Maurice Broaddus - [BCS300 S03] Read online

  “Ours is a living culture,” she continued. “Stories and traditions and rituals, sacred instruction of what it means to be human. We are a net of connections and come together to tend to our sorrows. You live in the shadow, denying who you are, what you feel. Do you not think we share your pain? Your anguish cries out to us. Once a strand has been ripped from us, we have to adjust to become whole again. We have no choice but to respond.”

  Dinga sucked his teeth. “Nyame, the Father I have known and followed all my life, has abandoned me and turned silent. Yet your solution is to offer me more gods?”

  “Nyame? That one is lost to us. That name is not spoken here.”

  “Tell me then, to whom should I pray?”

  “You’ve lost your ability to wonder and be awed. Learn how to ask a god for rain, and you will always have influence,” Luci’Kobe said. “We need others in times of need and loss and suffering. Only an idiot does it alone. You believe the lie of individuality.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Gerard said. “I’m Greek. It’s what we do.”

  “Though I am agoze, an initiate of Oya, I was born a diviner,” Luci’Kobe said. “My mother was a Great Mother. What some among your people might call an aje. A witch. When I was five, she was killed by a member of the Tigari, a witch hunter cult.” Luci’Kobe closed her eyes and laid her palm over Dinga’s heart. “You endure life, an endless existence of routine. You feed your shadow self, giving it life until it rattles through every part of who you are. An accumulation of wounds and sorrows, trapped in a ritual of grief, unable to move, much less move on. You limp through life believing that you’ve dealt with your pain. Instead, you are walking with death.”

  “So, I shall never be king?” Dinga sneered. So-called Wise Ones, or even Wise Ones-in-training, exhausted him with the need to prophesy who he should or would be.

  “Grief breaks us and can take us from the path we were called to. But we can also be remade in times of sorrow. All we have to do is the work to become whole again.” She opened her eyes. “Your path remains yours. You choose how to move forward.”

  “Me next, do me next.” Gerard raised his arms about. “I want to know my fortune.”

  Luci’Kobe stared him up and down as if he were small. “Your plan is a rousing success.”

  She strode through an exit. The door closed behind her, leaving a wall without any trace of a seam.

  “You introduce me to the most interesting people.” Gerard slid down against the back wall.

  With a mix of longing and regret, Dinga stared at the door. He stretched out along the floor, the gentle susurrus of the waterfall behind him calming him.

  “What is it, my friend?” Settling into his corner, Gerard crossed his legs.

  “Today would have been the anniversary of my sister’s birth. I can’t help but feel... incomplete. A missing puzzle piece. I daydream about what the young woman Lalyani would have been.”

  “Tell me this is all worth it.” Met with silence, Gerard sighed. “Tell me another? story of your village.”

  Dinga closed his eyes to stem his welling tears. He continued his story.

  The young man and the woman who was his sister each went their own way, for each had a respective destiny they were meant to follow. But on occasion, their paths crossed and they shared an adventure together. In time, their father learned that they knew one another. Whatever his thoughts, he took them to his grave, for he never spoke to the boy within the young man again.

  Then one day sickness came to the young woman. The Wasting. A series of bulging masses within her that seemed to eat away at her from the inside. Though they traveled to all the known healers, the Wasting proved resistant to all of their therapies, medicines, and sorceries. The young man tended to her, remaining by her side when physicians attempted to remove the unnatural growths through excision and cauterization. He recalled how he had once been captured by his enemies and tortured for information; their treatment was less cruel than the ministrations of the physicians.

  The young woman, exhausted and not wishing to live out her days in a vain search for a cure, asked him that they should retire to a small kraal. Bargaining with her body, though resting in bed, everything became a blur of horrible pain. Stripped of her dignity, constantly shifting her position in vain attempts to get comfortable, she found only postures of lesser anguish. He propped her up at meal times and fed her soup broth. Bathing her, dressing her lesions as best he could, spreading a poultice upon them to numb the pain, the boy within the man tended to her. By evening, he told her tales from his youth, of his adventures, and of his dreams.

  The boy within the man hid his anger. He silently raged at the Wasting, how it reduced her; lamented the time lost between them. He quietly cursed his father for separating them for so long, and the time they would never have together.

  The day came when she knew she neared drawing her last breath. The vital, strong woman was a faded dream. Left behind was only a withered crone, gaunt to the bone, whose every breath was a rasping wheeze. A combination of her pain, or the healing potions brewed for her once the Wasting took root in her. Screaming about the old withered woman visible in her cup, she stopped recognizing her own reflection. Often, she’d fling the cup across the room, and the young man left her side to pick up the pieces. When he returned to her bedside, he crawled into bed alongside her and wrapped his arms around her.

  “‘I will keep you safe from her,’ he whispered in a reassuring tone, stroking her thinning hair. The conversation pained him. He was in a habit of rushing to end their conversations when they turned to her death. Or to not have to hear the quaver in her voice. The confusion. The fear. This stranger before him. But she turned to him. Lucidity filled her eyes again. Her hand struggled to reach his face and stroke his beard, since he had not shaved since they had entered the village.

  “Promise me.” She ran her fingers through his premature gray strands, her recurring silent lament that she’d never have gray of her own.

  “Anything,” he said.

  “Take me to the home of my gods.”

  “The orisha?” he asked.

  “Yes. Find the Dreaming City, that they would welcome me home. And promise me you won’t go alone. That’s the only way I might truly find rest.”

  Dinga rolled over and allowed his soft sobs carry him off to slumber.

  IV.

  There is a grief we carry from the things we didn’t even realize we’d lost.

  Dinga sprawled out on the marble floor, unable to get comfortable, unable to rest, yet not wanting to move. His was the view of the enslaved: from the dirt floor of the waiting pen. Part of him angry at the inhabitants of the Dreaming City. From all of the magic he had seen them demonstrate, at any point they could have come down from their precious mountaintop and saved Lalyani. They chose to keep their medicine to themselves, locked away in their lofty sky bauble.

  Sweat trickled down his back, and he trembled like an infant beset by fever. He feared attempting to stand, knowing his legs would threaten to buckle beneath him. Lalyani’s face tormented him. He longed to feel the ghost of her touch, running her fingers across his thinly haired scalp to tease him. Rolling over, he was unwilling to find Gerard in the dark. Rather, he was content to spend his nights on the floor, staring at the distant wall, replaying his failures from the past. Every injustice on an endless loop of trauma, while he lay impotent to do anything about them.

  “What are we going to do?” Gerard’s footfalls echoed back and forth behind him. “We can’t stay here forever.”

  “Why not?”

  “You may be comfortable in prisons, no matter how gilded the cage, but I am not.”

  We were meant to be free. Dinga knew she would not want him to remain in this place. Willing strength to his heavy limbs, he began to stir. “What can we do against their magic?”

  “I may have the beginnings of a cunning plan. Their magic may be powerful, but...” Examining the strange patterns along the wall, searchin
g for any opening, Gerard fished within the folds of his chlamys to reveal the hilt of his short sword. “They are human enough. They may bleed easily enough.”

  “No,” Dinga said.

  “No what?” Gerard stopped moving.

  “No. We will not harm her.”

  “Look, Din, I don’t know—I won’t pretend to know—what you’re feeling. But she is not Lalyani.”

  “Her spirit is true. She won’t allow anything to harm us. She will see us through on our journey.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t. I just do.”

  Heavy clomps along the marble floor slowly drew their attention. Not knowing where in the wall the door might appear, Gerard backed to the center of the room. Behind them, the opposite wall dissolved into an entrance. Luci’Kobe’s black cape undulated in an unfelt breeze, like a living thing stretching after having woken from a nap.

  With a military formality to her carriage, she walked with a stiffness she wore uncomfortably. Behind her marched three uniformed guards with gold mail vests and fur-lined collars. Their charged pehla sticks were drawn but remained at their sides. Behind them strode a man with the slow, determined stride of an elephant. His arms thicker than a grown python and legs like tree trunks; his sable skin nearly as black as a shadow in the wan light. A wispy white beard dangled from his chin, reminiscent of a boy’s first attempt to grow out whiskers. Black silk robes swathed him, and red pants that stopped just below his knees flashed out with each step. A necklace, the beads of which also alternated between red and black, dangled from his neck, and a maroon kerchief wrapped his head. He chomped on a large, though unlit, cigar. His left hand twirled three silver coins.

  “My lord Eshu, these are the spies we captured.” Luci’Kobe stepped away from the prisoners, not meeting their eyes.

  “Spies? Who dares infiltrate the Dreaming City?” Eshu flicked the coins between his meaty fingers. His heavy-lidded gaze landed on Gerard.

  “Oh. I thought your question rhetorical,” the Greek said. “You know, since we aren’t spies. You can’t spy on something you never realized was there.”

  “And who might you be, slick-tongued one?”

  “I am Gerard, scion of Sparta.” He bowed with a flourish, his hands reaching into the folds of his chlamys. His eyes locked onto Dinga’s, awaiting his nod. At least Dinga hoped that he was waiting. His friend was impetuous under his best temperament. Desperate and trapped, Gerard might be prone to lash out at the slightest provocation or perceived opening.

  “And you?” Eshu focused his studious gaze on Dinga.

  “Dinga. Of the clan Cisse.” His eyes flitted from Gerard—who lowered his stance, ready to charge—to Luci’Kobe—who angled away from him, her cape trailing along the ground—to Eshu, whose gaze remained steady and unhurried.

  “Cisse, eh? We’ll see about that.” Eshu swished his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “You and your compatriot now have a choice to make. Do so.”

  With the barest movement, Dinga patted the air. Gerard made the face of a child dissatisfied with his gift but stood up in a relaxed posture. Dinga stepped toward Eshu. “I don’t know where I am. Or where I’m supposed to go. I only know that I am to be here.”

  Eshu smiled, almost satisfied. “Take them to the temple. Let us introduce him to his history.”

  With that, Eshu turned on his heel, trailed by the three guards. As soon as the wall reformed behind him, all the tension left Luci’Kobe’s body.

  “Spies?” With mild amusement, Dinga side-eyed her.

  “You prefer ‘exiles lost on their pilgrimage to a dream’?” she asked.

  “Exiles is a bit harsh,” Gerard said.

  “’Outcasts’ any better?” She stepped toward the wall.

  “Who was he?” Dinga hesitated at the area where the exit had appeared.

  “Eshu is a powerful orisha. He is the keeper of ashe and the messenger with the power to make things happen. He opens the way to the path. You have to be careful though, because he’s also a trickster. It’s how he helps people see the fault in making the wrong choices.” Her gaze lingered on Gerard. “Your friend could have ended your journey here.”

  “How do you mean ‘end’?” Gerard glanced at Dinga, who held a knowing silence.

  “The way all stories ultimately end.”

  The Dreaming City reminded Dinga of his home kraal, with the homes larger and nearly stacked upon one another. Elders and young alike occupied each structure. From what he could see, upwards of ten city residents lived in each residence. Each groupings of homes circled a courtyard. Tables lined the outer edges of it as people came together to share a meal. In a pantomime familiar to him, an elder told stories while children played.

  The floating cart stopped before a structure which looked like a bauble set in a cup, the way an expertly cut jewel fit into a ring. Spires radiated out from it, recalling the image of a rising sun. Dinga had no way to measure its size. One moment it had seemed to gleam in the distance, they next they were upon it. It resembled hand tools, tapered and pointed, rising from the earth.

  The three of them exited the cart. Golden steps led up to an archway. The air around the courtyard grew heavy, too thick to breath comfortably. The weight like gravity itself tugged at him. A pressure built deep within his lungs, a near burning as if he were running out of breath. The moment had an intensity. A solemn thrum, an invisible energy filled him with a surge of power.

  “What is this place?” Dinga asked.

  “The temple of Orunmila,” Luci’Kobe said. “It straddles the threshold between this world and the next. A living shrine, a dwelling place of the sacred.”

  “Like an unanswered prayer, like so much of the response from the gods to the strife in life.” The pack weighed against Dinga with a renewed pressure, as if needing to remind him of its presence.

  “Have you ever asked yourself who you are without your pain?” Luci’Kobe slowed as she neared the courtyard. “Once you’ve finished your errand, what will you do next?”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready.” Dinga shifted the pack, unsure if he was even willing to let it go. “How do we know we are at the right place?”

  “The heart will know.” Luci’Kobe closed her eyes, a reverential pause. “It is here that you will fulfill your promise.”

  A moment settled between them, respecting her silence for a few heartbeats.

  “You said you were an agoze, to be an initiate of Oya?” Dinga’s voice raised as if he were asking a question.

  “I am a child of Oya’s, orisha of storms, life, death, and rebirth.” Luci’Kobe opened her eyes. “The orisha may have one name in one place and another elsewhere. They rule the sky city but have allowed others to live here. Those they’ve found worthy. They can be proud, insouciant, and cruel.”

  “Like every god I’ve ever known.”

  “Like the essence of humanity when you get down to it.” Her words were thick with an air of defensiveness. “The... lesser orisha have more limited, specialized gifts. Health, fertility, good crops, protection from enemies. Down to being barely distinguishable from humans. In fact, some were humans, warriors and kings who distinguished themselves in life and have found power among the ancestral dead.”

  “I have no use for gods I have never heard of.”

  “That does not mean that they have no use for you. Just because they are a story you have not heard before does not mean they are not real to many. Three orisha form the Primodial Irunmole. They were present before time began, when there was nothing except the vast region of outer space and the earth was shapeless beneath the sky, an endless stretch of water. The domains of the orishas were then carved out. The supreme orisha, Olodumare—also called Olorun—ruled the sky. Orunmila—also called Ifa—was given the power to bend time to his will and read the future. His was the gift of deep understanding, of plumbing the secrets of existence since he was the only orisha present at the moment of creation other than Olodumare. There
was the mysterious orisha, Obatala—King of the White Cloth—spirit of ethics, morality, purity, humility, and peace and shaper of human bodies. Considered the father of all orisha, it is they whom Olodumare trusted as if they were his own.”

  “You can say many things about the Greek pantheon,” Gerard said, as if needing to remind them of his presence, “but at least they understood that there was more than one letter in the alphabet to name their gods after.”

  “You know little of the magic to manipulate the elements and even less about the orisha to know to show the proper respect,” Luci’Kobe said. “There are four-hundred plus one orisha.”

  “Where does Eshu fit into things?” Dinga asked.

  “He is one of the powerful orisha, bound by nothing. He represents uncertainty, randomness, or chaos. Neither good, nor evil, he was born of chaos and chance and accident. His very nature and portent is that of unpredictability. Language is his gift, for he is Olodumare’s linguist. Whenever Eshu appears, there is a flaw in the sequence of events, a disruption of divine intention. With his presence, things become unclear.” Luci’Kobe touched her forehead as if struck by a headache at the very thought of him.

  “All stories pass through him,” Dinga mused to himself.

  “Yes. The second-oldest story begins with she who ruled down below.” Luci’Kobe inhaled slowly, almost as if preparing to unload a painful memory. Or a secret not hers to share.

  “Olokun ruled over the deepest of waters and the expanse called the wild marshes, a grey area, where no life dwelt. Not animal, not plant. This was the balance of creation: Olodumare ruled the sky above, Olokun the waters below. Anything that fell to the bottom of the waters remained intact, never to be seen again except by her, and she became the mother of secrets. Other than her, the orishas lived in the sky, acknowledging Olodumare as the owner of everything, the highest authority in all matters.

  One day, Obalata pondered Olokun’s domain and lamented that it was bereft of life. That, in their judgment, her kingdom was one of grey monotony; a melancholy bleakness. So, they went to Olodumare and petitioned that there should be solid land so that fields could grow and hills and valleys give shape to it, and that orishas and other living things could live there. Olodumare agreed but knew such creation to be an ambitious enterprise, and he asked who would do such a thing. Obalata volunteered.