Tag: writing

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The Elephant Joust

The gong rang and reverberated, and the gates to the arena ground open. In rode Huan Xi, Imperial Prince of Zhongguo, on his elephant Longwei. Both he and his mount glimmered with platelets of polished leather armor under the afternoon sun, with bronze blades glinting on the elephant’s tusks. Spreading a proud smile across his pale yellow-brown face, Huan Xi waved with lance in hand to the audience that filled the terraced seating to his right.

Everyone on that side of the arena waved back with cheering and hooting of his name. These men and women were all Zhongguans, Huan Xi’s subjects, come to see him joust for the prize he desired more than anything else. From the lowermost seating there watched the Empress herself, his mother, with a bright pink robe of silk and cherry blossoms in her bun of graying hair. Her eyes twinkled with both Imperial pride and maternal love, but Huan Xi noticed her wringing her hands together with nervous anticipation.

He would make her so proud. This he swore by Zhongdi, Lord of all the Heavens.

Another gong rang from atop the arena’s far end. Afterward there thundered exotic drums as an opposite pair of gates began to part. The right side of the arena fell silent, but the spectators seated along the left erupted into cheering and chanting in a very different language. These other people, dark brown-skinned with brief garments of white linen, hailed from the ancient kingdom of Khamit far to the southwest of Zhongguo. On their lowest seating was their old Pharaoh Kahotep, with his blue- and gold-striped crown and braided goatee. He flashed a smirk in Huan Xi’s direction.

The Prince of Zhongguo searched the Khamitans’ ranks for a glimpse of Berenib, the Pharaoh’s lovely young daughter. It was over her hand that the joust had been arranged, yet Huan Xi could not make her out anywhere. He could not even find her next to her father or any of his officials. From what he knew of her character, she did not seem like the type of woman who would avoid the sight of blood in the arena, but he was at a loss to explain her curious absence otherwise.

Maybe Kahotep had meant to present her only after the event, for whatever reason. Regardless, as long as Huan Xi had the memory of Berenib’s exquisite beauty in memory, he did not need to be reminded of why he fought.

Longwei the elephant raised his trunk with an anxious rumble. Huan Xi patted his brow while whispering the most soothing words he could muster. In spite of their size, elephants could be skittish animals, but the Prince had to wonder what had intimidated his steed all of a sudden.

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Mark of a Muvhimi

Nyarai crept through the tall grass with her hunting bow in hand and an iron ax by her hip. Her tawny halter-top and skirt, both banded with wavy brown stripes, further hid her within the yellowed savanna. Perspiration dripped from her brow, chilling her dark umber skin in spite of the baking afternoon sun.

The other Vavhimi had chosen her too young. No way in Mwari’s name could Nyarai do this and survive.

Ahead of her, the stegosaurs ambled in the field amidst scattered aloe and cycad trees. Any single one of the lumbering giants could feed all her neighbors back in the city, with the pebbled hide providing shields for the Mambo’s royal guard. The pentagonal plates that shimmered like copper on their backs would bring in a fortune from merchants in all directions. So would the ebony spikes glinting at the tips of their tails…if they did not impale Nyarai first.

No, she could not let her fears drown her hope. She was a Muvhimi, a hunter of the Vazhona nation, and she could not let her peers down.

Nyarai slipped an arrow from her quiver and laid it atop the bow, aligning its head with one of the stegosaurs’ rumps. On the far side of the field, the savanna gave way to a woodland of mopane trees where the other Vavhimi awaited. They had sent her not to kill any of the stegosaurs, but to drive the herd into their trap.

It was a simple, classic strategy when described out loud. Nyarai could only plea to Mwari the Creator, and to the spirits of her foremothers, that it would be as simple to carry out.

She drew her bowstring with tender care, not letting it creak. The bow still wavered in her clammy grip. The stegosaurs lowed and grazed, and she prayed in murmurs that they would not smell her.

Nyarai let go.

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The Case for African-American Reparations

This was originally a paper I wrote for a Sociology course over at UCSD back in 2012. Even after the passage of several years, I still consider what I articulate in this paper to be representative of my current views on the topic.

Are Black Americans owed reparations for the oppression they have suffered throughout American history? Many if not most White Americans would say no, whereas many if not most Black Americans would say yes. The question of reparations is a racially polarizing one, and since Whites form the demographic majority and socioeconomically dominant ethnic group in America, this has meant that reparations have never been paid. This payment is long overdue. Since Black Americans have suffered from and continue to suffer today an ancient legacy of racial oppression, a reparations program for them is long overdue.

The most commonly cited objections to reparations for African-Americans’ suffering are that slavery ended too long ago and that many White Americans’ ancestors never owned slaves, therefore absolving Whites as a collective of any responsibility over the issue. The former argument would be valid if slavery was the only historical crime against Black Americans and if modern Blacks did not suffer from its effects, but neither of these conditions have been met. The oppression and unfavorable treatment that Blacks received continued even after slavery was formally abolished and still affects the modern Black experience. As for the second argument, while Whites as a whole may not have been guilty of slavery, they have benefited from a racist social hierarchy that favored them over Blacks. This is not a question of making White people feel guilty about what a few of their ancestors did over 150 years ago. The fundamental issue is one of healing a larger legacy of racism that elevated Whites about Blacks.

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The Battle for Djamba

Our heroine, Queen Butumbi of Djamba, shoots from the back of her tame T. rex Tambwe.

Tambwe craned his big head upward, inhaled through his nostrils, and let out a deep rumbling growl from his mouth of blade-like teeth. The tyrannosaur’s tail swayed behind him as he sat crouched within the wall of jungle that reared alongside a moss-stained road.

Butumbi, Queen of Djamba, stroked the deep green scales on her mount’s neck while murmuring an incantation to calm his temper. She could hear the giant predator’s stomach grumble with a hunger for fresh meat that had grown over the past week’s southward march. With a voice as soft as that of a mother reassuring her child, the young Queen promised Tambwe that he would have more than enough to gorge on before sundown.

Other than the normal chorus of bird squawks, insect chirps, and monkey hoots, the jungle lay silent on both sides of the road. Even from atop the saddle behind her tyrannosaur’s neck, Butumbi could see little of the force she had laid out before her. Armed men and women lay beneath the cover of undergrowth and creepers, as did the packs of feathered deinonychus that had been hired to protect their flanks. Only the tiniest glint of iron weaponry and jewelry of gold and copper could betray anyone’s presence.

It was as Butumbi had planned. The forces of Ntambwa would not know what struck them until it was too late.

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Staff of the Red Sun

An illustration I did for my short story “Staff of the Red Sun”.

Egypt, 1942 AD

The limestone door ground over the gravelly earth as the diggers pushed it open. The grating noise would not have been the most pleasant for most men to hear, but for Friedrich von Essen, it was music to his ears. After untold weeks of watching these chattering Arabs gouge a pit out of the desert beneath the roasting sun, he had found it at last.

The thought of presenting this discovery to those fools back in Berlin made him smirk with glee. Even the Führer himself, eager as he was for any leverage in the war, had shown a bit of hesitance before sponsoring the expedition. Even if Friedrich ended up finding nothing inside this tomb, he had at least confirmed its very existence.

A faint yet acrid smell flowed out from the black depths beyond the doorway. The Arab diggers jumped back with startled shouts and whimpered among themselves, their normally bronze faces slightly blanched.

Underneath the howl of the wind, Friedrich thought he had heard a soft whisper. It must have been one of the dozens of men behind him, but it did make the back of his neck prickle.

“What do those inscriptions say, Professor von Essen?” Colonel Hermann Schmidt pointed to the string of hieroglyphs chiseled into the entrance’s lintel.

“Oh, those simply identify the tomb as belonging to Nefrusheri,” Friedrich said. “Why?”

The colonel’s tanned face had turned a shade paler as well. “I only wanted to make sure it wasn’t something like a curse.”

“Oh, don’t believe such sensationalist rubbish. Curses aren’t as common on Egyptian tombs as you think. You might find a few in tombs from the Old Kingdom, but that’s about it.”

“Fair enough, Professor. I would’ve expected a fearsome sorceress like your Nefrusheri would have something protecting her resting place.”

Friedrich glanced back at the darkness within the tomb. If the departed sorceress truly possessed the sort of power he sought, it would seem strange if she had not taken measures to defend it somehow. What those would be, he could not even guess.

On the other hand, he could not let fear and paranoia keep anyone away. Not when there was a war to win and a world to conquer.

“In case she does, bring your men over here,” Friedrich said. “We’ll go in together.”

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The Black Mask

A flute whistled in the dead of night.

Catherine jolted up from her bed and panted. Only the glowing blue digits on her clock, which read 11:22 pm, broke up the bedroom’s blackness. It was still enough light to show the contours of the plastic dolls and stuffed animals she’d kept from childhood on her shelves, and shine off the posters of pop stars off her wall. Not one of the shadows cast faint against the pink walls moved.

It must have been some kind of bird. With a relieved sigh, Catherine sank back into bed.

The flute whistled again.

It had a shrill and hoarse voice, almost like those tribal flutes they played for jungle movies. It sounded at the same time a reddish light flashed from her phone’s screen. Bolting to the desk where she kept it charged, Catherine unplugged it with one yank and hammered away its password. A text message appeared in blood-red letters with a scratchy font like scars:

TELL HIM THE TRUTH.

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Blessing of the Moon

Faraji wiped the last speck of blood off his scimitar and held it up against the campfire’s light. Even after all the nicks and scratches it had collected over years of combat, it still shone with an almost heavenly brilliance. The inscriptions in its blade, written in cursive Aradyic, invoked the Moon’s blessing of strength towards whomever wielded the sword. Thus far it had never failed Faraji, and certainly not during his latest raid.

Around the fire, his warriors bantered, joked, and laughed with each other, as warriors across the world always did when resting at camp. They were all Kiswahans like himself, dark brown-skinned with off-white kanzu tunics and turbans over their black, tightly curled hair. In truth, their physical features differed little from the miserable heathens they had yoked and manacled to one another in the darkness at the camp’s edge.

But those sad-eyed idolaters, naked but for loincloths of woven bark and jewelry fashioned from cowrie shells and dinosaur teeth, were not lovely to look at. Even the nubile young women in their ranks had their skin blemished with hideous scarifications of pagan significance. They may have been kin to the Kiswahan race by blood, but the old superstitions they clung to made for a very different, barbaric culture.

A faint yet high-pitched cry, almost like some kind of flute, whistled from the black depths of the surrounding rainforest. Even with the nocturnal humidity and the campfire’s warmth, Faraji could not deny the chill prickling his skin from that eerie noise. He had made a whole career of penetrating these jungles from the east, braving an immense variety of beasts and heathens alike. But never in all his previous ventures had the Kishawan slaver heard such a sound.

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The Peril of Kush

For the first time in his life, Teriahi laid one foot upon the summit of Amun’s Mount. His leg wobbled under the burden of nervous shame the instant his leather sandal contacted the sandstone. Only royalty and priests could set a single step atop this ancient plateau, the first outcropping of land the Creator had drawn up from the floodwaters of primordial chaos. Any mortal commoner, even a captain of the armies like himself, would profane this hallowed ground with his mere presence. So had maintained generations upon generations of tradition.

Nonetheless, desperate times called for desperate measures. And seldom before had times been so desperate for the people of Kush. Amun, in all his divine wisdom, must have understood that. And indeed, despite Teriahi’s worst fears, the creator god had not dissolved his leg or inflicted any other punishment for his trespassing. He sighed in relief.

His soldiers marched behind him, some equipped with gleaming bronze spears and ox-hide shields, others with the bows and quivers of arrows that were the pride of the Kushite nation. The hides of lions and leopards, the ruling predators of the desert, fluttered in the wind over their linen loincloths. They would need all the bravery of those beasts, and then some more, for the battle that awaited them.

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The Perfect Shot

Rain pounded like drumbeats onto the thatched roof of the bamboo observation tower. It must have been the seventh or eighth rainfall Sid Francis had seen over the first two days of his safari. Supposedly, this was what passed for the middle of the dry season deep in the Musiyinti country. Small wonder they called it the rainforest.

Sid swatted away at a mosquito which whined dangerously close to his face. Already the little devils had marred his pasty Kanuck complexion with a bombardment of red bumps, each and every one of them an itching reminder of his lacking the foresight to bring bug repellent. Or maybe he had simply been too cheap. Sid had already spent a third of his living on a suitable new camera and another third on reaching here from halfway across the world. It was too easy to gloss over a variety of important little details in that kind of hassle.

“Are they here yet?” Sid muttered as he continued to defend himself against the insect’s harassment with his bare hand.

His guide, a lithe Bayinti named Masengu, looked up from her handheld GPS to give him a disappointed frown. Her ebony-dark skin, though decorated with lines of traditional scarifications, remained fragrant with repellant and thus enviably unblemished by the bugs. Not to mention, the brief strips of bark-cloth she wore over her bosom and waist would have made for more comfortable attire in this humidity than the heavy khaki getup Sid had to put on.

“Ah, fuck.” Sid would have gotten out his pack of joints to smoke away the boredom, except he had no idea whether the scent of burning cannabis would attract or scare off the local wildlife. All he could do was continue to stand here on aching feet, watching for anything bigger than a colobus monkey to show up in the mess of foliage, mist, and shadow that was the surrounding jungle. And maybe glance at his guide’s curves a few more times from the corner of his eye.

On second thought, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

“Ever thought of a modeling career on the side, Masengu?” Sid asked, tapping a finger on his camera.

She thrust at him a glare almost fiercer than the tranquilizer rifle she had slung over her back. “You mzungu men are all the same.”

Sid laughed, not the least offended even if she had almost said the local word for white people like a slur. “It’s a compliment, trust me. A good shot of you would fetch as much as any tyrannosaur. Of course, I’ll split some of the profits with you, 50/50. What do you say?”

Masengu rolled her eyes with a smirk. “As long as you don’t ask me to pose nude.”

A deep rumbling groan resounded from the jungle. Except for the pulsing of his heart, every muscle in Sid’s body turned stiff as a rock from the surprise.

“They’re coming after all.” Masengu was looking at her GPS again. “It’s a whole herd. Get ready, and stay quiet.”

Bending his legs down at the knees, Sid held his camera to his eyes and peered through the lens. In spite of the mist and falling sheets of rain obscuring his view, he could make out the shaking and waving of vegetation down in the jungle understory. Not even the raindrops’ pattering on leaves and the tower’s roof could suppress the crackling of branches, or the rumbling and bellowing calls which made Sid quiver with every note.

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Punishment

Trumpets blared like the cries of elephants, and drums cracked louder than a thunderclap. The populace of Waset, capital of Egypt, poured out from their mudbrick houses to gather alongside the city’s main avenue. Fathers hauled their sons onto their shoulders, mothers let their daughters stand beside them, and youths stepped aside to make way for the elders on their walking sticks. Shaded by palm trees and the rearing statues of gods and past rulers, the people waited with buzzing eagerness for the procession’s arrival.

None of them looked behind to notice the white-robed stranger.

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