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Dark Continent
A brief flickering lights up the sky,
and sunrise is bright and immediate, the way it only can be
here in Africa. I breathe deep the morning air of the Maasai
Mara and, shoving the blanket aside, I sit up, swinging my
legs out the helicopter’s open bay door.
I don’t think I slept long. It took
a million years for morning to come….
I look out at the globes of blue flowered
fairy brush, scattered all the way to the horizon, peppered
with the occasional twirling shape of a tall vine-tree, and
other hybrids. Yellow spores—the fairy dust—rise up from the
brush and float by on the morning breeze.
No one is looking; I pull a flower
off a nearby brush, remove the flower, and place the stem
in my mouth, sucking at the sweet juice. A wave of tickling
warmth shoots through me, but I don’t hear any voices. No
visions come.
There is a breakfast fire burning in a small
brick fireplace near the old bungalow where they had slept.
Albert is toasting bread and cooking soy sausages on a metal
sheet. Reaching into the cooler hovering by his legs, he pulls
out a beer, and notices me. He looks straight at me with that
familiar cold and dead look in his eyes. Suddenly, as if he
is aware I see him, he comes alive and waves at me as if we’re
great pals.
Hannah is squatting over some of her hybrids,
taking samples or whatever. Fairy dust hovers around her like
little insects. She swats at the little yellow flecks as if
they are flies buzzing her ears.
I walk up to the fire. Reaching the boundary
of the burned-out farming settlement, I can still smell the
smoke of the fire that had once swept through here. The protective
enclosure is gone; dust and dead leaves scurry across the
ground.
I don’t know if I want to be here or not….
Then I spot our old house. The roof is gone,
but the loft is still there. I can see the stairs leading
up to it, and the window I used to sleep under. Staring up
at it, I notice I can’t feel my heart beating anymore. It’s
stopped. I feel nothing at all.
“Morning, son. You sleep okay?”
Hannah looks over and smiles at me; sweat
already glistening on her brown skin. I feel my shoulders
shrug.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“Uh-huh.”
She doesn’t bring up last night, doesn’t
ask me why I left the bungalow to sit in the dark under the
big sky. She just nods, looks over at Albert, and says, “I
understand.”
Does she? I wonder what she means.
“Al, will you stop that!” She nods her head
toward me, words hidden in the movement. Albert chuckles under
his breath, cigarette hanging from his mouth. It smells a
lot like the marijuana they used to smoke.
“Don’t be such a prude, Hannah.”
Her brow wrinkles, she tries to whisper:
“You said you’d take it easy this time.”
I watch Albert suck on the joint with that
stupid grin on his face, the one he always wears when he is
knows he is being a prick.
We make eye contact, Albert and me. His eyes
push me down. My cheeks flush, and I suck even harder at the
flower stem I hid under my tongue. A flash of warmth echoes
through my muscles, and the dreaminess begins to seep through
me. Still nothing comes.
“They’ve evolved and spread quite
fast,” says Albert. “These hybrids of yours.”
“Incredible powers of observation,”
she mutters.
“How long has it been since we were kicked
out? Four years, now?”
“Kicked out?” she says. “We were asked
to leave. Safety reasons. And it’s been about five years.”
I grab a piece of buttered toast
from a plate. For five years Hannah and I have been living
in Harare, where she’s been attempting the same trials with
the new grains. Feeding Africa, that’s her dream.
“That long?” Albert seems amazed.
“Still a short period of time, environmentally speaking. And
if I remember correctly, after what happened we didn’t have
much of a choice. The Alliance government didn’t want to give
us protection. That sounds like being given the boot to me.
There was a civil war going on.”
“There’s always a civil war going
on,” says Hannah flatly. I watch her turn stiff with the words.
She puts the samples in a case.
“Your grains have adapted quickly,”
he says. “And it looks as if some have even made a few of
their own mutations.”
“My data shows that. No surprises
there—”
I walk to the edge of the long, stone patio.
I don’t know why, I just walk, as if I am lifted out of myself,
not feeling my feet move, yet knowing that they are moving.
I spot an old rusted jeep, sitting in the
morning light. Fairy brush has grown around it. A single vine-tree
has broken through the jeep’s bottom and stands up between
the front seats, impaling the thing, like a long crooked spear.
Chipped paint on the side door reads: MARA FEEDING PROGRAM.
I stand staring, flesh prickling despite
the heat.
Hannah’s voice plays in the background.
“We need to get moving. We only have
another six days on our permits.”
“So what’s on the agenda?”
“One thing’s for certain. I’m not
getting into that bird while you’re stoned. You’re not that
good of a pilot.”
“Don’t sweat it. I can fly,” he says. “But
if it’ll make you feel any better, Nick can do it. He’s had
plenty of lessons, and the little shit’s not all that bad.”
“No,” she says. “We’ll hike. The chopper
will be fine here.”
At first he says nothing. Then: “There are
a lot of sites to see in six days.”
“I’d like to see the auxiliary farm,
and the impact crater.”
Albert points to a set of small rounded
hills. “Then we go that way. Eat quickly and let’s pack our
gear. It’s a long walk. Hey, Nick? Hey you!”
I look at them.
“Yeah you, little tough guy!”
“No need to get nasty, Al.” she says.
“Was I talking to you?”
Hannah looks at me, then down at her feet.
“Let’s go!” he says to me. “Mommy
fancies a walk.”
* * *
Years ago, back on the farm, Hannah had asked
me what I thought these alien plants should be named. I said
fairy brush, because of the way their glowing yellow spores
flitted on the air like those little winged people. I didn’t
know how close to the truth that would be.
One evening I had gone outside the Mara farm’s
enclosure to collect the blue flowers that grew on the brush
for her birthday. When I pulled a flower stem off, a milky
fluid oozed out. I touched a finger to it and tasted it. It
was sweet and I liked the taste. I placed a stem in my mouth
and sucked on it. The juice tingled my tongue, and warmed
my flesh….
And that’s when they came to me, under a
baobab tree, the fairies, hovering in the golden yellow fairy
dust. I could not see them in their tiny ships; they were
so small. But I knew they were in there; I could feel their
eyes on me, and their voices echoed in my head.
They talked to me of their great journey
across the stars, how they had been watching us for years.
I was among the Chosen, they had said, picked to join them.
They needed us as they spread through the universe to be living
vessels for them, making reborn all who were chosen to be
a part of them. And one day we would all travel to see the
stars, and see the home planet of their great republic.
I was very excited. I so wanted to see the
stars, to fly in space, to fly so far away, far away from
here.
What should I do?
When the time comes all the Chosen will be
reborn, and will know what to do, they had said.
I was allowed to make one request, and I
asked that Hannah be with me.
Before heading off into the night, they ask
me to promise not to tell anyone they were here, or what they
wanted to do. Some might not understand, they had said. But
they knew I would. That’s why they chose me.
I promised never to tell.
* * *
It’s evening; we have set up our tents on
the cusp of the strangely twisted fields, far from the ruins
of the compound just ahead. I can just make out the broken
buildings against the sky; they remind me of the ribs of a
decaying animal, lying on its back.
Hannah and Albert sit near the fire, munching
on Spam sandwiches. I sit off by myself under a vine-tree,
watching the sun melt into the hills, shades of blood orange
and then deep red, oozing across the horizon until only a
dark purple remains.
Behind me I can hear them, talking their
talk.
“It’s odd, don’t you think?” she asks.
“This whole place is odd. You just figuring
that out?”
She mumbles something to herself.
“The fairy brush is a dominant organism,
Hannah. Right?”
“But no cross-mutations? There should be
some mutations taking place with my engineered grains. My
grains have not only adapted in a free environment, but some
have already merged with other species.”
“Your grains are aggressive, and seek out
mergers with other species on purpose. They are designed to
function in that way. You said so yourself. The vine-trees
are a good example of excessive mutation.”
“But the grains have aggressively merged
with every other natural species in the Mara except
for the fairy brush. That’s what’s so odd. There is no indication
of any interaction between my grains and the brush at all.
In fact, the brush itself is not even displacing the surrounding
fauna. It doesn’t need much water, and it allows the surrounding
vegetation to co-exist. That’s certainly strange for a dominant
organism—”
I peer into the remaining light,
fairy brush scratching at my exposed legs. I know they can’t
see me, so I pull a blue flower off, disturbing the spores
that jump into the air, and suck on the stem. I let the taste
swish in my mouth, and tingle on my tongue….
The fairy brush came down to earth long ago,
before we came from Perth to take over the U.N. farming project.
Sitting around my first African campfire, I remember a farmhand
telling of pale flashes across a purple sky, of a brightness
that roared and made the sky bleed red streaks that fell down
beyond the horizon. Soon after the fairy brush began to sprout,
and moved as far south as the Serengeti.
Maasai healers believe the strong smelling
brush to be sacred, and because the traditional healers are
respected the local government has been protecting the brush
for years….
They must have gone inside Hannah’s tent;
I can’t hear their voices. I know he will sleep next to her.
I’m afraid to think about it, but it keeps eating at me: him
sleeping next to her.
I grind my teeth, breathing heavily through
my nose as I watch the moon climb the sky, large and silver
and cold.
Suddenly my body jerks. I must have fallen
asleep. Then I hear something. I sit very still, listening.
There is a trickling sound off to my right. Out of the corner
of my eye I see Albert, standing naked a few feet away. He
is peeing, his usual pre-dawn ritual.
I don’t look over. I can’t. But I swear I
can feel him look over at me in the moonlight. My body tightens;
my arms draw inward, squeezing my chest. His stare is long
and hard, and I feel the weight of it. I notice I’m holding
my breath. There is nothing I can do to exhale. My lungs begin
to burn.
He stands there a bit longer; then I imagine
that grin crossing his face. I think he is going to come over.
I think I can feel the heat of his body getting closer, closer,
but when I am finally able to snap my head around he is gone.
I am able to breath; I suck at the cool night
air, my heart thundering in my ears….
* * *
Morning arrives as a band of light
flickering in the east, like a long fluorescent. I hear a
rustling coming from the tent. Hannah comes out. She looks
surprised to see me. Screwing up her eyebrows, she walks over.
I smell something on her, something sour in her clothes. Sweat,
mixed with a bit of that funny smoke Albert likes.
I thought she wasn’t going to do
that anymore?
“Up early?”
“Guess so.”
She waits. “Were you out here all night?”
I shrug, watching a group of locals walking
past by a line of trees. They look at us with empty eyes,
and keep their distance. They always keep their distance,
as if we have some sort of plague or something.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What?”
She leans closer. “I know it’s been rough
for you. It’s been rough for me, too. He’s not the greatest
guy in the world. I don’t know, maybe I thought this time….
But don’t punish me. I’m not the damned villain here, Nick.”
I look at her. She can’t look me in the eye.
“I know,” she mumbles, and walks off to get
her gear.
I am angry now. I feel like I’m angry with
her; I don’t want to be, but that’s the way I feel. I am angry
with her.
She doesn’t know, doesn’t know how I’ve been
protecting her….
I spot a lone Impala off in the brush, jumping
around in circles, trying to brush off the dust as it swirls
around the beast, getting into its mouth and nose. It struggles
for some time, shaking its head violently. Then it suddenly
stops, as if nothing had been wrong. The dust moves off, as
if carried by a wind I cannot feel.
The animal looks over at me, snorts, and
walks away….
Hannah returns a few minutes later with Albert,
and asks if we will take down the two tents and get a fire
going for breakfast while she performs a quick survey. I help
him with the big domed tents without saying a word. Occasionally
he glances hard at me. I can feel it without looking at him.
I see him sweating in the morning sun. “The
Mara River is not far,” he says. “Twenty minute walk west
of here. What do you say we get ourselves a nice morning bath?
The fire can wait.”
I remember the river. Hannah used to take
me there on hotter days. One time I had saved her favorite
scarf from floating away, that leopard spotted one. I tucked
the scarf in my shirt and struggled back against the currents.
Standing on the shore Hannah was afraid of me being in the
deeper part of the water because it was moving so fast, and
so Albert came over to get me. He had grabbed me around the
stomach, underwater, and pulled me close, held me tight against
him. I wanted to break free, but my squirming only made him
hold me closer.
“What do you say?” His voice snaps me into
the here and now. “Come on, mamma’s boy. We’ve got time before
breakfast.”
Without saying a word, I turn and walk away.
“Nick!” His voice is hard. “There could be
big cats out there.”
I don’t care.
“Hey, Nick!”
I keep walking.
* * *
The midday sun is hot as we walk through
the main courtyard of the auxiliary farm. Weeds have grown
up between the stones of the pavement. The small houses stand
in two rows across from each other, naked, without roofs or
doors or windows. The walls are charcoal black from the war.
“Look at this,” says Albert.
I let Hannah guide me over to where Albert
is kneeling by something. It’s a dead animal.
“Hyena,” he says to her. “Hasn’t been dead
long.”
“Uh huh,” she replies.
“Strange to see a meat eater, since there
haven’t been any scavengers or predators in this area for
years. It’s taken a long time just for the grazing animals
to come back.”
“We’d better be more careful, then.”
“No need to be scared, sunshine.” He smirks
and pats the pistol on his hip.
She doesn’t look at the gun. “Big cat?”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “These teeth
marks are too small. A cat would have ripped it to shreds.
Call me crazy, but this looks an awful lot like another hyena.
Do they sometimes kill their own?”
Hannah tilts her head. “I’m a genetic botanist,
Al.”
I feel my face twisting as I look down at
it. Its throat has been chewed; the blood on the stones still
shines in the light. I let her hand go and move my face closer
to it.
“Wait a minute,” he says. “Why is the carcass
still here? I mean, an animal kills it, and then doesn’t eat
it. It just leaves the body here. Deliberately.”
“I suppose you have some engaging theory
to offer, professor?” Suddenly it is quiet between them. I
hold my breath, waiting for the repercussions, but they don’t
come this time. She continues: “Maybe it had a virus. Maybe
it was fighting over territory. Who knows? Animals know when
something isn’t right, when something doesn’t belong.”
His mouth twists. “What do you think, Nick?”
I cringe when he speaks to me. I shrug my
shoulders.
“Well put,” he says. “Like mother, like son.”
I feel his eyes.
“So are you scared, too?” he asks me.
“Just keep that pistol handy,” Hannah says.
They start walking.
I stand there looking at the carcass. I feel
weird and weak, and my face is suddenly flushed, like I have
a fever.
I hear Hannah call me. “Come on. No lagging
behind. Stay close.”
I am soaked with sweat. My shirt sticks to
my skin.
“Do you hear me?”
Suddenly I am walking, fast. I can’t stop
my legs.
I walk straight past them.
* * *
I remember one day I had come bursting into
Hannah’s study, drenched in fear, flower stem hanging in my
mouth, shouting, “We have to leave! Now!”
Hannah’s eyes widened. She pulled the stem
from between my teeth and threw it down. “Don’t put that in
your mouth!” she had said. “Ever! It’s poisonous, do you hear?
It’ll make you very sick.”
“Please!” I had cried. “We have to go!” And
I told her about the fairies, and what they had told me, of
the armies of angry people swarming across the land.
She looked scared, and took me to the camp’s
doctor.
“Is he okay?” she had asked.
The doctor just looked me over a moment and
said I was fine. Mild hallucinations were to be expected.
Nothing serious. He had a nurse give me some kind of shot
and Hannah took me home.
I slept for a long time. When I woke it was
early morning. Hannah was about to go inspect one of the fields
with some farmhands when a mob broke through the gate and
overpowered the guards. They had machetes….
But I protected her, as I always try to do,
tucked away into a corner of our home as they tore the farm
apart. I clutched at her, arms wrapped tightly around her
chest, refusing to let go, until the thumping U.N. helicopters
came and chased them away.
* * *
It’s evening, and I am the first to come
to the site of the impact crater. I stand on a large boulder
near the rim of the crater in the day’s fading light, and
look inside. It’s long and oval, stretching almost to the
horizon, because Hannah had said the rock came in low and
at a steep angle, and slid into the ground. I can just make
out the bottom of the crater; murky, a fine mist hovering
near the rocky bottom, and tangled with the twisted branches
of vine-trees.
I squint my eyes to see; dark shadows are
spreading out from every crevice like long dark fingers, choking
the day away. Fairy shrubs grow up the steep, steep walls.
It’s the most I’ve seen growing in one area. All close together,
tight, like a vast carpet. I can hear dirt and rocks falling
away every so often. Hannah told me it’s like that here. The
concentration of thick brush roots is tearing away the dirt
and rocks. The rim gets wider and wider, but the crater is
also filling itself up. I look over the edge. It’s still a
long way down to the bottom.
And there’s lots of fairy dust, everywhere,
floating up from the carpet of brush in a continuous swirling
dance. It’s like those sparkling ashes that rise up out of
a roaring beach fire.
A clumsy shuffling in the brush near me suddenly
breaks my thoughts. A small gazelle bolts out and away from
the crater’s edge just as a handful of loose dirt and stone
gives way. I watch the stones tumble down the crater’s side
into the dark hole. It takes a while for them to reach the
bottom, and I can barely hear them as they break on the huge
boulders below.
She so scared. I’m not, not even my heart’s
beating. I feel my mouth twist as I climb down and begin collecting
wood for a fire. Nobody asks me. I just do it.
When the fire has settled a bit, Albert turns
off the anti-grav cooler and sets it down beside him. He pulls
out some sandwiches, and a beer for himself, and they begin
eating in silence. I sit away from them against a rock. Hannah
looks at me across the flames.
“You doing better, Nick?” she finally asks.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” She stops in mid-chew,
and puts her sandwich down on a plate.
Albert grins that stupid grin again.
“Don’t worry about it. He didn’t go far the other day.”
How does he know? Did he follow me?
She swallows slowly and breathes deeply.
“Look I know it’s a little difficult for you right now,” she
says. I know she’s choosing her words carefully. “But you
have to be careful out here. Nick?”
The night air is suddenly chilly, and I turn
on my thermal vest to warm up.
“He’s growing some balls,” says Albert.
“You know? It’s about time, too. Come on, let’s celebrate
the end of our tour.” He tips the beer bottle back into his
mouth and reaches for another.
She stares into the fire.
“It’s about time we got out of here,”
he says, looking hard at me. “Lot of bad memories, anyway.
Right, Nick?”
I can’t think of anything to say.
Hannah gets up and goes into her tent. Albert
looks at me for a moment; then follows her inside. I hear
them mumbling back and forth, in low, hot whispers.
This goes on for some time. I cover my ears
with my hands.
Why did she have to bring him back into our
lives again? We’d escaped Kenya, left everything behind and
started new in Harare. We don’t need someone like him. He
doesn’t belong. He’s a stupid Yank! I hate him!
Oh, I’m ready, I say to the fairy dust. Please
forgive me! I didn’t mean to tell about you. Come back to
me. Make me reborn, and take me away from here! I am ready!
I sit for what must be a thousand years,
listening to the wind and the other night sounds, muffled
under my fingers, and watching the moon climb the big sky.
Then I hear a noise and freeze. I sit still
for a long time. As quietly as I can I get up, and look toward
the tents. The fire has burned to embers, and I can’t see
a thing; the moonlight doesn’t help.
I don’t want to look, but I know I
have too. I just have too. I stand in the dim moonlight, listening.
There! I hear it again, a soft grunting sound. I follow my
ears to the open flap of Hannah’s tent, and peer inside. I
smell something on the air, something thick and sweet.
And I see Hannah there in the dark,
sitting on her legs, rocking back and forth. Albert is standing
over her, a clump of her hair in his fist, and he is pushing
himself into her face….
I feel hot all over, and my blood boils in
my head and ears. I can’t breathe well; my lungs do their
best to suck in the air. My chest is heaving and pulling under
my shirt.
Backing away, my feet carry me off into the
dark.
Suddenly I am standing in a thicket of fairy
brush, near the rim of the crater. I can hear the sound of
pebbles breaking loose, clicking as they roll over each other.
The fairies rise and hover before me, just
floating and bobbing like a swarm of fireflies, as if they
had been waiting for me, their tiny vessels glowing luminous
yellow in the ghostly light of the full moon.
Have they finally come for me? Will they
take me back? There is no sweet juice in my veins, yet I swear
I can feel their presence as they begin to circle around me,
sticking to my flesh, entering my mouth, my nose….
And there is a cool calm that I have never
felt before, living in my skin.
* * *
The stairs that had climbed up to
the loft in our house back on the Mara farm were creaky, unpolished
wooden stairs that went up to where I slept. I could tell
by the sound when Hannah was coming up to make sure I was
asleep. You see, some nights I’d sit up by the loft’s big
window and watch the twinkling stars in the deep African sky,
and think about the fairies, and what they had told me.
One night the stairs moaned, but the sound
was different. Albert came in from a party across the way,
drunk out of his mind. He stood there in the doorway, looking
in at me with that strange look in his eyes.
I was alone in the house.
He told me not to say anything, ever. Or
he would hurt her. Understand? He kept talking, standing over
me as I did it, saying it was no damned bitches business what
secrets men keep. They have their secrets; we can have ours,
right? Damned lousy bitches.
He went on and on. The way he talked scared
me. I didn’t want him to hurt her. I had to protect her.
Talking, the whole time as he stood over
me.
* * *
For a long time Hannah wanders aimlessly
around the camp, laying her hands across the tops of the brushes,
loosening the dust which floats up and out of her way. Her
eyes seem as if they’re looking into another realm. She says
nothing, but mutters once in a while to herself, glancing
worriedly at me in the morning sun.
She had sat most of the day away by
the crater, not knowing what to do, occasionally glancing
down at that thing so far down below, impaled on a vine-tree
branch.
It’s evening now. I make sure the
fire is out, and pack the rest of our gear away. I tell her
we need to go. She looks off toward the crater. She wants
someone to come back and pick up the dead man’s body. Leave
it, I think to myself. You should know when something doesn’t
belong. But I say, “Sure,” just to make her happy for now.
The wind murmurs. I suck on the stem under
my tongue, and listen to the air. Strangely I still can’t
hear them, the fairies, but I know they are here, in the dust,
all around. I can feel them, watching….
We set out through the brush; Hannah
is silent by my side, not looking at me. But that’s okay.
I know I’ve saved her, saved her for the better world that
is coming. They promised, they did. The fairies. A better
world, once the refuse of the old is gone. Now all I have
to do is get her out of here.
If we travel most of the night, I
know we can reach the helicopter by morning.
Carl Rafala was born in New England and
has traveled and lived in various parts of the earth for periods
of time that ranged from 3 weeks to 5 years. He holds a Masters
Degree in English and a Masters Degree in Higher Education.
His fiction has appeared in various zines, and he has a collection
called, "Wildflower" available at Amazon and local bookstores.
Email Carl Rafala
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