a corner and ducked into the alcove he’d been looking for, rapping on an ornately carved door with his booted heel.

  After a moment a voice issued from behind the door. “Speak.”

  Bilo kicked again. One rap, a pause, three raps, one rap.

  “Do you have a riddle for me?” said the voice from behind the door.

  Bilo, still facing outward, eyes scanning for anyone taking undue notice of him, turned his face toward the door and said, “I am the riddle.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am alive.”

  Bolts shifted. Many bolts. The door swung inward. Bilo caught Astarte and Tanit’s eyes across the way before he spun and entered. The door closed and rebolted. “Mzee,” Bilo said, honoring the man’s generosity.

  The man was not alone. Two burly men and three burlier women formed a semicircle behind an elf of a man: small, wiry, dark yet filling the space.

  “Family,” said Bilo.

  “Family,” answered the largest of the men in the old language of alchemists. “Show your face.”

  “You do not know me.”

  “Then let me be surprised,” the burly man said.

  Bilo unwrapped. The women were of the Mongol people. The silent man had the look of the Kushites. The speaker had the tan of a native Moroccan, while the elf…he, Bilo knew, was beyond men and places. His small face and skeletal hands were all that was seen of him; all else was one unbroken, brown robe.

  “You know my works,” Bilo said. He held his arms out and opened his legs. “I ask to be searched.”

  “We give trust or death, not both,” said the elf. The large Moroccan relaxed a
notch.

  Bilo withdrew a slim, rectangular box capped by a lens from one of the interior pockets of his tunic. He pressed a pearl stud on the rear of the box. The lens lit brightly.

  The elf smiled a bit, turned, then appeared to glide, not walk, away. Bilo, respectfully, made no notice of this. He followed the brown robe down a passage to another door, then down a sloping path, one that went deep before leveling out into a leftward corridor that was lit, Bilo noted, by strings of glass bulbs, not the primitive torches or oils still widely favored. “Your light?” the elf said. “Acids, filaments, woods and metals?”

  “Yes, Mzee.”

  “So small.”

  “Mzee is small.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet not small.” Bilo plotted their course: they traveled under the street itself, away from the house. This was a marvel of engineering. No dank air, not a speck of dirt, and lit brighter than most of the streets in daylight. The corridor branched off at several points but they continued straight.

  They entered a room, barren but for a plain wooden table and two chairs.

  “Who sits first?” said the elf.

  “We sit simultaneously, for we are the same spirit.”

  The elf clucked his tongue and smiled again. “I like you, boy. You are the monster the crown seeks to flush out. Timing could not speak otherwise.”

  “I wish no more destruction of our knowledge,” said Bilo. “Your family can help in that. You’ve done so before.”

  “Many times,” agreed the elf man. “And for eons hence. I have many daughters and sons.”

  “Then you will help us?”

  “You think we are not?”

  “Apologies.”

  “We are why this entire world has not yet burned. We may allow you to become family. We are not certain.”

  “On what does certainty hinge?”

  “On whether or not you can call war upon yourself.”

  ####

  Astarte’s hand unconsciously went for her sword the moment the ornate door swung open again. It had been a ridiculously long time in there. She and Tanit had had to take turns wandering from their positions of surveillance to avoid suspicion, keeping in contact when out of view of others by speaking in their sound boxes.

  Bilo, wrapped again, left the doorway. They followed at their distance. He sat for a meal. They shopped and spoke with others. He walked toward a less populated area, then an even sparser one, then to the deserted area where he, his sisters, and the four other crew who had been guarding behind the sisters were to meet, uncover their interceptor, and return to Daazeet Vingree Ramsee to prepare for war.

  ####

  You are authorized, the letter read, to use all means and resources both available and conscripted. We have lost eight tribute ships and four carriers. We will lose no more. You are expected to succeed. If the widows of your former captains require their children become orphans that your current stewards may find proper motivation, it is a sacrifice lesser are blessed to make in their ignorance. Spain, Brittania and Italy are all reluctant to sail waters that carry the finest ships the world has ever constructed. If there is no safety under my Inquisitors I must question the value of that office. I must question the value of our grace upon your liberties…

  Boniface stopped reading. His job was to collect tribute and sow fear among both populace and pirates. His job was to ensure that the very lucrative flow of trades, human and otherwise, was maintained. His job was not, he thought with bitter acid burning yet more holes into the dead lining of his soul, to ensure that ghosts no longer roamed the Earth. There were witnesses now, men able to make it to life rafts that made it back to the sovereign land. They described being suddenly blinded in the cool quiet of the sea, then eyes approaching fast, straight for collision, but just as suddenly going dark. Then the hard, shattering rams from both sides of the ship. It was as though the beast called forth spirits. Water flowed inward like blood in reverse, for every screaming man on the ship knew this stab was mortal. Even the ones on deck firing their guns blindly at waves and moonlight knew that their lives had ended upon this vast, immortal sea. Then the lights again, a sudden flash astern, aft, port, starboard—never the same place twice, and always a presage of the coming THUD!

  Ships ripped to pieces by demons.

  There would be one final convening of the Apocalypse.

  Then holy war upon the black lands.

  ####

  By the time word from spies had gotten around to Vingree, four large assault ships and three smaller frigates, all bristling with cannons, had rounded the horn of Africa. It had been a circuitous, non-stop voyage. Hell drove each ship like a flogged horse on pain of death. The demons liked saving the brown and black skins from being taken from their lands? Fine. Let them then tend the fires Hell meant to rain down.

  By the time Vingree’s ship and the interceptors made it around the horn of Africa, Kismaayo was burning. The city’s coastline was a smudge broken here and there by jumping flames. “What can we do?” she said. Bilo said nothing. “Bilo?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  Oil had spread upon the waters a fair distance. It, too, burned, creating a wall of smoke and fire that stung the eyes and nose.

  “They had several days journey ahead of us,” said Bilo. “We reduced it to hours. The city is still burning, Daazeet.”

  She had her entire crews standing on decks to show the fishermen scrambling in boats that they were no harm. The efforts to fight the fires on land were futile. The attackers had used shells containing highly flammable unguents. The city was far from lost but it sustained serious enough injury. Vingree did not want to think on the deaths involved.

  “We cannot man our hoses,” said Vingree.

  Bilo nodded.

  “They are still here,” she said. “Prepare for battle,” she said softly to the crewperson beside her. The word quickly, quietly, and efficiently filtered to the entire crew who moved as one mind to their duties. Vingree used her sound box. “Be wary.”

  Astarte and Tanit agreed. They spaced their interceptors wide so that the three ships formed a great talon upon the water.

  “They are behind that wall, Daazeet,” said Bilo.

  “I know.”

  “They are idiots.”

  “They are dangerous. They have no plans to return home if not entirely victorious,” she said. “If they want smoke we shall give them all the smoke their tainted lungs can hold.” She spoke into the sound box. “All ships, slow sail, random spillage, then ignite.”

  From the shores it was a sight that generations would remember: three ships as dark as the night sky criss-crossing the bay in wide, unhurried arcs as though forming a web worthy of Anansi’s praise. The day the water burned, the thunder fell to rescue it.

  The three dark ships all turned to face the thick camouflage wall hiding the inlet. Cannons from the eels cracked the air and sent massive weights whizzing through the smoke, some merely creating loud splashes, many not. Many brought forth the pain of wood splitting.

  Hell raced his ship through the flames, the wind at its back and full rowers giving the ship high speed. He had hoped it would appear as an avenging angel, cannons blaring, striking the ghost ship that dared bring a man of his age and station into battle. He, of course, was not on the ship. His instructions were. He and his brethren were well hidden on land with a nearby frigate ensconced from battle.

  Vingree’s ships scattered, weaving through the smoke and fire like living things. Two other war class vessels emerged from the roiling smoke screen, both at speed and both firing, hitting nothing.

  There was nothing to hit.

  Merely water.

  Vingree and her interceptors rode the smoke like wraiths. They circled behind the war ships and fired, targeting their masts. Wood and sails split. Bilo used his heat lens against the men on decks pointing guns warily outward before Vingree dropped into another billow of smoke. The gunners, touched so suddenly by Satan’s hand, did not kno
w whether to curse or pray, looking at each other for immediate guidance. Astarte followed Vingree’s course, lobbing cannon shot in her wake. Tanit arced far outward behind the war ship and increased speed, burying her vessel’s lance tip into the beast’s side and grateful yet again for Bilo and Vingree’s shock absorption as part of the lance and hull of the ship. She reversed and quickly pulled away, leaving a hole that eagerly filled. Vingree was already adjusting course to dart past the second war ship. Her vessel was half its size and height but she moved as though she was of the water. Bilo’s engines made them too fast for these lumbering oafs, but the daazeet was in no mood to toy, not while homes and businesses burned. Not while there were dead on the shore of a land that had attacked no one. Daazeet Vingree came around and between Astarte and Tanit, who made the same maneuver and followed her out. This was a fight meant to feed open water, the ancestors above, and the sharks below.

  The war ships followed.

  Cannons boomed.

  One of the rounds slammed into the foredeck of Vingree’s ship and exited the prow. She cursed and gave the order for bowmen. They took their positions, their arrows already impregnated with flammable gel. “Bilo, be ready!”

  “Ready, Daazeet!”

  “Fire!” She brought the ship parallel to the offending war ship. Arrows immediately lined its side. She swung around the ship in a circle. Bilo brought his lens to bear on all the arrows, needing ignite only one. A cluster midships flared. Flames raced left and right from center. Tanit and Astarte ran their own circles around the ship, firing away. They veered off, again following Vingree. This ship was dead, it just didn’t know it yet. The other war ship had sailed, hoping distance would serve it well, but reserved its fire. The 3 dark ships were too close to its sister ship.

  “Let us see,” said Vingree eyeing the wall of smoke that seemed as though part of the water and land, “what is behind the curtain.” She made straight for the smoke.

  A third ship. Meant to engage the battle if the noises of war indicated its brethren were in distress. Captained, however, by a man who felt no need to pointlessly die so far from anything he called home or family. Tendrils of smoke wafted off Vingree’s ship as it faced him. She read the war ship’s posture immediately and motioned for all stop. She took up her cone and spoke in Spanish to the unseen: “I will allow one ship to leave. Will that be yours or that of your masters?” She knew how this enemy thought. Over-confident and greedy, thus cowardly and cautious. The coastline had enough naturally-occurring inlets blocked by cliffs that hiding even several war ships would not have been difficult.