WHO ARE YOU
I walk the rivers blue
the waves crash at my feet
bare as when I got them
on rocks and sand of sea
suddenly you join me
from the other side
you walk the other bank
you watch the other tide
I check if you are looking
you see if I am too
soon the river narrows
and I walk next to you
My hood as black as night
its pinholes tiny stars
my parent's skull upon me
it tells me who you are
but you have your ways too
and gifts from elders dear
that make my flaws apparent
that make my strengths more clear
I follow rivers into oceans
hand in yours, my hand returns
we part as shores begin to broaden
no heart dies where love was learned.
* * *
I was about to vomit. I could barely see straight. As the hot sun
blasted its heat to me, full force, I felt my body shiver and shrivel at
the same time. I felt my head get lighter, and my vision turned dull
black. I felt a scorpion, or something, skitter along my back, and by
the sand on my face I knew I'd fallen face-first.
The next time I
blinked, I was somewhere cooler, looking up at a shanty ceiling.
Dragging myself out of a skin-cot, the blood rushed to my head, and it
was like a hammer. Next to me was a pot of clear water with no smell,
and some crackers. Still belly-on-floor, I sipped the water, my stomach
tight, and gnawed on a cracker. It took me a while to get the strength
to sit up, and I saw that I was on a marble balcony that overlooked a
beautiful town. Palm trees on every corner, streams of water running
between square streets and pooling into a fountain at the center. Each building was a
mix of stone and sand, with wood to support walls and doors. I was
expecting more marble, but that was unique to the tiered structure of
the building where I was resting. On the lower tiers were more cots, and
more shanty roofs. It must be some kind of hotel, I thought. The sun
was low, and the long shadows of the trees stretched into each other,
like dark continuous lines. I fell asleep again, leaning my back into
the cot's longer side.
The next morning, The Prince and The Huntress returned with a basket, brand new and empty.
"Whassat for?" I grumbled.
"Fishing," announced The Prince. "You are going to help."
"I feel terrible," I protested.
The Huntress replied, "Fish will make you feel better."
I
dragged my ass out to the edge of town, walking behind the other two,
holding my gut and feeling my head swim. We walked for at least a
half-hour to a soggy patch of grass, and then up a hill. At the top, I
could see below us a narrow creek, clear as the sky itself and trickling
softly. There were shiny red fish swarming the rocks, glistening like
beds and gems under the sun's light, filtered mercifully by a forest of
round-leaf trees that surrounded us. The fish darted from bank to bank,
catching bugs with their mouths; insects leapt from reeds to grass and
back into the water, too numerous and noisy to track with the eye. It
was a frenzy! The Prince had us get low, onto our knees, to crawl
quietly down the hill. Once there, he instructed the two of us to stay.
He stood up slowly, and took the spear off his back, from its little
leather loop that strapped around his shoulder and just under his chest.
He untied the flag from the spear, and used it to tie his robes above
his thighs at the waist. He waited, and let the curious fish crowd his
feet. He looked at ease with them, and a little bit sorry – like me with
the gazelle. Then quick as a needle into thread, he pinned a fish on
his spear, and yanked it out. It was caught on the arrowhead, and he
twisted the fish to make sure the wound didn't align with the edges.
He'd left the bucket with me, so I was waiting for him to return.
Instead, he kept jabbing, skewering fish with incredible accuracy. Each
one slid the next up the spear, like he was building a totem pole, or
making shish-kebab. Before I could count, he was wading his way back to
slide them all off into the basket, leaning the spear against the edge
and dragging it to let them go in one smooth motion. The tip, though at
odds with the holes in the fish, seemed to slip right through them.
He handed the spear to The Huntress. "Here you go."
She nodded, and slowly made her way to another spot where the fish were
chasing bugs. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then opened
them again and with both hands thrust the spear straight into the sand
with a thud. The fish swam away, then came back within seconds. She
tried again, taking a smaller breath, and stuck three fish in a row.
Then one slide off because she forgot to hold the spear sideways between
jabs, or twist the fish. She slapped her forehead and signed, "Aye,
this is why I hunt in the fields. This is too slippery for me, too wet."
I whispered, "Is that supposed to be an-"
She glared at me. I shut my mouth. Apparently, it was not.
Then she tried one last time, and came back with five fish. Not half as many as The Prince.
He growled, "Woman, you'd better stick to the fields, you can't even
spear them right. Look at this one: you put three holes in him. Another,
through the eye – I'm surprised it didn't rip and fall off."
She
let out a growl herself, wordless frustration, and let the fish slide
into the bucket, but she had to push the last one off by hand (from the
notch that allowed the spear to sit in its harness and still poke the
height above The Prince's head). Then, she handed it to me.
As I
stood up, my hips stung. I was loud and heavy into the creek, my feet
dumbly trodding like they were made of clay. The fish could hear me long
before I got there, they just didn't care enough to leave. As I drew
closer, and saw them feasting on crickets and beetles, their little
faces reminded me of my own, and I felt a fondness towards them. I'd
been fishing back home, with my siblings and with The Knight. There, we
tied hooks to string and string to a stick or branch – if the fish took
our bait of pierced worm or chunk of another fish, it was the fish's own
fault and greed. We called it "dumb-culling" because only the dumbest
animals could fall for such a trick for hundreds of years, if not
thousands. We joked at dinnertime that eating too many would make us
stupid, though our father was quick to correct us: eating fish makes you
smarter because of yet unstudied nutrients and components inside it,
and group testing showed an increase in reading ability. The test had
been done in a lab in Egypt, and it was the topic of a conversation that
resulted in our family.
The Prince hissed, "Go on! Skewer them, before my catch rots."
I side-eyed him, knowing I had only spent a minute in my memories. He
smiled. I took a deep breath, and stabbed my left foot. I gasped hard,
and squealed through clenched throat, immobilized by pain. My blood
clouded the water, and the fish stopped moving. They started swarming
me! What looked like a hundred fish, all jumping at me and running along
my ankles. They were attracted to the blood, for some reason. I took
the spear, and put it through two fish at once. Then another, and a
miss, then another. Before I knew it, I had fish from the tip of the
spear down to my hands, twitching as their hearts slowly stopped
beating. They dripped with water and blood, and it ran along my arms,
down my body, around my legs in spiral, and back to the creek. Excited, I
splashed over to the basket on my limping foot, and The Prince helped
me slide them in.
I was grinning ear to ear. "Not bad for my first try, huh?"
He narrowed his eyed, but he was grinning too. "Beginner's luck. I'll catch the rest."
Back in town, which I learned was Chinguetti, we sold most of our
basket's worth and kept only a few to eat for ourselves. Behind our
hotel was a fire-pit with wooden benches, and to our convenience, nobody
else was using it. We sharpened some stray sticks, and each roasted a
fish or two, and splayed them out on a pan to separate their bones. The
Huntress put the bones in the fire, and told us why.
"The bones become ash, wind takes it and brings it back to the earth."
The Prince scoffed. "Who told you that?"
The Huntress glared. "My mother."
He laughed, "Oh, yes. The Shaman. What a crock of shit."
She jabbed her elbow into his side. "Says the spoiled camel racer who can't catch one with his bare hands."
The Prince looked hurt. "I don't need to do pointless things, I'm the
best rider there is. How do you think I found you so fast? You're lucky I
got you before your father's assassins did." He crossed his arms, and
straightened his back.
I asked, "So you two have known each other for a long time?"
The Huntress cleared her throat. "Since we were kids. The Prince was my first boyfriend."
The Prince grinned. "Yes, we have always been in love." Then his face
soured. "It is a shame her father was not more like mine, nor my mother
like hers, I suppose."
"How so?" I asked.
The Huntress gripped The Prince's shoulder, and shook her head.
The Prince sighed. "My father was a brilliant man; he taught me to
ride, how to fish, and how to rule. And, to fight – we sparred every
day." He flexed his muscles in boast. "He told me I would grow up to be
powerful, and to do fantastic things!" He leaned forward, now exhausted.
"But our kingdom was betrayed, and he asked my mother to take me far
away. I wound up in The Chief's village, and my mother found the hole in
his heart a good place to seep in and infect. A hole he'd made himself,
I'm told, but an entry-point for her disease nonetheless."
The
Huntress followed, "So the two of us let them distract each other, and
we ran away. Every time they found us, we ran further. One day, we left
the village, and never looked back."
The Prince took a fish fillet in his fingers and lifted it over his mouth to bite into. He finished it in three more.
I nodded to myself, remembering there was food, and had some of it
myself. So did The Huntress. When the fish was gone, we passed around a
rag to wipe the oil from our hands.
"Now," announced The Prince, "I will see what I have been competing with these last two months."
The Huntress looked unsure, and grimaced. "Really?"
He nodded slowly, lips pursed but smiling.
I felt the air shift, becoming electric towards me. "Uh... what are you talking about?"
He said, "We're going to fight."
"Oh, okay."
I reached for the scythe under my feet, but he stopped me with a raised hand.
"Not like that," he laughed.
I was confused.
He leaned on his side along the bench, and lifted his arm like an emperor being fed grapes. "You're going to lay with me."
My eyes went wide with shock, slowly but surely. "I'm gonna WHAT?!"
He explained, "I've seen your face about me, red like a beet. And I
like your hips. Come, I will judge if you are good enough for her."
I froze up, and my face warmed, and I broke out in a cold sweat. "I-is, uh, is... is that, uh-"
"I-is it w-WHAT?" he mocked.
"Is that normal here?" I leaned forward to whisper, "Do guys just... DO that?"
The Prince shrugged, offended. "I do. I'm not Muslim, I'm Nubian. Many
parts of Africa, men love each other. Did you not see so in the city?"
I thought back, to where I'd landed from sea and to the streets of
Chinguetti. While there were people covered in cloth head to toe, and
men with staunch faces and brows frowning in their beards, there were
also dark-skinned men in red robes laughing arm in arm, and even leaning
on each other at the market. I said, "Yeah, I thought they were being
friendly."
He laughed, "They were lovers, my friend, you were just blind to it."
I looked down at my feet, feeling a pit in my stomach grow. "I'm not sure I can?"
The Prince said in a quiet but booming voice, "I'm tired of you staring
at me, looking like you're going to explode." He stood up, walked over,
and offered his hand. "Come with me, I'll go easy on you."
Redder yet, I was terrified. The Huntress nodded, with a pitying expression.
I sighed, and took his hand. I wasn't going to let something like this get the better of me. "Fine."
It went on for two hours. Not because it was amazing, exactly, but
because I had no idea what to do. I realized that The Huntress had done
most of the work with me, made it simple. Showed me without words each
step. With him, every minute or so I'd get a look of disapproval, and
have to ask what I did wrong, only to get an eye-roll and frustrated
sigh. It felt like fucking a church-yard bully. Though, I'll admit, I
did get excited to see his body, with abs like buttered buns from the
oven still stuck together, and thick, sharp hips much more narrow and
square than mine. Neither of us took the other in the woman's way,
another fault of mine for inexperience. But eventually, something was
accomplished, however mutually. The whole affair only seemed to make him
tired, while I was angry at the clumsy drunkenness I felt on my own
emotions. I just wanted to impress him, even a little, and get closer to
his impenetrable heart.
When it was all over, I tried to put my arm around him, and he rolled away to the other side of the bed to evade me.
Annoyed, I asked, "Why don't we both marry her? I'll even marry you too, if I have to."
He stuck out his tongue. "I don't do charity. This was a contest, and you lost."
I groaned, and lowered my brows. "Yeah, I know."
He went on, "You don't understand a man's body at all. You treat me
like a woman, and you act like one." He looked wistfully at the ceiling,
like he could see the stars through it. "I don't think you know what
you are, and you're confused. But that's not my problem."
I frowned, and asked, "What do YOU think I am, then?", nodding upwards as a mild taunt.
He only chuckled. "Something else. But not a man. It's in your blood."
Already frustrated, now I was just pissed off. "Can we try again later? I'd like the practice, if it's so important to you."
"No," he replied, "I am beat from playing both sides of a game. Get out, now."
I laid back, confused and offended. Then I sprung forward, and left the bed
to find The Huntress. I turned back to see him through the thin red
canopy over the bed, looking for a sign of remorse. He rolled onto his
stomach, stretched with a contented squeal, and closed his eyes.
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