Diana Pho: Steampunk World

As the response and Yoka’s translations continued, the handler returned with a rooster. It was the right color. The buried man talked faster, seeming eager to say everything at once. As it was set down the rooster flapped its wings, disarranging the careful, even distribution of dried corn.

But not the symbols incised in the packed soil. Calming down, it pecked this area, that area, another, another, watched carefully by the Bah-Sangah priests. Two made notes on lengths of bark. Apparently finished with its meal, the cock left the corn to climb the little pile of stones left from the pit’s excavation.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, Wilson remembered. Exodus 22:18. But what of Endor? Hadn’t she, though of course cursed, revealed Jehovah’s will? What if his association with the Bah-Sangah religion was foreordained?

“What does the oracle teach us?”

The recording priests consulted with their apprentice, Yoka, who said, “The most likely outcome is for him to betray us to Leopold.”

Executing the prisoner would be a mercy, then. Would save innocent lives. Yet Wilson couldn’t bring himself to condone killing him in cold blood.

He thought a moment more. Doubtless Leopold had threatened the spy with a family member’s death in order to get him to act in the tyrant’s interests. To turn that monster’s tool against him—that was what would hurt him most; not to let him sacrifice his pawn.

“The final question.” Which according to the instructions he followed was never directed at the prisoner. Wilson lifted his eyes and held out his hands, palms up, to receive the righteous knowledge of heaven. Though he wasn’t sure it would come.

All other eyes, he noticed, were lowered.

The handler retrieved the rooster and tucked it under one arm. A knife glinted in the opposite hand. Yoka faced him, holding a large gourd.

“How can we further the highest good of all involved?”

The cock died swiftly, silently. Only the knife’s flash and the hiss of life pouring into the bowl told what had happened. A few kicks contained by the handler’s hold and the bird was meat.

A different gourd, covered, was carried forward by a different young apprentice. Wilson had seen its contents before: rounded stones, brass implements, figures of wood and glass and gems. Yoka spilled into it a measure of the hot liquid—the blood—within his own gourd. Then he approached Wilson.

He had twice already drunk such offerings. On the first occasion Wilson had—much to his shame—done so out of fear of death at his congregants’ hands. On the second he’d feared to offend them. A third instance would, he thought, impel him that much closer to his fate. If this trend continued he’d soon be a full-blown heathen—worse, an apostate.

Wanting to rescue these brands from the burning, Wilson had caught fire himself.

He took the gourd from Yoka. Guiltily, he sipped. Salt ran over his tongue, down his throat, like a thin gravy. As he passed the bowl to the eldest of the Bah-Sangah priests the remembered vertigo assailed him.

He meant to stay seated, but the world whirled and he was on his feet, dancing. Glimpses of his surroundings penetrated the glowing fog of his ecstasy: swirling stars—or were those the myriad little lights the lamps cast through their shades? Wise faces—his friends, his brothers—went and came, bobbed up before him and twisted away. Out of an opening leading deeper into the caves poured music, waves of horns and harps and bells and drums. Stamping down! Down! He gloried in the strength of metal, the knife and the hammer he’d been given spinning in his nimble grip. Round and round and round and round and then he reached the place just right.

The center. A vision. He could see….

See them sweeping over the forests like a scythe, blazing above the river surface, fire reflected in the waters’ steel, going there! There! In chains, iron’s perversion, children stooped to tend rubber plants, the vines-that-weep. Whipped and starved—they must not die. Attack! Attack!

Then he was back on the folding stool Yoka called his throne. No music. He couldn’t remember when it had stopped. Now he heard only the soft murmurs of the priests discussing what he had told them in Bah-Sangah. What he had told them using a language he didn’t in the least understand.

Sickness filled his stomach and threatened to overflow it. Yoka gave him a cup of water. Four women entered. They often arrived after such ceremonies, though how they knew the proper time he had no idea.

Two of the women squatted before him and patted his feet with a white powder like talcum. The first time this happened he had balked. Then he’d remembered how, initially, Peter had refused to let the Lord perform a like service. Jesus had rebuked Peter Simon, and the disciple had come to accept the Christ’s anointing.

It was obvious by now, though, that that was not what he, Wilson, had accepted.

He wished he could be alone and think about what he was doing. He wished he could lie down and sleep. But Yoka reminded him there was no time. The Mote, he said, was scheduled that very evening. It was the Socialist colony’s central government, accepted by all Everfair’s diverse settlers.

He let Yoka guide him to the Mote’s tall-ceilinged cave, let the apprentice “light” the already-burning wick with their shared lamp’s flame. As always, they were among the earliest arrivals. Only Alfred, Tink, and Winthrop preceded them, though Mrs. Albin’s stool awaited her. Beyond it stood another, higher and more elaborate.

Lately Wilson had been leaving the space on Mrs. Albin’s right for Old Kanna to take. And the space on her left—with the better stool—was filled these days by beautiful Queen Josina, who had replaced her cousin Alonzo as Yoka had replaced Loyiki. These substitutions were for the same reason: the work Alonzo and Loyiki did away from Everfair. The work of war, which he was to join in again on the morrow. Wilson had fought in the American Civil War, though far too young at the time. Age made him less certain of his skills, more sure of the need to use them.

Yoka sank onto the central mat, out of the way of the entrance, and Wilson knelt beside him. His attempt to pray silently was interrupted by plump Mrs. Albin’s bustling advent; her too-young husband accompanied her, and though Wilson tried to ignore the man’s solicitous stare he felt it even with his eyes reverently closed.

Queen Josina came in next, with Old Kanna and Nenzima in her wake. The new chair was, of course, hers. As usual the poet, Daisy Albin—George’s mother—was last.

Winthrop had lists of weapons they’d made, and in what quantities. He’d designed new knivers, the clockwork guns that shot knives based on this land’s “shongos.” They’d copied conventional guns and ammunition as well.

Queen Josina had one list—a short one—of African allies’ promises. Daisy was able to supplement that with news from Europe courtesy of Mademoiselle Toutournier. She also gave totals of funds available from white supporters to be spent on necessary supplies, “ not squandered on useless religious paraphernalia—”

“Bibles? Hymnals? Those are hardly useless !” Mrs. Albin’s indignance was plain in her raised voice, her narrowed eyes. Poor George Albin had no hope of reconciling his mother with his wife. Their quarreling drowned out his attempts.

Mrs. Albin turned to Wilson for his agreement, as he had expected she would. But despite her effectiveness in hushing up the scandal associated with his frequent episodes of—possession—by demons? gods? spirits of some sort—despite her help, he didn’t think he ought to side with her any longer. Eventually she’d be contaminated by his reputation.