Stone and the Three Kings: Part 1

Don’t you hate it when you have to summon potentially dangerous spirits just to save your girlfriend’s life?

If you didn’t relate to the first line, then please bury this book. Or better yet, burn it.

The world isn’t ready for the secrets this journal holds. This is a short tale, but I promise it will shock you. It will mystify you. It might even horrify you!

It will cause you to question everything you’ve been told by your parents, teachers, and both religious and academic scholars!

Or it may not be your preferred reading.

It was our first official date. I say official because Sandra and I had been going out for almost four months at that point. We both have ultra-conservative parents – and my father wants to murder me. So when I finally moved out of the friend zone, it was with no real plan on how two fifteen-year-olds would maintain a relationship.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to get together after school, sit together at break time, and pass the occasional badly spelled love letter across class. But then her parents signed her up for after school lessons, and we noticed that some of our classmates were intercepting the letters we were passing around (While I did appreciate the occasional punctuation check and grammar correction, it’s still impolite). We also read Romeo & Juliet in the library – or rather, the Romeo and Juliet Wikipedia page - and we decided the whole 'forbidden love' thing was overhyped.

So after much deliberation, we told our parents. And all things considered, my mother took it well. I don’t mean much better than I imagined. I mean, she was happy. Excited, even. I would have been suspicious if she didn’t already get along well with Sandra (who knew her obsession with telenovelas would actually be useful?). Of course, I never gave my mum any reason not to trust me, so all I had to do was promise not to do anything inappropriate with Sandra and we had her blessing.

Sandra’s father was the real problem.

See, Sandra’s mother was a darling. If she had any say in the matter, I doubt she would mind her daughter dating. Last last, she would prefer she start when she was older – maybe twenty-two, give or take a few years. But that was the thing, she had no say in it - or in much of anything as far as I observed.

Sandra’s dad was the absolute worst kind of person to know if you’re anything like me. An old-fashioned conservative bordering-on-fanatic Christian who treated all teenage boys the way he treated devil-worshippers and third-wave feminists, keeping them as far away from his daughter as possible.

He didn’t like it when boys sat close to his daughter in church. He frequently complained that Sandra had too many male friends in school (three to be precise). And he despised me. Apparently, he didn’t like that I called myself Stone (as opposed to my original name, Livingstone, which you should never address or even think of me by). He considered it a sign that I was disrespectful and not raised properly. To say I was offended on behalf of my mother was an understatement. Being a single mother isn’t easy; especially when your husband continually schemed to murder both you and your son.

I was against telling him from the beginning. I thought it was a bad idea, but she convinced me.

“The worst thing he can do is say no,” she said.

She was wrong. He set his dogs on me.

“You were lucky,” Sandra told me at the ticket line. “He was in a good mood.”

“Hmm,” I said, trying not to breath in. The fat man standing in front of me just farted. “How are Rory and Bolt, by the way? I didn’t see them when I came over.”

“Oh, they’re dead,” Sandra said, her voice turning grim. “I think they had ticks or something…”

It was a Saturday, so predictably, the cinema was filled with people. This meant the counters were packed to the brim with lines of people who had nothing better to do on a late weekend afternoon than watch the latest superhero flick or animated film. And I, a near omnipotent being with powers and responsibilities well beyond the comprehension of the regular thirteen-year-old, also had nothing better to do, and neither did my now official girlfriend (We’d planned to go to the arcade just across from the cinema, but apparently it had closed down to accommodate a Dominos branch, and we were just… It wasn’t worth it).

But I digress – I do that a lot, try to get used to it. I’m actually digressing a bit right now, as the story doesn’t really begin in the cinema, but in the street hours later. But I think all of this information is important to provide some kind of context (maybe it isn’t a diversion after all?)

Sandra and I stood in line, about five people away from the counter. She’d buried herself in the cinema’s film guide while I watched the people at the front of the line decide whether to take their hot dog with mustard or ketchup, trying to fathom how people eat non-popcorn foods during a movie. I made cursory glances at my watch in the midst of those philosophical musings.

“Is it that hard to pick a film?!” I asked when I noticed it was already five minutes past three. “Just pick a film so we can watch na!”

Sandra looked up from the film guide, giving me the look of disdain she tailored specifically for me. “I’m sorry, my accurate time keeper, I didn’t know we were rushing anywhere.” She glanced at the front of the line.

They had decided on both condiments, and were currently stuck between 7up and Mountain Dew. I immediately came up with a comeback, but she kept talking, making sure it never saw the light of day.

“Any way, I think we should watch the new Quentin movie.” She moved in closer to me, holding up the guide so we could both look. I was a bit distracted by her hair though, which brushed against my face – with how smooth it was. How she could get her hair so smooth and sweet smelling? Her father definitely didn’t buy her any hair products, and I wasn’t sure her mom bought anything without patriarchal permission. “See?” She pointed to the third movie on the roster. “There’s a screening in twenty minutes. And its Quentin, so it’ll definitely be good.”

I had to admit she had brought forward some very good points, but there was a problem. “It’s three hours na.” I said, shaking my head.

“So?”

“Your dad said you should be home by six.” After some masterful negotiation by me, I was able to talk him down from his original one p.m., which would have required time manipulation abilities I had yet to master.

“So?” she asked again, oblivious of my worries. I must have made a weird face, because she started to laugh. “Stone, stop worrying. They always go to service by five on Saturday.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“How do you not know?” she asked, an eyebrow raised. “Your own mother goes.”

I nearly hit myself in the head. Sandra shook her head and laughed.

“Anyway, they won’t be back till eight,” she said. “We have lots of time.”

I didn’t share her confidence, nor did I want to push my luck. “Sorry, Sandra. I don’t share your confidence, and I don’t want to push my luck.”

Sandra’s brow creased, and she raised her eyebrow again. She was no longer smiling, but I could tell she was still amused. “You are really afraid of my father, aren’t you?”

I thought back to an hour earlier when I sat in Sandra’s living room while she got ready. Alone with her father, who sat in an arm chair adjacent to the couch I was on. He explained to me with his mouth that he wanted his daughter home as early as possible, safe and sound; and with his eyes that he hated me and would do anything human and divine to make sure I wouldn’t so much as cross her mind without being run over by his heavy-duty truck of overprotectiveness. Anytime I assured him she would be fine with me, he glared at me like I confessed to spitting on the cross for a living.

“Yes. Yes, I am,” I said. Sandra hissed and checked the guide again.

“Stone, the movie starts at quarter to three.” She said, her tone a bit too patronizing. “It’s like two hours, forty minutes. It’s not even up to three hours. There’s no how we won’t be home by six.”

I sighed and conceded. A few minutes later, we bought our tickets and snacks, and were on our way to the screening room.

Four hours later, Sandra and I stepped out of the movie theatre, both at a loss as to how the cinema could not have a generator in place for an hour long power outage. Sandra recounted the entire thing like a funny anecdote. You could say I was thinking ahead. It was six thirty, and while Sandra was still confident her folks were still in service, I didn’t like our odds.

“Oh, Stone?” Sandra whined. “You’re no fun when you’re like this.”

“Well, I’m sorry…,” I said, sarcastically. “…but I’d feel much more comfortable if we were both home…” I checked my watch. “…thirty…four minutes ago.”

Sandra rolled her eyes and hissed. “Daddy would have called if he was home. If we leave now, we’ll be home in ten minutes.”

“You never know how extraordinarily plans can go wrong,” I said, as we left the mall. In hindsight, I was probably the one who’d jinxed it.

The second we walked into the street, I knew we were being followed. I turned, my eyes darting around. My sword – which I carried in my school bag at all times – started to tingle, further warning me of the danger.

I'll try to make this as brief as possible.

My name is Stone, my father wants to kill me, and an evil spirit has frozen my girlfriend.

I am dead serious.

I am not a regular teenager, and it was pretending to be one that got me into this mess.

Now, I have to enter the realm of dangerous and unpredictable spirits to fix my mess.

Will I succeed? I won't bet on it.

Part Two is Coming Soon. Tell us what you think of this story so far, in the comments section!

One Eighty: Part 2

Utopia

It has been a thousand years since the Great War

A thousand years of perfect peace and harmony

A thousand years since the only world we know was physically separated from the ‘outside’

The outside never recovered from the Great War

Thousands of smaller wars have erupted since then

They say a lot of things, the scholars, historians, keepers of the past,

They say we, Utopians, have been fortunate

That it’s not humanly possible for so many different looking and thinking people, black, white, red, to live so peacefully together in an enclosed world

They say our world is too good to be true

They say our world is not real

They come from the outside and they distort everything we know, we believe

They say a war is coming

Either from the outside or within ourselves

They say human nature would corrupt Utopia just as it has corrupted the rest of the world

I don’t know if they are right and I don’t want to think about it, about discord

But it was all Chance could think about

He needed to do something about it

If Utopia had to be involved in the war then he would play his part

Last week, Chance volunteered to serve in the Utopian Peacekeepers Delegation

A division conceived by the council to keep the crisis out of Utopia

He received his conscription almost immediately

Yesterday, he followed his fellow recruits and new superiors aboard a frightfully large jet

I think at that moment he had never looked happier

It was impossible for him to hide his teeth as he moved excitedly with palpable energy

Completely oblivious to my pain

He seemed so happy to leave me

I had never felt heavier seeing him completely overcome with glee

He would be gone six months

One eighty days

I was alone when I met Chance

My parents were alive and I had five siblings

But I was so alone

I was working in a departmental store when I first saw him

He was beautiful and kind looking but I decided to ignore

Five minutes later, an entire heap of canned fish was falling from underneath me and a pair of hands were pulling me out of the line of fire

I dread to imagine all those cans landing on my feet

I felt heavy breathing at the back of my neck and realized I was still held prisoner by two solid arms

I moved out of the shield of flesh so quickly that I fell to my hands and feet

Someone pulled me up again and I felt my embarrassment grow with each breath I took

I heard his voice for the first time from behind me as I moved quickly towards the storeroom

He was calling for me to hold on, to slow down

I couldn’t get out of the room quicker

God alone knew why I was behaving like a fish out of water

But for some reason I was nervous

Ok, well, I was a klutz any given day and it was completely expected for me to tip over a pile of produce

I wondered why I was weirdly shaken by that encounter

By the next week, I had forgotten about the little incident

I was sitting on a bench in the only park in the city

The only place that you could get some peace and quiet, just

It was the only one hour in the day I had to myself after office work and before house work

I was facing the clear glassy duck pond but I had my eyes on the amazingly colorful sunset

This one was special and I had to capture it on paper

The purple, yellow, blue, white and grey colors that all flowed into each other in harmony, ushering away the burnt orange sun

And then the way it all reflected in the tiny pond beneath it

Bending forward over my work, some of my thick brown hair over my face, with the quacking of ducks for background music,

I was awed by the fast strokes of my paint brush as I hurried to capture the scene perfectly

For most artists it was a slow and painstaking process

But for me it was a spiritual happening

Something took over me when I got the inspiration

At one moment, a shadow fell over my easel

I trembled slightly to see the dark silhouette on my paper

I bit my lower lip a little too hard

But I couldn’t stop painting, I couldn’t break transmission

The human outline did not shift, even slightly, it waited patiently till the end

My brush fell to the ground at the last stroke

And as I looked at the picture, I knew nothing needed to be added, it was perfect!

The sky view was in my paper.

And still the shadow hadn’t moved

And then I heard his voice

He told me what I already knew

That the painting was a miracle

I looked at him and registered the same awe I knew was written on my face too

I smiled at him

He walked me home that night because he wouldn’t hear of me walking back alone in the dark

That feels like a lifetime ago

Chance wanted to help people, to save people, to protect them

He wanted his life to have some deep meaning

He dreamed of it

At heart, he was a fighter, a defender

He loved the take-care-of role

With the talk of coming chaos in Utopia taking flight, it didn’t take long for his protect-the-people instinct to kick in

To him, he had to have an active part in the cause

That was the only way he could truly help,

Join the army

The entire idea, logic, theory made no sense to me

All of this “peacekeeping” would not bring peace!

They will not really protect the people

Utopia has never experienced war and I don’t know what it will be like but I know it would destroy everything

Sometimes, in the dead of the night, when all is silent, loud explosions could only just be heard and gentle vibrations felt from whatever ominous thing was occurring on the outside

And sometimes, I could just make out human screams

or maybe I just imagined them

I think about how life is out there, how people live there,

Why they couldn’t join us and live here where it is safe and peaceful

But now we join them in dispute and discord

Every single citizen of Utopia would be dragged into this dreadful event, consciously or unconsciously

I can feel our lives changing irrevocably

We would never know this peace again, I know

And I am afraid

Soldiers die

They are always the first to go

They fought and sacrificed their lives for the “greater good”,

For the country

For the vague nation of Utopia which somehow never really included the singular people

And after war, there is never peace, there is just destruction

I think I am a pacifist

I do not NO cannot understand why the world hasn’t learnt from the patterns of the past

And now everything I know and love has been plunged into this meaningless protracted war that might never end

Nobody remembers why it started.

As I watched the enormous craft lift into the sky, I couldn’t help feeling sick to my stomach

I could have stopped him

I knew I had the power to

I could have asked him, told him how I felt about him leaving

About the whole idea of the peace keeping mission

How all my “excitement” was fake

I could have told him

He would have changed his mind

But how could I have?

He thinks this is his destiny!

I love him and I don’t want him having regrets because of me

How could I ask him not to do this if he believed this was his life's mission?!

He might have agreed to stay because of me

But he would have grown bitter hanging around in the country when the idea of fighting for the safety of the people had already stoked a fire in him

I would be quenching that fire

And he would never thank me for it

He would eventually blame me for keeping him from what could have been

I can't handle him hating me

And he would

Not at first

It would be a slow and painful process

And I would never be able to live with myself

Still, now he's gone and I cannot imagine how I will live with myself

Last night, I couldn't sleep

The night before that, I couldn't sleep

But at least the bed was soft and warm

And our quaint, square, wood logged room was not quiet

Chance couldn't sleep too

But for a completely different reason from mine

He was bubbling with uninhibited mirth

He was sitting up on the bed, his back resting on the headboard

Outlining the itinerary for the six months he will spend with the delegation

It occurred to me that Utopia has never had an army, how can they know what they are doing?

I had not noticed that tears had started streaming unchecked down my cheeks until he asked me why I was crying

I looked at him, he was truly confused

That was my first show of anything besides happiness and approval

I didn't wipe the tears from my face, no

I let them fall freely

Because what I wanted so desperately to say, I couldn't

I stared at him and his gentle, kind eyes filled with concern for me, called out to me

I leaned up to pull his face to mine

His lips to mine

The gentle kiss was reassuring

I felt like I could absorb his strength and make it mine

We didn't talk more that night but we said everything we needed to say to each other

And the next morning I escorted him to his fate

Watch out for Part 3 next Sunday.

Bichara's Heart: Chapter 2

Isha was Bichara’s nanny, but her husband liked to refer to her as her secretary. She was a multilingual nurse with special administrative skills—rich people and their strange needs. She was one of those rich people now, she had to remind herself. Although, it was all Rahman’s money. Rahman and his formidable family.

“I’m so tired, and my legs…” She leaned against a tall polished stool with a large china urn on top, in the back lobby of her home. The plain-faced woman, about a decade older than her, walked straight toward Bichara, and tugged her forward with her hand were John’s was, toward the main hall. A maid passed by and the secretary ordered a basin of warm water as she led her madam to a private sitting room. “I think I should go to bed,” Bichara said in protest. Isha was great at French too. Part of her job was to teach her her husband's languages.

“You need to sit first, Mrs. Bello,” Isha said, leading her to one large armchair, and helping her onto it. “In an hour, you can lay down, and then you sleep.” She couldn’t argue with that order.

Constant exhaustion was just one of the symptoms she’d been suffering since the beginning of her second trimester. Her morning sickness never stopped, it seemed to be getting worse. She was bloating, and self-conscious about being naked in front of her husband. Worse still, the life in her tummy was extra active, and at all times of the day. It never slept. Was this a preview of what was to be expected when it came into the world? It was going to be a big baby, that much was obvious.

She didn’t know when she slept off after Isha carried the basin of tepid water back to the kitchen following a long soak, but as she opened her eyes, she knew she’d been sleeping for a long time.

She sensed a presence behind her and turned.

“Kun farka. Did you sleep well?” Rahman was standing at the arched doorway, his voice quiet. She tried to stifle a yawn but didn’t succeed. “I told them not to wake you.” She stretched out a bit, glancing away from him, surprised he was home. His work schedule was very irregular, and when he was home, she wasn’t sure what mood he was in.

“Yes…when did you…?” They always spoke French when it was just the two of them.

“About an hour ago,” he said, shoving his hands into his pants' pockets. He walked out of the airy room without further comment, and she rested back into the chair, letting out a deep calming breath, closing her eyes.

She felt the baby move and remembered a time when she was excited to feel its kick. Now, she was just tired and desperate for a restful sleep at night. She stood to her feet wondering if Rahman would want to feel their baby’s movement. She walked through the same path he’d just taken, up to their rooms. She found him sitting on the bed, his trusty smart phone in hand. He’d already taken off most of his clothes, left with his briefs on.

“The baby just kicked,” she mumbled just loud enough to carry to his side of the room, as she walked in through the archway.

“Good,” he grunted out in English, not shifting his attention even for a second from his phone. “That's good,” he muttered in Hausa, absentminded. He looked strained as he pressed away on his mobile’s touch screen, all but ignoring her.

She sighed, walked in fully, making a bee line for their bathroom.

She would ask about his work, if the company was doing well, but she’d been rebuffed on so many occasions for her to get the message—things were rocky on that front, and he was touchy about it. He was so obsessed with maintaining his father’s legacy, even building a greater one for himself, and for some reason, he’d been receiving a lot more opposition to his success than he’d anticipated. Even she was surprised at how much fire he was under from all sides. She didn’t know enough about the business world, but she was sure there was some kind of vendetta against him, a backlash of some dealings his father was involved in before he died. She didn’t know for sure because Rahman never talked about it to her. She’d had to get most of her information off the internet, it was embarrassing.

She returned after a long warm bath, to find him in the same position she left him several minutes ago. This time, on a call—a loud conversation in sharp Hausa. She couldn’t understand anything he was saying, more because he was talking so fast she found it hard to pick the words out than anything else. He was always so tense and involved, she wished she knew some way of relieving his stress when he was here at least. He didn’t give her any opportunities…and frankly, she was scared of him when he was that way. She didn’t know him as much as she wished she did.

Rahman Bello, at thirty-eight, was at the helm of affairs of the RuBel Conglomerate created by his cattle herder grandfather, and expanded by his industrialist father whose unexpected death two years ago left Rahman in control of his 61% of the company. Now, he struggled to manage a strange friction with the Rufai family—the second half of the partnership—headed by his father’s childhood friend. Aliu Bello had called Muhammed Rufai into the business when he needed extra resources to expand beyond West Africa. Muhammed's son, Ahmad, bore a deep personal grudge with Rahman and had decided to take it out on the company at its peak, and Rahman had a feeling Muhammed was more involved in his son’s actions than he let on.

Rahman's struggles were beyond that though; the stocks were responding negatively to the uncertainty of a shift in company leadership to an inheritor rather than the next in corporate hierarchy. Investors were dancing to the tune of the stocks of course, and everything seemed to be on standstill. Except for the bills. Those were running into hundreds of millions of naira by the day, cutting deep into company coffers.

Running a company was hard work, running a multinational was a whole different matter. He knew that, everyone knew that. But not his family. His step mother took her monthly allowances, and then some, caring less how it was coming in, her children were no better. RuBel was not in trouble, far from it, but he had to get these first few years right if he was to keep it that way. The market, investors, shareholders, had to be convinced he knew what he was doing. He had to make the right commercial decisions at every turn, he couldn’t make any mistakes. They had to respect him, fear him, and he was going to make that happen. His father had taught him that.

He sat there now, on his bed, talking with his men at the field, the men in charge of the shipping ports in Lagos, discussing last quarter’s figures which had dropped since the quarter before, marginally, but even so, he wanted to know why. He wanted to discuss cargo details now, so he could have his assistant rearrange his agenda for tomorrow so he could have a video conference with the financial directors.

He almost forgot his wife was there in their room with him until he felt the bed move under him, felt her struggle to get under the covers, his beautiful, pliant, foreign wife. He turned around to find her back to him and the comforter covering her entire body, and sighed. She was always tired these days. If only he had the luxury to sleep whenever he wanted. He went back to his phone, sending emails.

Minutes later, he stood to call for his dinner to be brought up, and stepped into the bathroom for a long, deserved shower.

So you've met Rahman. How intimidating is he, or is Bichara overreacting? What do you think of their relationship? Is Rahman being unnecessarily distant considering all he has to deal with? Should Bichara be more vocal? Tell us in the comments below. We'd love to talk about it.

Chapter 3 will be posted next Saturday...