Slavemakers (9 page)

THEY LEFT TWO
days later, and at first it wasn't so bad. “Just put one foot in front of the other,” as Mama had always said about facing a challenging task, “and eventually you'll get there.”

But it was a near thing. From the very first step, Mama moved slowly, so much more slowly than she once had. Still, the prospect of returning to Naro Moru seemed to give her new energy. Her eyes seemed to have a light in them they'd been lacking, and even what her ravaged face showed seemed to recall the strong—and headstrong—woman she'd been once.

Using a walking stick Aisha Rose had fashioned for her, she stumped along the switchbacked roads leading up and out of the Great Rift Valley. They even sang together, just as they had on all their previous journeys.

But that was only at the start. Before they'd even
reached the lip of the Rift, Mama needed to rest for hours in the heat of the day. They made real progress only in the chill of dawn and in the last few afternoon hours before the sun set over the valley's far wall. Aisha Rose could have kept going at night, under the light of the stars and a moon waxing toward full, but Mama had to rest. At night, the heaviness of Mama's sleep frightened Aisha Rose.

By then, Mama had stopped even attempting to sing. Nor did she seem to be aware of Aisha Rose's voice, or of any other sight or sound around them. All her attention, all her energy, was devoted to putting one foot in front of the other.

While everything else became Aisha Rose's responsibility. Finding food. Filling their skins with water whenever they found a clear brook or spring. Keeping Mama going for as long as possible before the heat became too great or the evening too dark.

Still, somehow, eventually, days later than they should have, they made it back to Naro Moru. To the compound with its stone walls and patch of forest and its little stream, and the house where Mama had witnessed the end of the dreamed earth and the birth of the real one, where Aisha Rose had been born.

And found not a house but a ruin. A pile of rubble receding into the dream, just as everything human-made eventually did. The past rainy season had been long and unrelenting, and at a certain point it had overwhelmed the house, which had been tottering even before they'd left for Hell's Gate. The tile roof had simply
collapsed, bringing down the sodden wooden beams and leaving only crumbling exterior walls standing.

To Aisha Rose, it looked just like all the other ruined houses they'd passed along the way. Just another building subsiding into the earth. Who would have thought that their house, which had stood for so long, would be immune?

It seemed that Mama had. She looked at the house in silence, but there were tears glittering in her eyes, then on her cheeks. Aisha Rose came up beside her, and stood as still and strong as possible as Mama leaned on her. Frail, insubstantial Mama, little more than fragile bones covered by translucent skin.

It was late afternoon. Aisha Rose looked around, at the familiar forest patch, the rushing stream, the huge clouds billowing across the beautiful African sky, and felt tiny, and so lonely. As if Mama, standing right there, were gone already. Blowing away with the clouds.

“Darling?” Mama said, looking away and speaking in such a quiet voice that she might almost have been talking to herself.

Aisha Rose, unsure, waited.

“When I die,” Mama went on, “I don't want to be buried. Please don't take the time to bury me.”

Aisha Rose didn't say anything. It was one of their moments that she realized the connection went both ways. What the worm had done to Mama, and what together they had done to Aisha Rose. She knew she could see Mama's thoughts—her memories—sometimes, but she often forgot that sometimes Mama could see hers.

She didn't protest, didn't tell Mama not to worry,
didn't say that she was just tired, that she would be fine. On the real earth, you knew what death was and that it couldn't be denied. You saw it everywhere, so you didn't waste time pretending it couldn't happen to you.

Aisha Rose said, “What do you want, Mama?”

“I want to be close to the sky.”

Aisha Rose was quiet.

Mama paused. She was looking east, toward Mount Kenya. Though, as almost always, the mountain was shrouded in cloud.

“I want to go there,” she said.

*   *   *

THERE
. AISHA ROSE
knew where she meant: the rose farm.

Aisha Rose had heard about it all her life. Their friends' farm perched on the slopes of the hidden mountain. A place that Mama and Papa went to relax, to be happy, before the dream came to an end.

And now Mama intended it to be the last stop on her final hejira. Aisha Rose knew better than to argue, to tell her that it was a two-day journey even at full strength, to recommend returning instead to Hell's Gate, where the weather was warm and there was always water to drink and food to eat.

She saw Mama's expression and didn't say any of these things. Instead, she just nodded, and got to work making a bed for them with reeds she gathered from beside the stream, picking ripe mangoes from a tree that had survived the rainy season, and not thinking about the journey ahead and where it would end.

*   *   *

THE TREK FROM
Hell's Gate had taken them mostly along empty roads half-reclaimed by the brush. Of course, there were occasional signs that people had once lived there—patches of ground along the roadside where huts and shacks had once stood, like long-abandoned graves. The wind blew scraps of rusty metal and plastic whose origins Aisha Rose couldn't even guess at.

But the part of their hejira that took them away from the compound and toward Mount Kenya was different, taking them through what had been a far more densely populated area. They walked along a road whose asphalt, though now shattered by sun and rain and split by wind-bent saplings and creeping vines, still reminded Aisha Rose of the snakelike highways she'd seen in pictures.

Only instead of the gleaming automobiles in the pictures, this road held the bubbled, half-melted, rusty remains of the vehicles that had stopped forever when the dream ended.

Mama told Aisha Rose about them, a part of the dreamed life she hadn't often mentioned before. Matatus were little buses you'd cram yourself into and pikipikis were motorcycles you'd ride on the back of. Both allowed you to just sit and get taken places with no effort at all, Mama said, as if the very idea was a miracle.

To Aisha Rose it was less a miracle than something beyond her imagination. You had to experience being taken places without walking to know what it meant, and she knew she never would.

*   *   *

AUTOMOBILES MELTING BACK
into the earth. Shattered gray asphalt that had once been a highway. The graves of old houses. The last of everything.

And always vultures circling above.

Mama, leaning on Aisha Rose to rest, watched the vultures, and said, “Some people believe that they can guide you to the afterlife.”

“Who can?” Aisha Rose said, pointing.
“Them?”

“Yes.” After a moment, Mama laughed. “Who knows if it's true? But I'd like to find out. So, darling, when it's time, I want you to let them take me.”

Aisha Rose was quiet.

“Please, Aisha Rose.”

“All right.”

They went on.

*   *   *

AT FIRST, WHEN
they left the desolate, wounded flatlands behind and began climbing into the lush green foothills, it didn't seem like the last stage of a journey. It felt like a blessing, a relief, even a thrilling escape.

And Mama seemed stronger as well, walking with a little more energy and purpose. Knowing that her destination lay close at hand.

They were following grassy trails made, Mama said, by animals. Large antelopes, she said, or even forest elephants or rhinos. “They make roads, just like we do,” she said. “Like we did.”

The trees and plants were much thicker and greener
than the ones in the forest patch in the compound back home. Bent, ancient-looking trees whose branches were hung heavy with spiky plants that seemed to live on air. Glossy shrubs with broad shiny leaves slick from the moisture, the clouds that wafted through turning everything a milky gray-green. Soft moss that sprang back under Aisha Rose's feet and made her want to lie down on it and sleep.

They didn't see any elephants, but smaller creatures were everywhere: bushy-haired squirrels and little gray-brown antelopes that dashed across the path in front of them, even a little golden cat with gemlike eyes that paused beside the path to stare at them as they rested. As Mama rested.

And the birds were like candy, like fruit. Big green ones that ran along tree branches like lizards and let loose with wild lunatic cries. (“Turacos,” Mama declared, smiling.) Parrots that came screeching out of the mist and went screeching back into it. An eagle that rose above them and disappeared into the mist.

And vultures, too.

*   *   *

AT THE END
of their second day of climbing, they reached a flatter, much more open stretch. Not quite level land, but a gentler slope that had been turned into terraces. These had once been fields here, split by a stream tumbling downhill.

Mama's face was alight with emotions that were so vivid, so naked, that they frightened Aisha Rose. “This is it,” she said, breathless. “Their house is right up there on that knoll.”

“Mama . . .” Aisha Rose said.

But Mama was already well ahead, and Aisha Rose's voice was carried away by the wind.

*   *   *

MORE OF THE
house—the grandest Aisha Rose had ever seen—was intact than any other they'd passed along the way. It had been built of stone, great sheets of yellow-white stone quarried from somewhere on this enormous mountain, so even though the rain and the mist and wind had done their work, much of it still stood intact. The red-slate roof covered the interior walls, and now glassless windows showed where you could have sat inside, looking out over the fields and valleys.

To Aisha Rose, seeing a house so well preserved was a little miracle. She wanted at once to go inside and explore, to imagine what it would be like to live in such a palace.

Yet, looking at it, Mama radiated sadness. As they stood there, all the energy seemed to go out of her, and she turned her back on the house, sitting on the remnants of a low brick wall that had once bordered a stone patio.

“We used to have drinks here,” she said, her voice small and breathless. “We'd watch Naomi and Rick's boys, and we would talk about—”

But then she stopped. After a few moments, Aisha Rose said, “Where are they?”

Mama looked at her. There were tears in her eyes.

“The roses,” Aisha Rose said. “Didn't you say that's
what they grew here? I know what they look like. Where are they?”

Mama blinked. Her gaze shifted past Aisha Rose. “They had big greenhouses there,” she said, pointing. “But they're gone.”

Aisha Rose looked. Perhaps there were still a few signs that there had once been buildings there. Perhaps.

“Mama?” she said.

“Yes?” A breath.

“Was I named after the flowers here?”

She knew the answer, had heard it often. But she wanted to hear it one more time.

“Yes.” Mama smiled at her, a ghost of the big smile of Aisha Rose's memory. “The purple-red ones that were my favorite.”

*   *   *

THE REST OF
the day was awful. Especially as midday turned to late afternoon and the sun dipped behind the huddled clouds, and the air grew very cold.

Even while resting, even while sitting still, Mama could barely breathe. “I'm fine,” she said, but already Aisha Rose could feel her slipping away. Her light dimming.

She had no appetite, and she knew Mama didn't either, but she went out searching for food anyway. She didn't know what else to do.

But it was nearly useless. She threw stones at a couple of perched pigeons and a hawk, but she, too, was chilled
and tired and a little dizzy from the altitude, and she succeeded only in chasing them away.

In the end, she found only some red berries growing wild. She gave them all to Mama, saying—lying—that she'd eaten some herself while gathering them. But Mama, slipping away, just smiled and thanked her and put the berries carefully down beside her.

*   *   *

THEY SPENT THE
night inside the ruins of the house, sheltered a little from the wind and gusts of cold rain by the crumbling walls. Aisha Rose built a small fire from wood she gathered from an old tree fall, but it was damp, spitting and hissing and casting only a little heat.

In Aisha Rose's arms, Mama shivered her way through the long hours, only falling into a harrowed sleep as dawn approached. Aisha Rose, who hadn't slept at all, rose as soon as Mama was asleep, built up the fire as best she could, then went to explore the ruins. She was looking for something to eat, something that maybe she could tempt Mama with. Maybe some birds' eggs she could cook, or some meat she could catch.

Something to postpone what she knew was happening.

But she found no nests, no vulnerable baby animals. She could hear birdsong outside, and she knew that the forests surrounding the old house and fields were full of wildlife, but all of that meat might just as well have been part of the dream.

What Aisha Rose did find was a metal door she hadn't noticed the day before. It was set in a wall that was still
standing in the center of the house, the area most protected from the elements, and though rusty and stiff on its hinges, it could still be opened.

Wondering where it led, Aisha Rose pulled on the edge until it swung open far enough to admit her slender, flexible body. The milky early-morning light spilled through the open door to reveal stone stairs leading down into complete darkness. Cool but surprisingly dry, musty air wafted up and past her.