Chapter Forty-Two
Like a flick of a light switch, I wasn’t in the forest where I’d started out. I was deposited at the end of the path that wound in the steep curves of one continuous S up the mountain and deep into the realm of the Above. In front of me were two massive, ornate closed gates.
They were also made of gold with luscious, thick vines of ivy and moss winding through and on top of each of the closely placed golden pillars, which were as thick as small tree trunks.
I realized each of the pillars were spears, the tops of them pointing dangerously in the sky.
I couldn’t help thinking about if something fell from the sky and was impaled on one of the many sharp-edged tips.
Tiny, cupped flowers of every color imaginable dotted the vines.
There were no levers or latches to open or close the gates.
Carefully, because I didn’t want to damage any of the delicate petals or smudge the shiny gold, I placed my palm against the metal, finding it cold to the touch, cold to the point of burning.
Reflexively, I pulled my hand back, not expecting the sensation.
But I could hear commotion on the other side, could see a mass of people who looked like me and the backs of the twin sisters as they approached them.
“Wait,” I called after them. I’d seen scenes like this before me in history books, on countless movies. Scenes of masses of people being lined up. Having their hands bound. Being tethered together by rope, one after the other, by the waist, or in the cases of these people, by the neck.
But seeing it in person was a completely different experience.
I watched as the men on horses holding rifles and handguns corralled the people as if they weren’t … people. Screaming curses at them, spit flying as they looked down at the dazed and shocked African people as if they were nothing. My heart and my body ached at the sight of it.
I knew where they were going. I knew what would become of this hundred, as it had so many before them and so many after. I’d seen plenty renditions of it, but it was nothing like seeing it with my own eyes. It was something that would stay with me forever.
I pushed and pushed against the gate, but it wouldn’t give.
“Wait!” I yelled after the sisters. “Come back. Don’t go down there.”
But they couldn’t hear me. I still had no words. And I wasn’t really there. This had already happened and I hadn’t been there.
They got farther away from me, but even as they got farther and farther, they grew closer and closer toward the people and what I now saw was a gray shoreline lined with tiny boats being filled with people to be carted off to the tall, dark, massive ships bobbing ominously in the whitecaps, their stained sails fluttering in the wind.
It was as if I were seeing Effie and Ama through a mirror, as if they were right there.
But they were not. They had gone well beyond their realm.
They were not as close as I thought, even though it felt like they were right there and I could touch them, feel them, as I did when they ran through me back in the clearing.
They inched along the bushes, trying not to be seen.
They hid behind big ones and I could see them arguing between themselves, so deep into what they were saying—I could imagine it, Ama begging Effie for them to turn back.
Effie shaking her head vehemently, refusing to come back without helping the captured people in some way.
Intervening as their father had told them to never do among humans.
They didn’t know they’d been heard. They didn’t see four of the invaders coming up behind them, their guns pointed. Didn’t see them at all. But I did.
“Behind you!” My warning was absorbed into the ether. I wasn’t really here. I was just a witness to something that already happened and couldn’t be altered.
Screw the cold. I placed both hands to the gates, ignoring the sting, and pushed. The gate didn’t give, not an inch. I pushed again with more force this time. Nothing. I backed up a couple steps, trying to see where the gates ended or if there were places where I could get through. Nothing.
But it was too late. The men were upon them. The twins turned, fear so plain in their eyes that it pierced me where I stood—where I had to watch, unable to help, unable to do anything at all.
“How’d we miss these two?” one of the men asked. He pointed at them. “And what are those markings on them?”
Ama shielded Effie and her little round belly.
Ever the protector, ever the big sister even if only by minutes.
Her arm was fully exposed, showing that instead of the gleaming, golden cuff, dark raised markings like a tattoo and a fraternity brand were embedded in her skin.
And when another of the assholes yanked them apart, Effie’s regal amulet was revealed, now embedded into her skin, the once brilliant blue gem having lost its luster in this setting.
The man gripped her face, though she fought hard to get from his grasp, and twisted her head left and right as he decided if she’d be too marked up to sell.
“Just markings of her people. That’s what they do, paint and cut each other. They think it makes them beautiful.”
“Nothing will ever make them that,” another sneered.
But the man on the horse studied them keenly. “These two are the most beautiful I’ve seen yet. Black or not, they are striking. Plus, have you looked upon a mirror yourself lately, Thorson? No woman would have you. Not even one of these savages.”
In a blur, Effie lashed her hand out as if she were throwing something at him, like a beam of godly light, a curse, something that would spew forth and strike him where he stood. Nothing happened.
She stared down at her hands, first the backs, then the palms, in horror and disbelief. She looked up at Ama, wide-eyed, who stared back. They could not fight. They’d lost not only their way back home, but whatever powers they possessed as well.
The men gathered the twins without any more fight, and neither of the goddesses reacted.
They only stared past the gates and through me at their home in the Skies, their eyes giving away their anguish and disbelief that they were truly lost. Then they were carried down to the shores where the last of the rowboats would push them off to the looming, dark ships waiting just beyond.
As they set sail, the twins watched their home—with its majestic gates, the bounty of multicolored flowers, the outline of the highest mountain draped in mists, with a ringlet of golden Adinkra signs circling its peak just as they had in my dream—begin to fade away, as they were warned it would.
Their world folded into the thickening mist, closing itself off to them forever, their keys no longer able to open it.
There was a sensation building in me, and I touched my lips. My fingers came away red with blood; the rich metallic tang filling my mouth tasted like life. My tongue ran across the ridge of my top teeth, stopping where my canines had descended.
I flipped around, pressing my back against the gates, nestling against fragrant foliage to see the last images of the Oosoro, wavering before me like rising heat.
The deep sadness was overwhelming, was nothing I’d ever felt in my life.
The grief cascaded over me because I knew what would come next for Ama and Effie, for all of those African souls on that ship with them, the ones who came before and after, and the people who’d be born enslaved on foreign soil for years to come.
There was nothing I could do to stop it.
There was nothing they could have ever done. Even when they were gods.
This was how the story of the adze had begun.