Issue #35: BLACK ISEKAI

The first boy I ever doomed with love was Joshua. I was nearly twenty-five years old by then. Before this, I’d had my share of dalliances, midnight fumbles and swoony afternoons, but that was when I was too young to know real pain, too stupid to see the power of my birthright.

Joshua’s manner was mild, like marshmallow flower, like the sweetleaf my father and I use to make ulcer medication for inside of the body and outside of the body. Down in the valley where the city lived, I set my father’s teaching to one side and studied plastic and metal medicines in classrooms with warm and cool air that came in boxes. Everyone smelled like strong, wrong versions of the herbs my father raised me to know, to speak with, to make bargains with. I thought that the education I got in the box full of boxes down in the valley would allow me to bring in money for my family and my future. Not safe to be a girl alone in the mountain forests; I needed to make sure we could afford a full-time staff of people to keep my house, work my counter, protect me. I had to think of my future, as my father was getting old. So I sat in my plastic chair with the squeaky metal legs unbalanced, and wrote in chemical pen on chemical paper, trying not to breath too deeply. I didn’t notice at the time that I always sat next to Joshua, who moved little, said less, and smelled like unbloomed marshmallow flower.

“Shut that door firm, now. Cold air’s getting out.”

The creature was not Osa’s mother, though it had her face, her voice, and her particular way of standing at the stove, like a flamingo, with one leg canted behind the opposite knee. This was not Osa’s mother and despite appearances, this was not Osa’s apartment. The windows in the kitchen looked the same, at first glance. Instead of gazing out onto familiar sights — courtyards, storefronts, or neighboring apartment complexes — the windows of this kitchen oversaw a dreaded swatch of the Birthing Place; a bubbling, phantasmic-purple fertile-land where millions of years from now ocean and land would spring forth. The Birthing Place sat hot and low, crowning in the crust of the land called Lamprey, and belched out clouds sulfuric and unforgiving from its volcanoes and geysers. The creature that looked like Osa’s mother had sprung from the Birthing Place just as readily as the noxious clouds, the steam-vaults, the acid-jets, and the grand smog of the Weeping Sky that obscured the twinkling, nine-eyed celestials.

“Another lost one, huh?” the creature said. “You have ears on your head, don’t you? I said shut that door.”

The girl Osa kicked the door closed. “If we’re gonna do this,” she said, blinking away swift, bitter tears, “you’re not gonna look like my Momma.”

Tracie tasted her greens, grimaced, then picked up her phone and called her Mama. While it rang, she wiped the sweat from her brow, frowning at the way the coily hair at her scalp was beginning to frizz, whether from the heat in her tiny apartment kitchen, or from the frustration turning into an ache in her temple.

“Hey baby, I knew you’d call; been waiting by my phone all day. My horoscope said there was a conversation I couldn’t miss. And I don’t mess with Old Miss Horoscope. What’s happening on your end of the woods?”

An image of woods popped into her mind, absurd. She hadn’t lived near many trees since she was a kid, and even then it was limited to the neighborhood park and the lemon tree in the backyard. It made her feel like laughing, but she held it in. Mama could be a worrier.

“It’s wrong, everything is wrong, Mama — I just…” she swiped a hand over her face. “I’m not sure about anything. Ariel and John wanna cut me out of the business. She slipped up and said it right to my face; she mentioned her father’s lawyer.” Mr. Bowdich, a man with a mean disposition and an analytical mind, who would’ve licked dirt off Ariel’s father’s shoes, if it meant he’d keep the family as clients. She’d met him once, on the singular occasion he’d visited Lamp Mouse to wine and dine “associates.”

Mama was quiet for a long time, and Tracie thought she would mutter, “I told you so.” Her mama had stressed the point of never going into business or buying a house with friends you weren’t sure would help you out after a nor’easter. She thought the advice would’ve been kinder if John and Ariel were different people. Five years ago, she had this fervent belief how the three of them were the best of friends, eternally linked by the trials and tribulations of college.

The Realm of Seven Hands is defined by the beauty of the mountains, the valleys, and the One Sea. Once teeming with herds of impala and animals that you would not know or even imagine, the realm is surrounded by seven mountains called The Hands. Our ancestors named them so because the mountains are aligned around the valley like gigantic fingers. Beyond the Seven Hands, a rolling plain separates the empire from the One Sea, an ocean that is so large that only those with the strongest wings have ever flown far enough to see the other side. We say all of these things as if they still are, but we don’t know what is and what was where you are, not yet.

We accept and expect multiple temporalities and possibilities, as we do many things that you might consider strange. Like the births of the Red Wings, for instance. When they started being born into our world, the elders accepted this as a momentous time of transition in the kingdom. The first one was born near the farthest peak of the Seven Hands. This continued until there were fourteen of them, born in the appropriately measured time that assured that they could be paired as mates, according to our customs. They were all remarkable, with red feathers rimming their wings in intricate patterns amongst their other, gold tipped feathers. All except one of them had been born with a life-path of five, assuring prosperity for all of us.

Sola Adesin, however, came into the world with a life-path of nine. The elders knew that she was the one who would bend the world to her light. So, our elders watched her, and discussed her often, until they found a way to understand the gifts that Sola Taabe was to bring them.