FICTION

Joy Matiri

                     CREDITS: CRISTINA MARTINEZ

                     

    CHEPSUMA IN THE GREAT LIBRARY 

                        

Of the Great Library, only three things were known.

* Passage into the library was gained by an answer and a question. The answer allowed the seeker entry and the question allowed them to leave.

*The Chemosi who guarded it held the last of the power of the ancients, the moulders of the universe.

*To prove themselves worthy of the knowledge they sought, all who entered the Great Library had to face their worst fear and conquer it.

I knew one more thing about the Great Library but I told no one. The last thing I wanted was to add to the list of things the washer priests thought it was their duty to teach me before I sought entry. Already, I had to spend hours in deep meditation with only the question in mind. The rest of my time was spent training in combat and endurance or studying with the chief priest.

The priests chose me for the mission into the Great Library because my mother never stopped telling people that I was blessed by the old gods. She sold silks and other kinds of cloth at the market. Every day some poor soul would wander into her stall, fooled by the bright colours and soft fabrics, only to be forced to listen to the story of my birth. 

“I was visiting with my sister in the north when the pain came. We were collecting roots by the river and right there in the water did they come. Is that not a blessing of Isis? She was born just as the sun gave way to the moon. And a harvest moon it was! As though the Noble Hawk himself was welcoming her into the world. And oh how the jackals howled, all night and into the next day. My sister’s husband was terrified.” She would lower her voice here and lean in, “Whatever they say about Anpu, I could not ask for a fiercer protector for my Chepsuma.”

She told the story to the priests when they came looking for the girl with the auspicious birth. They promised a great fortune and the gratitude of Princess Saira Intunate Makazi, the twice-lived. 

Mama needed no rewards. This is what I was born for she told me. It was my honour and duty to serve Gedi and the Eastern Kingdoms in this way. My father took the gold that the priests brought and found a scribe to write the agreement for the full fortune after I completed the mission. He said nothing more of the arrangement. They gave me a day to prepare to leave for the temple.

In the darkest of night, I ran away. I left a note for my mother and hoped she would forgive me. She did not really believe those stories. It was just one of the endless little lies we told each other. They soothed her in the nights when every noise was a terror and in the mornings when the day and the neighbours had to be faced. 

I planned to go north to my aunt’s home. She is a practical, faithless woman who was always begging me to come live with her. She would hold off the priests and her husband was a Maa elder. He would hold off the princess. I walked and ran through the darkness, from the city and my shame. I did not see the lioness until she was upon me.

Glowing silver in the light of the half moon, her head came up to my chest and the low purr she produced seemed to rattle in my chest. Damn the gods. Damn the gods. Damn the gods.

“Sister, let me pass. I am not chosen.” I begged.

“A lie told once is nothing more. A lie told twice makes its mark. Told three times and three times more, it is a lie no longer.” She rumbled.

My mother was awake when I returned. She sat outside our home which was far more modest than it should have been. My letter was in her hand and her eyes were red from weeping. I sat at her feet and cried into her diira until the roosters began to crow and it was time to leave for the temple.

The temple was the oldest building in the city if you did not count the masjid which was built on the ruins of an older mosque that had burned down during the Old Queen’s rebellion. It was home to the washer priests, believers in the prophecy of the twice-lived queen and worshippers of the old gods of Misri. In the temple, priests learned to divine the will of the gods, practice the healing arts and play their part in the complicated politics of Gedi and the Eastern Kingdoms. Many washer priests took vows of poverty and travelled all through the continent telling of the prophecy and collecting news and knowledge for the temple. 

After entering through the arched gates, protected on either side by a great hawk, we were led away from the halls of worship. I bowed dutifully at each carving of the gods, even the great serpent. We were shown the elegant bath houses, gardens and then the modest living quarters where I had to part with my mother. I did not know what to say. Do not mourn me. Please don’t tell them I fell like one of the great heroes of old. Say I was only your daughter, your chosen and you loved me. Curse the gods for this burden they placed on us.

“You’re smarter than that old cat. The gods go with you lakwani. Come back to us eh?”

The priests were on a rigorous schedule. They hoped to bring me to Giza at the rising of the second full moon. That was exactly seventy-one days from the time of my arrival at the temple. The journey would take three days by airship thanks to the king’s generosity. My teaching began that night with the chief priest herself.

“We have divined that the tomb of Hatsheput is not where the acolytes of Alexandria claim. And buried with her are the Seba and the jar of life.” She said.

I tried to suppress a smirk. King Makazi was losing territory to the Maa resistance and sought to wield the power of the old gods. The chief priest smiled to expose her red-stained teeth. Father often called the priests opium eating fiends who without the authority of the faith would be seen for the wastrels that they were. Of course, he only said this at home and never on the holy days.

“Chepsuma, this is no fool’s mission or a desperate ploy to push back the resistance. In the coming days, you will learn of our divinations and understand why you must succeed. I saw you in the fire myself. This is your destiny and yours alone.”

“I meant no offence, Blessed One. I serve the Mother and I know my duty to the twice-lived queen.”

And so we began. I was allowed just four hours of sleep each day. At the coming of first light, I would meet the priests for lessons about the Great Library and the Chemosi. The guardian of the great library was a lioness with a pharaoh’s head. She was cunning, ruthless and the oldest of all the known powers of the world. She would not permit me entry easily and would happily let me turn to dust in her library. If I failed I would be forever trapped in my worst nightmare like thousands of seekers before me. 

After the afternoon meal, I would sit before the fire and pray for the wisdom to correctly answer the Chemosi’s riddle. Sometimes, one of the king’s guard would come to try and teach me how to fight. I learned that I was not a noble fighter, always aiming for the eyes, neck or balls. Eleven days passed in this way and then one morning I was called to the private sanctum, the holiest place in the temple, where the princess herself received her teachings.

A great fire roared in the middle of the chamber making it almost unbearably hot. Two people stood on either side of the chief priest. One, I knew to be a diviner of the highest order. The other caused a shiver to go down my spine. He was a confessor, clad in red robes despite the oppressive heat. I was only fifteen years old and by our laws too young to face a confessor.

“You must not lie, Chepsuma.” The chief priest said.

I knelt before the fire without being bid to do so. The confessor called on the great goddess Maat. When the petition was finished I felt a weight on my chest that pressed on my throat. I gagged but nothing came out.

“Chepsuma, daughter of the Mother, chosen of the ancient ones I bid you tell us… What do you fear most?”

Maat’s punishment was physical pain. Murderers were killed as they had killed. Liars had a piece of their tongue cut off or their vocal cords removed. Thieves lost one hand and disobedient children were caned with wet reeds. I could feel her burning me from my toes to my eyes but I let none of that be seen. Pain, I knew. And hiding it, even better.

“When I was four years old, a black mamba slithered onto the mat where I slept and slumbered under my arm. Upon finding us, my mother woke me very gently with a long stick and bid me rise slowly. But I was scared and I screamed, startling it. The serpent rose and began to hiss. All I could see was its black mouth but I could not run and I could not move. A charmer removed it but the fear has never left me. I know it is a sin to fear the children of the gods but I cannot abide snakes of any kind.” 

So they brought snakes and charmers to control them. The story with the mamba was true and my fear was real. First, there were small rat-catchers and garden snakes and then larger vipers completely tamed by their charmers. Then I lost a fight to a python and got a dislocated shoulder and a disgusting rash was my consolation prize. I was moved to quarters where I would sleep alone on a mat on the floor. One night, they let four mambas into the room. One was wrapped around my leg before I was fully awake. There was a jar of meerkat musk by my mat and that saved me.

Eventually, I was cured of my fear of snakes. Although Apep forgive me, I still hated them.

I started to believe that I could succeed. If I could conquer one great fear, then I could defeat another. What a fool I was.

Sixty-eight days after I was brought to the temple, we set off for Misri. I was allowed to say goodbye to my parents. Father stood back after a quick pat on the head for luck. My mother beamed with pride as she fastened a beaded belt on my waist.

“This was your gogo’s, she was a great warrior too. And Wamathai told me to give you this.”

She took a dagger still in its tarnished sheath from her pouch and gave it to me. I could see she wanted me to handle it so I unsheathed it as she went on.

“He uses it to cut through leather but it’s a genuine Jambiya made by a smith at the Crescent Port.”

Daggers were good luck and given as gifts to those one holds in high regard or as payment for a blood debt. As the dagger gleamed in my hand, I fought the sob trapped in my throat.

“I’ll return mama. I promise.”

A priest gave me a draught to help me rest for the journey ahead. I woke up to see the glittering Nile cutting through the desert below us. We stopped at an oasis and I slept long and deep under the watchful gaze of the moon. Tomorrow it would be a full moon and I would face the Chemosi.

As dusk approached, we started towards the Chemosi’s hold. I walked barefoot behind the rest of the caravan. The sand was soft and yielding beneath my feet. A gold trader from Juba was a clan-sister to my mother and she always stopped by the stall when she came to the capital. She told me stories of the desert. My favourite one was of the long journey from the forests of the far west into the desert and the valley we call home. With nothing but the Mother to protect us, we lit fires everywhere we went and asked the ancestors to show us a true home. We found more than that, we found our old gods and they gave us the twice-lived. In her the power of Misri was reborn and with victory after victory, Gedi and the Eastern Kingdoms continue to grow in wealth and influence. 

I loved that story but as I watched sand sift between my toes as I walked, it was a different story that came to me. It was the only story of the Chemosi that I’d heard before my time at the temple.

A young Mughal warrior sought a way to destroy a river spirit that was devastating his village. The spirit was an eater, like some of the minor gods of the forest. Its power came from consuming other beings. The Chemosi had no answer for the river spirit was an ancient and knowledge of that age was hidden from her. But the warrior’s greatest fear was the spirit and there, in the Great Library, warrior and demon fought a duel that shook the foundations of reality. The warrior defeated the spirit but at great cost. Cursed and wounded, he returned home in the hope that he could reveal the secret to defeating the river spirit before he died. He arrived to news of a miracle. The spirit was dead, extinguished by an unseen foe in a long battle that lasted days. Its thrashing and accursed magic had poisoned much of the delta but the village priests confirmed that the evil was gone.

Perhaps the story was common enough that the priests saw no need to tell it to me. Although they had told me hundreds of stories, some little more than a few scrawled characters in ledgers of no import. They might have thought the destruction of a few serpents would have no consequences in the real world. I suspected that they did not know the tale of the Mughal warrior and his battle with the river spirit. Northern traders were not given to sharing their knowledge easily.

“Chepsuma, the fire is ready.” A priest beckoned me. 

Unbelievably, I had missed our arrival at the Chemosi’s hold. Looking up, I took several steps back and just stopped myself from falling back. 

I do not know what I expected but it was not a statue the size of a palace. In the light of the full moon, it looked very much like an ancient, a thing out of time. All the priests seemed to cower and look away but we still managed a petition of strength and wisdom before I faced the door between its front paws. I knew that if I made it in they would add a petition for peaceful passage into the afterlife, but no one truly died in the library. 

On shaking legs, I ripped off my headscarf and loose shirt leaving only my chest bindings, belt, the dagger strapped to my thigh and short leather skirt common to my mother’s people. When I was in the shadow of her head, I prostrated before the door.

“Ah and so she arrives. Chepsuma of the wicked tongue.”

It was a terrible voice. It was a roar and a whisper, there was laughter and screaming. It was the voice of a being that watched the earth rise out of the sea. It spoke no language I knew but I understood it all the same. I waited for what seemed like days but it still felt like no time had passed. All my time in the library would feel that way, like forever and like the strike of a cobra.

“An easy one, as you’ve endured so much to come here…. what has four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening?”

It had to be a trick. I’d learned the myth on my very first day. The priests did not even think it was true. There was a rumble like laughter and an earthquake.

“What? I can’t revisit the classics? Does a daughter of the Mother need a hint?”

“Woman, who crawls as a baby, then walks on two legs, and uses a cane towards the end of her life.”

The door opened. I stood. 

“You may find what you seek inside but beware of what lurks in the dark, sister.” More rumbling.

The air inside was cold, dry and choking with dust. There was no substance to the floor. I stepped on ground that felt solid but had no texture. The moon shone here too but it was a weaker light, as though it had travelled further to reach this place. All around me were shelves of all shapes and make. Stone, mud, wood, reed, polished metal, from every age and all peoples that ever walked the earth. There were spirals for scrolls with wheels that could be turned to bring unreachable parchments closer. Shelves held up by columns sturdier than could be found in the palace held tomes of ledgers of incomprehensible size. There were thousands, no, millions of books. Everything there was to know, all that could ever be known was here. 

Somewhere above my head, a cat leapt from one shelf to another. The shock of seeing a living thing, or the spectre of a living thing, brought me back to my business there. I called the question to mind.

“Where lies the true resting place of Hatsheput, King’s Daughter, King’s Sister, God’s Wife, Pharaoh?”

A shard of moonlight pierced through the endless ceiling and pointed to a corridor on the left. I took that as a sign and walked in that direction knowing all too well that this was too easy. There were no directions or marked sections. Some of the books had titles on them but many did not. Still, I found myself distracted by a few on my long walk through the library. 

Here was a dark wood engraving of a fish with all its bones revealed, even those of the needle-thin gills. One of the lighter ledgers contained an accounting of every barrel of berry wine made long ago in the icy lands far, far north. I was careful not to get too absorbed in my discoveries and forget my question. All the same, I forgot something. 

My eyes were beginning to lose focus from reading by the weak light. I stopped to close my eyes and ask the question again. That’s when I heard my name called from the shadows of the corridor behind me. Without thinking, I took off at a run as the walls erupted around me. Parchment flew and shelves quaked. I was losing grasp of the question but I did not care. I risked a look behind me to see what was following and ran into a pillar that could not have been there before.

The fluttering and banging all stopped at once. The sudden silence made me dizzy and I closed my eyes and held on to my knees to steady myself. When I could feel the ground beneath me again, I opened my eyes slowly. There was one last whisper in my ear, like the muted squawling of a hawk. Stand up. And then came the footsteps.

Even at his most inebriated my father never stumbled. He could drink a full drum of honey wine during the harvest festival but his sure, steady gait would bring him home. Always home. I knew that sound better than anything in the world. The sweetness of dates, the sting of thread cutting the tips of my fingers, the smell of my mother’s exhausted cooking in the middle of the night because he could not abide a cold meal… none was as familiar. It would haunt me forever. The man I married would have to tread softer than a stalking leopard. We would have no doors in our house and no creaking floors. A stealthy carpenter, that was the man for me.

“You want to fight your father!! Useless, insolent witch. Should’ve drowned you in the river.”

His voice echoed all through the library and all my calm vanished. My clever, wicked plans were washed away by my tears. How foolish I was. Just like my mother. I ran again from the ever-approaching footsteps. 

“I was a merchant! They sang my name in Baghdad. Pirates paid tribute to MEEEEEE.”

I tripped and fell but I didn’t stop moving. No, it was not I who was moving. It was the floor. Towards him.

“These cups were a gift from the merchant king of Oman. I’ll show you, kneel.”

I came to my knees on the smooth stone floor of the library. It was better than the rough mud floor of our house. I was shaking worse now than I had been that night. Mama had fallen asleep on the chair, too tired from the day’s strains. I heard him coming and started the food for him and shook my mother awake. He was in a terrible, festive mood. Nights like this were the worst. He made her sing when he got like this and knocked her to the floor if she lost the tune.

I knocked over the cup in my rush to find his bowl.

“Lift your hands.”

In the library, I took the weight of the porcelain tea set and stopped breathing so I could quit shaking. Tears soaked the bindings on my chest and my heart was still slamming against my ribs. Every part of my body seemed to be on fire but I knew that the worst of the pain was yet to come.

“Drop them. I will break every one of your fingers.”

Somewhere behind me my mother pleads and prays. She begs and seduces. But she does it all in a desperate whisper, so the neighbours don’t hear. There are no neighbours in the library but still, she keeps her voice low. 

He stands back and watches me with the tray over my head. It rattles violently but nothing falls. Nothing fell then either, not for hours and hours. Morning came and went. I began to stink from the sweat but nothing fell. He drank coffee and chewed muguka to stay awake, to watch me.

“Where are your gods now Susu?” 

My hands stopped shaking. The last time he finally gave in to sleep and my mother lifted the tray from my hands because I could not move them. She carried me to a healer like I was a babe again and told him a wonderful lie about a task given to me by the gods. I could not speak for weeks after that. Sometime that night, I am certain that my soul sought refuge outside my body and I’ve felt incomplete since. Like some piece of it was still too wary to return. I would watch the sparrows fly above the market and smile at their freedom. The Ngoni, native people of Gedi, believed that our souls came to earth on the wings of birds. Perhaps that piece of mine returned to its first host.

In part, this was a relief. I always knew my father would kill me. This was as good a way to end as any. The priests would be disappointed but a more worthy candidate would be found. Perhaps one day the pain would end and I could read forever. Here my bones would always lie, scattered in a pile of priceless, broken porcelain. A gift from the merchant king of Oman. I had always wanted to know the great places and people of the world.

A flutter came from the shelves to the back of me and then I heard the soft padding of a cat’s paws. The civet strolled in all its regal splendour and stopped when it could face me full on. I could just turn my neck down an inch to regard it.

“There are no merchant kings of Oman. It is prohibited for royal titles to be used in reference to any but the Sultan and his kin.” She purred, “And to the question of the porcelain. It is painted glass made by a trinketer in Kilwa. Its trading price is worth less than the belt your mother made.”

There are no merchant kings of Oman. There are no merchant kings of Oman. There are no merchant kings of Oman. 

I sat back on my calves. A saucer slid to one edge of the tray

“Who speaks the name of Kibet Kirwa in Baghdad?”

“None speaks that name. He who holds that name has never been to Baghdad.”

“Did he fight in the Barbary Wars? Was he promised a princess in marriage as a reward for finding the lost tomb of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang? Does anyone hold him in high regard?”

“No. No. No, but he is greatly feared by some.”

The tray made no sound as it crashed to the floor and the shards flew everywhere but did not hit anything. I rose from the floor and brushed away my tears with my sleeves. The dagger was still in my boot and I drew it out. 

“Kneel.” I said.

I looked down on my father for the first time in my life. We had the same eyes, perfectly white with an obsidian black centre. He kept a beard ‘to remind me of my days as a sailor’. I never really looked at his face unless he was choking me.

“My gods are here, baba.”

The blade cut his throat just as smoothly as it cut leather. He made a choking sound and then fell over. I sheathed the still wet dagger and put it back in my boot.

The scroll bearing Mwindo’s epic shone on a shelf just ahead of me. I stored it carefully in the bamboo bottle the priests had given me and made my way out of the Great Library. At the door, I gave my thanks and walked out into the desert night. 

The Chemosi remained where I had left her but she seemed to be smiling now.

“Chepsuma, the one who stood up. Chosen of Horus, Mistress of Serpents, Bearer of the Crimson Dagger, the long-suffering sparrow, suffer no more. Your mother awaits you.”

                                           

Joy Matiri lives and works in Nairobi. She writes to uncover new and unexpected realities. A history buff and fantasy nerd, she explores Afrofuturistic themes through fiction.