Everfair by Nisi Shawl

Author:Nisi Shawl
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466837843
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Kisangani, Everfair, June 1914

King Mwenda’s capital Kisangani was now also the capital of Everfair, as the whites called this country. And it was a city: Kisangani had become home to many, many people, a hand of thousands. He could remember it holding fewer than a hand of hundreds.

During his time in Alexandria he had learned the European mode of counting. It was one of many pieces of knowledge he had brought back with him from Egypt. Another was the whites’ calendar. According to this, the war against Leopold had ended in 1904, though weak resistance remained for a while in some areas. He’d dealt with the last of that in 1906. Soon after he’d gone to Alexandria’s Fouad University to study for eleven seasons. From 1907 to 1912: six years of self-exile, of trying to master the whites’ ways and prove himself their rightful ruler.

Six years without good connection to his spirit father. No, longer: almost eight. He hadn’t made a serious attempt since his return. He had never seemed to find the right place, the right time.

Despite having lived almost eighty seasons, thirty-nine “ah-nays,” he questioned his own fitness to serve as king. Despite having won.

The war’s end had changed many things, but one thing was the same: King Mwenda had no peace, even here, at home. The steady, soothing roar of the river’s cataracts had been drowned out by the hiss of pumps, the chugging of bicycle motors, the rumble of traction engines, the noisy steamboats coming and going and endlessly singing through shrill pipes. The beats of drummers’ messages and shouts in many tongues surrounded him as he walked now at the head of his retinue. The shouts came from the Mah-Kow laborers erecting steel frames for Kisangani’s high new houses; from the Zanzibari traders crowding the city’s wide streets and increasingly rare open lots. Also he heard the chatter of returning whites—not as loud, but unavoidable, since they’d decided their lives were no longer in danger. From allies they and the Americans had somehow become something more.

Rain still dripped off of the overhanging beams of unfinished buildings and the leaves of trees. It had ended late that morning, as it often did this time of year. Nevertheless, king and courtiers walked the relatively drier paths heaped up in the streets’ centers, raised beds of shells and pebbles rearing out of the mud. With Mwenda came Old Kanna, Alonzo, and his favorite queen’s favorite ladies, Sifa and Lembe. Josina had spent several days outside the royal compound, staying with the Poet and her remaining daughter, Rosalie. He missed her.

Just past a freshly painted corner shrine to the Bah-Sangah’s sacred earths, they came to their destination. Of course the Poet’s home was in Kisangani’s modern style, compounded of foreign and traditional influences. A short stairway of river stones led from a three-sided work yard to a porch running around its sides.

He climbed upward. Oiled bars of metal stood in place of wooden supports; the mats attached to them were much the same, however.

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