PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition – April 2023 Leg/ Chazaq T. Reads

THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT

TITLE: The Whistle Man and Bow

Written by Chazaq T. Reads

‘Please don’t do this, she is sick, I beg you please,’ the young man pleaded as he knelt before the intruders. ‘My mother is sick, she can no longer work. I am the one who has to work and since I am still young, my wages are cut in half. But I will have her tax money ready by tomorrow afternoon.”

But still, no mercy was shown.

‘Sebaste, you know the law, taxes are equal to each soul, you can’t live here freely,’ said one of the soldiers. He had a moustache that flapped around the air as he spoke. In excruciating pain, the woman stood up from the ragged reed mat. Her knees shook with weakness as she struggled to keep herself strong.

‘My son and I will leave tonight,’ she cried. ‘Please have mercy on us, we will pack and leave, you will never have to see us again.’

‘You have only ten minutes to pack your belongings and leave,’ commanded one of the soldiers. ‘Whatever it is that you leave behind will be counted as your taxes paid to the kingdom.’

Bow collected himself from the floor and helped his mother pack clothes and food.  As they walked out of the hut, the soldiers followed them to the gates of the kingdom.

‘Don’t look behind you and don’t shed any tears,’ Bow’s mother reprimanded. ‘The soldiers will see this as a symbol of resistance. Surrender my son; we will figure out our way outside these gates.”

Bow’s mother clasped her son’s hand tightly inside her sweaty palm as they walked on. Bow obeyed his mother’s orders. He held back the tears and erased the temptation to look behind him. The soldiers marched behind them and when they approached the gates, the screeching sound of the hallowed billows heavily weighed into their hearts, as they stepped out into the unknown.

The people of the kingdom had heard dreadful tales about what awaited them in the outskirts of the kingdom. The nation laboured hard to secure their stay under the ferocious rule of their king. On the other side of the hallowed kingdom gates lay a nation of scavengers who preyed on human flesh. Every night they would roam around for feed by the railroad connecting the kingdom and the Coastal Plains. Long ago before the war against the scavengers, the train used to connect the two nations for trade. The Coastal Plains traded poultry and minerals from the Moresha sea and the kingdom had fresh vegetation and dairy to offer the fishermen from Coastal Plains. But long gone are the days when the fisherman and the farmer shared produce.

‘Where will we go?’ Bow asked in a voice that trembled with fear.

‘We will have to go to the Coastal Plains, ‘ his mother replied. ‘We’ll travel across the river in the valley and when we reach the meander by the berry bushes, we will have to climb Mount Yosemite. We will be safer that way, no one will see us.’

The scavengers feared water bodies so she knew that she would not find them prowling around the river route. The moonlight led their footpath as they set their trail down the mountain into the valley and followed the river. The fear of the scavengers gripped her son’s heart but the faith he had in his mother was as large as the depths of the Moresha sea.

The ground quaked at the gaits of the scavengers as they scoured the forest for human flesh. The couple had to take silent breaths and tread softly, lest their presence be known. Around midnight the mother looked at her tired son and decided to set up camp for the night. They camped under the willow trees and covered themselves with a reed mat.

‘Are we going to be safe here?’ the boy asked.

‘Yes, my son,’ the mother replied softly, and then comforted her son with a sweet lullaby.

Hours passed and the two could not shut their eyes, as the heavy gaits continued to shake the ground. They lay staring at the night sky, counting the twinkles as they tried to silence their fears. And suddenly the ground was no longer shaking.

‘Do you hear that?’ the boy asked his mother, relieved.

‘Yes, the scavengers are back in their caves and by tomorrow evening when they come out again, we will be safely entering the harbours of Coastal Plains,’ the mother replied, running her soft, cold hands through her son’s coiled hair.

‘Mom, do you know anyone in the Coastal Plains?’

A long moment of silence lapsed.

‘Yes, I do. In fact, since I became worse from my sickness, I had wished you could meet him.’

‘Look mom, a shooting star,’ Bow said pointing his small finger to the sky.

‘Bow, I wish that you could meet him because he is your father.’

‘My father?’ Bow asked, taking a deep breath with his eyes wide open.

‘Yes my boy, your father lives there. He was the greatest fisherman I have ever known. He was a soldier too. He protected the Costal Plains from the scavengers a long time ago and that is why to this day, the scavengers fear the waters.’

The boy’s heart jumped blissfully. All of a sudden, he forgot about the painful eviction from earlier that night.

‘Once upon a time, your father got swallowed by the sea. We were happy until that faithful evening. He came out of the sea a changed man. He came missing a leg and an eye. He looked different but I still loved him, and when I found out we were going to have you, I was excited but he was not. “Do you think a baby would want to look at someone like me?” he had asked me. “I mean look at me and look at you. A man like me does not deserve a beautiful woman like you or even an innocent child. The fishermen and I have littered the sea beds and the coast is dirty. How will we raise a child in a place like this?” Those were your father’s words.’

‘The bigger you grew inside me the more he grew apart from us, he could not receive me as I received him and so we went our separate ways,’ his mother explained. ‘The night when the Kingdom gates shut forever, I was Inland with you and I started working for the kingdom. And today, we are here. We are going to find your father, and if he still cannot receive us, it’s still fine. We will find our way.’

His mother took off her pendent necklace and opened it. ‘I know that you will not see it now, but this is the picture of your father and I. We took this picture on our wedding day.’

Bow wanted to see the picture; he never knew that the heavy necklace that his mother carried every day around her neck had such sentimental value.

‘Will you show it to me in the light tomorrow morning?’ Bow kindly asked.

 ‘Yes my dear,’ the mother replied with a smile as she locked the piece around her son’s neck. ‘I want you to wear it for now so that you can be safe as we travel. Your father gave it to me and said it will protect me wherever I go. I should so hope it will do the same for you, my child.’

She seemed to be losing the strength to keep talking, and lay down next to her son. Comforted by his mother’s words and the heavy piece around his neck, Bow fell fast asleep in his mother’s arms.

The next morning, droplets of dew from the willow tree dripped unto Bow’s face. The birds in the tree were dancing around the branches, shaking the tree and raining more dew to his face. He sat up in frustration and felt an inch of an awkward response from his mother’s body.

‘Mom! Mom, wake up, it’s the morning,’ Bow pleaded, but she remained silent. ‘Please Mom, wake up,’ he cried out.

He lifted her hand, moved her and shook her. He tried sitting her up but she remained heavy and senseless. He called out to her for so long, his voice faded to a whisper, leaving him groaning silently. His heart was shattered, his waning strength fighting the certainty of death. With his whole world lost and bereaved, he fell asleep.

Right below that willow tree, the day cursed the swallows of death. Bow numbed in his sleep until dusk when the shaking ground shook him awake. The scavengers were out prowling again. Fear trembled in his heart. He knew he had to escape. He looked at his mother; there was no more fear in her. She seemed more peaceful than he was. He knew she was safe because no sound of breath came out of her.

He walked on, not looking behind him but promising his footsteps that they would one day walk back to her under the willow tree. When he reached the river meander, he climbed up the Yosemite mountain and the next morning he was climbing down the mountain facing the Moresha sea. The sea’s waves crashing onto the rocks on the shore consumed his spirit. The sky above it bore an orange hue that pierced through his heart. He recollected himself and sat by a rock next to a thatched cottage. He dosed off into a slumber before he heard a cloaked man with a peg leg whistling a lullaby familiar to his ears.

The man was dragging a heavy bag to his boat. His sailors helped with the cargo and once they were done with the loading, the ship sailed into the sea.

A few hours later, the boy was still staring at the sailing boat. The boat went full streams ahead, and hours later it made its way back to the shore. A few moments later, the litter was torched to flames by flaming arrows shot from the stern into the boat of the floating litter. Bow was fascinated, and waited patiently for the men the in the boat to return. He thought they could be of great help to the woman he left under the willow tree.

A gang of boys broke into the alabaster gates behind the cottage and stole a few berries and tomatoes from the enclosed fields, and rushed out of the premises before the boat could return.

‘Hey you, you have to get away from there before the Whistle Man returns,’ said one of the boys.

‘Yeah, come with us or else you will be toast,’ another replied.

Seeing that the boys were about his age, he followed them. They ran into the market place where a few fishermen were drinking beer and playing a game of cards. The gang shared the stolen goods with them.

‘What you did was wrong,’ protested Bow. The men and the gang looked at each other and broke out into a mirth.

‘Where are you from anyway? We have never seen you around here,’ asked one of the men.

‘I am from the kingdom,’ the boy replied.

The men looked paled, all weary and silenced. ‘I came from the Kingdom, I left with my mom and she died on the way here.’

‘And how did you survive the scavengers?’ asked one of the men.

‘I ran away from them but Mother could not, she would not move. Mother said my father was the greatest fisherman that ever lived, she said he once defeated the Scavengers.’

All off them drew themselves away from him, but stared at him in amazement and fear.

‘He does sure look like him,’ said one of the men from the crowd.

‘Do you think that he is as dangerous as him?’  another one asked with a trembling voice.

Bow drew himself nearer to the men. ‘Do you know my father?’

‘No!’ They all exclaimed in fear.

‘But yes… yes, it could be that we do know your father,’ said one of the men. ‘Your father could be Bow, the Whistle Man. He lives in the cottage. I’m afraid he is no longer a fisherman or a scavenger slayer, but rather a mad man.’

‘You see, one faithful evening the sea swallowed him and a few days later he came out the mouth of a humpback whale drenched in seaweed,’ said one man. ‘When we uncovered him he had a missing leg and a missing eye. His lover, who could be your mother, left him because he turned into a monster ever since.’

‘That’s not true,’ the boy denied.

‘Okay, maybe he is not a monster, but he is sure mad,’ said another fisherman. ‘He no longer draws fish from the sea, he goes around whistling a depressive lullaby about his lover while picking the litter around at night with his sailors and burn the litter into the sea, like how mad people do, and all because the sea castrated him.’

‘That is a lie!’ the boy protested and left the men enraged.

Later in the evening Bow heard the lullaby whistled from afar and he chased after it. And when he drew closer, he saw a shadow of a man from behind. The shadow was big and tall and it dragged a load of litter behind it. When the whistling shadow reached the anchorage to load the cargo into the boat, Bow hid himself into the boat, below the deck in the galley. When one of the sailors entered the galley he yelled, ‘Boss, we have a stowaway!’

 Bow wanted to run but his legs stood stiff like ice. He could hear the Whistle Man approaching. Every stump on the wooden floor thundered as he drew closer to the galley.

The Whistle Man came closer to him, placed a monocle to his eye and investigated the young man. He noticed a familiar piece around his neck and pointed a dagger to the boy. Bow clutched his eyes and shrugged as he looked away.

The Whistle Man slit the pendent open with his dagger. Bow took a deep sigh of relief, he completely forgot about the precious piece around his neck.

‘Sebaste!’ the Whistle Man exclaimed, throwing his dagger to the ground and embracing the boy.  

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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3