People in Bridgetown are disappearing, vanishing from their homes. Akeelah is the only one who knows the truth--that the creatures have come again to wreak havoc on the only home she has ever known. Overwhelmed by her responsibilities, she stumbles...
Grandpa pressed the brown of the soil through the pink of his fingertips and felt its heat escape into the wind. With all the change in his household, quiet was hard to come by these days. He was grateful for the gentle breeze of the morning. He blessed the soil washing beneath his feet. Soil was never wicked. If you took care of it, it would take care of you. Everything it swallowed would again find new use.
Today, he planted a fresh batch of maize seedlings in the ground. God loved maize, he thought. If he didn't, why would he wrap it with three, four, or even five layers of clothing?
Grandpa was a simple farmer in Breku before the Magic, before Aisha, and before the war. In this strange land, where everyone looked like his ancestors, but talked like his conquerors, his blood boiled, bellowed, cooled, and steamed. Today, he held maize seedlings in one hand, and rich brown soil in another. He had faith that if he planted his loss in the ground, beside the maize, maybe it would grow and find a new use as well. And so he dug a hole, dropped the seed inside the earth, and gently pushed the top soil over it.
A firm wind pushed against his arched back, his salty tears wet the soil. "That is enough gardening for one day," he laughed to himself. "I guess an old man can admit when he is lonely," he whispered to the wind. He set his tools aside and wobbled as he rose, a firm push bringing him to his feet. As he walked inside, he heard a shifting beneath the tomato hedge. A bell crashed in the distance.
"I cut those weeds just yesterday, how did they grow so fast?" The tomatoes were covered in pernicious vines, and the weeds around it looked like strands of hair on a baby's head. But the more he gazed at the shrubs, the sooner he noticed two blazing eyes staring back at him. They weren't just vines, he realized. It was a creature, covered in weeds. He could have mistaken the creature for a garden.
"Akwaba," grandpa says in a soft greeting.
The creature said nothing in return, just stared at him in curious silence. Like he was waiting for something.
"Are you looking for the Doorkeerper?" Grandpa asked. "Are you looking for Akeelah?"
The bush wiggled back, the tomatoes bright eyed and bulging.
"Are you hungry, would you like some food?"
The bush stepped forward, and Grandpa spotted a bell dangling across its vines. The bell struck again, and he heard an explosion of gunshot shatter across the yard. He dropped to the ground in an instant. Glancing around he saw that the world he had known was gone–as if he had been sucked back into the past. Doomed to relive his worst memory.
A machete was seven paces away on the far side of the nursery. He crawled behind the bushes in search of some kind of cover as he glanced behind his back for the shooter. Decades past his prime, his reflexes were like muscle memory. He could walk the compound with his eyes closed.
Another strike of the bell, and this time the assault came from inside. He was standing beside a well in Breku. He knew this because of the scent of roasted corn cooking and the sight of his mothers' kaftan hanging on a line and blowing in the breeze. He hadn't been home since the war. There was nothing to come back to. He grasped the pale of water in his hand and walked into the front door. He peeped into his father's room. He was greeted by a warm scent, and a half finished plate of fufu and banku on the floor with a freshly devoured plate of tilapia.
"Father, I have the water for your hands" he said as he held up the pale of water to an empty room. The breeze blew him through the house and swayed the straw on the thatched roof. It was lit by the sun, now on its exodus from Breku. Mosquitoes buzzed beneath his ear.
"Junior!" a soft voice called out to him from the outside of his home. He dropped the bucket on the floor, and let the water spill out into his father's leftovers.
"Aisha!"
"Junior, "it called back. He stood out beside the well looking for her.
My dream, where are you?
He follows her voice to the well in the far side of the compound. His eyes trace the bricks he laid when he was a boy. Her voice sinks deeper and deeper into the water. He runs towards it and places one hand on the cold damp rocks and the other deep into the water. He feels a tug hold onto him. In the well, a slender looking creature covered in vines, pulls again. The moment before he is swallowed into the water, he sees a garden full of weeds, red hot eyes, and hears the final ring of that bell.
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Artwork by Morby, Property of TRAD Magazine.
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