The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 (5 page)

Day followed inexorable day, and newly turned earth progressively supplanted the charred remnants of Babakar's field. The rains fell with perceptibly diminishing intensity. Working against the advent of the day they knew the rain would cease, Babakar and Amma toiled from the rising to the setting of the sun. With grim determination they struggled to prepare the soil for planting while there was still time for another crop to grow.

Work they shared; work in plenty, along with the thatch-roofed house Babakar had erected on the side of the one the Sussu had destroyed. They shared meager meals of millet and beans bought only after tiresome haggling with the near destitute merchants of Gadou. The people left in the town paid little heed to Babakar's new companion; she was but one more of many refugees from the desolate countryside. At night they shared the sleep of the exhausted, their bodies touching only by chance on Babakar's single sleeping mat. For, by unspoken agreement, they shared not each other; not in the way of a man and a woman.

On occasion Babakar's gaze would linger on the smooth play of muscles beneath Amma's skin as she toiled beneath the sun. Such gazes did not last long, for the memory of his first Amma remained a shadow of sorrow in his mind. And he remembered how the Noba had ravished her… Was he, a countryman who had given her shelter, to offer her similar abuse?

If Amma noticed such moments of quickly suppressed passion, she showed no sign. Indeed, she seemed more determined than Babakar to succeed with their late-sown crop. She demanded nothing of him beyond food and shelter he gave her.

Once, at sunset, they were visited by Kuya Adowa, the local
tynbibi
or diviner. Despite her advanced years, Kuya stood proudly erect, and her eyes smoldered beneath her turban like the embers of a fire. The words she spoke were addressed to Babakar, but that dark, portentous gaze never left the eyes of Amma.

"The
dyongu,
the spirit-cock that embodies the luck of Gadou, died yesterday," the old woman announced ominously.

Babakar stiffened. The death of the sacred black rooster always presaged a period of ill fortune. When the predecessor of this last
dyongu
had died, the invasion of the Sussu had followed. What new calamities the death of Kuya's bird foreshadowed, Babakar did not care to contemplate. His concern was why Kuya Adowa had chosen to come to him to speak of the matter…

"War brings disruption not only to the lands of men, but to the world of the spirits as well," the
tynbibi
said. "The
kambu,
the spirits of power, manifest themselves in our world, and the
tyerkou
shed their skins at night to wander the land and drink the blood of the unwary. Beware, Babakar
iri
Sounkalo. Beware."

Only after the second "Beware" did Kuya shift her gaze from Amma's eyes to Babakar's.

"What do you mean by that, Kuya Adowa?" Babakar demanded. "Are Amma and I in danger of some kind?"

The old woman wrinkled her nose in disdain. "I leave that Interpretation
to
you. I must go and seek the black hatchling that is to become the new
dyongu."
 

With that she turned her bare, bony back on them and stalked back down the dusty road to Gadou.

Troubled, Babakar turned to Amma… and was taken aback by the hatred in her eyes as she glared at the dwindling figure of the departing
tynbibi.
…

There came the morning when the first seedlings of
wassa
poked boldly through the soil. Overnight the seeds had sprouted several inches, in the typical manner of the first growth-spurt of this type of bean plant.

A smile of satisfaction crept quietly across the face of Babakar. It was the first such smile his features had worn since the coming of the Sussu…

Then he looked at Amma… and his smile disappeared, replaced by an expression of utter bewilderment.

In an attitude approaching reverence, Amma knelt near a cluster of seedlings. One finger stroked the fragile green stems with the delicate touch of a priestess conveying a sacrifice to the goddess of fertility. Her head inclined so far forward that her face hovered only a hairsbreadth from the tops of the plants.

Tentatively, Babakar touched the shoulder of the kneeling woman. The effect of the brush of his ringers against her skin was at once instantaneous and disconcerting. Amma sprang into the air like a frightened animal. Yet for all the suddenness of her leap, she landed lightly on her feet, facing Babakar in a tense, quivering half-crouch. It was as though she were prepared to flee at the slightest pretext. Her eyes, fixed glassily at something beyond Babakar's head, bulged wide in fright. A tremor shook her slight frame; then the glaze faded from her eyes and she suddenly pitched forward.

Quickly Babakar reached out and broke Amma's fall, saving her from a bruising impact. For a moment she lay limp in his arms. Babakar became conscious of her sleek body pressing closely to his, and this time his thoughts did not. stray to the Amma he had lost, or the outrage committed by the Noba deserters…

"Amma…" he murmured into the tight folds of her turban. He had felt her stir against him. "Amma, what is wrong?"

Her head tilted upward. Never before had Babakar been so aware of the true beauty of the strange woman's face. It was as though he were gazing into a sculpture carved from polished black pearl, streaked with tracks of diamond where the sunlight caught her tears.

"I am sorry," she said softly. "It's just that I was remembering the last harvest my family had… before the Sussu came."

"The Sussu are gone!" Babakar said fiercely, his hands tightening on Amma's arms. Silently he repeated what he had said. The Sussu
were
gone… as was his first Amma. Sorrow was there; it always would be. But the woman he held in his arms was no memory. She was warm. She was real. He loved her.

Babakar's face bent toward Amma's. Their faces came slowly together, and when their mouths met, Amma's arms encircled Babakar's shoulders and clung to him with gentle strength. Warm as the sun that nurtured the land was this, the first embrace of their love.

"My Amma," Babakar whispered when their lips parted.

"Your second Amma…"

"No," Babakar said firmly. "I have only one Amma. And I want her to be my wife."

"You do not ask this only out of gratitude for my help with the crop?"

"How can you say that?" Babakar demanded. "It is as a woman I want you, not labor to be bargained for. What is mine is yours, even my life."

Exerting a soft but insistent pressure, Amma's arms drew Babakar's head downward, and their mouths met again. Long moments passed before they parted. It was Amma who spoke first. "When the next wet season begins, we will go to the
ad-hana
to be mated at the shrine of the Mother of Earth?"

Without hesitation Babakar assented, and he pressed Amma close to him. He never realized that Amma's gaze was cast downward, fixed with strange avidity on the
wassa
sprouts pushing their way through the soil…

Night had fallen swiftly, as always during the waning weeks of the wet season. The glances that had passed between Amma and Babakar were no longer fleeting or hastily averted. As they walked from the field to Babakar's dwelling, Amma's hand clasped his for the first time. The soft half-light of the stars cast a shaft of muted illumination through the! house's only window, and outlined the contours of Amma's half-nude form as she reclined on the sleeping-mat. Her arms opened to Babakar as he moved toward her.

All the restraint he had imposed upon his emotions melted swiftly in the heat of Amma's embrace. His hands peeled the
asokaba
from her waist, then traveled upward to untie the turban from her head, so that he could experience the sensation of her kinky hair brushing against his palms.

But as Babakar's fingers pulled at the knot of the turban, Amma uttered a low cry that had naught to do with passion or pleasure. Her hands shot up to Babakar's, and with surprising force held them away from her head. The points of her fingernails dug talon-like into his flesh as she hissed, "No! You must not touch my turban."

A bewildered "Why?" was Babakar's only response.

Amma did not reply immediately. She lay silent, her body taut and rigid next to Babakar's, her hands pinioning his wrists like clamps of steel. Then, with a shudder, she released her hold and wriggled from beneath him. Sitting up, she hooked her arms around drawn-up knees, then spoke in a flat tone.

"I did not tell you everything that happened when the deserters took me. I fought them. They became angry, and one of them decided to teach me not to defy them. He took a brand from their cook-fire, and pushed it at my face. I turned away… and the flame burned the top of my head! There are scars… it is horrible. You must not see it! You must not!"

Babakar reached out and pulled Amma down to his broad chest. She yielded easily, and nestled passively against him.

"Yet another outrage that the Sussu must answer for," he said bitterly. "Would that I'd killed as many of them for you as I did for… my other family." Then, more gently, "My feelings for you are not so shallow that I would turn from the sight of what the Noba did to you. But if you prefer that I not see it, I will never again put my hand near your turban."

Amma leaned forward and covered Babakar's lips with hers. His arms tightened around her; she returned his embrace with an ardor beyond any he had experienced before. Their love was consummated in a fierce flow of passion that left Babakar spent and drowsy. So deep was the slumber he-soon fell into that he was not disturbed when Amma extricated herself from his embrace, hastily donned her
asokaba,
and quietly slipped out of their dwelling, being especially careful not to rustle the rectangle of cloth that hung across the doorway. Nor did he waken when, only an hour before the rising of the sun, she returned.

Amma seemed strangely subdued as she and Babakar walked to the
wassa-
field in the morning. Her fingers hung lifelessly in his grasp, and her eyes were downcast. Babakar wondered if he had unknowingly done wrong the night before. Surely Amma had enjoyed their lovemaking as much as he… or had she? Possibly she now recalled the depredations of the Noba who had ravished her, while in the ecstasy of the night she had forgotten. Babakar wanted to assure Amma that with him she was secure. But if she had indeed begun to forget the horrors of the past, it would be foolish for Babakar to bring them once again to the forefront of her mind. Suddenly he recalled the strange warning of Kuya Adowa…

The sight that met his eyes when they reached the field swept aside all the conflicting thoughts that roiled through Babakar's mind.

The field was ruined. All the burgeoning
wetssa
sprouts were gone, bitten off to jagged, pitiful stumps that barely protruded above the line of the soil. Amid the destruction lay the mocking signatures of its perpetrators: scores of small, cloven hoofprints scattered among the rows of ravaged plants.

"Goats?" thought Babakar. No, that could not be. There were no goat-herds this far south of the Gwaridi-Milima Mountains.

When he knelt to look more closely at the damage, he realized that the prints had come in a long, disorderly line from the west, then departed in the direction of neighboring fields after they had eaten their fill of his
wassa.
There were other, fresher tracks that told him that later the animals had returned the way they had come; that way led to the Tassili. There were no wild goats in the Tassili, Babakar knew. There was not enough forage in the wasteland to support their voracious appetites. But there were… gazelles.

The mystery deepened. Babakar's brow furrowed in confusion. Never before had the graceful, elusive antelopes of the desert ventured this far from their wasteland environs. Never, at least, in the generations of time the
griots
could recall, and these seemed to stretch back forever. Yet what tradition said could never happen, had. The evidence lay grazed to the ground at his feet.

Shaking his head in despair, Babakar stood up and turned to Amma. She stared downward with a wooden, unseeing expression.
Gods,
thought Babakar,
she's even more affected by this than I am.
…

Gingerly, recalling her frightened reaction of the previous morning, he placed his arm around her shoulders. "Amma," he began haltingly, "I don't understand why this happened, but somehow we must overcome it. The land is useless to us now; there is no time to plant another crop. We can go to Gao, or some other city, and hire our services to some Merchant Lord. It's only a step above slavery, but it's better than starving,…"

"So, Babakar, they got you too," a voice behind them interrupted.

Babakar whirled to face two of his fellow farmers, Mwiya
iri
Fenuka and Atuye
iri
Sisi, whose fields lay closer to Gadou than his.

"The gazelles destroyed your crops, too?" Babakar demanded. "Did they get everybody?"

"Mine, not his," Atuye said sourly. Like Babakar, Atuye was an ex-soldier, hard-muscled and battle-scarred. Mwiya, a stocky man of middle age, seemed even more agitated than Atuye even though it was Mwiya's crop that had been spared.

"It's like that throughout this whole area," Mwiya said. "The creatures struck haphazardly. You know Atuye, here, and I are neighbors, our fields side by side. Yet mine still stands as it did yesterday, and Atuye's looks like yours."

"Thought you might have seen something, since yours is the last field in the direction the gazelles came from," Atuye said.

Babakar shook his head. "I slept through it all, curse the luck."

"What about you?" Atuye growled, turning to Amma.

Amma started, her shoulders tensing beneath Babakar's arm.

"Nothing," she replied quickly. "I know nothing."

"Are you sure?" pressed Atuye.

"What in Motoni's wrong with you, man?" Babakar exploded, taking a step forward. "Amma couldn't have seen anything. She was with me all night."