Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky: Chapters 29–40

“This is our target. The Ridge. A heavily defended, fiercely guarded, fortified city high up inside Isihlangu.”

“See, look at these.” She tapped a paw on a section of the drawing where it looked like a series of trails went up the mountain. “They need some way of getting food from the farms at the bottom of the mountain to the city at the top. So they built these trams. They even carry passengers.”

Perfectly smooth, like a cylinder of black glass, it stretched way above us. As we circled it, rising in a spiral, the sheer height of the thing blew my mind.

But our fearless little marksman—markswoman (marks-doll-baby?)—was already taking aim and screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Sap attack! Sap, sap, sap, sap attack! Super sap attack!”

It was the trash car, after all. When we landed, we’d knocked over thin, papery containers filled with garbage. Old clothes were strewn across the floor, and bags of rotten food had splattered the walls.

Between the rock lasers, the sheer mountain face, and its completely obscured city on top, the Ridgefolk really did seem to discourage visitors.

I don’t know what I expected, but there really was a city inside a mountain. Obsidian towers and spires rose out of the walls at an angle.

They wore long blanketlike cloaks with mesmerizing stitched and beaded patterns. The material seemed to absorb light, and if I gazed at the beads too long, they started to glow and burn my eyes, like I was staring into the sun.

“Gum Baby ain’t caught,” she said, sniffing in contempt. “She’s escorting y’all for your own protection.”

“You will show the diviner some respect, thief.”
Diviner?

"A story?” Thandiwe stared at me, incredulous.

The chief gave a curt nod, and, with one swipe of her spear, Thandiwe cut my bonds.

When I fell through the hole, something came with me. Something old. Something evil. A haint that I freed. Now it’s looking for me, and it’s riling up an old enemy of Alke from the depths of the Burning Sea—the Maafa.

Fezile looked as if he thought that was a foolhardy plan.

An arm slashed down viciously, and Ayanna barreled into my shoulder, sending us tumbling. Deep claw marks gouged the obsidian stage where we’d just been standing.

The Amagqirha continued to speak in her humming voice, naming the elders and their lineages.

Chestnutt trembled as the man walked to center stage to grin cheekily at me.

I didn’t know anyone well enough to sit with them, and lunchtime was a loud mess of cliques and conflicts.

One day I devoured my lunch so I could spend the remaining eighteen minutes devouring the latest graphic novel about some caped superhero—can’t remember which one—when a reedy voice interrupted me in the middle of a full-battle spread.

He was rude enough to scoot his chair around so he could look over my shoulder. I was too flabbergasted to get angry.

He had an earnest, honest expression, like he really expected me to debate him on this, when all I really wanted to do was tell him to scram.

High John noticed my eyes and smiled, then tucked the pouch back inside his shirt. He stretched and cracked his neck. “We ain’t got time to chew the fat. Grab that Story Box for me, will you?”

“You know, Nana—my grandmother—used to tell me stories about you.”
High John preened like a peacock. “Oh yeah?”

Those are my friends. You think I want to see them dragged off? My home burned and desecrated? I don’t.

He sat atop a fallen tree that still smoldered, studying his fingernails.

Two rusty fetterlings, screeching and clanking, had cornered a group of older children, like foxes herding chickens. The biggest girl was valiantly trying to ward off the monsters with a straw broom while the rest of the kids cried or screamed.

The man of fire and smoke appeared again, and several people screamed. John Henry flinched and whirled around, hammer raised. Then he paused at the sight of the apparition floating in midair.

“But before I do, I’m gonna make you suffer. I’m gonna rip away everything you hold dear. All the memories of your little friend? Mine now. The only picture you can cling to is of you failing to be a hero. And all them friends you made, all them gods with all their powers, they ain’t gonna help you. I’m gonna pluck your recollections out, one by one, and leave you with nothing but dusssssst.”

That fancy box everybody’s all in a tiff about. You bring that to me, and I’ll give back your precious little book, and nobody’s gotta get hurt.

He met my eyes and I recoiled from the centuries-old fury roiling in his gaze.

“As I was saying,” Fezile said, “High John has relinquished his demand for Nyame’s Story Box.”

Ayanna scoffed, but I ignored it.

The tales’ meanings can be distorted if they are shared without guidance. Anansi realized this when he received his prize from Nyame, so he created the Anansesem, his champion orators, like you, to carry his fables far and wide.

She narrowed her eyes and my default reaction was to do as I was told.

She had strung it with a tiny silver ball, which nestled between the two adinkras.
“A bead?” What was it with Alkeans and their jewelry?
“A talisman, boy. For protection.”

The Amagqirha dropped down next to us, and whatever insult Ayanna was going to fling at me dissolved into a grudging tone. “Just...don’t scare us like that. One minute we were eating together, and the next you were gone and the mountain started shaking.”

This creature, man...this creature was a collection of rot on four legs. Yes, four legs. Plus two huge arms that scraped the stone floor as it moved into the hall. Its extremities were soggy wooden beams intertwined with metal shackles, the iron restraints lining its limbs like veins.

“Bound by rotten malevolence—”
“Eleven what?”
“MALEVOLENCE! Evil! Bound by rotten malevolence, and carriers of disease via their…. Oh no.”

The giant iron monster opened its mouth wide—wider than a mouth should ever, ever open—and it bellowed, allowing a maelstrom of brand flies dripping with green venom to erupt from its mouth.

Its massive arm stretched toward the prone figures, and I felt my heart drop.