Prologue

We found them on an autumn day around dusk. Whispering winds had led our cautious feet away from my damp, flooded basement to a small stream that traced through the thick trees behind our houses. The smell of petrichor was thick as the rumble of thunder swept over us.

“Oh hell no,” I whined as Themba stepped forward, their confident flashlight chasing the water’s steps as it danced through the trees into a stretch of the forest my parents always forbade me entry to.

“You know what we gotta do,” they scolded. “We follow the water.” They marched their happy ass into the darkening forest that seemed to swallow their wide strides as they sunk deeper and deeper into it.

Now, what I wanted to do was to leave their stupid ass there and go home, but I knew leaving them to their own devices would be worse, so I begrudgingly followed them. Expletives fell from my lips like breadcrumbs marking the trail back towards the houses in the thin sputtering stream as I grabbed onto the back of Themba’s hoodie.

“If we die, I’m haunting you, and yo daddy,” I spat as we continued.

Through the thicket, we found a small clearing with a murky ass pond (more like a puddle, to be honest) sunk into the center. Themba’s eyes scanned before they began to roll up their pants legs like they was gonna make an attempt to get ring worm in front of me. What got me was that they actually walked their lanky ass right into the puddle, tripped over some shit, and stumbled to the other side talkin’ bout some damn “THERE’S SOMETHING UNDER THERE!” In my mind, I’m thinking “nigga it can stay there”, but what I actually said was “nigga” cause what horror movie did they think this was?

“I’m Serious!” They threw their flashlight to the ground only for the shit to sink into the mud and cast a shadow of the figure in the middle of the water. Themba was right, but not just something was under there, someone was, and they weren’t moving.

The silence was deafening before Themba charged toward the clogged drain on the far side of the pond and I’d trudged into the water before I even noticed and grabbed the body’s wrist praying to find it’s pulse, but that familiar thump never rang out against my finger tip. Themba ripped and tore with all their might to unclog what looked like whole branches from the large drain freeing more and more of the water to flow down the hill and deeper into the forested area.

“They’re dead,” I stammered as the water receded revealing the muddy figure to me as the clouds seemed to clear above me. My heart beat sounded like the beginning of Love Lockdown as I dissociated where I sat. I thought it’d beat out my chest before I heard my father’s voice in my memories.

“In an emergency when someone isn’t breathing, even if you think it’s too late, try CPR,” he’d remind me as he had me volunteer to demonstrate in his CPR class.

I wiped their face clear of any mud revealing their pitch black skin and their white freckles that swirled and dotted them to match the night’s sky. Themba was still clearing the drain when I opened their mouth and began my chest compressions to the tune of Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield.

The full moon hovered overhead, illuminating us as the lyrics whispered from my lips. I stopped compressions to breath life into them myself, and was met with them sputtering to a coughing fit. They tried to turn themselves over, but there were chains keeping them trapped on their back.

Their energy seemed to wane as they settled, their breathing regulating before they sucked in enough air to make the world fall silent around us and released the loudest scream I’d ever heard in my life. Tears fell from their beautiful obsidian eyes as scream after scream erupted from their dry lips. Again their energy waned and their sobs grew quiet and they wept as they watched the full moon overhead.

Themba ran, with his clearing task complete, back towards our houses at full sprinting speed as if he knew what needed to come next. Now, in retrospect, I can’t believe that lanky ass, Gumby ass nigga left me alone in the forest in THEE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, but I digress. There were in fact bigger things at play.

My spirit ached for this stranger in a way I’d never felt before, and I’d never feel again. Part of me knew and understood their screams even though the language was foreign to my ears. They rambled their pain and my heart sank, tears streaming from my puffy eyes.

“Um, excuse me,” I interrupted as gently as I could. “My name is Solstice. Can you tell me what your name is?”

Their lips contorted for a moment, as if their jaw was wired closed, then they opened their mouth and groaned.

“My… name… is Zana,” they struggled in an unfamiliar accent.

“Thank you for telling me that,” I smiled. My tears had dried on my cheeks so I know I had to look crazy in that moment, but I was literally talking to someone covered in mud, so I was chillin’. “Everything is going to be fine, but I need you to tell me if you feel any pain anywhere. Do you understand?”

Zana nodded before taking a deep breath, falling almost immediately into a meditative state. Their calm was short lived as they again sputtered into a sob. “Only pain in my heart,” they cried.

Their sobs continued even as Themba led someone back towards us. “Sol,” he cried out. “Where you at?”

“First you leave me,” I called back to him. “Then you forget where you left me?”

He stepped through the darkness with an unsuspected guest. His dad, Adesanya Morris.

“Now, what the fuck is this?” Ade complained before watching Themba, with a saw mind you, begin his attempt at breaking the chains holding Zana captive.

“We don’t know either,” Themba admitted.

“Their name is Zana, they're conscious and mentally stable,” I reported.

“I’m not confident in that second one,” Zana admitted honestly. “The room is spinning.”

“You sound just like your father,” Ade praised. “And you,” he scolded toward Themba. “Left your friend alone in this creepy ass forest, in the middle of the night, so you can gone and kiss your tv goodbye when we get home.”

Themba was painstakingly sawing at the chains in a futile attempt to free Zana from their prison. They grunted and gasped as they rocked, finally putting a dent into the hard gravy metal.

“Not even listening to me,” Ade grumbled, rolled his eyes, and pulled out his chain breaker, making quick work of every chain except the one Themba was carefully gnawing at.

“When you free your friend here, bring them back to Travis,” Ade ordered, leaving the chain breaker in my hands and strutting away.

“Do you want help?” I asked when Themba started slowing down. He was sawing through the one ankle cuff keeping Zana in place and it seemed he was loosing steam faster and faster by the second.

“Fuck you,” they spat, picking up some speed again, as if powered by angst.

Zana had propped themself up on their elbows, still gazing at the moon as it hovered above us. It’s large pink form captivating them as if they’d never seen the moons light before. Well, I guess it had been a long time for them.

“What year is it?” Zana asked after a long silence (well if you ignored Themba sawing it was silent anyway).

“It’s October 2nd, 2005,” I answered cautiously.

“Two!?” They jolted before their hands frantically scanned their body, as if they were searching for their ID. They grabbed at one of the discarded shackles and passed it to me after wiping as much of the mud away as they could. When I held it up in the moonlight, I could see an inscription carved into the rough metal.

“Walker Property, Bought 8/8/88?” I read aloud.

“Like eighteen-eighty-eight?” Themba gasped.

As if under Kenpachi’s spiritual pressure, the weight of the chains seemed to multiply in my unexacting hands. Not only were they potentially enslaved, but their plantation’s owner had my last name.

The chain finally snapped thanks to Themba’s unnecessary hard work, and he celebrated as if he’d won the lottery, flopping down on the dry-ish ground just outside the small muddy pit Zana and I sat together in.

Zana gently kissed my forehead and held me, as if cradling their child, and rocked back and forth, like my aunties tended to do when hugged. They gently hummed as their tears landed on my scalp, falling from their high chin, and without noticing my tears too began to fall. My arms held them as I climbed into their lap like a toddler struggling to be fully held by their mother. I craved the comfort of their embrace, I sobbed for it. As they soothed me, their gentle rock and soft lullaby eventually drowned out my cries, and my head filled with their calm heartbeat. Before I knew it, I was asleep.