Now.
The rain came down so hard that he couldn’t see the other side of the river, nor the houses that were beyond the bridge. The beam from the lighthouse made the rain project itself in a dump full of charm.
Wamai Ndumbo emerged from the river with the fishing net, laughing as he walked.
“I’m not going to drown today.” Wamai entered the lighthouse, passed his dark hand over the tattoos on his arm and took a deep breath. Heavy rain was becoming a constant in the Moya Buya Kamina community and, every month, it became more difficult to go further into the territory and find the other peoples of Alkebalan.
“Are the cliffs going to collapse?” Wamai turned his head when he heard a noise above the rain and a landslide happened on the opposite side of the river, right where the road that brought the caravans to the village and the natural labyrinth of earth protected his people from invaders.
In fact, the last invasion happened so long ago that no one remembered them anymore, and the caravans had disappeared into history, along with the quilombo ships that abandoned Alkebalan. But in any case, the watchtowers remained in the same place where they were erected by the ancestors before the Diaspora.
In general, the cliffs were easy to cross, but in some places, they were so labyrinthine that only the locals memorized their passages. Something curious about them was that whenever they collapsed in the storm, they changed shape and created new passages without anyone knowing how this happened or how they reached the same height.
The first floor of the tower had the reception room and the kitchen, where Wamai left the fish. On the second floor was his bedroom, with a bed and a desk, and on the third floor was the lighthouse with the system of reflecting mirrors that projected light across the river.
“They’re stubborn, really.” Wamai whistled in surprise beneath the storm, watching a small boat wade through the rough waters of the river to get to where he was. The lightning crossed the skies, showing the faces of the navigators, most of them were standing, unafraid of the rain and waves, with their arms towards the skies. It was impossible to hear their voices, but Wamai knew what they were doing.
They were going to vote.
*
Almost two years in the past, when Wamai was still not an adult.
Wamai Ndumbo’s skin was dark as a veteran soldier’s shield. But when the bamboo needle pierced her, she bled hot and thick as a baby’s skin. The process hurt less than he’d imagined it would, but he pretended to hold back tears so he wouldn’t show the elders that he was worthy of their mark. A feigned show of humility that he was tired of sustaining.
“The old man is coming, coming slowly, leaning on his staff, coming and helping us.” The women hummed around the tattoo artist and the boy, their voices low, their tone moderate, very different from what they adopted during tours.
“Atoto,” Amai, Wamai’s mother, spoke a tone above the group, putting the house to silence. Her voice brought Wamai out of his reverie. She carried a short reddish candle in her hands and the women around her held matching candles.
The tattoo started on Wamai’s left shoulder, spiralled up to hisforearm, ending at his wrist, just next to the back of his palm in a complicated circle of jagged lines. There were two lines, one representing the father’s family, the other the mother’s family. As Wamai grew up and his deeds became important to the people, he would earn more marks of honour.
Despite the chant in honour of the orisha healer, Wamai had little connection with the strength of this specific orisha. He never identified much with his mother’s line, nor with his father’s line, made up of hunter guides. His inner strength was fairer, centered, based on the balance of everything that existed.
“May the waves guide your spirit, child of the jungle and the sea,” Linolen, the eldest of the crones, intoned. The tattoos on the left side of her body were so many that they filled her arm, chest, belly and leg. Wamai always visualized a heron on her back.
The foreign name sounded funny to Wamai, Linolen had arrived on a boat in the village many years ago, when his parents were still children. Soon, she was adopted by everyone, as was the custom among the children of the river: there were no orphans in this civilization, since every child was the responsibility of every adult, regardless of their paternity. Mother and father, of course, had strict social duties in rituals and ceremonies, of responsibility and care – but if they weren’t present for some reason, any adult could take their place.
Amai whispered softly.
“May your name not be forgotten.”
Wamai fixed his eyes on his mother’s tattoo, an octopus between her breasts, whose tentacles spread across her body. He could never quite count, but he believed there were nine tentacles; two snaked to the back through the shoulders; two for the spiral arms; two circled the breasts and ended at the nipples and two went down the legs, passing through the thighs and ending in the shins. The last snaked into the belly.
“The time has come for the waters to heal you,” said the women. Wamai couldn’t hide the sarcastic smile at the corner of his mouth, luckily it went unnoticed by the adults.
Amai held her son’s arm and dripped the candle’s wax into his tattoos. According to the traditions, sacred energy the colour of straw would cover the marks and heal the needle holes, but the energy that emerged was a dark and strong blue. There was a murmur of surprise among the people, still, the ritual continued.
“May you never get lost in the woods, never get hurt for no reason, never be alone without your brothers,” Linolen finished the litany, disconcerted by the change. Out of respect for Amai, no one commented on what happened.
There should have been pride in the priestess’s voice, but there was a tone of disbelief that was hard to disguise. She stared at Wamai for a long time, before looking away with some discomfort.
“Who will bless this boy?” Amai asked the priestess.
“Only time will tell,” Linolen replied, still with her head turned away from the family and watching the lighthouse on the edge of the village.
╬
A Short While after the Ritual
There was a moment of silence, when the adults realized that time had passed and Wamai had not awakened any skills in the community. Whenever, whenever they got the tattoos, something awakened in them, no matter how small: some set fire to things with their eyes, others floated, some could read minds and even talk to animals.
Wamai did nothing.
“What could the orishas have in store for you?” Amai provoked, one day. She was with him looking to the great river that cut the community in two parts, where the small boats travelled in tranquillity.
“I don’t know either,” Wamai, dry as the earth, stared at an isolated raft. Above him a man and a woman were praying to heaven. Next to them, immersed in the river, two men were talking to the waters. “What are they doing?”
“Talking to the orishas,” Amai replied with the same serenity as always. “Soon, we will have to vote on who will be the patrons of the community, have you chosen yours yet?”
“I don’t like politics; I see no reason to be a part of it.”
“Wamai, politics is important and so is democracy, we need to be part of the process, to understand where we want to go as a society,” Amai turned a serious face to her son “When I was young, we elected the sun and rain to be our patrons for the next five years, this was very important for the crops of the next harvests and it was what saved us from hunger.”
“Why not leave them there, then?” Wamai kicked a pebble against the river.
“Because the needs of the past are not the same needs of the future, and change is what makes us grow. Democracies are born from the choice, freedom and voice of the people who make it up.” Amai’s class was quick, but enough for her son to withdraw into a quiet thoughtfulness.
Silence hung between them, until Amai broke it with a question.
“Have you spoken to your grandfather?”
“Aghatis?” The crazy old man holed up in that lighthouse so long ago that everyone had forgotten about him. Wamai laughed.
“You two have more in common than you might think.” As soon as Amai spoke, they heard a splash in the water, followed by a scream.
“Son, son!” from the shore, a woman screamed in desperation.
Wamai saw the boy’s body sinking and didn’t think twice, he ran along the river bank at full speed without taking his eyes off the child and jumped right next to where he was. The waters embraced Wamai like a child, his body followed the current naturally and Wamai took advantage of the momentum to sink deeper and deeper, passing under the child and catching him from behind so that her desperate slaps didn’t reach his face. Wamai climbed with him so fast that he was amazed at his own speed. He jumped high out of the water with the boy in his arms.
Wamai landed on the ground, the child was spitting water and whimpering. Before the desperate mother took her son in her arms, Amai stretched her hands towards him to wield healing energies, as soon as she did that, she realized that Wamai himself was already healing the child.
“How did you do it?” Amai walked away with her son, smiling at the woman with the child in her arms and the crowd that gathered around her.
“I have no idea,” Wamai said, and then stopped to check the people starting the arrangements for the voting.
“We both know that Wamai is not a child of the forest, like your husband. The voice of Aghatis, Amai’s father, came from behind them. “And he’s not a child of heaven, like you, little girl.”
Mother and child turned to the tall, thin man who was staring at them. Aghatis was dark, not only because of his natural skin colour, but because of the constant sun he took in, tending the river. Like few others, he had water-related skills such as swimming, breathing, and high empathy.
“Oh, it had to be your thing, didn’t it, Father?” Amai grumbled.
“What thing?” Aghatis flashed a gigantic smile.
“This.” Amai gestured to her father, then to her son. “What you do, which isn’t forest or sky… it’s sea and moon, it’s fishing and all that!”
“Every community needs a judge.” Aghatis pointed at the earth formation. “Or are you, like the others, still afraid of them?”
“It was the judges who decided to leave when the quilombo ships arrived,” Amai refused a hug from her father, exchanged glances with her son and walked away. “Don’t expect my approval on that.”
“It’s not you who should approve what I do, it’s the orishas!” Aghatis shouted to his daughter, but she was already far away and the noise of the river swallowed her voice.
“Why is she so angry?” Wamai felt like a dwarf next to his grandfather, the man was really big and his flowing blue clothes made his body look even bigger, almost a giant among the people.
“Bah, it’ll be over soon! Your mother wanted you to be a child of the skies, like her… or a child of the forest, a hunter like your father. It’s been that way for generations in families, except for me.” Aghatis embraced his grandson affectionately.
“And whose son are you, grandfather?”
“Ógún Lákkáaye.” Aghatis replied in the ancient language of the realm, lost when the ships departed, leaving his people in Alkebulan.
╬
Later that day.
Wamai and Aghatis walked along the riverbank, greeting the residents and soaking their feet in the water. Wamai noticed a large metal plate protruding from the earth, a remnant of the ships that crossed the planet’s skies years ago.
“Does your house have light?” Aghatis brought it up, knowing the answer.
“Every house has light, grandpa.” Wamai bit back a laugh, knowing they were both uncomfortable with the silence. He already wore the blue clothes of the judges, and had gained better understanding that his origin was from those who brought laws, order, justice and struggle.
“There is no light at the lighthouse.”
“Grandpa, it’s a lighthouse, of course it has light!” Wamai laughed. “I never asked you, but why do we have a lighthouse? The sea is past the cliffs and the river is not big enough for us to need one.”
Aghatis let the waters of the river cover his feet, then he bent forward and scooped up a little by cupping his hands. He then concentrated until the waters turned into a miniature of the community, with the river, the cliffs and the lighthouse.
“Long ago, when my grandfather was born, our community was a route for merchants, but as they couldn’t cross the cliffs without help, we ended up missing good trading opportunities.” In the hands of Aghatis appeared miniature wagons, trucks and cars pulled by nanorobots. “So, my grandfather decided to build the lighthouse so that the merchant ships could find us too.”
“Interesting,” Wamai was impressed both by the story and by his grandfather’s skill with the water.
“When the Empire disappeared, our ancestors decided to go to the stars and they summoned the judges of the region to decide whether we would go with them. The village was divided into two groups, those who stayed on the right side of the river stayed in Alkebalan, those who went to the left, went to the Star Quilombos.”
“I’ve never seen the beam of the lighthouse off, now that you mention it.” Wamai followed in his grandfather’s footsteps
“And you won’t even see it.” Aghatis took a few more steps, they could see the white tower of the lighthouse, with the beam high above, turning and turning. “We have a responsibility in the community, we must keep the lighthouse lit, whatever the cost, because it is a symbol of our ancestry and the only hope that others will find their way back.”
╬
One year after the meeting with Agathis.
The lighthouse was very different from what Wamai thought; the external structure was a long cylinder equipped with an optical device at the top, from which the light was projected. Its first floor was very pretty, with a sort of reception room filled with high-quality furniture, a table, a shelf with some books and technological odds and ends, as well as a small computer with a holographic projector. The spiral staircase climbed the walls to the second floor, where Aghatis’ room was, with a bed, chest, wardrobe, and a long table. Only from the inside was it possible to see that this floor was all made of glass and, no matter where you were, you could see the whole community, the cliffs, the river and the opposite bank.
“I thought the lighthouse was ugly on the inside too.” Wamai laughed as they climbed to the top floor.
“Our family has lived here for generations, only your father and mother left.” Homesick, Aghatis explained “See the marks on the floor? They are nembo, the sacred symbols of our family. If you pay attention, each family here in Moya Buya Kamina has some similar symbols with different meanings, like courage or wisdom.
Agathis continued explaining.
“Your uncle Sahel had built a harbour there, your aunt Binthu also had a house here, further into the forest.”
“What happened to make them walk away?” Wamai remembered having more contact with his cousins and aunts when he was a child, but as if by magic, they all moved.
“Constant fights, that family stuff.” Aghatis stopped at the door that gave access to the third floor, before opening it, he handed a copy of the key to Wamai. “Now those who live on the other side of the river are the opposition and are always against the ideas of those who live on this side. And they don’t speak anymore with each other.”
“Why are you giving me this key? Wamai, curious, clasped the object in his hands as if it was a gift from his entire family, capable of bringing them close to his heart.
“With your birth as the new judge, my mission here is over,” Aghatis opened the door to the top floor of the lighthouse.
“I will teach you everything I know about being a guide to those far away, then I will go on a pilgrimage around the world, there is still much to see in Alkebalan.”
‘But you can’t go!’ Wamai protested “What if I make a mistake?”
“If you make a mistake, you will learn.” Aghatis smiled, climbed up and disappeared.
╬
The light from the lighthouse flickered.
It was a quick, unsteady flutter, so brief that people didn’t notice.
But Wamai was watching.
The rain had been coming back hard in the last few days and, according to his parents, Wamai was the one who should decide when the elections would take place, after all, he was the new judge and had the sacred power of the orishas to call the election. More than that, it was a social power handed over as a gesture of trust by both sides of the river since time immemorial – but it was the first time that someone so young had taken the job.
“How shall we do?” Linolen insisted.
“Do you already have the candidates of the year?” Wamai, surrounded by elders, hunters, healers, children and warriors, remained impassive, observing the objects that each group brought to represent their desires and wishes. The entire community converged close to a large house by the river. From there they could all see the lighthouse and the cliffs.
The hunters, led by his father, brought a kind of headdress made of the most colourful feathers he had found and attached to a very beautiful leather strap with natural ornaments, such as pebbles, leaves and bones.
The children brought a table of sweets, all delighted with its purity and joy. The children’s presence was more a game than a serious vote: they still did not have the power to vote in the community, but they were part of the elections to learn to respect the democratic process and the symbols of the community.
The healers came with herbs, powders and a white cloak, symbolizing death. At the centre of their table they placed a clay amphora with water from the river, part of the energy of the orisha that governed her powers: Oshun.
The people across the river brought their offerings, but set them apart from their countrymen, so divided you could see they didn’t want to talk. Wamai saw it with great sadness, mainly because his uncles didn’t even look in the direction of his parents.
The pilgrims also came, putting chicken, cachaça and grains in clay bowls, right in the corner of the house where the elections took place. They said nothing, but they smiled a lot under their wide hats.
The female warriors placed two spears near the door, one wooden, one steel, both with golden tips representing the sun, plus the head of a buffalo painted red.
Finally, all faces turned towards Wamai, waiting for him to also present his offerings to the orishas. Poor Wamai was at a loss as to what to do, groping in his clothes for something he could improvise.
“This judge is very weak!” one of the pilgrims laughed, making the rest of the community laugh as well.
“One moment…” Wamai had an idea, left the house and was accompanied by the curious population, who followed him to the lighthouse. Then he reached into his pocket and pressed a button on the light control, which he always carried with him. A surprised cry erupted from the crowd when they saw the lights go out, right on the spot.
“What is this?” Zaki, Wamai’s father, protested.
“It’s the lighthouse,” Wamai, as his grandfather had taught him, was calm.
“The lighthouse light is out, what madness is this, Wamai?” This time it was Amai’s turn to lose her temper. “Was this your grandfather’s idea?”
“It was my idea.” Wamai interrupted her with a gesture, taking a few more steps to distance himself from the crowd and have room to speak, looking each of them straight in the eye, staring at their fear, their anger, and their distrust of each other’s plans.
“Explain, Wamai,” Even Linolen was nervous.
“I’ve been following the light of the lighthouse for years, it has always been here for us and for those who are lost beyond the cliffs. The vast majority of people don’t know what it’s like to exist in the village without the presence or light of the lighthouse.” Wamai explained, pacing back and forth, tapping his staff on the dirt floor with each sentence.
“But without the light of the lighthouse many can get lost,” Amai commented.
“It’s true, just as we’ve been lost since a part of the community moved across the river. No matter the light of the lighthouse, because our uncles, parents, brothers and sisters, no longer cross the waters to share with us.” Saddened, Wamai looked at the family. “We only meet every five years, bringing offerings to the orishas, but what offerings do we bring to ourselves? How much respect do we give to democracy and the ritual of voting? How can we expect higher forces to respect us if we don’t respect ourselves in flesh or spirit?”
“That judge is very smart.” said the same pilgrim who had doubted Wamai earlier.
The crowd looked at each other in embarrassment, some people apologized to each other, there were hugs and tears, Wamai’s uncles and parents approached and smiled, for the first time since he was a child.
“You, what’s your name?” Wamai pointed to a little girl on the front lines.
“Luena.” She introduced herself with bright eyes and beautiful braids on her head.
“Do you want to light the lighthouse?” Wamai passed the lighthouse remote control to the child, next to him he heard the same pilgrim speaking.
“Báàtínrín, okùnòtítọ́ kì í já; bíirọ́ tóìrókò, wíwóní ń wó.”
“Even if it is thin, the real thread never breaks; even if the lie is as big as an Iroko tree, it will surely fall.” Wamai turned to face the pilgrim, but he was gone. With a smile, he indicated to the girl which button to press and both sides of the community lit up with the beams of the lighthouse.
“May this be the first year of our meeting, may the beacon of democracy guide us to the paths of the future and may each of our voices be part of the transformation we wish to bring about in our community,” Wamai’s voice grew louder and louder until it rumbled like thunder.
“Then let the lighthouse be our offering this year and for the next five years!” Linolen squealed excitedly, with approval coming from all the gleeful laughter from the community.
And that’s how Wamai Ndumbo became the first judge of the Moya Buya Kamina community.
