Everfair (9 page)

Mr. Owen spoke. “Ho! There's someone at the door; do you mind—”

“Yes! A moment—” The high, sweet voice grew louder, nearer. The door opened to reveal a child she'd never seen before. Which meant this must be another heathen refugee, another conversion to make, another trial she must undertake in service to Christ. Martha strove to dissect and classify the vision before her: bare feet, canvas trousers, naked torso—so, likely male—sharp-chinned, hair black and straight, eyes slanted. Slanted. Skin tanned. But the eyes.

Undoubtedly Chinese. In the middle of Africa. How could this be?

Suddenly she remembered the railway, the camp full of coolies they'd gone off the path to avoid. But apparently they hadn't gone off it far enough.

 

Bookerville, Everfair, April 1896

None of them were devils. Tink reminded himself often that calling them that was impolite. More important, it simply wasn't true. Even Leopold's drivers, the railroad gangs' cruel and grossly ugly overseers, had been human. Horrible, with their floggings and starvation, but human.

Everyone here was much better. And the elders had been right not to try for Macao. Home would have been too far, impossible to reach. The trip upriver from Matadi had been hard enough.

With a nod to Yoka, his English student and recipient of his first attempt at a prosthetic, Tink laid his blowing tube in the sandy mud beside the kiln's flat-topped mound. A thread of smoke curled out of the mound's interior through the hole where the tube had gone. Only a thread—the fuel had burnt off correctly. Yoka, too, set his tube aside. Together they heaved away the river stones blocking the pouring channel.

Molten metal, red and golden, flowed through the gap in the kiln's side and down to the molds they'd dug into the Sankuru's lower bank. They leapt eagerly after it, the steps too steep to take slowly.

Sweat beaded Tink's skin. Fierce heat shone up out of the greensand molds. Their new knives looked fine and wicked, glowing a blackish red now, like drying blood. Yoka spit on them the cud of the root he had insisted on chewing, “for blessing.”
Crackle! Hisss!
Loud sounds issued from clouds of steam. Then the air cleared and Yoka grinned at him. “Scared?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Tink claimed, though that was a lie. But he would act in a way that would make it good as true.

Yoka humphed. “Next time you can do it, then.” Testing, always testing; Tink wondered when the Mon-Goh youth would finally trust him. Perhaps never. Perhaps when your family, your whole town was destroyed and everyone and everything you loved and knew was gone—

Someone approached—footsteps, boot steps, on the recently dry path. A few of the white men had shown interest in Tink and Yoka's project. But it was a woman who peered around the sapling tree marking the side trail to their workplace.

“Have you seen George? Hello!” Tink still hadn't learned the tree's name, but her he knew. She was the Day's Eye, Albin Daisy, a mighty poet according to the many tribes gathering here. He bowed, noticing that Yoka did the same, imitating how he clasped his hands.

“What are you doing here?”

“Miss Albin, we have not seen your son.”

“Mrs.” The Poet frowned.

“Mrs.,” Tink agreed. He straightened and looked directly into her eyes, which whites here preferred. “We would be glad to help you, but—”

“He isn't here,” Yoka interrupted, showing off his freshly acquired English. “But we can tell you where he was soon ago.”

“You mean, ‘not long ago,'” Tink corrected his pupil.

“Where?”

“Hospital,” Yoka told her.

This appeared to displease the Poet. “Of all places,” she said, again frowning. “Well, if I must go, I must.” Still she failed to leave them. “Would you—one of you, at least—come with me? Tink? I know the reverend was hoping you'd answer a few questions for him.”

So Yoka stayed to guard the cooling knives while Tink escorted the Eye of Day, Miss—
Mrs.
Albin, to the hospital buildings. On the way she asked him why none of the white workers were helping him. Several were familiar with metalwork already, she said, and would have nothing else to do with the harvest just in. He struggled for a diplomatic way to tell her how Mr. Owen seemed to discourage that. Perhaps discouragement wasn't even all that necessary: older whites likely would choose on their own not to believe in the abilities of those younger than themselves and “foreign.” Though here the whites were no more at home than he was.

They passed among a cloud of tiny, clear-winged moths. Tink assured the Poet that he and Yoka had cast only agricultural implements, to supplement those brought with them. Knives were often used in farming.

After a brief silence Mrs. Albin went on. “Really, though, we're going to need a forge, soon, to repair things, and if you can manage to—to conciliate yourself with Jackie's followers”—A sharp-eyed glance reminded Tink of every poet's greatest gift: observation. She knew he was out of harmony with these men, and she knew, to some extent, why—“I, for one, would consider it a favor.” Granting a favor upon this most revered poet would put him in a powerful position; Tink considered again how best to involve Mr. Owen's smiths and smelters and welders and such.

In silence they neared the hospital buildings. Tink slowed his pace to match that of the Poet's. Why did she wish to avoid this place? Only the Christians' temple, their “church,” was newer, bigger, with better ventilation. Sometimes there were screams, yes, and the smell of flesh gone bad, or burnt to keep people's wounds from rotting. Also, however, there could be laughter, peace, strengthening.

In any event, George wasn't actually inside either building, but serving porridge out of the kitchen at their backs. Not the most interesting work, but he seemed happy. Beside him sat the reason. She was nicely shaped, but of course so oddly brown, as were all the women in this land who were not oddly white.

The Poet asked her son to come home and add to the letter she was writing to her husband, his father.

“Now?” He was plainly loath to leave Miss Hunter's vicinity.

“Jackie will be heading for the coast again quite early tomorrow morning, almost the middle of the night—”

“Very well.” He pulled the apron he wore over his head and began rolling down his sleeves, then stopped suddenly, desperately addressing the other woman: “Unless you need me to stay?”

Miss Hunter turned her graceful head. “No, it will be fine. We're almost finished for the evening. Miss Toutournier can see the cookpot is clean.”

The Poet's face went through one of those swift color changes whites were prone to. “Tink, do you know where to find Reverend Wilson? Shall we show you to his office on our way?”

She was in a hurry, and made George hurry, too. They walked off without saying anything more. The church door was open. Tink said goodnight and went in. Then he had to wait while the reverend conducted another interview. But not long. This person had no French, no English. Tink had gradually come to realize that not everyone possessed his facility with languages; this unfortunate man could say his name and that of his home village, identifying them as such in Kiswahili. After that he counted over and over to ten until the reverend dismissed him, guiding him out of the church's entrance by the man's abruptly truncated left arm.

Three stools occupied the area screened off from the church's main space by patterned mats. The reverend sat on the lowest of these with a wooden box balanced on his knees, and pens and inkpots on top of that. He gestured to Tink to take either of the other seats. A brazier cast light and flickering shadows on the walls and floor. The high ceiling remained in darkness.

“You've been here the entire rainy season, haven't you? Arrived with the other Macao Chinese?”

Tink bobbed his head in the white motion for yes. Though this man was black he dressed and spoke much like the English tribe.

“As you are already familiar with our ways, I'll save some time by not going into those. Tell me, if you will, how you came to Everfair.”

“We were treated so badly—”

“No, no, no! Start from the beginning.
Your
beginning. When you were born, with what name you were christened, and so forth.”

As if he were the only one in the world. The only important one. This was how these people thought. They
thought.
They were not devils, but human beings.

“I was born on the island the English call Macao. My family name is Ho. My given name is Lin-Huang, meaning ‘bright woods,' or ‘shining forest.' But because of the sound my hammer makes when I work, most people grow to call me Tink.”

 

Ilebo, Everfair, August 1896

Once more in his beloved bush, Mwenda had heard many sweet musics, seen wonderful and restful sights: ceaseless songs from the beaks of invisible birds, dark leaves drifting down through soft rains to float on shining pools.

But also he had waged war—indirectly enough that he was still in alignment with his destiny, he hoped. Silent as hunting dogs, his fighters had circled a few of the whites' smaller stations and attacked without needing a word of command. Of course those dying had shouted, and their guns had banged loudly, cracking apart the night. Silence had not been the same thing as peace, and it had not remained whole. And while noble casualties have an appealing look as they lie fallen, opened bowels stank, always, without fail.

Worse, though, than the slaughter of barely wakened enemies were these smoldering ruins, these villages emptied by death. This was the third such he had encountered on his way south.

Mwenda stood on beaten earth, on vanished Ilebo's central plaza. A heap of vegetable-smelling ashes to his right must have been the remains of whatever sort of guardian plant his dead subjects had placed here. The charred sticks beside it told of the ancestor house once sited beside it. That was most likely what it had been, since at the time of its firing it had held no living inhabitants.

Not so most of the others.

Some had sought to escape the town's burning. Mwenda ordered their corpses gathered up and brought to him so that he might see to their final speech and burial. He summoned Old Kanna to his side, and asked for Josina as well.

“You will tell the dead ones' story,” he commanded his counselor. He turned to his favorite. “What can we give them?”

Josina's round eyes slitted half-shut as she considered. “Flowers we pick,” she said. “Not much else. The cloth is gone.” Used in the two earlier funerals; she did not need to explain. He had seen.

“I've asked my women to fetch water from the river,” she added. “And I have brought my fan.”

Mwenda took his place upon his throne, waiting as the corpses were laid in quiet rows before him and washed. Most were children of various ages. One a baby.

Wives and other women emptied baskets of loose white blooms, stars falling over the wet, ruined skins of the dead. Josina fanned the air above them gently, blowing the flowers lightly back and forth like clouds. She took a long time. The fan had been presented to her by tribes far to the west, he recalled, just a month ago. Brass, like a knife or mirror, it proved her to be some sort of priestess in those people's eyes. How pleased she had seemed to receive it—not expecting, he was sure, that she would first bear it publicly while conducting death rites.

He heard the grind and clink of axes digging up the soil, felt through his feet their thudding as the grave opened in the high ground to Ilebo's east. Properly, burials should occur at the sites of new houses. The dead ought not to be left on their own. But no one would be building anything here for quite a while.

At last the digging stopped. Soon after, the fanning. In these lowlands dampness clung and clung to whatever, wherever. Josina might have fanned till the light was gone and not gotten the bodies fully dry. This would be enough. Mwenda nodded to Old Kanna and he cleared his throat and spat ceremonially into the ashes of the ancestor tree.

“These are named the Blessed of the King,” the old man began. “Newly his subjects, the Blessed of the King were on their way to him. Newly his subjects, the Blessed of the King were coming. To fulfill their lives, the Blessed were approaching. Fleeing murder, searching for their lives' fulfillment in the presence of their king. Fleeing murder, frightened for their lives' fulfillment, the Blessed of the King sought righteousness and peace.

“And now they have found it.”

A good story Old Kanna was making, forging meaning out of this stupid destruction. Mwenda gazed at each dead face, committing it carefully to his memory. White stars had drifted over the sightless eyes and stuck to the unsightly wounds.

Someone was running toward him—quick breaths and shouted interruptions. A sentry knelt down in front of him and panted out: “King, King, we have discovered one alive, a man! Alive!”

“A white? A black traitor?”

“Neither! He says he was working for them and ran—and ran away—”

Screams of wordless horror. Mwenda stood and waved aside those whose job it was to protect him. Taking advantage of this traveling court's informality, he strode past the sentry to where a stranger had collapsed on the hard, burnt earth, wailing, groaning, rolling himself into a tight ball. A hand of additional sentries surrounded the unfortunate, and one of these held his nearest shoulder, looking foolish, unable to do more.

“Let him go.”

The sentry edged away.

Gradually, the man's grief appeared to subside a little. “Get up,” Mwenda told him, in the language of the people of the Kasai. “Get up and greet your king, Mwenda, and tell to me your troubles.”

He was Loyiki. He knew the names and lives of all the dead. He believed his actions had killed them.

Loyiki had been taken away with many others of Ilebo's strong young men, those roughly the same age as Mwenda. They were supposed to harvest the tears of the vines-who-weep, of course, like all the rest of those whom the whites claimed to rule. Scared by threats of harm to the women, children, and old ones left behind in their village, Loyiki and his fellows had toiled painfully to satisfy the whites' demands, which only increased when met. Finally, hearing of a refuge in the east, at the base of the Virunga Mountains, Loyiki had escaped. After much hardship he had found his refuge and been welcomed into it: a land called Everfair, of which Mwenda had heard in great detail since his “surrender.” Yet he remained curious about it and let Loyiki tell him further, listening attentively to his accounts of a hospital, farms, and foundries.