“There is also good news,” she proclaimed, “for tonight, we welcome a long-lost brother.”
Suddenly, all eyes turned to me.
Awkward. I managed a weak wave in response.
“Come here, Samuel Budovich,” called the woman, stretching her arms in my direction.
“Get moving,” Mr. Fowrou said with a hard clap on my back.
Without really thinking, I stepped forward. It was an automatic response, as if I were drawn to the woman like a ball rolling downhill. As I walked, the crowd parted, forming a path straight from my feet to the stage.
“This child is a Son of the Bouda,” she boomed. “That is the meaning of Budovich.”
The whole field giggled in response.
I couldn’t figure out how she knew my name, aside from her powerful hoodoo or voodoo or whatever it was she was said to have.
“We will show him the way of our people,” she continued. “The way of the hyena. The way of the hunter!”
Hyena? Hunter?
The woman laughed, as if she’d read my thoughts. Shaking her skull cane in my direction, she said, “We need to free this young brother from the lies he’s been told!”
By this point, I was standing near the edge of the platform, where the woman motioned at a stairway. I climbed the steps slowly, wondering what I was getting myself into.
“Come,” urged the woman. “Come, so the whole clan may see.”
When I turned to face everyone, the glare from thousands of eyes bored through me like hot pokers. My mouth went dry, and the first sound I made was a giggle.
Uncountable giggles answered. I even heard several whoops.
“He’s one of us!” declared the woman. “A brother from up north!”
Hundreds more hyena noises shouted out in response.
“Welcome, Brother Samuel,” declared the woman, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“Thank you, Miss … um … Queen.”
“Did you just call me Queen?” she asked in disbelief.
“Isn’t that who you are?” I almost glanced at her face.
“Ho-ho, no,” the woman cackled. “I’m no queen.”
The hyenas lost control. There were giggles, there were whoops, and there were even some human guffaws.
“But that, um, Queen, uh …” I groped for the right name. “That Queen Ayaba—I’m supposed to meet her, right? And didn’t everybody just invite her to speak?”
The woman pointed a manicured finger behind the platform. Not far off stood a house painted with more symbols and a swirl of colors.
“Queen Ayaba can speak through me,” she said. “But you must meet her in person.”
I blinked at the house for several seconds, watching torchlights flicker over the porch.
“You want me to go there?” I asked.
“Go,” urged the woman. “Go there and meet your queen.”
THE PATH TO THE HOUSE WAS LITTERED WITH BONES ON BOTH sides. They looked as though they came from various animals—some that I recognized, and others I didn’t. A cow’s rib here, a pig’s scapula there, and the femur from a large horse was completely chewed in half.
That’s where strong jaws come in handy. I tried to comfort myself with the thought. My bite force was still a thousand …
But thinking about that wasn’t any help. Here I was, completely exposed, wandering through a killing field to the house of some fabled hyena queen.
Several women, dressed in robes, rushed out before I arrived at the house’s front porch. They giggled in warning, and the message was firm—don’t start trouble.
That wasn’t going to be a problem, as far as I was concerned. Every part of me was pretty much petrified. With a quick scan of the building, I noted that the roof wasn’t made of shingle; it looked more like grass. Lining the edges of the porch were rows of skulls with sharp teeth, identical to the one I’d seen onstage. They were too large to come from hyenas; they looked like they belonged to bears or something.
My eyes returned to the women. All looked similar, and I figured they had to be related. Sisters, probably. Like my own family, it appeared that blood ties were important, and hyena clans stuck together. Maybe that explained why I’d just traveled more than a thousand miles, and might travel several thousand more, on this quest to save my parents—and even my sister—from whatever had happened to them. It was a drive that I couldn’t exactly explain, just that it was something that I needed to do, no matter the obstacles that stood in my way.
“That lady onstage …” I stammered uncertainly. “Sh-sh-she told me to come back here.”
The women glared with arms crossed, unflinching, until a voice beckoned from inside.
“Let him pass.”
Stepping back, the women formed a funnel to the front door. As I advanced, I noticed one woman moved in behind me.
There was no backing out now.
“Come, child,” called the voice. It sounded dry and hollow, like somebody speaking into a paper grocery bag.
Space over the doorway was adorned with another large skull. The skull still held a little skin on its edges, which was a tawny brown color. I recognized the animal it had come from right away.
It came from a lion, most definitely.
“Enter, Samuel Budovich.”
Terrified, yet unable to resist, I stepped under the skull and passed inside. At first, the room seemed dark, but then I saw candles lining each wall. They lighted the bed of a figure who was protected on both sides by tall, thick women even bigger than my mother. Their bodies were covered in robes, and their heads were masked with veils.
The figure on the bed pointed a twisted finger, which looked like a knobby twig, in my direction.
“He is the one I saw in my visions,” said the figure.
Each veiled woman nodded once in reply.
The figure waved me closer. Again, I couldn’t resist.
“Kneel before your queen,” the women beside the bed commanded. “Bow down before Ayaba!”
I dropped to my knees and pressed my forehead against the floor, mostly because I’d almost fainted from fright.
“Now, now,” scolded the withered voice. Rolling my ears slightly, I heard her say, “Don’t be so hard on the child. He’s never been trained in a proper hyena society.” Movement on the mattress sounded like a dozen rusty hinges creaking, and I guessed that Queen Ayaba was rising from her resting position.
“Let me look at you,” said the voice. “Stand, and let me see your face.”
Before I even realized it, I was back on my feet. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her directly, though, since I was scared of that hoodoo Mr. Edi had spoken of.
“Have no fear,” Queen Ayaba told me. “I want to help you.”
My eyes remained fixed on the foot of her bed. I was too terrified to move.
“You come from a proud line of hyenas,” she said. “Great hunters, all of them.”
Words didn’t come like they should, so I just kept quiet.
“Tell me,” said Queen Ayaba, “what do you know about your family?”
“Not much.” I finally dared to speak. “Just that my great-grandfather came from Russia.”
“And do you know how hyenas got to Russia in the first place?”
“Uh … no, ma’am.”
Queen Ayaba giggled softly. “Thank the spirits for keeping old memories alive. Have you not heard of Alexander Pushkin?”
My mind caught a memory of something my father had mentioned. Squeezing my eyes shut to avoid looking at the queen, I said, “Wasn’t he a poet or something?”
“The greatest poet who ever lived,” she declared. After a pause, Queen Ayaba added, “Lost in hopeless sadness, lost in the loud world’s turmoil, I heard your voice’s echo, and often dreamed your features.”
“You did?”
She cackled. “Those lines come from one of Pushkin’s poems.”
“Oh.” Now I felt really dumb.
“Pushkin was the great-grandchild of
an African.”
“So Africans went to Russia a long time ago?”
“A few,” she told me. “Against their will, in most cases—they were captured and sold as slaves, just like they were in this country. Over time, they became renowned for their strength, bravery, and intelligence.”
“And they were hyenas?”
“Not all, but some.”
“Was Pushkin?”
She cackled again. “I don’t think so. But tell me this—what is the meaning of your surname?” I recalled what that woman outside had proclaimed. “I think it means ‘Son of the Bouda,’ right?” My eyes remained closed; I kept fighting the impulse to open them.
“And what are the Bouda?” she asked.
I shrugged. I hadn’t a clue.
“They are the hyena people,” she said. “In Ethiopia, that’s what our kind is called.”
I couldn’t resist any longer. Opening my eyes, I dared a glance in her direction.
And I was completely shocked by what I saw. Queen Ayaba’s body was twisted with age, yet she emanated a youthful glow. She even had all her teeth. Before I caught myself, I even checked out her eyes. The irises were covered with whitish discs, as if she’d been struck blind.
Wait a second—shouldn’t I be scared of her magic? Hadn’t I been warned not to look at her face? I was in deep trouble now! I quickly shot my eyes back to the foot of the bed, waiting for the hoodoo to start working on me.
Queen Ayaba said, with a smile to her voice, “Don’t let those ol’ hyenas scare you with stories about my hoodoo, young one. My magic comes down through our ancestors—the ancestors you and I both share.”
I raised my eyes a bit to look at her again. “So I have hoodoo, too?”
“Of course,” she said. “That’s how you change form. It passed down through your father’s bloodline, from the African hyenas that went to Russia.”
“But what about my mother?” I asked.
“Her family is not Russian.”
“Then how come she’s a hyena?” Mom never really discussed her family history, so if Queen Ayaba could shed light on that, I was eager to learn.
The queen stretched her spindly fingers and offered them to me. “Here, child,” she said. “Take my hands.”
I took them carefully, worried I’d break her bones if I squeezed too hard, except her grip proved to be stronger than I’d imagined. The pressure was so hard, in fact, that it hurt, as if I were caught in a python’s coils.
Just when I thought that I couldn’t take the squeezing any more, my body was hit with a jolt, forcing me to stare directly into the queen’s clouded eyes. There was movement behind the whitened discs, a tiny movie playing in the orbs.
“Come, Samuel Budovich,” she said invitingly. “Come see what your ancestors endured.”
Without warning, I was hit with another jolt. It knocked me out briefly, and when I felt myself coming to, I was no longer in Queen Ayaba’s candlelit room. Instead, I was flying over an ocean and back through time.
Suddenly, I was on a field. Or maybe it was an African plain. There was a little village nearby consisting of no more than a few squat huts with grass roofs. Off to one side, I could hear the sound of metal striking metal.
“That is your ancestor,” Queen Ayaba’s voice spoke to me, though I could no longer see her.
I drifted closer to the sound, where I discovered a muscular, dark-skinned man pounding a glowing piece of metal with a hammer.
“For as long as anyone can remember,” Queen Ayaba’s voice continued, “our people have worked iron and steel, making tools and weapons for others.”
The man clanged his hammer several more times. It appeared he was making a plow or a shovel of some sort.
Then sound erupted behind me. I turned to see several other African men approaching, carrying muskets in their hands. Each musket had a bayonet attached to the muzzle.
My ancestor saw the men and sounded a warning. People in the village responded with giggles and whoops.
The men with muskets shouted, raised their weapons, and charged forward. The language they spoke was one I’d never heard, yet I somehow understood exactly what they were saying.
“Grab the Bouda! Get rid of them once and for all!”
I realized I was standing in their path. I flinched, prepared for the pain of a bayonet stab, except the charging men passed straight through me.
“They can’t hurt you,” Queen Ayaba’s voice assured.
I checked over my body—just to make certain—and returned my attention to the scene. The metalworker leaped over his fire and shifted into hyena form, leaving behind his tattered clothing. One man fired a warning shot then dropped to a knee to reload. The hyena was on top of him in an instant, grabbing him by the arm but clearly aiming for the man’s throat. His attack was greeted by clubbing from the other men, who battered my ancestor with the butts of their guns, over and over, until he dropped to the ground, unconscious.
More men arrived, some wielding machetes, others sporting muskets, and they attacked the village. There were screams and whoops and giggles, as well as more shouts from the attackers. Moments later, the entire village was engulfed in flames. Several hyenas charged out, only to be clobbered by the musketeers’ guns. I wondered why the men with the muskets weren’t shooting or hacking the hyenas to pieces with the machetes. Queen Ayaba must have heard my thoughts, for she spoke, “Those men want to make sure the hyenas aren’t killed.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because our magic has always been powerful. In death, it will haunt those who do us harm.”
“Then why not just leave us alone? Our people weren’t bothering anybody, were they?”
“It was the lions,” she told me. “They tricked the no-tails into capturing us.”
“Tricked them?”
“Disguised as humans, the lions spread lies to everyone who would listen. No-tails once respected us and believed that our kind brought light into the world, but the werelions convinced them that we’d eat their children and steal the bodies of their dead.”
The action before me shifted as she finished her explanation. Many of the hyenas were injured and now back in human form. Men were shackling their wrists and ankles with chains.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“Taking them to the slave traders,” Queen Ayaba said.
The next scene was a flash forward, in which my ancestor and the other hyena people were forced on a long march. Wooden poles strapped to their shoulders kept them from turning around. All they could do was walk straight ahead across the African plain. The no-tails who’d caught them kept careful watch at the sides, bayonets and machetes at the ready. As the brutal journey continued, the hyena people met up with other captives, although the new arrivals didn’t radiate that same hyena strength.
Days later, my ancestor arrived at a city with the rest of his village. Many of those chained no-tails were no longer with them; I could only assume they’d fallen behind. Or maybe they’d died of exhaustion. Even the hyena people looked exhausted from the journey.
Everything that followed matched what I’d read in history books. My ancestor and the others were purchased by white slave traders and then were poked and prodded and branded with hot irons and packed onto ships so tightly that there wasn’t any room to move. Except this time, I could see their suffering with my own eyes, hear their sobs, and smell those sickening odors of poop and vomit and stale pee. Reading about it in a textbook was nothing compared to living through it—that much was now clear.
Upon arriving in the New World, the hyena people were split up at slave auctions. Some were sold to the Spanish colonies, some went to Brazil, and others went to the newly formed colonies in America. My ancestor was sold to a white man in South Carolina who had a reddish, turnip-shaped nose and only a couple of teeth.
Years must’ve passed, because in the next scene, my ancestor looked older. He was on a cotton plantation, cradling a baby in his arm
s. I knew that little bundle was the next in my line of ancestors, and it appeared to be a girl. Then I jumped to the girl’s adulthood, where she was carrying a child of her own. This baby was lighter in complexion, and as she grew, I realized that she almost looked like one of the slavemaster’s sons. I remembered something about Thomas Jefferson having children with his slaves, so I supposed that sort of thing happened frequently, even between no-tails and werehyenas.
The next generation showed an even lighter-skinned slave girl, who didn’t look all that different from the white girls raised by the slave masters, although they forced this slave to cook and clean in their home. She was also full of fire and hated the way her people were treated. When one of the new master’s sons began whipping a slave for stealing cake for his hungry children, this girl refused to stand by idly. She shifted to a hyena, clamped her jaws on the hand holding the whip, and wouldn’t let go until it dropped. The slavemaster’s son howled in pain, and everyone around panicked, screaming about witches and demons. They probably would’ve killed her right there, except she was too fast to catch and darted into the forest. Dogs followed her, but they couldn’t keep up. Hours later, they’d completely lost her scent.
I flash-forwarded to a major leap in geography—government officials in Vermont were writing up a document abolishing slavery throughout the state.
The year was 1777.
There wasn’t much question of where my ancestor was headed, since Vermont granted her safe refuge up north. Once in free land, I assumed she settled down and had a family—a family that must’ve lasted, generation after generation, until my mother was born. Magic must have been strong in my bloodline, because it kept working even when my ancestors married regular no-tails. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder why my ancestors hadn’t fled the plantations earlier or why they didn’t resist being whipped and subjugated—or why they barely ever changed into hyenas when trouble came before this one girl decided to take matters into her own hands.
Queen Ayaba gave an answer immediately. “It was the werelions who stopped us,” she told me. “Many were captured and sold in the slave markets as well.”
Earning My Spots Page 8