GUARDIANS OF THE WATERS

"If this story is good, the goodness belongs to all; if it is bad, the badness belongs only to him who told it." George W. Bateman, "Haamdaanee", Tales of East Africa

Chapter 1

Shuri knelt on the uneven floor of the damp cavern. Her knees were calloused from each day she knelt onto the sea rocks and her hands were soft from the constant humidity. The Talokanil guard watched from the shadows after delivering her meal. The guards had wide, ever-seeing eyes and ears but they rarely, if ever, spoke. Shuri sometimes wondered if they were ordered not to answer the many questions she bubbled over with or if they couldn't be bothered to answer.

At first, she had wondered if their silence was due to the great trench between their tongue and hers. She took it upon herself to learn their language so she could speak to them, but still, her guards remained as silent as the fish that dwelt in the pools of water by her feet. She could see their movements, take note of their presence, but she did not hear their voices.

Shuri picked up the glass bottle from among the bamboo tray of food before her. She opened it and smelled the sweet fragrance of the coconut milk within. Under the turtle shell cover, a platter of boiled fish, seaweed, and soft coconut flesh was neatly arranged between hibiscus flowers. It was beautiful, but she missed the taste of warm ground nut sauce on millet bread and she would give anything for a skewer of freshly roasted goat.

Most of all, she missed the communal meals she took each day with her family. It was custom, in Wakanda, for the entire family to share their meal together and eat from a common platter of food. Until late in the night, it was more than food that shared between them. It was stories, it was companionship, it was a deep connection to her blood kin and the most important people in her life.

Here, in Talokan, she took nearly all her meals alone. None shared her platter with her or laughed over stories of her day or told her stories of their own. Instead, she listened to the drip, drip, drip of the water from the walls of the cave and the soft rippling waves caused by the rise and fall of the tide in her cave.

She was trapped here in this little isolated bubble of oxygen, halfway between the land and sea. This cave sustained her life but it was a constant reminder that she was a prisoner, kept captive by the dual forces of water and her need for breath. If she was not so dependent on air, then she could try to escape or maybe join into the vibrant communal life of the city beneath the waves, but she could do neither.

She took a piece of fish and tossed it into the nearby pool of salt water. Then she tipped the bottle over on its side just enough for a drop of the white, milky liquid to swirl into the still, salty waters in the cave. Then she closed her eyes and spoke aloud, first in Kiswahili and then in the deeper, ancient ceremonial tongue of Kikanda.

For you, Brother. I honor your memory. Keep watch over me and stay close to me and speak favorably of me to our Ancestors.

She knew he would hear. He always did. Those recently departed always stayed close to those they had left behind. They continued to live, to love, to eat and drink, and meddle in the affairs of their family, but only as long as they were kept close by and remembered. Once their names were forgotten and their family neglected to pour out libations in their honor, then they grew angry. Those were the dead to be feared – the nameless, disconnected spirits who preyed on the living and caused harm to those who had forgotten them. Her brother, her father, her aunts and uncles – they had joined the ranks of the Living Dead. Their names were still remembered and they kept close to her. Sometimes they spoke to their kin in dreams and visions. Sometimes they only appeared through omens and messages in the waters and skies and creatures.

For awhile, in her grief and anger, Shuri refused to speak to her brother or grant him gifts. Her mother tried to gently correct her, to bring her to the side of the waters and to burn his funeral shroud to release the final tethers keeping his soul in his body, but she had refused. She tried too hard to hold on to his living memory and she refused to seek him out once he joined the Living Dead.

Then he came to her in a dream. He wore the white funeral shroud and he came to her in anger. She apologized and promised she would not neglect him again. Despite his anger, she delighted in the sight of his eyes, the familiar cadence of his voice, the thrill of his presence in her unconscious mind. His absence had thrust a chasm in her heart that rivalled the Rift Valley and she felt all her own inability to cross that void to find him again.

She remembered the stories her grandmother told her in her youth. There were so many stories, back then. In some stories, there was a hunter who followed his quarry to the Land of the Dead and then found their way back home again. In others, a bereaved warrior sought the soul of his beloved in the dark underground world of the Land of the Dead and retrieved her, bringing her back to the Land of the Living and finally marrying her in his home. She wished her brother could find his way back to her or that she could follow him and force him back to join her again. Yet, she could not. He was too, too far and she could not hear his voice, see his dimpled smile or the way he quirked his eyebrow when he was laughing at her.

It was T'Challa himself who sought her out. After her apology, she poured out her libation at each meal, in the ways of her ancestors before her, and she spoke his name aloud each day. Her voice kept him alive, her food and drink kept him remembered, and her heart kept him in the Land of the Living for as long as she kept breathing.

After that day, her dreams were often filled with his visage. Yet, in these subsequent meetings, T'Challa smiled. His anger was gone and, in its place, she felt his warmth, as vibrant as cooking stones heated by the flames of a fire. In those dreams, they sat and spoke of many things, all of which she would forget by the next morning, yet she remembered that she had seen him and that was enough. In those dreams, they met in Wakanda. Their sun rose over the slanted yellow branches of the acacia trees and the air burst with the morning songs of birds. The entire dawn hummed with life, as if the rays of the sun set the savanna on fire and made everything come alive for another day. They sat together, in the place they loved most, and they looked upon their home with eyes that knew neither grief nor fear.

Her cave seemed all the darker and more claustrophobic after such dreams. The walls were all the narrower and she missed the feel of the sun all the more for dreaming of its heat.

Shuri ate all the food she had been given and watched as her taciturn guard took her tray away. Another tray would come in a few hours bearing her next meal. The meal would leave her as satisfied as it would make her discontent and she would spend her meal thinking of home again. Shuri sighed. She did not know if she would ever see her home again

How many years had it been? She had been so young when she first came. So young, so angry, so naïve and full of her own self-importance.

"What is the difference between uji, millet porridge, and malwa, millet beer?" her mother's brother had asked her once, after she made a particularly arrogant speech at a gathering.

"One is alcoholic and one is not," she had answered, confident she was correct.

Her uncle laughed heartily and placed on hand on her shoulder. "Hapana, mtoto. The difference is everything! Malwa takes heat and time. Malwa brings the village together around the shared calabash. Remember, until you have fermented, you are not ready to be poured into the calabash."

Shuri had been young, then. She did not have a voice in the Council of Elders and she had not yet taken her place between the Ancestors and Descendants. She had worked so hard to have her own voice, separate from the Wisdom of the Elders. She chafed against their Pillars and the constrictions of tradition. She longed for the freedom of youth and her creative energy to have full release. She was convinced she could change Wakanda, and the rest of the world, with the unlimited potential of technology and her own intelligence.

That was then. That was before she was forced to swallow her saliva and learn to be one zebra among many. As her grandmother liked to say, "'Mbwa hubweka nyumbani,' or 'the dog barks at home.'" When Shuri was safe at her home, she could bark with her own importance, but here, she was only a prisoner. She was an outsider with no say. Without her technology and her tools, what remained of Shuri? The Talokanil would not let her explore their technology or let her have access to any human artifacts. Locked away from the world of wires and electricity and computer codes, she found herself confronted with the voices she had avoided for so long. The stories of her elders remained, locked within the circuitry of her mind. Their words remained to keep her company, even when all she had once taken refuge in was gone.

How many times she remembered that night alongside the banks of the Nile! Her mother pleaded with her to burn T'Challa's funeral shroud, the face her grief, to remember the ways of mourning of their people. She had refused… and then Namor had come.

How many times she wished to rewrite that day! What if she had agreed? Would Namor have stayed away? What if she had not allowed her anger to make a nest on her head? Perhaps, then, she would have forged different banks for the rivers of her life to follow. Instead, her anger opened the door for dark spirits to enter and Namor rose out of the waters like a crocodile, ready to devour them whole.

She wondered, after, just how long it had taken Namor and his guard to travel to Wakanda. It was no small matter to traverse aquatic highways from the Atlantic all the way to the landlocked nation of Wakanda. The only river road that penetrated the inland heart of the Great Lakes was the cataract-filled behemoth of the White Nile.

Still, Namor came. He made his demands and Shuri insisted on accompanying Okoye on that mission. Her life had never been the same.

It was early into her captivity when she made her agreement with the king of the underwater kingdom.

"Keep me instead," she pleaded. She begged Namor to release Riri Williams to Wakanda in her place and keep Shuri as his prisoner.

"The scientist will not be permitted to leave Wakanda."

"Fine."

"And you will remain in Talokan until you agree to ally Wakanda with me," he said.

"Then I will stay forever."

"As you wish," Namor said, his teeth glittering in the light of his sanctuary as he smiled.

ooooo

Author's Note: I use Kiswahili instead of Xhosa with a random smattering of Luganda. I refer to more East African myths, proverbs, and cultural practices than I can really cite easily. However, most proverbs will come from: .

Next, this story has been bothering me ever since I saw Wakanda forever last week. So, I had to start scribbling ideas down in a frenzy. I have no idea how long it's going to be or what is going to happen in it. Hold tight for an adventure in story-telling.