01

  Is There Anything Left of me to Lose?

  Zalika could remember the morning two years ago, the day her mother left. It was just after her sixth birthday. The naming ceremony, when her name would be presented to the elders, was just a handful of days away. She would have become part of the people, known to all by her own name. The Janjaweed had heard a rumor that riders would attack a village to the south. Her father, Salahuddin iben Yusuf, named after a Great War leader, had ridden out to help defend our neighbors, along with most of the other men of the village.

  Zalika and her mother were collecting maize west of town when they heard riders approaching. These were not the Portuguese that had plagued them off and on for as long as anyone could remember. These pale-skinned men, whom Zalika thought at first to be ghosts, attacked without warning. They took everything they could carry and destroyed the rest. Even their speech was hard and broken-sounding to hear. Running through the field after her mother, Zalika watched as her friend Dayo was carried off by one of the riders.

  “Come back to us, child.” She was not sure she heard it. With the echo of a pistol shot ringing in her ears, the sulfur smell of smoke, and the wide-open eyes of a man filling her senses.

  “Zalika, come back to us. Please come back to me, my child.” Startled, she screamed and struggled as she became aware of being held. No, let me go!!!

  “It is over, my child. You are safe now. I …” Zalika clung to her father, sobbing in his arms as she came back to the world.

  Their village was nearly destroyed, and the raiders were gone. Zalika was standing on the edge of the field when her father found her staring at nothing in this world, and a pistol in her hand. At her feet lay her mother, her brother, and the body of what her father called a Dutchman. She had shot him while trying to defend them. Most of the fight would never be more than a blur of noise and smoke to her, but she would never forget the look in his eyes when the bullet struck him.

  Like his father before him, Salahuddin was a traveling merchant. He came to this village as a young man and built a small business. He had to travel some, but not too much. He practiced Islam and did his best to teach his children the faith. He was also the village medicine man, something that still amazed him. The old medicine-man had changed him forever by showing him how to heal an infected wound. To Salahuddin, that was clearly a miracle, and if it were not the will of Allah, it could never have worked.

  In the days after the attack, Salahuddin worked almost continuously, tending to the people hurt in the attack. He did whatever he could, no matter where he had learned it from. He begged for Allah’s mercy for the dead and his help with the hurt. If the family wanted him to shake a rattle over the body, he did that too. “If it gives them comfort when there is nothing else, how can it be wrong for me to do this?”

  With his duty of tending to the hurt completed, Salahuddin could tend to the body of his wife. He knew of a meadow where the zebra liked to graze.

  Zalika and her father followed the men carrying her mother’s body to the meadow. As she watched her father and the men dig the hole that would receive her mother. How can everything keep going, like nothing has happened? How can we just leave her behind in the ground and go on without her?

  When the hole was finished, her father climbed out and hugged Zalika. “Your mother loved this meadow. Maybe the zebra can carry her spirit to paradise.” Salahuddin wrapped Kaddy in black cloth and bound her with string. He burned sacred incense, blessed the earth, and blessed his dead wife. This was not quite the way of his people, but it was the way of hers.

  She watched as they placed her mother in the hole and covered her with dirt. She cried as her father spoke. When her father asked if she wanted to say goodbye, she could only stand there as light rain began to fall. “You see, even the heavens are crying,” said her father.

  In the morning, the ground was covered in something white. Her father called it snow. The people of the village had never seen it up close and had no name for it.

  “My child, with your mother gone, there is a hole in my heart. There are stories of magics that can bring a person back to life if they are loved enough, and I miss her so much. If there is a chance, I must try. If it is not Allah’s will, he will send me a sign.”

  It started slowly at first, with a story of someone brought back from the dead. Her father asked the man where he had heard it, and then he sought out that person. Salahuddin would follow up on each story he heard. Most went nowhere. He would return, take up his duties, and return to his life, until he heard about a book.

  One book led to another book. With every new book, her father became more convinced that he could bring Kaddyjutu back. “We and they are all children of the book. Why should I not look into their books?” Some of what he found in the books helped him heal the people who came to him for help.

  Now that there were just the two of them, Zalika took on all the chores of her mother. Salahuddin kept busy with his work all day and studied much of the night. When he went to market, he took the excess medicines he had made. If he had room and their neighbors had small crafts to sell, he would take that too. These trips were normally just for the day. When he could, he brought back books, and more books.

  Each new book had to be studied, and its secrets tested. The tests led to experiments, which led to more experiments.

  As his obsession grew, his business tapered off, and her father spent more time in the large hut with his experiments.

  The garden could probably have fed the two of them easily, but Zalika needed help to tend it, and as her father became more isolated, that help tapered off as well, leaving Zalika to forage for ever more of their food in the bush.

  Zalika would bring a meal to her father's work hut, knock on the door, and wait. Salahuddin would grumble, ‘Leave it,’ but Zalika would wait. After a while, her father would come out and eat the meal with his child in the space between the work hut and the living hut. Thank her for her patience and understanding, then tell her of some great new magic that would restore her mother. Usually, he would return to the living hut with her. Sometimes he would send her to the living hut and promise to follow soon.

  Increasingly in the mornings, Zalika would bring another meal, and the scene would repeat. Her father was always kind and gentle with his child at these meetings, but Zalika felt the loss of both her parents. Her father no longer had time to tell her about the poetry from the Quran.

  The more her father isolated himself, the less time the elders found the time to teach her the stories of origin. As the daughter of the medicine man, Zalika could expect to marry well, become a priestess, or even continue as a healer when her children were grown and after her father died. How would she do any of that without her father teaching her?

  Zalika began to feel the magic growing around her father’s work hut. How is this possible? The wards are there, so this won’t happen. Her father never seemed to notice it, and who else could she ask?

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  At first, she only felt it right next to the hut, but she felt it growing. Others must have felt it too, because as it grew, so did their isolation. No one threatened her with any harm. But the help that used to come from neighbors was not there anymore, and it became clear the village quietly wanted them both to be gone.

  “When will you stop and be my father again?” Became a common question Zalika would ask her father.

  “When I have brought her back, my child, or there is once again snow on the Serengeti. Then I will quit.” Salahuddin would then hug his child and go back to work. This, too, became a regular part of the evening meal.

  Now, two years to the day after her mother’s death, the morning brought a steady rain that had her spirits as dark and muddy as the ground. Zalika needed a reason to hope. This was not how she had seen her life. Her father’s obsession consumed everything left of their old life. She still had her child’s name, because her father had simply lost track of everything but his effort to bring back his wife. Even a child of eight knew this was not natural, and nothing good would come of it.

  Feeling old before her time, she looked east. My father’s world has stopped. While everyone else moves on and I am caught in between.

  As the sun set behind the rain clouds, Zalika felt her mother’s presence for just a moment. With the darkness of the night, the rain gave way to snow. Mama, did you ask Allah to send the snow because you know that Father will keep his word? Zalika knew that her father would keep his promise to her and that he would work all through this last night for one last chance at something he was coming to understand was futile.

  As Zalika took a blanket to the work hut for her father. She could see the hut glowing blue with magic energy. She could feel it pulling on her hair and tingling in her feet. How could this be? What are you doing? Thought Zalika. She knew her father was always very careful to keep the hut well protected from stray magic.

  Zalika opened the door just a crack to see what was making all the light. There, she saw her father in the part of the spell where he gathers the magic. How can there be so much magic? It fills the hut like something alive. She saw a young zebra mare in the middle of the hut. That must be the messenger. Will she carry the spell?

  Creeping just a bit further to better see what her father was doing, Zalika was inside the hut, past the wards. When she felt the magic dancing on her skin, it was too late. Her father had released the spell. She saw a flash and then nothing for a few moments, no light, no sound, no tingle of magic, nothing. As her vision returned, Zalika was standing in the middle of the hut facing her father.

  ‘I am in so much trouble now,’ she thought. But her father just stood there, for an eternity in a single moment. When he moved, Salahuddin grabbed Zalika's arms and screamed her name. Zalika was so frightened she wanted to cry, but stood there ready to take what would come. “I have done it,” Salahuddin screamed.

  Salahuddin stared at the woman in front of him, unconcerned by her striped skin covered in short, smooth fur. She had Kaddy’s hands. Kaddy had come back to him, and right now that was all he cared about. He hugged the zebra woman tightly to his chest and cried into her shoulder. “Kaddy, I have missed you so much.” When he released his hold on her, he rushed to the living hut to tell his remaining child the good news, screaming, “I have done it” repeatedly as he ran.

  Zalika tried to apologize to her father. She lowered her head and worked her jaw up and down. When she tried to walk, her legs were too long, and something was attached to her face. When she reached up to investigate, the hands she saw were striped black and white. Thrusting them forward, the arms she saw were striped black and white. "What has happened to me?" Zalika tried to call her father and ask the obvious question, but the squeal she heard sounded incomplete. She struggled with the halter briefly, dropping it and running after him.

  She met her father returning from the living hut, looking terrified, and very close to panic. "My daughter! My child is gone. I must find her!"

  Zalika held a clear image of herself in her father’s arms, but she couldn’t find the words to go with it. Taking him by the hand, she led him to where she had been standing just inside the door. She lowered her head to point with her muzzle. Shook her head and pointed with her hand.

  Salahuddin, hoping she was his Kaddyjutu, did not resist. Looking at where she pointed, he could see his daughter’s tracks cross the wards and disappear. “What have I done?”

  Zalika watched the strength drain out of her father as he fell to the snow, sobbing, “What have I done … What have I done?” She found the blanket she had brought for her father. While covering him with it, she tried to explain that she was his child. The thought was there, but the words were just out of reach. Why is it not enough to be here next to him? She worked her jaw and clicked her teeth while making recognition noises.

  “You are working so hard to say something. It must be important.” Salahuddin said this with a tear-streaked face, looking up into the zebra woman’s elongated face. Zalika nodded and wiped her father’s face clean with part of the blanket.

  “You are not my lost wife, are you?” As soon as he asked, he knew that she was not his Kaddyjutu.

  Zalika shook her head. At least she could do that much.

  “There has never been anything like you before, yet you are familiar to me. How can this be?”

  Listening to her father, Words! Father uses words. I know how to use words. He needs to hear.

  Zalika felt the fur on her back and sides pull as it fluffed to keep her warm. This felt strange and normal at the same time. ‘Cold’ connected with the strangeness of the sensation.

  Father must be cold. Struggling again to speak, all she could produce was “ch ooom iii.” Practically lifting her father to his feet, she pushed him gently towards the living hut. Have I gotten so big that I could carry my father like a child?

  Zalika continued to ponder that question as she built up the fire and brought in more wood. This new body is bigger than I was. It is not hard to use, well, other than the mouth. This body was also nude. I need to find something to wear. Her mother’s clothes were the obvious answer, but wearing her dead mother’s clothing wasn’t a pleasant thought at all. Zalika wrapped a green blanket around herself.

  The more she thought in terms of words, the easier it became. It felt like she was remembering and learning at the same time. It must be the mare’s mind. I, she, we are here too. Zalika found thinking of themselves confusing. I am … did not have a simple answer, but we are … didn’t either.

  Over the next handful of days, Zalika’s speech improved, but not fast enough. She needed to tell her father she was here NOW! Stamping her feet in frustration, why did he not understand that? When she got frustrated or her mouth ached from overusing muscles not strong enough for speaking, she had to take a break and tell herself, Father will understand when he can, and when I can say the words.

  Salahuddin did all the outside chores, explaining that it might be hard for the other villagers to accept a zebra walking upright among them. Zalika did everything inside the hut during the day. She ventured out only at night after the cooking fires died down and the people slept.

  During the days, her isolation was bearable because she could hear and smell the village all around her. At night, when the noises dropped off, all she had was the sounds of the night and the smell of the village. She needed to see others. She felt a need to be with others that came from a place without words.

  Sleeping in the bed she had shared with her brother and sister felt empty without them. Sharing her parents’ bed was not something she wanted to think about. … What happened to my world? Mama, why did they take you from us? I don’t know what to do … What have I become?

  Over the next week, everything got worse. The village elders, while glad to have the Medicine-man back, wanted to know where Zalika was and what had happened to her. Zalika’s need to be part of a crowd grew ever more intense, and she became aware of herself and her father in ways she was not prepared to deal with. Zalika worked every day to speak to her father, often frustrated to the point of stamping her feet. Why does he not hear me?

  Her father seemed amused at her attempts to talk to him. Until the day when Salahuddin finally heard the message in words too clearly to be anything other than. “Father, I am Zalika, your daughter.”

  Salahudin stood there, struck dumb for a moment. He wanted to be angry that this zebra woman would play such a trick on him, but he knew better. He wanted the joy of having his daughter in his embrace. He could not hide from his horror that this was his daughter, blended with the zebra mare, and it was his spell that did it. On some level, he had known it since she showed him her tracks crossing the wards.

  “Zalika, child, I love you. Can you forgive me?” Hugging her and sobbing, Salahudin put thoughts of how this would affect his entry into Paradise and how the village might hasten that day, for them both, out of his mind. Right now, all he wanted was to be a father, hugging his child.