SHADOW OF DEATH

Chapter 19: Tours

Shuri stood before a series of screens in her lab and carefully threaded her eyes through a new stream of data from their latest test with the new telescope adjustments. The Asgardian prince, while as prickly as the hedgehog living in the palace gardens, had given her a wealth of information during his last few visits. This opened doors to completely new research for Jane and her, much to their excitement. The rows of orange numbers continued to flow past her. Shuri bit her lip and scrawled a few notes on her arm. This continued until her arm filled up and she needed more space, so she swung around to find a digital tablet to write on instead. As she looked for her tablet, she noticed a little bundle of orange push its way through a door. Goose traipsed into the lab like it were the little furry emperor of the space. It paused to wash its haunches and then gracefully leapt from a bookshelf onto the white lab table. Shuri, distracted from her search, came to scratch the soft cheek of the cat. It rewarded her with a loud purr and rubbed itself against her hand in appreciation.

"Here, paka," she said and pulled out a dried fish she had brought from the kitchen. She made sure to grab a few during the midday meal so that Goose would continue to visit her in the lab each afternoon. The cat quickly fell into a very predictable routine and eagerly sought her out each day. Goose happily ate the little fish and looked at her so imploringly she wished she had snuck a few more into her bag.

"Hakuna, paka. There is no more."

The cat coughed slightly before stretching out its limbs with a lazy yawn. Then Goose coughed again, harder this time, followed by a gagging and hacking sound.

"Eeee, eee, eee! Hapana, paka! Not a hairball…on my lab table. Paka enda! Goose, go away!" She cried and tried to push the cat off the table. She wasn't fast enough. The cat's mouth opened and vomited out an elongated silvery metal object which, according to all the laws of physics, should not have been able to come out of that cat.

She wrinkled her face in disgust as she caught sight of the shapely saliva and partially digested hair streaming off it and all over her table. Goose jumped off, rubbed against her ankle, and disappeared down the hall without another look back.

"Nini? What is this?" she asked. She grabbed a rag from another table and came to investigate. She mopped up some of the mess along the dark ridges of the handle of what appeared to be an intricately decorated metal hammer. She ran her finger along the design carved into each side of its head and stared.

"How did you fit inside a cat?" she asked herself, in a loud whisper. "And where did you come from?"

She knew how she could find a few answers to her questions. Her scanner, the good one, was still in her room where she left off running tests on the Asgardian box and cloth. Shuri picked the hammer up in one hand and took it to the sink to wash if off. Then she left it on the countertop to dry as she made a quick trip to her room.

When Loki next entered the lab, he found Shuri and Jane busily employed in Shuri's favored wing. The pair spent so many hours locked up there that he wondered if they even bothered to sleep. He was about to inquire into their latest developments when he stopped and stood in shock at just what the scientists were investigating. Shuri flitted about Jane with a black machine in her hands. It was no bigger than her fist and it blinked with a myriad of colored lights and buttons. She ran the device up and down over a silver, metallic object that Jane held carefully in her hand and rotated in a circle whenever Shuri came to the edge of it. So engrossed in their work, both remained oblivious to his entrance.

"What are you doing?" Loki asked, more harshly than he meant to. Both women jumped and turned to face him with slightly guilty expressions on their faces. Normally, he would be amused at their surprise, but he was too unsettled.

"Running tests," Shuri said, her expression morphing into feigned innocence.

"Of course. The pair of you do little other than run tests. What, pray tell, are you running tests on?"

Jane's face only grew redder, like a child caught stealing tarts.

"This hammer," Shuri said, while her keen eyes fixed on him with too much calculation. "Goose spit it out on my lab table earlier today."

"Is it Thor's?" Jane asked. "I thought it looked a lot like his…but I only saw it that once and it wasn't for very long."

Loki's eyes shifted back to the silver object which remained…not on the lab table across the room, but in Jane's hands…held upright and into the air. Loki scoffed inwardly at himself for his momentary panic.

It couldn't be Mjolnir…

He walked closer to inspect and his eyes grew wide as he recognized the runes and the distinctive carvings of Thor's hammer. He could feel the familiar hum of power emanate off its surface. Jane, noticing his reaction, stood up and began to apologize.

"We didn't mean to be disrespectful to his memory or sacrilegious to the hammer or anything. It just came out of a cat and we were trying to figure out how and why. You can have it back now," she said and held out the hammer for him to take.

"The…you…" Loki said, uncharacteristically stammering. He stared at the hammer and then at Jane, still lost as to what exactly was happening. "Goose had Mjolnir?"

Shuri nodded. "I saw the hammer come out of the cat's mouth. Haiwezekani...It shouldn't be possible, but there it is."

"The Flerkin…it isn't a cat," Loki said, half-distracted and not even paying attention to what he was saying.

"Aye, bwana. I may believe you now. This alien paka-what you call it? I do not think I can even pronounce that-'flah-ken'…'frawky'…it is too too hard," Shuri said as she tripped over the word. She stopped struggling and gave a wide-eyed look at her hands. "Engoja kidogo. Wait a little. Will I acquire some exotic alien disease from the…creature's….saliva? I washed the hammer and I washed my hands with soap and hot water, but I don't want to lose my hand or find my skin has fallen off tomorrow."

"You…no. The greatest dangers posed by a Flerkin are their tentacles and their ability to swallow things into dimensional pockets," he said. "Wait-you washed the hammer?"

"Indio. Tentacles? Dimensional pockets? I think you need to explain that kidogo, bwana."

Loki ignored her and began pacing the room.

"You washed it on the table?"

"No. In the sink. There was too too much saliva and little pieces of hair and other foreign matter I'd rather not think about stuck to the hammer. It should be very clean now."

"You simply walked over and picked it up?" Loki said, incredulousness marring his voice.

"Indio," Shuri said with a nod and a slight shrug.

Loki let out a huff of exasperation. Without another word, he turned and left the room. Shuri met Jane's questioning gaze with one of her own.

"What was that about?" Jane asked.

"Sijui…I do not know," Shuri said.

Both women waited for a few minutes and watched the door.

"Does that mean we can keep studying it?" Jane asked.

"He didn't tell us know to. I say we continue until he comes back and tells us to stop."

"We had better hurry then."

When Loki failed to reemerge, they turned back to the hammer and Shuri's scanner.

"The tests are complete. Here!" Shuri said with a wide grin when it finally finished. She projected the rows of data onto the nearest screen and both women huddled around it with greedy expressions on their faces.

"Wow! Look at the energy readings coming off that thing!" Jane said.

"It is very…." Shuri began but her reply was interrupted by Loki's sudden reappearance. He swept back into the room with his cape trailing behind him and peered at both women, as if a general commanding his troops.

"Jane," he said, pointing towards her.

"Yeah?"

"Pick up Mjolnir."

"Ok."

She walked over to the hammer and lifted it. While her thin arms showed the strain of its weight, she easily hefted it to her will.

"Princess, will you also?"

"Sawa," Shuri said. She walked over and picked up the hammer and carried it to Loki, extending it for him to take. "Bwana, shika."

"No. I thank you. Place it down where you had it again," he said. He would not test this in front of an audience. Without a word, he turned and left the room again.

He returned again at half past midnight. He waited until he saw the women had finally abandoned their work and gone to bed. He walked over to the hammer and felt the familiar leather of its handle in his own hand. He closed his eyes and heaved.

Nothing happened. The hammer stayed rooted on the shelf and failed to budge in his grasp. He tried again, but it was just as it had been in New Mexico. Immovable. Solid. Condescending. He gritted his teeth and fled the room again.

He would not speak to the cursed hammer again this night (despite how he had wished to the last few nights). He would, however, kick the blasted Flerkin in the ribs the next time he came across the miserable excuse for a creature... or, perhaps, to avoid any tentacles, he would instead cast a menagerie of sordid insults on the Flerkin and all its nearest relations to the fifth generation.

Loki felt weary to his core. When he was not discussing neurology and Midgardian biology with Dr. Okapi, he was discussing physics and astronomy with Dr. Foster. When he was free from their constant questions, he found himself assailed with his own relentless internal questions. He found little sleep. The nightmares were growing worse. The Titan was restless and he felt the need to pull on Loki's leash just to remind him how he was still bound and not entirely master of his own mind.

He would need to return to the SHIELD headquarters soon and make his rounds of his Midgardian representatives to ensure rebuilding continued on schedule. However, he did not want to dwell on so many tedious and mundane tasks now. He glanced out the window of his room and watched as the sun rose over the city below.

While Shuri and T'Challa both invited him to accompany them on errands into the capital, he did not wish to be ushered through the city as a foreign dignitary on the tails of their sovereigns. He politely refused and claimed disinterest again and again, despite their repeated attempts and, worse, their suggestions that he meet with their appointed Dr. Njeri. He would not, if he could avoid it.

Now, he would see the great city of Birnin Zana with his eyes instead of with his magic. He decided an exploration of the city would help clear his crowded mind and provide him a respite. He did not wish to advertise his intentions and so he made his way through the shadows along the palace and through the gardens to the great wooden gates. He chose to slip over the wall instead of through the guarded gates and he made his way into the city below.

The sprawling metropolis lay nested in a valley guarded over by steep emerald mountains. The sun glistened off the river meandering through the city and pouring through the urban jungle. Towers of rock and metal stood sentry throughout the valley, reaching towards the shallow blue sky above, like upright spears in a pit. Below, rivers of people and vehicles crowded through the tan, cobbled roads. Trains hovered above the ground and zipped between stations with a quiet hum that reverberated the streets below.

Loki clung to the shadows between buildings, his cloak pulled high over his head, shrouding his figure and his face. He climbed a series of sandstone stairs decorated with geometric patterns and stood on a balcony overlooking the city.

The bustling city life of Birnin Zana swept through the street below like a clamorous river of polychromatic chaos. Brightly clad Wakandans milled around street corners, bustled between shops, and chatted happily with companions at sidewalk cafes. Vendors weighted down with baskets of food and trinkets shouted advertisements of their wares. Music blared and warred with the sound of vans hooting. Vehicles skittered between tethered cows, free range chickens, and the occasional Vervet monkey. The air around him hung heavy with the fragrances of dust and concrete, frying oil and spices, sweaty bodies and livestock.

He continued on down the road to where he came to a wide marketplace dotted with vibrant tents, blankets, tables, and more people than he could count. He pulled his gray cloak tighter around his face, entered the market, and began to look around. He glanced over piles of fruits and vegetables, fried fish, and livestock, shoes and shirts, and all manner of wooden stools and spoons and metal saucepans. He paused to watch an artist carving a piece of wood when he noticed a stillness descend upon the clamoring throng of people like the cessation of wind through forest leaves.

He glanced up and saw all eyes around him fixed upon him as the many eyes turned as one to stare at him. The silence was soon replaced by a growing tidal wave of whispers.

"Who is this?"

"How did an outsider arrive here?"

"Does the King know?"

"Are we betrayed?"

"We cannot let it escape."

The whispers around him morphed into pointing fingers and shouts. He turned to leave but found his way blocked. The people nearest to him remained unmoved, as if a rabid ice hound had suddenly appeared in their market and they were unsure whether to shoot him or cage him or flee. He found the shouts surrounding him from all sides as people strained to see if their eyes deceived them or if he was really present among them.

Bodies inched closer to him, anger and fear written on their faces, hands grabbing whatever makeshift weapons they could grab. All other affairs in the marketplace were forgotten as the crowd focused all its attention onto the one outsider in their midst and the hum of fear and anger grew to a crescendo. It would only take a breath of wind for this crowd to boil over into a mob. He gave a scan of his surroundings to determine his best route for escape and found none. Without his magic, he could not rely on illusion for his escape. He would need to fight, if it came to it. He would easily win, even against so many, but he doubted his hosts would be pleased if he did. His fingers twitched with nervous energy and he reached out for a nearby tree to find a branch he could wrench off.

His attention soon turned back to the crowd which gave way to allow a path through them. The tall, frowning red and gold figure of the General walked straight towards him and the crowd around them breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"It is the General. He will not live," they whispered to themselves and watched in fixed fascination. General Okoye and four other Dora Milaje soldiers surrounded Loki. The General glared at the crowd, knocked the butt of her spear against the concrete below, and the marketgoers backed up under the weight of her stare.

"Mgeni, if you do not wish to be banished from Wakanda, I suggest you come with me," she said in a harsh whisper not meant to be overheard by those around them.

Loki nodded and followed the General without protest as she turned to lead him back through the street. The other women flanked him on each side and kept wary eyes on the crowd. Okoye led them to a doorway which, when she scanned her hand upon it, opened to a tunnel beneath the city. The dimly lit, musty tunnel led them directly back into the palace grounds.

As they emerged into the sunlit gardens surrounding the palace, she turned her fierce glare onto him.

"You are either a fool or you have a wish for death," she spat. "Have you listened to nothing Njeri has told you? You will never enter the city unaccompanied again or I will not hesitate to throw you out of our borders or into our prisons. Now, wait on that bench and do not move from there. The King wishes to speak to you."

Loki's frown deepened at her commanding tone and he chafed at being so instructed and restrained. However, he did sit where she bade him to and he waited.

The old king emerged from a side door and slowly shuffled across a tiled walkway to where Loki sat on a bench. The king lifted one of his hands and the Dora Milaje fell back, sinking into the shadows to give their monarch the space he desired. He ran his hands through his rough, white beard and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Sawa, now prince, come take a walk with me," T'Chaka said, without meeting Loki's gaze once. Loki nearly refused simply to prove that he could-then thought the better of it -and he fell into step beside the king.

T'Chaka led him to where the tiled pathway brought them through a brilliantly colored tropical garden brimming with birds as colorful as the flowers. Orange and yellow flame lilies grew alongside white orchids and bright yellow tunguja flowers crept up a nearby wall lattice, filling the space with their sweet fragrance. A small stream gurgled through the center of the garden and fell in a small waterfall into a pond surrounded by a courtyard and benches. T'Chaka motioned for him to sit. T'Chaka carefully organized his long, dark blue robe and sat down beside him.

From their seats, they could look back onto the sand-colored palace. It did not tower over Birnin Zana but instead grew out of the city, interwoven within the fabric of the rest of the tall urban structures alongside the river. T'Chaka let the quiet silence grow before he addressed Loki.

"Tell me, prince, does Asgard host many dignitaries from other realms?"

"On occasion."

"Is there an expected code of conduct for how to show honor to your royal family and your great city?"

Loki rose one eyebrow but did not respond. He did not need to. He waited for T'Chaka to continue in his mild, calm manner.

"Birnin Zana is not Nairobi or New York or Beijing. We survive because our walls are tall and our shields thick. We allow few visitors and none which look like you. When my people see you, they will fear you because they will see you through the lens of our history. Men who looked like you came here to conquer and to steal. We have strict measures in place to keep outsiders out of our country and for you to appear in their midst, unaccompanied by a representative of the crown, it is enough to stir them into a frenzy of fear and panic.

"If you had stayed in the market for another fifteen minutes, the crowd would have turned into a mob and they would have sought to burn you alive. I do not doubt that you can defend yourself, however your defense would have cost the lives of many of my people and would only have increased their fear.

"Already, I will need to dispense three communication teams to represent the Golden Tribe to the people and answer their questions and quell their fears in response to your actions. It will take the majority of the day to sort this out and let the people know that all is well. Yet, if you walked through the marketplace accompanied by a representative of the Golden Tribe, they would merely have stared and whispered.

"Now, allow me to be clearer. As a representative of one of our oldest allies, you have been granted welcome here, however you must give us the honor due to us. You are welcome to wander the palace grounds and the palace itself, but you will not go into the city or surrounding countryside unaccompanied. My people need to know they are safe and that our Pillars are upheld. If you had sought out Dr. Njeri, as I advised you upon your arrival, you would have not transgressed on our hospitality as you have. Let Dr. Njeri do her job. She is one of the few outsiders that is permitted in Wakanda and she was specifically sought out because she is highly skilled. She will inform you of our ways so you do not learn them by trial and error. I prefer to spend my time on other matters instead of tending to such avoidable messes."

T'Chaka stared at Loki with a look of such solemnity that Loki dropped his eyes to the flowers growing beneath his feet. T'Chaka heaved a sigh and began to speak again, his voice still low and full of the cadences of a story-teller.

"Sir Winston Churchill, who would later become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, came to visit our neighboring country of Uganda over a hundred years ago. The country greatly impressed him-the beauty of the people, the land, the life within. When he came to the birthplace of the Nile, the greatest of rivers, he first spoke of its might and glory and then in the next breath, his dreams to 'harness the whole river' and build a dam at the source. He saw the mighty rapids and falls and determined to conquer them, tame them, harness them.

"He was not alone. During the last 130 years, this entire continent was 'owned' by outsiders, save for Ethiopia and Wakanda. Outsiders came and conquered our highest peaks with their flags and their names. They redrew our borders with their guns and their maps. They conquered our people with their money and their bullets. The taller the mountain, the more desirable the ascent. The stronger the people, the more glorious their defeat. The more powerful the river, the greater the desire to dam its torrents, to claim and control its rapids.

"The outsiders called this the 'dark continent.' We were the nameless, faceless void upon which they could inscribe their own names, their own stories, forge their own fortunes, and recreate a world in their own image and for their own glory. The peoples they found, they simply erased and wrote a new story over what already existed, but that they could not, or chose not to, see."

T'Chaka paused again and then faced Loki. He placed a hand on Loki's shoulder and his voice grew even softer, almost weary.

"Prince Loki of Asgard, the words you spoke during your speech in Germany are a much too common refrain to Wakanda and our neighbors. We have been told to kneel, to be ruled, that we crave subjugation, that it is our natural state. Because of the continent which birthed us, outsiders have told us for generations that we are made to be ruled-that it is our birthright, no matter how far from our homeland our feet take us.

"If you are here to conquer Wakanda, I do not doubt you would succeed. Our secrecy is our one defense and, as you are here, it is no longer protecting us from your designs. So, I ask you now, are you Churchill or are you the Nile? Do you wish to dam our rivers and tame our torrents or do you fear being tamed and dammed and utilized for the whims of another?"

T'Chaka's brown eyes sought his face and carefully measured his reaction. Loki fought to ensure he allowed none. Instead, he gave a short nod of his head.

"I will seek out your Dr. Njeri," Loki finally said, fully aware it was not the complete response the king desired but unwilling to accede to more.

"It is good," T'Chaka said. "I have spoken. I will leave you now."

The king rose from the bench, smoothed out the back of his knee-length robe, and motioned with one hand. Four Dora Milaje soldiers materialized out of the shadows. He gave them a nod and they escorted him down the tiled pathway back to the palace.

Author's notes:

Guest on 11/27: On my "treachery of Bollywood and not Wakaliwood": hah! Yes. I did commit treachery-but it wasn't without an excessive amount of forethought! Here's my reasoning behind why Shuri has Bollywood posters in her bedroom as opposed to "Wakaliwood" or "Wollywood" or "Wakandawood":

1.) Undoubtedly, Wakanda has the technology to have a stinkin awesome film industry, but it does not mean that they would choose to. Remember-super secret society that doesn't want a lot of attention. A well-developed media would not necessarily be helpful for that. Film documentation of Birnin Zana and the technology within Wakanda could easily get outside of Wakanda and into the wrong hands. It is possible they have a vibrant internal film industry but even then, they don't have a huge population (I'm thinking between 15-20 million and at least half of that is rural) to support it. Not saying it's not a possibility, but I think it safer and more likely that they have a greater emphasis on live performance as the preferred form of art as opposed to film.

2.) Let's say Wakanda does have a vibrant internal film industry… Shuri is hardly representative of all of Wakanda. She is not normal and she likes being eccentric. I would expect her taste in media to reflect that. And Bollywood-with all the colors, music, dance, flavor-just strikes me as very Shuri. She may enjoy her Wakandawood films as well, but I could easily see her obsessing over something entirely "other" simply because that's her personality (or my interpretation of her personality). This is also why she has "Lugaflow" posters as well...I'm sure Wakanda has a vibrant music industry...but Shuri likes what she likes and doesn't care about what anybody else thinks. (Okoye, on the other hand, I could see watching other movies from around the world simply to then critique how inferior they are to Wakanda's and being totally all "Wakandawood all the way".)

I refer to Goose as an "it" because Goose is not a cat and is not a mammal of Earth-maybe Flerkins follow different reproductive patterns? Undeveloped thought…so…Goose will remain an "it". ;)

Sir Winston Churchill and the Nile-he wrote about this in his book "My African Journey," published in 1908. I came across the story in another book-Inside Africa by John Gunther Harper. It's a fascinating old book that came from a library dumpster. Written in 1953 by an American travel writer, he describes the conditions in colonial Africa during this particular era. What an era to write in! They still have the idealism and optimism of the colonial "civilizing" projects, but with the burgeoning sparks for independence smoldering across the continent.

Dark continent: Jean and John Comaroff's article "Africa Observed: Discourses of the Imperial Imagination" is my favorite exploration of European ideas of Africa as the "dark continent" and the implications this had for the colonial enterprise and the development of scientific racism. They say, "In investigating the savage, the West set up a mirror in which it might find a tangible, if inverted, self-image." In other words, Africa's creation in the European imagination is not a reflection of what is actually there, but what Europeans wish to see in order to see themselves as more superior. It's a representation not based on actuality but on ignorance and ethnocentrism.

I should probably note that in this particular manifestation of the fictional country of Wakanda, my goal is not to create a "perfect" utopian African nation that has its act all together, or a perfect inverted image of the West, but to create a picture of what the country would look like based on the conditions presented in the MCU. Mainly, what does a super technologically advanced, secretive, and uncolonized central African country looks like? Thus-it should be flawed (since all nations/cultures are flawed in some way or another) and it should not be the mirror image of the Western world (trying to avoid the tropes of the "noble savage" or "orientalism"…if it's possible to fully avoid such things). This means I've spent way too much time rewriting East African history to try to figure out how Wakanda escaped the Scramble for Africa.

Golden Tribe: the concept of tribe I will utilize for Wakanda is not the ethnicity-based definition as was perpetuated by the colonial enterprise and the British policy of indirect rule (which created tribes in some areas which formerly did not have them) and created a more racial and unchanging tenor to people groups which previously were much more fluid and based on economic or political belonging. Thus, in this particular exploration of the fictional country of Wakanda, I will base the five "tribes" (as granted us by the comics) on the concept of tribe as an economic situation. (Example: pre-Belgian Rwanda had the agrarian Hutu and the pastoralist Tutsis. The "tribes" were based on class and economic activity until the Belgians formalized it and made it based on birth and racial characteristics such as nose size, skin color, etc.) The tribes in Wakanda will be more fluid and less based on ancestry and language and more on class and position within the economic/political system. (Aidan Southhall's Illusion of Tribe gives a great exploration of the creation of tribalism in E. Africa….for anyone who is a nerd like me and likes reading this kind of thing). ;)