The Eyes of The Sea - Alberto Guaita-Tello-With cover

Alberto Guaita Tello
THE EYES
OF THE SEA
(Twins of Telluria, Book I)
Translation from the original Spanish
by Dorothy J. Herrick

Original title: Los ojos del mar.
The writing of this book was completed in Cantabria, Spain,
on February 22, 2014.
The translation from Spanish to English was completed
on September 5, 2016.
© 2016 Alberto Guaita Tello
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1539916017
Registered in the Spanish RGPI
on May 5, 2014. (Registry no. 00/2014/2370)
Cover art: Alexia Jorques

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alberto Guaita Tello was born in 1976, in Zaragoza, Spain. He spent his
first seven years, which he remembers as “gray but happy,” in the cities of
Madrid and Calahorra. The rest of his childhood and his early teens were
spent in Cameroon, at the missions his parents administered in that
country.
Together with his brothers and sister, Alberto experienced complete
cultural immersion in Africa, and enjoyed endless hours of listening to
stories and legends. He soon began to invent his own tales to share in the
storytelling sessions, which usually occurred around an open bonfire
somewhere in the jungle. For him, those were “years of happiness,
freedom, and adventure.”
Today, Alberto and his wife live in a country cottage in the highlands of
Cantabria, in Northern Spain. He is currently writing the second volume of
Twins of Telluria and preparing a collection of children’s stories, Tales
of the Forest of Zamina, for publication.

DEDICATION
To Africa, the first place I ever really felt at home.
To my wife and my father, who corrected my text with infinite patience. If
they hadn’t believed in me, I would still be writing only in my imagination.
To my manuscript reviewers; you know who you are.
To Dorothy Herrick, my translator, who has made it possible to share my
story around many more bonfires than ever before.
And especially to you, my readers, because you have decided to dive in with
me among these paper waves.

CONTENTS
Prologue: Bitterwater 1
Chapter 1: Mama Simone and Fanya 20
Chapter 2: Malaam 40
Chapter 3: Fanya 65
Chapter 4: The White Van 74
Chapter 5: Ciel 81
Chapter 6: Man Kenguele 92
Chapter 7: Etienne 123
Chapter 8: Bilal the Great 136
Chapter 9: Awale 148
Chapter 10: The Grand Titanic 160
Chapter 11: Iron Atoll 171
Chapter 12: Ciel and Maalam 206
Chapter 13: Searching for Patrick 215
Chapter 14: The Barracuda King 239
Chapter 15: Sharduk and Fanya 249
Chapter 16: Market Day 255
Chapter 17: Malaam and Bilal 271
Chapter 18: The Crossover 284
Epilogue: The Message of the Dragonfly 301

BY THE WAY…
Although parts of this story are based on fact, it all takes place in a parallel,
imaginary version of our world. Any possible similarities to real personal
names, brand names, or place names should be understood as mere
coincidences.

Alberto Guaita Tello
Prologue
Bitterwater
1
Little Mekú had been walking through the forest for nearly
an hour when she reached the Hugging Tree.
She had been following her firefly friend ever since she had
opened her left eye and saw it hovering there, a palm’s breadth
from her face. And so, with just her left eye open, the threeyear-old
had climbed down from the rough cot that her parents
had built for her next to their own, in order to watch her more
closely at night, and had followed her friend into the jungle.
Sometimes her mother, Ekoume, would tie a strand of fine
twine to her little wrist, in case she woke up and tried to walk
out into the darkness of the night all alone.
Her parents’ hut, built of adobe and straw, had but a single
room and an outdoor kitchen, as did most of the homes in the
little village lying on the shores of Bitterwater. The hut was
situated at the end of the village farthest from the lake, as was
appropriate for families of hunters such as her father, M’some.
Ekoume was often troubled by terrible nightmares because
of the strange habit of sleepwalking that her little one had
acquired after a round of nasty fevers. In these nightmares,
Ekoume always saw herself trying to run towards the lake,
which was actually home to only a couple of species of catfish
and an occasional hippo that stopped to rest there, but which in
her dreams was full of crocodiles and mamiwatas with green hair,
fishhook-shaped teeth, and emerald eyes.
No matter how hard she tried to hurry forward, Ekoume
could hardly lift her feet off the ground, while her baby girl
toddled closer and closer to the water. She had even dreamed at
times that a gigantic hippopotamus had swallowed her baby
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The Eyes of the Sea
whole; then she would force the animal to open its jaws and
would rescue her little one, safe and sound.
But so many weeks had gone by now since Mekú had
suffered an episode of sleepwalking that her mother decided not
to tie the twine around her wrist any more. The little girl had
climbed out of bed without making a sound, with the stealth
that comes so naturally to a child who is bent on mischief.
Not even Dog had awakened. He always slept across the
threshold of the doorway, which was covered only by a crude
curtain made of pieces of hides of antelope, baboons, and tree
rats. Mekú had barely brushed Dog´s fur with one little bare
foot as she passed.
The toddler had wandered away from her parents’ hut,
oblivious to everything around her except the sparkling halo of
green light that her firefly friend emitted, outlining the
silhouettes of the bushes and tugging at the harsh shadows of
the trees. She hardly heard the soft rustle of the dry leaves
underfoot nor smelled the sweet, omnipresent aroma of
overripe fruit that wafted up from the ground at every step,
taking her deeper and deeper into the night.
As she entered farther into the black denseness of the
jungle, the darkness slowly began to dissipate, giving way to an
aura of bioluminescence. At first dozens, then hundreds, and
finally myriads of fireflies appeared along the pathway, all
traveling towards the same objective.
In spite of the innumerable tiny, twinkling, star-like lights
that accompanied her on her way, Mekú never lost sight of the
one that was leading her.
2
The heat of the day had been suffocating, and Bitterwater
stank even more than usual.
2

Alberto Guaita Tello
Every time his sense of smell became accustomed to the
stench, the lake would surprise M’some with yet another of its
infinite variety of pestilent odors. On those days he was happier
than ever that he was a hunter instead of a fisherman or of
being in charge of one of the little gardens that some of his
neighbors grew near the water’s edge.
Today, the hunting had not been too bad; one of his snares
had captured an enormous porcupine, and a small gazelle had
fallen into another. But a civet cat had found the gazelle before
he had, and there was not much left that he could use.
Back at the village, M’some spent a couple of hours playing
awale with some neighbors and had even won two games, so he
had a couple of extra cups of salt to take home with him.
But in spite of the weariness that came with his hunting
activities, he could hardly ever sleep the whole night through.
Memories returned to him in the form of nightmares nearly
every night.
The dreams always began the same way, with the smell of
burnt flesh. Flames licked the corpses of the inhabitants of a
distant village, which were piled in a great heap in front of the
home of the tribal chief, the lamidó, as a punishment for
supposedly helping the northern separatists—who remained
faithful to the former president, now ousted from his position.
What M’some had thought would be a great honor serving
in the glorious Cameroonian army as a scout had turned into a
horror of fire and blood as soon as the purges in the north
began.
The captain in charge of his squadron was a distant cousin
of the current president, as were most of the officials, as a
matter of fact. The official’s greatest virtue was that he enjoyed
fulfilling his duty, which apparently was to unmercifully kill
3
3

The Eyes of the Sea
anyone who maintained any type of direct or indirect contact
with the terrorist separatists in the north.
M’some had signed up as a volunteer to defend his country
from the terrible threat of secession after hearing a speech by
the parish priest from a nearby village. He would sometimes go
there on Sundays to sell meat and skins from his hunting, and
he had heard the priest exhorting the young men to help the
President, Defender of Christianity, protect the country from
the Muslim demons in the north.
While he himself was still an animist, as was all of his
family, M’some was also Catholic, and he would probably
embrace yet other faiths before he became an old man.
Everyone knew that when it came to being protected from evil,
there were never too many gods and spirits.
One morning he came across the trail of a detachment of
rebels who were hiding in Chad but would cross over the border
at night to restock their supplies in a little village where it
appeared some of them had relatives. When M’some informed
the captain of his find, their battalion was ordered to move
towards the village immediately, the troops crowded into their
two transport vehicles as though they were cattle and the
officials in their Jeep. They were all armed with old Sterling
submachine guns—purchased second-hand from the army of
Her Gracious Majesty, Queen of England—and with machetes.
They never found the militiamen, but the captain decided
to teach the locals a lesson, so he ordered his men to execute
the entire village, everyone except the lamidó, who shouted
curses at them until they solved that problem with the blow of a
rifle butt to his face, leaving him unconscious. The old chief ’s
life was thus spared so he could give testimony of what had
happened. No one would laugh at the glorious Cameroonian
army by aiding the “terrorists” and get away with it, if they
could help it.
4

Alberto Guaita Tello
To say that it was a slaughter does not even come close to
describing what followed. Some villagers ran, trying to escape,
while others knelt and begged for their lives, to no avail.
Meanwhile the captain leaned on the hood of the Jeep with
his sniper’s rifle in hand, laughing like a maniac while he took
deadly shots from the shade of the baobab tree where his
sergeant had parked the vehicle. He even shot a couple of his
own men who showed signs of reluctance in fulfilling their duty.
The cadavers were being piled up in front of the largest hut
in the village when M’some saw a civilian vehicle approaching
the checkpoint he and two other soldiers were manning. It was a
Renault 18 with a large bumper shield built onto the front,
covered with dust and occupied by two men. When the car
reached the checkpoint, the soldiers ordered the men to stop
and get out of the car.
The driver was white; he was thin but wiry, with a heavy
beard and hair so black that it almost looked blue. He was
wearing a blue-plaid shirt, khaki pants, and sturdy jungle boots.
The eyes that looked out through his simple eyeglasses did not
show the least bit of fear; his gaze was that of a high-ranking
officer or a leader of some kind.
“You can’t go through here! Where are you headed?”
M’some demanded.
The passenger who accompanied the driver did not manage
to say a word and appeared to be wetting his pants as he stood
there.
“We’ve come from the hospital in Koza, and I’m headed to
one of the hospitals in Chad that I’m also responsible for. My
name is Dr. Robert Lagarde,” said the driver.
“No one is allowed through here now; it’s an order.”
“And when do you expect that order to be lifted? We need
to get through to the other hospitals.” His voice was energetic
and compelling. It seemed that the fact that three soldiers were
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The Eyes of the Sea
aiming their submachine guns at him did not impress him very
much at all.
The captain had noticed the arrival of the vehicle and was
observing the scene through the sight of his rifle.
“Who is that white pig?” he growled at his sergeant. “Go
see if he’s an idiot journalist or something like that. If he is, I’ll
shoot him myself. I’ve never killed a whitey, and I want to see if
they scream the same as everyone else.”
“Yes, Sir!” replied the sergeant, starting off toward the
checkpoint.
Meanwhile the man in the plaid shirt did not relent in his
insistence on continuing down the road.
“Come now, we’re civilians, and we only want to take some
medical supplies to a hospital that’s a couple of hours from
here. . .”
“What the devil is going on here?” queried the sergeant,
arriving on the scene.
“Nothing, Sir! This white man wants to continue on across
the border.”
“Show me his documents!”
M’some handed them over to the sergeant, who glanced at
them briefly.
“Turn around immediately and leave!” he commanded the
driver. “There is nothing to see here. Give us those supplies
first, though; we don’t want them to fall into the hands of the
rebels.”
The captain was waiting for the signal from the sergeant
with his sight fixed on the white man’s back. If he shot him in
the head, he would die much too quickly, and that took all the
fun away.
“If I give you the supplies, we won’t be able to take them to
the hospital. They need the supplies there badly. We’ve heard
that they have a lot of people coming in with gunshot wounds.”
The wry comment did not seem funny at all to the sergeant.
6

Alberto Guaita Tello
Another soldier started pulling the supplies out of the car.
The driver’s companion had completely emptied his bladder
onto himself by now.
“Now get out of here, Doctor, and be grateful that we
aren’t accusing you of taking supplies to the rebels.”
“All right, we’ll turn around. Just one more thing—we
thought we heard a shot or two. If there is anyone who is
wounded I can take them back to Koza.”
Just then someone lit the pyre of bodies soaked in gasoline.
A few screams were heard, quickly silenced by short bursts of a
7.62. The sounds made the captain smile, and for a moment he
forgot about the white pig.
“Don’t you want us to take any wounded with us,
Sergeant?”
The air filled with the acrid smell of burnt flesh, burnt
clothing, and burnt hair.
“There are no wounded here, Doctor, not today.”
Neither the doctor nor M’some would ever forget that
sentence.
Dr. Lagarde realized with horrible certainty that what the
sergeant was saying was as true and real as the column of
smoke that was rising from the center of the village, and he
turned to leave. He wasn’t going to be able to help. It was as
simple as it was terrifying—there was no one left to help.
His companion could not stop shaking; the car smelled of
urine all the way back to Koza.
When the hypnotic dance of the flames died down, giving
way only to black smoke, the captain thought of the bearded
white man once more. The cloud of dust rising up behind his
vehicle in the distance already made it impossible to get in a
good shot. For a moment he considered following him to kill
him, but the sun was beginning to set, and the smell of roasted
flesh, together with the pleasant sense of fulfilled duty, had
made him hungry.
7

The Eyes of the Sea
4
The nightmare woke M’some as it had so many other
nights. His wife, Ekoume slept soundly at his side. They had
known each other since they were both children, when they had
played “building huts” together in the mud by the lake. She was
a good woman; he had married her the year he got out of the
army, after learning that she was pregnant with his child.
He felt an urgent need to go out to relieve himself, so he
got up, lit the oil lamp, and headed out the door. For some
reason, the lamplight was dimmer than usual; perhaps the new
wicks he had bought were defective.
When he had finished, he stopped briefly to drink the rest
of the watery palm wine that was left over from his simple
supper of fish rubbed with black spices, and headed back to
bed. Dog gave him a lazy glance out of the corner of his eye
and curled up tighter as he walked past.
When he entered the hut, M’some suddenly knew that
something was wrong, very wrong. Ekoume was still sleeping,
but Mekú was not on her cot!
“Ekoume! Ekoume!”
“Mmmmm, what’s the matter? What’s wrong? Are you
okay?”
“Mekú is gone!”
“Oh, gods! Not again!”
Ekoume quickly stepped into her sandals, and M’some
pulled on the old army boots he had kept from his days as a
scout, mended and patched a thousand times. He grabbed the
tin lantern so they would have some kind of light besides the oil
lamp. They also took their machetes, and as they left they woke
Dog so he would go with them.
“Do you think she headed towards the lake?” Worry
drenched every syllable that Ekoume spoke.
8

Alberto Guaita Tello
“No. . .wait. . .the footprints are heading south, towards the
woods. Dog, find!”
Dog sniffed the footprints and took off running towards
the jungle, barking. M’some was afraid one of their neighbors
might wake up; they had tried so hard to keep the maladies of
their daughter a secret.
Fortunately the trail was clear and recent; as a hunter, he
had no problem following it, nor did Dog. What worried him
most was that Mekú might stumble into one of the traps that he
had set in this area.
As soon as they were far enough from the village, they both
began to call out to their daughter as loudly as they could.
Besides, making noise would scare away most of the predators.
After some time, the Chinese-made batteries in the
Chinese-made lantern began to show signs of weakness, but the
oil lamp mysteriously seemed to burn much brighter here than it
had at home in their hut.
A firefly flew past them, followed by several more.
“It seems like they are following the same trail we are.”
“M’some, there is no moon tonight. . ., but. . . Ah, Zambe
wuo!!! Do you see that light?”
“What the dev. . . ?”
5
They had reached the last row of trees that bordered the
clearing around the Hugging Tree and the enormous boulder,
more than a dozen cubits high, which had been held prisoner
for centuries by its tangled roots, as thick as a man’s body. An
adult could climb up to the top of the boulder with the help of
those roots, though it would be with some difficulty.
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The Eyes of the Sea
The top surface of the rock was flat, and large enough to
hold two huts. There was a little spring of water at the foot of
it, on the far side of the age-old rubber tree.
The sight that had frightened his wife and left the former
soldier speechless halfway through his sentence was enough to
take away anyone’s breath. An army made up of thousands of
fireflies danced like an aurora borealis around the leafy branches
of the tree that stood in the middle of the clearing. Everything
was lit up by the living, green, glowing shape. The buzzing was
soft, penetrating, and persistent.
For every dozen or so of the blinking star-like creatures
there were one or two wingless females perched on the
branches and on each leaf, covering the tree almost completely.
They created the sensation that the entire tree was lit up by
synchronized waves of a slightly bluer light than that of the
males.
These creatures had been somehow attracted to this
particular point in the jungle, and they flew in a luminous mass,
creating formations of an infinite, fractal complexity, flying into
each other—not to destroy their formations, but to reorganize
themselves into new groups, which became larger and larger,
then quickly separated and rejoined again, over and over, in a
frenetic dance.
Dog fled in the opposite direction from the clearing and its
vibrant lights, running as fast as he could.
They took a deep breath. M’some wrapped his muscled
armed around Ekoume’s shoulders. In spite of the reverent awe
that they felt and their sudden, crystal-clear recollection of
every story of jungle spirits they had ever heard around the
bonfire when they were children, they stepped out from among
the trees.
They were completely bathed in the light that filled the
clearing and in the sound of the beating of thousands of tiny
wings.
10

Alberto Guaita Tello
6
“The footprints end several paces before reaching the
boulder. How the devil could she have climbed up?”
“The fairies must have lifted her.”
“Ekoume, that’s impossible.”
“What does it matter now? Let’s bring her down!”
“Okay, I’ll climb up behind you, in case you need me to
boost you.”
“You know good and well that I can climb better than you,
and always could, since we were children!”
Ekoume slipped off her sandals, and with the agility of a
panther, she made her way to the top of the boulder in a matter
of seconds, followed a moment later by her husband, who
found it more difficult to climb in his old army boots.
Their daughter was sitting peacefully on top of the rock,
looking upward with her left eye wide open and her right eye
moving rapidly beneath her closed eyelid. She was laughing and
clapping, enjoying the spectacle that frightened her parents so,
as only a child can. She had one firefly sitting on her right
shoulder, and it seemed to give off quite a bit more light than
its numerous companions.
“Mekú! Mekú!”
“What are you doing, Husband? You know that we mustn’t
wake her when she’s in this state.”
“We should pick her up carefully and carry her home.”
“Don’t even think of it; we will wait. Light a fire.”
Ekoume sat down close beside her baby girl, who was still
laughing from time to time, not missing a second of the
spectacle that was taking place around her.
Suddenly the little light that was sitting on Mekú’s shoulder
flew up to hover just in front of Ekoume’s eyes, and its glow
pulsed softly, passing through a series of all the blues and
greens on the Creator’s palette.
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The Eyes of the Sea
“M’some, I think it’s trying to talk to us.”
“That’s not possible; it’s just a glow-bug. I’m going down to
get some firewood. There isn’t enough up here to last through
the night.”
The firefly stopped him by flying directly in front of his
face.
“Crazy bug!” He tried to swat it away several times, but it
seemed to anticipate each of his movements.
“Stop it! I think that it doesn’t want you to climb down.”
“Why on earth not? Wait. . .! Do you hear that?”
7
It all happened very quickly.
There was an explosion of light in the Hugging Tree when
all of the fireflies except the one that was flying around Mekú
decided suddenly and all at once to fly away from the tree in
every direction. The females covering the branches and leaves
were suddenly gone.
The universe turned dense and dark. Silence filled the night
as the light disappeared completely, and a few seconds later it
was broken by the whisper of hundreds of bird wings. Mekú lay
down on the rock and curled into a ball, deeply asleep, both
eyes closed at last.
With a fear that penetrated clear into the marrow of their
bones, her mother and father reached out to embrace her and
protect her, forming a trembling wall between their daughter
and the darkness, which was absolute now except for the feeble
light of their oil lamp.
“What is happening?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this; the birds
act like something is after them, flying in silence that way. Listen
—I can hear other animals running, as well!” He crawled
towards the edge of the rock.
12

Alberto Guaita Tello
When one fear fills you, sometimes there is no room for
others that follow, so what he saw when he lit the tin lantern
could not frighten him any further.
It looked as though the black rock they were sitting on was
a ship whose keel was opening its way among a fast-running
river of animals: antelope, wild dogs, porcupines, an elephant
smashing branches and small trees as it went, baboons jumping
from branch to branch as though they had gone mad, a panther,
dozens of snakes, and insects of all kinds. All of them were
running, jumping, crawling, or flying as though fleeing from
death or from the very devils.
M’some even thought he caught a glimpse of Dog
overtaking a wild-eyed goat.
“I think I know now why the firefly wouldn’t let me climb
down; the stampede would have run me over.”
“It saved your life, then. Come back to us, and make a fire
with what we have, at least.”
The flow of animals at the foot of the rock slowly
diminished, and those that were still passing by seemed to give it
a wide berth.
Just as he bent down to pick up the few dried branches that
lay on top of the rock, M’some felt a violent tremor that shook
everything and knocked him off of his feet. Fortunately he was
no longer at the edge, or he would certainly have fallen.
There was a strange, unnatural sound, some sort of a dull
gurgling, as if something enormous was rising up from the
entrails of the very earth, causing it to groan in agony.
“M’some! What was that?”
“Gods! It sounds like the end of the world that the white
men talk about.”
13

The Eyes of the Sea
8
“We’ll spend the night here. There are too many animals
out there, and they have all gone mad,” M’some mumbled, as he
started to light the little fire with some of the oil from the lamp.
“Mekú is still asleep. She must be dreaming something she
likes—she’s smiling.”
“At least one of us isn’t scared to death. Try to sleep if you
can; I’ll keep watch.”
It was an unusually cold night. It was as though something
had sucked out all the warmth that the sun had been sharing
with the earth, even to excess, the day before. M’some didn’t
hear a single sound the whole night; even the wind that usually
rustled through the trees seemed to have died.
At some point the last firefly, his daughter’s little friend,
flew up by his face once more, as if to say good-bye; then it just
vanished, rather than flying away, right before his eyes.
Life was certainly strange at times, he reflected, and he
didn't know what story he would tell the next morning when
they returned to the village. No one would believe them, not
even the marabout. He decided it would be best to keep the truth
to themselves.
Ekoume finally fell asleep.
At first M’some had cursed to himself when he learned that
she was pregnant by him. He even considered leaving the
village, but now he was glad he hadn’t. She was hard-working,
funny, a terrible cook, and she always came to him when it was
time to lie down in their bed at night, even when she was tired.
He figured that it would not be long until they had another
child. Ekoume was a true blessing that one of the many gods
that he prayed to had bestowed upon him. She always managed
to calm him when he woke up shouting in the middle of the
night because of the nightmares. It even seemed like the terrors
came less frequently now.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
He could find no way to explain what had happened
tonight; he had never heard of such things.
While he was submerged in these thoughts, the first rays of
sunlight began to filter through the trees, and he decided to
wake Ekoume.
“Hey, girl, it’s daybreak,” he said as he gently shook her
shoulder.
“Have you been awake all night?”
“I’m a pretty good soldier, aren’t I, my General?” he
laughed.
“You’re silly, M’some,” she replied, giving him one of her
precious smiles. She looked over at their little one. “Mekú!
You’re awake!”
“Hi, Mama! I’m hungry!”
“Do you know what a scare you gave Baba and me?” She
embraced the girl tenderly.
“What are we doing up here?” asked Mekú, looking around
in bewilderment.
“She doesn’t remember anything, Ekoume. Let’s get back
home before anyone starts wondering where we are.”
9
For some reason return trips always seem shorter—
especially when in spite of everything, you are happy to return,
instead of being upset about leaving.
They didn’t cross paths with any animals on the way back,
but the vegetation seemed to droop more and more as they got
closer to the village. The happiness to be returning home with
their daughter safely in their arms began to diminish when they
started finding animal carcasses among the wilting brush.
“Gods, it is as if everything’s been poisoned. What could
have killed off all these plants and animals so quickly?”
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The Eyes of the Sea
“And why are we finding dead animals, if until a bit ago we
hadn’t seen any at all, dead or alive?”
“All of the ones that we are finding—look at that armadillo
over there, and this big lizard over here—they all seem to be
old. It’s as though they weren’t able to run away fast enough
from whatever it was. Listen, I know you want to go home, but
it seems like we are walking into Hell itself. Everything stinks of
death. Go back to the rock, and I will go on by myself.”
“Please be very careful.”
“I will. Go on back, please, and if I don’t return. . .”
“Don’t say that!”
“. . .if I don’t return you know where the road is, just a little
ways from the rock. Go to Nkobeze, where my cousins live.”
“But come back to me! Whatever you do, come back to me!
Look, maybe I should go directly to your cousins’ village.”
M’some could only nod his agreement, and he turned on his
heel to continue towards their home.
Ekoume’s expression was very solemn. She couldn’t seem
to shake off even a bit of the fear that filled her soul.
“Come, Mekú, we are going to visit Aunt Corine.”
10
As M’some drew closer to their village, the idea that a
horrible curse had fallen over the whole area grew in his mind.
He himself had certainly committed acts that were sufficiently
evil (or not—after all, he had only been following orders) to end
up being cursed, and yet life had been smiling on him ever since
he had come back home.
He had a good wife and a beautiful daughter, and he was
respected in his village as a good hunter, just as his father and
his grandfather before him had been, and so forth back to
before the white men had come to tell them where the borders
were and to take everything they could by the force of arms or
16

Alberto Guaita Tello
of deceit. Where they lived, no one usually came by to bother
them, nor did they have anything that the “outsiders,” the
garamayos, might desire.
When he was almost to the village, M’some saw someone
sitting on the ground with his back against a fallen log. For a
second, probably because his brain refused to think of any
other options, he thought the man was sleeping. But reality is
hard-headed and rarely allows itself to be shaped by our desires.
It was Batiste, the tanner, a great bantumi player and the
official village drunk—the palm wine he prepared was
legendary. He was dead. His eyes and his mouth were
exaggeratedly open, trying desperately to grasp at a bit of air.
Pinkish foam covered his chin, his chest, and the hand that he
held to his throat. The other hand had dug into the earth, as if
he were trying to pull up some grass by the roots. The
convulsive back-and-forth movement of his feet had left deep
marks in the dirt.
M’some knew what this was. During his military training he
had been taught about the use of chemical warfare and had
learned the symptoms that the Chadians had suffered in their
war with the Libyan soldiers under the orders of Colonel
Muammar al-Gaddafi.
He tore off a strip of his shirt, wet it with urine, placed it
over his nose and mouth, and continued on to what had been
their village next to the lake, the surface of which was now
covered with thousands of bloated, dead catfish floating belly
up.
About three hundred paces before reaching the first hut,
the village still looked empty. No fires were lit to prepare
breakfast, no children were playing with their toy cars fashioned
from bamboo, no one was washing clothes. There was only a
silence that was painful to the ears.
M’some entered the first hut. Its three occupants, a family
much like his own—a father, a mother, and a little girl—were
17

The Eyes of the Sea
still lying on their cots. They looked peaceful; there was nothing
out of the ordinary except the pinkish foam around their
mouths and noses. They had not even tried to escape; death had
come to them as they slept.
It would appear that the only one who tried to flee had
been Batiste, or perhaps he had been returning from one of his
hiding places where he kept his palm wine and had not even
made it back to the village. No one would ever know for sure.
M’some wondered why he and his little family had survived,
when everyone else had died. What had they done to deserve to
be saved by their baby girl? Why had she wandered into the
jungle, just that night? The questions crowded into his mind and
tears filled his eyes.
After checking several huts and finding the same scene
repeated over and over, his legs failed him and he fell to the
ground. He cried like a child; he wept for the nearly two
hundred souls who had been lost in his village—for his family
and his friends, as well as for those who meant little to him.
He wept for all the deaths that he had witnessed during his
time in the army and for those that he himself had caused. It
didn’t matter that he was following orders—it really didn’t
matter.
After a long while of weeping uncontrollably, M’some
managed to get ahold of himself. He stood, with tears still in his
eyes.
The lake had provided them with food and with a way of
life for centuries untold, and yet in a single night it had given
almost all of them into the hands of death. Triggered by a slight
earthquake, a great reservoir of poisonous gas had bubbled up
from the lake bottom, taking its victims unawares.
M’some decided to go back to his wife and baby girl, the
only other survivors of the village that until now had existed on
the shores of Lake Nihos, which the inhabitants had always
called Bitterwater. He turned to look back once more when he
18

Alberto Guaita Tello
reached the edge of the village. Neither he nor his family would
ever return here. No one would ever live here again.
A phrase his former sergeant had used flashed into his
memory: “There are no wounded here, Doctor, not today.”
19

The Eyes of the Sea
Chapter 1
Mama Simone and Fanya
Things had not been easy since Fanya’s mother had left,
chasing after an emcee on what had been one of the first
television programs in the country. The last time they had heard
from her, in a letter gushing with enthusiasm, she told them that
her beloved talking-head had managed to get her a role in one
of the many soap operas that filled the programming from the
beginning. That had been seventeen years ago.
And then besides the ordinary struggles they experienced in
order to get by and eat two or three times a day, with so few
members in their family, they suffered the additional burden of
some very unfortunate circumstances.
On one hand the local witchdoctor-marabout, Bilal the
Great, had spent years trying to convince the old Longhee
village chief, Monsieur Arthur Ngoma, to cast them out of the
village.
The excuse was that the potions and salves that Mama
Simone prepared were not only useless, but that they could be
very dangerous for the people who used them. The hidden
truth was a deep anger due to the fact that he had to share his
clientele, and on top of that, with a woman, whose cures were
always more effective than his own spells and charms.
Luckily several of the chief ’s wives were very fond of the
incredible algae-based hydrating creams that Mama Simone sold
to them. The creams prevented stretch marks during pregnancy,
and his wives had warned him that he would not be welcomed
into any of their huts at night if he cast her out of the village.
Chief Ngoma feared the ire of his wives a great deal more
than that of the marabout, since when they were all angry at
1
20

Alberto Guaita Tello
once, their individual power combined in such a way that it was
multiplied rather than added together, and they were much too
dangerous an enemy for him to fight against and come out
unscathed.
The other problem Simone had to deal with on an almost
daily basis was the principal wife of the pig farmer, who was
also a second cousin to the chief. A pig farmer’s wife had never
had such a fine opinion of herself as this woman, who believed
herself to be a great lady of some kind. She never let herself get
closer than a thousand paces to the pigsties, so that their stink
would not cling to her fine person, and she required her
husband to perform elaborate ablutions before entering their
house.
They lived on the side of the village farthest from the pig
farm, which in time grew so much that it made them quite
wealthy and at the same time spread a blanket of warm stench
over the whole town.
The large quantity of liquid fertilizer that they had sold to
their neighbors—with the promise of unprecedented
production for their fields—had killed off most of the gardens
in and near the village. That was wonderful, since they now had
many people looking for work in order to feed their families,
desperate people willing to work for low wages, which enabled
them to rake in even more profit.
To see those people who used to hate them come begging
for work mucking out the pigsties, carrying away the solid—and
not so solid—waste, made them feel tremendously happy. Soon,
most of the local income was directly or indirectly derived from
them, which required the chief to give the pig farmer a seat at
the Tribal Assembly.
Madame Oyono did not mind dedicating all her efforts to
making a show of their wealth and social position to anyone
who came in contact with her. She constantly reminded
everyone she could that she was a direct descendent of one of
21

The Eyes of the Sea
the founding chiefs of the village. The disdainful expression
that she could summon to look at anyone over her shoulder,
even if they were taller than herself, deserved to be patented.
She had spent years attempting to marry the granddaughter
of Simone, Fanya, to the eldest of her offspring as his second
wife. She had hoped that Fanya’s beauty would somehow
compensate for the ugliness her son had inherited from his own
father, so that it would not be passed on to her grandchildren,
and thus she would be able to show them off with pride before
her few friends.
The mere idea that her granddaughter might end up in that
family kept Simone awake many a night.
It wasn’t that she thought that a pig farmer’s work was
unworthy, not at all, but rather because, due the frequency with
which she was called upon to apply healing poultices to the
bruises on the bodies of the rest of his wives, she knew that
both he and Madame Oyono beat them regularly and cruelly,
whenever they felt that they were not trying hard enough to
make life pleasant for the pigs, so that they would grow as fat as
possible before they were slaughtered.
The thought of Fanya becoming one of the slave-wives of
the pig farmer’s son—who she knew for a fact had a heavy
hand and a short temper just as his father, along with the evilspiritedness
of his mother—was just too much for her to bear.
2
As so many other times Simone was up before dawn to
make ready her basket and her little machete, to set out in
search of the herbs, roots, leaves, and other ingredients she
needed for her medicines.
She and her granddaughter brought in most of what she
needed, but for the last two years, she had been receiving the
help of a new assistant. His name was Malaam; he was from the
22

Alberto Guaita Tello
north and lived in N’long, the little neighborhood
corresponding to the “outcasts and undesirables” of the village,
as he explained it.
Leprosy had stolen a great deal of him, and in spite of
having been declared cured after years in the leper colony and
having a medical certificate to testify to the complete absence
of the disease in him, no one wanted him living in the village.
Fanya had spent the whole afternoon processing tree bark
and berry juices in the various grinding bowls, presses, and
distilling flasks which comprised the equipment in the little
alchemist’s laboratory that was her home. She was sound asleep
when Simone gently touched her arm to waken her.
“Fanya, dear, wake up! The sun will soon be rising. . .”
“…and it will dry up the blue algae before we can collect
them,” her granddaughter completed the sentence she had
heard so often, with her eyes still closed, giving her beloved
grandmother a soft smile.
“Did you know that you are the only person I have ever
known who always wakes up with a smile on her face?”
“Better than waking up snarling like a dog, isn’t it, Mama?”
Mama Simone began to laugh with that deep, sincere laugh
that she had and that shook her abundant flesh all over.
“You always make me laugh, my dear girl! Gather our things
and let’s stop by to get Malaam; he must already be waiting for
us outside his hut.”
Fanya collected her own equipment as well—an oil lamp to
find their way through the darkness, a hoe, and a large sieve to
rinse the ocean sand off of the algae before carrying them back
home.
N’long was about two kilometers from the village, and they
arrived around an hour before sunrise. The neighborhood had
very few inhabitants; there was only Malaam and the former
witchdoctor, Bilal the Elder, whose son and heir to his magic
arts had caused him to be cast out of the village in order to
23

The Eyes of the Sea
increase his own power in the eyes of the chief. In spite of his
many aches and pains, the old marabout stubbornly clung to life,
in all probability, because of the rage that filled him.
Bilal the Elder had always been respectful of Simone and
had never done anything to undermine her reputation. On the
contrary, whenever he saw that a client of his needed treatment
with one of Simone’s medicines, he would send them to her.
And if she came across someone whose problem she felt was
more of a spiritual nature than a physical one, she would send
them to him.
The betrayal that his son had concocted against him was so
cruel and cowardly that bitterness led him to spend most of his
days shut up inside his house, dreaming up dark curses against
the younger Bilal and against those who had helped him.
The rest of the five huts in the neighborhood were usually
empty, except for an occasional vagabond who might stay in
one of them for a few days at a time.
“I thought you weren’t coming today,” Malaam called out
when he saw Simone and Fanya coming up the path.
“Sorry we are late, my friend,” replied Simone, smiling
warmly. “My granddaughter was working until late last night,
and I didn’t want to wake her any earlier.”
“No, that’s fine. It’s just that I would hate to miss out on a
chance to go fetch algae with you two. Could you tie this basket
to my back for me?” he asked, nodding to Fanya.
The girl set about tying the basket onto Malaam’s powerful
torso.
“Tighter, child, you aren’t going to hurt me!”
“It’s just that I don’t want to get it too tight. I would rather
carry it myself than to cinch you up like a mule!”
“Did you give the marabout the yucca flesh that Fanya
brought to you yesterday?” asked Simone, watching them.
“I called at his door, but he didn’t open it. I know he was
inside because I could hear him muttering some words I
24

Alberto Guaita Tello
couldn’t understand. If half of the curses that he is setting—
against his son, those that helped him, and the chief who
allowed it—are effective, they aren’t going to have anywhere to
escape to. I left him the food on the stool by the door yesterday
evening, and he must have gotten it because it isn’t there now.”
“But Malaam, all those invocations are just nonsense used
to scare children,” chided Fanya.
“Child, if you had seen the things that I have, you would
not say that. And tighten up those ropes, or the basket will
come loose and swing down under me halfway there.”
“Mama Simone, I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Fanya, there are many things we cannot explain and others
that I prefer not to explain to you just yet.”
With that, they set off towards the beach.
3
In spite of his difficulties, since he walked on his knees and
wrists—lacking any feet and missing most of his fingers—their
assistant did not lag behind and spent the whole time telling
them tales of his days as a young man on the northern
savannas, as they covered the last few hundred paces that took
them from N’long to the sea, crossing the dense jungle on a
narrow, winding path.
“Well, Malaam, let’s see if we can fill all three baskets,”
sighed Mama Simone when they reached the shore.
“Only blues today?”
“Yes, I have enough of the others; I never collect more
than I’m going to need.”
“Would you untie my basket and light the lantern for me,
Fanya?” asked Malaam affectionately.
The blue algae grew at quite a depth in the water; they were
actually a rare species of gorgonias, little creatures related to the
coral family, which would float up to the surface whenever an
25

The Eyes of the Sea
underwater current or some sea animal uprooted them from the
sea floor. They retained their blue color as long as the sunlight
didn’t reach them, but on their way up to the surface they would
drag along pieces of green algae with them, and in the sunlight
these would grow quickly, covering their branches within
minutes.
They needed to be collected and dried while it was still
dark, since the green algae would destroy the special nutrients
of the blue, which acted as the best natural antibiotic that the
sea had ever bestowed upon mankind, and which Simone and
her granddaughter used to create an ointment that would keep
wounds from festering.
Malaam headed north along the beach while the two
women headed south.
“There aren’t many today, Grandmother. I hardly have
enough to cover the bottom of the basket.”
“Well, as always we will do what we can with what we
have.”
“It must be wonderful to have whatever you want.”
“That depends, child, that depends.”
“On what, Grandmother?”
“On how much you want, why you want it, and who you
have to make poor in order to get it.”
Just then they heard Malaam shouting something at them,
but at that distance they could not tell over the crashing of the
waves exactly what he was saying. They could see the lantern he
had tied to his chest bobbing up and down as he tried to run
towards them on his maimed limbs.
They dropped their baskets and ran towards him.
“Come, come quickly! There’s a wounded man; I think he’s
dying!” They caught his words as the distance closed between
them.
When they reached him, Malaam fell over onto his left side.
The effort had exhausted him, and by the light of the oil lamp
26

Alberto Guaita Tello
they could see a look of utter amazement on his face such as
they had never seen before.
“Who is dying? What happened? Take it easy, breathe, and
tell us!”
“Later! Go quickly! He’s on a big pile of algae about two
hundred paces from here! I’ll catch up with you. I think it’s a
man, but a strange man. At first I thought it was a giant squid.
He’s tangled up in the algae.”
“Oh, gods! Oh, gods!”
“What is it, Grandmother?”
“This cannot be!”
“What cannot be?”
“Hurry, let’s try to help him!”
They set out running towards the position that Malaam had
indicated to them. As soon as they arrived, they struggled to
untangle the man from the knotted mass of various types of
algae that he was nearly buried in. They were still working on
this when Malaam reached them.
“How did you find him?” Fanya asked.
“I was looking for blue algae, and I thought I saw some that
had been washed up by the tide. I came over here, pushing the
basket along to fill it, and when I started to sort through the
algae, I saw that there was something of considerable size
caught up in the pile. I kept pulling at the algae until I saw what
I thought was a giant squid or something like that. But then I
saw that it was a strange-looking man. Let’s get him out of
there. I could hardly budge him by myself.”
When at last they had freed him of the tangled seaweed,
they stretched him out on the sand and saw that he had several
wounds on his side, on his hands, and on his head.
“He is still breathing but with difficulty, and his wounds are
very serious.”
27

The Eyes of the Sea
“What kind of person is this, Grandmother? He doesn’t
have any ears, his hands and feet are webbed, and his skin is
glowing! Is he a mamiwata, a sea spirit?”
“Something like that. I’ll explain it to you later, child. But
first I need you to run back to the house and bring me all the
seaweed ointment that we have left there. Bring bandages and
enough food to last us a couple of days. We have to get him out
of here and hide him; if anyone sees him they will kill him.”
“Then you know what he is?”
“Not what, Malaam, but rather who, or at least where he
comes from. Fanya, are you still here? Run, child! Run home
and bring me what I have asked you to!”
Fanya had stood frozen, staring at the amazing sight of this
strangely beautiful being, but now she reacted to her
grandmother’s seldom-used voice of command and took off
running towards the village as fast as she could go.
“I know just where to hide him, Simone.”
“It needs to be somewhere in the water, Malaam; if we have
him out of the water very long in the condition he’s in, he will
surely die.”
“Yes, in the mangrove swamp, across from the little clearing
on the shore where I go to fish sometimes, there’s a sunken
boat, just a palm’s width underwater. It’s less than three hundred
paces from here.”
“Perfect, but we must take him there through the water.
Show me the point on the shore, and I’ll pull him along to it
through the water. Then one of us must come back here to wait
for Fanya to return, to show her the way.”
4
Mama Simone stroked the sea-man’s face. His eyes were still
closed as she gently pulled him into the water. As soon as they
were waist deep, she grasped him beneath the arms and with
28

Alberto Guaita Tello
great effort started pulling him along the shoreline to Malaam’s
hiding place in the mangrove swamp, trying to keep his body
completely submerged as much as possible.
His breathing became more even as soon as he was in the
water, and the light his skin emitted seemed a little brighter.
Following the lantern light of her friend and fighting
against exhaustion, Simone managed to reach the sunken boat
Malaam had told her about with her precious cargo. She
carefully slipped him over the edge into it.
“Now, you wait here. I am going back to the beach to meet
Fanya.”
“But you’re exhausted!” protested Malaam.
“Perhaps, but I’ll get there faster than you can, no offense.
He’s very weak, and we can’t waste a single moment.”
“I could never take offense at anything you say, Mama
Simone.”
When she reached the place where their baskets still sat, the
sun was beginning to rise, but her granddaughter had not
arrived yet. Simone crumpled onto the sand. At some point
today, she would have to share with Fanya a secret she had kept
to herself for many years.
The girl arrived a few minutes later, also exhausted from
running and from carrying all the things her grandmother had
asked her to bring.
“How is he?” Fanya asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait a few hours and see how
he does. I’m not sure he’ll make it.”
“There’s a question that’s the been haunting me all the way
to town and back, Grandmother. Why do you know about this
fish-man?”
“Let’s get back to Malaam, and I’ll tell you about it along
the way. To begin with, he is not a fish-man. His people are like
that. They live in the sea, but not in this sea. It’s another sea, in
another world.”
29

The Eyes of the Sea
“What do you mean, in another world?”
“The marabouts and the healers have always known about
this type of thing. I’ll tell you more about it when we’ve finished
binding up our visitor’s wounds. Let’s hurry faster now.”
5
The early morning was unusually cold, too cold to stand
still, all covered with sweat, without having a fire to get warm
by. It would be a couple of hours yet before sunlight would
penetrate the thick foliage in the mangrove swamp.
Malaam decided to light a fire while he waited for his only
two friends to return. Out of the corner of his eye, he kept
watch on the old sunken boat where the strangely glowing being
they had rescued lay resting. At one point he heard a little
splash; glancing over, he saw a sudden torrent of light streaming
from the wreck, and then it faded just as quickly.
He went back to the difficult task of striking a match with
the few fingers he had. At last he managed to get it lit, and he
set it to the tinder he had prepared. Within a few minutes he
had a good fire going by which to dry himself, all the while
keeping an eye on the sleeping creature. It would be good to
have the fire going when Mama Simone returned; she had been
soaking wet for quite a while and must be freezing by now.
He sat by the fire and rubbed his sore knee stumps. The
run down the beach had left him worn out and in much greater
pain than usual.
He would do anything for Simone, after she had cared for
him when he first arrived at N’long. As a leper and a foreigner,
no one else had been willing to help him in any way, and only
because of the insistence of the nuns who had healed him of
his leprosy was he allowed to stay at all.
Mama Simone was the only one who cared about the
people in that neighborhood, yet for some incomprehensible
30

Alberto Guaita Tello
reason that very kindness of heart had won her the hatred of
many people.
In spite of being officially cured, the other villagers
considered Malaam to be a dead man, or even worse—a sort of
walking zombie who reminded them uncomfortably of the
person he had once been.
He had had the misfortune of ending up in prison before
he turned twenty, because of a beating he gave to an idiot who
turned out to be a military official dressed in civilian clothing
and who belonged to the powerful tribal group which
controlled everything, from the army to the courthouses.
There he had witnessed many terrible things that he would
rather not remember, but that his stubborn head refused to
forget.
The extremely unsanitary conditions in the prison had
resulted in him falling sick with leprosy. They had sent him,
along with another dozen prisoners or so, to a leper colony that
some Spanish nuns ran, to let them sort out which ones had
actually contracted the fearful disease.
They were watched from outside the fence by a group of
guards with orders to shoot to kill if any of them tried to
escape. The nuns refused to allow the guards to enter their
gates, especially carrying weapons. The truth was, it was not all
that difficult to convince the guards to stay outside, since they
were understandably scared to death of possible contagion.
Three prisoners tried to escape; none of them got very far.
After a few weeks it became clear that the only one who
had actually contracted the disease was Malaam. They left him
there in the leper colony under the supervision of the sisters,
and the healthy prisoners were returned to their cells, or what
was left of them after the fire that was used to try to purify the
prison air had burned down part of the building, along with a
couple dozen prisoners in it.
31

The Eyes of the Sea
He remembered vividly the unending tests he was put
through with needles to try to determine whether or not he had
lost feeling in his extremities, since the first thing the disease
destroyed were the nerve endings in feet and hands. He
especially remembered the first day he couldn’t feel the needle
pricking the toes of his left foot; that was the first part of his
body that he lost, followed by many others.
Even so, he was better off with the nuns than he had been
for the more than ten years he had spent in prison—he had
learned it had been ten years when he got to the leper colony,
rather than the eight that his sentence dictated.
The sisters were kind; they took care of him and of the
other patients with admirable devotion and affection. They all
partook of the same food, whenever there was any.
After three years he was declared to be healed. At first he
thought he would return to his native village in the north, but
between the time he had spent in prison and his time at the
leper colony, so many years had gone by that he felt that
everyone in his village would be accustomed to his absence, and
no one would really miss him. He finally decided that it would
be better for them to think him dead than to return in the
crippled state he was in.
His healers suggested he move to N’long, where he could
live in a long-abandoned hut that they owned there. He fixed it
up as best he could with a bit of help from the old marabout,
who was his only neighbor at the time.
The day after he moved into the hut, he received the first
of many visits that Simone would make to him. She took him
some food, a few patched garments, and a new ax. She asked
him if he would cut firewood for her and help her harvest
certain plants in the mangrove swamp. For the first time in years
he felt useful.
Deep in his thoughts, Malaam almost didn’t notice the
arrival of Simone and her granddaughter, whom he had
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Alberto Guaita Tello
watched grow up and whom he loved as though she were his
own.
“I lit a fire; come get warm—especially you, Simone. You’ve
been in those wet clothes far too long, and you’ll catch such a
bad case of pneumonia that not even you yourself will be able
to cure it.”
“In a little bit, Malaam. First we need to attend to our new
friend’s wounds.”
“It’s all right, Grandmother; I’ll do that. You’re chilled to
the bone. I don’t think Malaam and I will be able to take care of
all of this if you get sick.”
“Okay, you know exactly what you need to do. Take him
out of the water just long enough to apply the ointment to the
wounds and wrap them with the bandages, then put him right
back into the water.”
“And when I finish?”
“Yes, when you finish, I’ll tell you everything I know about
him.”
6
Simone stayed with Malaam by the fire, while Fanya waded
into the water above her knees. She approached the boat,
carrying a large plastic bag with everything she needed to treat
the wounds. The sunlight now filtered through the tree leaves
and lit the water with almost blinding golden reflections.
She grasped the visitor by reaching her right arm across
under his back and lifted his head and shoulders out of the
water without too much difficulty. She felt a shiver run through
the wounded man’s body as she raised him. With a cloth, she
cleaned the wounds on his shoulder and head as best she could,
then applied the ointment made with blue algae and covered
them with gauze to keep it from diluting too quickly in the
33

The Eyes of the Sea
water. Then she gently turned him on his side to take a look at
the cut he had there.
She took out some fine fishline and a curved needle from
her bag and placed nine stitches before applying the cream and
bandages. She could feel how his body trembled with each stitch
she took. She could not help but shed tears for him.
Who could have hurt such a beautiful creature? What
reasons could they have had, other than their own
unreasonableness?
She gently laid him down once again in the bottom of the
boat, just as she would have laid an infant down in its crib. Still
weeping, her head swimming with an ocean of questions, she
came back onto shore and drew close to the fire to ask her
grandmother those questions.
“He’s all bandaged; I had to stitch up the big cut on his
side. He’s very different from anyone I have ever treated; I don’t
know whether he will live.”
“He is very much like us; he is, in fact, a man, with a few
differences, but a man, a person, like you and me. We’ll stay here
as long as it takes to see whether he’ll recover or not.”
“Will you tell me now how you came to know about him?”
“Yes, sit here beside me, child; I have a story to tell you.”
7
“My husband, rest his soul, your grandfather Patrick, told
me a story, something that happened to him when he was very
young, long before we met and long before our families
promised us to each other in marriage.
“It was a strange story which he never dared to tell to
anyone except to me and to his bosom friend, the witchdoctor
Bilal the Elder, for fear that others would think he had lost his
mind. He told me the story shortly after your mother was born,
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Alberto Guaita Tello
and only because he knew that I had an understanding of
certain supernatural matters.
“On the way here, I told you that the marabouts and healers
like myself know about certain things that are not revealed to
most people. Malaam, unfortunately, has also had his own runins
with what are wrongly called ‘supernatural beings.’
“I also told you that the man you just attended to, who by
the way must be about your same age, more or less, is from
another sea, another world. I’ll explain it in a simple way, not
that you aren’t bright enough to understand, but because I can
barely understand it myself.
“You, me, Malaam—we share the same world, but there are
an unknown number of other worlds, some like ours, some
more beautiful and peaceful than ours, and some that, though
their inhabitants find them idyllic, would seem to us to be like
the worst hell imaginable.
“The same thing goes for their inhabitants. Some would
seem like angels to us, or mamiwatas, while others would seem
like the monsters that live in our nightmares.
“When we are children, the separation between different
worlds, different realities, has not yet been completely formed in
our minds. That’s why there are so many stories of children
who see spirits, or little girls who are visited by fairies, and this
is why children’s nightmares are at times full of unimaginable
horrors.
“The separating walls consolidate as time goes by, as
reasoning develops, but in some parts of the world they are so
thin that even adults can still cross them, sometimes without
even realizing it.
“The marabouts know spells by which they can peek into
these other worlds, though there are occasions when what they
see there will drive them mad. Some of them have been
powerful enough, or foolish enough, to bring across to our
35

The Eyes of the Sea
world creatures from other realities that once here, turn out to
be monstrous and out of place.
“I myself know of certain roots which will open the spirit
to such a degree that they allow you to look into these other
worlds; the bad thing is that just like with a radio, once you turn
it on you never know what you’re going to tune in to.
“Most of the legends and tales of magical beings that you
have heard in your lifetime actually have to do with these beings
from other worlds that ended up here, or with marabouts or
healers from those other worlds who were curious enough, or as
I said, foolish enough, to cross over to here.”
“I have some coffee ready, little one, if you would like
some,” interrupted their companion, holding out a steaming cup
towards Fanya.
“Thank you, Malaam.” She grasped the cup and turned her
attention back to her grandmother. “So, the young man we
found is simply someone from another world, that’s all? That
still doesn’t explain to me how you know him.”
“It’s not exactly that I know him; let me go on explaining.
“Going back to the story of your grandfather. As you know,
he was a fisherman in this same village, as were many of his
neighbors before they were forced to turn to pig raising for
someone else.
“One of the hundreds of nights that he set out to fish,
when he was quite a ways out to sea, he lit an oil lamp that he
had on the bow of the boat to attract giant squid with. There
were a lot of them lighting up our sea back then, though since
the great fishing ships came to our coasts they are harder to find
now than an honest politician.
“Anyway, shortly after he lit the oil lamp he noticed the
golden glow of one of these squid. He figured it must be huge;
it swam swiftly under his keel, approached his lamp, and then
quickly disappeared into the night. He waited patiently for it to
36

Alberto Guaita Tello
come back and repeat its path, and then he threw out his fishing
net with lead weights on it.
“The glowing beast fought so hard that it almost capsized
the boat several times, and caused his other lamp to go flying
out to sea. But with one last gigantic effort, more to save his
fishing net than to catch a squid, he managed to haul it on
board.
“He could not have been more surprised when after
fetching the lamp he had on the bow and turning again towards
the rear of the boat, he saw that entangled in his netting there
was a strange, beautiful young woman.
“He dropped his lamp to the floor of the boat and hurried
to untangle the poor creature, who was trembling, and as he
later learned, was murmuring her prayers, sure that she was
about to die.
“He tried to reassure her as best he could, and she began to
weep, looking up at him with enormous, pleading green eyes.
“He helped her get up, but the struggle with the net had left
her in great pain, and she could hardly stand. She was in no
condition to attempt to swim back to wherever she had come
from.
“Your grandfather knew the shoreline very well—every
cove, every cliff, and every sea cave—so he determined to take
the young woman to safety.
“He carried her in his boat to one of the sea caves, one that
only he knew the entrance to. Inside, there was a little cove with
white sand and a freshwater spring that filtered down from the
top of the cliff.
“He stayed there with her for many days, going out at night
just long enough to fish for both of them, and spending every
hour of the day with her until she had recovered completely. At
first, she looked a little strange to him, but each day that passed
she seemed more beautiful to him.
37

The Eyes of the Sea
“To make a long story short, they fell in love, and for many
weeks they spent all their nights together while he was
supposedly out fishing. In fact, she would help him by chasing
huge schools of fish directly towards his nets.
“He never told me her name, but I know they learned
words from each other to such an extent that they were able to
converse. She told him how she had come from another world,
that she had come through some sort of door where the
realities of their two worlds touched each other, and one could
slip between them easily.
“The days, the weeks, and the months flew by, and their
love grew deeper and deeper. And then one night, she did not
appear—nor the next, nor the next after that.
“He searched for her in every cave along the cliffs; he spent
many days out at sea, hoping that she would return. He went so
far out that once he almost perished, because he ran out of
food and water far, far from shore. But all was in vain.
“After several months, your grandfather lost all hope of
finding her; his first love had left as mysteriously as she had
appeared. He never heard of her again, and I think that even
though he was the best husband in the world to me, and he was
the best of fathers to your mother, he always felt a certain
bitterness that nothing could take away.
“Just before he died, from a lung disease I could not heal
no matter how I tried, while he was suffering from delirious
fevers, he told me where he had hidden the notebook where he
had written the words that the young sea maiden had taught
him.
“ ‘In case she returns,’ he said. ‘Tell her that I waited for
her; tell her I searched for her.’
“Those were your grandfather’s last words.”
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Alberto Guaita Tello
8
The three of them watched carefully through the night for
any change in their patient. Only Malaam left their improvised
campsite for a while a couple of times to bring some sheets of
plastic and some floor mats to set up a tent, and some
fermented yucca stalks wrapped in banana leaves for them to
eat.
The two women took turns day and night, changing
bandages, checking the sutures, and watching over the young
man from another sea.
During the anguish-filled days which followed, there were
several times when they thought he would not live, even though
the wounds were healing.
On the fifth day, while Fanya was removing the head
bandages, the stranger’s eyes suddenly opened wide.
“Grandmother, Grandmother! He opened his eyes!”
Mama Simone rushed quickly into the water and came to
her granddaughter’s side.
“He closed them again, Grandmother. He has enormous
eyes, the most beautiful eyes that I have ever seen! Man
Kenguele!”
“Man Kenguele. The same image and the same words that
your grandfather used to describe the eyes of his beautiful sea
maiden,” said Simone, feeling a deep stab of bitterness in her
heart. “He said she had eyes the color of the sea. Be careful
who you love, my child.”
39

The Eyes of the Sea
Chapter 2
Malaam
1
A few seconds of fury can ruin your life.
Young Malaam’s fist struck the left jaw of his opponent.
The reasons almost didn’t matter; they were as trivial and stupid
as they usually are in a bar fight. There was a terrible cracking
sound as the jawbone broke, as well as two of the knuckles of
the fist which had hit against it with such great force.
The head of the man on the receiving end of the blow
swung around backward, twisting the neck below it into an
unbelievable angle compared to the rest of his body, which in
turn was swept along by the inertia of the violently accelerated
mass of the turning head.
At the same time, centrifugal force sent a rain of teeth
flying from his mouth, followed by a flow of blood, saliva, and
beer.
Unconscious before ever hitting the ground, on his way
down he knocked over one of the tables in the bar, evoking
cursing and swearing from the mouths of those who were
sitting around it, as they watched their beer mugs and wine
bottles flying through the air. The alcoholic contents ended up
drenching those nearby, as well as the bundle of inert flesh,
once it came to rest in a decubitus prone position.
The general commotion which followed the short fight
between Malaam and his opponent quickly attracted the
attention of the security forces, made up of soldiers from a
nearby army camp.
The newly arrived soldiers showed their staunch belief that
all were equal under the law by prompt and generous use of
their sand-filled rubber billy clubs, and entered the room
40

Alberto Guaita Tello
showering blows equally on all those present. Peace was
restored with as much virulence as speed.
The tavern keeper was the only one present who had
escaped the blows, by diving behind the wooden slab resting on
half a dozen kegs, which made up the bar of the dusty saloon;
he was required by the sergeant to come forward with his
testimony of what had transpired.
He was so frightened that they had to give him some
additional strokes on the calves of his legs with the billy clubs
before he could speak. After that, he was able to concentrate
and explained to them that the young man who was now trying
to revive the unconscious fellow on the floor with a broken face
had given him that terrible blow, for apparently no reason
whatsoever.
The sergeant told him to point out the aggressor, and as
soon as the tavern keeper lifted his index finger towards
Malaam, the latter was showered with blows from clubs and
boots, reducing him to a state even worse than that of his fallen
rival. He rolled into a ball; he could feel several of his ribs
breaking under the onslaught of boot tips belonging to half a
dozen soldiers. His body would carry the tattoo marks from
their boot heels for the rest of his life.
2
The fellow whose jaw he had broken turned out to be the
new lieutenant of the military base in the city of Nanka. He was
taken to the hospital, where—since he was a military official—
he was attended to rapidly and installed in a private room with a
bed, an almost clean mattress, and freshly boiled sheets.
Malaam was not as fortunate; after yet another beating he
was thrown like a bundle of coffee leaves onto the floor of a
cell at the police station. Neither was he fortunate enough to
lose consciousness.
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The Eyes of the Sea
He had only recently arrived in the city, coming from the
little Peul village where he was born, a place so small it had no
name; even those who lived there just called it “our village,” and
other people referred to it as “where the tall ones live,” referring
to the stature of its inhabitants.
There were only a couple dozen round adobe huts in the
village, with pointed straw-thatched roofs, sheltered among
capricious rock formations which looked like dolmens and
menhirs that some giant had scattered haphazardly.
The villagers raised goats and a few scrawny cows, planted
mainly red sorghum and millet, and also obtained a bit of
income from the sale of rocks that they hollowed out to sell as
drinking vessels to the tourists who came through Waza, the
nearby natural park that attracted so many garamayos.
The people of his village were so irrelevant and had such
little relationship with those who ruled their territory that they
did not even have any direct problems during the cruel purges
in the late nineteen-seventies and early eighties, which took
place in the north and did away with entire populations of
supposed opposers of the regime.
But Malaam had always been restless.
He had had a series of conversations with one of the forest
guards in the park, a man who had been born in the south, and
who spoke to him of the sea, of rivers full of “fish as large as
men,” of unending forests full of game, and of the possibility
of earning a great deal of money. Malaam eventually decided to
leave his familiar, comfortable land to explore the world, or at
least a part of it.
In the hope of finding work in one of the many
warehouses for roasting coffee or cocoa beans that the great
European businesses ran (and which paid only a pittance, while
they sold the product afterwards in their own countries at the
price of gold), he left with a group of eight cattlemen from a
nearby village, who were driving their zebu cattle along the usual
42

Alberto Guaita Tello
route they followed from the northern end of the country
down to the slaughterhouses in the south.
Cattle could not be raised in the south due to certain
parasitic diseases prevalent there, and especially due to the caiyor
flies, which quickly killed any bovines off at those latitudes. The
flies deposited their larvae under the animals’ skin, where they
would develop into more flies, and so on, in an unending cycle.
For almost a month Malaam had helped drive the cattle,
defending them as best he could from wild predators and
professional cattle thieves alike. After those losses, plus the
required gifts to each of the border controls, village chiefs, and
governors of the territories they crossed, as well as the cattle
that died of thirst, illness, or exhaustion, they arrived at the
Foumban slaughterhouse with only a third of the original
animals.
It was an absolute success, considering that they had
crossed nearly fourteen hundred kilometers, mostly without
roads nor bridges, always sleeping out under the stars with their
cattle.
After delivering the animals to the slaughterhouse and
collecting their meager pay, the eight cattlemen left as quickly as
possible, anxious to get away from that place, perpetually
engulfed in a cloud that smelled of death. The animals had
detected the smell long before they had, and that had made the
last leg of the journey an authentic torture for them all, trying
to keep the cattle from stampeding to escape the sure fate that
awaited them, which they could sense with every breath of air.
Malaam did not understand why they were paid so little,
considering the price he knew they would get for the meat at
the marketplace, nor why the slaughterhouses only paid for the
meat itself instead of for the hides as well, since there was a
great tannery there by the river which brought in as much
income for the owners of the slaughterhouse as the meat did, or
more.
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The Eyes of the Sea
He picked up his duffle bag, and a passing truck driver let
him ride on top of the load of huge logs strapped to the trailer,
along with many other young men who were headed south as he
was. When he arrived in Nanka, covered from head to toe with
the red dust of the road, he stopped to inquire at a butcher
shop run by a northerner, asking whether he knew of a place
where he could find work. His fellow countryman told him how
to reach the Lasodecacao plantation, which provided cacao to a
company that made famous Swiss chocolates.
3
Malaam's great physical strength, his willingness to work
hard, and his firm, calm temperament soon earned him the
respect of his co-workers. Within a few months he was
promoted to crew chief at the cocoa-roasting plant he had been
hired at. He shared a house with some other workers while
trying to save up enough to buy his own lot and some
aluminum sheets to build himself first a roof and eventually a
whole house, complete with walls.
In spite of the many times his companions had invited him
to accompany them, that evening had been the first time since
he had come to Nanka that—after working for twelve hours in
a row for just a little more than minimum wages—he had
decided to go have some drinks at the bar with them.
They had just ordered a second round when a drunken fool
stumbled into the smallest fellow in their group and began to
punch him. Malaam tried to intervene; he told the aggressor
that they didn’t want any trouble and offered buy him a beer.
The fool turned on him, answering that no northern son of
a thousand fathers was going to pay for any beer for him, and
that if he spoke to him again he would bust his face in two; with
that, he turned back and raised his fist to punch the little guy
some more.
44

Alberto Guaita Tello
Malaam simply slugged him. One good hit, or a bad one.
4
He never knew how long it was before he was able to sit up
on the damp earthen floor of his cell. Most of the beating had
been directed to the soles of his feet, as is the custom at police
stations, to “cool off ” the prisoners. There was no way he could
stand.
The door of the detention center opened just enough for a
man in a loose white coat to enter. He had an enormous head, a
disproportionately wide mouth, and distended eyes. Together
with his lack of any neck at all, it gave him the appearance of a
large white toad.
He smelled powerfully of burning alcohol, as if he used it
internally, as well as to disinfect the wounds of his patients.
“Let’s see what we have here.”
Malaam kept quiet.
“Ah, my friend, they have given you a good thrashing,
haven’t they; but then you already know that,” he said with a
drunken smile that made him look even more like an amphibian
of some kind. “Let me see your feet. Christ! What a disaster!”
“Do they always beat their prisoners this hard in the
south?”
“Well, well! So you can talk! Generally, yes, but if you are
from the north, and on top of that a Peul, who just broke the
jaw of an army lieutenant, they devote even greater passion to
their corrective exercises.”
“A lieutenant?”
“Yes, and you broke his jawbone in two or three places.
They sent him to Douala to try to fix him up; it would be best
for you if you aren’t around here any more when he comes
back. Let’s see, turn around; I have to take a look at your back—
that’s where the boots usually land.”
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The Eyes of the Sea
5
For the next three days, during which they sometimes
brought him food and sometimes not, no one came to empty
the bucket in the corner where he took care of his needs. He
remained alone in his cell.
Finally he had another visitor. This time, in spite of the
lacerating pain in his feet, he managed to stand. The visitor was
a bit older than himself; he wore a threadbare suit and small,
round spectacles.
“Monsieur Malaam, I am Monsieur Mousa, your delegated
attorney. I am here to try to get the lightest possible sentence
for you.”
“The lightest possible sentence? But I only slugged a guy
who wanted to beat up a friend of mine; I had no idea he was
military.”
“That will precisely be the basis of my defense, in an effort
to reduce the sentence.”
“How long do you think they will give me?”
“If he had been in uniform, it would have been at least
twenty years. But I think we can get it down to a little under
half that time.”
“Ten years? I’ll be thirty when I get out!”
“We are lucky; your companions have all signed a sworn
declaration saying that you had no idea that he was military.”
“When is my trial?”
“Tomorrow. Today they are busy with the trial of some
witches, and earlier in the week we had a terrible double murder.
A fellow killed his wife and his mother-in-law with an ax after
he had smoked half a field of strongweed.”
“I don’t know why I ever decided to come here to the
south; you’re all crazy, and your laws only serve those who rule.”
“I recommend you keep that kind of opinion to yourself
when we are before the judge.”
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Alberto Guaita Tello
6
Malaam could hardly walk when they came to take him to
the courthouse, strategically located halfway between the police
station and the large prison, which served the needs of several
nearby towns.
People were talking about the execution of the ax murderer;
more than half of the town’s population had come to the fence
of the prison courtyard to witness it. In order to ensure that the
law had been correctly fulfilled, the authorities had their seats
set up in the courtyard itself, shaded by large umbrellas adorned
with the name of the same beer they were drinking during the
spectacle.
The prison firing squad, whose responsibility it was to carry
out the judge’s sentences, had done their job very well, with the
head official of the prison releasing two final shots to the
prisoner’s head, once the twelve rifles of the other members of
the squad had torn through his chest.
Captain Bangos had served during the purges in the north,
and the reward for his atrocities was that instead of being
promoted and given an office in the capitol city he had been
named chief of the former colonial prison in Nanka. There he
terrorized guards and inmates on an equal basis.
The courthouse itself was a building which was open on
three of its four sides—on the fourth side was the judge’s dais.
The building had a tin roof that turned it into an oven on sunny
days while forcing everyone to shout over the din made by the
rain on wet days.
The guards sat the young northerner down next to some
other suspects on a bench near the dais while the trial of the
three women accused of being witches was being wrapped up.
The judge cleared his throat. “I herewith condemn the
oldest of the suspects—accused of conspiracy, of attempting to
47

The Eyes of the Sea
kill by poisoning, of carrying out rites of black magic with the
intention of harming a public figure, of manufacturing flying
artifacts, and of high treason—to be shot to death. Her younger
sister and her sister-in-law, for the crime of participating in
rituals of black magic with the intention of harming a public
figure, are sentenced to eighteen years of prison each. Take the
accused back to prison and execute these sentences as soon as
possible.”
The cries of the three women and their pleas for clemency
did not even elicit a disapproving glance from the judge.
“What did those women do?” Malaam whispered to a boy
who was seated to his left on the suspects’ bench.
“They were accused of wanting to kill the governor by
causing a trained fly carrying venom on its legs to fall into his
glass of beer, and of making airplanes of bamboo, which they
flew to Paris on to tell State secrets to the French.”
“But, as far as I know, that’s impossible!”
“Of course! What really happened, or at least what I’ve
been told, is that the youngest one refused to have an affair with
the chief commissioner, and since they’re all from a family of
healers, they cooked up this story so that they could…”
“Silence!!!” one of the guards shouted as he let loose a
heavy kick to the boy’s shins, which left him curled up on the
ground. “Have you no respect for the law?”
7
Malaam remained prudently silent until his turn came.
It all went very quickly. They read the charges against him;
his attorney could only wangle a slight sentence reduction for
his client because Malaam didn’t know he was striking a military
official. He was sentenced to two years for an attack with
physical harm, plus a year for each of the teeth he had knocked
from his victim’s mouth.
48

Alberto Guaita Tello
Eight years.
Since the prison was overflowing, they sent him back to the
police station, to wait there until there was more room in the
prison after the executions scheduled for the next morning.
This time he wasn’t alone; two other men shared his cell.
One of them was obviously dead drunk, sprawled out on the
floor in the corner. The other, sitting on some pieces of
cardboard, did not even look up when the door opened. By the
look of him and the way the soles of his feet were not touching
the floor, Malaam concluded that he had received the same
treatment as himself.
“Are you all right, my friend? It will be better after a few
days. Just don’t try to stand on your feet; put them up on the
first crossbars—that helped me.”
“Thank you, thank you. They beat me so hard!” the man
cried bitterly, sobbing like a child.
“Did you punch someone in the military, too?”
“No, I went into a bookstore to rob it with some friends.
When they saw someone coming they ran away without telling
me, and I got caught with my pockets full of ball-point pens.”
“What’s your name?”
“Alain.”
Malaam leaned towards him and whispered, “The people
here in the south are crazy, Alain!”
8
The next morning, the drunk was still in the same position,
but he was now decorated with a pool of vomit; Alain sat in
silence. The guards entered and started to haul Malaam away
towards the prison.
“Good luck with your trial, my friend!” he murmured,
touching Alain’s shoulder gently.
49

The Eyes of the Sea
“Thank you, northerner; good luck in prison,” replied the
pen thief.
“That’s enough chit-chat!” growled one of the guards.
“Come along, you! We’re taking you to your new home!”
They handcuffed him and pushed him into a van to carry
him the scant six hundred meters between the police station and
the prison. The vehicle passed the barbed-wire gate into the
men’s area and stopped in front of the director's office. They
pushed him from the vehicle and made him kneel in front of
the door by means of a swift blow from a club to the back of
his knees.
“Hold still there, you dog; the director will come out to
welcome you. Don’t speak to him unless he tells you to, and
don’t look him in the eye, if you know what’s good for you.”
One guard stepped forward and knocked on the door of
the building. He went in, and a few seconds later he came back
out, walking behind Captain Bangos, director of the prison.
“Well, what have we here? A northerner? Damn, you’re sure
black! Are we treating you okay here in the south, big guy?”
His smile, predominantly golden, threw evil glimmers of
light into Malaam’s eyes.
“The director asked you a question!” He felt the heavy thud
of the club on his bruised back.
Malaam felt sick, and tired, worn down by so many beatings
and so much injustice against him. Gathering up his last shreds
of pride, he stood up, head and shoulders above the rest of the
men. He looked the captain in the eyes, barricaded there behind
shell-rimmed eyeglasses that matched his teeth.
“Who told you to stand up?” barked one of the guards.
Malaam didn’t even turn to look at who had shouted at him;
he just gazed into the captain’s tiny eyes behind the shell glasses.
He had killed his first lion at the age of fourteen. The lineage
of his family, all great hunters, went so far back that the elders
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Alberto Guaita Tello
said that his forefathers were the ones who had scratched the
hunting scenes in the secret caves around his region.
The captain took his glasses off and leaned towards his
prisoner.
“You and I are going to have lots of fun together, you cur.”
9
When the effects of the blow he received in the head from
the butt of the director’s rifle began to wear off, Malaam awoke
in a windowless cell with a heavy door made of acacia wood
and a sort of a narrow canal that apparently ran along the back
from one cell to another.
He was in one of the punishment cells of the squatty
building that the guards referred to as “the shop” because they
had all the necessary tools there to set the inmates straight. It
was just a few meters from the main gallery, which was shared
during the day by both men and women, who were only
separated at night when they were locked into their cells.
Every kind of violence was offered up there with greater
frequency and greater regularity than their meals.
The slim beam of light that slipped through a crack
between two of the wooden planks in the door was not enough
for Malaam to have a clear idea of the size of the space he was
confined in. He couldn’t stand because the corrugated tin roof
was too low, but the cell seemed to be about a meter and a half
wide by two meters long, counting the sewer canal. A few pieces
of damp cardboard, which served doubly as home to a large
colony of cockroaches, was the closest thing to a bed that there
was.
Over the next few days the monotonous sameness of his
prison was only broken by the occasional visit of a guard to
leave him some unrecognizable lumps that were supposed to be
his food and threats of a soon-to-come visit from the captain.
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The Eyes of the Sea
His eyes slowly adjusted to the scant light, and soon his nose no
longer perceived the rotten stench that shared the cell with him.
Neither his body nor his soul were able to adapt to the
suffocating heat that beat down from the tin roof by day nor to
the damp cold of the night, which made his bones ache
painfully after a few weeks in his cell. During those terrible
nights of pain and loneliness, the only thing that offered some
relief were the brief periods when he would manage to sleep.
Then he would once more be on his native savanna, which he
was so sorry he had ever left.
The long hours of wakefulness sometimes mixed with his
moments of sleep in such a way that he could hardly tell
whether he was awake or asleep. The walls of his prison would
disappear, and he could see blue sky instead of the tin roofing.
In these trances, he would see his mother gathering sorghum
from the little community plot in their village. He would see
himself accompanying his father on an outing to hunt for
ostriches. The sounds of the northern winds, the harmatans,
would reach his ears; he would hear the laughing voices of his
family members, and the thundering of the buffalo as they
crossed the streams that filled Lake Chad.
Soon he also began to notice other sounds—different and
far away, the sounds of scratching and of broken glass.
Sometimes these sounds came quite near him, as though they
were coming from right there in his cell, and other times it even
seemed to him as though they were coming from the very
center of his head and then traveling to his ears from there.
After a time, he began to find that the sounds made a
certain sense, somehow. He chalked it up to the fact that he
could feel his sanity slipping farther and farther away from him,
and he tried to keep his mind busy with memories of better
times.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
10
Malaam heard a door open down the hall and the shouts of
the guards as they shoved another prisoner onto the floor.
“You piece of ratshit, let’s see how you like it here!”
The blows and the cursing of the guards echoed even
louder than the cries of the prisoner, as they continued to kick
him and beat him with their clubs.
“Get up! Do you think we are going to carry you to your
cell in our arms?”
The mocking laughter of the other guards showed their
approval of their leader’s joke.
“Yes, Amos wants us to carry him like a baby! Is that it?”
The prisoner groaned again as he received another blow.
More laughter.
“That’s right, crawl to your cell, like the dirty rat that you
are!”
He heard the guards coming toward his own cell. For a
moment, he was afraid they would open his door, but they
stopped at the one next to his, the one on his right.
“Look, you’re at home now, you rat! Maybe you’ll learn to
keep your mouth shut! Hey, you, northern dog!” the guard
shouted, kicking at Malaam’s door. “Pretty soon the captain will
come to visit you.”
The guards headed towards the outside door once again,
laughing as one of them sang an obscene song about the young
girls that they had forced to lie with them.
These southerners were all out of their minds, at least the
soldiers were. Either that, or they were very, very evil people.
The moans of his new companion reached him through the
wall between them.
“Did they break anything?” Malaam asked.
“I don’t think so, not much anyway,” Amos sobbed. “A few
fingers and a couple of teeth; it could have been worse.”
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The Eyes of the Sea
“What happened? Did you hit a guard, or did you try to
escape?”
“No, not at all. I’m not that brave. That’s what has kept me
alive up until now, being docile and cowardly. You must be the
northerner, the one the captain is so anxious to make really
suffer.”
“My name is Malaam. I’m surprised he hasn’t come to give
me another beating yet.”
“They say he’s saving you for the fellow whose face you
split in two. He’s just softening you up here in the shop until the
other fellow gets out of the hospital. And what’s more, he put
you in the witches’ cell. I’m very sorry, but I think you have a
short and very painful future ahead of you.”
“This was the witches’ cell? The ones they tried a few weeks
back, just before me?”
“That’s right. They found all three dead the morning after
the trial, when they came to take the oldest one to the firing
squad. They say that the three of them took poison to avoid
their sentences. The captain made the guards shoot her cadaver
anyway; he said that the law had to be fulfilled.”
“Gods, why did I ever come to the south?”
“To enjoy our famous hospitality, man. Why else?”
They both laughed with a lighter heart than they had
thought possible, considering their circumstances.
“You haven’t told me yet why they brought you here.”
“Because of my big mouth. A few days back some
missionaries came, and they were looking us over to see if we
had any unusual illnesses. They gave us vaccines, medicine for
malaria, antibiotics, and things like that.
“They also brought along a cleaning crew to clean the
prison cells and take out all the feces that were piling up and
that the rats had been feeding on. They even whitewashed the
walls. At first I was surprised that the guards would let them
come in, even to the common gallery, but as soon as they left,
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Alberto Guaita Tello
the guards came to take all our medicines, and I understood.
They had planned from the start to take everything from us, and
then sell it back to us little by little.
“I was on a day-pass regime; I was allowed to go out and
work, and the captain collected my pay. He does that with a lot
of people and makes quite a bit of money that way.
“I had often worked in the gardens of these same
missionaries, and for some reason I mentioned to them how the
guards had taken everything they gave us. I asked them not to
say anything, and they didn’t, but a fellow prisoner who was
working there with me must have overheard me talking and told
the guards. So now here I am, a traitor, and the buddy who
turned me in will be working out there, taking my place.”
11
Two days later they took Amos away, after one more
beating, so that he would remember to keep his mouth shut.
The impotency and the rage that Malaam felt as he listened to
the screams of his companion in misery were so great that it
caused him physical pain. That night, he could not dream of his
home; his memories seemed to disintegrate into the darkness of
his cell.
In the days and nights that followed he became oblivious to
everything except the hatred he felt for his captors. His rage was
more present in his mind than his own consciousness.
The sounds of shattering glass and of scratching seemed
more and more pleasant to him. Sometimes they even seemed
like intelligible words.
His cell door opened.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to visit you sooner, northerner. Do
you know how bad you smell?”
The young man looked blankly at the captain with his
golden smile, accompanied by three of his bulkiest guards.
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The Eyes of the Sea
“Aren’t you going to say hello? You northerners never had
any manners; the only thing you know how to do right is to die.
You’re the scum of the earth, trying to keep our great nation
from reaching the place it deserves in the world. Hit him a little,
to see if he reacts.”
Malaam tried not to scream.
“All right, all right. Put fetters on his feet and hit him a little
more, but don’t take it too far. He has to be in good shape the
day after tomorrow.”
The director of the prison exited the cell, leaving the guards
behind to fulfill their duty. The rusty fetters cut at his skin, but
the renewed rain of blows distracted him enough so he couldn’t
feel them.
Once Malaam lost consciousness, the guards left his cell,
but not without urinating on him first. Urinating on the
prisoners was practically the guards’ favorite sport, second only
to raping the females.
He tried not to come back to his senses this time. He just
wanted to let himself go, to end it; but a feeling of warmth in
his right hand woke him from his lethargy. When he came to, he
realized that he had his right arm and leg buried in the filth that
rotted in the canal at the back of his cell.
The warmth that he felt in his hand had not been his
imagination nor an effect of the repeated blows to his head. He
pulled his limbs from the muddy filth and opened his hand.
Under a crust of slime, he saw a little cloth packet, so small that
it fit into his closed fist. He brought it close to the crack in the
door to see it better, and untied the knot to examine the
contents. It was a red grigri.
The sound of breaking glass filled his cell, or filled his head;
he wasn’t sure which.
That little leather pouch the size of a walnut was an object
of greater or lesser power, depending on who had created it and
what spells they had used. The ones that were this color usually
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Alberto Guaita Tello
either contained or called up spirits, either good or evil,
whatever was needed. But this one in particular gave off a weak,
reddish light, which pulsed in his hand like a recently extracted
heart. He felt the urgent impulse to throw it back into the mud.
Then the sounds began to take shape in his head,
transforming themselves into a polyphony of voices that
sounded like shattering crystal, at first transmitting basic
concepts such as cold, hunger, pain, fear, and loss, then words,
and then finally intelligible phrases, deep within his mind.
“Your pain is great, Malaam. We can feel it.”
“Who are you? Have I finally gone completely mad?”
“Your mind is not sick, Malaam; it is only in pain.”
He sat on the floor and formed a bowl shape with his two
huge hands to gently hold the grigri.
“Who are you? Are you djins?”
“We are the ones who are present; we are the ones who are
left.”
“The ones who are present where?”
“We are the ones who are where we are. There is nothing
more left; everything has been consumed, devoured, savored.”
“Why are you talking with me? What do you want from
me?”
“We have sensed pain and rage, first the women’s and now
yours. Both are powerful forces which have guided us here to
you. But we cannot come through on our own; you must open
the door and let us come in.”
“What for? This is a prison; I don’t think you want to come
here.”
“Here in the shadow it is cold, and we are hungry. Where
you are there is warmth and much to feed on.”
“But the grigri is warm.”
“We are not inside of it; it is only a key so that we can cross
over. You are our door. If you help us, we will help you.”
“No! You are demons!”
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He threw the object back into the sewer. The sounds
stopped, and after a great while, overcome by pain and
weariness, he fell asleep.
12
The transition from consciousness to unconsciousness and
back again was beginning to be frequent.
The reddish light of sunset that filtered in through the
crack in the door outlined the silhouette of a cylinder about a
cubit and a half tall by a cubit in circumference. It was a stump,
a big chunk of wood.
He passed his fingertips over the surface, reading the
different cuts in it, at different depths and angles. It was a
chopping block, the kind butchers used, stained with dried
blood. He took his hand away
They left it here for me to see, so that I will know what they plan to do
to me.
He heard sounds coming from the object he had thrown
back into the filth at the rear of his cell.
Malaam sat on the chopping block. He had not been able to
sit down on anything for a very long time; nothing except the
floor of his cell. He looked at the hand that had touched the
wood and saw that it was stained with blood. He stood quickly,
cursing to himself.
The sounds were more and more insistent. Frightened as to
what his near future was to be, he knew that he had nothing to
lose. He pushed his hand into the ditch to pull out the leather
talisman once more.
“You have come back to us. We frightened you, but that
was not our intention.”
“Will you help me?”
“Yes, we know what they want to do to you. We can sense
their evil.”
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“What do I need to do?”
“You must swallow the key; that way we can come out
through you. We will try not to take much of you with us, but
you will feel very weak. Perhaps something else will take
advantage of your weakness to come into you.”
“Then what will happen?”
“We will take whoever you tell us to.”
“What do you mean, whoever I tell you to?”
“Those are the laws of balance. Someone on your side must
decide who we bring over to our side.”
He heard the creak of the shop door.
“They are coming for you, Malaam. Their hatred and their
evil are powerful. You must hurry.”
“All right. Take the guards with you. All of them.”
“As you say; now let us come through.”
“What will you do with them?”
“Whatever your hatred tells us to.”
He heard the steps of several men approaching his cell. He
looked at the object for a moment; it was glowing more brightly
than ever, due to the excitement of those who were waiting at
the other side of the door it contained. He yanked it off of the
string where it usually hung, and he pushed it down his throat
with his fingers. The door of his cell opened as he tried to keep
from throwing up.
Two men entered. They were soldiers, not prison guards.
They jumped onto him, grabbing his arms. He was too weak to
defend himself. As soon as they had him down, the lieutenant
he had knocked the teeth out of walked in. It seemed as though
it had all happened in another lifetime.
The lieutenant’s face was still swollen from the operations
on his jaw and teeth. Screws stuck out of his skin at several
points along his jawbone, holding together the metal bands
which were trying to keep everything in place as he healed. He
was wearing an old, worn butcher’s apron, stained with the
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The Eyes of the Sea
blood of many creatures slaughtered before him. In his right
hand the lieutenant carried a machete whose shiny edge had
been honed with care.
The lieutenant didn’t seem able to open his mouth, but with
a huffing sound he made through his wired-together teeth, he
indicated to his men that they should bring Malaam over to the
chopping block.
Malaam tried to scream, but the pouch was still caught in
his throat, and he could only open his mouth without making a
sound. He must have only imagined the voices, the grigri; he was
going to be chopped to pieces, bit by bit.
“The lieutenant,” said the soldier on his right, “has asked
me to tell you that there are two pieces of news for you, one
good and one bad. The good news is that last night you escaped
from prison, and you haven’t been found. The bad news is that
it isn’t true.”
Something that sounded like a snort of laughter came from
between Lieutenant Bofana’s tightly wired teeth, splattering
saliva on Malaam and on those who were holding him down.
Malaam managed to swallow. Nothing happened.
Another huffing sound indicated to the soldiers that they
should put the young man’s right arm on the chopping block.
The machete rose into the air and paused there for a fraction of
a second.
In that instant, Malaam suffered a great convulsion, so
violent that it took the soldiers by surprise and they released
their grip on him. His arm was no longer on the block when the
machete came furiously down.
They all jumped away from him as he lay there, face up, his
back arching in a gruesome, unnatural contortion. He felt an
excruciating pain, as though he were being torn apart, as though
he were burning from the inside out; a bright light flashed from
his mouth, now open so wide that it seemed his jaws would
come unhinged.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
As the three military officials stumbled over each other
trying to get out of the cell, the light streaming from his mouth
took the form of thousands of tiny pieces of crystal, dark
crystal, like obsidian, and just as sharp.
The sound of shattering glass filled the whole room. The
hungry cloud of splinters, already half as large as the cell itself,
began to spin so fast that it was impossible to identify single
pieces.
Malaam watched as the cloud turned on the soldiers and
their lieutenant. Their clothes, their flesh, and their internal
organs were all shredded by the splinters within seconds, while
their skeletons, stripped completely clean, bounced around
within the cloud for a few moments longer before being
reduced to dust. Not a drop of blood touched the floor. Only
the screws and metal bands and wires from the lieutenant’s
mouth fell to earth.
The cloud, which had now grown a great deal in size,
disappeared from the northerner’s view and headed out of the
shop, ripping the door from its hinges as it went, and on down
to where the rest of the feast it so desired awaited it.
Almost unable to move, Malaam leaned against the wall as
the cries of terror from the rest of the guards and of the
prisoners who were witnessing the spectacle grew louder and
louder.
13
Bangos, the murderer, the torturer, the disgraced captain,
was in his private office at prison headquarters. The air
conditioning, in spite of being turned on full blast, barely
cooled the room. Tall stacks of papers covered his desk and
robbed him of most of his time.
To see himself reduced to a mere paper-pusher with no real
power beyond the walls of the prison infuriated him and filled
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The Eyes of the Sea
him with a deep frustration. This was how they repaid him for
his service in the northern purges! But at least he had his
executions.
And now, by chance, for whatever reason, he had his hands
on this northerner and a white man within reach as well, the
one who had gotten away from him at the checkpoint that time
when he was sent up north to “calm down” that village.
The witches had been fun. It was a shame that they had
taken their own lives; he could have gotten a lot more sport out
of them. He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator; it was localmade,
strong and thick.
It was too bad that he had had to turn over the northerner,
but that son of a bitch Bofana was a good friend and a
campaign brother. He smiled as he remembered how good his
friend was at chopping people to pieces. He would drop by the
shop to see how things were going. There was no rush; Bofana
would probably make it last all day long.
It had taken him a while to realize who the white man was.
He had only seen him from a distance, through the sight of his
sniper’s rifle, and it had been years before. But a few weeks ago
he had seen him again—him, and his wife, and his team of
workers, with their air of great white saviors, coming to check
on the health of the garbage that occupied his prison.
The beatings that his guards had given that fellow Amos,
who worked in the missionary’s gardens, had been the reason
for the white man to request a meeting with the director of the
prison afterwards.
The director had accepted at once; it was perfect. The
image of the bearded man’s car raising a cloud of dust as it
drove off down the road still bothered him occasionally. It
would be easy enough to have one of the inmates stab him
when he came to the appointment.
He turned the radio on to listen to the sportscast.
Cameroon had whipped Algiers badly in an important match,
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Alberto Guaita Tello
with a hefty five to zero. That would teach those shitty Moors a
lesson!
He thought he heard some shouting above the wild
cheering of the enthusiastic sportscasters, but the idea of
leaving his air-conditioned office on a day like this seemed
unbearable.
The noise grew louder, and he finally decided to go out to
see what was happening.
He turned the radio off. There was a burst of submachine
gunshots, and then another, followed by terrible screams.
Something serious must be happening. He took his revolver
from his desk drawer.
Just as he walked around from behind his desk towards the
door, it was violently flung open. Something came in through
the doorway along with the shouting from outside. A strange
cloud suddenly filled most of his office.
The door slammed shut with the same violence with which
it had opened. He backed into the only corner of the room that
had not yet been filled with the noisy presence, lifted his
revolver, and fired.
The cloud swirled so close to him that it was just a palm’s
width from his face. He could see that it was made up of
thousands of dark glass splinters, which spun and turned in
whirls of various speeds. He fired once more, with the same
ineffectiveness.
Before him, the swirling glass took the form of something
that looked like a face.
“Hello, Bangos.” The strange voiced scratched at his
eardrums. “We have brought you greetings from three good
friends of ours.”
“What do you want from me? What the devil are you?”
“There is a great deal of evil in you; we will savor it very,
very slowly.”
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The Eyes of the Sea
The cries of the captain were heard for several long
minutes. No one thought even for a second of running in to
save him.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
Chapter 3
Fanya
1
A contraction, a dull pain that threatened to split her in two.
She had helped her grandmother with dozens of births, but
Simone was no longer here to help her with hers. The death of
Simone six months ago had not only taken her only family from
her, but her grandmother had also been one of the best
midwives in the region, and it would have been so helpful to
have her here now to help with this birthing, which looked like
it was going to be complicated.
Kenguele was not there with her either, and she was
tremendously sad for that.
That afternoon a powerful force—a new, unfamiliar instinct
—had guided her here. She had prepared a bundle with everything
that was needed to assist at a birthing, and she left towards
N’Long, the little neighborhood of the outcasts, where her few
true friends lived, in search of the help that she knew no one in
the village would give her. Had it not been for Malaam and
Alice, the woman who had been living with him for the past
several weeks, she would now be giving birth alone.
The pregnancy had been hellish; her body seemed to refuse
any food except fish and algae, preferably raw or nearly so. She
had devoured enormous amounts of these two foods. Malaam
had been taking the fish to her house in secret so that others
would not notice; she had no need for yet more gossip and
rumors about her.
“Everything will be fine, my daughter; just breathe deeply,
and push when I tell you. Your body will do the rest.”
“Something’s not right, Alice! It’s too soon!”
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The Eyes of the Sea
It was true—not even half of a year had passed since she
and Kenguele had made love, that first and only time, in the
shallows of the mangrove swamp.
“Push!”
It was impossible that her child could have fully developed
in such a short time.
She pushed with all her strength, frantically reviewing
mentally all the complicated births in which her grandmother’s
skill had made the only difference between life and death for the
mothers as well as for their children.
In Longhee everyone had begun to whisper behind her
back. She was certainly not the first young unmarried girl who
had been impregnated, even that same year, but these rumors
had some most unusual tints coloring them. The pig farmer’s
wife and her oldest son, Mathieu, had been whispering peculiar
stories to the old women of the village. It would seem that
Mathieu had once seen a mysterious being with her, but he
could not see it clearly, as he did not dare to get too close. And
his mother, undoubtedly with the help of the marabout,
embellished his stories with certain legends of the mamiwatas.
“Puuuuuush!!”
Malaam, meanwhile, waited at the water’s edge, so nervous
he was hardly able to contain himself.
“I can see its head; just one more push!”
The head crowned, and the baby came out swiftly.
“How is it? Is it all right?”
“It’s a big, beautiful baby boy! He looks as though he were a
full nine-month term baby! But what the. . .? Malaam!”
He hobbled over as fast as his maimed limbs would carry
him, looking discretely down towards the ground.
“What is it, Alice?”
“You’re going to have to help me.”
“What is it, Alice?” This time is was Fanya’s frantic
question. “Is there something wrong with the baby?”
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“No, child, no! It’s just that there’s another one coming!”
“What shall I do?” asked Malaam.
“Here, hold this one; keep him face down in case he
swallowed some liquid, and try to make him cry.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem! Children usually cry as soon
as they see me coming! If he just opens his eyes and looks at
me, I’m sure he’ll cry! No, seriously—I’ve helped deliver little
ones before, and we always do this.”
Malaam sat on the ground with his back to the women;
holding the newborn face down, he gave him pats on his little
buttocks. Another contraction made Fanya cry out.
“I’ve got it! I mean, I’ve got her! It’s a girl! And she’s nearly
as large as her brother.”
“Malaam, make him cry!”
“I’m trying, but it isn't working. Give me a minute.”
A transformation came over Fanya; it was as though she
were assisting at another birth instead of giving birth herself,
and with her habitual authority she began to give orders from
the mat where she lay.
“Alice, give me my daughter; I’ll cut the cord. You take the
boy the way I explained earlier and try to get him to react.”
Alice took the baby boy from Malaam’s arms and gave him
several vigorous slaps to the buttocks.
“He’s not crying!”
“The girl isn’t, either. Keep trying! Hold him by the legs,
and keep swatting him! Come on, come on!”
“They need water! They need water!” shouted Malaam
suddenly. “They need water! We need to put them into the
water!”
“What are you saying, Malaam? Why would we put them
into the water?”
“Do you remember when we found Kenguele? Your
grandmother made us put him in the water at once. Maybe
something like that is going on with the babies, and they need
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The Eyes of the Sea
water. That must be why when you came to fetch us that you
told me you felt like you needed to come here!”
“You’re right! Alice! Wade out into the water, out to the
sunken boat! That’s where we kept their father until he had
recovered. Don’t worry, it’s less than a meter deep there.”
Alice went over and got the little girl, and with one baby in
each arm, she waded through the water to the boat.
“Put them underwater for a few seconds.”
Malaam's companion gently knelt down on the sea floor.
The water, cool at this time of year, reached to her chin.
As soon as they were submerged, the babies began to
wiggle and squirm. For a moment, she thought she saw a dim
glow of light coming from their little bodies, but that was
impossible. It must have been the way the evening sunlight
reflected in the water.
She lifted the infants back out immediately. Water ran from
their mouths and noses, and loud wails filled the air with hope.
“They’re crying! They’re breathing! Thank the spirits!”
“And thank you, Malaam! They would have died if you
hadn’t realized what we needed to do!”
Alice struggled back to shore, trying to keep the little ones
from falling as they wiggled energetically in her arms.
“Bring them to me! I didn’t even get a good look at them
yet!”
In spite of her curiosity, Alice did not ask anything about
Kenguele nor whether dipping the newborns underwater that
way was something that was normally done in that part of the
country. She had learned the hard way, a long time ago, not to
ask too many questions.
“You have two beautiful children.”
Fanya sat up as far as she could and cradled her little ones
in her arms. As soon as they felt themselves next to her, the
babies opened their eyes wide and suddenly stopped their
crying. Two tiny sets of eyes, exact copies of the green eyes that
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Alberto Guaita Tello
belonged to the man she loved—but that she feared she would
never see again—looked at her steadily.
2
Malaam lit a fire. Fanya wouldn’t be ready to return home at
least until tomorrow. Alice had brought along several cloths,
which she was washing now. She made Fanya comfortable, and
the little ones set about to suckle their mother’s breasts with
gusto.
Alice, his dear Alice.
The day that they met, he had just gotten back from the
woods, rolling a large section of log ahead of him down the
road. After much searching, he had found an ebony log with
almost no light-colored veins. Songo, the ebony carver, paid him
well for that kind of wood. Tourists loved the figures that he
sold at the marketplace in the nearby city of Kribi.
Malaam was exhausted but very happy. Ebony was so dense
that it was the only wood known that would not float in water;
this piece of log must weigh at least a hundred and forty kilos.
Rolling it from the woods to N’Long was a titanic task that few
could have accomplished even with all their limbs intact.
He was just a few shoves from his hut when he saw her, a
small, slim figure carrying a bundle on her head, walking down
the road towards him. She had almost reached the huts that
made up his neighborhood. When they neared each other he
looked up from his four-legged position and decided to greet
her.
“Good day, Madame. What brings you to our neighborhood
on this beautiful day?”
“It’s been a while since anyone has called me Madame,
good Sir! Where are you going with that piece of log?”
“Right here, I live right here in this hut; you’ll notice that
nearly the entire roof is made of tin!”
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The Eyes of the Sea
“It looks like a fine house, indeed!”
“Oh, it is! But I’m still curious as to what brings you here.
If you were from around here you would know that this is not a
very respectable neighborhood, according to the villagers.”
“At least it seems that its inhabitants greet strangers who
pass by. You don’t look like you’re from around here, either.”
“I’m a northerner, from the Peul tribe, to be exact. My name
is Malaam; forgive me for not offering you my hand.”
“Do you think I’m not worthy of a handshake?”
“That’s not it at all; it’s just that since much of my hand is
missing, people don’t generally want to shake hands with me.”
Alice, insistent, held out her right hand firmly towards him.
“Well, my name is Alice; I am traveling through, although
I’m not sure where I am headed yet.”
Malaam stood up on his knees and shook the hand she held
out to him.
“It’s a pleasure, Madame Alice. I was just going to make
some coffee, and I think a friend may have left some fresh
bread in my house.”
“Do you mind if I help you push this monster log the rest
of the way?”
She had been walking for days, sleeping at the side of the
road, and judging by the speed with which she finished off the
coffee and the half loaf of bread that Fanya had left at
Malaam’s house, she had not eaten much along the way.
Her story was that of thousands of women who had the
misfortune of being repudiated because they were sterile. Her
family, dishonored by this terrible fault, wanted nothing to do
with her, and her husband had asked for the return of his entire
dowry. No one would ever marry her now, and unfortunately,
hers was destined to be a path of mere subsistence, working at
jobs that no one wanted, or selling herself in exchange for a bite
to eat.
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Malaam told her about his time in prison, omitting certain
details about how the guards had disappeared, and they each
discovered in the other someone who had been treated roughly
by life and yet maintained their capacity to find happiness in life
and the desire to make others happy as well. That night, and the
next, and the next after that, Alice stayed with Malaam and
shared his bed.
3
“What do you mean I have to leave?” exclaimed Fanya.
“This was my grandmother’s house, and her parents’ before
her!”
The old chief, Monsieur Ngoma, was uncomfortable about
the situation, and glanced over at his marabout for support. Bilal
nodded gravely.
“Women may not inherit; it’s the law. The house will be
sold.”
“And it will end up belonging to the pig farmer! He is the
richest person in the village, and he has you by the balls!”
“Don’t you dare speak to the chief that way, woman, or you
will get a beating!”
“I don’t remember inviting you into my house, Bilal the
Great! I know that you are great only in your betrayals, and that
you destroyed your own father’s reputation so that you could be
named marabout in his place!”
“I should have you whipped in the village square!”
“Calm down, Bilal.” the chief ordered. He turned to the
young woman. “I’m sorry, Fanya, but you must leave the house.
I’ll give you one more week, in honor of Simone’s memory.”
“She will come with me.” They all jumped and turned
towards the door, looking for the origin of the resounding deep
voice. “I’m down here.”
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“You damned northern leper! How dare you startle us like
that?”
“Shut your mouth, you young witch! You know very well
that I’m not afraid of you. Get out of here, before my ax helps
you find those spirits that you are always looking for.”
The witchdoctor took one look at the ax firmly strapped to
the cripple’s right arm and strode out of the hut, trying not to
brush against the leper as he passed, leaving the chief alone
with Fanya, her children, and Malaam.
The chief spoke again. “Look, you know how sorry I am
about this whole situation. You may have one of the huts in
N’long.”
“Your generosity is overwhelming, Chief Ngoma,” replied
Fanya icily.
The twins, with their enormous, strange eyes, stared at the
chief in silence from their crib. As he glanced at them uneasily,
Ngoma felt a chill run down his spine.
“Besides, you know how people talk,” he continued. “They
say that you had an affair with a sea spirit, and the color of your
children’s eyes. . . It just isn’t normal.”
“Get out of my house, Chief, and tell your wife to go tell
that damned m’bok, Madame Oyono, that she can be happy now,
because at last you have thrown us out of our home.”
“Don’t worry yourself, child,” Malaam assured her. “In
N’long we take care of our own. You and your grandmother
have always helped us. You’ll be better off there than you are
here, with so much gossip and so much wanting things to
appear as they are not.”
The chief mumbled a last “I’m sorry,” as he went out the
door.
4
While not all the inhabitants of Longhee agreed with the
expulsion of Fanya to N’long, no one raised their voice in her
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defense, for fear of angering the pig farmer, or the chief, not to
mention the marabout. The silence of good people always
empowers idiots and bullies.
With her two children, Ciel and Etienne, tied to her back
and a borrowed wheelbarrow, Fanya made several trips back and
forth from the village to the neighborhood that would be her
new home. Alice and Malaam helped her as much as they could,
and between the three of them they fixed up the dilapidated hut
that in his infinite generosity the chief had assigned to her.
Over the years that followed her children grew strong and
healthy. Alice and Malaam were like grandparents to the little
ones, and as loving as parents towards Fanya.
For months and months Fanya would walk down to the
water almost every day with her two babies, hoping that
somehow, someday, Kenguele would return to her.
As one season followed another, she stopped going down
to the sea, except on the nights when she needed to collect algae
and gorgonias. The mere sight of the sea, its sounds, the smell
of it in the air, brought back memories that had once been
sweet but that had now turned as bitter as gall to her heart.
Her character grew sour; in spite of still helping others and
trying her best to be a good mother, she could find no
happiness in anything she did. Many times the idea would come
to her to make one last visit to the sea, wading in farther and
farther until she disappeared, until she simply dissolved, and the
thought was very powerful. Only her sense of responsibility
kept her alive at those times. That and a faint ray of hope,
which, even though she didn’t realize it, still flickered in some
small corner of her soul, waiting for an excuse to burn brightly
once more.
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Chapter 4
The White Van
1
The dirt road stretched out like a long red scar in front of
the Japanese-made family van, once white but now the same
color as the dust that it stirred up in stubborn dense clouds,
seemingly reluctant to settle back down to the ground.
The baboons moved parsimoniously out of the vehicle’s
path, waiting until it was practically on top of them before they
started to get out of the way, as though they were a bunch of
kids playing chicken on the railroad tracks. As soon as they were
off of the road, they looked back at the van with baleful gazes
and scolded the intruders, showing their sharp fangs.
Here and there, the road was spotted with the mortal
remains of a thin layer of asphalt, which had once been laid out
on certain routes in the region on the occasion of a long-ago
visit of some European dignitary. The crusty ridges, composed
of a mixture of gravel and sugar-cane based asphalt, made the
van lurch along, much to the delight of its youngest occupants.
The driver was in his late forties and sported a heavy, gray
beard that had once been so black that it almost looked blue. He
found much less pleasure in the lurching; over his years of
traveling on these rough jungle roads he had lost count of the
bent wheel rims and shattered shock absorbers he had had to
deal with, ever since he and his physician wife had left Nanka,
where they had spent several years as directors of a large
hospital.
At least this western region of the country was more stable
than where they had first worked, in the north, close to the
border with Chad. Back then, Dr. Lagarde had been in his
twenties, and hadn’t yet met his future wife, who was almost
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Alberto Guaita Tello
fifteen years younger than himself. All their friends said they
were crazy to stay and raise their four children in the middle of
Africa.
This was the first time in many months that they had taken
a few days off, and they had decided to spend the short vacation
with their four youngsters at a little hotel by the beach on the
western coast. With a bit of effort they could already catch
glimpses of sunlight reflecting off the sea whenever there was a
break in the dense vegetation along the roadside.
The van had three rows of seats. In the center row there
was a dark-haired girl about eight years old and twin boys just a
year younger. The three of them were jumping around,
bouncing and laughing with each bump and curve in the road.
The back seat was occupied by a solitary traveler, a boy four
years older than his sister, who kept his head buried in a
superhero comic book, slightly annoyed by the games and
chatter of his younger siblings.
At the end of a straight stretch of highway ahead of them,
they saw a small group of humble dwellings standing next to a
faded sign indicating their turn onto a side road. After a brief
discussion they decided to stop here and stretch their legs.
There was a little stand by the road, consisting of a slab of
wood resting on some large plastic water containers, shaded by
a little roof made of palm leaves. Sitting on the ground next to
the hut farthest from the road, there was a young fisherman
busy at work repairing his nets.
The white lady who stepped out of the van was dressed in a
blue print cloth such as the native women wore; her hair was
pulled back in a thick pony tail, and she sported a pair of large
sunglasses. As soon as her foot touched the ground, she was
followed by the twins, who tumbled out the side door of the
van, spinning ahead of her like a matching set of white
whirlwinds, coming to a halt when they reached the shaded
stand.
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From the same door the dark-haired girl emerged; she
looked like a smaller-scaled version of her mother, except that
she wasn’t wearing sunglasses. She had big, brown eyes filled
with infinite curiosity.
Although the mother was only interested in obtaining some
roasted peanuts, the two whirlwinds clamored at the top of
their lungs, “Hausa candies, Hausa candies, Hausa candies!”
Two little girls, carbon copies of each other and apparently
both autistic, observed them solemnly from the woven raffia
mat they were sitting on, a few paces behind the stand. The
whirlwinds noticed them, and curious to see another set of
twins, they went over to try to play with the girls. A young
woman of about seventeen sat watching them.
“Hello, Ma’am. May we play with the little girls?” the
whirlwinds asked at the same time.
“Hello, my dears. You may try, but I’m afraid they only play
inside their own heads.”
The boys hardly listened to her answer—all their attention
was on the girls, who looked to be somewhat younger than
themselves. And then a strange thing happened—the twin girls
stood up, took each other by the hand, and set their usually
absent gaze directly on the little white visitors, looking intently
into their eyes.
“What do you know!” the young woman exclaimed. “They
won’t even look me in the eye!”
Meanwhile, boys’ mother was finishing up her purchase at
the little stand.
“What beautiful girls! Are they yours?” she asked the
woman as she wrapped the peanuts and candies.
“No, they belong to my friend, Marie; she’s gone to the
village with her friend, Malik, who’s blind. My daughter Ciel
helps her watch them.”
“Do you have any medical attention available to you here?”
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“I am the medical attention here, Ma’am; if you need
anything, at my house I have excellent potions, termites to close
wounds with, disinfecting creams, and healing ointments.”
“I see that you are very well prepared. If you need anything,
we have a mission near hear; you may say that Dr. Martine
Lagarde sent you.”
“That’s very kind of you, Ma’am. I know where the mission
is.”
“How much do I owe you?”
“It will be one hundred francs for the peanuts; the Hausa
candies are my gift for your little ones. Your boys are the only
children who I have ever seen try to play with Marie’s girls.”
“Well, thank you very much, but I was thinking. . . Please go
ahead and wrap up all of your roasted peanuts for me; my
children love them.”
A smile of mutual understanding darted between the eyes
of the doctor and those of the healer.
“It must be because they are all twins; we Bamun have
always believed that twins are special beings, even magical
beings. The Bamileké kings used to adopt any twins born into
the tribe as their own, in the olden days.”
The doctor’s daughter glanced over at her two younger
brothers. “Come on, boys, we have to get back in the van,” she
called, walking over to them. She gently shook one of her
brothers by the shoulder, and turned back to her mother.
“Mama, they won’t mind me,” she complained.
“Come on, boys, we have to get to the hotel while it’s still
daylight—there aren’t any streetlights here.” Their mother also
walked over to where her boys were still standing, motionless,
gazing into the eyes of the little girls. “Come on, boys!”
“See, Mama? What’s wrong with them? They keep staring.”
The healer, noticing what was happening, came over to the
children.
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“Nothing’s wrong—it’s just as I said, twins are that way
sometimes. They recognize each other. Sometimes it’s as though
they could talk to each other without moving their lips.”
The comment did not seem to ease the doctor’s concern.
“It’s almost as though they were sleepwalking,” she said
with a slight frown.
“Don’t worry, Doctor—I know what to do. Ciel, separate
the girls’ hands.”
The young lady gently followed her mother’s suggestion,
and the strange spell was instantly broken.
“Oh, good; I was beginning to worry.” Their mother drew a
breath of relief.
“It’s all right, Doctor; nothing happened.”
The boys instantly resumed their interest in the treats they
were so hungry for. “Mama, did you get us some candies? Can
we have some Hausa candies, please?”
“You see?” smiled the healer. “It was just childish nonsense;
we don’t always understand what goes on in children’s heads.”
2
The father of the family had stayed in the van, studying his
map. The eldest son had not gotten out, either. In fact, he had
not even pulled his nose out of his comic book, and he just
grunted a one-syllable negative when his father asked him if he
didn’t want to get out with the rest. The story of Antares, the
sea warrior, battling against the fearsome shark-men, had him
too engrossed to want to put it down to go play with his siblings
or to explore his surroundings.
With the purchase of peanuts and candies completed, the
little family climbed back into their van. The twins were already
devouring the first Hausa candies that the healer had wrapped
up for them in a page from an old newspaper.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“Mama, Mama! Tell Papa what we saw!” said the girl,
excitedly.
The oldest boy, meanwhile, deepened his expression of
annoyance at the constant interruptions of his reading.
“The daughter of that lady at the stand has beautiful green
eyes,” said her mother. “I think they’re the most beautiful eyes
I’ve ever seen.”
“Did you ask her about that?”
“So did the boy mending his nets!” chimed in the twins at
once.
The eldest’s curiosity stirred. He looked up and turned
towards his parents.
“No, it didn’t seem polite, but they were really quite
stunning.”
“Well, we’d better get going; we’re almost to the hotel,” the
father said, putting away his map.
“And there was something else that was strange; the twins
kept staring at the two little girls that the girl with the green eyes
was taking care of.”
He started the engine. The eldest turned to look out the
open car window to his right. Suddenly the look of bored
annoyance vanished from his face, as he saw the sea-green eyes
of the healer’s daughter for the first time. His indifference was
replaced by the amazement one feels when accidentally
stumbling upon beauty where it is least expected.
Just then, the van lurched back into motion. The speechless
youth leaned his head and arms out the window, dropping his
comic book in the process. The girl with the green, jewel-like
eyes looked back at him. He tried unsuccessfully to prolong that
moment of beauty that had struck him so forcefully, as the van
drove down the side road, again lifting a great red cloud in its
wake.
A strange look of desperation, almost of guilt, clouded his
eyes; at the same time, without him understanding why, they
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betrayed him by filling with tears. He closed the window and lay
down with his face towards the back of the seat, so that no one
would notice what he felt, and growled at his siblings to be quiet
and let him sleep.
Life sometimes slips by us without us ever knowing, just
because we don’t look up in time.
Although he had only looked into them for a few brief
instants, the smiling sea-green eyes of the girl—just a few years
older than himself—carried him down that dizzying path from
love to loss in three fleeting seconds, and the memory of it
would haunt him for a very long time.
He never saw those eyes again, except in his dreams.
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Chapter 5
Ciel
1
The moon shone down so brightly that it left a circular
silhouette burning in the retinas of anyone who looked at it
more than a second or two. In its light the soulful eyes of the
beautiful young woman seemed to glow with their own
luminescence, now aqua, now sea-green.
The moonbeams painted a silver tint on everything they
touched and projected a thousand shadows from the jungle
trees onto the sands. At the same time the ocean breeze mixed
its savory notes with the many different chords of sweetness,
fruitiness, and acidity of the mangrove swamp.
Ciel walked confidently among the tall roots, her feet
splashing gently in the tepid saltwater of the swamp, directing
her steps to the seashore. When she reached it, she untied the
knot in the billowing orange cloth that she had covered herself
with while she slept, and tied it high on one of the mangrove
roots.
Keeping to the channel that made its way wearily into the
sea, she waded in deeper and deeper. As she went she could feel
the water becoming colder and saltier on her skin. Soon the
water was lapping at her waist, but she kept wading. Very slowly
the water reached her shoulder blades, dancing to the rhythm of
the gentle waves.
She saw the great, submerged rock just in front of her
when the water began to cover her collarbones; walking was
becoming impossible. She let herself sink under the water, eyes
wide open, and hugging the great rock tightly, she emptied her
lungs of air. Within a few seconds, she began to feel the
dizziness that comes with oxygen deprivation, and her sight
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clouded. The memories of her childhood remained with her as
her eyes closed and she slipped into darkness.
2
“You idiot! Now you broke it!”
“I’m sorry, Etienne! I didn’t see it; I didn’t mean to step on
it!” Eight-year-old Ciel was more corpulent than her brother,
but his attacks of ire had always frightened her. “I swear to you
that I didn’t see it!”
“It was the best bamboo car I had ever made, and it was
really hard to find the fleshy bamboo stalks that I needed. And
now you’ve destroyed it! You’re an idiot!”
Tears welled up in Ciel’s sea-green eyes, hesitating,
trembling for a moment, dammed up by her eyelids, before
flowing down her cheeks, filling her mouth with their saltiness.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, her voice broken.
Seeing that her brother was so angry with her that he would
not even look at her, she turned and fled, trying to escape the
shame of being an idiot, an idiot, an idiot!
The pain of forgiveness being denied her in spite of her
heartfelt apology was unbearable.
She loved her twin brother with all her soul, and she knew
that he felt the same way, but at times it seemed as though he
temporarily forgot that he loved her, and he behaved as though
she were a stranger, an enemy.
They already had too many enemies for it to make sense to
quarrel between themselves. The children in the village
tormented them whenever they went there with their mother to
sell her medicines in the marketplace. They would throw pieces
of rotten fish at them and shout for them to eat it, saying that
they were filthy sea bastards.
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It was incredible how being different in such an
insignificant way as the color of their eyes could cause everyone
to hate them.
She ran towards the shore, weeping. If she told her mother
about the quarrel, her beloved brother would receive a sound
beating. Mama was good to them, but she seemed so sad much
of the time. Her sorrow morphed into anger all too easily.
Soon Ciel reached the shoreline where the Benoué River
ran into the sea, descending swiftly from a height of nearly
twenty meters, forming a long series of waterfalls whose roar
silenced the sounds of the sea. She climbed up on the rock
where she often sat to watch the Atlantic, hoping against hope
that the stories she heard from the other children about her
father were true, and that he would return one day.
It was midday, and thousands of golden reflections danced
on the surface of the water. The waves beat against her rock,
sprinkling her face with salty drops, making it impossible for her
to tell which were tears, and which were not.
Amidst the reflections on the water she thought she saw a
long pole bobbing back and forth just a few meters from the
rock where she sat. It looked like a stalk of bamboo but without
the sections which would typically divide it. Ciel stood to get a
better look and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
It’s a stalk of fleshy bamboo, it is! If I can grab it, Etienne will be
able to make a new toy car with it. Then surely he will forgive me for
having broken the other one. She lay face down on the rock and
reached as far as she could, trying with all her might to grasp
the bobbing stalk.
What every mother fears—and is sure will happen in such
circumstances—did indeed take place. Ciel reached too far,
slipped, and fell into the crashing waves. Her head struck the
rock with violence as she fell, and she heard a sound as though
someone were splitting open a ripe coconut, before she became
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unconscious and was carried out to sea by the undercurrent
from the river.
3
“What do you mean, you don’t know where your sister is?”
“I don’t know; she stepped on the new toy car I had just
finished making, and I shouted at her, and she ran away, crying.”
“That is not the way I have taught you to behave, Etienne.
It’s getting late, and Malaam isn’t here. We must go looking for
her; bring the oil lamps from the house.”
“Sometimes when she’s angry, she goes out to the rocks
there where the waterfalls go down from the river to the sea.”
“Ah, Zambe!” cried Fanya. “Quick, fetch the lamps as fast as
you can; I’ll run ahead towards the beach.”
With his heart in his throat, Etienne hurried to grab the
lamps from the nails where they hung in the little hut, and he
managed to light them after breaking several matches in the
attempt. He ran towards the seashore as fast as his little legs
would take him. It seemed as though everything was moving in
slow motion; his own slowness filled him with desperation.
When he reached the beach, he headed towards the mouth
of the river, and he could hear his mother’s cries in the distance.
“Ciel! Ciel! Cie-e-e-e-e-e-e-el!”
“She isn’t here, Mother! Maybe she’s in the mangrove
swamp!”
“In the mangrove swamp at night?” Dread filled Fanya’s
eyes and voice. “Sometimes there are crocodiles in the swamp!”
They ran along the shore together, shouting out for Ciel at
the top of their lungs. Etienne wept bitterly. What if his sister
was lost because of him? What if she had fallen into the sea?
He knew that the same thoughts must be running through his
mother’s mind.
“Cie-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-el!”
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“Si-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-s-s-s-s-t-e-e-e-e-e-er!”
The mangrove swamp was about two kilometers to the south
of the path from their neighborhood of N’long to the beach;
when they had almost reached its dark shadows, both of them
at once saw the little silhouette outlined on the beach by the
moonlight. Etienne ran towards his sister, shouting, weeping,
trembling. The idea that he could have lost her forever had
shaken him to his soul.
“Ciel, Sister!”
“Hi, Etienne! I went to look for fleshy bamboo for you.”
“Daughter, where were you? You scared me nearly to
death!” exclaimed Fanya as she arrived, kneeling down beside
Ciel on the sand.
Etienne sobbed with such violence that he couldn’t say
another word, and he hugged his sister so tight that his arms
hurt. Fanya joined in the embrace.
“Child, how did you get that cut on your head?”
“I was looking for some bamboo for Etienne, and I hit my
head on a rock.”
“Etienne, let go of your sister. I need you to run ahead and
get a jar of termites ready. We need to close up that head wound
so it won’t leave an ugly scar. Hurry!”
He took off running towards their home once again. He
had been very close to losing his sister because he had been so
mean to her about something that was totally stupid. He knew it
would never, ever happen again, and that he would do anything
in the world for her.
Fanya picked her daughter up in her arms and started
towards N’long.
“Where’s your wrap?”
“I lost it, mama; I don’t know when it came off.”
Ciel fell asleep long before her exhausted mother reached
their hut in N’long. When they arrived, Fanya washed the
wound with boiled water and took some of the termites, with
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their large, red heads the size of a garbanzo bean, from their jar,
forcing them to bite into both edges of the wound, closing it
with their powerful jaws. Fortunately, Ciel was still sound asleep.
Fanya carefully spaced nine termites along the length of the
cut, and then tore off their abdomens, leaving their heads in
place, holding the edges of the wound tightly together. Etienne
did not leave his sister’s side for even a second.
The healer tenderly placed a poultice of blue algae over the
wound and covered it with a banana leaf. As she applied the
poultice she was assaulted by memories of a night long ago,
when she had found her love while searching for blue algae with
her grandmother there on that same beach. As soon as Etienne
had dropped off to sleep, Fanya allowed her tears to flow. Their
salty taste made the memories even stronger, and she wept until
she, too, fell asleep.
Far away, at a great distance from the shore, the little cloth
belonging to the girl floated on the waves like a giant orange
jellyfish.
4
Ciel opened her eyes and mouth. Sucking in deeply, she
filled her lungs with water, releasing her grasp on the huge rock
and letting herself sink downwards. No longer prone to floating
towards the surface, she lay down on her back on the sandy
ocean floor, as she had done so many times before, to watch the
moon and stars struggling to reach into the depths of the sea
with their light. She released the liquid in her lungs and filled
them again; the first breath of water was always the hardest.
Her heart began to pump her “sea blood” with great force
through her arteries. The first time she cut herself on some
sharp corals, she had discovered that while she was breathing
water her blood turned a deep purplish color, and then went
back to red again when she was back ashore. Her red blood cells
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aggregated copper ions to the iron ions of the hemoglobin that
transported oxygen throughout her body, allowing a greater
amount of the precious gas to reach her cells, no matter what
the temperature or the water pressure might be around her.
She could still remember the first time in every detail. In an
effort to appease her brother in his stupid tantrum, she had
ended up unconscious on the sea bottom. It had not been very
deep there, but when she woke up and found herself lying on
the sand, completely submerged, she had panicked. She must
have expelled all the air from her lungs when she fell and hit her
head on the rock. Remembering, she reached up and touched
the little scar that could still be felt over her left eyebrow.
At first, before she had opened her eyes, she had dreamed
that she was still in her mother’s womb; when she woke up and
saw the waves dancing above her, she tried to scream, but no
sound would come from her mouth.
As she realized that she was not drowning, in spite of the
slight stinging she felt in her lungs, her fear turned into surprise,
and then into elation. She could breathe under water! She
looked around: sea anemones and clownfish accompanied her
there on the sea floor. In the other direction, away from shore,
the clumps of coral were teeming with life and colors. As it
often does in children, her curiosity quickly overcame her fear
of the unknown.
She swam among the corals chasing a parrotfish and played
with a leatherback turtle. She was having so much fun for so
long, that it began to get dark. She decided to swim back to
shore, but when she got there, she could’t see any recognizable
landmarks. She had strayed farther than she thought.
She had only taken a few steps on the beach when she was
overcome by an attack of violent heaving that left her curled up
in a ball on the sand. With one of the heaves, salt water had
streamed from her mouth and nose. A burning sensation, even
stronger than before, filled her chest. In spite of the pain, she
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gulped breath after breath of air; within a few minutes, she
began to feel better.
She felt an urgent need to go back to the water, but she
forced herself to walk toward where she thought the path to her
house must be. It was dark by now, and only the moon with its
silver light accompanied her on the beach when she saw the oil
lamps in the distance and heard her mother and her brother
calling her name. She fell to the sand in exhaustion and relief.
It seemed as though that had happened an eternity ago. An
eternity of secrets, of sneaking out at night to return to the sea
that she yearned for, where she felt alive, strong, complete.
Once again, she felt full of energy—powerful, driving
energy. It was as though every cell of her body had awakened
from a lethargy. All of her senses were heightened, just as they
always were when she went into the sea and let it fill her.
She could feel the different salts on her skin. Her eyes,
which suffered from a slight myopia when she was out of the
water, could distinguish every detail, and captured every beam
of moonlight here below. The distant symphony of the
cetaceans was omnipresent. She could distinguish between the
aromas of the different algae, fish, crustaceans, corals, starfish,
and sponges. They all intertwined in a polyphony that had taken
her years to learn and to decipher in her mind.
With a downward flick of her wrists, she shot upwards to
just a meter or so below the surface. She turned her hips slightly,
and flew back downwards towards the sea floor. With her arms
along her sides, she began to flap her hands so fast that they
soon became a blur in the water. She quickly gained speed,
which increased even more as she began to move her arms and
legs in an uncannily fast rhythm. No other sea creature, no manmade
vessel, could move as fast as she could, as she sped
through the water.
A great school of horse mackerel dispersed as she flew
through it.
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She loved to accelerate this way to a depth of about a meter
from the surface, and then pop up into a series of low jumps
across the water, bouncing like a flat rock that had been sent
skipping across a lake.
Ever since she had discovered her abilities as an eight-yearold
girl, she had kept the wonderful secret to herself. It was bad
enough to be considered strange because of the color of her
eyes, the daughter of a witch who had had a love affair with a
sea creature.
She didn’t even tell her brother Etienne. Was he like her?
Since they were twins, she thought it might be possible, but the
fear of being rejected by her own family kept her from asking
him.
She rarely dared to go down to the sea by day, but her
nighttime visits there had certain advantages. Her augmented
visual abilities allowed her to enjoy the spectacle of ocean night
life, and the young girl loved to shoot straight up from the water
as high as she could, as though trying to capture the full moon.
The local herds of dolphins usually accepted her very well,
and she could jump even higher than they, joining along in their
games and chases. She also learned that the tastiest way to eat
fish was to catch it and eat it totally raw. She found that she
could sate her thirst with salt water without any problems. In
fact at home she had begun to throw a little salt into the water
on the sly before drinking it.
Ciel dove fifteen fathoms down and turned upwards again,
trying to attain her maximum speed during the ascent. Her
whole body felt vibrant; she was going so fast she could hardly
see clearly. She aimed at the full moon, held her breath, and shot
out of the water.
She kept up the propelling movements of her body for a
few instants as she entered what was emptiness for her, and
soared to over ten meters above the ocean’s surface. She could
feel the air on her skin, cold, and so very, very dry.
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Someday she would dive into the sea and never come out.
In the water she felt happy, strong, and very much respected.
The only thing that kept her from doing it now was that she
couldn’t abandon the people she loved on land.
The moment she submerged herself into the sea all the
troubles of the day left her, floating away on the surface of the
water as though they were but a dark, dirty oil spill. Whenever
she came out of the sea and emptied herself of it, she once
again felt small and weak, and she hated it.
When her upward impulse was spent, Ciel spun in the air to
fall seaward again head first with her arms outstretched. It was a
long fall, but when the might of the sea was in her, her strength
and resistance were enormous.
Not even the largest sharks would bother her, after she tore
apart that first and only one that tried to attack her. The
dolphins knew that while she was around no predators would
come close; they loved and respected her for that.
As she descended, she thought she saw a glowing object or
animal cross below her in the water, traveling at great speed. She
entered the water with her arms still outstretched, quickly
twirling around to a vertical position to try to find whatever it
was she had caught a glimpse of from above.
There, already a long way off, between herself and the
shoreline, she saw a dot of light, orange and pulsing. She
accelerated to try to catch up with it, but before she was close
enough to make out its silhouette clearly, the light began to
move downward towards the sea floor.
She followed it, and for a while it seemed she was closing
the distance between them. She thought she could make out a
human shape, but it was glowing with a strange light that would
change hues from moment to moment. They continued their
descent, but at a depth of a little more than three hundred
fathoms the mysterious glow suddenly disappeared.
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Ciel paused, suspended in the water like a tiny particle in
the immensity of the ocean, trying to relocate the light she had
been following. She had never been this deep before; it was
completely dark here. She could only hear the beating of her
own heart, and the sound of her lungs filling and emptying
themselves of water in rapid succession.
It was hard to tell which way was up and which way was
down, and she felt frightened for the first time underwater since
that long-ago day when she had accidentally slipped in and
found herself lying there submerged. She was suddenly aware
of the enormity that surrounded her, of its weight, of its
pressure. She began to move her head this way and that, trying
to figure out which way she should go.
Just then the light reappeared, so close this time that she
could see the silhouette clearly. He was definitely human and
was glowing more brightly than before. He was floating just a
few meters above her, with his arms out to the sides and his feet
together. He looked like one of those angels or saints that the
white men talked about in their churches.
The apparition moved his right arm in a gesture indicating
that he wanted her to follow him. As soon as she did, he began
to move away, more slowly now, and this time towards the
shore.
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Chapter 6
Man Kenguele
1
Ciel followed the stranger towards a sea cave that she also
knew of; the entrance was about four arm-spans high by two
wide, and it remained hidden underwater even at the lowest
tides. The sunlight bounced off the white sands of the cave
floor and splashed in every direction, lighting up the domed
rock ceiling.
The interior lagoon had a little beach; the big red crabs that
made it their home scooted off as she came up out of the water
and fell onto her knees on the sand, exhausted by her effort to
keep up with the glowing being.
The stranger also came up out of the water, provoking
another reddish stampede on the shore. He knelt next to her
and expelled water through two small holes below his shoulder
blades, in order to be able to speak once on land. Ciel watched
in amazement.
His facial features were beautiful, strong and masculine.
High cheekbones framed a mouth with fine lips. He did not
have ears, but in their place there were small, translucent
membranes. His face showed just as much surprise and curiosity
as Ciel’s.
“Fanya?”
Ciel, still kneeling on the sand, expelled the rest of the
water from her lungs through her nose and mouth.
“I’m not Fanya; I’m her daughter, Ciel. How do you know
my mother’s name?”
“By the Sacred Twins! That’s impossible! I only left a few
months ago, but you must be about the age of your mother
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when I met her! And yet, here you are, and you look just like
your mother.” A look of incredulity came over his face.
“Except for the color of my eyes, which are like yours,”
Ciel pointed out to him.
“I have a daughter?” His voice was a mixture of awe and
amazement. “I never knew that our love had given fruit!”
“So what they say about my mother is true; she had loved a
creature from the sea!”
“And my blood flows strong in your veins; no one from this
side could have dived down to where you followed me.”
“Why? Why haven’t you been here with us? How could you
abandon us that way?” Ciel nearly choked on her own words.
The face of the strange man from the depths of the sea
twisted with a look of pain, and he covered it with both hands,
letting out a bitter groan as he rocked forward. The glow that he
emitted darkened and almost died away.
“Oh, gods, this cannot be happening,” he groaned.
“What cannot be happening?”
“I left only eight months ago, and now it turns out that. . .
How old are you?”
“Almost seventeen, and you?”
“I’m just a bit older than you. I didn't abandon you nor
your mother. I had no way of returning until just ten days ago.
And each of those ten days, I’ve been visiting the place where
your mother and I agreed to meet. I was on my way to the
mangrove swamp again to see if she was there, when I saw you
swimming. At first I thought it was her, that she had found
some way to live in the sea like me.”
“But you said you left just a few months ago; I don’t
understand how more time can have passed for us than for
you.”
“I had to ask for the help of a very powerful witch in order
to come back. Something must have gone wrong, and instead
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of returning in the same moment, I seem to have appeared here
years later.”
“Years? My mother waited for you for years, for many,
many years, going to the mangrove swamp when she thought
we didn’t see her. She would sit on the shore and weep for you.”
Man Kenguele’s face showed his agony.
“Of course, she would tire of waiting for so long. I saw
that some things were different when I got here; the sea was
much less healthy than when I was here before. Now I
understand why.”
“You have a son, too; we’re twins. His eyes are like yours
and mine.”
“Is that true? And can he live in the sea, like you?”
“I don’t know; I discovered it once by accident, and I’ve
never told anyone. Many of the villagers shun us because of the
color of our eyes; I didn’t want to give them any other motives.”
“In my world, there has only been one single case of twin
births; you are a true miracle. What’s your brother’s name?”
“Etienne. He’s a great fisherman, strong and brave. He
would do anything for those he loves. You’ll be proud of him
when you get to know him.”
“And how is your mother? Every day that has gone by
without seeing her has been a day of torture for me.”
“She’s been alone for as long as I can remember. Often
when she thinks no one is looking, she cries, because of the
great sorrow she carries inside; I always knew that she was
crying for the absence of our father, for you.”
“Did she tell you about me?”
“No, that subject was always taboo at our house. The little I
know about you I learned from a family friend and from the
gossip in the village that Mother had been with a mamiwata, a
fish-man. They say that’s the reason we have these green eyes.”
“Mama Simone was right; I’ve caused your mother much
suffering, even without my being here.”
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“What’s your name, Father?”
A warm orange glow returned to his skin, and a look of joy
flooded his face as he heard the word “father” come from the
lips of the daughter of which he had never known.
“My aquatic name has no meaning if it’s pronounced out
of the water. On land the name I’ve used most in my world is
Sharduk. Your mother gave me the name that I love the best,
Man Kenguele, ‘The-Eyes-of-the-Sea.’ ”
“And my name is Ciel, ‘Sky.’ ” Her voice softened. “You and
I reflect one another, even as our names do.”
“I have so many things to share with you! I want you all to
come with me; I’ve been trying for so long to be able to return,
to take your mother back with me to my world, but I haven’t
been able to until now.”
“What do you mean when you say, ‘my world?’ ”
“For you to understand all these things, who I am and who
you are, I’m going to tell you the same things I told your mother
about myself and about the place I come from.
2
“My world is much like yours, and at the beginning all of its
inhabitants were very much like you, as well.
“For six long centuries we confronted each other in two
rival factions during what were called the Telluric Wars. On one
side were those we called Mechanists, whose knowledge was
based on logic and who pursued scientific advancements at any
cost; on the other side were the Sons of the Roots, also called
simply the Sons, who knew the secrets of magic and of the
energies of our planet, and who violently opposed any scientific
advancement, considering it anathema and an attack on their
way of life.
“The wars were continuous, and at one point it seemed that
they would soon destroy all the life forms on our only
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continent, as well as in the ocean that surrounded it. But when
it appeared that the complete annihilation of both factions was
inevitable, a great leader came to power in each of them, and
these new leaders were willing to see beyond the dogmas which
were preventing us from growing and developing in peace.
“Uz-Talim, the Supreme Mechanist, and Garnil, spiritual
leader and great warrior of the Sons of the Roots, were actually
fraternal twins, although no one knew that at the time. Their
mother had been a high-ranking Mechanist engineer, and their
father a top official among the warrior magicians of the Sons of
the Roots. They belonged to a movement which was persecuted
by both of the two main rival groups, the Unifiers.
“As I mentioned before, the arrival of twins was a great
wonder among us. They were separated shortly after birth but
were both raised in the ways of the traditional Unifier beliefs,
which included not inflicting any suffering and respecting
oneself and all others. Uz-Talim was raised by her mother, Uz-
Alexia, and Garnil was raised by his father, Borek.
“Their parents conspired for many years within their
respective bands, with the help of the Unifiers, until at last they
managed for both of their children to rise to power. The twins
had both taken office within their factions on the eve of what
could very well have been the last battle, after which there
would undoubtedly be no one left to ever fight another.
“Too much blood had been spilled, on both sides, and in
their blind obsession with victory, which had surpassed every
imaginable limit, the Mechanists had created all sorts of biomechanical
creatures and atrocious weapons, while the Sons of
the Roots had used some of their darker arts to call up
enormous beasts from places that should never have been
looked into. The Sons also modified and rewrote their own
cellular language in order to change the very essence of their
bodies and, ultimately, of their souls.
“The two new leaders had arranged to meet together in the
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middle of the Plains of Sorrow, an enormous extension of
bluish, burnt, poisoned land that crossed the continent like a
horrible scar from north to south.
“This area had been the main battle zone for all the major
wars over the centuries; it lay between Latica, the giant city-state
of the Mechanists, who occupied most of the western half of
the continental mass, and Rayna, which is what the Sons of the
Roots called the area of vast forests where they lived, and which
extended throughout the eastern regions of the continent.
“Brother and sister had dressed alike in white linen, as had
been the custom of their forefathers, before that first people
had been split in two. When they met, their followers on both
sides were amazed at how much they resembled each other, in
spite of being of either sex; not only was there a striking
similarity in their faces, but even in their mannerisms and in the
tone of their voice.
“They joined hands and, speaking together in a very ancient
form of our language, they addressed their armies, ordering an
absolute and definitive end to all hostile actions between the
two peoples. We don’t know if anyone thought of disobeying
the order, but the fact is that the armies appeared to accept it
without question, since both leaders were held in reverence
because of their accomplishments and in awe because of their
enormous power.
3
“In spite of having achieved peace between the two
factions, our world was so poisoned and our resources so
depleted that it was clear that Telluria was dying; it simply
couldn’t survive the abusive actions we had been subjecting it to
much longer. It was only a matter of time before new conflicts
would arise due the shortage of basic necessities.
“Garnil and Uz-Talim set to work with the wisest men
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from both peoples to search for solutions, but the conclusion
they reached was unanimous: within five hundred years, even if
they restricted births and tried to reestablish the delicate balance
of our planet, life would become unsustainable there unless
something was done about the situation.
“The idea of searching for new planets to inhabit began to
develop among the red magicians belonging to the Sons people.
During the Wars they had used their skills to create powerful
but terribly unstable blood doors, in order to attract beasts from
other, darker realities to cross over to our world, for use in
battle against the Mechanists. Some of these beasts died as soon
as they arrived, unable to survive in our atmosphere, but others
were terrible, hungry weapons, and very difficult to control.
“There was even one story told of a battle where the Sons
of the Roots brought across a beast that was so dreadful that it
would have destroyed both armies if they had not joined forces
for once to overcome the monstrous thing. The red magicians’
skills were more of an art than a science; the results were often
quite unpredictable, and on many occasions they were
disastrous for both sides.
“I need to explain to you that all through the universe there
are what we call crossing points. The most common are what we
call jumping points, which allow us to move from one place to
another within our same universe. Then there are passing points,
that open up other universes to us.
“These different crossing points only connect us to certain,
established places, and their very existence is a great mystery.
They are believed to be as ancient as the stars, and it’s thought
that somehow they play a part in the balance of our universe.
“Both types were always very difficult to find and to use, as
we could never know when they would be open, nor for how
long. That’s where the blood doors came in, because they enabled
our magicians to stretch the very tissue of the cosmos to create
their own jumping points and passing points.
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“The Mechanists suggested to their former enemies that
perhaps they could work together to find other inhabitable
worlds. The Mechanists’ understanding of science turned out to
be extremely useful, since once the Sons had initiated them into
their arts, they used all their capabilities of measurement and
calculation to find the best intervals and ideal moments so that
using the artificial crossing points would be less dangerous.
“Together they opened new jumping points with which they
could travel through our universe—the Sons would open them
through magic, and then the Mechanists would stabilize them
by means of their technology.
“With these new developments the old war machines were
reworked and transformed into transports for the first
exploratory expeditions, and fabled warriors—who until a few
years before had been unreconcilable enemies—were sent along
in mixed teams to protect the colonists from possible dangers.
“Garnil and Uz-Talim forbade the unauthorized use of
both types of crossing points, and especially of the passing points,
because of the horrible things that had once come to our world
through them.
“But of course, in spite of the prohibition and of the
punishment that any disobedience would bring, many people
continued experimenting with unauthorized crossing points and
even with the possibility of finding new types of them. The
sentences for such unauthorized crossovers varied according to
the gravity of the consequences of the specific one made, and
could range from a warning to permanent exile.
4
“Through the jumping points, we found thirteen different
worlds which were inhabitable for our people. The Holy Twins
led the expeditions, along with a small group of explorers.
“The first stable jumping point that was achieved took us to a
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planet that was drier than ours, but otherwise quite suitable. It
orbited around a double star, and we named it Twins’ Blessing.
“On that first planet, our people were able to open up three
new jumping points. Each one led us to a different planet, which
we named Oceans I, Golden, and Fractured. From each of
these, in turn, we were able to reach three more. From Oceans
I, we went to Emerald, Cloud, and Cold; from Golden, we
reached Peat, Stormy, and Giant; and from Fractured, we found
Oceans II, Bloodwater, and Hollow.
“Our expansion came to a halt after the discovery of these
last nine, because they all turned out to be dead-ends. No
matter how we tried, we were unable to open new jumping points
or passing points in them. We couldn’t go any farther.
“Many of the colonists began to suspect that someone or
something was willing to help us but at the same time was
limiting our expansion, which had been so rapid until then. That
wouldn’t be surprising, considering what we had done to our
own planet.
“The symmetry of the number of jumping points and planets
that we had discovered—together with the fact that among
them all they had everything we needed to survive—made it
evident that our ‘discoveries’ were not the fruit of pure luck. It
was all a miraculous gift to us, a second chance for us to live
and prosper.
“None of these new planets were inhabited by beings of
advanced intelligence, but they did contain innumerable species
of plants and animals—more than we could ever have imagined.
In their skies we discovered unknown constellations, and it
seemed that they were as far from each other as they were from
Telluria itself.
“The new planets were all different from our own world,
but had resources that could be useful to us. This led to the
question of whether it would be ethical for us to modify them
for our convenience, since that would have destroyed their
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original ecosystems.
“It was decided that besides being more respectful of our
new homes, it would be faster and more efficient to simply
adapt ourselves to these new places, to make the least impact on
them as possible. Using the knowledge that the Sons of the
Roots had of cellular language and the laboratories of the
Mechanists, these changes were made.
“Thirteen new races branched from ours, each adapted to
one of our new planets and genetically compatible among
themselves. The new colonies would all be closely supervised by
the Twins along with their Conclave.
“In some cases, only minimum adaptations were made,
such as skin that was more resistant to cosmic rays, or
metabolisms that were capable of feeding on plant and animal
proteins that otherwise would have been toxic to us, or eyes
that could see a broader spectrum of light.
“Other changes were more radical, enabling the colonists to
survive the gravitational forces on Giant, whose mass was much
greater than that of Telluria, or allowing them to live and move
about amidst the powerful winds that swept Stormy.
“After seven generations had passed, ninety-eight per cent
of our planet’s population had been sent to colonize new
worlds, thus drastically reducing the burden on our poor,
battered habitat.
“From time to time we would find clear signs of the
existence of ancient civilizations on the worlds our colonists
travelled to, including the ruins of cities that had apparently
been inhabited by different sorts of beings, some of which
seemed to have been humanoid. Sometimes among these ruins
we would find cemeteries, remains of science laboratories,
magical objects, or even sacred holograms.
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5
“Many of the people who left our world did so in the hope
of finding some way to help return it to its ancient splendor.
The small percentage of our population which did not
participate in the diaspore, that slim two per cent, devoted
themselves to trying to clean up the mess that was left behind,
restoring order and repopulating land and sea with the different
creatures that had once inhabited them.
“But there were certain regions, both on the continent and
in the ocean, that had suffered extreme destruction, or were left
completely poisoned, or in which there still lived and thrived
some of the beasts that were brought over or created during the
wars, in spite of the efforts made to eliminate them or to send
them back to where they came from.
“The Conclave of the Remnant was the ruling body which
had resolved possible disputes and conflicts among us ever
since the majority of the population had left Telluria. The new
colonies had a great deal of autonomy, but were governed by
the Colonial Authority, the seat of which changed from one
colonial planet to another every five Tellurian years.
“The Conclave included representatives of the Mechanists,
the Sons of the Roots, the Unifiers, and a new religion which
was becoming more wide-spread and more radical, the
Indistinguishables. This new religion worshiped Garnil and Uz-
Talim, in spite of the fact that the Twins never had any
intention of founding a religious movement, and awaited their
return.
“The fact is that the Twins, who had saved us from
extinction, had disappeared centuries before, ever since in their
old age they had made a last crossover to somewhere, and were
never seen or heard from again.
“In one of their semi-annual sessions, the Conclave of the
Remnant called for volunteers to make up two action groups
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who would work in the most dangerous areas de Telluria, in
close collaboration with each other and with the rest of the
population. Nearly a fourth of the inhabitants, mostly young
people, decided to volunteer. The two action groups were called
Shepherds of the Land and Shepherds of the Sea.
“Using the same techniques that had been used during the
colonization period, the Conclave modified the volunteers in
order to turn them into the best possible instruments for the
recovery of the planet. They were modified in such a way that
the changes were hereditary, yet at the same time reversible, in
case any of their descendants decided not to follow the path of
their parents.
“The Shepherds of the Land did not need houses to live in;
their home was what remained of the great eastern forest. They
would only leave that area if their work required it, and they
rarely entered any city. Their muscles and bones were improved
so that they would have the strength and stamina necessary to
take apart and recycle the mechanical waste which was left from
the wars, and they could do battle with any of the beasts they
might encounter on our planet.
“Their red skin could withstand the corrosive power of the
acid rains that fell in certain regions, and they were immune to
both common illnesses and dangerous chemical or radioactive
agents. They were impressive beings and very wise. The
majority of them were of an introspective nature, and they
devoted their hearts and their souls to their work.
“We, on the other hand, were changed so that we could
withstand the pressure of the sea; our blood and lungs were
modified so that we could breathe underwater. Our hair follicles
were replaced with chromatophores and photophores such as
those of the great squids, to facilitate underwater
communication, to allow us to see no matter how dark the
water is, and to enable us to camouflage ourselves, blending in
perfectly with our surroundings.
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“What’s more, we were given a double, transparent eyelid
which allows us to see in the water or out, and simple orifices—
called spiracles—just below our shoulder blades, through which
we can fill or empty our great adaptive lungs with water. We
were designed very deliberately, in such a way as to need no
tools or weapons other than our own bodies.
“I can go onto land, but without the protective clothing we
need, it’s very uncomfortable, and my skin will rapidly become
dry and irritated unless the relative humidity is extremely high.
Within a few hours, the pain becomes unbearable.
“We have managed to re-introduce many of the species that
had been over-harvested to the point of extinction on our
planet.
“I know that all this is a lot to digest in so little time, but I
need you to understand where I come from and why I am here.
“I belong to the third generation born in the sea, and for as
long as I can remember, I have helped my parents in the work
of regenerating corals, which is their specialty. We live in a little
settlement in the middle of an extensive atoll where the water
stays at a pleasant temperature year-round. Our homes are made
of programmable corals that within a few days will take
whichever shape we wish, according to the commands they
receive.
“Within the atoll we have sea farms with a great variety of
different algae, and around the outer edges we have mollusk
breeders and great herds of spider crabs and anomalocaris.
“It is a good place to grow up, and it has been a very, very
long time since we have had to deal with an attack from any of
those great sea beasts that have wandered through our oceans
ever since the Sons of the Roots brought them over during the
Wars, in an effort to destroy the Mechanist’s underwater ships.
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6
“My fascination with stories of the great battles which had
been fought long ago led me to explore a region that we had not
begun to clean up yet, in my desire to visit the skeleton of one
of those giant wartime submarines. It was an enormous,
impressive artifact from about the middle of the last war. It lay
several hours’ swim from our atoll and four hundred fathoms
deep.
“Near the shipwreck there was a large pocket of deadwater.
The ocean itself had been one of the victims of our long wars.
These large areas of contaminated water, where the oxygen level
was so low that no life-forms could survive in it, were the
demonstration of that fact. The sea currents sometimes shifted
their position, and we had oxygen-level detectors near our
underwater settlements to warn us of their proximity.
“As I observed the remains of the submarine from the
outside, I saw that a section of the stern had been cleanly sliced
off, as though someone had cut off the tail of a fish. The
skeleton of the Condemnation was resting on its port side, and it
was not difficult for me to find a large tear in the outside
starboard wall where I could get inside. It was undoubtedly a
tear left by the jaws or claws of some beast of incredible size.
“I started exploring the engine room. The domed ceilings
were so high and wide that the mythical krill-eaters could have
swum through it easily. As I swam towards the control bridge, I
noticed a strange sound that seemed to be coming from the
stern area.
“Searching for the source of the high-pitched hum, I had to
squeeze myself through some narrow passages filled with a
chaos of bent iron to which that section of the ship had been
reduced.
“I reached the part that from the outside I had seen was
cleanly cut off. Contrary to all logic, from inside the ship it
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didn’t appear that any part was missing; it seemed to be
complete all the way to the stern wall. The shrill humming was
much louder now.
“Confused, I stopped and made my way back outside,
where I could see that the last section of the stern was indeed
missing—or at least it was not visible. I tried to enter the ship
from the rear by passing through the apparently non-existent
section, but I hit against a wall, which somehow was still there,
even though I couldn’t see it. I felt along the side until I reached
the cut section; there was no discontinuity, no break. It sounded
like metal when I struck it.
“I went forward and entered through the tear in the hull I
had found earlier, and as is often the case when one is young
and foolish, curiosity overcame any sense of fear or prudence. I
crawled through the narrow passages of the wreckage once
again until I reached the section that apparently could only be
accessed from the inside. This time when I got to the clear
space where I had turned back before, I kept going. The
humming sound became louder, and shriller; then it faded out
again as I advanced into the part of the ship’s stern that was
undetectable from the exterior.
“Suddenly I realized that something was very strange about
the water. The temperature had risen several degrees within a
matter of a few seconds, and its taste and aroma had varied just
as quickly. The density and salinity had also changed, and it was
more difficult for me to breathe.
“I found an opening I could squeeze through and swam out
of the wreckage. When I turned to look back on the ship, my
heart did a summersault. I could see the missing piece of the
stern, but the rest of the submarine had disappeared.
“It startled me so that for a moment I didn’t realize what
had happened—I had found an uncharted crossing point that held
the Condemnation caught between two worlds! Apparently no one
had ever found it while charting the underwater points.
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“I could sense that I was in another sea, perhaps even in
another world, and I didn’t know what kind of crossing point I
had stumbled across. It could be a jumping point, carrying me an
unknown distance through my own universe, or it could be a
passing point, taking me to a completely different universe. I had
no idea of the dangers or the wonders that might lie ahead of
me.
“The horror stories I had heard as a boy ran through my
head. It was quite possible that I could never return; I had been
an idiot. I felt panic, and for a moment I froze. When I
managed to calm myself, I quickly squeezed myself back
through the same hole I had exited the ship from, and I moved
forward through the wreckage, this time from stern to bow,
listening for that shrill humming sound.
“I began to hear it again at exactly the same place it had
stopped as I went through the other way. I went just a little
farther, and I was at home. It seemed like the crossing point was
stable—perhaps the mass of the submarine had anchored it,
somehow. The water once again had all the characteristics of
the sea to which I was accustomed, and the change made me
notice all the nuances of aroma and taste of the waters I had
been born in, many of which I had never really noticed before.
“As I headed back to my settlement, I turned to look once
more at the strange phenomenon that I was leaving behind.
Perhaps the Mechanists had also secretly tried to make a
crossover, with catastrophic results. Or perhaps the Sons had
ambushed the Condemnation and caused it to fall into a crossing
point and be destroyed; it was impossible to know. Logically I
decided not to mention my discovery to anyone when I got
home.
7
“Weeks passed before I decided to return to the sunken
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submarine. A colony of enormous jelly fish had decided to take
over the area that had been my entrance into the steel shell. I
made my body emit red and white stroboscopic flashes so they
would let me by, and swam in through a tunnel made up of
great translucent giants, who began to imitate the cadence of my
flashes as a sign of respect.
“The interior of the submarine was also filled with
medusas; they pressed against the walls to let me through. They
all stayed a prudent distance from the crossing point.
“This time, the changes in the water didn’t take me by
surprise, and I hardly felt a difference in my breathing. I headed
straight for the surface of the alien sea. The smell of the air was
strange, fresher and cleaner than on our planet.
“A few hundred swim-strokes away I could see the
silhouette of a great land mass; along the shore I could make
out several unmoving points of light, some orangish in color
and others more whitish. What kind of strange creatures would
I find near those lights? And in the ocean around me?
“I took mental note of the position of the wreckage so that
I could get back home quickly in case I found myself in
difficulties, and I began to explore the water with my senses.
Right away I realized that the waters on this side of the crossing
point were not as silent as those on my side. I heard songs that
fascinated me with their beauty and complexity. At first I didn’t
recognize them, since I had only heard them on audio
recordings at our knowledge center, but when I realized what
they were, I felt deeply moved, because cetaceans had
disappeared from our world long ago.
“I spent weeks coming and going through the crossing point,
inventing excuses, sneaking away, stealing hours from my sleep
in order to spend as much time as possible following the
different families of humpbacks, killer whales and dolphins. The
dolphins were the first to accept me into their herd. I spent a
great deal of time accompanying them on their hunts and in
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their play. I had never felt so alive.
“I began to think about the possibility of trying to convince
one of my new friends to follow me back to my world. That
way our waters would once again be inhabited by other
intelligent creatures besides ourselves. But the prohibition was
very clear, and the consequences could be very serious for me if
I were discovered.
“I decided I would ask my elders for permission to spend
several weeks in the supposed exploration of an area especially
rich in sunken ships several days distant in the direction
opposite of where the Condemnation lay. That way I would have
an alibi for what I figured might be long periods of absence. I
set up my base in the engine room of the enormous
submachine.
8
“One night, as soon as I crossed over to your side, I heard
the squeal of a young bottlenose dolphin that belonged to the
group that I usually hunted with. I swam towards him as fast as
I could. He was trapped by one of those great nets that are
dragged along behind large fishing boats. I darkened my skin
and shut down every single one of my photophores in order to
be less visible.
“I grabbed the net as close to him as I could. It was
swallowing everything in its path: dolphin fish, conger eels,
frigate mackerels, and sea turtles, to name a few. The net was
death, and like the Black Lady herself, it made no distinctions
among those that it embraced.
“I began to tear at the net with my hands, but soon they
were bleeding. Meanwhile we were being pulled toward the
surface; the rest of the dolphins circled below us in complete
desperation. I was still hanging onto the net when it breached
the surface, and within a few seconds I found myself being
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hoisted by a giant mechanical arm and thrown onto the ship
deck.
“The impact killed many of the fish and wounded almost all
of the rest. The young dolphin lost consciousness, and as I tried
desperately to find an opening in the net, powerful spotlights
came on. Several humans arrived on deck, and they immediately
saw me.
9
“There were about twenty men, and they all fell suddenly
silent. The only sound was that of the fat raindrops dashing
against the deck, the waves lashing at the hull of the boat, and
the flopping of the fish that were still able to move.
“I had never seen so many land beings together before.
Their faces presented different shades of a mixture of fear and
curiosity. Some of them began to murmur exclamations that
sounded very much like swearing. I raised both hands and
emitted an orange light as a sign of friendly greeting. I emptied
my lungs of water and breathed in air in order to be able to
speak, and in the process lost part of the strength that the sea
gives me when it is within me.
“ ‘I’m not a threat; I only want to take my friend with me.
Please, we will not bother you any further,’ I said, as calmly as I
could.
“Many of the men stepped back, and the tone of their
voices raised suddenly. Just then a loud, authoritative voice was
heard, and they fell silent once more. A man, much stouter than
the others and who seemed to be some sort of leader, pushed
his way through the group of gawking sailors.
“I lowered my arms and made motions indicating the great
net, trying to make myself understood by the giant.
“ ‘Will you help me get him free? I promise we will go back
to where we came from,’ I pleaded.
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“The big man came towards me, smiling and talking in a
tone that sounded very kind, especially in contrast to the voices
of the other men. He was holding out his left arm and hand to
me, showing me his huge palm, which I understood to be a sign
of peace.
“I kept indicating the place where my friend was trapped
inside the net, and the captain kept coming closer, nodding as
though he understood what I was trying to tell him, and smiling
at me with a smile that began to remind me more and more of a
shark’s smile than that of a friend.
“When he was just two arm-spans from me, I realized that
at no time had he shown me his other hand. I thought that
these people must greet each other using only one hand.
“Just then a great bolt of lightning struck nearby. At the
same instant the right hand of that smiling fellow appeared,
holding an iron bar that few would have been able to wield so
easily. Before the sound of thunder faded, he had delivered a
blow directed at my legs. I jumped away, but it came so close
that it wiped the raindrops from my left thigh. When the iron
bar hit the deck it made sparks fly, and the captain roared a
curse at me.
“Several of the sailors lunged at me then, trying to grab
ahold of me; some were carrying makeshift weapons. I set
ablaze all my skin-lights at maximum strength and turned them
bright red, in an effort to frighten them; most of them stepped
back. But one sailor jumped forward and grabbed me by the
waist, and though I managed to slip from his arms, he caught
me by my knees and threw me down.
“I smashed half of his face in with my right knee at the
same time that I rolled away to escape a second blow from the
captain, this time directed at my head. Luckily for me the other
sailors were getting in the way of his attack.
“I leaped to my feet and opened the belly of the nearest
sailor with four long slits made by my retractile claws; he fell to
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his knees trying to hold his guts in place. I didn’t even realize
what I had done.
“I turned and grabbed the forearm of another sailor, who
had moved around behind me and was trying to get me by the
back of my neck; I bit him furiously. The double joints in my
jawbones and my cone-shaped teeth shredded his arm. My
mouth was full of flesh and blood, which I spit out immediately.
I had never had to fight against another person; I had never
caused harm to anyone, and it frightened me to see how easily I
could inflict serious wounds.
“That night I lost my taste for stories of great battles
forever. I began to see them for what they really were—people
killing each other out of fear, fear of what was different, fear of
losing what was theirs and the ones they loved, fear of what
their superiors would do to them, real fears or imaginary ones,
fears that had been instilled in them, suggested or nurtured by
the interests of those in power.
“I was horrified; I just wanted to jump off that deck back
into the sea. Battles are only fun when seen at a distance, unless
one is a monster or an imbecile.
“I felt the impact of an oar on my left shoulder as I dodged
yet another of the giant’s efforts to smash in my head with his
iron rod. I didn’t receive the full force of his blow only because
it struck the head of the fellow who hit me on the shoulder first,
crushing his skull.
“The rest of the crew stepped back, not from me, but to
avoid the homicidal fury of their captain. The face of the man
with the iron rod was now the very picture of murderous
hatred, and it is etched in my memory.
“Though somewhat blunted, the captain’s blow did reach
my temple, and everything began to look fuzzy. My skin lost its
glow, my sight was clouded, and I felt terribly dizzy. Our sonar
doesn’t work very well out of the water—it wasn’t designed to
—but at least I could make some sense of my situation.
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“The sailors were in a roaring semicircle behind me,
cheering on the monster with the iron bar with shouts of
encouragement. The beast that I had mistaken for a man was
about an arms-span from the stern.
“I forced my skin to light up once more, and I charged
towards him. I hit him right in the stomach with my head, and
as we both flew overboard, I grabbed his back with my claws. I
was still holding onto him when we hit the water, and we began
to sink. He grabbed my neck with his huge hands.
“At last I was able to fill my lungs with water through my
spiracules. I struck him in the face so he would let go of me, but
he just kept on squeezing tighter and tighter. We both knew that
my neck was about to break. He smiled, and I knew that mine
would not be the first neck he had broken, and that the
crunching he could feel beneath my skin was giving him
enormous pleasure.
“I raked my claws across his face, taking part of it with me.
This time he let go, to protect what was left of his face, and I
summoned all of my remaining strength to strike him on the left
side of his ribcage. I heard it crack and felt it cave in. A great
bubble of air and blood escaped from his open mouth. The sea
bottom rose up quickly to meet him.
“I heard a rapid series of popping sounds on the surface of
the water, and I saw several small objects fly past me at great
speed, leaving a trail of bubbles behind them. The sailors were
shooting at me from the ship’s deck with some kind of weapon.
“I shut down all my skin-lights and kept sinking downward.
At some point, I lost consciousness as a consequence of the
wounds I had received.
10
“The next thing I remember is your mother’s face, and her
voice calling me by the name I have considered as my own ever
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since, Man Kenguele.
“Her smile, full of light and kindness, was reflected in her
eyes. Her skin, contrary to that of the men who had wounded
me, was a beautiful dark cinnamon color. Her hair was done up
in dozens of little braids.
“She spoke to me, but I couldn’t understand a single word
of what she and the older lady beside her were saying to me.
They were applying some sort of sticky ointment to my head. I
had no idea of what I was doing there nor how I had gotten
there; I could hardly move. I fell into darkness once again.
“One day at sunrise after what your mother would later tell
me was several days, the light of dawn woke me again. I no
longer felt pain, and I saw that I was lying in a small, semisunken
boat. I later learned that the boat had belonged to her
grandfather.
“There was only half a fathom of water over me, and the
edges of the boat were about a palm’s width above the surface. I
clumsily tried to get up, and created a great splash. I saw that I
was only a couple swimstrokes from the shore, in the middle of
a mangrove swamp, where the water was almost saltless.
“On the shore, sitting around a fire with a cooking pot over
it, were your mother and a strange creature that looked like a
man with several body parts missing. When she heard me
splashing, she stood up slowly and came to the water’s edge
nearest me. She gave me another of her smiles, as her strange
companion walked over on his hands and knees. He let out a
soft exclamation when she waded into the water.
“I couldn’t take my eyes off of her face; it was the most
beautiful face I had ever seen. I slipped over the boat’s edge and
came towards her. The differences in the way we looked did not
seem to matter to her at all. She called me by my new name.
“Her voice was gentle and calming. I would have let myself
be killed just to hold onto the seconds I had been looking at
her. She touched her left temple with one hand and pointed at
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me with the other. Then she touched her shoulder and pointed
at me again.
“She was trying to ask me how I felt, but neither of us
knew any words that the other used, so she was using signs. I
touched my shoulder and then my head, and smiled at her. The
incomplete man on the shore said something, but she just lifted
up her hand and did not even turn to answer him.
“Now we were so close that I could hear her breathing and
smell her skin. Her aroma was so wonderful it made my head
swim. She held out her right hand towards me and gently
touched the wounded shoulder. Then she placed her other hand
on the side of my head, where the captain’s blow had struck me.
She touched me tenderly, and although her hands were not as
soft as those of my people, I felt at home. I saw that she was
shedding tears at the same time she was smiling; my people
could also weep with joy.
“I didn’t know how to express my gratitude to her. When I
hugged her there was not even a shadow of fear in her eyes, and
when she hugged me back I told her, “Thank you” the way we
do where I come from, emitting blue and purple waves of light
for a few seconds. She leaned back for a moment to look me in
the eyes, and then lay her head back on my good shoulder.
“She invited me to go ashore with her, so I took in air and
followed her. The humidity was so high in the mangrove swamp
that it hardly bothered me to be out of the water.
“Her companion raised up on his leg stumps, extended his
hand towards me and smiled at me from his disfigured face. His
eyes were honest and full of kindness.
“I sat with them by the fire, as I had sometimes done with
Shepherds of the Land. They invited me to eat some cooked
fish and some kind of root vegetable they were preparing in the
fire. We don’t usually cook our food where I come from, but I
was famished, and the food smelled of some very appetizing
spices which were new to me.
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“While we were eating, the older lady that I remembered
seeing when I awoke briefly a few days before arrived at the
campfire. She gave me a brief hug and then began to speak to
me using some words that I could understand perfectly.
“ ‘Are you better? Are you in pain?’, she asked.
“ ‘No, I am almost well. Do you understand me? How?’ I
answered in astonishment.
“ ‘Only a little. Another came before you. My husband help
woman with eyes of sea like you; she teach words.’
“ ‘Thank you; I am eternally indebted to you.’
“Then your mother asked her grandmother something; she
turned to your mother with a very serious look on her face and
gave her a long answer, while the man nodded in agreement.
“ ‘What did she ask?’ I inquired.
“ ‘She wants to know if you will leave, and I tell her yes.
You must leave and not return; bad for you, bad for her, bad
for everyone.’
“ ‘Why bad? I am grateful to you; you have saved me. You
are my family now; I owe you my life.’
“ ‘Bad for you here; people will kill. They not know; they
not understand. They fear.’
“Your mother sobbed and looked at me through her tears.
She raised her voice, and her grandmother took her by the
shoulders and spoke to her with even greater insistence than
before.
“She shook herself away from her grandmother and hugged
me again. The man said some words and left on the path
through the jungle, walking on all fours as he did.
“ ‘Bad for you, more bad for her. You both know; let it be
whatever pleases the spirits,’ her grandmother said, shaking her
head. And she left on the same path as the man.
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11
“We were there for several days, with occasional visits from
her grandmother to bring us food, and from the man, who
brought us a bundle of firewood tied to his back every day.
With each passing day I felt stronger, and I began to hunt in the
sea for both of us. We also began learning words from each
other. Your mother’s mind was very sharp and very agile; she
learned much faster than I, but soon we could converse easily.
“Her life had not been easy and her situation was
precarious, in spite of the great efforts of her grandmother,
Simone, to provide for her and make a good life for her. We
came to the conclusion that it would be much easier for her to
go unnoticed on my side than for me to do so on her side.
“Day by day our love for each other grew, until it filled
every corner of our spirits. But the time I had requested for my
supposed explorations was coming to an end; if I wanted to
have any opportunity to take her back with me, as she had said
repeatedly was her wish, I had to be careful not to fall into
disgrace among my people.
“Besides, what Simone had said about a woman apparently
of my race having been here before myself, kept spinning
through my head. I needed to find out who had crossed over
from our side to yours, and that might not be easy to discover.
“The first time we parted, it tore at our souls, just as it did
each time over the next few months as I came and went, even
though I only left to try to find a place and a means for us to be
together and safe for as long as we lived. I spent every minute I
could when I was back in my world searching for a way to
somehow bring her over. I also tried to find out about the
woman who first crossed over to your side.
“As to the means of taking her back to my world, the
wreckage of the submarine where I had found the crossing point
was so twisted that it would be impossible to get through it
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even with a small one-person transport. Once I tried to widen
the passage and I nearly lost my life in the collapse of the steel
structure that followed. It took me weeks to open up a narrow
new passage to the crossing point again.
“As to my search for the mysterious woman who had
crossed before me, I didn’t have much more luck. As the days
and weeks went by, my despair grew greater and greater.
“Meanwhile I kept lengthening my leaves of absence to
continue my explorations, until I finally found myself in a
position of needing to change my status to freeman. While that
would allow me to come and go as I pleased anywhere on our
planet, by renouncing my responsibilities toward my community
I would lose the right to maintain residence on my atoll, to use
community equipment, and to be heard in decision-making
community meetings, among other things.
“Your mother was waiting for me at a little cove near the
mangrove swamp on the evening of the first day after the full
moon, but when I didn’t show up, she returned the next day,
and the next, and the next. . .
12
“When I finally managed to open my way through the
wreckage again and come back to her, the joy she felt at seeing
me could hardly placate the sorrow and emptiness she felt
because of Simone’s passing just a few days before. Not being
able to do anything for her grandmother as she watched her
heart weaken rapidly and mysteriously over the last few weeks
had filled her heart with great heaviness.
“She waded into the water until the waves were lapping at
her knees, and we hugged each other with the desperation of
two people who, even though they refuse to admit it, know that
even those brief and far-apart moments of happiness could
cease to exist at any time. In an effort to exorcize our fears and
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our pain, we made love, passionately, while the waves covered
us with a blanket of foam. That was the night you and your
brother were conceived.
“We spent the rest of that night in the mangrove swamp,
and I wrapped myself in a large cloth that your mother kept wet
with seawater so that I wouldn’t have to leave her side. Just as
the dawn was breaking, I jumped up at the sound of someone
or something coming towards us through the swamp.
“I quickly woke your mother and we left the clearing to
take cover in the foliage of the mangrove trees. From where I
stood, I could soon see that it was Malaam who was nearing the
clearing.
“ ‘Fanya? Kenguele? Where…?’
“ ‘Here we are, Malaam,’ said Fanya. ‘What has happened,
for you to come here so early in the day?’
“ ‘I’ve heard some things in the village, and I think we have
a problem. As you know, the pig farmer’s wife, Madame
Oyono, was always trying to get your grandmother to agree to
marry you to her oldest son, Mathieu. Now that you are alone,
she will pressure you even more.’
“ ‘She’s not alone!’ I told him emphatically.
“ ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, my friend, but if they find
you they will kill you, and they will probably kill Fanya, as well.’
“ ‘But why would they find us? Nobody knows we are here,
do they?’ asked your mother.
“ ‘That’s the problem, child,” he explained. “It seems that
your constant visits to the mangrove swamp have stirred up
gossip and the suspicions of Madame Porc, I mean Madame
Oyono. It turns out she sent her son to follow you and find out
what you were up to.’
“ ‘The son is almost worse than the father!’ she shuddered.
“ ‘I don’t think he saw you clearly, but he knows he saw
something strange, and now there is a rumor going around that
you have been meeting up with a mamiwata.’
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“She turned to me. ‘Gods, Kenguele! You must leave at
once!’
“ ‘No, Fanya, I won’t leave you here alone!’ I vowed.
“ But Malaam was firm. ‘Now I’m the one who must tell
you that she will not be alone, friend Sharduk.’
“ ‘Well, all right; I’ll go. But in two weeks I’ll return with
some solution to be able to take you with me.’
“ ‘All right, in two weeks!’
“We embraced once more, and I dove into the water.
13
“When I crossed over again to my home world, I felt at
once that something was not right about the water; it was hard
to breathe. I headed for the tear in the ship’s hull where I
usually went in and out. Then I noticed the complete silence
around me. The sensation of not getting enough oxygen got
stronger and stronger.
“I pushed off towards the surface of the ocean; my lungs
were aching and my skin began to sting and burn. As I ascended
I finally understood what was happening to me—the pocket of
deadwater had drifted and now it completely surrounded the
wrecked submarine. I survived only because I only crossed just
the outer edge of the pocket, where it was less dense than the
main part of it.
“When I reached the surface, I exhaled the water from my
lungs and filled them with air; it had never seemed so delicious.
I lay back and floated for several minutes until I recovered
somewhat, and I swam a long ways before going back
underwater. The millions of cubic meters of death continued to
shift position until the only way I knew of to cross back and
forth between our worlds was right in the middle of it.
“Ever since then I have been trying to cross back over to
your mother’s side, failing miserably again and again. That
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cursed mass of deadwater began to grow in size, and it was
impossible to get through, at least with the means I had at my
disposal. I finally had to find someone who would help me
open a new portal that would allow me to return. I knew there
was a good chance that it wouldn’t work the way we wanted it
to, but neither I nor the magician who helped me imagined that
there could be such a great time difference, and that I would
return here seventeen years later than I expected.”
“Ah, but you kept trying until you got back! I think my
brother must have inherited his stubbornness from you!” Ciel
exclaimed. A smile spread across Man Kenguele’s face, showing
his conical-shaped teeth.
“Your teeth! We didn’t inherit that from you!” she laughed.
“You can thank the Twins for that!” he agreed. The
villagers would never have let you live. Soon I will ask you bring
to your brother here, so that he, too, can learn the truth about
who you are. After that we will talk with your mother, so that
she can get ready to come with me.”
“Oh, yes! As soon as I see Etienne I’ll tell him all about
you. I don’t really see him much these days. I know he’s up to
something to try to get enough money to be able to leave this
neighborhood we live in and so that Malaam, who has taken
care of us for as long as I can remember, can return to his home
in the north before he’s too old to travel.”
“So Malaam is still living?”
“He’s as tough as ebony wood, a good man, in spite of all
the pain and suffering he’s been through.”
“He can be a big help to us; when it’s time, you will tell him
that I’ve returned and that I plan to take all three of you back
with me. Now run back home and talk to your brother. Please
don’t say anything to your mother yet, though. I need to think
of how to tell her after so much time has gone by.”
“So you’ll take all three of us with you?”
“I always planned on taking your mother with me, although
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I was beginning to fear it was impossible. And if you and your
brother want to come with us, I’ll be the happiest creature in
both worlds!”
“Will you wait for me here in the cave?”
“Yes, for now. It’s a safe hiding place. I love you, my
daughter.”
“And I love you, my father. I’ve always dreamed of meeting
you.”
Ciel slipped into the lagoon and was soon in the open sea.
Her heart was racing, and it wasn’t just because of the
tremendous speed at which she was traveling beneath the
waves. She had met her father, and he was kind yet powerful,
and incredibly beautiful. She could hardly wait to tell her
brother all about him, and especially to tell her mother. She
would just have to wait for that.
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Chapter 7
Etienne
1
Etienne was sitting on the ground with his legs crossed and
his back leaning against the adobe wall of his home, intent, as
he so often was, on untangling the knotted mass that his fishing
nets ended up in after every night he spent on the sea. He had
hardly glanced up the day before when a small group of white
tourists riding in a large, white van had stopped at his mother’s
road-side stand to buy some Hausa candies and roasted peanuts.
A gust of wind had caught the pages of a comic book that
one of the white children had dropped, and it blew up against
his foot. The van had started down the side road, and the boy
was hanging halfway out of the car window with a stupid look
on his face, staring at his sister, Ciel.
As far as he could tell, the owner of the comic book was
just a bit younger than himself. He had always thought that
white children stayed children longer. He doubted that any of
them would be able to endure a night of fishing with him. The
mental image of a little white boy struggling with the nets in the
middle of the night put a half-smile on his still beardless but
weathered face.
He took another look at the comic book. Quite a bit of red
dust had ended up trapped between its pages; he shook it. As
usual, only the covers were in color. They promised epic tales to
whoever decided to read the booklet.
It was the story of a white underwater superhero with a
dolphin mascot and a ridiculous little pair of short trousers
made of fish scales. He would finish reading it later if he had
time.
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As usual the great barracuda, those cursed opportunistic
beasts, had torn big holes in his net in order to steal the fish
from him. His palms were covered with hard callouses and as
tough as leather. His arms were enormously strong from heaving
the nets into his boat day after day. In fact he was one of
the few local fishermen who could work alone, handling the
equipment even when the nets were full and overflowing with
fish.
Not yet seventeen, he had acted as man of the house
already for several years. His mother, his sister, and he lived in
one of the five huts standing by the unpaved highway in the tiny
neighborhood of N’long, which belonged to the village of
Longhee, on the coast along the foot of Mount Cameroon.
There were neighborhoods like N’long in all the villages.
That was where the pariahs lived, the people who the majority
of the villagers did not care for very much or preferred to keep
at a distance for various reasons, while at the same time keeping
them close enough to be useful if they needed the services of
the outcasts.
An offense to the local chief, some unusually persistent
gossip, being unpleasantly ugly or deformed, and many other
reasons that were as absurd as they were varied, could earn one
permanent residency in one of these neighborhoods to which
the undesirables were relegated.
The fact that the wife of the richest man in the village, the
pig farmer, had spent years accusing their mother, Fanya, of
being an evil witch, just because she had rejected their attempts
to marry her to their son, had certainly not helped the family’s
status in the village.
And the fact that with the help of the local witchdoctor, the
same woman had spread rumors that were repeated over and
over, with ever-evolving and ever more succulent details, about
their mother bathing in the nude on the nights of the full
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moons, to meet up with a sea spirit—well, that did not help,
either.
Then there was the fact that Fanya’s twins, Etienne and
Ciel, were born with those huge green eyes and extremely
straight hair, which was irrefutable proof for the villagers of the
supposed aquatic adventures of their mother. They were
eventually expelled from the village and forced to live in the
neighborhood of outcasts. They were children of the sea, they
were cursed; they could not and should not live alongside
normal people.
Like the other outcasts, among many other restrictions, they
were only allowed to sell in the street outside of the market
place, and they were not allowed to participate in any of the
village festivities. Of course, that didn’t mean that the villagers
couldn’t buy products from them—paying a reduced price, of
course—or hire them for any tasks no one else wanted to
perform—again at a much lower rate than they would have paid
‘normal’ people.
N’long consisted of only five huts that were standing and
two others that were in shambles; the current population
consisted of Fanya and her children, Ciel and Etienne; Malaam
and Alice; Marie and her twin girls; and Malik, who was blind.
Fanya and her children shared the hut closest to the road.
As a tribal healer, she did her best to help all of her neighbors
with their various maladies.
Malaam, the leper, would always be a leper in the eyes of
the villagers, in spite of having been cured years ago. His wife,
Alice, was like a grandmother to Fanya’s twins, to Marie and her
girls, and to anyone else who was willing to accept her care and
concern. Although she had never had children of her own, she
was the undeniable matriarch of the little community.
Marie herself was a teen-age mother with twin girls who
were severely retarded. Their father, a married man thirty years
Marie’s senior, had never claimed them as his. He had visited
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Marie sporadically before completely abandoning her and her
little ones. She spent a lot of her time with her neighbor, Malik,
and was coming to feel deeply towards him. She hoped he
would feel the same.
Malik was a young man who in general was quite unsociable.
He had become blind due to an untreated case of a parasitic
filaria. He was kind to Marie, caring for her as though she were
his little sister, and although it was hard for him to express his
affection, he demonstrated it daily by providing for her and her
girls, sharing with them whatever he obtained from begging in
the marketplace.
Although Marie and her girls were the only ones who could
make him smile from time to time, Malik preferred to live alone
in the smallest hut of all, next to Marie’s, with his most prized
possession, an old radio that he kept working by setting up in
series the batteries that he picked up off the ground or found in
the garbage.
The fifth home in the neighborhood was nailed and
shuttered, and the jungle had already begun to reclaim it. It had
belonged to Bilal the Elder, the so-called evil witchdoctor, who
had lived there until one night he simply disappeared. The hut
was full of spirits now; at times, strange noises could be heard
coming from the interior. No one wanted to live there, and no
one dared to tear it down.
The residents of N’long were all uncomfortable for the
villagers to look at, because their circumstances reminded those
who saw them that misfortune could fall upon any of them at
any time. It was better to have them out of sight, so as not to be
tempted to help them, to get involved, to be human. Those
whose own lives were going well were too busy to complicate
their lives with other people’s troubles. They were a bother.
There has always been a natural tendency to bury or
distance oneself from problems, and from people who are
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considered to be a problem; it was easy to look away and wait
for someone else to resolve the situation.
With great effort and the help of her new neighbors, Fanya
had managed to set up a little stand at the roadside, where she
could sell her products to anyone who might pass that way. She
had everything from roasted peanuts to herbs and other
ingredients used in traditional medicines, as well as Hausa
candies that she made whenever she was able to obtain a few
kilos of sugar. The item that was always in greatest demand was
the laxative brew she made that would rid a person of
tapeworms, as easily as a good witchdoctor could rid one of an
evil spirit. With the income from the stand—supplemented by
the fish that Etienne brought home almost every morning to
cure by smoking them over coals in some old metal Texaco barrels—they
were able to eke out a living.
2
“Greetings, Etienne!” It was Malaam’s hoarse voice.
Just seeing him from a distance was enough to make the
village children cry and for the adults to look away in disgust.
But in N’long the former leper was loved and respected. He was
practically considered to be their chief, in spite of the fact that
he had to walk on all fours, even when he was bringing home
huge sections of tree trunks to split for firewood there beside
his hut. He would just roll them along in front of him. He had
been a large man, and he was still impressive, with strong, wide
shoulders.
“Good day, Malaam! How is Alice doing?”
“A little better—she had a better night. The herbs your
mother gave us are helping a lot. She’s still coughing, but the
fever is less.”
“I’m glad; my mother told me that she’ll probably be well
again in a couple more days.”
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“I hope so! You know I can’t bear to see her suffer. By the
way, how are your escape plans coming along?”
“Ha, ha! You have too many tales in your head, Malaam! I
just want to get my mother and Ciel out of N’long. I’ve told you
a thousand times that you and Alice are like family to us; I
would like you to come with us, as well.”
“And where are you going to go with a leper that is missing
more pieces than he has left, and his wife? I am doing just as
well—or just as poorly—here as I could do anywhere else, and
you know it would be hard for me to leave my mangrove swamp
behind.”
“Wouldn’t you like to return to the north? The drier climate
there would do Mama Alice’s lungs a lot of good, my mother
says.”
“The truth is that I would, though I’ve been gone so long I
don’t know if anyone there would remember me. Besides, I’m
still waiting for the return of a good friend that I met here; he
swore he would come back.”
“Well, it’s up to you. But I’d rather you came with us.
Besides, if you don’t, mother won’t want to leave you here alone
and won’t go.”
“Ah, you know your mother well! And how much money
have you been able to save up for this emigration plan of
yours?”
“Not as much as I would have liked, I’ll admit. But I have
an idea that will allow me to get enough together in a very, very
short time.”
“Oh? And what is this infallible idea that has come into
your head, young man?”
“I am going to catch me a barracuda king!”
“All by yourself? That’s impossible! It will take you and that
old piece of wood you call a boat down to the bottom of the
sea with it!”
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“Excuse me, but the Grand Titanic could take on a blue
whale!”
“Well, maybe, if you had more than one crewman, but I
can’t help you unless you use me for bait!”
“What a brute you are! But I do need a special kind of bait.
I want to catch me a really big barracuda, and I need you to tell
me if there’s anything about the kind of bait I need in all those
fishing stories that you know.”
“I’m not going to tell you how to get one of those things to
come to you; it’s very dangerous, and if anything happened to
you I would never be able to forgive myself.”
“Look, Malaam, I hate living in this hole. If I can get a
single fish that is large enough, we can leave here. I’ve been
saving every cent I could, but I still don’t have nearly enough to
get anywhere.”
“Good Lord of all things! All right, there was a fisherman
that I shared a prison cell with once, who told me that to catch
a really large barracuda, you would need to use a head for bait.”
“A head? Would it have to be. . .”
“Human? Well, ideally, yes—in the olden days they were
used, but later they discovered that we have a relative who has a
head enough like ours to fool a barracuda: a pig.”
“It might as well be an elephant; we don’t have any pigs.”
“True, we don’t, but you know someone who does.”
“Oh, shit! Yes, I know who—the pig farmer.”
“The very one whose wife wangled it so you and your sister
and your mother ended up here—yes, him.”
“Then tonight I’ll have to go fishing inland. But if he
catches me, he’ll feed me to his animals.”
“So you’ll have to make sure no one sees you. Don’t make
me end up being sorry that I helped you.”
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3
Not all nights are equally dark, and the presence or the
absence of the moon is not always the factor that holds most
sway in a night’s blackness. To have to enter into a hostile zone
in order to carry out a plan that could very well cost one their
life makes the darkness that lives crouching inside every heart
come out and add its strength to the night forces to make it
darker, thicker, and more menacing.
But the darkness had never bothered the young fisherman;
he was used to it, thanks to the hundreds of dark nights he had
spent sitting in his boat. From where he usually fished, he could
barely make out the feeble, distant dots of light that came from
the few lightbulbs in the coastal villages. At sea the only light he
had with him was his little oil lamp, which he kept dark during
the long hours of waiting for the fish to bite, so as not to waste
fuel.
He went out fishing, just as he did almost every night, but
this time when he got about a thousand swim-strokes from the
coast, he tossed out the rock that he used as an anchor and
swam back to the shore, where he had hidden the tools that he
would need that night in a hollow palm tree trunk. He could
walk from there to the pig farm in less than half an hour.
The night hid him; it made him feel sure of himself,
protected. He had brought along one of his harpoons with
several meters of coconut-fiber rope tied to one end, a net bag,
and a chunk of fermented yucca bread.
As is often the case of plans before they are actually carried
out, his seemed very simple to him. He would find a good tree
to climb next to the fence that surrounded the hogs, throw the
pieces of yucca bread down into their pen, wait until one of the
animals was close enough, and then throw his harpoon directly
through its lungs so that it couldn’t make one of those loud
squeals that they are known for.
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Then he would just hoist it up by pulling on the rope, carry
it to the shore, cut off its head, and throw the rest of the
carcass into the ocean with a big rock inside of it. The sea and
its inhabitants would take care of the rest.
But of course if you want to hear the gods and spirits laughing,
just tell them about your plans in your prayers.
Almost four hours had gone by since he had tossed the
food over the leafy, five-cubit-high fence made of thorn bushes
that surrounded the pigsty, but the huge animals had not come
near it. Perhaps they were still feeling full from their last feeding.
The truth was that they probably ate better than most of the
human inhabitants in those parts, and they received better medical
attention for sure.
Worried about how late it was getting, Etienne decided to
drop down into the pen from the branches of the little avocado
tree that he had been sitting in, the trunk of which stood just
inches from the thorny fence. He had planned to be finished
here hours ago, and dawn—that unreconcilable enemy of all
acts that need the cover of night—would soon bring in a tide
of light that would most certainly drag him away on it.
His bare feet landed silently on the other side of the fence,
but something in his lumbar region popped with a sharp cracking
noise and sent a volley of pain through his spine and up
into his head. The hours he had spent crouching in the treetop
had taken their toll.
As he slowly stood up straight, he thought about how dangerous
it was to be in the middle of a pigsty, alone and at night.
Pigs have much better night vision than humans, and only a
very large dog could inflict worse bites than a pig’s.
There were some flickering neon lights on in the back end
of the pen, and they showed stroboscopic silhouettes of the
pigs against the wall of the guardhouse. Columns of foul-smelling
vapor arose from among the piles of excrement.
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The pig that he had been eyeing because of its good but
not excessive size was asleep, stretched out in a puddle of mud
and dung. It must have been having some kind of a nightmare,
because every now and then it would start kicking its thick hind
legs.
When his toes were less than a palm’s width from the
animal’s back, Etienne lifted the harpoon that he had used
against so many sharks at sea, and with a single, powerful thrust
he pierced the skin, fat, flesh and bone, leaving the pig literally
pinned to the ground. Spasms shook the animal’s body in waves,
but although it tried mightily, it could not emit more than a
bubbly sound from its snout. The agitated movement of its legs
mixed its blood with the mire in which it had been sleeping.
The sweet, metallic aroma of blood stirred the interest of
the other pigs, and they began to wander over to their wounded
companion. When Etienne pulled out his harpoon, the animal
gave one last shiver. As the grunts of the other pigs began to
increase in volume and intensity, he set about to decapitate his
victim just as he did with the fish he caught, with a rapid series
of cuts with his cleaning knife, following an imaginary line from
behind the pointy little ears down to the throat.
Just as he stuck his hands and the knife under the thick
flesh to separate the first cervical vertebra from the base of the
skull, a light went on in one of the windows at the guard house,
which was next to the pigsty. The grunts must have wakened
someone.
With his arms and chest bathed in blood, Etienne grasped
the head with one hand while he used the other to cut as quickly
as he could through the veins and arteries that still fastened the
head to the body. He pulled with all his might and the head
came off, making a horrible sucking sound.
He could hear the night guard opening the front door,
swearing as he went. There was no time to dispose of the rest
of the carcass. Etienne stuck his trophy in the net bag that he
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had brought along and lit out running towards the fence. He
vaulted over it, using his harpoon as a pole to propel himself
into the air, just as the large, bright spotlights went on in the
pigsty, producing a long shadow as he leapt. He ran, and ran,
and ran, and the shouts and cursing behind him slowly faded
into the distance.
4
Etienne did not stop until he reached the seashore. He hid
his tools again along with the pig’s head and dove into the water
to return to his boat. The spirits must have nearly died of
laughter, if that is possible, when they saw him go in, all
covered in blood. It left a generous trail behind him as he swam
—the reddish color could be seen by the first light of day, as the
water turned bluer and less black.
When he was about halfway out to where his boat was
anchored, Etienne noticed something brushing up hard against
the sole of his foot—something as rough as a metal file. He
quickly turned his head and saw three large, greenish-gray,
triangular fins protruding from the water. He turned back to
look out to sea, to calculate whether or not he had any chance
of reaching his boat, and he saw another fin, even larger and of
the same greenish-gray, crossing over to his left, only a couple
arm-lengths away.
The terror of being devoured overwhelmed him, stealing
his breath, leaving him weak and trembling, unable to swim a
single stroke more. His plan had never included ending up
bathed in pig’s blood; he had turned himself into the perfect
bait for large sea creatures.
Now he would never be able to take his family away from
N’long, he would never capture a barracuda, he would never
know who his father was—never, never, ever. The absolute
certainty that he was going to die filled him suddenly and
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overcame the terror that had frozen him. At least he would die
at sea, as a fisherman. He took his cleaning knife from his belt,
determined to take one of those bastard hammer sharks with
him.
The sharks had begun to swim in smaller and smaller circles
around him. Etienne knew that the first attack would come
from below. He took in a deep breath of air, knowing that it
would be his last, and dove swiftly downward, as though he
were going down for oysters or sponges.
He had always had excellent vision underwater and he could
hold his breath for a very long time. He saw the fast-swimming
shape of the largest shark of the group, about five meters long,
coming straight upwards toward him.
His intention was to go directly towards the animal, shift to
the side at the last minute, and try to slit it open lengthwise. As
he kicked with all his strength towards the great shark, whose
open jaws he could see in perfect detail, he saw something else
that nearly gave him a heart attack, saving the sharks from
having to kill him.
What looked to him like a flaming red object flew by him at
great speed, leaving a wake of bubbles behind it, and hurled
itself directly into the shark’s side. The impact was tremendous;
he heard a great thud as the object struck the shark’s flesh, and
the sound of splitting cartilage. The beast’s back was bent at an
impossible angle, and as he watched in amazement, the shark
began to succumb to the pull of the seabed, sinking down,
while a thread of blood streamed from his open jaws.
After the impact, the light surrounding the strange object
shifted to an iridescent blue as it slowly ascended toward him. It
stopped just a few meters away, at eye-level with him; the
bubbles dispersed and he could make out a figure that almost
looked human. Time seemed to stand still as they observed each
other.
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The surface of the man-like creature’s skin produced waves
of iridescent light. Etienne felt so astonished that he let the last
bit of air escape from his lungs, and the knife dropped from his
hands. He could feel that very soon his lungs would fill with
water, and he panicked again. He could never reach the surface,
no matter how hard he swam. He had survived the sharks only
to die of drowning
He started upwards, but as soon as he did he felt something
grab him by the shoulders. He turned, ready to fight off
whoever or whatever it might be. It was his sister, Ciel. His
panic gave way to surprise. His twin took his face in her hands
and her smile filled him with a sense of peace. Only then did he
realize that—although with some difficulty—he was breathing
seawater. They ascended together.
The strange being, who had kept a prudent distance until
they reached the surface, approached them then. Etienne
realized, as he looked at the creature and at his sister treading
water together there in front of him, that they both had eyes of
the same sea-green color, just like his own.
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Chapter 8
Bilal the Great
1
“If you commanded respect like a real man, no one would
have dared to steal a pig from you!” Her sharp, soprano voice
was like Hell in the ears of those who were unfortunate enough
to hear her. And unfortunately the person who had to hear her
most often was Marcel Oyono, the pig farmer. “They are a pack
of envious curs, damn them all! What are you going to do about
it now? You need to teach a lesson to whoever did this terrible
thing!”
“But my dear,” sputtered the pig farmer, “we don’t even
know who it was! And they only took a pig’s head.”
“Oh, and now you’re going to correct me? You’d better not
be coming around to my room this evening, if you know what’s
good for you!”
A layer of noisily buzzing flies covered the carcass of the
beheaded animal like a green, metallic blanket.
“I’ve called for the marabout; I’m sure he’ll be able to help
me find out who it was,” Monsieur Oyono defended himself.
“Ha! I knew you wouldn’t be able to do it yourself. Gods, I
married an imbecile!” With her nose in the air she whirled
around and marched off, holding her skirts above her knees to
keep them out of the muck. It was the first time she had actually
gone into the pigsty, and the penetrating stench made her feel
nauseated.
Marcel cursed himself on a daily basis for ever having
married her, almost twenty years ago. Of course if it hadn’t been
for the dowry her family brought to the table, his business
would never have reached the level of prosperity he enjoyed
now.
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On the best of days, she behaved like a witch, and on the
worst, like the cruelest of harpies. No matter that they had the
largest house in the village, the only motor vehicle, and the only
television for miles around. Nothing was good enough for
Madame Oyono.
As a young woman she had put on airs of being a great
singer, and frequently complained about not living in the
capitol, where she could have studied the techniques of bel
canto. Undoubtedly her talent would have been recognized, and
she would have acquired the fame and fortune which for some
mysterious reason she believed she deserved.
They currently had three hundred ten pigs on their farm—
well, three hundred nine now—and half of the villagers worked
in their employ. It was true that he had had to deceive or
threaten quite a few of their neighbors in order to acquire the
land he needed for such a large number of animals, but now he
was by far the richest man around, and his opinions were
listened to in the Tribal Assembly.
This wasn’t the first time someone had stolen a pig from
him, nor the first time he pretended someone had done so in
order to make a present of it to one of his lovers. But there was
something very strange about it this time—they had only taken
part of the animal.
On her way out of the pigsty, his wife ran into Bilal the
Great, as he insisted on calling himself.
“Greetings, great marabout! Thank you for coming. I hope
you can help my idiot of a husband figure out who has dared to
slaughter one of our animals right in our yard.”
“Greetings, my lovely lady. I’m sure we can help; don’t be
so hard on him—the poor fellow can’t help himself.”
“I know, Bilal—it’s just that he drives me crazy. It’s a good
thing that I have you.” Taking advantage of the fact that her
back was to her husband and that there was quite a distance
between them, Mabelle Oyono flashed a provocative smile at
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the marabout, who could barely mask the look of lust on his face.
She was Marcel’s fourth wife, but when his first wife died,
she managed to place herself in a position of power within the
family, and she had the other wives and their sons immersed in
a constant state of terror. She controlled their finances and
decided who would eat and who would go hungry.
“If you keep looking at me that way, we will be caught,”
muttered the marabout.
“What if we are? He’s only half a man; the only thing he
knows how to do is shout at his workers. When I shout at him,
he turns into nothing.”
“Of course, Madame Oyono,” Bilal continued in a voice
loud enough for the pig farmer to hear him. “I will do
everything I can.”
“Well, my magician, let’s see when you come to visit me
again, and we can spend a while. . .studying the dark arts,” she
whispered. Her lover nodded and smiled as he passed her and
entered the pigsty.
The truth was that it was quite risky to get himself involved
with the pig farmer’s wife. At fifty-two, she was eleven years
older than he, but in spite of the fact that the marabout generally
preferred younger women, he had never known a woman as
lusty as Mabelle.
She had taken possession of him, or had him under a spell,
he didn’t know which, but he found himself unable to resist the
impulse to bed her—in her house, or in the jungle, anywhere, as
often as he could. And to be truthful some of the pig farmer’s
children did not look very much like their presumed father at
all. In fact there were several jokes about that fact, which had
circulated in the village for years, always whispered of course.
“My friend, Marcel! I was told that you require my services.
Here I am, to help throw light on what has happened to you.”
“Hello, Bilal. Thank you for coming so quickly,” the pig
farmer greeted him.
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“Not at all, my friend. Besides, in this heat the carcass will
soon be rotting and the smell will be unbearable.”
Marcel waved his walking stick above the carcass and a
cloud of flies rose up. “Who could have done this?” he asked
the marabout. “A spirit? Why would anyone take only the head
of such an animal? Its hind quarters could have fed a family for
weeks. Poor animal! It was one of the largest pigs I had this
year.”
Bilal knelt down, waving his bull’s-tail fly whisk at the
buzzing diners, who were trying to get back to their earlymorning
banquet. The carcass was lying on its right side. Bilal
noticed the expert cuts that had been used to separate the head
from the body, and the wide slit between the ribs. It was an
entry wound, since the edges were tucked inward towards the
interior of the carcass.
“Have someone turn the animal over; it’s too heavy for
me.”
“Yes, of course. I’m too old to be turning over dead hogs
myself. Mathieu, Mathieu! Come help your father. Zambe! This
son of mine turned out very lazy; we have always been hardworking
men in this family—it’s almost like he was no son of
mine!”
For the second time that day Bilal had to make a great
effort to hide the smile that tried to peek out of his long face,
partly because the probability that any number of the pig
farmer’s children were not his was quite high, and partly
because he knew that practically everything Marcel had obtained
in life had been through deceit and by having about the same
set of scruples as the hogs he raised.
“Yes, Father! What do you want me to do?”
“What do I want you to do? You should always be at my
side and know what I need you to do; I have to shout at you to
get you to do anything. Turn this pig over onto its other side.”
“It’s surprising that the other pigs didn’t eat it,” commented
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Bilal, watching as the young man struggled with the carcass.
“The watchman came out to see what was going on and put
all the others inside, so that we could look at it as undisturbed
as possible in the light of day—and especially so that I wouldn’t
accuse him of having stolen it or of having fallen asleep again
while he was on duty,” explained Marcel.
“And the watchman didn’t see what happened?” insisted
the marabout.
“He just saw a shadow, someone running as fast as they
could, and he thought they were carrying something in their
hands.”
With great effort Mathieu managed to get the heavy carcass
turned onto its other side.
“Bring me a bucket of water; this side is so filthy I can’t see
anything,” ordered the marabout.
“Bring it, Mathieu, and be quick about it!” echoed the pig
farmer.
“This is going to be very complicated to solve, Marcel. I
will need much spiritual labor, and certain herbs that are
brought to me from far, far away. I’m very sorry, but this is
going to be quite expensive for you.”
“Of course,” muttered Marcel between clenched teeth.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing, I just said, ‘Of course.’ I understand; it’s difficult
work. I’m sure you’ll have to consult with many spirits and that
you’ll have to put much effort into solving the mystery.”
“Yes, and a great expense in magic plants. I always have the
blessed porcupine quills brought to me from Zaire; it’s a long
ways away, but those are the ones that give the best results.”
“How much will you need?”
“For now, about sixty thousand céfa francs, half to buy the
materials I need for the spells, and the other half to burn the
banknotes on your behalf in my spiritual fires. You know how
much the spirits like for us to be generous with material things.”
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The pig farmer’s wallet was connected directly to his heart;
by this time Marcel was in almost physical pain. The amount
being required was three month’s worth of wages for a skilled
laborer.
“Here’s the water.” Mathieu arrived, panting.
“Good. Toss it on the carcass so we can see the wounds
better.”
Mathieu tossed the water from the bucket onto the carcass
with such force that blood, water and muck splattered both the
marabout and his father.
“Damn you! This is unacceptable! Look what you’ve done
to my tunic! It was blessed; it was sent to me from Chad, and it
was very expensive!”
“Son, you are an idiot! You just cost me another load of
francs!”
The look of disgust on Bilal’s face was a poem in itself;
Marcel was only concerned about the stupidity of his son and
the money that he was sure the marabout would use the
circumstances to squeeze out of him.
“I’ll buy you another, Bilal. I’m sorry; my son is a fool. Get
out of here, you! Go clean the hog house!”
“Of course, Father, right away. I am so sorry; sometimes I
am very clumsy.”
Mathieu managed to keep a straight face until he got out of
sight of his father and the witch doctor. Spattering blood and
pig feces on that arrogant marabout and on his father at the same
time had really made his day. Too bad that he could not brag
about it to anyone, for fear that one of them might hear of it
and find out he had done it on purpose.
His father insisted on enjoying good health, and the
yearning to inherit ate at Mathieu, just as it did at his brothers.
He should have left the village instead of staying to work in the
family business, but he didn’t dare go too far, because as soon
as the old geezer kicked the bucket, they would all dive in after
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the inheritance like a pack of hyenas.
Mabelle, his mother, had done a fine job of positioning him
as heir above the older sons that Marcel had had with his first
wives. Everything would come to him in time; he just needed to
be patient, very patient.
2
Cursing under his breath, Bilal cleaned off his face with the
inside of one of his sleeves and kept studying the carcass. This
family was such a pack of imbeciles that they deserved for him
to get as much money from them as he could.
Ever since he had eliminated all the competition in the
village—his father on one hand and the old witch Simone on
the other—life had been smiling on him. He earned as much
money as he wanted.
Getting rid of the old woman had been easy; he just had to
slip a little poison her way. It was enough to scatter purpleleaf
powder on her firewood so the smoke would weaken her
already tired heart. Her granddaughter, who lived with her,
never noticed anything, at least not enough to be suspicious.
His father’s case had been more complicated. A direct
attack or a poisoning were out of the question. Instead of using
such drastic measures, he drew on support from the
Witchdoctor’s Council. With their approval he organized
matters so that his father would fall into disgrace in the village.
Bilal the Younger only had to provide Chief Ngoma with
the medication against impotence that his father had denied him
repeatedly because it was too dangerous, given the advanced age
of the chief. He had taken advantage of the situation to get into
Chief Ngoma’s good graces, telling him that his father was a
selfish man and refused the chief’s request in order to humiliate
him, and so that he could not satisfy his new young wife, who
was only sixteen at the time.
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The chief had demoted the older marabout from his position
and Bilal the Elder had ended up having to live in N’long, with
the rest of the outcasts, while his son now occupied his
prestigious position at the chief’s side. The only ones who
interfered with Bilal the Younger now and then were the
missionaries, who insisted on teaching false religions to the
people, religions in which there was no need for a marabout, and
in which there were no spirits to appease.
It had been a long time since Bilal the Younger had
believed in the spirits; they had never appeared to him even
once, in spite of his repetition of the rites that his family had
passed down to him with such zealous care. But if the common
people took this attitude, it would be very bad for business—
totally unacceptable.
Bilal observed that there was another wound which was
clearly visible on the left side of the pig carcass. This was an exit
wound, with the edges pointing outward, away from the body.
The water had washed away some of the blood from the ground
as well, and a reflection caught his attention. He reached down
and pulled a small piece of pointed metal out of the mud.
“Did you find something?”
“No, it’s just. . . I’m collecting some dirt from the area to
take home with me and present it to the spirits.” He quickly hid
the piece of metal in a fold of his brightly colored bubú tunic.
“This is going to require an enormous amount of spiritual
work and many hours of concentration. Oh, and I will also need
a good, fat hog.”
“For the spirits, as well?”
“For my own spirit, to be more precise. The spirit is fed
through the flesh, and my spirit must be in top form in order to
carry out such an arduous task. If you would like to pay me now
so that I can start making the various offerings I need to make,
that would be best.”
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3
With a full wallet and a fattened hog on its way to his
house, Bilal started on his way. His home was located a little
apart from the rest of the village, to avoid prying eyes, especially
the eyes and ears of the husbands of his multiple lovers.
It wasn’t hard for him to guess that whoever had carried
out the night raid and removed the animal’s head with such skill
was either a hunter, a butcher, or a fisherman. The little piece of
metal that he had hidden so astutely from Marcel was still in the
fold of his tunic; it was undoubtedly the tip of a harpoon used
for spearing large fish, so that made the third option the most
likely. And there were not many fishermen left—most of them
had ended up working for the pig farmer in his foul-smelling
business.
He detested the way the stench permeated his expensive
tunic. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to get the stains
out. He strongly suspected that the idiot eldest son of Oyono
and his wife Mabelle had splattered him on purpose. That was
all right; he would take care of Mathieu in due time.
Mabelle had tried for a long time to marry Mathieu to
Fanya, Simone’s granddaughter, but her proposals were rejected
again and again. It was Mabelle who had stirred up the rumors
that Fanya had been seen with a sea spirit, a mamiwata. Of
course, that was ridiculous—spirits did not exist, nor did
mermen nor mermaids—but the story was useful to get the
villagers to expel Fanya.
Bilal’s thoughts returned to the investigation. He was
confident he could make Marcel’s purse bleed a little more.
It was probable that the culprit was someone quite young,
and without much love towards the richest man in the village or
his wife. He wasn’t totally certain, but he had a perfect
candidate—Fanya’s boy. Besides, as he recalled, hog heads had
been used in olden times as special fishing bait, to capture giant
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barracuda.
Many fishermen had lost their lives trying to reel in such
dangerous specimens. There were not many people around who
were crazy enough, or needy enough, to try it. But perhaps
someone from N’long. . .
Fanya’s son, Etienne, was young enough and strong enough
to try something as stupid as stealing from the pig farmer. Bilal
would only need to tell Marcel of his suspicions and wait to see
if someone brought in an unusually large fish to sell in the
marketplace. What’s more, he could teach Fanya a good lesson,
while he was at it. He could use this incident to get rid of her
for good, too.
When he managed to get her thrown out of the village he
thought he would not have to worry any more about her
stealing his clients. It worked for the first few years—almost no
one was interested in her medicines. But after a while some of
the people he had not been able to cure himself had begun to
go to her. Unacceptable.
By accusing Fanya of helping Etienne catch a barracuda by
the use of magic, and accusing him of stealing the hog’s head at
her instigation, he would have plenty of ammunition against
her. He could probably have all three of them expelled from the
region. Perhaps some indignant villager would even make a
night raid over to N’long to burn down their hut with all of
them inside.
Malaam, the leper, was also on Bilal’s long list of people
that he planned to eliminate eventually. Several times he had
been disrespectful to the marabout, and what was worse, he did
not seem to fear him in the least. This would be a good time to
make a clean sweep of the whole lot.
4
“So what you are saying is that the spirits have revealed to
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you that the thief is a fisherman, and that he lives not too far
from here.”
The heat in the pig farmer’s house was asphyxiating. Only
the cold beer that one of his younger wives was serving them
made it a little more bearable.
“That’s right, my friend. I filled my bowl with the blood of
the pig that you sent to me, and then I sprinkled over it some of
the dirt that I had collected, which had been mixed with the
blood of its brother. After hours of deep connection with the
spirits, the image of a young fisherman was shown to me on the
surface of the liquid in the bowl.”
“I’m sorry it is so hot in here, Bilal. The damned air
conditioning is on the blink again, and they have to bring the
parts from Japan. Japan! Damned Chinese, they are going to be
the end of me yet.”
Sometimes Bilal had to make great efforts of self-control to
not beat the pig farmer to death. His stupidity and ignorance
were despicable, especially when compared to the fellow’s great
ability to make himself rich. His house looked more like what
you might find in a city—it had electricity and running water,
the inside walls were painted, the floors were of marble, and it
even had an indoor bathroom. That was definitely an influence
from the white pigs, who were too lazy to leave their house to
take care of their bodily needs, and preferred to do it inside
their own houses.
“The spirits must have told you something more than that,
because with all due respect, that’s not much to go on.”
“After burning your money together with the holy divining
herbs, the spirits whispered to me that the young fisherman had
received the help of a woman, a close relative of his, who had
some knowledge of magic.”
“Around here, almost any woman knows enough magic to
tie knots in the thatching of her neighbors’ huts to bring them
bad luck, or to plant an old machete inside a circle made from
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burnt flametree wood so it won’t rain on the fields of someone
they dislike.”
“They also told me that the culprit will soon bring a large
barracuda to the marketplace to sell. Whoever does this will be
guilty of killing the hog and of practicing forbidden magic.”
“Well! I’ll tell the chief about this; he must give permission
for someone to be taken prisoner.”
“I’ll speak to him myself. I have to pay him a visit anyway,
to treat him for a certain problem he has.”
“I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“Just bedchamber problems; too many wives for a decrepit
old man like him.”
“Ha, ha, ha! Bilal, you are terrible! Another beer?”
You don’t know how terrible! thought Bilal to himself. He was
planning to take advantage of the situation to rid himself of
Fanya and her children, then poison the pig farmer and claim
that it had been a case of vengeance on the part of the healer’s
spirit.
No one would mourn much for Marcel in the village,
especially if his business kept going and providing employment
to the villagers. And someone would have to advise his poor
widow on how to handle her finances, and keep her company.
The rest of his wives would make good servants. He was
definitely on a roll.
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Chapter 9
Awale
1
The dry season was lasting longer than usual. The children
stirred up little clouds of dust as they pushed old tires down the
village street with the help of a stick or when they kicked a ball
made of rags and rubber strips, in the short periods of leisure
that they could enjoy after a day of helping with chores in the
fields and around the house. Not fully conscious of the
difficulties with which their parents struggled on a daily basis,
they played whenever they could, for as long as they could.
The old chief was sitting on a little stool in the shade of an
enormous rubber tree, staring at an awale board. Close by, six
other men watched in reverent silence that contrasted sharply
with the shouts of the children playing in the street.
The awale board was beautifully made. It sat between two
players; games could last for days, and sometimes a great deal of
money or even land was wagered. Whole inheritances had
exchanged hands over these little boards, and wars had been
declared between tribes because of accusations of cheating at
the game.
The chief turned slightly to spit out the spent cola nut pulp;
he chewed cola frequently, a habit that had weakened his heart
and stained his few remaining teeth an orange color.
He picked up the tokens from one of the hollows on his
side of the board, and with a crooked, orangish smile he
dropped them into the hollows on his opponent’s side of the
board.
“You’re done for, Mabuka”
“Dammit, I don’t have any tokens left to move.”
“That’s right. You owe me another ten thousand francs!”
“Your wife is going to kill you, Mabuka!” laughed Franco,
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the blacksmith, who stood by watching. He often played awale
with the chief himself, but he was prudent enough not to place
any bets on the games.
“Give me a chance to win it back, Chief.”
“Double or nothing.”
“Double or nothing? Hell no, I’m going home. I’ll just have
to figure out something to tell my wife.”
“If it’s of any consolation, it was a good game; you played
very well. It’s just that there at the end, your greed got the better
of you and you lost. It’s like life itself, playing out on the
board.”
“I’ll come by to settle my account tomorrow, Chief.”
“Tomorrow is better than the day after. Go in peace,
Mabuka.”
“Thank you, Chief, thank you.”
Mabuka was fairly well off; he the owned the only grocer’s
shop in the village with a refrigerator, and on the sales of cold
beer alone he earned a great deal of money. Unfortunately he
ended up risking it all in nearly every game with stakes that he
could—games of luck and games of wit—and his account with
the old village chief was growing to the point where it was out
of control.
As he stood up and walked away, some of the spectators
who had watched the game made wisecracks about what his
huge wife would do to him when he got home, while the rest
praised the undeniable strategic abilities of Chief Ngoma.
2
“Hello, Mabuka! You don’t look too happy,” Bilal greeted
him when they ran into each other a couple of huts down from
where the awale game had taken place.
“Hello, great marabout! The chief really gave me a beating
today.”
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“And yesterday, and last week—and tomorrow he will give
you another, if you don’t come and pick up that amulet that I
prepared for you.”
“You’re right—I’ll drop by tomorrow, for sure.”
“Be careful with ‘tomorrow, for sure.’ If you say it as lightly
to some of the people you owe money to as you do to me, I see
you ending up face down in a ditch one night soon. And I can
see that without using any of my powers.”
“Tomorrow, tomorrow for sure, I swear to God.”
“Are you Christian now? Don’t swear to me by the white
man’s god!”
“Forgive me, Bilal—it’s just a habit. You know it’s because
of that cursed wife of mine. By the spirits of my fathers, who
are buried behind our hut to protect it, I promise to go fetch it
tomorrow, for sure.”
“Bring along a white rooster, spotless, so that I can sacrifice
it over the amulet, and two thousand francs for the materials I
have used to make it; I’m giving you a good deal, my friend.”
“Tomorrow, for sure.”
“Tomorrow, for sure. . . Dammit, I’m going to end up
using your stupid expression. Get out my sight!”
Mabuka ambled on towards his store. It was right on the
marketplace square, and he spent as long as he could there, in
an effort to delay returning home and facing the painful
consequences that another lame excuse to his wife was going to
bring upon him. She was more than a palm’s width taller than
he, and her shoulders much wider than his own.
Bilal continued on his way to the site where the shopkeeper
had lost his shirt yet again. The village streets were not paved,
so they were dusty during the dry season and turned into
mosquito-infested puddles during the rainy season.
It had been many years now since by means of his
astuteness and lack of scruples he had usurped the position of
village marabout from his father. But although everything was
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going according to his plans, some things were happening a
little slower than he expected.
Ngoma, the village chief, a withered old man death seemed
to have turned away from in disgust, was still holding his own.
He was nothing but skin and bones, but in spite of the
inhumane number of pills and potions he took to stimulate his
sexual vigor, and of the cola nuts that he chewed constantly, his
heart insisted on continuing to beat quite regularly. The trouble
was that if Bilal took more extreme action, such as poisoning
him, he might be discovered, and they would throw him to the
pigs—probably alive.
Whenever a chief died, it was almost always assumed that
he had been poisoned or had had a spell cast on him, whether
or not the death was the result of an illness, of old age, or of a
bolt of lightning that struck him during a storm. The
Witchdoctors’ Council would send a group of its members from
nearby villages to determine who was guilty, and they usually
took advantage of the situation to eliminate the competition or
to get rid of anyone who might be deemed a liability to them.
Bilal had a good relationship with many of his fellow
marabouts, but if they found out he had a hand in the death of
the chief, they would turn against him rather than risk any illwill
towards the Witchdoctors’ Council. It would have to look
like those long-term bad habits of his had done him in. Losing
the trust of the village chiefs, through which the witchdoctors
indirectly controlled most of what went on in their
communities, was bad for business. They had enough trouble
with the missionaries.
3
Most of the men watching the awale game were already on
their way home or to their fields when Bilal reached the shade
of the great tree, which was so welcome on hot days like this,
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making them almost bearable.
“Greetings, Chief Ngoma!”
“Hello, witch! I wasn’t expecting you. Do you want to
play?”
“I need to inform you of some very serious matters.”
“All right, sit at the board and we’ll talk as long as the game
lasts. I have other things to do later.”
The chief always imposed some condition or other, be it
great or be it small, whenever anyone wanted an audience with
him. These conditions were generally insignificant, since he was
so used to exercising his own will over that of others all of his
life, but they irritated the witchdoctor greatly.
“Of course, Chief.”
“The rest of you may leave—we have things to discuss that
are of no concern to you.” The last few spectators moved away,
leaving the witchdoctor and the chief alone in the shade of the
tree.
The narrow ebony awale table was set between two of the
enormous roots that served as benches for those watching the
games. It had two rows of six round hollows each, carved into a
piece of ebony wood that was a meter and a half long and just a
hand-span wide.
A buffalo head was carved at each end of the board, and
between the horns of each was another, oval-shaped hollow,
called a silo, which held the tokens that the players won from
their opponent during the game. Two matching stools had been
fashioned by Songo, the local ebony woodworker, as payment
for a game that he had lost to the chief. Their legs bore the
carved images of antelopes, and they were set at just the right
height so that the players could move their tokens comfortably.
Awale, also called bantumi in certain regions, was a game as
old as the world itself, much older than the modern game of
chess. In awale, the players took turns “sowing” their tokens into
the hollows, one by one, in a counter-clockwise direction. They
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could leave tokens, or “seeds” in all or some of their opponent’s
“fields” or in their own.
Basically the game consisted in getting a previously agreedto
number of tokens in each hollow, in order to win one’s own
tokens back as well as those of one’s opponent. In order to be
the one “harvesting,” the usual strategy was to try for the last
token sown to be into one of the opponent's fields that had
only one or two tokens in it. That way they would all go to
one’s kalaba, or silo, situated between the buffalo horns to the
right of each player. The harvesting had to be done in the
opposite direction to the sowing.
“I ran into Mabuka on my way over. He seemed to be very
heavy-hearted.”
“Yes, I wiped him out again. He always gets in a hurry at
the last and ends up losing.”
They picked up the tokens from the silos and distributed
them again, each one in their fields, six tokens per field, thirtysix
per player. Even though the tokens and the table stayed
outside every night, covered with a sheet of plastic held in place
by stones so that they would not get wet, the village children
would never have dared to touch—much less steal—any of the
tokens. The thought of the beating they would undoubtedly
receive if they did so was enough to dissuade them.
“You go first, Bilal.”
“An honor! Thank you, Chief.”
4
Bilal picked up the tokens from his first hollow to the left,
and sowed a white sphere in each of the following fields, leaving
the chief with an extra token in his first field.
“That was not a very generous opening, Bilal. What did you
want to talk to me about?”
“I know who killed and butchered that hog of Marcel’s.”
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“Who do you think was stupid enough to just take the
head?”
“I’m sure it was one of those sea bastards, the boy to be
exact.”
“How did you come to that conclusion? You seem very
sure of yourself.”
The chief decided on the tokens in the last of his fields, the
one on his far right, and dropped them one by one into each of
Bilal’s six fields.
“You are on the warpath today, Chief.”
“I asked you why you were so sure of yourself.”
“I consulted the spirits, and they told me…”
“Don’t be ridiculous—we both know that you have about
as much faith in the spirits as I do. If they existed, they would
have punished the two of us long ago for our favorite
pastimes.”
“Forgive me—it’s just out of habit. You know that it’s in
the best interest of both of us for the villagers to continue to
believe in the spirits. I found a broken harpoon tip underneath
the dead pig, and that son of Fanya’s is one of the few
fishermen around here that still goes out to sea. He’s also the
only one young enough to jump the fence like that.”
The marabout copied the chief’s play almost exactly, but
since he now had eight tokens in the hollow to his far right, he
ended up dropping one into each of his own first two hollows
on the left.
“You grab every token that you can get; you shouldn’t be
so anxious, Bilal. By the way, we haven’t said anything about
what we are wagering on this game.”
“I’ll be satisfied to have the opportunity to tell you about
the ‘hogicide.’ ”
“Oh, come on, I know you. You never do anything for
anyone unless you are going to get something out of it.”
“I want Fanya and her children out of here.”
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“You have always had a grudge against them.”
“She takes away my clients.”
“You mean she cures your clients.”
“She’s a woman—she shouldn’t be allowed to have that
kind of power. People respect her too much.”
“Because she helps them, and although she doesn’t have
much herself, she generally doesn’t charge them anything.”
“It sounds like you are fond of her, Chief.”
“I still don’t feel it was right for us to relegate her to the
neighborhood of the outcasts.”
“Are you growing a conscience now at your age? It’s a little
late for that, isn’t it?”
“Is that the way you talk to your chief?”
“Forgive me; it’s just that I’m surprised that you even think
about that.”
“Be quiet a while, and let’s play.”
The two opponents made their moves more quickly now;
the chief seemed to be losing—quite a number of his tokens
were already in Bilal’s silo.
“You’re playing well today, witch. You really want to win.”
“I must be having a lucky day.”
“You know full well that luck has nothing to do with an
awale game. Now, what was it exactly that we are wagering?”
“I told you—I want you to expel Fanya and her family
from N’long.”
“Look, it’s one thing to not believe in the gods, and another
thing to not believe that doing certain things will bring you bad
luck.”
“And I want permission to take her son prisoner. If he’s up
to what I think he is, he will soon be bringing in a large fish to
sell at the marketplace. That will be the final proof.”
“And what is it that you think he is up to?”
“I think that he’s going to fish for a giant barracuda, and
that he needed the hog’s head as bait. I’ll accuse his mother of
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performing black magic, and you will have the perfect excuse to
send her away.”
“The boy must be very brave; as far as I know, he fishes
alone, and those barracuda can be twice the size of a man.”
“If I win, you will allow me to arrest him, and you will send
the woman away from here.”
“Agreed, but don’t think you have already won the game.”
Ngoma redistributed his tokens, trying to fill out some of
his hollows, while Bilal made repeated attacks, trying to keep the
chief from carrying out his strategy. But the old man was only
apparently defenseless; after he had strung along the marabout
for a while with the temptation to collect several more tokens,
he began to attack once more.
Such was his skill, worthy of a professional gambler, that
the chief had managed for one of his hollows, the one he had
used the least, to go unnoticed even by the expert eye of the
marabout. He had managed to accumulate enough tokens to go
around the whole awale board exactly twice, sowing his tokens in
all of his opponent’s fields and collecting so many tokens that
all Bilal had left were four, in his first field.
With so few tokens left, he could not even get to the
opposite side of the board to force the chief to play. On the
other hand he had not been left with no tokens at all, in which
case Ngoma would have been obliged to give him at least one
so he could continue playing, according to the rule that forbade,
in the game as in real life, depriving the enemy defeated in battle
of sustenance.
“Damned be the spirits of my forefathers!”
“Now you think about them, witch?”
“I didn’t see you coming; you’re a deceitful devil.”
“Why, thank you. This old man does what he can.”
“I still have one move left.”
“No way! No matter what you do, you can’t get to my
fields. You’ve lost, Bilal. You will do nothing to Fanya nor to
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her bastards.”
“You’re mistaken. I told you I still have one move left.”
Bilal slowly moved his hand over the board, dropping a dozen
new spheres into the hollows. They were each about a
centimeter and a half in diameter, just a bit smaller than the
awale tokens, and bright green in color.
“Are those what I think they are, Bilal?”
“Not exactly; these are even better, much stronger than the
ones I usually bring to you. With these, you will have enough
energy to last the whole night long.”
The chief picked up one of the green spheres and looked at
it thoughtfully.
“The last ones you brought me were not having much
effect any more.”
“I’ve revised the formula especially for you; I heard that
you were planning to marry a new wife.”
The chief brought the sphere up to his nose and sniffed it.
“They have a very strong smell.”
“Because they are strong. Are you going to want them?”
“You’re a devil, you witch.”
“Why, thank you. I also do what I can. I will take that as a
yes. ”
“All right, let’s say that you won the game. But I am going
to set you one condition: first you will bring the boy to me, and
then I will decide what to do.”
Bilal got up from his stool.
“Agreed, I’ll bring him to you. But don’t hold me
responsible for what the pig farmer might do to him.”
“Get out of here—let’s see if with a little bit of luck I don’t
have to see your face again until you bring me the boy.”
“Thank you, Chief. Enjoy the gift. And one last thing:
would you send me a couple of your guards to take the boy in,
if I need them?”
“All right, damn you. I’ll give the order for them to go with
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you when you ask for them. Now get out of here for once and
for all; your voice gives me a headache.”
Biilal turned and left, leaving Ngoma looking at the little
pills wrapped in fine banana leaf fibers to disguise the telling
odor of their contents. With a bit of luck, they would lift his
spirits so much that he would end up in his grave, with a big
smile on his leathery face, of course.
Ngoma’s oldest son and heir to his position, Anton, did not
have his father’s character but had inherited all his vices. He
would be easier to manage than his father. If Fanya’s son
showed up in the marketplace to sell his giant fish, he would
have him taken before the chief, of course.
Bilal had been waiting for the chance to get rid of old
Simone’s kin. Although she had never shown any sign of it, it
was quite possible that Fanya had guessed who had caused her
grandmother’s death, and that was a risk that he had been
wanting to eliminate for some time. After all these years, with
great patience and great manipulation, he was about to achieve
total control of the village.
The Witchdoctors’ Council would undoubtedly be pleased
with him, and if he played his cards right, it would not be long
until they assigned him to one of the many public officials they
controlled. Of course theoretically they only served as
counsellors, but in fact they had complete sway over such
officials’ actions through fear and the obligatory performance of
meaningless rituals.
The witchdoctors’ power had been on the rise ever since
the European colonizers had given way to great international
corporations, which they helped by manipulating the leaders of
various countries to allow them access to the natural resources
they craved. The long shadow of the witchdoctors already
covered all the non-muslim countries on the African continent.
Where Islam reigned, witchdoctors had been persecuted
and almost exterminated in some areas, but they were present in
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practically all the countries that were principally animistic, no
matter the different races of their peoples, always influencing
whatever government was in power, or even exercising
complete control in the cases where the leaders had been set up
in power by the Council itself.
It was all just a game as old as awale: They placed their
tokens where they would produce the greatest benefit, they left
breadcrumbs to appease their adversaries, and they played the
board until they owned everything. Their silo got filled more
and more, and everyone else’s got emptier.
His idiot father had never made any effort to enter into the
game that Bilal was now about to win. He had always refused to
mold the village and its inhabitants to the desires of the
Witchdoctors’ Council. But Bilal was much smarter. Infinite
possibilities now lay before him. He might even be assigned to
an ambassador, to protect him from the evil eye when he went
abroad. Yes, he could soon be traveling the world—in first
class, of course!
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Chapter 10
The Grand Titanic
1
Etienne leaned over the edge of his boat, an old wooden
affair that was about six paces long by one and a half wide.
The Grand Titanic rocked peacefully as the waves lapped at
its peeling wooden sides, where it had been repainted over and
over again, layer over layer, with all the possible tones of blue.
After several violent spasms and much empty heaving, his lungs,
which had just been filled with seawater for the first time,
managed to empty themselves of their contents.
His sister, Ciel, held him by his shoulders while he went
through the painful process. Etienne had seen her also release
the water from her lungs, apparently without any effort, as soon
she had helped him climb up over the port side of the vessel.
He could hear her saying what must have been words of
encouragement, but all he really noticed was the strange
bubbling sound in his lungs.
“It’s okay, you’ll be all right. The first time is the hardest.”
Another heave brought up a large quantity of seawater that
had ended up in his stomach.
The bottom of the solar disk had just separated itself from
the leafy sea of trees in the dense jungle, bathing the treetops in
reddish tones. Etienne sat up enough to turn over and flop
down on the bottom of the boat.
“Here, drink it slowly. It will make you feel better.”
Strangely, sipping the seawater from the can his sister offered
him did indeed make him feel a little better.
“Dammit, my lungs are burning.”
“You’ll be okay in a few minutes.”
“You didn’t look like you were drowning, Sister.”
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“You weren’t drowning either; well, for a bit, but just until
you quit fighting it and you filled your lungs with water.”
“That doesn’t make sense! And where’s that strange fellow
who was with you?”
“He’s right here, in the water, just a few meters below us.”
Etienne gave a startled jump.
“Who is he? And why can all three of us breathe
underwater?”
“I think you will know the answer to those two questions if
you think about it for a few seconds, and if you remember what
you felt when you saw his eyes.”
“Enthi! Is that our father?”
“See? You knew the answer. Do you want to meet him?”
“How long have you known about this?
“Only for a couple of days. I was going to tell you all about
it last night, but you never showed up at the house. I came out
here to talk to him again.”
“Ask him to come up here with us, please.”
2
Ciel stretched out her right hand and dipped it into the
water. The boat leaned slightly to starboard, and something
grabbed onto her hand. Etienne jumped up and rushed over to
free her of whatever had ahold of her, but at the same instant
another hand grabbed the edge of the boat. He saw that his
sister was smiling.
The hand clinging to the edge of the boat had long, sharp
nails, and the creature’s head, which he had seen underwater a
few minutes before, looked much more human now that he saw
it out of the water. With an agility that only beings with
enormous strength and speed possess, the creature pulled
himself over the edge into the boat.
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“Hello, Etienne.” The stranger’s voice was deep; it
reminded him of his own.
“You saved me from the sharks. Thank you.”
“Keeping you from ending up in a white-tooth’s stomach is
the least a father can do for his son.”
“Etienne, let me introduce you to our father. You can call
him Man Kenguele, which is what our mother called him.
Sharduk is another of his names, but I prefer to call him Father.
“Thank you, Sharduk. You don’t seem much older than we
are; I’m afraid it would be hard for me to call you Father, at least
for now.”
“You may call me whatever you like. I just got here, and I’m
in no position to require anything of either of you.”
“Brother, why were you swimming at dawn, all covered
with blood? I can still smell it on you.”
“Gods! I stole a hog’s head from the pig farmer.”
“Are you crazy? If they had caught you, what would have
happened? I’ll tell you! They would have thrown you into the
pigsty to be eaten by the pigs! What were you thinking?”
“I needed it to use as bait for a barracuda king.”
“And you went to steal it last night?”
“Your brother is very brave,” commented Sharduk.
“Don’t you stick up for him!” scolded Ciel. “It was a
completely stupid thing to do! If anything had happened to
him, Mother would have died of a broken heart.”
“You sound just like her, Sister,” complained Etienne.
“You certainly have as much spunk as she does, daughter.”
Sharduk smiled at her.
“Are you on his side about this?”
“I didn’t say that; I just said that he must be very brave to
have done it. . .”
“Thank you.”
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“. . .although it was quite foolish to go swimming in the sea
all covered in blood. If there had been more sharks I don’t
know if we could have rescued you.”
“All right. It was stupid of me.”
“And why do you need to try to catch a barracuda king?”
demanded Ciel.
“The answer is simple. I’ve been trying for a long time to
save up enough to be able to take you and Mother away from
this shitty neighborhood. A giant fish like that will fetch me
enough at the marketplace to be able to do it at last.”
“Your motives are honorable, Son.”
“I’m doing the best I know how. But speaking of motives,
why and how did you suddenly show up here? Don’t get me
wrong, I’m very thankful for what you did for me down there,
but I don’t know why you’re here, nor what you’re planning.”
“He had his reasons for coming back now and not sooner,
Etienne,” Ciel assured him.
“Come back from where? From the dead?”
“I see that you have a lot of fire in you as well, Etienne!”
“He’s gone through a great deal trying to return from his
world to ours. There are doorways—they call them crossing points,
Brother—to go from one world to another. He found the door
to our world by accident the first time, but then later that door
couldn’t be used any more, and he had to find a different way to
come back. Unfortunately, the door they opened for him to
come back didn’t work quite right, and it’s seventeen years later
here than when he left.”
“Gods! It’s like in the comics about Antares!”
“Antares?” Sharduk looked puzzled.
“Never mind. It’s just some stories that are told in our
world about underwater heroes, hidden worlds, and rescuing
princesses that are always very beautiful and very white.”
“In every world there are legends of heroes and princesses;
these are universal tales,” nodded Sharduk.
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“Father, we have to talk to Mother. I can’t stand waiting any
longer,” broke in Ciel.
“And I still don’t know what plans you have for us,” insisted
Etienne.
“My idea has always been for your mother to be able to
come back with me to my world someday. Now, of course, I
would like for you two to be able to come, as well.”
“I see a problem—I don’t think anyone has asked Mother
yet whether she wants to go. It may not be easy for her; she
helps a lot of people, and I doubt she is willing to abandon
them.”
“My brother’s right. But I’ll go with you; we have no future
here.”
“Unless I can catch that barracuda, and I can take us all out
of N’long. You’ll excuse me, but I am very used to having to
take care of business myself.”
“If any of you decide to come, tomorrow night I’ll try to
open up a crossing point, a door, at the old witchdoctor’s house.
But it will be a one-way trip, as that particular door only works in
one direction. The one I used in order to come here would not
work at all for you, as it would take you back seventeen years.”
“At Bilal the Elder’s hut?” the twins asked in unison.
“Yes, and I’ll have to go that way as well, as I explained to
your sister. I can’t get back the way I came the first time, either.
I’ll need a large cloth to wet and wrap around myself, to protect
myself from the air. Otherwise by the time I get to N’long from
the swamp my skin would be so dry that I would be bleeding. I
don’t have the land suit here that I usually wear if I need to stay
out of the water for very long.”
“What does the old marabout have to do with all of this?
He’s been gone for years,” frowned Etienne.
“It’s a long story,” answered Sharduk.
“My boat is anchored; I’m in no hurry. I can’t try to catch
the barracuda until tonight.”
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“Are you still planning to go ahead with that, Brother?”
“I risked my life in order to be able to try for it, and I don’t
know if I’ll go with you or not, or whether Mother will go.
Maybe I’m not as ready as you are to abandon her and the
others.”
“I am not asking you to abandon anyone, Son.”
“I’d rather you not call me that, Sharduk.”
Ciel bristled. “What’s the matter with you? You’ve just met
our father for the first time, and he wants the same thing you
do, to take us to a better place to live. And you react by being
disrespectful?”
“Daughter, I know I will have to earn his respect. I
understand your brother; he has his plans, and they’re plans that
only a brave man would dare to make. I can’t just show up here
and change everything.”
“I’ll go on with my plan; I’ll catch a barracuda king, and
afterwards I’ll decide what to do about your proposal. I still
don’t know what that cantankerous old witchdoctor has to do
with you.”
“It will take me a while to explain it to you, Etienne.”
“Like I said, I have nothing else to do until tonight, except
to go back to shore to fetch the hog’s head. By the way, Sister,
could you bring it over to me? I see that you swim very fast.”
“I think your brother would like to have some time with
just the two of us alone, so he can better judge me.”
“What do you mean, judge you? You’re our father!”
Etienne looked at Sharduk as he answered his sister. “That
may be, but I want to know what kind of a man he is before I
decide whether or not to go with him, or whether Mother
should even know he is here.”
“That seems fair to me, Etienne. I don’t know yet how to
explain to Fanya that I’m the same age as when I left, and yet so
many years have gone by for her.”
“I think you are making a big deal out of it, Brother.”
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Now it was Etienne’s turn to bristle. “Ciel, I’ve been the
man of the house for many years. I would rather Mother go on
with her life thinking that Father will never return, than risking
that she might suffer because of him again.”
Man Kenguele could not help but notice that Etienne had
referred to him as “Father” for the first time. The boy had every
right in the world to decide what he would do. It could be
difficult to win him over, but he liked to see the way Etienne
defended the interests of his family.
“Ciel, please go fetch you brother’s bait; I need to talk to
him alone.”
Reluctantly, Ciel dove into the sea, purposely splashing her
twin brother as she did so. It bothered her that just because he
was a boy he thought he had more right to make decisions than
she did. And it had hurt her for him to insinuate that she was
willing to abandon their mother.
Her own future was much more complicated than his. She
would end up married off to some lout, in the best of cases.
And it was true that her brother’s plan, crazy as it was,
barracuda king and all, made her feel very proud of him.
Etienne gestured for Sharduk to take a seat across from
him. “Now come, tell me your story. I want to know what kind
of man you are.”
3
“The truth is that your sister has summed up very well how
I showed up here and why I couldn’t return any sooner.”
“I want to know how you managed to get here. I didn’t
mean to offend you when I said that I didn’t know if Mother
would want to leave with you; it’s just that people change over
time. She has suffered a lot all these years.”
“You speak as one much older than you are.”
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“I had to grow up fast, to be the man of the family, to be
strong, and to provide us with the things we needed.”
“When you get used to breathing in the sea, your strength
will increase; but even now, you are very strong for your years.”
“As I said, I had to grow up quickly and could not be weak.
The sea will either make you strong, or it will kill you.”
“It has made you very strong, indeed. When you allow me
to do so, it will be an honor for me to call you my son.”
A smile crossed Etienne’s face. “If two children of mine
suddenly appeared to me, I would die of fright, Sharduk.”
“Don’t think it doesn’t scare me to think that I’m a father.
The only thing that frightens me more is how to explain all this
to your mother. It has all turned out to be a disaster. I don’t
know how well she even remembers me, or whether she will still
love me; it has only been a couple of months for me since I left.
No matter how I explain it to her, even if she understands, I
know that the heart does not always forgive, even if the head
wants to.”
“Well, explain it to me first, and I’ll tell you what chances
you’ll have with my mother.”
“As your sister said, I found the door—the crossing point to
your world—completely by accident, while I was investigating
an old naval wreck. Once here, I set out exploring your sea and
one night I ran into some fishermen in a huge boat. I ended up
lying on the beach, wounded and unconscious; your greatgrandmother
found me and with the help of your mother took
care of me until I regained consciousness.”
“Yes, I know the kind of boats you are talking about. They
belong to big fishing companies, mostly European and
Japanese; all they leave for us are the small fish they’re not
interested in. Anything they capture that they don’t want, they
just throw overboard. They are thieves and sons of a thousand
fathers.”
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“Making a long story short, I fell head over heels in love
with your mother, and during one of my visits here, you and
your sister were conceived.”
“You don’t need to go into the details.”
“I wasn’t going to. The trouble is, some idiot from the
village saw us together and I had to leave before anyone else
found out about us. The fellow who saw us was the son of
some pig farmer; I think his name was Mathieu.”
“What a despicable person! He isn’t just the son of some
pig farmer, he’s the son of the pig farmer. His father owns half
the village.”
“Then it was his father that you stole the pig from.”
“No, not a pig, only a pig’s head. I had to leave the rest of
the animal there.”
“That’s dangerous; someone might guess that it was you.”
“Maybe, but it will be hard to prove. No one saw me, and
my trail ended at the shore.”
“Let’s hope no one reaches any conclusions. As I was
saying, I had to leave, but I almost ended up dead, because on
my side of the door the water had become poisonous and
contained almost no oxygen. It was impossible to come back
through there after that.”
Ciel suddenly flew up into the air beside the boat,
drenching her father and brother with water and tossing the net
bag with the hog’s head that had cost Etienne so much effort to
obtain onto the floor of the little boat. It made a wet thud as it
landed, as though someone had slapped the surface of the water
with a wooden bucket.
Etienne was astonished to see that his sister’s leap took her
several meters high. She dove back into the water with barely a
splash, and before her brother could recover from his shock,
she was hanging onto the edge of the boat, looking at him
playfully.
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“Don’t worry, Brother. If I teach you, I’m sure you’ll soon
be jumping twice as high as I do.”
“You can be sure of that, Etienne,” agreed Sharduk. “I
seriously doubt your abilities are any less than those of your
sister.”
“Ciel, it looked like your were flying!”
“No, but almost. I brought your smelly bait; it was covered
with flies. I’m going back home to talk to Mother—I can’t wait
any longer. She needs to know that Father has returned.
“No, Sister, I said not to tell her yet.”
“And how are you going to stop me?”
“I won’t—I don’t think I could, but give me a little time.”
“What your brother is asking is fair, Ciel.”
“At nightfall, if you see both of my lamps lit on the boat,
you can go ahead and tell her. If I light just one, wait until I
finish fishing and get back home; that way the three of us can
talk to her together.”
“All right, then I’ll go talk to Malaam.”
“That’s fine, Ciel—just don’t say anything to Mother yet,
please.”
“I’ll do my best. I’ll leave you two here alone, to see how
you get along.”
“I’ll see you in a few hours, Sister.”
“See you later, Daughter.”
Ciel dove into the water once more and sped towards shore.
Etienne turned his attention again towards Sharduk, studying
his strange skin; it seemed to emit a dim glow even in the
sunlight.
Sharduk studied Etienne, as well. Looking at his face, and
remembering Ciel’s, he couldn’t help but think that it felt like he
had seen those faces, or others very much like them, somewhere
before. Gods! They were the same as… No, that could not be!
After looking intently at his father in silence for a few
minutes, Etienne asked him, this time in a tone that began to
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reveal more curiosity than distrust, “So how did you manage to
get back here?”
“Ah, well, if as you say you like stories about other worlds,
you are going to enjoy this one.”
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Chapter 11
Iron Atoll
1
“I floated for hours, and when I managed to recuperate
some of my strength, I headed for the atoll that had always
been my place in the world. More strongly than on any of the
previous occasions that I had returned to my birthplace, I felt
like White Atoll was no longer my home; my true home was
now on the other side of a door I couldn’t even get close to.
“I felt a great emptiness within me. I knew I would do
absolutely anything to get back to Fanya, or I would use my last
breath attempting it. That possibility only worried me because it
would cause great pain to the one I loved. Tired of secrets, sick,
and in desperate need of help, I told my parents everything that
had happened in my life over the previous months.
“My lungs had been severely damaged by the deadwater I had
inhaled, and for the first few weeks I couldn’t even breathe or
swim normally. I asked to be excused from the duties of our
community, which sparked more than a few unpleasant
commentaries about my family. As soon as my parents
understood what a great loss it was for me not to be able to see
Fanya again, however, they did everything they could to help
me.
“Of course they warned me to make sure that no one else
found out that I had made several unauthorized crossovers,
emphasizing the consequences that could befall me if these
happenings reached the ears of the Conclave or of any of their
local representatives. I also told my parents that I knew I wasn’t
the first of our kind to use that particular crossing point.
“Following their suggestions, I used my convalescence to
connect through my parents’ wall terminal to various knowledge
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centers with an anonymous connection. Although there were
other populated areas that were isolated and didn’t recognize the
authority of the Conclave of the Remnant, the fifteen largest
registered aquatic colonies shared their data and had access to
the government’s communications network.
“On the continent, due to the increasing shortage of
government employees, only Latica—or what was left of what
was once that great city-state—remained under the government
of the Conclave of the Remnant and was connected to the
communications network.
“I spent my time searching through all the records and
news items over the previous sixty years to see if there was
mention of anyone that had been sanctioned for having used a
crossing point without the necessary permits.
“I only found one article, from more that fifty years earlier,
where it mentioned that around that time, a woman had gone to
a healing center at Iron Atoll to have her baby, and when they
did the normal genetic testing on the child, the results were so
abnormal that an investigation was carried out.
“The medical data for each citizen is usually totally private,
but this came to light because the woman had confessed to one
of the midwives she knew personally that the father of her child
was someone she had fallen in love with on the other side of a
crossing point. The midwife, like the responsible citizen she was,
informed the authorities.
“As soon as the woman was able to get around on her own,
she was sent to the nearest sanctioning center, where they tried
to clear the matter up. The reports from these sanctioning
centers are public documents. Since the woman refused to
reveal the location of the crossing point she had used, tissue
samples were taken from her to try to identify the crossover
marks.
“Each crossing point leaves a unique sort of mark, a slight
scar on the cerebral cortex of those who use it. Unless a person
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makes extremely frequent crossovers or the doors they use are
unstable, these marks don’t cause any permanent damage, but
they do allow us to know how many crossovers were made and
through which crossing points, as long as they are known points.
Since this was not the case, and since she continued to refuse to
give the location of the point, it was never found or classified,
and so it never came under the control of the government and
the Brotherhood of Crossers.
“There wasn’t much information in the article about the
woman or her newborn baby. It only mentioned her name,
Coralina Ij-nee, and the fact that she was condemned to exile
away from her native atoll, which was a couple of weeks’
swimming distance from ours.
“While the report had not been hidden and could be found
in the record, it did seem that at the time the matter was treated
with a certain amount of discretion, and news of it did not
extend beyond the local atoll.
“Was Coralina the woman who had used the crossing point in
the sunken ship before I had found it? Was she the one who
had known Fanya’s grandfather? I had to find out, no matter
what it took.
2
“As soon as I was feeling well enough, I headed north to
search for more information about Coralina. Even though I was
feeling much better, I still wasn’t in good enough shape to swim
that far, so I decided to take one of the surface transports that
connected the different inhabited areas of our planet on a daily
basis. That would make my travel time much shorter.
“Although when I swim I can reach a top speed that is
faster than your dolphins, I can’t maintain it for more than a few
minutes at a time, unlike the surface transports. They don’t go
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quite as fast, but they are safe and comfortable, and have an
excellent average speed.
“These former warships were recycled as public
transportation but don’t have any weapons nor luxuries. At least
they have areas that are designed to have sufficient humidity in
the air for my kind to use them without having to don our land
suits.
“My parents prepared a medusa-bag for me to keep my
things in; I could put some things in the external pockets, and
my mother filled the large ventral sac with live squid, as she
didn’t trust the quality of what they might serve me on board
the transport.
“She also gave me some land-sickness pills and a silver
chain from which there hung a gelatinous sphere filled with
seawater, algae, and krill. It was a tiny but perfectly balanced,
enclosed ecosystem which would bring me luck as long as I kept
it alive. By attending to it I would never forget that the primary
duty of our people was to take care of sea life. And lastly my
father presented me with a land suit such as I had never seen
before, telling me that it would protect me from any dangers.
“I swam around my parents several times, flashing my
good-byes, while they raised a brightly lit prayer for me. I picked
up the medusa-bag, and as soon as its arms had gently adhered
to my back, I left for the surface.
“Several other people and I swam upwards from the base
of the atoll, where our settlement was located, towards the
surface, following a vertical wall covered with spirographs,
corals, gorgonias, and anemones that competed fiercely among
themselves to occupy any empty spaces that were available.
Schools of tens of thousands of fish of all imaginable kinds,
sizes, and colors fled from us as we made our way upwards.
“At the surface of the atoll all we found were about a
hundred thousand square cubits of volcanic sand with olivine
highlights and a small docking area for the surface transports,
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along with a building to house the merchandise which was
coming or going and a few workers.
“The Drybow was sitting in the water near the docking area,
glimmering in the sunshine. It had convenient underwater access
points in the hull, so we didn’t even have to go ashore to
board. I settled into one of the cabins and stuck my medusabag
to the wall.
“As soon as all the passengers were on board the great
cylindrical ship, the hatches locked. The propulsion system,
which had been brought in from one of the planets we had
colonized, activated its first phase, repelling the water that
surrounded the ballast-laden keel of the old ship, leaving it dry
and eliminating any friction with the sea.
“Then the vessel received her coordinates from the main
office in Latica, turned a few degrees, and ignited the inertia
compensation system in the cabins, to make our voyage more
comfortable.
“Immediately we began to hear the purring of the engines
as the second phase of the propulsion system kicked in, and we
saw a message on the communications panel saying that we
would be leaving the atoll in matter of seconds.
“I didn’t feel the acceleration, even though in just fractions
of a second the transport had gone from a standstill to cruising
speed. What I did notice, just after we left, was a nauseous
feeling, as though my stomach wanted to come out through my
mouth.
“I stumbled to the bathroom and threw up the breakfast I
had enjoyed that morning with my parents before leaving home.
I spent that first day and a half of my first experience on a
surface transport alternating between the bathroom and my
sleeping net.
“I tried to force myself to eat part of one of the squid that
mother had sent along, after chasing it around the cabin to work
up an appetite, but the only thing I got for my effort was new
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The Eyes of the Sea
ammunition to attack the bathroom with. Fortunately,
everything I regurgitated was absorbed with such efficiency that
there was no need to flush out the water from the rest of my
cabin.
“As soon as I began to feel less nauseated, I took out my
land suit and tried it on. At first it seemed strange to wear
something over my own skin, but I knew the suit would prevent
any prolonged exposure to the sun and air from drying out my
skin and damaging my lungs again.
“The suit covered my whole body, except for my head;
there was a hood and a mask that I could wear in situations of
extreme heat and dryness. Two tiny vaporizer jets situated at
collarbone level shot out small, barely visible clouds of cold
mist towards my face, automatically adjusting the amount of
mist to the ambient level of dryness, keeping the skin on my
face and the air that I breathed adequately moisturized.
“I went upstairs to enjoy the view of the surface of the sea
from the forward section of the deck that ran from front to
back at the center of the enormous cylinder-shaped ship and
had viewing areas protected by glass-like screens of variable
transparency.
“The speed with which we were moving through the water
was such that the whitecaps on the surface appeared blurred
and my eyes couldn’t focus on any specific point. Above us the
clouds swept by in a dizzying fashion.
“I felt nauseated again, and I had to look away from the sky,
turning my back to the transparent panel and focusing my eyes
on the rubber deck covering, hoping the unpleasant sensation
would fade. Someone touched me on the shoulder, and I gave a
startled jump.
“ ‘Are you all right, Sir?’
“It was a member of the ship’s crew, a surface dweller. I
had to look up in order to see his face; he was much taller than
myself. He was dressed in protective clothing which
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Alberto Guaita Tello
undoubtedly shielded him from the constant humidity of the
decks that were especially conditioned for us Shepherds of the
Sea.
“ ‘Thank you, I think I’ll be okay. I just got a little dizzy
from the speed that everything moves out here.’
“ ‘Is this your first time using a surface transport?’
“ ‘Can you tell so easily?’
“ ‘You have a very uncomfortable look on your face. Don’t
worry, that’s quite normal. Chalk it up to the inertia
compensation system on this old wreck; it messes with your
balance. Some people never do get used to it. By the way,
looking outside will just make you dizzier.”
“ ‘Great, no wonder I was starting to feel sick again!’
“He held out his hand towards me in what I understood
was a gesture of friendship. ‘By the way, I’m Ensign Lucas, at
your service. If you need me to, I’ll accompany you back to
your cabin.’
“I grasped his outstretched hand, as I had seen done on
some visual records at the knowledge center. ‘My name’s
Sharduk; and if it’s all right with you we can skip the formalities.
I don’t think I need you to accompany me, but thank you.’
“ ‘Well, at any rate, we have begun to slow down, and pretty
soon we should be able to see our destination in the distance.
It’s a very peculiar place, to be sure.’
“ ‘Yes, I read something about it on the terminal.’
“ ‘You can’t really imagine it until you’ve seen it in person.’
“ ‘Have you been there many times?’
“ ‘Every time I do this route. And what brings you this way?
It’s very different from where you come from.’
“ ‘It’s still an undersea colony.’
“ ‘Yes, but it’s the only one that was settled on the wreckage
of battleships. Sometimes the level of iron oxide in the water is
so high that it looks like blood. And since every now and then
there’s some toxic waste leak or another from the old ships
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The Eyes of the Sea
they’re dismantling to send the materials to the surface for
recycling, everyone here wears a personal filter. You’ll need one,
too, so that the heavy metals and other toxins in the water here
won’t make you sick.’
“ ‘It sounds like a tough place to live. There was nothing
about all that in the descriptions I read.’
“ ‘Well, each atoll decides what information to share about
itself and what not to. I imagine that the details I just mentioned
aren’t too conducive for business, and they don’t talk about
them a lot.’
“ ‘I don’t have a personal filter with me.’
“ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you one before you disembark. We’ll
be arriving soon.’
“After a few seconds of silence, the young ensign spoke
again. ‘It’s none of my business, I know, but I can’t help
wondering why you would ever leave your beautiful atoll and
come to this red stain in the sea.’
“ ‘I’m looking for a person that might be able to help me in
a matter I’m trying to resolve.”
“ ‘It sounds like a mysterious adventure!’
“ ‘I’d really rather not say anything about it.’
“ ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. The boredom is getting to me
lately. Life at sea isn’t turning out to be as exciting as I had
imagined.’
“ ‘You needn’t apologize. Maybe some other time we can
talk about it.’
“ ‘Well, good luck with whatever it is that brings you here.’
“ ‘Thanks for all the helpful information, Ensign Lucas.’
“The young officer walked away with a firm step. I stood
watching the horizon for a long while, until I saw the strange
outline of the surface of the atoll against the greenish sky
sprinkled with yellow clouds. Several dozen halfway dismantled
warships stood vertically in the water, with about three-fourths
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Alberto Guaita Tello
of their length above the surface, held in place by a complex
web of cables made of xenosteel anchored to the sea bottom.
“Between the ships, on the massive platforms that had been
installed to help hold them in place, were the remains of some
of the great beasts that had been brought over by the Sons of
the Roots during the long wars. Teams made up of men and
enormous Shepherds of the Land, with the help of some small
ships and heavy machinery, were carrying out the
dismantlement of the wreckage and of the leviathans, some of
which were no more than piles of stinking, rotting, organic
materials. The flesh of others seemed impervious to the passing
of time and decomposition.
“Iron Atoll was by far the largest of the recycling centers in
the ocean areas, only comparable with the one that had been
established on land between the Plains of Sorrow and Latica.
“Beneath the surface the activity was just as frenetic as
above. Small submarines and hundreds of people worked day
and night to convert all of that vast quantity of flesh, bones,
and metal into primary materials, which would then be sent
through the crossing points to where they could be used for the
subsistence of the colonies. At the same time they gathered the
waste that was dangerous or contaminated, to be sent to planets
which were mere rocks, with no life forms on them.
3
“Once we had docked below the towering, monstrous
ships, I returned to my cabin, removed my land suit, packed it
away with the rest of my belongings, and gave the luminous
order for the medusa-bag to attach itself to my back. I headed
back up to the observation deck as soon as I received the little
personal filter that Ensign Lucas had promised me; I hung it
around my neck so it would be close to the two small breathing
holes on my back.
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“Before disembarking, I watched the crossing points for quite
a while. They were close to the port, on a great esplanade which
had been built with leftover pieces of hundreds of ships. The
activity around them was very interesting.
“There were large shipping containers going through the
door, destined for the far-away worlds that we now inhabited
Others were carrying in-bound merchandise that was hard to
come by on our world. There were also a few passenger
capsules but not many, and most of them were out-bound,
filled with people who were leaving our planet.
“I had never seen above-water crossing points before, and the
underwater ones were much harder to see. Here all of them—
from the smallest ones, which were only about a man’s height,
to the ones that allowed the passage of the largest containers
and were nearly twenty cubits in width—emitted a soft light
along with the strange, high-pitched humming sound I had
heard underwater when I got close to the one that allowed me
to cross over the first time.
“Looking through the points that were activated, we could
actually see the strange heavens of the destiny worlds. In some
cases we could even see the shapes of buildings in the
abandoned cities that we had repopulated.
All of the crossing points were marked by metal rings
connected to control stations for the teams in charge of them.
These teams were always made up of two people—a magician,
descendent of the Sons of the Roots, along with a Mechanist
scientist. The teams were assigned by the Brotherhood of the
Crossers and were responsible for opening, closing, and
stabilizing the points so that only what was designated to pass
through them would do so, preventing contaminations or the
transfer of atmospheres from one side to the other, even if
there were differences in atmospheric pressure. I wondered how
I could find one that would take me back to Fanya.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“I went down two decks to reach an area where I could
leave the ship by one of the underwater hatches. The water had
a reddish hue and tasted strongly of metal and of salts that
shouldn’t have been there. I located a locker in the underwater
area of the dock and left my belongings there.
“I looked around and saw shops of all types where plastics
were exchanged for metals and fuel for bones, teeth, or
whatever else could be found aboard the innumerable
shipwrecks or in the rotting carcasses piled from the sea floor to
the ocean surface. The shops nearer the surface were those of
better reputation and belonged to wealthier merchants; the ones
which were farther down, closer to the bottom, where little
sunlight reached, were of dubious fame and lesser category.
“The coming and going of vehicles and people was
constant near the surface but decreased at the lower levels. Near
the bottom lived the less fortunate, scavenging for what items
of value they could find among the giant skeletons and from
whatever floated down to them from above. They were those
who ate the crumbs from others’ tables.
“Carved out about halfway down the reef were the offices
of the government officials and the House of Records. That
was where I headed, after asking directions from several people
I met along the way. The lights that people flashed at me when I
asked were difficult for me to understand at first, because the
cadence and the colors they used were not exactly the same as
we used on my home atoll, and because they also emitted some
kind of clicking sound from their throats to emphasize the
more important parts of what they were trying to explain. And
yet, since so many people from different places visited this atoll
on business or looking for work, nobody seemed to have any
trouble understanding me, which made me feel pretty stupid.
“In the House of Records I had to float in place for a while
along with other people who were waiting their turn to be
attended to. We looked like a bunch of fish riding the currents.
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The Eyes of the Sea
“When it was my turn, I approached one of the translucent
blue spheres, twice as tall as myself, anchored halfway between
the ceiling and the floor by some means I couldn’t determine.
The only thing I could see through the little round hole at eyelevel
in the sphere was the stony face of the administrative
employee that was sitting inside.
“After some effort, repeating Coralina’s last name and the
date of her exile several times to the listless government worker
—who gave off such unenthusiastic light that it was as difficult
to interpret as his mumbled words—I managed to get an
address for one of Coralina’s relatives.
“As would be natural for a family that had fallen into
disgrace due to the shame of one of their members being
exiled, the address was for a location in the deepest part of the
atoll, only a few meters from the trash and waste that covered
the ocean floor.
4
“I felt excited as I left the House of Records, because at last
I had a trail to follow. I looked downward; I had to go to Sector
Forty, Blue Quadrant, cabin twenty-three. The water became
harder and harder to breathe as I descended along one of the
thick black cables that held the warships out of the water in
their strange verticality. Without the filter I had been given, I
doubt that I would have been able to make it to the address.
“The only thing blue that was left about the quadrant with
that name were some dying lanterns that hung from the coral
walls. There were no anemones on the walls, not because it was
too deep, but rather because the only things that could survive
down there with the disinherited were sea scorpions and huge
anomalocaris that were a sickly white, with great, faceted eyes,
scurrying about on the dirty sea floor, patiently looking for
some edible bit.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“I couldn’t help thinking about the neighborhood where my
friend Malaam lived, and where Simone and my beloved Fanya
spent much of their time, helping and healing the inhabitants.
This was not the world that I wanted to bring your mother to. I
would have to find a good place where we could live together
and be happy; that could not be my native atoll, either.
“But it was too soon to worry about where to settle down; I
still had to figure out how to bring her over. I hoped with all my
heart that Coralina could tell me how to do that. It was a very
remote possibility, but at that time it was the only one I had to
grasp at.
“The people I approached, looking for guidance, glared at
me with distrust, like I was some alien, and I only got a reply of
darkness or a rude flash of burgundy when I asked about cabin
twenty-three.
“When I finally found it, the entrance-way was closed, so I
stuck my hand into the greeting-box, as is customary when one
arrives at a house, and I emitted several slow, lavender pulses.
“ ‘Is anyone home?’ I asked, “I wish you health and clear
waters; I’m searching for Coralina Ij-nee.”
“There was no answer. I hadn’t come this far to just turn
around now, so I stuck my whole arm in, to indicate the
seriousness and importance of my visit. ‘Do you know
Coralina?’ I insisted.
“Suddenly someone grabbed my arm in a strong grip. It was
an absolutely hostile gesture. I jerked my arm out of his hold,
and the iris-shaped door opened. An old man with an extremely
unfriendly face and several water fleas as thick as a man’s fingers
stuck on his skin flashed glares of black light at me that were so
intense they made my head hurt.
“ ‘Clear waters to yourself, stranger; get out of here.’
“ ‘I just wanted to ask you a question, please.’
“ ‘Get out of here or I’m calling the authorities.’
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The Eyes of the Sea
“The old man’s attitude had irritated me a great deal. ‘I
doubt they come around here very often, Grandpa,’ I said,
sarcastically. He tried to close the door but I managed to slip
inside before he could.
“ ‘Get out of my house, you damn sea toad! Maybe the
Conclave’s security forces don’t come around here much, but if
I call my neighbors, you’ll never reach the surface alive.’
“ ‘I only need for you to tell me whether you know
Coralina; she was a young woman who they exiled from your
atoll, and I’m looking for her. I’m not going to hurt her, I swear
to you.'
“ ‘She brought disgrace to our family; she had a bastard son
after she used a crossing point without permission, and they sent
her away.’
“ ‘Do you know where she went?’
“ ‘Is that personal filter you have on your back less than a
year old?’
“ ‘I don’t know, it might be. Why?’
“ ‘I’ll tell you what you want to know if you give me that
filter; my old lungs need it more than yours.’
“ ‘If I give it to you, I won’t reach the surface alive.’
“ ‘I’ll trade you mine for it; it’s plenty good to get you back
to where you came from.’
“ ‘All right, it’s a deal.’
“ ‘She was my sister; the rest of my family, the Ij-nee’s, were
so ashamed that they all left and went to other atolls. I stayed
here, and as you can see, everything is going just fine for me.’
“It was hard for me to stop looking at the fat sea fleas that
were sucking on his blood, and I couldn’t understand why he
didn’t pull them off. Some of them must have been attached for
years, leaving a little trail of bite marks behind each time they
collapsed one capillary and moved on to another.
“The cabin was small, and the light that the walls gave off
could hardly penetrate the layer of algae that covered them. In
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all the corners there was apparently useless junk floating
around, which had to be shifted aside to move through the
room.
“ ‘If you say so,’ I mumbled, not sure how to respond.
“ ‘What did you say your name was, boy?’
“ ‘I didn’t say; you really didn’t give me much of a chance.’
“ ‘True, true.’
“ ‘Do you know where your sister might be now?’
“ ‘Yes, or at least where she went to.’
“ ‘Did she go to another atoll?’
“ ‘First the filter; we’ll both take them off at the same time,
all right?’
“We each took off our filter; his was covered with algae and
gunk of every brown and green shade imaginable. I held my
breath; I had just recovered from a long convalescence because
I had breathed in some deadwater, and I didn’t intend to let the
same thing happen again.
“I held out my filter to the old man, who quickly grabbed it,
but he yanked his arm backward when I tried to take his as we
had agreed. He emitted several short, bright white pulses and
threw himself towards the back of the room.
“From behind the pile of junk that occupied most of the
room darted out three sea scorpions, each nearly as large as I
was. Without making a sound, they came at me with their
pinchers open.’
“ ‘I feed them well, stranger! Tonight they will eat sea toad!’
“I unsheathed my claws and decapitated the scorpion
closest to me, kicked the second one, and tried to get off to one
side. Shaking their huge tails violently, the two creatures that
were left turned toward me, fixing their huge black eyes the size
of a fist straight on me.
“I threw myself at them feet first, striking the larger of the
two with both feet and pushing it so hard against the opposite
wall that its shell split, and a milky, bluish liquid spilled out.
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The Eyes of the Sea
“The pinchers of the one I had decapitated were opening
and closing spasmodically. I had lost sight of the old man, but
the cabin door was still closed. Where had he gone?
“The last scorpion aimed his pinchers at the nape of my
neck, but I noticed the movement of the water and jumped
away just in time—I just got a scratch on my left temple. I
grabbed it as it went by, and I bit down hard right at the base of
its eye, taking out a sizable piece of its head. I spun around and
saw the grandpa with a primitive harpoon gun in his hands.
“ ‘You killed them, you sea toad!’
“He shot the harpoon gun, but luckily for me the chaos of
all the floating objects, which was even worse after my battle
with his pets, caused the harpoon to end up stuck into an empty
fuel container that was floating beside me. I rushed toward him
through that soup of trash, and I yanked the harpoon gun from
his hands. He was livid; I pushed him up against the ceiling and
held my claws to his throat.
“ ‘Now give me that filter, old man.’
“With terror painted on his face, he began to remove my
filter, which he had put on next to his own, to return it to me.’
“ ‘Not that one, yours.’ The look on his face turned to confusion.
‘That’s what we agreed on,’ I insisted. ‘Now tell me
where your sister went when she was exiled.’
“I put on his filter as soon as he handed it over to me. It
didn’t work anywhere near as well as mine had, but it was a
relief after breathing that sick water during the fight, and it
would get me back to the docks all right.
“ ‘You’re a man of honor; you keep your word even to
those who don’t. Things are very hard down here, especially for
an old man.’
“ ‘That’s no excuse for you to sic your beasts on me.’ I let
go of the old man, and he began to sob; his skin went almost
dark, and he wept ink-like tears.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“ ‘My sister went to live in Latica with her bastard. She got
a job there working to clean the coastline, or something like
that. I never heard from her again, and that was many years ago.’
“I headed to the surface then, leaving the deceitful old man
crying about his dead pets, hugging the head of the one I had
decapitated. I followed the cables upward to the docking area,
where I thought I still saw the keel of the Drybow.
“The water got clearer as I rose. I would ask if the
passenger transport’s route took it to Latica; if not, I was sure I
could get a ride on one of the cargo ships anchored in port.
“I was still feeling shocked that not only had Coralina been
exiled, but her whole family had turned their backs on her and
disowned her. Things were so different here on this atoll,
compared to where I had been raised. The enormous difference
between the rich and the poor made the latter live in
desperation. I couldn’t wait to get away from that strange place.
5
“I picked up my luggage and re-boarded the Drybow, which
was indeed going to Latica. The crewman that showed me to
my cabin was surprised by the condition of the personal filter
when I turned it in, but he didn’t question me. I checked into
the healing station for someone to look at the scratch on my
head. I said I had run into some loose metal, and no one
doubted me. It just needed to be disinfected, as the wound was
superficial.
“It would be several hours before we left port, and since I
had no desire to see any more of the metal reef, I donned the
land suit my father had given me and went up to one of the
decks that had been designed for people who lived above-water.
“I wished that someone had invented a suit that could be
used to cross through areas of deadwater. If I didn’t figure out
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The Eyes of the Sea
another way to get back, I thought that maybe I should try to
invent one myself.
“I made my way to the ship’s exercise room. Its presence on
board was one of the few advantages of the ship having once
been a military transport. I wanted to get a little more used to
using my legs for walking instead of just for kicking or pushing
off. Fortunately our kind have powerful muscles, and even
though there is quite a difference in weight when we are out of
the water, the fact that I had spent so much time walking
through the mangrove swamp with your mother had already
gotten me used to walking to a certain point.
“The main exercise room had a man-to-man combat
simulator room off to one side. I had never used a simulator,
and I was very curious to know how it worked. Just as I was
going to open the door, I heard a familiar voice behind me,
calling me by my land name.
“ ‘Well, if it isn’t Captain Lucas,” I said, turning to see the
officer who had been so attentive and kind to me that same
morning.
“ ‘Ha! I wish! How did your search go, Mr. Sharduk?’
“ ‘What do you say that we skip the formalities?’
“ ‘Sounds good to me! Sharduk. How did it go for you?’
“ ‘Well, as you can see from this scratch on my head, I
didn’t exactly make any new friends.’
“ ‘It only took a few hours for someone to try to turn you
into fish food!’
“ ‘I guess that’s what I get for going down to the bottom
asking questions. It really didn’t look like there were many
friends to be had down there.’
“ ‘Nope, down there the only things that can survive are
scorpions and those ugly things that look like squid relatives—I
don’t remember what they call them.’
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“ ‘Anomalocaris. The cut on my head is from one of those
sea scorpions, who I guess just fell in love with me and wouldn’t
let me go.’
“ ‘The people who live near the bottom of the atoll use
them for protection.’
“ ‘This was more a case of an attack.’
“ ‘I see you really know how to pick your friends.’
“ ‘I was going to try the simulator.’
“ ‘Do you mind if I join you?’
“ ‘Of course not! Besides, I’ve never been in one of these
before.’
“ ‘All right! This one hits hard, but logically it’s programmed
not to kill you. I’ve used it quite a few times, and the worst that
can happen to you is that you end up black and blue.’
“We closed the door behind us, and Lucas requested
combat against three enemies. From among the opponents that
the machine offered, he chose a small biter from the age of the
Telluric Wars and two standard foot soldiers from the ancient
Mechanist army, with their pulsar rifles and their short swords.
The biter was a round, reddish ball of fury with a body about
three cubits in diameter and dozens of tentacles that had a row
of sharp teeth at the end of each one.
“ ‘Interesting choices, Lucas! What weapons will we use to
fight them?’
“ ‘I’ll take one of these.’ He opened one of the panels, and
from among the various simulated man-to-man combat
weapons he selected a wide-bladed, three-edged sword with a
groove between each edge. ‘You can choose whichever one you
want, but you don’t really need a weapon; you’ve got that
combat suit on.’
“ ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled.
“ ‘Come on, man! Your suit is a valuable relic; it’s one of
the last combat suits that they made, just before the Wars ended.
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The Eyes of the Sea
There probably aren’t more than half a dozen of them left in
the whole world.’
“ ‘You must be mistaken; my dad gave me this suit. It’s so
that I can walk around above-water without any problems.’
“ ‘Are you kidding me, Sharduk? You should ask him where
he got it. I’m sure that your suit has a great story to tell. It’s a
shame it doesn’t seem to have the name of the official who
wore it, as far as I can tell. You can just barely see a golden
manta ray etched there on the left shoulder— that’s the insignia
of a Captain.’
“ ‘Why would I kid you? And where did you learn so much
about combat suits?’
“ ‘By the Twins! You really don’t have any idea of what
you’re wearing! Yesterday I saw you wearing it, and I was so
curious I couldn’t help but come over and talk to you. It’s a
magnificent weapon. I thought for sure you were wanting to try
it out in the simulator! You mean you don’t know how to
activate it?’
“ ‘I press here at the middle of my collarbone and the
recycling system and the humidifier turn on.’
“ ‘Well, that’s just one of the things it does. I know about
some other things from the historical rolls and the terminals.
During the Wars the Mechanists created the first divisions of
aquatic soldiers. As you know, later on the Shepherds of the Sea
were created based on the same design, but the changes that
turned them into formidable warriors underwater left them with
certain weaknesses above-water. These suits were designed for
use on dry land, and allowed the warriors to be just as agile out
of the water as they are in the water. Later they were used
underwater as well because of the armor and weapons that they
provided for whoever wore them. With one of these suits on,
you are as strong up here as you are in the water.’
“ ‘Well, I still feel just as heavy and clumsy as I always do
when I’m above-water.’
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“ ‘That’s because you’ve only activated the humidifier.
Combat suits acted as armor and added the necessary strength
to compensate for the change in weight when you are out of
the water.’
“ ‘So how do I turn it on?’
“ ‘From what I understand, they react to your orders by
reading the different colors and light pulses that you emit with
the chromatophores and photophores in your skin. You can
also choose whether or not to let the light through to the
exterior. They’ll change color according to the user’s skin, too.’
“ ‘How do you know so much about these things?’
“ ‘The truth is, my friend Sharduk, that I’ve always been
passionate about military history, and I’ve read a lot about the
lives of the great warriors who helped the Holy Twins bring
peace to our world.’
“ ‘There aren’t many of those warriors left.’
“ ‘I know, and I believe the ones that are left all spend their
time hunting down the remaining war beasts that are still hiding
in remote corners of our world. I hope to get to meet one of
those warriors someday; they are true living legends.’
“ ‘Well, since you know so much, tell me how to activate
this thing.’
“ ‘When you get a chance, you should do a search at a
terminal to get more information, but for now, try emitting a
pulse of light that is as white and bright as you can. That should
get it started up.’
“ ‘Cover your eyes.’
“I flashed a bright white light, but since the rest of my
body was covered by the suit, the only thing to be seen was that
my head lit up.
“ ‘Nothing seems to be happening, Lucas.’
“ ‘Oh, I’m sorry—I forgot to say that you should put on
the hood and lower the mask that’s attached to it.’
“ ‘Let’s see. . .’
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“I put on the hood, and with my thumbs I pulled down the
thin, gauze-like, transparent mask that was hidden inside. I
lowered it clear to the collar of the suit, and it fastened itself
onto the collar as though it were alive, like a limpet.
“Okay, now give it another try.’
“I emitted another flash of light, even whiter and brighter
than the first. This time the light passed through the fabric of
the suit, which had a texture similar to dolphin skin. The hood
became rigid, taking on the shape of a battle helmet, and the
gauze-like mask became a hard, crystal-clear barrier. The entire
suit had adopted a rigid form, and for a moment I felt trapped
inside.
“ ‘I knew it would work! I knew it!’ shouted Lucas.
“ ‘It doesn’t feel like I’m going to be able to move around
much.’
“ ‘Ah, but it’s a wonderful suit of armor! Just try moving; it
will respond automatically to your nerve impulses. Give it a
minute; it looks like it hasn’t been used in a very long time, and
besides, it needs to read you and adapt to you.’
“I made some tentative movements with my arms, then
tried some jumps and spins. I soon began to feel just as
comfortable and agile with the suit on as I did in the water.
“ ‘The humidity in here is perfect.’
“ ‘Wow, and I can hear you as clearly as if you weren’t
wearing it!’
“I flexed my legs and jumped almost to the ceiling, pushing
off from one wall and flying across the room to the other.
“ ‘That’s great, Sharduk!’
“ ‘I never thought I could move this way outside of the
water!’
“ ‘Let’s try it with the combat program.’
“ ‘Okay! Let’s do it!’
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“Lucas pressed a button on the console, and in the center
of the room appeared the two soldiers and the biter that he had
requested from the computer.
“ ‘Come on, let’s get them, sea warrior!’
“I threw myself at the biter while Lucas started sparring
with the nearest soldier; both had moved to attack us just as
soon as they appeared. The biter was very impressive up close,
even though I knew it was just a force field covered with
holograms.
“I tried to strike the beast in the fleshy parts that were
between the bases of its tentacles. Two of the tentacles hit me;
Lucas was right, it wasn’t going to kill me, but it sure hurt! I was
thrown against one of the walls, which fortunately was also
covered with force fields to soften the impact.
“The ensign had decapitated one of the soldiers and was
forcing the other one to back up towards where the biter was.
For a simulation, he seemed to take the fight very seriously, and
a murderous half-smile danced on his usually peaceful, round
face, as he moved his muscular body at a speed much greater
than I could have imagined from a person who was nearly two
meters tall. I guessed that he had spent hours in this room, and
that he had a lot of frustration and even hatred to release.
“While Lucas and the simulated soldier continued their
swordplay, with thrusts, feints, and blocks in rapid succession, I
renewed my attack on the biter, which was rolling towards me. I
jumped towards the ceiling, flipping in the air so that my feet
would end up on top of the beast, as the huge ball whipped its
many arms in my direction.
“Then something strange happened—the soles of the feet
of the suit adhered to the ceiling by means of a series of short,
dark hooks that had emerged from them, and suddenly I found
myself hanging upside-down, while the arms of the biter
swirled upwards towards me.
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“I flexed my legs and then extended them with all my
might. The soles released from the ceiling, and I found myself
shooting downwards towards the beast. In the brief instant I
had before I fell onto it, flying through its extended tentacles, I
stretched my arms out towards it to strike it as I fell.
“I noticed a tickling sensation on my forearms, and the
sleeves of my suit took on the form of two broad knives,
running from my fingertips to my elbows. They plunged into
the animal at impact.
“The beast shuddered, and I planted my feet on it to pull
my arms out from where they were buried. A stream of
holographic blood spurted from the two terrible wounds the
knives left, and the biter’s tentacles fell flaccidly to its sides.
“Across the room, the soldier had struck Lucas in the head
with the handle of his sword, and jumping back from him, he
was now grabbing the pulsar rifle he carried on his back, to
shoot my companion.
“I prepared to leap from the biter onto the soldier, but at
that exact instant, Lucas threw his own sword, piercing our last
opponent through the chest before he could fire his weapon.
“ ‘Good battle, Sharduk,’ said the ensign, panting slightly
from the effort.
“ ‘The suit responds well, but we still have to get to
understand each other better.’
“ ‘I have to go on duty now; if you want to, we can get
together later. One thing—deactivate the suit before you leave;
if people realize what you’re wearing, someone might try to get
their hands on it.’
“ ‘You’re a good fighter, Lucas.’
“ ‘Thanks. I spend almost all of my free time here. Not
many people use it—war is a little old-fashioned, but it’s
important to know how to defend yourself.’
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“ ‘When you’re free again we’ll get together and you can tell
me more things about the Wars, and especially about what has
you so angry that you fight the way you do.’
“ ‘I didn’t know it was that obvious.’
“ ‘I’m afraid I inherited an ability to read people from my
mother. You know—tell me how you fight and I’ll tell you who
you are.’
“ ‘Ha, ha! Yes, you really know how to put two and two
together. See you later. At the evening meal I’ll tell you about an
idea that’s been going through my head.’
“I stayed a while longer in the simulation chamber,
experimenting with the combat suit. I seriously doubted that my
father was ignorant of what he was giving me. He must have
known that along the way I might find myself in difficulties, and
a suit like this would be of great value to me. But if he knew,
why didn’t he say anything to me about its capabilities? He must
have had his reasons. I would ask him if I ever got the chance.
6
“I managed to emit concentrated light pulses from the
palms of my hands with the help of the suit, make knives of
various sizes and attack angles, and with a bit of practice I saw
that I could camouflage myself in almost any surroundings, in
spite of having the suit on.
“I wasn't getting uncontrollably stuck to the walls like when
I was fighting the biter. I also realized that with my luminous
and nervous orders I could make the entire surface of the suit
become adhesive. This was very useful, not only allowing me to
stick to whatever I needed to, but also letting me carry
equipment simply by attaching it to my back or to the belt of
my suit.
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The Eyes of the Sea
“It would still take us several days to reach the coasts of the
ancient city of Latica, once the seat of power of the Mechanists
and today a sad shadow of its former self.
“That evening at the agreed time, I went to the upper deck,
where the dining hall was located. I asked for a large serving of
hydrates and proteins, since the exercise had given me the most
ferocious appetite I had ever felt. The food served on the ship
wasn’t as good as freshly caught fish, but at least it filled my
stomach. I sat at one of the tables, and within minutes Lucas
joined me.
“ ‘Twins, what a plateful! It looks like the suit takes its
share!’
“ ‘What does that mean?’
“ ‘Nothing you need to worry about. The suit, in a way, is a
living being—it’s a bio-mechanoid, and it will absorb part of its
nutrients from you. You’ll just have to eat a little more than
usual so that both of you can stay fit.’
“ ‘One surprise after another. I’ve been practicing, and I’m
beginning to understand your enthusiasm better and better. Do
you want to try it out?’
“ ‘I’d love to, but these suits only recognize as users people
with the genetic changes made so they can live in the sea.
Thanks for offering.’
“ ‘You were going to tell me about a plan that was going
through your head; I’m intrigued.’
“ ‘Right. Look, as I told you before, I’ve always been
fascinated by the stories of the great battles of the Tulleric
Wars. When I saw you with the combat suit the other day, and
saw how quickly you adapted to its use, it was as though I was
seeing one of those ancient warriors. Someone in your family
must have fought in those wars. I think that you are in the
middle of a complicated situation, and you might need to have
someone along who could give you a hand finding whatever you
are looking for. I grew up in Latica; I could help you.’
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“ ‘Thank you, but as you know, I’ve only just begun my
search and someone has already tried to get rid of me; I don’t
think I should put anyone else in danger because of a problem
that is mine alone.’
“ ‘Look, the truth is that I’m getting very bored here on this
ship. I thought I would find more adventures on the high seas,
but we just travel the same route over and over again. These last
few months my frustration has been turning into rage inside of
me; that’s what I’ve been trying to work off in the simulation
chamber.’
“ ‘Well, by the way you fight, I’d say you have a lot more left
to work out of your system. I’d love to have you come with me,
but I have no idea how long it will take me to find what I need,
and you don't even know what it’s about yet.’
“ ‘As long as I have something more real than a bunch of
holograms to fight against, you can count on me. I’ve always felt
that I was born for battle, as though I belonged to another
time.’
“ ‘And I hope that you won’t have to find out if you really
were. I assure you that it’s not as much fun to be in real combat.’
“ ‘I guess I’ll just have to find out for myself.’
“ ‘And it may be some time before you see your family
again.’
“ ‘Oh, I haven’t seen them in years, not since I first went to
sea when I was fifteen years old. My parents became followers
of the most radical branch of the Indistinguishables cult.’
“ ‘I’ve heard of them; they have some very extreme
positions.’
“ ‘You’re telling me! It’s a pseudo-religion that makes its
followers unhappy and doesn’t allow for others to be happy,
either. Especially those who are eking out a life on the Plains of
Sorrow. They’ve taken the writings of the Twins, blessed be
them both, so literally that they stifle everything and everyone in
a massive structure of rules that are so difficult to follow that I
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The Eyes of the Sea
found them to be unbearable as soon as I began to be able to
reason.’
“ ‘I can understand how you would leave them, then. My
parents are just the opposite; they’ve helped me in every way
they could.’
“ ‘What’s the name of the woman who’s gotten you into so
much trouble, Sharduk?’
“ ‘Why do you think this is about a woman?’
“ ‘It’s always about a woman, my friend. I had problems
with my parents before I left home because I was seeing a girl
from your people. The Indistinguishables think that mixing
genes is immoral.’
“You were seeing a Shepherd of the Sea girl?’
“ ‘Yes, indeed! Lanysa, a wonderful girl; but things didn’t
work out between us, and besides, she and her family moved
south. What’s your girl’s name?’
“ ‘Fanya, her name is Fanya.’
“I told him a bit about how I had found the crossing point,
how Fanya had rescued me, and how now a pocket of deadwater
kept me from returning to her side. I explained that I was
looking for a woman who apparently had used the same door as
I had, to see if she knew of any way for me to get back.
“ ‘And I thought my story was sad, Sharduk my friend!’
“ ‘I beg you not to tell anyone about this; I could be exiled,
and so could my parents, for having helped me. I have just put
my fate in your hands.’
“ ‘I swear it by my honor, which is my only possession of
any value. Fate meant for us to meet, so that we could help each
other.’
“ ‘If only I could cross the deadwater with some kind of
protective suit. . .”
“ ‘Forget that—I don’t know how you came through it
alive! You must have just gone through the very edge of the
pool. It eats everything; it’s more than just a lack of oxygen. No
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Alberto Guaita Tello
one has ever been able to penetrate a pocket of deadwater more
than a few meters, even with heavy armor.’
“ ‘Besides, even if I could get through, I couldn’t bring her
back with me.’
“ ‘Even if you could, that would also have its risks.
Fortunately, there seems to be less and less presence of the security
forces of the Conclave; you could hide out on the eastern
coast, protected by the forests of Rayna, and live in peace. We’ll
help each other—you get me out of this tedious job, and I’ll go
with you until we find a way for you to get back to Fanya.’
“All right, it’s a deal!’
“ ‘Now, tell me more about that world you visited, and I’ll
tell you what I know about the Wars and about your combat
suit.’
7
“I spent the remaining days of our journey towards Latica
either in the ship’s knowledge center or in the combat
simulation room, where Lucas and I trained together. I began to
understand why my new friend and ally was so bored with his
work. The hours passed slowly at sea, and the monotony was
only broken by meals and by our training sessions.
“Sometimes Lucas invited other sailors to join us in our
exercises; I think he talked them into it just to torture them.
When there were others present, I used the session to practice
without the extra help of the suit, as much to keep from
depending on it totally as to keep our training partners from
seeing what I could do when I wore it.
“I felt more and more comfortable with my father’s gift to
me. Sometimes it was even hard to take it off. Whenever the
confidence the suit gave me got so great that it could be a
danger to me in a situation of real combat, Lucas raised the
level of the simulator to a higher intensity, or added extra
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The Eyes of the Sea
enemies without warning me. Sometimes we both ended the day
covered with bruises.
“My skill increased rapidly. The suit and I acted in perfect
synchronization. No, it was more than that—it anticipated my
requests by a fraction of a second, as though it shared my
instincts even before my conscious orders could reach it in the
form of patterns, colors, and flashes of light from my skin.
“The suit’s caloric requirements were very high, and soon
there were comments running through the dining hall that I ate
like one of the great sea beasts. At any rate I only interacted the
bare minimum with the other people on board, except, of
course, with my self-proclaimed best friend.
“It still fascinated me to go up to the bow decks with their
transparent barriers, and the speed at which everything went by
no longer made me sick.
8
“On the eighth day, Lucas came to look for me in the
knowledge center. I was concentrating so hard on my screen
that I didn’t hear him come in.
“It was discouraging; I had only found a brief note about
Coralina’s contract to work on the clean-up of the coasts, and
the old traitor of a brother of hers had already given me that
information. I did find out where the headquarters of the
company in charge of the cleaning process were located; maybe
they could tell me where to find her.
“ ‘Hey, Sharduk! Any better luck with your search today?’
“ ‘By the black waves, Lucas! Do you always have to sneak
up on me?’
“ ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
“ ‘Where I come from I would hear you splashing half a
day away!’
“ ‘I’m sure you would!’ he laughed. ‘I don’t know if you
realized it, but we’re beginning to slow down. You might want
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Alberto Guaita Tello
to come up on deck to watch us arriving in Latica before the
captain announces that we are docking and it fills up with
passengers.’
“I left the medusa-bag in my cabin. It would be useful to
someone, and above-water it would only last a few hours before
it dried up and died. I went up on deck with Lucas, and we
stood by the barriers, which were set at maximum transparency
for a better view of the docking. Just about then the captain, a
man that I had only gotten a glimpse of once at the dining hall,
announced our arrival through the ship’s loudspeakers.
9
“It had been a good voyage; we were only one day late, and
he wished us all a pleasant visit in the Capitol.
“There were only a dozen of the enormous ovoid buildings
remaining of the hundreds that once defined the profile of the
city-state against the turquoise sky. They were painted with a
thousand iridescent colors and decorated with symbols and
markings that indicated the use of each one.
“Newer buildings that were smaller—between four and ten
stories high—had replaced most of the towering giants of
former days. Some of the older ones were halfway demolished,
and would soon give way to large extensions of pastures and
woods. Little by little an effort was being made to return a
natural equilibrium to our world.
“From what I had read, the plan was to leave only enough
buildings to house those who had decided not to leave our
planet, along with their descendants. They would help replant
the woods within the city as well as across the poisonous Plains
of Sorrow, which promised to be an arduous task that would
take a very long time to complete.
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The Eyes of the Sea
“ ‘I’ve requested leave, Sharduk. Let’s see if near the port
we meet some little land mermaid that will make our troubles
vanish, and then we can look for a place to stay.’
“ ‘Thanks, Lucas, but I’d rather start looking for
information about Coralina and her descendants. And by the
way, if by mermaid you mean a Shepherd of the Sea girl, you
should know that we don’t like to be called mermaids or
mermen. It is a little condescending. I don’t refer to land
dwellers as dry-faces.’
“ ‘Ha, ha, ha! You’re right! I’ve heard that expression, dryface!
No offense meant; it was just a playful nickname I used to
use with my girl Lanysa.’
10
“We disembarked together through the cargo area to avoid
unnecessary lines. Long walkways at nearly a hundred per cent
humidity led from the port to the city itself. What remained of
the ancient metropolis was a spectacular array of streets and
avenues, both aquatic and pedestrian, that crisscrossed each
other in astounding complexity.
“Transparent bridges created by force fields held water in
the desired shape and crossed footbridges, sometimes under
them and sometimes over them, forming complex arches and
spirals as they led to the different buildings. Inside the buildings
there were rooms adapted to our needs.
“Thanks to my land suit I didn’t have to use the water
bridges, which gave me greater freedom of movement and
allowed me to keep company with Lucas.
“Just as at Iron Atoll, jumping points were set up near the
port area, but there was less activity here than at our previous
stop. These were the first ones to be installed, and they looked
very lack-luster, past their prime. It was impressive to think that
it was here that the colonization of other planets by our people
had begun.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“There was a movement that was becoming more popular,
begun by the sect of the Indistinguishables, which considered
that the colonization had been an unforgivable sin, and that
although we had not found any people on any of our new
planets, our actions must have caused great misfortune for
thousands or millions of sensitive beings. They believed that
these beings were watching us to see what we did with their
former worlds, as if they were monitoring a strange illness.
“Using an avenue with a moving transport belt, we headed
towards the headquarters of the company that had been in
charge of cleaning the coasts over the last two centuries.
“ ‘I think you’d better put on your hood, Sharduk; this
avenue passes through a neighborhood that’s mainly inhabited
by Indistinguishables, and they don’t take kindly to people who
are different from them.’
“ ‘Discrimination in any form has been forbidden since the
reign of the Twins.’
“ ‘I know, but some object could accidentally fly out of a
window and hit you. Every day there are fewer security forces
here, and these people have total control over many sectors.’
“ ‘I can understand why you left your parents’ religion.’
“ ‘No religion that seeks to harm others would be pleasing
to the Twins.’
“The transportation belt left us in front of the tall, ovoid
building that housed the offices of the Clear Seas Company,
painted green and covered with swirling designs in bronze and
silver. Dismantlement had begun at the top of the building,
with a plan to move the whole thing to Oceans II, where it
would carry out its business adapting the infinite sea bottoms
there to the needs of the many Shepherds of the Sea who had
decided to emigrate, once they completed their work in our own
ocean, to begin a new life.
“The receptionist seemed surprised that I had come to their
office by way of a pedestrian avenue and not a water bridge, but
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The Eyes of the Sea
she maintained a professional smile as she attended to us, only
shooting us a few furtive glances as she looked for the
information about Coralina that I had requested.
“To my dismay, she told me that Coralina had passed away
two decades earlier, and that apparently her son had moved east,
to Rayna. I felt as if I had suddenly been plunged down to a
depth of thousands of meters, and Lucas must have seen it on
my face, because he tried to cheer me up.
“ ‘This isn’t the end of your search, Sharduk.’
“ ‘I know; we have to find her son. He might know
something, but this reduces my possibilities of returning by a
great deal.’
“ ‘Is there something else I can do for you?’ asked the
receptionist in a sharp nasal voice.
“ ‘Do you have the name of her son there on the terminal?’
“ ‘Ij-nee, Patrick. Now that’s a name I never heard before, if
you don’t mind my saying so!’
“ ‘Thank you, good day. Come on, Lucas, let’s go.’
“Once outside, I could barely breathe from the excitement.
“ ‘Lucas, Patrick was the name of Fanya’s grandfather!
Coralina gave her son the name of the man she loved, the name
of his father! I’m sure it was her that crossed over before me!
Maybe she told her son about some other way of crossing over
besides the point in the old ship.
“ ‘So Coralina was an important clue from the very
beginning, after all!’ exclaimed Lucas.
“ ‘We have to go find Patrick’
“ ‘We’ll find. . . Wait, if he’s the son of Fanya’s grandfather
and Coralina, he would be a half-brother to Fanya’s mother, and
her. . .half-uncle?’
“ ‘That family tree is beginning to have too many branches
in it for me to follow!’ I laughed.
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“ ‘We’ll have to go by land, Sharduk. There aren’t any water
routes that go to the Red Fjord any more. That was the only
port in Rayna, and it’s on the far eastern end.’
“ ‘Then we’ll have to cross the Plains of Sorrow, and that’s
not a place I look forward to seeing.’
“ ‘Don’t worry, I know someone who can go with us. I’ll
need a few days to get things ready for the trip.’
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The Eyes of the Sea
Chapter 12
Ciel and Malaam
1
The perplexed look on her brother’s face when she went
flying above him and his boat made Ciel smile for a moment.
But it was no more than that, a slight smile, because she
couldn’t forget what her brother had said. It was quite possible
that their mother would not want to leave behind the people
whose health depended on her to a great extent.
This thought tormented her as she swam towards the
mangrove swamp, where she could leave the water without
being seen. She needed to find Malaam and talk to him. She was
sure he could help them with the plan their father had in mind,
and talking to Malaam would help her pass the time while
Sharduk and Etienne were getting to know one another.
Her brother’s insistence on spending some time alone with
their father in order to size him up, as well as to consider his
plan to take them back with him, had taken her by surprise and
left her in a bad mood. On the other hand, she understood that
if they had some time alone together, just as she had had with
Father there in the sea cave when they met for the first time,
Etienne could not help but take a liking to Man Kenguele.
As Ciel neared the shore, she reduced her speed and swam
as close to the sea bottom as she could, trying not to stir up any
sand as she went, as that could easily be seen from up top. The
sun lit up the sandy sea floor as she silently glided into the
shallows.
The waters of the mangrove swamp contained a jungle of
ancient, twisted roots. A great number of different fish and
amphibians lived there, as well as a few crocodiles. The latter
were smart enough to recognize her as a potential predator and
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Alberto Guaita Tello
not prey, so if they noticed her in time they would always try to
put as much water as possible between her and them.
She often entered and left the water among the roots of an
enormous white mangrove tree, where she wouldn’t be seen by
some stray shrimp fisherman. They were almost the only people
who came close to the swamp, except for some of the village
boys, who would risk their lives to obtain stalks of the fleshy
bamboo that grew there. The boys used the jointless stalks to
create little imitations of the different models of cars that they
had seen, producing true works of art with an exactness and a
sense of scale that were simply incredible.
Ciel emptied the water from her lungs, and as soon as she
felt a little better, she wrapped herself in the dry cloth that she
had hidden among the roots of the mangrove tree and headed
down the path to her neighborhood of N’long.
2
Compared to the sense of security she felt when she was
embraced by the sea, the jungle had come to feel like an
inhospitable place to her, too noisy and with too many places
where she could be attacked. The impulse to go running back to
the sea and never come out again flooded her once again. But
knowing she was so close to being able to tell her mother all of
the truth and that at last their whole family could be together
again gave her strength to continue on her path through the
jungle to N’long.
When she got home, her mother wasn’t there, but Ciel went
in and had something to eat, while she thought about how to
tell her mother and Malaam about Man Kenguele’s arrival. She
wished her great-grandmother Simone were there so she could
ask her advice.
After a while she went on over to Malaam and Alice’s
house. Malaam wasn’t home—when he was, he usually sat on an
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old mat outside his front door, sharpening his ax or striking up
an animated conversation with anyone who was within hailing
distance. But today it was just Alice and her neighbor Marie,
pounding corn in the baobab-wood pounding mortar that the
carpenter had carved for Malaam in exchange for an excellent
piece of ukola wood he had brought him.
Whenever Alice was well enough, they ground their corn
together. Not only did they enormously enjoy each other’s
company, but they each had so little corn that if they ground it
separately, there would hardly be enough to use the pounding
mortar instead of the flat rocks they used to grind smaller
quantities by hand.
Alice’s girls watched hypnotized as the women took turns
vigorously lowering their poles in perfectly synchronized
movements, all the while chatting and laughing as good friends
do. Alice saw Ciel coming and called out a greeting, and Marie
turned to greet her, as well.
“Mbolo, friend,” said Alice cheerfully. “Are you here to help
us grind our corn?”
“Mbolo fee,” responded Ciel. “I wanted to talk to Malaam.
Hello, little ones,” she said, going over to where the girls were
sitting on a piece of cardboard. She patted and hugged them,
and the girls laughed happily.
“He isn’t here—he went into the jungle to look for cola
nuts and fresh bottle-tree thorns that your mother needs to
prepare some of the medicines she’s taking to the village market
tomorrow. I don’t think he’ll be long.”
“Okay, I know where he gets them. I’ll go see if I can find
him. Do you know where my mother went?”
“She went into the village to take care of a boy who burned
his arm with boiling palm oil, trying to snitch some fried doughrings
his mother was cooking,” replied Alice.
“Are you all right?” queried Marie. “You look worried.”
“No, I’m fine, Marie. It’s okay.”
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“We can’t help being concerned about the people we love,
Ciel,” said Alice, looking at her intently.
“Thanks, Alice. It’s nothing—you needn’t worry, really.”
“Can you go on for a while without me, Marie?” asked the
older woman. “The more this child tells me not to worry, the
more worried I get. Come walk with me, Ciel, and tell me what’s
going on. Maybe I can help.”
3
Ciel knew that Malaam shared everything with his wife, but
she wasn’t sure how much he had told her about Man Kenguele,
and since it seemed too strange a truth to burden anyone with,
she wanted to choose her words carefully. They walked down
the path towards the sea for a while in silence. Alice asked no
questions, waiting for Ciel to find the courage to speak.
“My father has returned, Alice. He wants us to go live with
him.”
“Man Kenguele, the man from the sea, has returned?
“I wasn’t sure how much you knew about him. I thought
Malaam probably told you some things, but I wasn’t sure how
much.”
“I know the whole story, my child. I even know that you
yourself can spend a very long time underwater. Malaam was
worried about the way you disappeared sometimes, and he
asked me to follow you once. Don’t worry, though; you know
that your many secrets are safe with us.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you myself, a long time ago.”
“Each person keeps to himself what he thinks is best;
there’s no need to apologize for that.”
“Thank you, Alice.”
“So why is your heart so troubled today, Ciel?”
“Etienne is in his boat at sea, talking to Father, but he said
something that’s making me think a lot. He said that Mother
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may not want to leave because she has the responsibility of
taking care of everyone’s health here. He says she won’t want to
leave you and Malaam, nor Marie, nor the others who live in
N’long.
“That idea has taken away all the excitement I felt when I
first thought we would all go live with him. On the other hand,
living on land is becoming more and more unbearable for me. I
don’t know what to do—I feel so confused. I don’t want to
leave anyone behind—we are a family. But then I don’t want
him to go back alone, either, knowing how much trouble he
went through to be able to return to us.”
They came to a place where another path crossed theirs.
“How appropriate—a crossroad!” commented Alice.
“And I don’t know which path to take.”
“Well, if you will allow an old woman’s advice, it’s good for
you to think about what you should do, but in the end the
circumstances will dictate your decision.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you see a panther on the path, if you are wise you
will go the other way. The circumstances will determine your
decision.”
4
The calm demeanor and gentle words of Alice had soothed
Ciel’s troubled spirit, and after parting ways with her at the
crossroad, she went on down to the little clearing where Malaam
usually collected the stimulating cola nuts. Deep in her thoughts,
she hardly noticed how close she was to the clearing when she
heard a strange murmur.
“Malaam! Is that you?”
The sound stopped immediately, and she thought she heard
Malaam mutter a curse under his breath.
“Enthi! What a scare you gave me, Ciel!”
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“Were you talking to someone? I thought I heard voices.”
“I only hear the wind in the trees.”
“Oh, well, I must still have water in my ears. I need to talk
to you.”
“Whatever you want, my green-eyed girl. Help me with
these thorns? They’re a little high for me.”
“Of course—hand me your knife. I was just talking to Alice
—you could have told me you knew about. . . about my ‘special
talents.’ ”
“I thought it would be best for you to just feel normal, at
least with us. Maybe I was wrong.”
“I know your heart was in the right place—I would never
doubt that—but I would have liked to able to talk to someone
about these things.”
The thorns were tough, and she had trouble getting them
off the bottle-tree trunk, even though the knife was very sharp.
“I always thought you would talk to your mother about it,
or your brother. I guess you had your reasons not to do that,
but I can’t think of what they might be.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter any more. Something amazing has
happened; my father has returned!”
“What? Man Kenguele is here?”
“Yes, and he says he needs your help.”
“How is he?”
“Happy to be back, sad because so many years have gone
by for Mother.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s the same as when he left—the very same, even the
same age. It’s only been a few months for him, less than a year.
“You mean he’s still a young man?”
“He’s my age, Malaam. It seems so strange.”
“Gods! I don’t know how your mother will take that.”
“I’m worried about it, too, and so is Father.”
“Did he say what his plans were?”
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“He says he wants us to go with him, but I don’t know
what to do.”
“Go, my child.”
“And leave all the people I love behind?”
“There’s no future for you here, nor for your brother,
either. He’s been taking a lot of risks lately, and he’s going to
end up in serious trouble before long. You should both go, and
get out of this miserable place.”
“What if Mother doesn’t want to go with us?”
“I’ll watch after her, don’t worry. Don’t look at me like that
—I know very well what my limitations are.”
“That’s not what I was thinking, Malaam.”
“I swear to you that I have the means to defend your
mother, as well as the rest of us.”
“I believe you, Malaam, I do.”
“Tell your father that I’ll meet him tonight at sunset at the
mouth of the Benoué River, there behind the tallest waterfall.
He can tell me then what he needs me to do to help you get out
of here.”
“I will. Oh, Malaam! You’re the best grandfather in the
whole world,” she said, bending down to hug him. “Here are
your thorns.”
“Thank you, Ciel.”
“I’m going into the village. I want to talk to Mother, to tell
her to come to the mangrove swamp with me tonight, after
you’ve talked to Father.”
5
Ciel made her way to the village and found the hut where
Fanya was just finishing applying poultices made with blue
gorgonias on the right arm and part of the chest of the sobbing
little fried-dough thief, whose impatience had brought upon
him an outrageous punishment, compared to his petty crime.
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With all the bravery a five-year-old could muster, he gritted his
teeth and tried to keep the tears from falling.
“There you go, little man. We’re all done,” said Fanya,
stroking his head lovingly. “Next time use the long-handled
spoon to go fishing for fried dough-rings.”
“I don’t think he ever wants to eat fried dough-rings again,
poor little guy,” said his mother. “Here, I wrapped a couple
dozen of them in a banana leaf for you to take home with you,
Fanya.”
“Thank you, Ruth. You know how my children love these.”
Ciel watched from the door of the house as her mother
picked up her things and wrapped them all in a cloth, which she
tied up into a neat bundle. Ever since she was a small girl, she
had seen how it was easier for her mother to be tender and
sweet with other children she took care of than with her own.
Maybe she and her brother reminded her too much of their
father, and of the pain of never having seen him again.
She waited until her mother had picked up all her things
and was turning to leave.
“All right, Ruth. Change the poultices twice a day the way
that I explained to you. I’ll be back in a couple of days to see
how it’s healing.”
“Hello, Mother.”
“Ciel, I didn’t know you were in the village. Who’s at the
house?”
“Nobody, Mother, but Alice is keeping an eye on it.”
“Have you seen your brother?”
“I talked to him a couple of hours ago; he’ll be out fishing
tonight.”
“Well, I’m going back home now. I have to get everything
ready for market day tomorrow, and I just used up the last of
my gorgonia ointment.
“I’ll walk home with you. Let me help carry things.”
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The silence between them became heavier and heavier as
they walked towards N’long.
“Has something happened, Ciel? You show up in the village
all of a sudden, you insist on walking with me, and now you
don’t have a word to say all the way home. Did your brother get
himself into some kind of trouble again?”
“No, Mother. Something else has happened, but we’re all
okay.”
“So what is it? I’m getting worried.”
Ciel stopped and took her mother by the shoulders. She
looked into her eyes for a few long seconds—the contrast
between her mother’s dark, warm eyes and her own sea-green
ones couldn’t be greater.
“Mother, we need to talk. I was supposed to wait until
Etienne gave me the signal to do it, but it’s eating me up inside
and I have to tell you. Father has returned, and he needs to see
you tonight.”
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Chapter 13
Searching for Patrick
1
“The days that Lucas said he needed in order to get ready
for the trip to Rayna turned into several weeks, but now that we
had been crossing the multi-hued blue sands of the Plains of
Sorrow for nearly a month, I understood why so much
preparation was necessary.
“If Jaffeth, the pilot of the sand spider that we had hired in
Latica, hadn’t taken us along the less frequented routes, we
could have fallen into the hands of the many followers of the
Indistinguishables sect who wandered through the desert they
had made their home. While we had had a couple of somewhat
violent run-ins with members of the sect during our stay in the
city, apparently this was nothing compared to what could
happen at the hands of the desert dwellers. There were rumors
that they fed off of the remains of the war creatures that could
still be found in abundance among the dunes.
“We had seen several groups of Indistinguishables in the
distance, but Jaffeth kept us far enough away from them so it
wasn’t worth their while to chase a small group like ours. They
often attacked groups that ventured out of the city in search of
metal scraps and other materials among the battle ruins that
covered much of the Plains of Sorrow, but they avoided groups
that included any of the powerful Shepherds of the Land.
“The slow but steady pace of the huge, six-legged, metal
sand spider that carried us, along with our supplies—four
meters above the ground and protected from the sun by a
canvas tent—produced a tremendous sense of monotony. The
only thing that provided a little interest was caring for my
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pendant, whose tiny red inhabitants were not doing too well
amidst so much heat and dryness.
“ ‘How long until we get to the border of Rayna, Jaffeth?’
“ ‘Two days less than the last time you asked me, two days
ago, Sharduk. I said that I would get you there in one piece, not
that I would get you there fast. My old spider wasn’t made for
racing.’
“ ‘Don’t try to rush the pilot,’ said Lucas. ‘If we went faster,
we would arouse the interest of the Indistinguishables, and I
assure you that if that happens the only place we will get to
quickly will be the other world, if there is one.’
“ ‘We’ll have to go around that; it wasn’t there last time I
came through here,’ said the pilot, indicating an enormous
crater with walls of crystalized sand looming in front of us.
“ ‘An artifact must have exploded when they were trying to
dismantle it, and it must have been a big one. This thing is
several kilometers in diameter.’
“ ‘Hopefully it took out a few Indistinguishables,’ said the
pilot. ‘That would be good.’
“ ‘Another delay,’ I muttered.
“ ‘We’ll get there, Sharduk; it will just take us a few extra
hours. Remember that you aren’t the only one with a mission.’
“ ‘I’m sorry, Lucas. It’s just that I’ve been out of the water
so long that it’s getting on my nerves.’
2
“After another two weeks of playing hide and seek with the
Indistinguishables, we finally began to see a few spindly trees,
and later, in the distance, what looked like an impenetrable wall
of vegetation, which extended from north to south across the
whole continent.
“ ‘We’ll get to the forest within a couple of hours at the
most—then I’ll go back to Latica like we said.’
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“ ‘Of course, Jaffi! Keep the supplies that are left over, too.
I’m sure you’ll make good use of them.’
“ ‘Thanks, Lucas. I hope you don’t run into too many
problems in the forest.’
“We hadn’t been able to find any vehicles that we could use
in the dense jungle, so we would have to make the rest of the
journey on foot. As we neared Rayna, the breeze brought us the
welcome scent of humidity, and I began to feel refreshed.
Crossing the blue desert had taken its toll on my body and soul.
“Soon we reached the edge of the forest, where tall trees
seemed to be watching over other younger ones who were
trying to take possession of the desert a few meters at a time.
“We shouldered the backpacks with the supplies we would
carry with us and a couple of rifles, and as soon as the pilot
lowered the cabin of the sand spider to the ground, we paid
him what we had agreed on and climbed out. The care and
attention of the Shepherds of the Land could be seen in the
harmonious way the young trees were developing.
“We heard shouting and some mechanical sounds
approaching us from deeper in the jungle.
“ ‘That doesn’t sound good at all,’ said Jaffeth from the
cabin, ‘and that isn’t the only thing coming our way.’
“ ‘What else is there?’
“ ‘I see some of the Indistinguishables’ vehicles coming
across the desert; I’ve got to get out of here right now, or they’ll
see me. May the sands be smooth in your path.’
“ ‘Good luck to you, too, Jaffi.’
“The sand spider lifted up off the ground and started off
in the opposite direction from the now perfectly visible dust
column that was heading right towards the area at the edge of
the forest where we were standing. Lucas looked very serious as
he watched our transport disappear behind a blue-hued dune.
“ ‘Sharduk, it’s quite probable that the people coming
toward us through the forest are also Indistinguishables;
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sometimes they make raids into the forest to hunt, and they
attack the settlements that are closest to the edge of the Plains
of Sorrow. We’d better hide and figure out how many of them
there are; then we can decide what to do. Keep your
communicator turned on, and let’s split up.’
“ ‘Shall we use our tactic for combat simulation number
fifty-one?’ I asked him.
“ ‘That’s just what I was thinking. You take an upper
position, and I’ll try to slip behind them when they get close to
the edge of the forest.’
“We heard several shots and loud voices. I activated my suit
and climbed to the top of one of the tall trees in the last row
before the desert began. My armor generated a set of tiny
hooks that fastened my back to the tree trunk, and I changed its
color to blend in. It would be hard for anyone to see me. Lucas
had also vanished from sight.
“I could hear the vehicles coming across the desert at our
backs very clearly, while the shouts coming from the forest were
getting louder and louder. In my mind’s eye I could see the band
of Indistinguishables, faces hidden behind their white,
expressionless masks, crashing towards us through the
underbrush.
“Lucas’ voice sounded in my right ear. ‘There are eight on
foot, and another one in an old Mechanist combat walker with a
cage welded onto the back of it. I see some young Shepherds
of the Land and one of my kind in the cage. I think a group of
Shepherds are chasing after them.’
“ ‘Those sons of a shark have been on a slave raid for their
work camps in the desert! If they reach the vehicles, we won’t
be able to do anything. I’ll take care of the walker. I’m moving
forward.’
“I released my back from the tree trunk where I was
perched and jumped from tree to tree until I was directly above
the group. The mechano was a museum piece made up of parts
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of several walking suits of armor, and it was four times my
height. Luckily the cabin was only armored across the front. I
calculated my angle and jumped down onto its roof. Before the
driver could react and attack me with the articulated arms, I slid
feet-first into the cabin through a side window, knocking his
head against the stability bars so hard that that it split his skull.
The machine halted and stood there, unmoving.
“ ‘What are you doing, Driver Grez? They’re right behind
us! Don’t stop here!’ There was no answer.
“The group of Indistinguishables halted, unsure. One of
them scrambled up the ladder to the cabin and looked in the
window through which I had just entered. I stuck my pulsar rifle
in his face and shot at the same time that Lucas began shooting
from behind their line, trying not to hit the captives, who were
still in the cage, shouting and crying in desperation.
“The force of the impact from my weapon sent the raider
flying several meters backward before falling to the ground on
his back like a headless bundle of meat. The rest of the group
tried to return Lucas’ fire, but they had a hard time figuring out
where he was, since he was constantly changing his position,
making them believe they were being attacked by a small army.
“I jumped down behind them; they were too close to the
prisoners, and I didn’t have a good shooting angle, so I formed
knives with my sleeves and threw myself at them in a fury. I
have never been in favor of attacking from behind, but they
were slavers, and our little army of two didn’t have much time
for what we needed to do.
“A shot from Lucas set fire to the belly of another
Indistinguishable, but there were still six against two, and this
was not a training session; here the shots killed, and those
whose lives you took were real people.
“Two of them turned toward me, running between the legs
of the mechano with their white-painted masks. I grabbed onto
one of the walker’s legs and used it as a pivot to spin around
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and hit at the fellow who was closest to me. I missed—my left
blade passed only centimeters from his neck.
“His companion didn’t miss; I felt an intense burning in my
right shoulder as I landed on the ground. Lucas was keeping the
others busy.
“Once he recovered from the initial shock, the one I had
aimed at first raised his handgun and pointed it at me. I lit my
suit with the brightest flash of light that I could, in an effort to
blind both of them. It seemed to work, but it wasn’t a very
good idea, because two of those who were exchanging gunfire
with Lucas whirled around towards me.
“I didn’t have time to send another blinding flash; luckily,
one of them received a deadly shot in the middle of his back. I
jumped forward, taking advantage of the fact that the first two
still couldn't see—which didn’t stop them from shooting blindly,
so several of their shots almost got me as well as their own
men.
“I lunged at the other one with my good arm, missing his
fire by a fish-scale’s thickness, and sank my knife into his chest.
Shots were still raining down from behind me, so I quickly
jumped back up to the cabin of the mechano. The pain in my
shoulder was getting worse by the second, and it was hard for
me to stay on my feet.
“ ‘Let’s get out of here! More Shepherds are coming!
Retreat!’
“The last of the slavers ran towards the Plains, where their
transports were approaching. I sat on the roof of the mechano
as Lucas, apparently unscathed, emerged from the brush where
he had been hiding.
“ ‘Help me get these people out of the cage. You’re safe
now—we’ll get you out right away!
“ ‘Who are you?’ asked a girl about thirteen years old. She
seemed to be the eldest, though not the largest, since there were
Shepherd of the Land children who were smaller versions of
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their powerful parents; even though none of them were older
than eight, they were already nearly two meters tall.
“ ‘We are friends; we’ll get you out of here,’ Lucas reassured
them again.
“ ‘That won’t be necessary. We will do it.’
“It was a voice as deep as rolling thunder; Lucas and I both
turned towards it at the same time. Coming through the forest,
tossing trees out of his way left and right as though they were
algae, was the largest Shepherd of the Land you could ever
imagine, followed by half a dozen more, as well as a dozen
other forest dwellers.
“Although the Shepherd seemed to be trying to walk
carefully, the ground trembled with every step. He was a meter
taller than the mechano, and probably weighed several tons. I
had never seen nor heard of the existence of such an enormous
Shepherd of the Land. He must have been quite old. His arms
and legs looked like branches and tree trunks painted a deep red
color and covered with old—and some not-so-old—scars. His
yellow eyes held as much wisdom as the whales I have met here
in your ocean.
“He looked straight at me; his rugged face was less than a
meter from where I was sitting. His breath smelled of dead
leaves, and his mouth still had most of its big, flat Shepherd
teeth.
“ ‘You stopped those who had attacked our camp. Why?’
thundered the Shepherd’s voice.
“ ‘We realized they were slavers; we couldn’t let them get
through with their prisoners.’
“His companions surrounded the mechano and Lucas, who
moved aside to let them open the cage.
“ ‘We didn’t think their clients were happy with the
transport service,’ said Lucas, carefully laying his rifle on the
ground and raising his hands.
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“ ‘Your friend thinks he is funny, Shepherd of the Sea. It
has been long since I’ve seen armor such as yours.’
“The timber of his voice was so deep that it made my chest
vibrate; it was like listening to an underwater volcano. I ordered
the suit to withdraw its protective hood. It took a few seconds
longer to comply than I expected; obviously it, too, felt uneasy
about the gigantic being that was in front of us.
“ ‘We were just passing through, on our way to the Red
Fjord. We couldn’t have just let them go by; it wouldn’t have
been moral,’ I explained.
“ ‘Moral? That is a concept that seems to have fallen out of
use beyond our forest. What takes you to the Red Fjord? Why
do you want to cross our forest?’
“ ‘I’m hoping to find someone at the Fjord who can help
me return to the one I love.’
“The Shepherd gave me a long, searching look, while the
newly-released captives ran to hug Lucas. If he decided I was
lying, my armor couldn’t keep him from squashing me like a sea
louse.
“ ‘You are very far from home, Shepherd of the Sea. Come,
you are wounded. You have done us a great service; those
bastards would have escaped with the children. They keep them
as slaves, and when the young ones grow so large that they are
difficult to manage, they perform a lobotomy in order to keep
them in their service. I am Colonel Turj. We will take you to a
safe place, a place with water. Welcome to Rayna.’
3
“The camp actually turned out to be a small city organized
around a lake. I dove in as soon as we arrived, leaving my
combat suit with Lucas for safekeeping. The various trade guilds
were arranged around the shore, while carefully respecting the
water and its inhabitants.
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“Most of the houses were on stilts, right on the lake itself;
one was assigned to us in appreciation for our fight against the
Indistinguishables. The inhabitants obtained most of their
energy though an intricate system of wires tied to the trees that
were closest to the lakeshore, converting the movement of the
branches in the wind into electricity.
“These were warrior-like people; many were direct
descendants of the Sons of the Roots who had fought in the
wars against the Mechanists. Others were clearly descendants of
the Mechanist group itself, but they had been living here since
the Holy Twins began their policy of non-segregation, with the
idea that the only way to live in peace was to know each other,
live together, and mix with one another.
“For the next two days I hardly left the water; I hadn’t
realized how much I had missed it until I was able to enjoy it
once more. We were anxious to get to our destination and look
for Patrick, but my wounded shoulder needed a rest.
“On the morning of the third day, after spending a few
hours feeding and chasing the enormous red-whiskered catfish
that lived in the lake, I saw Lucas sitting on the balcony of our
house, with his legs dangling over the edge and his feet in the
water. He greeted me when he saw me and motioned for me to
come over. I got out of the water and sat beside him; he looked
upset.
“ ‘What’s up, dry-face?’ I asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“Lucas waited for a few seconds before he answered, and
he completely ignored my clumsy attempt at being funny.
“ ‘They’ve asked me to stay here with them, Sharduk.’
“ ‘Here? In the forest?’
“ ‘Yes. Changes are coming, and not pleasant ones, either.
The Indistinguishables are arming themselves; winds of war are
blowing, my friend. The people here want me to help them in
preparing their defense. I know all the major battles fought on
this planet by memory, and though most of my knowledge is
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theoretical. . .’ He was quiet for a moment before he continued,
‘Turj is worried about what those people are up to, and he has
asked me to help him. He asked me! I know the great
accomplishments of that man—do you know who he is? He
was already an official before the arrival of the Twins! I’ve read
about all of his battles; he was—I mean, he is—one of my
favorite warriors of all times. He’s afraid that the errors of the
past will be repeated. At least this time the planet is almost
empty, and there won’t be as many victims as in the wars of past
centuries.’
“ ‘But wait, you’re saying he’s what, some four hundred
years old?’
“ ‘Yes, he’s one of the original Shepherds; he was an officer
in the army of the Sons of the Roots before the Blessed Twins
rose to power. He doesn’t age, or at least if he does, it’s very
slowly. But he hasn’t stopped growing since the day he was
transformed into a Shepherd, when he was about my age. He’s
the only one of the originals still on our planet; the rest were
assigned to the colonies, to protect our people.’
“ ‘So, what are you going to do?’
“ ‘When we get you back to your beloved, I’ll come back
here to join up with him. It’s the second time in my life that I
feel like I have a purpose to fulfill.’
“ ‘And what was the first time?’
“ ‘Oh, you know what that was! It was when you took me
out of my worthless position on the transport and invited me to
go on an adventure with you!’
“ ‘Ha, ha, ha! That was your own idea, Lucas!’
“ ‘Don’t laugh, Sharduk. I’m making some serious decisions
about my future. He wanted you to stay, too; he saw you
fighting, and he was impressed.’
“ ‘You know I can’t, Lucas. When I left, Fanya was in a
difficult situation.’
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“ ‘I know, and I’m not asking you to stay. I’ll go to the Red
Fjord with you to see Patrick.’
“ ‘Don’t tell me that you’ve gotten information on where to
find him…’
“ ‘Yes, Turj told me just a while ago; he asked me to take
the mechano to him so he can fix it up a little, and our new
friends can use it if those fanatic bastards attack them again.’
“ ‘Does he know that your parents…’
“ ‘…are followers of the Indistinguishables cult? Yes, I told
him myself. The problem isn’t the worship in itself, but the fact
that some of them use it as an excuse to enslave others.’
“ ‘Can we leave for the Fjord this afternoon?’
“ ‘If you’re ready to walk that far…’
“ ‘I don’t walk with my shoulders, Lucas.’
4
“The mechano turned out to be an efficient—though
boring—transport. We spent five days crossing the thick forest
at its steady, mechanical pace, taking the hidden paths that Turj
had indicated to us until the woods began to clear as we got
closer to the Red Fjord, which lived up to its name with the
reddish tones of its high cliff walls.
“Patrick was an engineer of about fifty years of age, who it
seemed had become somewhat of a hermit after being exiled
from Latica for accidentally causing a fire that burned down the
laboratories of the company where he was working. He now
lived atop one of the cliffs that bordered the fjord, with steep
rock faces dropping down to the water on two of the three
sides of his house.
“We stopped where the chaos began. The half a hectare or
so of level land in front of the house was almost covered with
all sorts of remains, both from war machines created by the
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Mechanists and from great beasts brought over by the Sons of
the Roots.
“We climbed down from the mechano and made our way
through the assortment of junk stacked into impossible piles,
connected to each other with a web of wires of every sort. It
looked like it would all come crashing down if anyone even
sneezed. In fact, it looked like some of the piles had already
collapsed and fallen down the precipice that was just a few
hundred meters from the house.
“ ‘Remember, we have to speak one at a time and tell him
that we are from the camp by the lake, and that Turj sent us.’
“ ‘Okay, Lucas. Go on, you tell him. It’s easier for you to
seem nice than it is for me.’
“We heard a nasal voice coming from above our heads.
“ ‘Who are you? Are you here to rob me?’
“We looked up at the top of one of the biggest piles of
twisted metal. Seated up there was a strange, middle-aged
person.
“ ‘Turj sent us, from the camp by the lake.’
“ ‘Anybody can say that! If you lie to me, I’ll have my scrap
piles knock you flat before you have time to think of a second
lie!’
“ ‘That won’t be necessary, oh Great Engineer,’ I told the
skinny little man.
“ ‘How can we show you that we come in peace? We’ve
brought a gift, a mechano in almost perfect condition.’
“ ‘A mechano that works, so that I can study it?’
“ ‘Well, actually, it’s so you can finish fixing it. The colonel
said that if there was anyone who could fine tune it, it would be
you,’ said Lucas, with his best smile.
“ ‘Well, that does sound like old man Turj. Just a minute, I’ll
be right down.’
“Saying this, he jumped from the top of his pile of junk,
and suspended from a cable by an intricate harness, he slid to
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the ground. When he landed, right beside us, we saw that he
was even smaller than he had seemed on top of the pile; he was
like an elf, barely three cubits in height, with a shiny pate riveted
with some hairy patches which, had they been subject to
adequate hygiene, would have been white and not yellow.
“ ‘Nice combat suit, fish-man. Will you sell it to me?’
“ ‘No, but we’ve brought you a mechano for you to play
with.’
“ ‘Come in, come in. I’ll make you some algae and berry tea
that you will love.’
“We followed the strange little man over toward his flatroofed,
triangular house. I certainly had never imagined that
Coralina’s son would be anything like this, although if I looked
very hard, I could see a certain similarity to the old idiot who
had sicced his pets on me at Iron Atoll. He was, after all, this
fellow's uncle.
“ ‘I suppose you didn’t come just to bring me this mechano
to repair. Come on over to my front door with it.’
5
“We walked along with Patrick, as he limped with an
uneven gait across the lot filled with artifacts in various states of
disassembly. We finally reached the house, which looked more
like an industrial building, with a huge front-entry door that the
mechano fit through without any problem.
“Inside the three-sided building, panels had been set up
across each corner, creating separate rooms and leaving a large
hexagonal space in the center, which was only a little more
orderly than the outside yard. It looked like the workshop of
some lunatic, or at least of someone who found it very difficult
to let go of worthless junk. The room was filled with halfdismantled
mechanos and dozens of tables with every sort of
unrecognizable instruments and machines on them.
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“After leaving our mechano in one of the few free spaces,
we went with our strange host to the space paneled off from
the chaotic workshop in the far corner of the building.
“ ‘Clean your feet off before you come in. Here, sit on this
bench and use the ultraviolet machine.’
“When he decided we were clean enough, he opened the
metallic door to his living quarters. The order and cleanliness
inside contrasted dramatically with the disorder and oily grime
outside.
“The same distribution of the outer room was repeated
inside, in fractal symmetry; the triangular room, about forty
cubits long and proportionately wide, was in turn paneled off
across all three corners, again leaving a central, hexagonal room.
Each panel had a door leading to a triangular bedroom.
“A long table with a series of hollows filled with small
spheres presided over the center of the main room, and there
was what looked like a kitchen next to a wall covered in
tapestries with aquatic motifs.
“The algae tea was absolutely repulsive, and it even seemed
so to both Lucas and to me in spite of our very different eating
habits. After declining a third cup of the viscous brew, I decided
to get down to business. The old man was in no hurry.
“ ‘Well, I’ll have another; my old stomach has been giving
me a bad time lately,’ he said, reaching for the pitcher of tea.
“ ‘Mr. Patrick…’
“ ‘I prefer to be called Engineer Patrick, Sir, if you don’t
mind,’ he interrupted testily.
“ ‘Excuse me, Engineer Patrick, Sir. We came here in the
hope that you might know something about crossing points, and
how to use them. To be exact, I wondered if you knew of any
way to cross back to the planet where your father was from.’
“The pitcher dropped from his hands, crashing to the floor
and spilling out its horrible contents with the strange brownish
lumps.
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“ ‘Get out of my house, now!’
“ ‘My friend did not mean to offend you, Sir, I mean
Engineer Patrick, Sir; he’s just very direct.’
“ ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I added in turn.
“ ‘How do you know about this?’ he demanded.
“ ‘I made the same crossover, and in my journey I met one of
your father’s granddaughters—your niece, of course. I learned
about him from his wife, Simone, who he finally married after
Coralina never returned, for whatever reason—I imagine it was
because she was pregnant with you. I know that your father was
named Patrick, like you. Your mother named you for him, for
the man she met and learned to love, after using an uncharted
crossing point which is underwater near my home atoll.
“ ‘And what the devil do I have to do with all of that?’
“ ‘I found that same crossing point, but now it’s blocked, and I
can’t get back that way. I searched for a long time before I
found you. If you know of some other way to return to that
world, it’s the only—and very remote—possibility that I have to
get back to the woman I love.’
“ ‘The Universe seems to enjoy repeating certain tragedies. I
don’t know your name, fish-man.’
“ ‘Sharduk, but on that other planet your niece called me
Man Kenguele. Why do you call me fish-man, if you yourself
are half Shepherd of the Sea?’
“ ‘Eyes of the Sea, well, she gave you a beautiful name. My
mother taught me many words in my father’s language. As to
the nickname, which seems to bother you, it turns out that my
sea-half wasn’t as strong as my land-half. It’s been years since I
was able to breathe water, and the truth is that it’s been a source
of a lot of frustration for me; I miss it a great deal. That’s why
I was ribbing you a bit about it.’
“ ‘So,’ Lucas put in, ‘do you have any idea of how to help
my friend get back to his girl?’
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“ ‘As a matter of fact there is a way. Someone was here
years ago, and he taught me many interesting things; let me tell
you about it while you have another cup of tea.’
6
“Patrick told us how one night, many years before, an old
man had knocked at his door saying that he had gotten there by
way of an unknown crossing point in a cave in the forests of
Rayna. The old man, who spoke the same language as Patrick’s
father, was none other than Bilal the Elder, who—after falling
into disgrace due to the scheming of his son to take his place
before time—had shut himself up in his hut, which is near
yours, to use all of his skills and knowledge to escape from a
world which only offered him pain and shame.
“He was sorry his son had turned into such a despicable
being, having even poisoned Simone, the healer, his friend
Patrick’s widow—the same Patrick who was our host’s father—
all to impress the Witchdoctors’ Council, who viewed healers as
dangerous competition. Even if he himself was too old to take
on the task of vengeance, he hoped that at some point the
spirits would find a way to punish both his son and the
witchdoctors of the Council.
“It seems that when he arrived on my planet, he felt
disoriented for some time. The energies were not the same as
on yours, his magic almost wouldn’t work for him, and he wasn’t
familiar with most of the plants. But he had a strong sense of
the presence of someone whose energy was familiar to him, an
energy that reminded him of his old friend Patrick, now
deceased, and guided by some sort of internal compass, he
crossed the forest for weeks until he came to the Red Fjord.
“Bilal lived with Patrick for several years, and in
appreciation to Patrick’s father for having told him that he had
known someone from another world, he took the younger man
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on as a disciple, teaching him his magic arts, even though
Patrick was a bit too old to be initiated and would never fully
master all of them. Patrick’s logical mind resisted at first, but
after all, the Mechanists had been combining their technology
with the magic of the Sons of the Roots for a long time.
“They spent most of their spare time telling each other
about their respective worlds, and especially playing a wonderful
game, awale, the rules for which Bilal had taught Patrick, who
was immediately captivated by it. It was an awale game board
that presided over the home of the engineer-magician.
“ ‘Then, my friend Sharduk, one night he simply
disappeared, leaving only this behind. He left without any
warning, just as he came. I haven’t had anyone to play with
since; he left the game halfway through, and there it’s been
sitting ever since.’
“Patrick stood and walked over to the wall to our left.
“ ‘Give me a hand, young fellow,’ he said to Lucas, ‘you’re
taller than I am; take down that tapestry.’
“We both got up, and I stood behind Lucas as reached up
to take down the rod that held the hanging tapestry on the wall.
A perfect circle, with strange, rust-colored symbols appeared on
the rough wall.
“ ‘This, this my friends, is a blood door. This is the way the
first Sons of the Roots who dared to attempt it opened the
doors, raised the curtains that separate different worlds.’
“ ‘By the Twins! This technique predates the Wars,’ my
friend said in an awe-filled whisper.
“ ‘I’ll help you, Man Kenguele; after all, we are family, of
sorts. This is how Bilal told me that he got here. After many
failed attempts, he opened a blood door in one of the walls of his
hut, like this one he made later in my house. Because of the
type of symbols he used in both of them, they are one-way
doors, opening up passing points, leading to a different universe.
They both must be unstable, very unstable, but I don’t have any
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way to stabilize them. That’s why I’ve never dared to use this
one myself—and besides, I like living here, and I don’t believe in
running unnecessary risks.’
“ ‘But it could work, right?’
“ ‘It’s very dangerous, Sharduk,’ objected Lucas. ‘Engineer
Patrick isn’t giving you any guarantee that it will work.’
“ ‘No, I’m not. You could turn up a thousand meters in the
air, or two meters underground, either of which would
obviously be fatal. There are a lot of variables that we have no
control over.’
“ ‘Not even the points in the cities are totally safe from
errors. Remember the Kodiak incident,’ I reminded them.
“ ‘I know—three shipping transports with passengers on
their way to a colony, and they never arrived,’ agreed Lucas
reluctantly. ‘We all studied about it in class. We use the crossing
points, but we don’t really understand completely how they work.
We don’t know how they came into being, and we don’t even
know if they have some other function.’ He eyed the blood door
with distrust.
“Patrick looked at us thoughtfully. ‘Let me see, I’ll try to
explain it in a way you can understand. ‘Everything that exists—
each of the particles that make up everything—has certain
values or characteristics, however you want to call them. These
values determine what things are, what they are like, and how
they relate to the rest of all existing matter. A simple example:
this token on the awale board has a determined mass and a
certain hardness; it reflects or absorbs radiations such as light,
and it’s in a specific place. Do you follow me?’
“ ‘Yes, Engineer, Sir, we studied about that when we were
little, too,’ said Lucas a little sarcastically.
“ ‘All right, genius. These characteristics are the ones we
see, but there are many more that we can’t even understand,’
continued Patrick, replacing the awale token in one of the
hollows on the board. ‘Just imagine that there were a way to
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change those characteristics; for example, the one that defines
where the ball that I just placed on the board is. Imagine that we
could simply make it so that in all the particles that make it up,
the characteristic that defines that it is in this hollow on the
awale board, would suddenly change value, and that the new
value defined that all the particles in the token are in hollow
number three instead of in hollow number two, or that they are
completely off of the board.’
“ ‘Then, the crossing points wouldn’t actually be carrying us
from one place to another.’
“ ‘That’s exactly right, Sharduk. They just change the values
that define where our molecules are, and therefore, logically,
where we are. They just change the data, and we immediately
cease to exist in one place, and commence to exist in another.
To anyone observing us, it would look like we had disappeared.’
“ ‘The crossing points usually allow us to see what’s on the
other side, Engineer; but this blood door is like jumping off a
precipice with your eyes blindfolded.’
Patrick’s eyes narrowed until they were nothing but fine,
sea-green slits, as he stood at his tallest to face Lucas.
“ ‘Perhaps it is, but I think your traveling companion has
made up his mind, and you should respect it, big guy.’
“ ‘I know; it’s just that I’m worried about what might
happen to my friend.’
“ ‘If it’s the will of the Twins, I’ll reach my destination. If
not, so shall it be; but I would be surprised that so much effort
would go unrewarded.’
“ ‘You have more faith than I do, friend Sharduk,’ replied
Lucas, shaking his head.
“ ‘And how will the door know where to take me? Maybe it
will take me to wherever Bilal is now.’
“ ‘Your blood knows; blood always knows where it has
been and how to get back there. You should appear in the same
place as you did when you crossed over the last time. As I said,
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the magicians of Rayna used their own blood at the beginning
to open the crossing points they discovered, or to force the
formation of other new ones, and they added strange formulas
to their blood so it would change and open doors to new
destinations. They used the doors intuitively long before
scientists had any inkling of their existence.’
“ ‘Isn’t there some way to make it a little safer for Sharduk?’
“ ‘If we were in a city and we had the right scanners, I
would study the marks of his previous crossovers on his cerebral
cortex, and then I would enter that data into one of the
stabilizers that the Mechanists built, but we have what we have.’
“ ‘Let’s do it, right now.’
“ ‘Well, you are in a very big hurry to get back to my niece.’
“ ‘I’ve already been gone too long.’
“ ‘All right, then. I’ll need some of your blood.’
“ ‘Lucas, I want you to have my combat suit; I won’t need it
where I’m going.’
“ ‘No way, Sharduk; I won’t accept it. Besides, they only
work for Shepherds of the Sea.’
“ ‘I’m sure Patrick can make it work for you.’
“ ‘Make what work for you?’ asked the engineer, who was
just coming back with what looked like an enormous syringe.
“ ‘I don’t know if this will turn out the way it is supposed
to, and if I don’t make it back…’
“ ‘…don’t say that, Sharduk.’
“ ‘…if I don’t make it back, I want Lucas to have my
combat suit, now that he has decided to help Turj in his fight
against the Indistinguishables, and I’d like for you to try to adapt
it so it will work for him and will protect him.’
“ ‘That shouldn’t be too hard; I’m pretty familiar with them.
I think that if I take some samples of his cells and I configure it
so…’
“ ‘I just need to know if that is something you can do.’
“ ‘Yes, yes, I can. No problem. I’m sure I can.’
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“ ‘I’m not going to accept it,’ protested Lucas.
“ ‘Well, it’s staying here. If you don’t want it, Patrick can
keep it.’
“Lucas walked away muttering to himself as he often did
when he felt frustrated.
“ ‘How do I get back?’ I asked.
“ ‘You’ll use the blood door in Bilal’s hut, but to make the
same journey he did, you’ll need the right blood. It can’t be his
because we don’t know where he is; you’ll have to use some
from a close relative of the one who drew it, tracing over the
circle with that closely-related blood.’
“ ‘Okay, I know where I can get some.’
“Patrick extracted some blood from my arm, and sprinkled
it on the wall, which absorbed every trace of it. The rustcolored
design on the wall became a glowing, pulsating mirror
of blue blood. I said my good-byes, closed my eyes, and crossed
the trembling membrane head first.
“I knew I was in the right place even before I opened my
eyes. I was in the sea, and I could taste the metallic water that
surrounded the submarine at the crossing point I had used before.
I was home. It took me a while to find your sister, and when I
first saw her, I thought she was your mother.”
7
By the time Sharduk finished telling his story to his son,
twilight was falling.
“That cursed Bilal the Great! I knew he had a grudge
against us, but not that he had caused my great-grandmother’s
death.’
“I’m sorry, Etienne; I want you to know that he’s going to
pay very dearly for it, and very soon.
“Don’t tell anyone else about this for now.”
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“I’ll only tell Malaam. He needs to know, so that he can
carry out a task he has to perform.”
“Well, do as you think best, then, but if possible, don’t tell
Mother or Ciel. I don’t want them to suffer more than
necessary.”
“I’ll respect that. Now I am here, and between all of us, we
will do justice for our family.”
“It’s too bad you didn’t come sooner, Sharduk.”
“The good thing, Etienne, is that I showed up in the right
place; the bad thing is that since the crossing point was very
unstable, it’s seventeen years late.”
“I guess it could have been worse; you could have appeared
in the ground, like Patrick said.”
“It is a meager consolation, but thank you, Son, if you will
allow me to call you that now. Apparently the crossing points can
make changes in time, as well as in space.”
“If you went through all those difficulties in order to return
to my mother, you deserve to call me whatever you like. By the
spirits, this is like in the comic books: time travelers, strange
creatures. . .”
“Well, I’m glad that those comics opened your mind to
these possibilities. It’s even strange for me, believe me. And
thank you for allowing me to call you ‘son.’ I still think it’s
amazing to have two children that are almost my same age. I
told Lucas to wait for me in the cave where Bilal appeared,
which is where the blood door in the old witchdoctor’s cabin
should take me, along with whoever is coming with me.”
“I’ll go with you, Father, as long as my mother decides to
come with us. I want to know more about the strange world
that you come from.”
“So do I, Father.” It was Ciel, who had returned from her
errand and had just grabbed onto the side of the boat.
“You’re going to scare us to death, Little Sister! Come on,
get in!”
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Alberto Guaita Tello
“So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight—you’re going to try to
open one of those doors, or whatever you call them, in old Bilal’s
hut, so that we can go with you?”
“Yes, that’s the plan.”
“I’m glad you are going to come, Brother.”
“I said I would as long as Mother comes.”
“And what if the door doesn’t open? Or what if it sends us
to Hell, literally?”
“It shouldn’t—the one in Patrick’s house worked all right
for me.”
“Except for the difference in years.”
“I’ve been thinking about that ever since I got here. Bilal
didn’t have that problem; I think it may have happened to me
because I used the blood door to reach a place it wasn’t designed
for. Or because my blood is different from that of land
dwellers.
“Now we will be traveling through the same door that Bilal
used to come to my world. I counted up, and according to when
your mother told me he had disappeared and when Patrick told
me he had arrived, Bilal didn’t have problems with time like I
did.”
“Did you get a chance to talk to Malaam?’ asked Etienne.
Ciel looked away, suddenly interested in the boards at the
bottom of the boat.
“Yes, and actually, I spoke to Mother also. She’ll be coming
down to meet you, Father.”
“Couldn’t you do what I ask you to for once in your life,
Sister?”
“I’m sorry, Etienne—the news was burning in my mouth,
and I had to tell her. Malaam will help us any way he can, but
Mother has me a little worried.”
“Worried why, Daughter?”
“I don’t know how to explain exactly how she has taken the
news of your return. I thought she would be overjoyed when I
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talked to her and told her that you were here, but she seemed
distant, somehow. She’s never been too expressive, but even so,
I don’t know what she’s going to do. Maybe she doesn’t even
know for sure herself. They’re both going to meet us. Malaam is
probably already at the waterfall, and she’ll be at the mangrove
swamp later.”
“We should get going, then.”
“What about you, Brother? Are you coming with us, or are
you going to wait here?”
“I’ll wait here if you don’t need me. I have a meeting set up
with a barracuda, and I wouldn’t want all the trouble I went to
for the bait to be for nothing.”
“You are the stubbornest person I know.”
“Stubborn, yes, but not more than you, Sister.”
“You two can argue about that another day. Ciel, let’s go see
Malaam to ask him to help us, and then we’ll see your mother.
By the Twins, I’ve missed her so much! I want to see her as
soon as possible, but what you’re saying has left me a bit
uneasy.”
Father and daughter dove into the sea, leaving Etienne
alone with his thoughts.
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Chapter 14
The Barracuda King
1
The young fisherman sat watching the wake that his father
and sister left behind as they headed away from him and the
Grand Titanic at an amazing speed. The last things that Sharduk
had told him were still spinning through his head. Now he
understood why his sister had been so fascinated by their father.
He was the very personification of the kind of hero that he had
read about in the few torn comic books that had fallen into his
work-hardened hands. Reading them had been the only luxury
he had occasionally enjoyed in his childhood and youth.
The day had spent itself while Sharduk told him his story;
the last embers of the sun bathed the horizon with their reddish
hues, while a flock of seagulls used the last rays of sunlight to
return to their nests on land.
From the bottom of his boat, the eyes of the hog he had
killed the night before to use as bait to catch a barracuda king
stared at him with apparent reproach.
“Don’t look at me like that; it’s for a good cause. No matter
what happens, whoever decides to stay here will have enough
money to leave this place if you and I manage to catch a goodsized
beast and sell it in the marketplace tomorrow.”
Etienne lit the oil lamp at the bow and made his way to the
back of the boat to light the other. He checked his longest line,
looking for any knots to be undone. He would use this line with
his large, three-pointed fishhook, each branch as thick as a
man’s finger.
He tied one end of the rope at the stern, and at about a
meter from the other end, he tied an empty jug to act as a float.
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He lashed the fishhook tightly to the end of the rope and
pierced the remaining piece of the hog’s neck with it.
Once that was accomplished, he hauled up the anchorstone,
which seemed unusually light to him, and started rowing
out to sea. He kept the Southern Cross to his left, until he lost
sight of the coast, while a flock of gulls returning to their nests
flew over him in the opposite direction. When the gulls were
out of sight and he could no longer hear their shrill calls, the
only sound was the gentle murmur of the waves, and the steady
sound of his oars leaving and entering the water.
The continental shelf was narrow along this stretch of the
coastline; he stopped rowing at less than a mile from where the
ocean floor dropped abruptly to impenetrable depths. It was the
ideal spot to catch one of the big ones. Merely being out there
alone in the middle of the night was a temerity in itself.
The monster he wanted to catch was too powerful for him
to use a single anchor, so he threw out the somewhat smaller
bow anchor as well. Unfortunately, the rope on this second
anchor was also shorter than the one for the stern anchor, and
didn’t reach the sea floor.
“Dammit,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “I’ll have
to make do with a single anchor point.” The darkness was
absolute, and a fine mist covered the surface of the water.
“Your turn, my friend,” he said, picking up the hog’s head in
both hands.
With the rope perfectly coiled in a flat roll at the bottom of
the boat, he began to swing the bait with its empty-jug float in a
circle above his head, faster and faster until finally releasing it.
The bait and its jug flew like stones thrown from a sling towards
the abyss, and the rope whistled through the air as the coil
diminished.
He had never thrown such a heavy piece so far; when the
rope reached its end, it tensed violently, and a loud crunching
sound came from the plank where it was attached to the stern.
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The gods had never done much for him, but Etienne prayed to
all of them to help him just this once, so he could catch a great
fish.
He was hungry; he hadn’t eaten anything since before he
raided the pig farm, and now he remembered that he had a bit
of yucca bread with palm oil in the chest with his equipment.
Now it was a matter of waiting. He finished off the piece
of stale bread and was overcome by sleep. He had been awake
for a day and a half. To the southwest some clouds began to
shoot bolts of lightning towards the sea. The flashes of light
woke him from his drowsiness before the sound of thunder
reached his ears.
“Just what I needed,” he said, even before he opened his
eyes. A flash of lightning etched itself on his retinas with his
eyes half opened. He slowly began to count, to see whether the
storm was moving his way or not.
“One mamiwata, two mamiwata, three mamiwata, four
mami. . .” The sound of thunder reached him, too soon for his
liking. “One mamiwata, two mamiwata, three mamiwata, four
mamiwata, five mamiwata. . . ”
It seemed that the storm was moving away from him, but it
was still very close. If the wind changed it could be on top of
him in short order. It wouldn’t be his first storm at sea; the first
time he was just eleven years old, and although he lost one of
his oars and took almost a whole day to make it back to shore,
he had managed. That was who he was; he did what needed to
be done, no matter how hard it was.
At least the sky above him was still clear, and the crescent
moon had decided to come out from its hiding place, reflecting
eerily on the mist that covered the sea with a layer so thick it
came to the edge of his wooden boat.
At least I can see a little better now, he thought, as he turned up
the wick of his oil lamp. He must have slept for several hours—
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the wick had burned almost out. He took a couple of steps to
the stern and dipped his hands into the mist to tug on the rope.
2
Nothing.
He decided to keep giving little tugs on the line, so that the
hog’s head would bob beneath the mist and the waves. He felt a
slight jerk that barely tensed the rope.
There was always the risk that some smaller fish would
nibble at the bait. He only had the one piece, and he wouldn’t
dare go after another. He had been lucky enough to get away
with the one he had.
As happens with all great fishermen and hunters, patience
was one of his virtues, and after tugging on the rope a few more
times, he decided to go back and sit for a while longer. Just as
he turned, a sharp jerk threw him to the floor of the boat; he
fell full-length, with the wind knocked out of him. Jumping up,
he headed back to his rope; the second jerk caught him on
guard, and he grabbed onto the top plank across the stern to
keep his balance.
The bow raised up from the water, and he almost went
overboard. It must be an enormous fish to raise the boat like
that. He would have to tire it out before he would be able to
haul it in, and the battle hadn’t had a good beginning.
He sat on the floor of the boat and braced his feet against
the stern, hanging on with both hands for dear life. He could
feel the pressure on the planks, and thought they might break
away. The dozens of layers of paint that covered the boat were
cracking, and he heard a loud snap. At first he thought he might
have lost the rope with the hook and bait, but then he realized it
was the anchor rope that had broken away. The bow slapped the
water violently; the tension on the rope and hook slacked as
suddenly as it had appeared.
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Perhaps the gods had decided to grant him his wish, but in
excess, just for a chance to laugh at him once more.
“One mamiwata, two mamiwata, three mamiwa… Drat it, it’s
getting closer, and fast.”
Another jerk, even more violent than before, yanked out
the board that Etienne was holding onto, causing him to fly
several meters over the water before landing, bouncing again
and again off the surface with his chest, abdomen, and legs. He
finally came to a stop, still holding the board in his hands.
The rope lay limp in the water now, sinking downward a
couple of meters. Etienne filled his lungs with water and
grabbed his cleaning knife from his waistband. This time it
seemed almost natural to be breathing underwater, and he
assumed a vertical position as he searched for a glimpse of the
beast that had pulled him out of his boat so easily.
Two life-and-death situations underwater in only two days;
this was getting to be a very, very bad habit. But instead of
feeling fearful, he felt strangely courageous in the face of the
struggle he knew was about to ensue. He knew he could not
drown, and he was stronger now than before—he knew it, he
could feel it.
Something else surprised him when he looked down at the
hand that held his knife. His hand was glowing! Either the
impact with the water or his excitement had activated the latent
photophores in his skin, and as he began to search the dark
water that surrounded him, his whole body began to emit a
powerful blue light.
I know you can see me now. Come and get me. . . One mamiwata,
two mami. . . This time he heard the thunder from underwater; it
sounded even lower-pitched than at the surface. The storm was
almost on him.
He sensed something behind him and spun around quickly.
The hog’s head, or what was left of it, was looking at him with
just one eye.
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Good for you, hog; you’ve brought him to us. One mamiwa. . . This
time the flash of lightning lit up the water. It felt as though he
were floating in dense, greenish-colored honey, where
everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. It worried
him that a bolt of lightning might fall right on him at that
depth, so he went down another ten fathoms.
It felt to him like every second that he was underwater he
became stronger and stronger. He felt invincible for the first
time in his life; it was as if he were one of the heroes in his
beloved comic books. His sister hadn’t told him about giving
off light; maybe she couldn’t, or didn’t know how to.
The bolts of lightning continued to hammer the surface
with a cadence that grew louder and louder. He was at the very
edge of the continental shelf now, and the darkness that
extended below him looked unfathomable, but only for a
second.
He felt a change of pressure on the hairs at the nape of his
neck. Something was coming towards him, something very large
and very fast. He turned just in time to see a bolt of lightning
fall behind the creature, outlining its terrifying profile. It wasn’t
just a barracuda; it was the king of all barracuda.
3
The great beast of the sea was three times his own length;
its jaws could easily crush a man’s thigh, and it was speeding
straight toward him, with its body undulating like a millennial
serpent. From the depth of its eyes peered out an ancient and
dark soul; they seemed to be searching him for any sign of fear
or weakness. Both he and the creature were at once prey and
hunter, victim and executioner.
Another bolt of lightning crashed down, this time behind
Etienne, and he could see the open jaws rapidly approaching.
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He felt at peace; he could not help but smile as he turned and
dove downward just as the beast reached him.
He felt the mass of the water the creature displaced, and
sensed how it tried to turn to follow him. But at that speed it
was incapable of any tight maneuvers, and it travelled many
meters before it could change direction. He wondered to
himself how old the enormous underwater hunter might be.
Etienne changed direction again, this time heading towards
the surface; the barracuda followed him on his dizzying vertical
path. He picked up as much speed as he could, trying to imitate
what he had seen his sister do.
As he burst through the ocean surface into the atmosphere,
his speed was so great that when the resistance that his body
met in the water abruptly ceased, he shot up over a dozen
meters into the air with the barracuda right behind him like a
flying dragon, shaking its huge tail in an attempt to reach as
high as possible and catch its elusive prey between its long,
dagger-like teeth.
The lightning kept falling on the rolling sea, causing
explosions of bubbles under the surface, as the hunters went
up, up, up, followed by wisps of mist that they drug with them.
The barracuda king lost its inertia first, before the young
fisherman lost his own; its enormous weight pulled it inevitably
back toward the sea. It fell on one side, causing a gigantic
eruption of water into the air.
When Etienne felt himself losing upward inertia, he turned
to dive head-first back into the water. His re-entry would have
won him a standing ovation from a panel of Olympic judges.
He fell directly onto the great fish, hitting it hard on its
upward side at a shallow depth, leaving his knife deep inside it
just behind the right gill. The impact thrust Etienne upward
again, and for a moment he was a tangle of arms and legs. By
the time he sorted himself out a few seconds later, the
barracuda was on him, and he didn’t have time to get
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completely out of its way. Its snout hit him the stomach, and
one of its long teeth cut a neat slice several centimeters long on
his right hip, ripping through his short trousers. Just a little bit
higher and his guts would have been floating around him. The
light he was emitting turned violet through the blood that
flowed.
Without his knife, there was only one possibility open to
him. His instincts, asleep until now but etched in fire into every
cell of his body, had fully awakened. He knew exactly what he
needed to do and how to do it. He swam downward, and the
great fish rushed after him in a craze, following the trail of his
blood. He let it gain on him, then accelerated and brusquely
dodged to the left, then to the right, then left, then right, in a
racing zigzag.
The barracuda, confused, slowed for a moment, and
Etienne charged into it, then swam just under it and then above,
settling astride it like a giant steed. He grabbed the handle of his
knife with one hand and the inside edge of the left gill with the
other.
Shaking itself from side to side with fury, the barracuda
tried to unseat its rider, but its efforts only succeeded in making
the knife wound wider. It dove downward, leaving behind its
own trail of dark red blood, almost invisible to the human eye
because of the lack of light, but certainly able to attract
unwanted company.
As they descended, Etienne pulled out his knife and
plunged it in again, over and over, in spite of the difficulty of
the resistance of the water at that speed. The huge animal
slowed its descent and after a few last convulsions, stopped
moving. Its white belly gradually turned upward as it floated
towards the surface, pulled inexorably along by the air in its
swimming bladder.
Contradictory sentiments welled up within the fisherman’s
heart as they neared the surface; he felt an explosion of
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exultation for the triumph he had achieved, and yet at the same
time, a strange sorrow that he had never felt before for any of
his prey. For the first time it had been a battle between equals,
and that magnificent beast would never again be feared nor
respected.
He pulled out his knife and followed his prey on its slow
ascent, keeping an eye out for anything else that might want to
join in on the hunt. Dead now and floating listlessly, it looked
smaller, like everything that dies. Death always diminishes any
creature.
In the distance, several hundred meters away, he could see
the oil lamp on his broken boat, which at one point had been
close to sinking. He grabbed his dead barracuda king by one if
its gills again and towed it without much difficulty towards the
Grand Titanic.
The great fish probably weighed about two hundred kilos,
and the edge of the stern, which had lost the top board at the
beginning of his battle, was only a couple of finger-widths from
the water once he hauled the monster on board.
Etienne curled the creature up in the bow and looked
carefully at the rows of sharp, curved teeth, designed to never
let go of whatever they clamped onto. He set the head in such a
way that it jutted out from the prow like the figurehead of a
viking ship. Sitting down at last, Etienne realized his skin was no
longer giving off that glow that he had seen on his father’s skin,
and although he tried to regain it, he couldn’t figure out how to
do so.
His father—it surprised him how comfortable it felt now to
think of Sharduk in that way, even though he had just met him,
and even though he wasn’t much older than himself.
“One mamiwata, two…two Man Kenguele, three Man
Kenguele, four Man Kenguele, five…” He couldn't help but
smile at his own joke. The storm was moving away without
releasing a single drop of sweet water over the salty surface of
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the sea. The mist that had covered the surface earlier had
dissipated.
As he bandaged his wound, he thought that perhaps the
gods, or the spirits, had not wanted to mock him after all, for
once in his life. He began to row towards the coast, still
shrouded in the darkness of the night. He would reach the
beach before sunrise, and there he would unload his huge fish
onto the wheelbarrow he had hidden in the brush. He felt
strong enough to carry it on his back, but such an exhibition of
strength could raise suspicions that he needed less than ever
now.
When he got home, his mother would probably already be
on her way to the marketplace. No one had ever caught such a
large fish, much less one man by himself. He was sure that there
would be a stir.
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Chapter 15
Sharduk and Fanya
1
“I didn’t think I would ever see you again, my friend.”
The only light in the cave behind the great waterfall of the
Benoué River where it fed into the sea came from a small fire
that Malaam had lit to keep himself warm by and to drive away
the dampness of the air. The damp walls reflected the orange
and yellow light of the fire, giving the cavern the look of the
entrance to Hades and producing an eerie effect on the water
falling over the mouth of the cave, from the outside looking in.
Sharduk emitted a very soft glow.
“I thought Ciel would come with you.” Sharduk glanced
around the cave.
“I sent her back to N’long so no one would wonder why
her house is empty,” explained Malaam. “You look different—I
know not as much time has passed for you as it has for us, but
your face is harder, somehow. You’ve toughened up.”
“While I was away I had to overcome many difficulties and
deal with many unscrupulous men.”
“I’m sorry for the hard time you must have had. You know
that I care about you, Man Kenguele.”
“I’m afraid that I must further abuse of your friendship,
asking you to carry out a task that I cannot perform myself, as it
would mean too much time out of the water. Besides, I do not
think I could get close enough to the people that I need to in
order to take care of it.”
“You only have to ask, Sharduk.”
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2
Visibly shaken and filled with rage because of what he had
just learned from his friend, Malaam swore to Sharduk that he
would do what he had asked of him, assuring him that in spite
of his missing limbs he had the means to carry out the mission.
The determination in the voice of the maimed giant was such
that Sharduk had no doubt that he would succeed or leave what
was left of his skin on the table trying. He was the bravest
person that Sharduk had ever met; if misfortune and illness had
not taken their toll on him, he would have been great among
men.
A few minutes later Sharduk reached the mangrove swamp,
too late or too soon, he didn’t know which, because he didn’t
know how to start the conversation that he had already had so
many times in his head with his first and only love, his dear
Fanya. The present circumstances were so different from what
he had hoped for.
He swam in among the mangrove roots to emerge from the
water by the now scarce remains of the sunken boat where just
a few months before, or a whole lifetime before, Fanya had
worked so hard to save his life.
He stood up slowly, gently emptying his lungs of water and
keeping his skin-glow very soft. Fanya was sitting a few meters
from the water’s edge, wrapped in a turquoise-blue cloth by a
little fire that burned there, where they had spent so many hours
together. He waded towards the shore, his knees trembling so
violently that he thought he would fall to the ground any
minute.
His heart was racing and there was a strange metallic taste
in his mouth. Fear, excitement, extreme joy, profound sadness, a
yearning to embrace, to touch and be touched, a desire to flee, a
desire to run to her, to his beloved—it all boiled within him
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with such intensity that he felt that his emotions had taken over
his entire being.
Without knowing exactly how he got there, he found
himself on the shore with Fanya in his arms; he was glowing so
brightly with happiness that it was hard to tell where one body
began and the other ended. The universe stopped spinning, and
time was suspended. Neither of them could ever tell how long
they embraced and kissed one another.
At last Fanya slowly separated herself from him. Sharduk
muted his glow and looked at her intently. He could see the
passing of the years on her face, which was even more beautiful
than he had remembered, but which also bore the marks of
pain and of age.
“Our daughter has told me a bit about what happened to
you, Man Kenguele. She said that for you only a few months
have passed. You are the same as I remember you; I, on the
other hand, am an old woman.”
“You are beautiful, Fanya. My heart has been with you
every moment; I would have crossed the universe a thousand
times for you.”
She took his face in both hands and immersed herself in his
sea-green eyes.
“Our children have your eyes, and although they have never
told me, I’ve always known they were more like you than like
me.” Sadness filled her own mahogany-colored eyes and spilled
over into her voice. “I loved you so much, Sharduk! What is left
of the girl that you loved is still in love with your memory; I
couldn’t help but throw myself into your arms.”
An enormous knot suddenly formed in Sharduk’s throat,
choking his words; they came out as a thin wisp.
“But I did everything I could to return; I never dreamed
that something like this could happen. For me, no time at all has
passed. My heart feels the same as it did the day I had to leave.
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I’ve come back for you; I can take you away from N’long now,
you and whoever you want to take with us…I…”
“It’s not your fault. I missed you so much, I loved you so
much, that your memory burned my soul; it broke me inside. I
used to come here every day in the hope that you would return.
‘Today,’ I would tell myself, ‘It will be today,’ again, and again,
and again. It got to the point that when I thought of you it felt
like I would die, and while our children grew within me, at the
same time my will to survive your absence became weaker and
weaker. I had to let go of our love so that the weight of the
unbearable pain that came with your memory would not carry
me away.”
“I am sorry, I am so very sorry. Your grandmother was
right; I have only brought you pain. I should never have stayed;
I should have left as soon as I was well.”
“Don’t ever regret anything, Sharduk. It’s a lesson I’ve had
time to learn. And much less, never regret having been loved, or
having loved. Would you rather regret not staying, not knowing
what there might have been between us? Would you rather that
these two wonderful young people who are our children had
never been born? Would you really rather have had it that way?”
Sharkduk, defeated, feeling himself dying within, fell to his
knees on the sand; Fanya fell beside him, and the two of them
knelt there, as though they were praying to the very gods that
had played such a cruel trick on them, allowing them to love
each other, only to tear them away from one another afterward.
He realized that although the two them were finally
together physically, Fanya’s heart was as distant from his as the
universe was wide, and that there was no crossing point, no door,
that could bring them together now. He was only an old, bittersweet
memory in Fanya’s heart; nothing could change that.
They held each other and he wept bitterly while she
comforted him with a strangely maternal love. It took him
several minutes to get ahold of himself, and when he did, his
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composure was only superficial. He knew they would never be
together again, but at times it is hard to make the heart
understand what the head knows.
“I can’t go with you; I have people who depend on me here.
Ciel has asked me for my blessing for her to go with you. I want
Etienne to go, too.”
“I can’t leave and take your children from you, Fanya. I
could not be so cruel.”
“It isn’t cruel. There is no future for them here. We are
pariahs; we are hardly allowed in the marketplace to sell our
products. Ciel, in the best of cases, will end up married to some
idiot, and I doubt that Etienne, with the tendency he has to get
into trouble, will ever reach old age if he stays here.”
“But you would be all alone, Fanya.”
“I know how to take care of myself.”
“I have no doubt of that. But you could come with us,
too.”
“Please don’t insist. For the love that we once had, say no
more. I want you to take our children away from here. Besides, I
have Malaam and his wife, Alice. I won’t be alone.”
“Etienne said he would give me his decision tomorrow.”
“Ciel told me that you sent Malaam on an errand.”
“Yes, I asked him to bring me something that I need in
order to open a door in the hut of Bilal the Elder, a door that will
allow us to return to my world. At the same time, he will make
life a little safer for those who decide to stay here.”
“He has more resources than it seems; he will do whatever
you asked. When will you leave?”
“Tomorrow night, if all goes well. I’ll need Ciel to meet me
here after sunset. Have her bring some cloths that I can soak in
water and cover myself with for the walk to N’Long. You and
Etienne can wait for me at Bilal’s hut. Malaam, too. Etienne will
need to figure out a way for us to get inside.”
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“All right, I’ll have her bring the cloths. I have to go now,”
she said, as she stood. “Tomorrow is market day, and if
tomorrow night you plan to do whatever it is that you need to
do to open that door, everything should seem perfectly normal,
so I need to be at my stand in the marketplace.”
Sharduk stood also and took several steps back, submerging
himself in the tepid waters of the swamp as slowly as he had
emerged.
“And have no doubt, Man Kenguele—I am very happy to
have been able to see you again.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”
“Until tomorrow, then.” Turning, she headed home through
the jungle, carrying a torch in her hand.
Sharduk, knee-deep in the water now, watched her go,
hoping she would turn to look at him, and that he might find
some sort of consolation in her eyes. Hurting and frustrated, he
finally dove violently into the water. Love, which until then had
been a firm concept in his mind, eternal and immortal, had
proven that it could cease to exist. It could actually disappear, be
extinguished, or at least be transformed into something else that
he couldn’t even describe.
He couldn’t see Fanya’s face flood with tears as she walked
away from him. He swam towards the ocean as fast as he could,
speeding like a bullet, trying in vain to leave his pain behind
him, but to no avail. It kept catching up with him with
inexorable persistence.
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Chapter 16
Market Day
1
Fanya had only spoken a few words to Ciel since they got
up. Her daughter had come into the hut quietly, and Fanya had
preferred to pretend that she was asleep on her cot. She didn’t
know what to say to Ciel. The pain and the joy of her meeting
with her beloved of the sea-green eyes were still mixed in her
heart, and she didn’t know yet which emotion would win out.
Other thoughts also came to her insistently—the desire to
give her children a better future than the one they presently had
before them, and at the same time the bitter fear of losing
them.
She also felt a strange tinge of jealousy creeping in. She had
dedicated her entire life to caring for Ciel and Etienne, and now
all of a sudden their father appeared like a great hero who had
come to resolve all their problems. She discarded that thought,
knowing it was the fruit of her own selfishness, and that it
would do no good to give it a place in her heart.
Fortunately, Etienne had spent the night fishing, so she had
one less person in the house with whom to avoid having the
conversation for which she was still unprepared.
Now with the help of Ciel, she was preparing the bundles
that she would carry on her head to the edge of the
marketplace, trying to make everything look normal, waiting to
see what would happen tonight if Man Kenguele’s plans went
forward. She was also worried not only about the task that had
been given to Malaam, but also about what forces he might put
into play in order to carry it out.
“Give me another lump of porcupine fat, and with that I’ll
have everything I need for today.”
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“Here you are, Mother. You are very quiet today.”
“I don’t have much to say, Ciel. Only that you should go
with your father, and that troublemaker of your brother should
go, too.”
“You should come with us and Man Kenguele.”
“Well, I see that you do have things to say, young lady. We’ll
discuss this later. I just can’t right now.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“Not today. I need to think.” And with that, Fanya carried
her bundle out the door, placed it on her head, and started
walking towards the marketplace.
2
She crossed paths with many people who were coming and
going to the marketplace carrying all sorts of goods. Some had
wheelbarrows, others had baskets full of chickens or ducks, and
others had cloth bags containing whatever they had bought or
were bringing to sell.
As she got closer, the voices of dozens of vendors and the
various sounds of goats, pigs, and chickens mixed with the
makossa music of Les Martiens. Distorted notes thundered from
the loudspeakers that Monsieur Mabuka had hung at the
entrance to his grocer’s shop, where the prices precluded all but
the richest villagers.
Since the area of the marketplace covered with metal
roofing was reserved for the official marketplace vendors, Fanya
had to set up her stand under one of the flame trees that
surrounded the crude building, which consisted of a roughlypoured
cement slab, a few posts, and a roof made up of odd
pieces of aluminum. The roof had so many leaks that it was
nearly useless in rainy weather, but turned the building into an
oven during the dry season.
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The butchers, who sold meat from any kind of animal that
could be caught, and the fishermen, who sold both fresh and
dried fish, swatted at the clouds of flies buzzing around their
produce with calm resignation. There had always been a stand
selling sohya—a type of spicy, roasted meat in long strips—next
to each butcher, and one selling fish in a black sauce made of
toasted spices, served on banana leaves, next to each fisherman’s
stand.
Fanya’s stand, like the others around her, was quite simple.
As usual she spread out the cloth that she had used to make her
bundle on the ground. This time she had some pieces of
cardboard underneath it, and a stone on each corner to keep it
from catching in the breeze.
She carefully placed her merchandise on the cloth in groups
—herbs for teas, brews to cure stomach worms, different
ointments, including the gorgonia-based ointment to disinfect
and heal wounds, walnut-sized chunks of kaolin clay, porcupine
fat for blisters, black stones for snakebite, and all the rest of her
abundant medicinal products.
Those who sold fruit and vegetables set them out in tas,
little piles with four pieces at the base and one piece on top.
These piles typically contained some pieces that were in better
condition than others and were a curious example of bulk
purchase, because they were sold as a group, and you had to
take the poorer specimens along with the better-looking ones.
Dozens of kinds of bananas, ngongons, blackfruit,
yellowfruit, yams, mangos, redberries, snake-apples, corosoles,
breadfruit, bitterprunes, and cassaba melons, many just
harvested from the jungle or from family gardens, covered the
colorful patchwork of cloths and mats spread out on the
ground.
Through the smell of fish entrails and overripe fruit wafted
the aroma of boiling palm oil, as red as blood and reused a
thousand times, in which the sweet fritters and doughy fried
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bread in lumps the size of a man’s hand were prepared by their
vendors. Next to them were spice vendors, with pile after pile
of every kind of spice imaginable; some spices were burned to
carbon to increase their potency. Other vendors sold chiles,
some of the hottest ones in the world, in bunches as colorful as
the head cloths of the women who filled the marketplace.
It was interesting to see the daughters of many of the
vendors setting up miniature versions of their mothers’ stands,
where for a very reduced price they would sell products their
parents did not think were presentable enough to sell
themselves. Everywhere, everyone was chatting with their
neighbors.
Fanya greeted people she knew as they passed; soon a
pregnant woman stopped to buy half a dozen kaolin lumps and
began to nibble on one of them as soon as she had paid for
them. Kaolin was an excellent source of extra calcium and other
minerals useful in pregnancy.
She could not stop thinking about Man Kenguele. Even
though she tried to reawaken the feelings of passion she once
felt toward him, they came only fleetingly—then all the
suffering that she had gone through when she lost him would
drown out the feeling, leaving her only the coarse taste of
extinguished love. She made her decision.
3
After a while Fanya saw Etienne arrive, pushing his poussepousse
wheelbarrow. It was about a meter and a half long and a
meter wide, with two wheels he had salvaged off an old
motorbike. In it he was carrying what looked to be something
very large, covered with makabo leaves to keep the flies off.
Etienne nodded a greeting to his mother from the other
side of the row of trees that surrounded the marketplace, and
she nodded back. He was a big lad, and strong. Unfortunately,
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trouble seemed to happen wherever he went, and he tended to
resolve his problems with his fists. It wasn’t really his fault—he
had had to grow up very quickly, too quickly.
As soon as he began to uncover his fish, even before he
could toss all the leaves to the ground to display his monstrous
capture, Fanya could hear the exclamations of surprise and
admiration. One child even began to cry in fright at the beast
that her son had apparently taken from the sea.
The fish vender left his huge hogfish to the care of the flies
and ran to make room for himself in the circle of admirers that
was forming around Etienne.
“By all the spirits of my ancestors and of the mother who
gave me life!” he exclaimed when he saw the gigantic barracuda
looking up at him with its dead eyes. “What hell did you pull
this beast out of?”
The crowd’s exclamations of astonishment were increasing
in volume. Fanya stood up and went over to where her son was,
asking herself, “What has he done this time? she wondered What
has that crazy son of mine brought in?”
“Boy, sell me that monster,” said the fish vendor.
“I don’t think so, Ahisi—I know you too well, and I know
you won’t offer me half of what it’s worth.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve! You shouldn’t even be allowed
to sell here!” the fish vendor blurted, then turned around and
went huffing back to his stand of river fish.
“This is the street; I’m not in the marketplace!” Etienne
defended himself.
“I’ll buy it from you, young man.” The circle opened to let
in a middle-aged man, dressed in a suit. Etienne didn’t know
him, but he heard someone murmur that it was Monsieur Jacques
Aboulantang, the owner of a hotel located on the beach
on the far side of the mouth of the Benoué River.
“How much do you think it weighs, boy?”
“I think it’s over a hundred seventy kilos, Sir.”
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“I think you’re right—it might even weigh more than that,
and I’m not usually wrong. I’m not going to try to fool you; I’m
sure you realize that this is a pretty special catch.”
“I know, I know.”
Some people lost interest and wandered away as Fanya
came up to where her son was.
“Ah, Zambe! Did you catch that all by yourself, Etienne?”
“Yes, Mother, and it wasn’t easy.”
Monsieur Aboulantang's face registered surprise.
“You caught that by yourself?” he repeated.
“I wouldn’t lie to my mother. Do you want it or not?”
“Of course, the white tourists who come to my hotel will
love it when I bring this fish in to cook up for them.”
“Well, so what are you offering my son for it?”
“Let’s say it’s a hundred and eighty kilos; I’ll buy the whole
thing, at fifteen hundred céfas a kilo.”
“I can’t let you have it for that price; that’s what the fish
vendor sells his hogfish for, and half of their weight is fly eggs.
I’ll let you have it for two thousand céfas a kilo.”
“How about seventeen hundred?”
“Nineteen hundred, and it’s all yours.”
“How about eighteen hundred? That makes a total of three
hundred twelve thousand céfas. You could build yourself a house
with that much, with electricity and everything.”
“All right, it’s a deal; but it’s three hundred twenty-four
thousand.”
“Jesus, I have such a bad head for numbers,” replied
Monsieur Aboulantang with a mischievous smile. He turned to
his two employees who had been waiting behind him. “Boys,
bring a pousse-pousse and load this thing into our van.”
He began to count out banknotes into Etienne’s extended
hand before they took away the enormous fish. He counted
them out slowly, so that everyone could see the huge stack of
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bills he had pulled out of his wallet. It’s thickness didn’t seem to
diminish after his payment to the young fisherman.
Monsieur Aboulantang said good-bye and walked towards
his vehicle, where his workers were trying to load the monster
fish. From a distance, it looked like the barracuda was attacking
them each time it slipped out of their hands, even though it was
most certainly dead.
“Son, you’ve got more than a year’s worth of wages there in
your hand,” commented Fanya softly to Etienne.
“I know, Mother. At last it looks like things are going to go
better for us.”
They smiled into each other’s eyes, and Fanya hugged her
son.
4
“Hey you, healer! Let go of that thief! He’s coming with
us.”
It was Mathieu, the eldest son of the pig farmer (at least in
theory), duly flanked by three of his father’s stockiest workers.
In his right hand he was carrying his favorite slaughtering
hammer, the one he used to break the pigs’ necks, and the
others were carrying machetes wrapped in pieces of cloth. The
mere act of raising a machete to threaten someone was a
serious crime which could send you to prison for a long time, so
they were prudently carrying their weapons wrapped in cloth
and held down at their sides.
“You, thief! My father wants to see you, now!”
“Who are you to insult my son like that, pig farmer?”
“You be quiet, woman! Bilal told us that whoever stole
from us had done it in order to use the head of our hog to
catch a great fish, using black magic—and you probably helped
him, witch!”
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Mathieu’s grudge against Fanya was well known by
everyone; he had been out to get her ever since she had rejected
his marriage proposal years before.
“Did you just call my mother a witch, you swine?”
“Etienne, son, is what he is saying true?” whispered Fanya
in Etienne’s ear.
“About the hog, yes, Mother; I’m sorry, but I had to do it.”
“I knew that cursed Bilal’s name would come up in this. My
son will not go with you,” Fanya said out loud, stepping
between Mathieu and Etienne, who seemed to be about to jump
at the neck of the chubby son of the pig farmer. “We’ll go to
the chief’s house to ask him for justice.”
“Out of my way!” shouted Mathieu, shoving Fanya hard
and causing her to fall onto a nearby stand, then raising his hand
to strike Etienne. Etienne ducked and hit Mathieu in the chest
with the palms of both hands, so hard that Matheiu flew
backward and hit one of his buddies in the mouth with his
head. The fellow lost consciousness, as well as several of his
teeth, some of which remained embedded in the back of the
pig farmer’s head.
“Are you all right, Mother?”
The owner of the yucca stand that Fanya had fallen onto
helped her up.
“Yes, Etienne. Let’s go ask for the chief ’s protection before
this gets worse.”
Mathieu’s head was bleeding profusely. He got up with
hatred flashing in his eyes—hatred for Fanya and hatred for her
son, who had dared to push him and make him bleed.
“Kill that son of a bitch!”
The bystanders at the market crowded around once more,
not wanting to miss out on a detail of the fight. They stepped
back, though, when the two husky workers who were still
standing pulled out their machetes.
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No one intervened in a fight where machetes were
involved. The wounds they produced were terrible, especially if
they were inflicted with the back side, which had a strong, sharp,
pointed hook that was used to split coconuts wide open.
Etienne jumped in front of his mother as the two machetes
approached, flashing ominous reflections in the sunlight.
Apparently Mathieu decided that it was wiser to keep
behind his men and wait for the hardest part of the job to be
finished; then perhaps he could get in the last hit, to stain his
walking stick with the blood of that cursed son of the sea.
Suddenly, without him being able to control it, Etienne’s
skin began to glow with the same blue color that it had when he
confronted the barracuda. Now the crowd gave several quick
steps back, provoking shoving and multiple falls.
Fear struck the faces of his three opponents, and he took
advantage of the moment to grab his wheelbarrow by the
handles and swing it like an enormous hammer, striking both
machete bearers; they were badly hurt and fell into the no
longer curious bystanders, who began to flee the scene in a
panic, sure that they were witnessing a case of black magic.
Chaos reigned.
Mathieu’s trousers turned different colors in certain areas,
while the furious Etienne strode towards him in a halo of light,
raising the battered iron wheelbarrow above his head, ready to
smash it down like someone pounding a stake into the ground.
“Etienne, no!” The voice of his mother made him pause
for a second. He lowered the pousse-pousse a bit—it was like it
weighed nothing in his hands—and then he raised it again.
“Don’t kill him! You are better than that!” Fanya stepped
directly in front of him, trying to calm him down. “Put that
down, please. Enough people have been hurt here today.”
The marketplace was almost empty now. A few people were
crouching down, peering out from the windows of the nearby
houses. Etienne’s glow died down and he slowly lowered the
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wheelbarrow, as Mathieu crawled away on his back, like a crab,
with his eyes bugging out and leaving a trail of filth behind him.
“They would have killed us both, Mother.”
Just then another group of five armed men entered the
plaza, led by the son of Chief Ngoma, who was carrying an
ancient Chinese AK47 on his back.
“What the devil happened here?”
“This idiot and his friends attacked us,” said Etienne with a
scowl.
“Well, whatever. We have come looking for you, Fanya. My
father needs your services urgently. I’m afraid he may be very ill,
and I can’t find that cursed witchdoctor anywhere.”
“They attacked me and my helpers, Anton!” whimpered
Mathieu. “He’s a thief—he stole that hog’s head from us. I was
just trying to get back what was ours.”
“I don’t have time for you today, pig farmer. Present a
complaint to my father when he is better.”
5
Anton led the way, and people began to come out of their
hiding places, still fearful of what they had witnessed. The
chief ’s guards walked behind Fanya and Etienne as they made
their way to his house. Fanya paused at her stand to quickly
gather up her things in a bundle to take with her, so that she
would have what she needed to help the chief with whatever
health problem he was experiencing.
“Mother,” Etienne whispered to her as he helped her gather
her things. “I could have handled them; they are like dogs to
me.”
“I forbid you. No one is a dog to anyone; that’s not how I
have raised you. Keep quiet.”
The chief ’s residence was in the center of the village, as it
should be, surrounded by an adobe wall to give him privacy and
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to protect him in the case of a possible revolt. Inside the wall,
the chief ’s compound resembled a small village of its own.
There was a well, a thatched roof where meetings with the tribal
elders were held, a grain storage building, a cooking hut,
latrines, and a dozen small, round huts with traditional roofs
thatched with sorghum straw, where the chief’s wives and their
children lived, all surrounding a larger hut, which was the home
of Chief Ngoma.
When they reached the chief ’s house, Anton ordered them
to halt.
“Wait here—I’ll see if he’s presentable for visitors.”
“Mother, if you treat him and we are accused of anything,
I’ll fight my way out and we will escape.”
“Don’t you dare try anything. Let me talk—I’ll find a way to
make them let you go.”
“But I am powerful—the power of the sea doesn’t leave me
when I come back on land, the way it does my sister. I could
tear them apart with my bare hands, I can feel it.”
“You’re not better than anyone else; no one is. We are only
different because of the way we treat others. I can see that you
possess the strength of your father, even when you are out of
the sea. Take care that the power doesn’t turn you into the
opposite of what you should be, and I have to be ashamed to
be your mother. You’re going to have to leave with your father
—everyone will fear you if you stay here, and there will be
bloodshed.”
“You may come in, healer. The chief is waiting for you
inside with my mother and another of his wives. Your son will
wait outside.”
“Mother…”
“If you respect me, you will sit here while I do my work.
And you will not do anything else.”
Fanya entered the chief ’s hut.
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6
He looked pretty bad.
The chief was trembling and profusely sweating a strange,
viscous pinkish substance; he lay delirious on his cot. His first
wife was trying in vain to lower his fever with wet cloths that
were only a few degrees cooler than the room. Meanwhile
another younger wife knelt by his side, praying.
“Hello, Fanya. I’m so glad you came instead of that cursed
Bilal. He’s killing him; it looks like he’s sweating blood mixed
with milk,” moaned the elder wife.
“Is he still taking Bilal’s pills so he will feel like a young man
when he is with his wives?”
A girl entered the room silently, handing a bucket of water
fresh from the well to the chief ’s first wife and taking with her
the bucket that she had been using.
“He’s a fool—he thinks his heart can take anything. He was
very happy with the last pills the witchdoctor gave him. He said
they were very powerful.”
“May I see them? I need to know what he has taken in
order to try to counteract it.”
“Amina, child, stop praying for a minute and go fetch the
green pills. I know you know where he hides them.” She turned
to Fanya. “He uses them more with his younger wives,” she
explained.
“I know,” said Fanya wryly. “Sometimes I think I’ve been
better off without a man in my life.”
“You’re probably right, but please help him. He’s a cursed
fool, but I love him very much after all these years.”
“Here they are, these little green balls.” The younger wife
returned to her prayers.
“They smell just like his sweat and his breath, like scarlet
dactilaria and other things that I’m not sure of,” murmured
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Fanya. “Give them to me—I need to open one up, to see if I
can tell what they contain.”
“But, isn’t that the plant with the pink bell-shaped flowers?
I was always told that it was poisonous.”
“It’s all a question of quantity, my friend. Here, I have it.
See how the inside is almost scarlet? It shouldn’t be that color,”
she said before touching the open pill with the tip of her
tongue. There was a bitter, metallic taste. “That evil witch has
mixed it with a concentrate of yucca skin and who knows what
else. No wonder the chief is so sick. Bilal was trying to kill him,
for sure.”
“Oh, by the spirits! Tell me you can do something for him.”
“I’ll do everything I can—then it will be up to the gods. I
need to turn him face down; his body is trying to expel the
poison—it’s not blood and milk that he’s sweating.”
“I’ll call my son Anton to help us turn him.”
Anton was visibly concerned, in spite of his desire to
become the new chief. Seeing his father suffering so had really
affected him.
“Thank you, Anton; when you go out, do me a favor and
please tell Etienne that I will be here at least another couple of
hours, and to stay where he is.”
“Is what my mother says true? Bilal tried to kill him?” asked
Anton.
“Undoubtedly. He wrapped the pills with fiber from banana
leaves to hide their taste and smell. Your father is very strong, or
he would have already left us.”
“Please help him, healer, I beg of you.”
Anton exited the hut as his mother asked him to, leaving
the three women there in charge of saving his father. He could
do nothing to help for now, and that filled him with frustration.
He would kill that witch with his own hands. He would slit his
throat like a pig.
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“Etienne, your mother says for you to wait here—she’ll be a
while.”
“How is the chief?”
“He’s very ill; I don’t know if he’ll make it.”
“I know our families have had their differences, but I hope
he gets better.”
“Thank you, Etienne. By the way, I’ve heard some strange
things about your fight with the son of the pig farmer and his
men.”
7
It was close to noon, and three hours had gone by since she
had finished making a dozen small cuts along each of Ngoma’s
arms and legs, and one over each of his vertebrae, then placing
pieces of her black stones over each cut. To improve the
absorption of the toxins, she applied a dab of porcupine fat to
each piece of stone and set fire to it.
The sight of the chief covered with little tongues of
yellowish flame was too much for the younger wife, who left the
room in tears. The old man was no longer sweating. That could
mean either that his body was giving up or that the stones were
eliminating the yucca poison.
Suddenly, the flames went out. The stones dropped from
the unmoving body of the patient with soft popping sounds,
falling to his sides.
“Pick them up and throw them into the fire, quickly! Then
tell your son to come in—we need to turn him face up and
make him swallow the bottlewood tea with sugar cane.”
This time Anton brought Etienne in with him.
“All right, let’s turn him over. Then I need you to hold him
up in a sitting position.”
The strong odor of the tea made the chief wrinkle his nose
and grimace.
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“It looks like he’s reacting. Drink, come on, drink.”
Unwillingly at first, and then thirstily, the chief drank down
the large bowl of tea, only to vomit it out all over the floor.
“Damnation! I thought I had died!”
“You are back, my husband! We almost lost you! Anton,
hurry out and tell the others! The chief is well; he is as strong as
ebony!”
“But what the devil happened to me? I remember I was
going to visit one of my wives—and suddenly I felt dizzy and
had a pain in my stomach, like fire.”
“You almost died. Throw those pills into the latrine,
Ngoma. If you take a single one more, you will be a dead man.”
“Did you save me, Fanya, after everything I’ve put you
through? Where is Bilal?”
“I only heal, Ngoma—the gods judge. And today they were
merciful to you.”
“Are you still asking for that cursed witchdoctor, husband?
He tried to poison you with his pills!”
“What did that fellow give me, Fanya?”
“A good mixture for you to join the spirits of your
forefathers. It’s almost a miracle that you’re alive.”
“You have done the miracle; you’ve saved my husband, the
chief of our tribe, and we owe you our gratitude. Tell her,
Ngoma!”
“Gods, woman, don’t give me orders. I’m very weak—I
can’t even stand yet and you’re already shouting at me!”
“What is it you must tell me, chief?’ asked Fanya.
“Bilal, damn that son of a bitch, thinks that your son stole
from the pig farmer. He planned to take him prisoner with the
help of my guards this very morning.”
“I’m afraid the accusation is true. The pig farmer’s son
attacked us this morning. My son gave a beating to him and his
men, and now they want vengeance. We will pay fair
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compensation for my son’s foolishness, but I will not allow
anyone to harm him.”
“It’s more complicated than that.” The chief coughed
violently. “Give me a rag to clean my mouth with, and some
water, wife. The problem is that Madame Oyono has filled her
husband’s head with the idea of teaching your son a lesson. I’m
sorry, but Etienne must leave, for his own safety. He would not
be the first person to end up in the pigs’ stomachs. I will be
personally responsible for your safety and that of your
daughter.”
“Can’t you do anything for them, husband?”
“Yes, I can calm people down and order that nothing be
done until tomorrow, to give him time to flee. I cannot do more
than that, especially in my condition. Take your son, Fanya. I’ll
tell Anton to see to this matter.”
“Thank you, chief. That is all I need.”
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Chapter 17
Malaam and Bilal
1
Disconnected thoughts crossed each other in the darkness
of his mind. A high-pitched sound coming from his right ear
extended throughout the interior of his skull and brought him
halfway back to consciousness. Then he began to realize several
things that were not good signs at all.
Something viscous, probably blood, had left a taut, sticky
film running from his temple, where he could feel a painful
throbbing, down to his chest.
He began to hear another sound that was making its way to
his brain—this one seemed to be coming from outside of his
head, a buzzing of some kind. Flies, a multitude of flies. He had
hated them since he was a boy, always trying to get in his eyes,
in his face. Thanks to the large pig farm next to the village, with
all those enormous, flat-nosed, curly-tailed beasts, there were
always flies, all year long. They were mostly sitting on his head;
they must be feeding on the jagged wound there, several
centimeters long.
He shook himself, more weakly than he expected, and only
a few of his tormentors, fat and blue, lifted briefly from their
banquet. When he moved, he realized he was standing and that
his back was against something rough, perhaps a tree trunk. He
tried to recover full consciousness. As he breathed more deeply,
he sensed that the pressure he had been feeling across his chest
was caused by a tightly knotted rope.
He mentally reviewed who—of all the people he had
wronged throughout his life—would be capable of taking
revenge. Perhaps the pig farmer had found out about his
ongoing affair with his wife. He doubted that. Besides, Marcel
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was a womanizer himself, and his wife didn’t matter enough to
him to complicate his life by killing anyone because of her,
much less the witchdoctor.
It could be the chief, having tired of being blackmailed with
the special pills, but he was a pathological coward, and the
consequences of eliminating the marabout were not favorable to
him. Who could it be? Bilal wondered. Who would dare to attack me?
He had hurt many people—he had deceived and cheated so
many! His position was perfect for that sort of thing. What had
always surprised him most about human nature was that the
great majority of people did not seek revenge—they just tried
to forget about the harm done to them.
That lack of a desire for vengeance seemed to him to be
the greatest possible evidence of cowardliness. How could he
have any respect at all for the husbands of the numerous
women he had bedded with the excuse of curing some ailment
or other of theirs? They deserved everything that came to them.
The same thing went for those who got in his way.
He tried to remember what had happened before he was
wounded and tied to a tree in the middle of the jungle.
Yesterday he had spent most of the day thinking about how to
take revenge on that despicable herb-gatherer, and he had gone
to bed with the idea of going to the marketplace in the morning
to see if anyone, probably the son of Fanya, had brought in an
unusually large fish, which would give him an opportunity to
accuse both of them. If the chief then allowed him to search
the house of those curs for a harpoon that matched the broken
tip he had found on the blood-soaked ground under the dead
pig, he would have them at his mercy. He would have them
exiled from the village, at a minimum.
Early this morning, he remembered opening the door of
his house, and taking just one step outside; then he vaguely
remembered hearing a noise, like an explosion, in his head. And
then nothing.
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Maybe it was the old chief taking revenge after all. He
certainly had the money and the men to do it. Maybe he had
lost this round.
He managed to open his eyes and saw his arms crossed
over his blood-smeared chest. He must have been in this
position for a long time, because his neck hurt intensely when
he raised his head.
For the first time in many years, he felt afraid.
2
About four paces away, sitting on the ground on his legs, or
what was left of them, in a posture that could have been
appropriate for prayer, was Malaam, his hatchet lying on the
ground at his right side. With nearly inhuman calm and coldness
in his deep bass voice, Malaam spoke to him.
“I need to talk with you, witch.”
Bilal’s sphincters relaxed. “Malaam…” He couldn't get
another word out.
“As I was told once, a long time ago, when I still had all my
body parts, I have some good news for you and some bad. The
good news is that there is a way for you to leave here alive today.
The bad news is that in order to do so, you are going to have to
tell me the truth about everything I ask you, and I don’t know if
you are capable of that.”
“How did I get here, northerner?
“Even tied up and at the mercy of a man you know has
plenty of reasons to do away with you, you can call me
‘northerner’ and make it sound like an insult. I’m beginning to
think that you don’t know how to communicate respectfully
with others.”
The idea of being able to get out of the situation alive
made Bilal think of the possibility of trying to be a bit nicer to
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his captor. If he managed to live, there would be plenty of time
later for vengeance.
“Forgive me, Malaam. I know that my manners can seem a
bit rough sometimes. Would you please loosen up the rope a
bit? It’s terribly hard for me to breathe.”
“In response to your second question, no. In response to
the first one, I hit you on the head there in front of your house
a couple of hours ago and brought you here. You’ve only just
now come to. By the way, we are quite a ways into the jungle, in
case you’re thinking of shouting.”
“How did you get me here?”
“If I tell you, it will spoil the surprise I have for you,
witch.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I already told you—I want you to tell me the truth about a
couple of matters, and then we will see whether I let you go or
not.”
“So you are going to judge me and condemn me, all by
yourself?”
“Not at all—that would not be right. Your deeds are what
will condemn you, and I have some friends who will help me
judge you.”
“I don’t see anyone else.”
“Oh, they’re here, even if you don’t see them. It’s better
that way for now. I’ve always known you were a thief and a
great liar, and that it doesn’t matter to you what you have to do
to get what you want. What I didn’t know for sure, although I
suspected it, was that you were also a murderer. I need to know
why, for what reason you have devoted such effort to hurt
people like Fanya, and like her grandmother before her.”
How did this half-man dare to judge him? The bitter taste
of bile rose to Bilal’s mouth, giving flavor to the rage he felt, a
rage so strong that it overpowered the fear that was running
through his body. He didn’t have many options.
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“I’ve never thought that women had the right to exercise
the profession of healers. That’s a job for marabouts; women
could end up thinking that they can do whatever they want, and
that would be chaos, against nature. They are here to serve us
and to bear our children. I told Simone several times to stop her
business, but the old woman refused. Then Fanya insisted on
following in her footsteps, even after we sent her to N’long.”
“You mean when you and the chief exiled her and took
away the house that her family had lived in for generations. You
and your kind always get rid of the competition, just as I’ve
been told, especially if it is women.”
“Yes, and the old chief made a nice chunk of money from
the sale of the house. By the way, maybe you want to tie him to
a tree, too.”
“That might be a good idea. Keep talking.”
Bilal eyed the hatchet that lay within reach of Malaam’s
maimed hand and saw that one side was stained with blood; that
was probably what he had used to hit him on the head with.
“True, true; we sent her out of the village. But even then
she kept pestering my clients with her brews and her
ointments.”
“With which she saved more lives than you and your ilk will
ever save.”
“We do what we can—the spirits are very capricious. People
don’t follow our instructions very well. What can I do about it?”
“So, you connived to send Fanya to N’long because it
bothered you to have a woman healer who was taking away your
clients?”
“That’s what I just said; yes, that was basically the reason.”
A strange sound reached the ears of the wounded
witchdoctor; it seemed to come from near the northerner.
“You are telling the truth, at least in part. It’s a good start.”
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“Of course I am; I’m being sincere with you. I swear to you
that I will keep telling you the truth, but. . . how is it that you
are so sure?”
“I told you that I have some friends who will help me know
the truth.”
“Are they the ones who made that noise? How many are
there?”
“If you keep telling me the truth, you will never find out.
Now the second matter. This one is interesting. The story about
how you betrayed your father reached the ears of a friend of
mine.”
“My father? Is he still wasting air every time he breathes?
He disappeared years ago—it’s as though the earth swallowed
him. He must be very, very old if he is still alive.”
“He’s alive, yes, and enjoys good health. I think his hatred
towards his traitor of a son is so powerful that it keeps death
and disease far from his door. Do you admit that you plotted
with the chief behind your father’s back to take his position
from him?”
“I won’t lie to you; I was young and ambitious. I wanted to
rise from apprentice to master.”
“Well, now you are no longer young, but you are still
ambitious; you haven’t really changed that much. And your
father ended up in N’long, disgraced in the eyes of the chief
and in the eyes of the Witchdoctors’ Council, whose ears you
poisoned against him.”
“How would you know that?”
“As I said, a friend of a friend of mine spent some time
with your father. Is what I just said about your father true?”
“Well, not exactly. It’s true that I should have waited to
inherit the position of marabout, and that I did my best to
disgrace him in the eyes of the chief, but he just wouldn’t die. I
had no need to ‘poison the ears’ of the great Witchdoctors’
Council, as you so vividly expressed it—they were already tired
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of him. He refused to bow to their authority. They themselves
helped me undermine his reputation.”
He heard the strange sound again. This time he knew it
came from Malaam himself, and it sounded like a mixture of
the sound of shattering glass when the shards strike each other
and a strange murmuring of many voices.
“Very interesting, interesting indeed. Your father always
thought the Witchdoctors’ Council had something to do with it,
but what pained him most was that you would betray him.”
“What are those sounds? I heard some very strange voices!”
“Don’t worry about it, Bilal. It’s just my friends confirming
that what you just told me is true. They are very angry with you,
you know. Sleazes like you killed three friends of theirs a few
years back.”
“Am I to be held responsible for the faults of the Council,
too?”
“I just have one more question to ask you about your past.
Then I will ask you one about your future.”
“How am I going to know anything about my future?”
“Didn’t you say that one of a marabout’s powers is to know
the future?”
“It’s easy for you to mock a man who is tied to a tree.”
“Don’t think that I am particularly proud of what I am
doing—I’m just looking out for the safety of the people I love.”
“So what is your question? You’re going to kill me with all
this useless talk.” It was very hard for Bilal to keep the civil tone
which he hoped might save his life. Where the devil was his
father? If he was the one behind this kidnapping and this
strange trial, his future would be very bleak, indeed.
Malaam felt a knot tightening in his throat. The façade of
cool detachment and confidence that he had put up threatened
to come down around him as he prepared to ask the next
question. He had imagined this moment several times since
Sharduk had told him the truth about the death of Simone and
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had given him this difficult task. The thousand ways he had
thought of posing the question fled from his mind; he could
only utter it with a voice trembling with rage that was barely
contained, and using the simplest of words.
“Why did you kill Simone?”
Bilal bowed his head. Whether or not he came out of this
situation in one piece could depend on how he answered this
question. He sensed the change in the tone of Malaam’s voice
when he had asked. He kept silent, trying to buy himself some
time.
“Tell me, why?”
“Because it had to be that way, Malaam.”
“What kind of an answer is that?” Bilal could hear the
tremble in Malaam’s voice.
“She was old; I just helped her along a bit. I didn’t take
many months from her—a year at the most.”
“How did you do it?”
“If I keep telling you the truth, will you let me go?”
“I’m just asking you the questions, Bilal. I said that you will
be the one who saves yourself or condemns yourself for your
deeds. Did you poison her? What had she ever done to you?”
“I just had to sprinkle a bit of purpleleaf on her firewood.
It only affects people who have very weak lungs, and judging by
how quickly she went, she must have been pretty bad off
already. I had asked her to help me to get my father out of
office, and she refused. I got rid of her with the blessings of the
Witchdoctors’ Council. Malaam, I will only answer one more
question for you—then, kill me if you wish. Let’s just get to the
end of this foolishness.”
“You ended her life because she wouldn’t help you betray
your own father, and to make your beloved Council happy. You
are cursed of God, marabout.”
“It was an offense for her to refuse to help me, but I did it
especially because they ordered me to. They don’t like
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competition, you know. These women healers cause them to
lose a great deal of income every year, and undermine their
power over the people. If I hadn’t gotten rid of her they would
have sent someone else to do it.”
“The excuses of cowards! ‘I was following orders. Someone
else would have done it, anyway. It was her or me.’ ”
Malaam, who had remained in the same unmoving position
since he began the interrogation, now stood. In fact before the
astonished eyes of the witchdoctor he stood completely up, as
though he had never lacked a limb in his life, and stepped
toward his prisoner. He was so close now that their breath
mixed.
“How is it possible for you to walk on feet I know you
don’t have?”
“It’s magic, marabout, magic.”
“Magic is just a collection of wives’ tales to keep people in
a state of fright, the same as religions—just tricks to play on the
poor of spirit!”
“Are you an unbelieving witchdoctor, Bilal? Today you will
begin to believe. It’s time for me to introduce you to my
friends.” Malaam stuck his hand into the neck of his shirt and
pulled out an object that gave off a soft reddish light. With a
jerk he pulled it off his neck and thrust it into Bilal’s face, so
close that he could feel the heat it gave off.
“Where did you get that grigri?”
“You don’t want to know, witch.”
“Why is it giving off that heat and light?”
“So now you want us to go on with the questions? It’s a
powerful magic amulet, one of the most powerful ones that
exist, or at least that’s what your father told me when I showed
it to him.”
“What is that on your hands, gloves?”
“Not exactly. It’s my new skin, my new flesh.”
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He stuck the amulet back into his shirt, and its light
dimmed. Bilal could see that a dark, shiny, pulsing, crystal-like
material formed a sort of armor covering over all of Malaam’s
body except his head. His hands were no longer missing most
of their fingers, and his legs, apparently covered now by the
strange suit of armor, had allowed him to recover the great
stature he had had before he lost them to leprosy. Bilal
screamed in terror.
“Get it over with!”
“You have one more answer to give me. If we let you go,
will you leave and never come back, never seek revenge?”
“You damn cripple! Yes, I’ll leave! But I can’t promise you
that the Witchdoctors’ Council won’t investigate and won’t
come after the lot of you. What you have done to me here
today will be nothing compared to what they will do to that
herb-gatherer’s granddaughter and everyone who has anything
to do with you.”
This time Bilal could understand perfectly what the strange
voices were saying. “He doesn’t tell the truth, Malaam.”
Malaam took a couple steps back from the tree the
witchdoctor was tied to. “It’s time for you to meet them.”
In response to Malaam’s words, there was a strange,
crystalline humming sound, and Bilal saw some of the splinters
that covered the leper’s body fly off his skin and form a cloud
made up of thousands of tiny black splinters spinning around
him.
“Noooooooo! Spirits don’t exist!”
The razor-sharp splinters, no larger than the shards of glass
that form when a windshield is broken, flew in spirals towards
him.
“Magic is only an invention of magicians to dominate
people through fear!”
Bilal turned his eyes away, trying not to see what he thought
could only exist in the nightmares of children. If spirits did
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indeed exist, perhaps after all he would also be paying for his
sins in the other world, which he had never believed in before,
either.
The sound of the splinters hitting against each other
suddenly ceased. The jungle was in the most absolute silence;
there was not even the sound of a cricket.
“Open your eyes, witch.”
He turned his head even farther to the side and kept his
eyes obstinately shut. He sensed that whatever he saw when he
opened them would be the last thing he would ever see. A hand
that was as cold and hard as stone forced his head around
forward.
“Open your eyes, and believe.”
Bilal drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs and trying to
gather some courage for his spirit; then he opened his eyes.
Malaam’s face was just centimeters from his own; they were
both enveloped by a strange cloud.
“This is…impossible…”
“Do you know how many times I’ve been tempted to use
this amulet? It allows all these creatures that you see covering
me and flying around us access into our world. The bad thing
for you, in this case, is that they are always hungry, hungry for
evil.”
“May we take him with us now? His leaders made our three
friends die. They used to feed us, and keep us warm.” The voice
seemed to come from each and every one of the swirling
splinters of glass.
“You damn leper! We will destroy you! No one will ever
even remember your name!” Furious, Bilal made a desperate
lunge at Malaam to bite his face, but before his teeth could
reach Malaam’s skin, the armor rose up to shield it, forming a
kind of obsidian-like mask that looked like it had been created
by some demented artist. The impact with the shards of glass
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cut Bilal’s lips and gums. His captor’s voice sounded strange
coming from inside the armor.
“Take care of him.”
The shards that were spinning so frenetically around them
made a tight circle around the witchdoctor, making fine cuts in
his wrists as they wore through the ropes that held him against
the tree. For a moment, he thought they were freeing him.
He felt the furious whirlwind lifting him upwards, to the
treetops, tearing his clothing to shreds and scratching his skin.
He tried to scream, but his vocal cords were frozen in terror.
The glass shards, finished with their work, let the witch fall.
Naked and covered in scratches, he landed heavily on his right
side. The shards swirled down and took their places on
Malaam’s armor.
3
His dark friends told Malaam in their ear-piercing, inhuman
voice, “His evil is great. We would have enjoyed consuming it.
We are still hungry. You promised that you would feed us, and
that you would never send us back to the cold and the
darkness.”
“You know I need something from him first, and if you
devour him there will be nothing left.”
Malaam bent and picked up one of the bloodiest strips of
Bilal’s clothing; he picked a large leaf to wrap it in and stuffed it
into his trousers pocket.
“Soon you will have marabouts to feed on; for now I can
only offer you pigs to appease your hunger.”
“What are ‘pigs’?”
“They are animals that many people consider to be
delicious—you will like them. They are not evil of themselves,
but here they have served to do much evil, and there are many
of them. That will keep everyone entertained for a while.”
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“Will you take us to them soon?”
“I’ll take you right now—but remember, you have sworn to
only devour whoever I tell you to.”
“Those are the rules of balance. All of us have sworn to it,
all of us who are here. As long as you keep feeding us we will
help you. We will be your legs; we will be your hands.”
“And you, Bilal the Foolish, know that you are paying for
your crimes and for having betrayed your father. His vengeance
has crossed the universe to fall on you. As soon as you are able
to move, leave this place, and let your companions know that I
will go after any of them who deserves to know me and my
friends. If I ever see you again, I will tell my little friends to tear
off your skin in strips just as they did your precious bubú robe
just now.”
Bilal, sobbing and shaking, would no longer pose a risk for
those that Malaam loved. The marabout had been reduced to a
scratched, blubbering mass of flesh who would not be able to
get up and run for hours, and who would not be able to say a
single word for weeks.
Allowing Bilal to live, even after learning from Sharduk that
he had caused the death of Simone, had cost Malaam an
enormous effort. He discovered within himself more selfcontrol
than he had thought possible. Recent events would
carry a message that would mean a declaration of war against
the Witchdoctors’ Council.
I hope so, he thought. He would not rest until he destroyed
them all, for having ordered Simone’s death.
He had what he had come after now. Each detail of the
mission that Sharduk had given him had been fulfilled. Now it
was time to return to N’long to complete the strange task.
Malaam, walking upright with his new legs, walked away
from the clearing, taking great strides towards his home in
N’long.
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Chapter 18
The Crossover
1
The night air was warm, as it often was just before a storm.
Outside of the hotel, a hundred meters to the west and
perfectly audible, the untiring waves sang their song,
accompanied by the sparkling chorus of sea foam.
On the outside, the apartment that the Lagarde family
occupied looked like an adobe hut with its thatched roof, but
the interior was equipped with all the comforts that tourists
required. In the main room, next to their parent’s bed, hotel
staff had set up a bunkbed for the four children.
The eldest took the top bunk, as he did whenever possible.
He liked to be alone up there with his comic books. His sister
and the twins shared the bottom bunk.
Lying there, with their eyes and mouths tightly closed, Jean
and Daniel tried to work out a plan to leave the room without
being seen or heard by their parents. They had no need to speak
aloud to do so.
“They’re going to catch us.”
“We can’t reach to get the key—we’re not tall enough. We’re going
to need help to get out.”
“From Robert?”
“No, he won’t listen to us, he wouldn’t understand. He’s forgotten;
he’s too old now to understand. He would wake up Papa and Mama.”
“You’re right. Let’s wake up Martine. She still understands.”
“Okay. Besides, she’s having a nightmare. She’s dreaming about
the blue eyes that you see in the darkness if you look way up with your eyes
closed.”
“Robbie should never have taught her to see them.”
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“No, that was mean.”
“Sometimes he’s that way.”
“Do you think she can reach the keys?”
“I’m sure she can.”
“Martine,” they whispered together, “Marti-i-i-i-ine.”
“What? What’s wrong, boys? Do you want another drink of
water?”
“No, Sis, it’s something else this time.”
“I’ve told you to talk to me one at a time.”
They both propped themselves up on their elbows.
“We need you to…”
“…get the key to the door…”
“…that’s on the keychain fastened…”
“…to Papa’s belt.”
“Are you sneaking out? At night?”
“We have to go…”
“…somewhere important.”
“Now? It’s very dangerous. Ask big brother Robbie to go
with you, at least.”
“He’ll tell,” they said in unison. Jean added, “Besides, now
he is dreaming of the green-eyed girl. He’ll be mad if we wake
him up.”
“I know—he’s always getting mad. All right, I’ll get the key
for you. But be careful, okay?”
“Don’t worry, Sis. They’ll take care of us.”
2
An intricate circular design drawn in the rusty color of
dried blood occupied the farthest wall of the rectangular hut
that had belonged to the old witchdoctor, who had disappeared
so long ago. Curves, intertwining spirals, and letters that
resembled the ancient Bamileké alphabet, still in use in that part
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of the country, crisscrossed each other in the blood door, making
it hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
Standing in silence in front of it were Fanya and her son,
Etienne. His twin sister, Ciel, had left them alone there nearly an
hour before to go bring their father from the foggy edge of the
mangrove swamp. She had taken along some large cloths that
she had dipped in water and wrung out, to protect his delicate
skin from the dry air.
Fanya and Etienne had brought both of their oil lamps with
them from home to provide some light inside the abandoned
hut, in order to locate the blood door. It hadn’t been hard to find
—the lamplight revealed its reddish presence as soon as they
were able to force the termite-eaten door of the witchdoctor’s
hut open.
Fanya thought she saw some of the signs waver, changing
shape and place within the intricate circular design, but she
preferred to think it was just a trick her eyes were playing on her
in the low light and the many shadows that filled the room.
They both stood looking at the blood door for several minutes
before they could say anything.
There it was, covering most of the wall. The door, the
crossing point that Sharduk had said they would find. The
possibility of leaving the world that had treated them so poorly
seemed more real than ever. It was Etienne who broke the
almost reverent silence they were immersed in, to express his
thoughts to Fanya.
“I wish you would come with us, Mother.”
“You know I must stay here. This is my place, and besides, I
have a feeling that soon Malaam may need me more than ever
—I fear what he may have awakened in order to help us.”
“I hate the idea of leaving you here alone.”
“You know I won’t be alone. Besides, if you stay, it will only
be a matter of time until they kill you or you end up killing
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someone trying to defend us. I know you well, my son, and you
could not live with the weight of murder on your heart.”
“Then you will be safer without me.”
“Unfortunately that’s the way it is, Son. Ngoma has
managed to keep the calm among the pig farmer and his people,
but it won’t last long. They could show up here sooner than we
think.”
“They’ve always hated us because we were different.”
“No, Etienne. Deep inside they hate everyone that they
perceive to be better than they are. It makes them feel small,
and that’s the most dangerous feeling that a soul can harbor. It
corrupts them—it unleashes their hatred and their desire to do
evil.”
3
“Are you still all right, Father?”
“Yes, my child. The wet cloths protect me quite well, at
least for now.”
“We’re almost there. Let me go ahead a little to be sure no
one is going to see us.”
Ciel left her father crouched for a minute by the side of the
path and walked up to where it ended, just behind her house.
Evening was falling when she had set out to bring her father,
and so far everything had gone smoothly. She looked towards
the road to see if anyone was coming.
“It’s okay, you can come. I don’t see anyone. We’ll stay
behind the houses. We only have to go past ours, Malaam's and
Alice’s, and the ones where Marie and Malik live, to reach old
Bilal’s house.
There was a lot of thick vegetation growing behind the
houses, and Sharduk’s cloths caught on the foul-smelling giant
daisy plants several times.
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“Wait for me here.” She moved ahead again and knocked.
Etienne opened the door.
“Come in, Ciel. Where’s Father?”
“I came ahead to make sure the way was clear.”
“Smart girl. I like the way you think, Sister.”
“Isn’t Malaam back yet?”
“Do you know where he went?” asked Fanya.
“You’ll have to ask our father. You can come on over,
Father!” Ciel said just loudly enough for Sharduk to hear her
from around the hut.
“Hello, Man Kenguele. Where did you send Malaam off
to?”
“I needed for him to take care of some things for us,
Fanya. He has to bring us some blood of a relative of the
person who drew this door, in order to open it, since we don’t
have old Bilal himself with us. If we use someone else’s blood
the results are unpredictable, and could take us to a place or
time that we don’t want, like what happened to me.”
“By the gods!” exclaimed Fanya. “Man Kenguele, what have
you done?”
“There was no other way; I would have gone myself if I
could have.”
“You are so different, I hardly know you.”
“We’ve both changed.”
“Father, is Malaam going to kill Bilal?”
“Not if he can avoid it.”
“But why did you ask him to go, Father?”
“He said he could do it for us, Ciel. He said he had the
means to do it.”
“That’s the problem, Sharduk,” said Fanya, avoiding the
name she had given him. “He does have the means, but you
have set into play something that is very dangerous and that you
know nothing about.”
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The icy tone she used as she spoke to him chilled him to
the bone. She had been, and in his heart still was, the person he
loved most in the entire universe.
“What do you mean, Mother?”
“Listen, Etienne. Malaam has had a very powerful amulet in
his possession for many years. He has felt tempted to use it
many times, but Alice and I have always helped him overcome
that temptation.”
“And you think he is using it this time?”
“How else could he take on evil Bilal all by himself?”
There was a knock at the door. It was Malaam, sitting on
his stumps.
“You’re right, Fanya. I couldn’t have.”
“Are you all right, my friend?”
“Yes, Fanya. I’m fine. Everything went just as I planned.”
“Have you been at the door long?”
“I just got here a minute ago. Look, I know you are
worried. But everything went fine, I swear to you.”
“Did you…”
“Everything is fine, I tell you.”
“Do you have what we need?”
“Yes, Sharduk,” Malaam said, pulling the strip of cloth
from Bilal’s bubú robe, soaked in his blood, from his pocket.
“Is Bilal…?”
“Dead? No, Ciel, but it wasn’t because I didn’t feel like
utterly destroying him. Your father will explain the reasons to
you when he feels the time is right. But Bilal will never be a
problem again.”
Sharduk stepped over to Malaam, who held out the bloody
rag to him. His wet cloths were beginning to dry out, and he
was trying not to show how much the skin all over his body was
itching already.
“I just spoke to Alice. She knows you are leaving tonight
and wants a chance to say good-bye,” said Malaam.
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“We wouldn’t leave without seeing her first,” Ciel assured
him.
“We aren’t all going, Malaam. I’m going to stay here,” added
her mother.
“Are you sure, Fanya?”
“I’m very sure. This is my place,” she said, looking straight
at Sharduk.
“What about the pig farmer?” her son queried, concerned.
Malaam answered, “Don’t worry, Etienne. I’ve also
created. . .a distraction. The pig farmer and his people are going
to be much too busy to come calling on us for some time.”
Fanya felt a chill run up her spine when she saw the smile
on Malaam’s face at the mention of the distraction he had
created.
4
Their big sister had finally managed to get the key. She had
had to crawl under their parents’ bed to the closet, then
unfasten the keys from their father’s belt with her incredibly
skillful little hands, without making any noise at all, in spite of
the complicated clasp with which the keys were attached.
What did make a squeaking noise were the door hinges,
punished as they were by the sea breezes. But it must have been
written in the stars that they would achieve their goal of
sneaking out of the hotel room, because their mother, who
always woke up looking at her children at the least little sound,
remained strangely, deeply asleep.
Martine helped them fasten the straps of their rubber
sandals and gave them each a kiss on the cheek, as she told
them once again to be very careful. Then they took each other’s
hand and walked out into the night as nonchalantly as a fish
swims through water.
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Two little lightning bugs that seemed to be chasing one
another in tiny circles appeared in their path as soon as they left
the main road and started off into the jungle.
“Look, our friends…”
“…are lighting the way for us,. . .”
“. . .and they’ll take care of us, like always.”
An hour later, they reached the swaying rope bridge that
crossed the Benoué River just a few meters before its great fall
to the sea.
“This bridge is pretty narrow, Brother.”
“Yes, it is, and the waterfall is very close,”
“It’s a long ways down. We’ll have to…”
“…be careful as we cross.”
“You know we won't fall.”
“I know. But I’ll bet the grown-ups wouldn’t dare to cross it at
night.”
“Of course not, because they can’t see their lights any more.”
“They talk to us about them, and tell us that they will take care
of us, but they can’t see them.”
“The lights say it’s safe.”
“Are you afraid to cross?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Me, neither.”
“Maybe being afraid grows with us when we get older, so that we
don’t get into so much trouble.”
“Grown-ups are just weird. They’re afraid of a lot of things.”
“They’re even afraid of being afraid. Will we be weird and
scaredy-cats like them when we grow up?
“No, we’re twins. We’ll always be able to see.”
“When we get across the bridge we’ll be halfway there.”
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“Let’s see if we can get back to the room before Mama and Papa
wake up.”
5
Ciel and Etienne returned to the witchdoctor’s hut with
tears in their eyes after saying good-bye to Alice. She had been
their beloved grandmother for many years, but now she could
only wish them well. Just as Fanya, she knew they had more
possibilities for their future in any other place rather than the
neighborhood of the outcasts, and she was happy for them,
even though losing them broke her heart.
“She says she would rather not come—red magic scares her,”
said Ciel as she entered the hut.
“Close the door. I’m going to try to activate the symbol
now.”
“Yes, Father.”
The stars shone down brightly through the broken thatched
palm-leaf roof of the hut. Sharduk looked towards the sky in a
gesture of prayer. Would his gods hear him from this other
world? Would the Blessed Twins hear the plea that he sent to
them in silence? Or were other gods in charge of helping poor
mortals in this universe, and would they have no pity for him, a
stranger?
With the cloth stained in the blood of the son of the one
who had created the door that was before them, he began to
trace the circle on the wall. Behind him, everyone held their
breath.
Nothing happened. Something wasn’t working right.
6
The two little boys were near exhaustion. They had been
walking as fast as they could ever since they had left the hotel
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on Longhee Beach. It had been nearly two hours now, but at last
they were nearing N’long.
It was late when they reached the first houses. They hid
themselves quickly and quietly in the brush when they saw the
green-eyed girl and her brother coming out of one of the huts.
The two little lights that had led their way suddenly
disappeared.
“They don’t want anyone to see us.”
“No one will ever know we were even here.”
They waited for the others to go inside the abandonedlooking
hut that was at the far side of the little group of jungle
homes. When they saw the greenish glow of the little
companions who had led them here safe and sound once more,
they approached their friends’ house.
“It’s here.”
“Their parents are asleep.”
“Tell the girls we’re here.” (This, out loud.)
One of the fireflies flew in through a part-way open
window, and flew back out in less than a minute. The door
opened, and Marie’s girls, one dressed in a green T-shirt and the
other in a blue one with the logo of some humanitarian
organization on it, limped out, holding hands as always.
“We’re here.”
“You called us.”
“You telled us that you needed us to help you.”
“It’s ‘told’—Rob said so.”
“Okay, you told us to come.”
The twin girls smiled at them, stretching out their free
hands to their visitors. Daniel stood at their left and Jean at their
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right, and the four of them began to walk towards the
witchdoctor’s hut.
7
“I don’t understand; the blood door should have opened by
now.”
“Maybe it takes a while,” suggested Etienne.
“I don’t think so. The one I used coming here was activated
immediately.”
“Maybe that’s different on this side, too.”
“We should have had more of the witchdoctor’s blood—
maybe there isn’t enough.”
A wave of discouragement washed over them. Sharduk
could no longer hide the burning sensation he felt all over. The
cloths they had moistened in the swamp before they started to
N’long were dry by now, and he was miserable. “There’d better
be water on the other side; otherwise I don’t think I’ll make it to
the sea.” He sat on the floor to rest.
“I have a couple of buckets of water in my house.”
“Thank you, Fanya, but it needs to be sea water.”
“Etienne, run home and bring the water, and the packet of
salt that’s in the kitchen.”
Etienne ran out of the hut. He thought he saw a soft green
glow in the giant daisy bushes, but he was in too much of a
hurry to pay any attention. It was probably just fireflies.
“That will work. You’ve saved my life again.”
“That’s what I do, take care of people’s health.”
“Fanya, I’m so sorry that everything turned out so wrong.”
“I know, Sharduk.”
“You are not using the name you gave me any more.”
“Sadly I’m no longer that girl who fell in love with you, nor
are you the same boy who she fell in love with.”
“Sadly no.”
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A few steps away Malaam waited in respectful silence, while
Ciel sobbed quietly.
“What is it, Ciel? Why are you crying?”
“Because it’s such a hard thing, Mother, and because I’m
learning that love, too, can die.”
“No, love doesn’t die, my child. We die. Life and time kill us
over and over again.”
Ciel embraced her mother, unable to contain her tears.
“Come with us!” she sobbed.
“No, I can’t. I wouldn’t be happy there. Perhaps I’m being
selfish, I don’t know.” Casting a glance at Malaam, who was
sitting in the shadows, with only his eyes visible, she added, “I
am going to have a lot of things to take care of here.”
Etienne returned carrying the packet of salt with his teeth
and with as much water as he could keep in the buckets he was
carrying in his hands. His mother dissolved part of the salt in
the water and wet Sharduk’s cloths with Ciel’s help.
“Let’s get them back on him quickly—I think he’s almost
unconscious.”
“I will never stop loving you, Fanya,” whispered Sharduk.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Excuse me for interrupting, Father, but let me try it
again,” urged Etienne.
“The rag is too dry now.”
“I’ll wet it a bit.”
“We haven’t got much to lose—if it doesn’t open, you’ll
have to help me get back to the sea. Then you must go far away
from here, Etienne.”
After dipping the rag in the bit of salt water left at the
bottom of the bucket, Etienne began retracing the circular
design again, wetting it with the diluted blood, hoping that it
might work this time around.
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8
Two more little green lights, those of the girls, joined the
children as they reached the rear of the witchdoctor’s hut. They
thought they saw someone run past them just as they entered
the brush.
“They almost saw us.”
“Be careful with the giant daisy bushes! There are wild
beans growing on them, and if they fall on us. . .”
“. . .they’ll cover us with their itchy hairs,. . .”
“. . .and we’ll end up scratching at ourselves for
days.”
There was a tiny clearing just behind the adobe wall of the
hut. The girls led them there, sitting down immediately and
pulling the boys down with them. The two sets of twins sat
there, facing each other.
They took each other’s hands again, and instinctively, this
time they formed a circle. All four closed their eyes at the same
time, and suddenly the boys could see Marie’s girls as they really
were, as no one else in this world would ever see them.
“Thank you for coming to help us.”
The sky was a deep blue, cloudless, and though it was
daylight they could still see the stars quite clearly. In fact the
stars were moving across the sky fast enough for them to be
able to observe their harmonious dance.
They were no longer in a clearing amidst the three- and
four-meter-high stalks of the giant daisies, but sitting on top of
a gentle hill overlooking what appeared to be an infinite
succession of resplendently green valleys, crisscrossed with little
rivers and peppered with stands of trees and with lakes that
reflected the stars.
The only sounds were those of the flocks of birds that
crossed the sky and the murmur of the fast-flowing streams.
The air was so clean that they could differentiate the perfumes
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of the different trees in the nearby woods. And yet, neither their
little lights nor their friends’ lights were here with them in this
place.
“Where are we, Brother?”
“I don’t know.”
“You are in our true home.”
“They can hear…”
“…what we say to each other!”
“But no one can hear what we say to each other…”
“…without talking out loud.”
“Of course we can—you closed the circle with us. Of course we
can hear you, and you can hear us.”
Now the girls were not just the two little children everyone
felt sorry for, who could barely speak a few words, with a
strange, limping walk and their gaze lost in some unfathomable
void. Here they were a perfect version of themselves. They were
even more beautiful than they had seemed when the brothers
had met them by the roadside earlier, and the boys, instead of
being two little children, were the most perfect incarnation of
themselves.
“This is a beautiful place,” said the boys.
“Thank you. We spend most of our time here. We found it
a long time ago. We’ve never been able to share it with anyone
before.”
They all stood up.
“We’ve lost our lights.”
“Don’t worry. They can’t follow us here, but you are safe—
you don’t need them.”
“What are your names?”
“We are Tahisa and Tanisa.”
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“And we are Daniel…”
“…and N’Jean.”
“Your name is Jean, brother, not N’Jean.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
“We need to help our friends,” said Tahisa. “We’ve seen
several different futures for them, and they don’t survive if they
don’t cross through that door in Bilal the Elder’s hut. And if they
don’t go where that door is taking them, a whole world might
disappear.”
“But—they already went through the door.”
“No,” explained Tanisa. “It’s another kind of door, one for
crossovers, something like the way you crossed over to here when
you closed the circle.”
“So we’re really here? We aren’t in the bushes anymore?”
“Even though you can’t tell yet, the four of us are actually
in both places at once.”
“That’s complicated…”
“…I don’t get it.”
“Don’t worry—that’s normal. We’re used to it now—we
were born with a different kind of brain. We don’t have to stay
in just one place or just one moment of time.”
“So that’s why people think you are….”
“Strange? Abnormal? Weird? We know very well what they
think, but it’s not their fault. They can’t understand—they’ve all
forgotten, except the witchdoctors, who sometimes get a
glimpse. We children can see more than the grown-ups; we see
that everything is woven together. Twins, especially identical
twins like us, can see even more. We can even change certain
things, pull the strings that are being woven, reweave them.”
“We still don’t understand it very well…”
“…but that’s okay. What do you want us to do?”
“We need your strength so that together we can open the
special door. Close your eyes here, and then open just the left
one where we are sitting behind Bilal the Elder’s house.”
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The boys followed their instructions. Now they were all
sitting in a circle under the giant daisies again, but at the same
time they could feel that they were still in the sisters’ home,
where they had just been visiting. It was a strange sensation to
feel that they were in two places at the same time.
All four sat with just their left eye open. Smiling, they
clasped each other’s hands even more tightly. Meanwhile, above
them, their glow bugs spun in wild circles.
9
For a few interminable seconds, the door emitted violent red
flashes, and a strange force threw everyone in the hut onto their
backs. Light filled the room and fled off towards the stars
through the broken roof, making it appear as though the house
were burning like a torch.
“It’s open!”
“I’ve never seen such violence around a crossing point!”
“Father, Father! It’s blinking!”
“I don’t think it will stay open very long.”
“I know, Ciel. We have to go now.”
“Go, my children; we’ve already said our good-byes.”
“Mother, the money from my fishing is hidden in a tin box
under my bed.”
“I’ve always known you kept it there, Etienne. I love you
both very much,” Fanya said, embracing them one more time, a
gesture none of them was much used to.
“The door is getting darker—it’s now or never. Good-bye,
Fanya. Take care of her for me, friend Malaam.”
“You can count on it.”
“How do we do it, Father?”
“Just walk through, Ciel, like you are going through the
door of your house.”
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“I’ll go first,” announced Etienne, stepping towards the
door, whose light was rapidly fading, and disappearing through it.
“Take my hand, Father.”
They held hands as Fanya watched them step towards the
door.
Ciel did not look back, but Sharduk turned before being
engulfed in the last flashes of light from the door, just in time to
see Fanya’s eyes smiling at him with nostalgia and happiness,
just as we do when we remember a past love, and to hear her
say, “Farewell, Man Kenguele, my only love, my Eyes of the
Sea.
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Epilogue
The Message of the Dragonfly
1
Her three pairs of wings had brought her here from the
mouth of the cave where old Turj kept her and her eleven
companions. She had reached the border between Rayna and
the dead, deadly desert they called the Plains of Sorrow.
Between her legs she held a gelatinous sphere that contained a
miniature marine ecosystem.
The noisy flight of the two-cubit-long dragonfly could be
heard at quite a distance; that wasn’t a problem in the forest,
where there were thousands of her kind. They rarely crossed
that physical boundary, but after a half-day’s journey the tiny,
delicate circuit that she had attached to the back of her head
was now prompting her to cross the last row of trees and move
forward over the blue sands of the Plains.
What’s more, the apparatus indicated to her by means of
short impulses that she should slightly slow the rhythm of her
wings, which—like her body—were of a shiny metallic green
color. This reduced her speed, as well as the amount of noise
she made as she flew.
She flew at low altitude for another four hours toward the
farthest outpost of the new army of the Sons of the Roots. It
had been established after the rise of the Indistinguishables,
ostensibly to defend the Sons from attacks, but with the final
objective of doing away with the rebels completely. The great
fortress had been built with vitrified sand and sparkled in the
sunlight like an enormous gem with iridescent facets.
She flew over several detachments of soldiers dressed in
their combat suits, which were almost the same blue tone as the
sands, as they trained around the outpost with different war
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machines, and headed straight for the building that housed the
communications center. Once inside, she alit on a metal plaque
covered with sensors.
Meanwhile other dragonflies, some mere message-bearers
and others carrying scanners and cameras of different kinds,
flew in and out of the building just as she had, as the
technicians reviewed the information in their circuits and fed
them.
The constant hum of dozens of wings echoed off the high,
dome-shaped ceiling made of blue amber. Two technicians,
wearing headsets to communicate with each other, came up to
her to review what she had brought.
“This one came from Rayna; I think she belongs to Colonel
Turj.”
“You’re right, Phil. She’s his big green. The others can’t fly
such a long distance. Her programming is the best we have.
Look, she’s carrying a marine pendant.”
“Let’s see what the message says, Kal.”
Kal glanced at the little screen by the platform the
dragonfly was sitting on.
“Let’s see. Oh! It’s for the general. It’s classified and it’s
urgent.”
“Okay, copy it to a unit and take it to him, along with that
sphere she brought. I think he’s outside, training one of the
squadrons.
“Right, I’ve got it. Will you take care of…?”
“…of checking the circuitry and feeding her? We’ve been
working together for three years, and you still think you need to
tell me how to do my job, Kal.
Without answering Phil, who had already disconnected his
headset and couldn’t hear the complaints of his companion, he
stuck the unit in his jacket pocket and left the building.
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2
Outside, Kal traded his headset for sunglasses to protect his
eyes from the bright rays bouncing dangerously off of the sand.
He only had to cross half of the fortress, through the barracks
area, since the communications building was right in the center.
Even so, it took him about ten minutes to reach the main gate.
He called out to one of the guards, a mestizo who was half
Shepherd of the Land, carrying a pulsar rifle as long as
Communications Officer Kal was tall.
“I have a unit to give to the general.”
He showed him the unit and the guard nodded a signal with
his enormous red head to another of the six guards who were
standing watch on the inside of the wall, and that one opened a
narrow slot that Kal could barely squeeze through—there was
always a certain resentment between the foot soldiers and the
communications operators.
A few paces from the other side of the wall, the cadets
were listening attentively to the general’s instructions.
“Be sure to take cover before you stop to reload your
weapon! And keep watching for the enemy’s weakest side!”
The war had intensified and it didn’t look like anything
would stop it now. Meanwhile, both armies were building up
their ranks.
As he waited for a sergeant to let the general know he was
there, he remembered bitterly the happy years he had spent in
Latica working as a dentist, specializing in modified humans,
who also suffered from a good toothache from time to time.
But the situation had gotten worse. The Indistinguishables
had gone crazy, or so it seemed, and were set out to annihilate
everyone who saw things differently than them. They used as an
excuse the twisted interpretations they gave to the words of the
Blessed Twins, who he, too, revered.
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The rest of the inhabited planets had literally closed their
doors to Telluria. No one wanted the Indistinguishable fever to
extend to the rest of the territories. He should have left while
he still could.
“Officer Kal.”
“Yes, Sergeant Ian.”
“The general will see you now.”
He entered the general’s white tent, which in spite of its
spartan simplicity, still offered respite from the blazing heat
outside.
“At your orders, Sir. I have an urgent message for you.”
General Lucas had changed a great deal since his younger
days as an officer on a maritime surface transport vessel. Grave
responsibilities had overcome his desires to become an
adventurer.
He was standing by a table, disassembling his weapon to
clean out any stray grains of sand. His face had become stony
and inexpressive, his gaze profound and astute. Hundreds of
battles fought in the desert and in Rayna had toughened him
and turned him into the great general he was now. He was
admired by his men and feared or hated by each and every one
of the Indistinguishables.
He barely lifted his eyes from the combustion chamber of
his weapon when the communications operator entered.
“What does the message say?”
“It just says that it comes from Colonel Turj, and that it is
for your eyes only, General. Oh, and the dragonfly who brought
it was also carrying this little sea sphere.”
“You could have started by telling me that, Officer!” he
said, setting his weapon down on the table and approaching a
startled Kal in a few great strides. “That sphere means that you
are carrying a message I have been waiting a very long time for.”
“I’m sorry, Sir! Here’s the unit and the sphere.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Officer Kal.”
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The general was proud of knowing the names and the faces
of each of the men and women under his command, and of
having trained most of them, at least in part, in the use of
combat suits.
“You may go, Officer.”
The man who was once Sharduk’s companion on his
adventures plugged the unit into the terminal that was sitting on
the table, surrounded by rifle pieces. A slight smile lit his face as
he saw the image of his friend Turj suspended and translucent
above the table. He reproduced the message, and floating words
appeared superimposed over the giant’s red face, which faded
into the background and disappeared.
3
My good friend Lucas,
I understand that the campaign is going favorably for you, and that
you are losing very few men. I am as glad for you as I am for them, as I
know how much it hurts every time we lose a man.
I often feel vexed that due to all the wounds received, my health
does not allow me to be with you in the battlefield. But now, at last, I know
that my service here guarding the crossing point in this cave has not been in
vain.
Last night, as you always assured me would happen one day, your
friend Sharduk returned, and he did not come alone. He crossed back over
with his two children, who seem to be of the same age as him. Apparently,
the door through which you saw him leave so long ago did not work quite
properly, and when he reached the other side, he had been thrown forward
many years.
We had to quickly get him into a land suit, as he was only
protected by some wet cloths, and his skin was beginning to suffer. Don’t
worry—the suit made him feel better immediately.
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The Eyes of the Sea
He is happy to have returned, but sad that the mother of his
children decided not to accompany him, for reasons he did not explain to
me, and I did not think prudent to ask.
I am requesting that you send us a large detachment of soldiers,
since the true miracle is not only the return of Sharduk, but the perfect
resemblance of his children to the Beloved Twins, may they be blessed—
who, as you know, I had the enormous honor of serving until the day they
disappeared, leaving no trace behind.
When I saw Sharduk’s children, my old knees could hardly keep
me standing. It’s them—the same eyes, the same skin, their voices, the
strength of their hearts, the way they react. There is much greater power
within them than they themselves imagine. It’s as though they were an exact
copy—no, it is them!
I believe that Uz-Talim, Supreme Mechanist, and Garnil,
spiritual leader and warrior of the Sons of the Roots, blessed be their
names, have chosen a strange way of doing it, but they have returned to us
to help us in these dark days of our world.
Send your best men to escort us to your most advanced post.
Sharduk is impatient to be able to tell you about what has happened while
he was away. He looks just the same as the day he left from Patrick’s house
—it seems that for him, only a few days have passed.
The poor fellow meant to bring his family to a safe place, and
instead he has brought them to a war zone.
He is sending you a small gift. He says that the way things are at
present, you need it now more than he does.
Please hurry.
Your brother in arms, Turj.
4
Kal was just reaching the enormous gate to the fortress
once again when a mechanical sand crawler stopped beside him.
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“Principal Operator of Alternative Communications Kal,
the general requires your presence most urgently. Climb in
behind me. I’ll take you back to his tent.”
Who in their right mind would invent such long names for military
positions? he wondered for the hundredth time.
The driver was the same Sergeant Ian that he had spoken to
before.
“Did he say why he wants me to go back?”
“No, only for us to catch up with you and bring you back to
him.”
A knot tightened in Kal’s throat as he climbed into one of
the back seats of the speedy vehicle. Had he damaged the
communications unit when he took it from the dragonfly? Did
the general think he might have looked at its contents?
As he entered the tent, a cold sweat covered his back, and
he felt like he was going to faint. By the sands of the desert, what
have I done wrong? he wondered.
“Are you all right, Officer Kal?” General Lucas asked him.
“Ye-yes, Sir, I’m fine,” he stammered, trying to calm down
his thoughts and somewhat regain his composure.
“You don’t look too well.”
“Was there…some problem, Sir?” Kal asked, trying in vain
to swallow, his mouth suddenly dry, and a sharp pain stabbing at
him just below his left collarbone.
“Sit down, have some gelatin; you look a bit dehydrated.”
“Th-thank you, Sir.”
“Officer Kal, I have a mission for you.”
“For me, Sir?”
“Of course, for you! If it weren’t for you, I would have
called in someone else, don’t you think?”
“Yes, Sir, of course. Forgive me, Sir—I must be coming
down with Blue Fever. I’m entirely at your service.”
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An ear-to-ear grin slowly spread across his face. Apparently
nothing bad had happened, and on top of that the general
himself was going to personally assign a mission to him.
“I need you to prepare a message, which will be sent to all
the leaders of the Indistinguishables in exactly three days.”
“And what should the message say?”
“Tell them that the Blessed Twins, Uz-Talim and Garnil,
have returned among us. And that I am calling for us to meet in
the center of the Plains of Sorrow to end this war, absurd and
cruel as all wars are, in the same manner that the Holy Twins
ended the First Telluric War.”
THE END
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