“We haven’t seen these people for years.” Yari pointed at a man and woman, Elders Awa had never met, Zamanzi perhaps, with spiral scars on brown cheeks and thick locks arranged in a crown. “Anyone could betray us.” Vie pointed at Bal talking with shadow warriors. “Our own Sprites.”
“Not Bal. Stop worrying.” Isra pulled Yari to the enclave fire. Awa joined them. Yari kissed the top of her head. Isra stroked her cheeks and whispered in Yari’s ear, “Take better measure of yourself.”
Griots told a story on the sentimental griot of griots and the fearsome scout vie loved:
Once, a great brood of Sprites crossed over, as many as would become Elders or who knows what tomorrow. After the ceremony Yari wandered off to Smokeland, weeping and howling, “What world will these Sprites conjure?” Isra feared doubt would rip Yari apart.
Despite great scouting skill in the everyday, Isra was a terrible smoke-walker. Luckily a wild dog had Yari’s scent and led Isra to Smokeland. Yari was slumped against black lava rocks, tongue drying up, heart a faint ember. The dog vanished, stranding Isra with Yari who was too feeble to smoke-walk them back to the everyday.
Isra scolded Yari, “You rescued me, but the good or evil I do is not yours, you arrogant wolf! Sprites belong to themselves. Let them fly!”
Yari’s heart burned bright again and vie brought them back to the everyday. Yari grinned at Isra and said, “Never let the enemy know your heart—until you marry them.”
This could have been a tall tale but Awa felt the truth of it as Yari hugged each Sprite. Isra touched a forehead to their open palms then jumped on a boulder and shouted, “Yari won’t mope with me after you all cross over. Vie goes off to find an exiled master, an old lover.” Isra sounded jealous and excited.
Yari jumped on the boulder too. “You said he’s lost his way; go find him.”
Isra poked Yari. “Come back to me.”
“Always.” Yari kissed Isra. “You are my rhythm, my reason.”
Sprites cheered the romantic scene, then Isra gave Bal the loom.
“I’ll tell stories tomorrow,” Yari shouted. “On all of you.”
“My story too?” Bal asked.
“No secrets too dangerous to play on this drum—yours tomorrow.” Yari handed Awa the bag of scrolls and wim-wom. “I give you my yesterdays.” Awa thought she might burst. Yari hugged her and Bal until Isra pulled them all into a barbarian jig.
* * *
Awa passed her last night as a Sprite wandering vivid vision-scapes. Smokeland got tangled in the everyday. Iron horses with red eyes trotted across Father’s fields to nibble Mother’s berries. Kenu built a tower to the scar moon and smiled as she and Bal rode wild horses through waterfalls and across black lava sand. Behemoths danced in waves and doused Awa with warm, salty water. She woke, drenched and laughing.
In the dark before dawn, Awa and Bal outlined their eyes in black kohl, twisted seeds in unruly hair, and rubbed their skin with green and red mica. Over green shifts, they donned cloud-silk robes, light as air and warm as fire. Dressed as Elders, they poured a libation to the ancestors and gave thanks to the bees, cathedral trees, and spiders, to the seas, green lands, Mama Zamba, and the sweet desert. Who would anybody be without rock, rain, and sand? Filled with anticipation, Awa and Bal joined other Sprites singing and dancing on a carpet of purple sand-bells to the enclave circle.
Everything you believe could be wrong.
Patience, forgiveness, that is our song.
Elder musicians lost the beat and melody. Dizzy, they dropped kora harps and drums. The Sprites stumbled to a halt. Warriors in lion masks raced down Mama Zamba’s stone hills and burst through sand drifts carrying axes and swords: Zamanzi, ambushing them.
Nobody brought weapons to a crossover ceremony. Shadow warriors wore cloud-silk robes, not Aido spider-weave, and couldn’t disappear.
Yari brushed unruly braids from a sweaty face. Vie clutched a heaving chest. “Something in the wine.”
They were all drug-addled except the two Elders with spiral scars.
Awa gasped. “Anyone could betray us.”
Zamanzi warriors surrounded them. Nobody put up a fight. Yari dumped salt into a gourd of water then guzzled it. Shock gripped Awa. She clutched Bal’s hand. A Zamanzi war chief shouted commands and warnings in Empire vernacular. “Decide to live right or face the ax!” They’d come to liberate Sprites and vesons who agreed to be griots, wives, or soldiers.
Blood splattered across feast tables. Several Elders and Sprites refused to choose quickly and lost their heads. Bal lunged at a warrior twice her size. Awa held her back. He laughed. Three Zamanzi men doused a white-haired veson with tree oil and set vie on fire. The burning Elder raced across the enclave circle. Yari vomited on the purple sand-bells and howled.
The one who burned was Isra, Yari’s partner of twenty-five years, the love Yari always returned to, the weaver who taught Bal to fashion spiderwebs into dreams and shadows into Aido cloth, the friend to horses and wild dogs, the scout who never let anybody get lost. Yari and Isra had rescued Awa before Father sold her to a mine, brothel, or Hezram’s huts.
Isra died rolling in a sand dune. Vie suffocated the fire before it could spread to anyone else. Tears blinded Awa. Her breath was a wheeze. Her heart cracked and muscles gave out. She and Bal collapsed. The burly axman headed for them. Yari blocked him, sober and ferocious, hair a bristling storm cloud. The axman hesitated.
“Basawili, Isra.” Yari spoke the Anawanama prayer for the dead, then helped Awa and Bal up. They almost fell again. “Not the end, more breath to come.” Vie shook them. “Survive. Find each other.” Turning to the axman, Yari shouted, “I choose griot.”
“Prove yourself.” Spiral scars decorated the axman’s naked cheeks, just like the traitor-Elders. Thin braids with bones on their tips fell to his shoulders. He raised his blade.
“I know secrets about everyone and everything.” Yari swaggered in full griot trance. “I’ve traveled farther than any griot and listened to many hearts. I hold all the people. I’ve persuaded emperors to peace. Xhalan Xhala. I carry the past to the future. Take heart in the story I tell.” Looking at Awa and Bal, Yari chanted an epic in the language of Zamanzi ancestors:
When the Arkhysian Empire invaded the northlands, a petulant scoundrel, Mmendi, refused to surrender his horses, his women, or give up his fine tent to work an Empire farm and war against barbarian thief-lords in the Golden Gulf. Empire soldiers locked the rascal in a cage and took what they wanted. They paraded Mmendi’s horses, children, and women, chained and branded, in front of him. The pampered chief went mad with grief, tearing out his beard, talking only to haints. The beard never grew back.
Seeing Mmendi raving, his people were subdued, beaten. One afternoon the captain of his Empire guard, Thalit, a strong woman with northern roots, recognized his true spirit. Thalit seduced Mmendi or he her—who can say? They ran away together, hiding and eating roots and rats at first, with no thought of much but survival and pleasure.
One night, Mmendi and Thalit raided Empire caravans for mangos, goats, and nut bread. Mmendi’s people delighted in this defiance and deserted the Empire in droves. All the men shaved their beards; the women cut their hair short as a fighting woman’s. They joined the rascal and his warrior wife and harried Empire caravans, outposts, and patrols. Mmendi and his people claimed the shadows, the caves, the night. They forced the Empire to withdraw from this desert.