Africa Risen by Sheree Renée Thomas

Author:Sheree Renée Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

* * *

I meet them on the beach by the hotel, to sign the memorandum of understanding. Katelyn has an early-morning painkiller in a coconut, John wants a pure temple for a body, so he’s drinking something green. Grass-clippings green.

Deep, deep breath.

“You said you felt unease, you had a nightmare the other night?” I ask.

They glance at each other. “Yes.”

“I think…” I look off at the shimmering ocean and a medium-sized yacht bobbing by, someone on deck fumbling about, trying to get a sail up.

This bay used to be a quiet place when I was a kid. We’d come down and shatter the silence, scare off the seagulls and pelicans on the rocks with our wildness.

“You do know what the mill was?” I ask them gently.

“A sugar mill,” John says brightly.

“And, how was sugar made in this mill?” My voice is blunt now, my face no longer scrunched up in cheery sales mode.

We’re all tired.

“Is this about…” Katelyn starts off.

The way John lowers his voice, it sounds like we’re about to conduct a drug deal. He glances around, as if worried about being busted. “Those times?”

“Yes. Those times.” I lean forward. I can feel my stomach lurch.

“Will the locals try to stop us? Is there trouble?” Katelyn asks. She grips the table, eyes wide.

I set aside the way she says locals. I set aside the way it rankles me that they don’t see me as one of the locals, merely because I look like her and John. I set everything aside and let go of my driving need to get something, anything so I can start building my own house again on the hurricane-scoured land.

“You want to build a home there,” I say. “But the people enslaved and forced to work there, so many died there. So many lost limbs to the mill. Do you know what happened to a slave then, if they were injured at work?”

They didn’t go on disability. There was no social security.

“Are people angry … with us?” Katelyn asks, her lip trembling.

“Your living room on those plans, it would be right over where the gears ripped limb from body. Your carpet will be tossed over the bloody floor. If you have dinner there, it would be like having tea in an abattoir.”

Nibbling finger food where someone’s fingers had been yanked free …

Katelyn pales. That’s right. Animals. Of course animals would be the thing that shocks her most in that comparison.

Screw it. I’ll lean into that. If it’s animals that get her attention, I can work it. “How different would it be than eating dinner under swinging meat hooks, where cattle once screamed and panicked—”

“Stop.” She looks sickened.

“You’re building a house in a graveyard, and you’re asking me if people will be upset. The question isn’t will people be upset, the question is, why would you do this?”

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