Kiini Salaam - Ancient, Ancient

My guide gestures, pointing at something on the table. The Man lifts one hand and shoves the goggles off his eyes and leaves them to rest on his forehead. He says something to my guide. My guide nods. The Man says something else, and my guide says, “I promise.”

He picks up a cup from the table and drinks from it, then he disappears right before my eyes.

My heart convulses, but before my thoughts can whip into a frenzy, the Man yells, “Next!”

He doesn’t bother to look up when I stand before his table.

“Your things,” he says. I pull out the feather and place it on the table. Pinch by pinch, I pile the sand into a mound. Then I get the cup of perspiration out of my pocket and place it on the table. It has gone stiff in the middle where my guide pinched it. It tilts to the side, but the liquid has not leaked out.

The Man picks up my feather and inspects it. Its iridescence takes me back to the man with the glossy hair, his watchful eyes, his fierce spirit. The Man sets the feather back on the table and pokes his fingers into the sand, flattening my pile. Memories of the girl who watched her parents die run through me. By the time he picks up the cup, I am remembering the scar that wailed to keep me safe. The Man sniffs the cup, turning it around in his fingers, then places it back on the table. He clasps his hands in front of him.

“What is freedom?” he asks. He tilts his head back and looks up at me

I gasp.

There is no mistaking those features. The thickness of the eyebrows, the thinness of the nose, the full bottom lip, the scar on his left jawline.

“Grandfather?”

Not a flicker of recognition passes through the Man’s eyes. He doesn’t repeat his question, but the intensity of his stare lets me know that he is waiting for my response.

A thousand thoughts go spinning through my head. I don’t want to be afraid, but I am. How much of Grandfather is in this man’s body? I flash back to the rows of men shackled behind me in the courthouse. I remember the long snaking line of women plodding through the desert. I know what freedom is not.

The man who may be my grandfather bangs his hand on the table.

“Many are waiting. Do you have an answer?”

“I’m…” I wet my lips.

I think about my body, my real body, loose-limbed and free. I remember the Royale, how it always made me feel: flush-faced, high on adrenaline, disconnected from everything ordinary, locked in some ancient formula of ferocity and flight.

The man with a hand for a tongue didn’t prepare me for this.

“Freedom is the ability to be whatever you want—without control, violence, force, or limitations.”

Grandfather takes a closer look at me then. He squints as if sizing me up.

“Why do you deserve to be free?”

“Everyone deserves to be free,” I snap.

A slight smile creases Grandfather’s lips; then his seriousness swallows his pleasure, and he continues his inquisition.

“What will you do with your freedom?”

I know what Grandfather doesn’t want to hear. He doesn’t want to hear that I’ll pick up the razors and enter the Royale, he doesn’t want to hear that after decades of bondage, I will choose to squander my freedom by getting myself maimed in a fight.

I remember the freedom the Royale gave me, a freedom Grandfather will never understand: a freedom of feeling, a freedom of weightlessness, a freedom to be pure motion, to be more than I am. When I try to put my words together, I stumble, blinded by thoughts of you watching me dance, by my need to dazzle you again.

I look Grandfather in the eye, careful to strangle down all the hatred and anger that I have carried with me on my travels.

“I will obey my elders and love my friends,” I say. None of this is a lie.

Without another look at me, he grasps a glass beaker between his thumb and index finger and pushes it toward me.

Smoke wafts from the opening of the beaker.

“Drink,” he says.

A small dry chuckle falls from my mouth. This is the last of Grandfather’s potions that will ever pass my lips. As I raise the beaker to my mouth, he says, “May freedom be all that you wish it to be. May you be strong under the weight of its burden.”

I throw my head back and take a big gulp. The potion swells in my throat. I slam the beaker on the table and spit out the fluid that was in my mouth. As soon as I draw my hand away, Grandfather and the table are gone.

Traveling back home is like being smacked with a hundred small hands. There is nothing to see, but plenty of sound. After my skin has been slapped raw, I begin to tingle all over. An intense tickle starts at the crown of my head and splits my body, traveling right down to my pelvis. Heat spears up my throat and I jackknife forward, gagging.

When the vomit comes, I am back on the compo, my face a mess of mucus and tears. I force myself to my hands and knees and scramble off the compo. Then I look around me with wild, shifting uncertainty. Pain pulses through me like a mantra, but I cannot let it consume me.

All around me are the tools of Grandfather’s treachery. My skin bristles at remembering the scars, the mutilations, and the brutalities. I know he will dismiss the idea that I was ever in danger. He’ll crow over the power of his chemicals and insist that he was in complete control.

The urge to upend his worktable and shatter his beakers overtakes me, but I am too weak to stand. I hear Grandmother moving around in the kitchen overhead. I want to cry out, but I can’t squeeze sound out of my throat. I crawl over to the stairs. When I try to lift my hand to the doorknob, my limbs tremble violently. Hatred for Grandfather burns in my heart.

I ram my head against the door, blind to everything but the need to be seen, to be held. I bang the door with my head again and again, oblivious to the impact of the wood against my skull. Before blood breaks through my skin, exhaustion consumes me. In its wake, a blackout blankets my consciousness—and without knowing if any one has heard me, I collapse to the floor.

The ferret’s claws clicked echoes into the silence. I wanted to scream out. Instead I listened to the rasp of grandfather scratching his chin. Everyone’s gaze followed the ferret as it scurried around the compass, but I turned away. Without looking I knew the ferret would be running in dizzying circles. The dull thunk of ferret teeth sinking into wood rang out in the divining room. Grandfather’s robes rustled as he stood.

It was only compulsion—not faith, not hope—that pulled me toward the compass. I stood behind Grandfather as he leaned over the ferret’s inert body. He unfurled a long bony finger and stroked the ferret’s head. The ferret loosened its grip, and a servant removed the wood block from the ferret’s jaws. My breath caught in anticipation. I hated my body for that. I knew every movement of this divination was empty—useless—yet here were my cheeks, flushed, as the servant hung the block in the space for the speed directive.

“D,” the crowd yelled in a burst of noise. The servant turned back to the compass. They all watched the ferret begin circling the compass again, but I kept my eyes on the block. After years of use, the letter was almost obscured by teeth marks. I squinted, wanting to be certain the block did indeed have a “D” carved on its face. My scrutiny was aborted by the sound of the ferret sinking its teeth into another block. The servant lifted it and placed it in the space for the direction coordinates. By the time the crowd yelled out “U,” the ferret had already selected the last block: “B”—the distance directive.

“D—U—B,” my grandfather mumbled to himself as the ferret backed away from the compass.