The Mother of Drums by Donley Ferguson

“Prosper, they are coming…”

Instantly awake, like the moment when that voice of power, shouts your name in the twilight hours. You emerge from the black; like Lazarus from the tomb, shivering, knowing that the voice of God called you from death’s edge to lean, precariously, towards life.

The Dalmatian rose from restless sleep, shaking memories from his mind like the obedient dog his master trained him to be.

Rest Bakanibona, there will be time for us soon.

Carefully, he peeled back the gossamer sheet covering him like a thin layer of satin cobwebs. He recognized the Italian Milos sheets and ran his calloused hand, reverently, along the smooth surface. He unsheathed himself from the edge of the bed and placed his feet on the tan Berber carpet. He rose, slow and controlled to his full height. With purpose, he walked to the elegantly framed bathroom mirror in the Le Pavillon Hotel that he occupied to observe his work.

A new face stared back at him.

New Orleans was a grey city steeped in the lore of the dead. It was said by locals that the corridors of the Hotel were haunted by restless ghosts of history. Truth was not far from reality.

He stared in the mirror growing accustomed to his new face. High cheek bones, espresso-colored skin and tight kinky hair. His normal 6’2” height, now, a mere 5’10”. Glancing at the stolen driver’s license on the sink’s edge, he nodded his approval at the dead man’s picture.

Perfect match, except the weight, he reminded himself. Weight was never a factor, but the Dalmatian never dismissed any opportunity. It’s why he had lived long and his master’s enemies had not. Well, that and one other thing.

He showered in scalding water, emerging fifteen minutes later in a cloud of blinding steam.  He toweled dry and stood naked in the mirror marveling, still amazed after all these years. From the groin up he had become Brazil Boisseau, New Orleans native, dark complected, aspiring drummer whose future lay lost in the murky waters of the Mississippi along with his submerged body. The groin down he remained Prosper Baranyanka, the black and white son of the Mwami, the late King of Burundi.

“Wasting time,” the Dalmatian said to the man in the mirror.

Brazil dressed in the second-hand suit he purchased from the Funky Monkey on Magazine Street, ready for Shrove Tuesday.

This era’s descendants called it Mardi Gras.

Brazil surveyed the decorative room one last time, arranged the room keys on the armoire and turned off the lights. He opened the door, removed the do-not-disturb sign, and placed it on the inside of the door knob. He stepped outside of the room with a sun-warmed smile on his face and a rhythmic lift in his steps.

The Dalmatian donned his mask. His master’s enemies would never know he was coming.

 

1692 AD, Burundi

 

“They are coming,” Yasmina gasped for breath.

Their childish dream of escape from Uncle Aristide was proving as bleak as the dry, crackling landscape through which they ran.

It was ill-luck that they fled during the dry season, Prosper thought. The Karyenda drums pounded the tempo of their fate.

Prosper’s heart beat out of his chest thrumming in rhythm with the Inkiranya, the Burundi word for World’s Drum. The Mother, who birthed the human race, arranging the cadence of their lives and the paths of creation. His young body cramped in the stifling heat, like his uncle, it tried to subdue him. His fear for Yasmina drove him forward like he had feverishly driven his hands against the drums.

“Bakanibona, I carry your fear, carefully, like the sacred drums. But you must carry my hope.”

She coughed in the dry heat and clasped his calloused hand in response.

“Like the drums,” she smiled.

The smell of the torches reached his nostrils. Only a man as foolish as his uncle would carry flames in the dry grass.

“The Drum guides the way of the wise.” The Mwami, his father, told him before Prosper joined the Royal drummers and before his uncle had desired the limbs of his sister.

“Fire,” Yasmina whispered.

The light crested the western hills like midnight rising.

Prosper, spun to face his sister. “Remember the drums,” he said looking into her red-irised eyes.

They ran. Fast and fleet like all Tutsi children, like korrigum on eastern hills.

Nonetheless, Prosper knew one can never outrun the Mother of Drums. Nor could they escape the Hutu Hyena, Uncle Aristide.

He looked over his shoulder and missed the incline to the next hill.

Running full stride, he clipped the mound of dirt with the front edge of his foot tumbling like weeds on the plains.

The taste of Burundi soil mingled with the salt of his blood caused him to gag and vomit, splattering the thirsty earth.

He could not protect her.

Uncle Aristide and the men masquerading as caracaras, flew the final paces to where Prosper lay. Yasmina stood between them, brilliant against the night.

“Uncle,” her voice small but clear, “no magic in my hands, only the blood of the Tutsi and the Hutu as Inkiranya decreed it.”

She stretched her arms for him to see, shining arms, white and gold at the same time. The untainted, albino child of the Tutsi Mwami and her Hutu mother, Nahimana. Born a symbol of life for all tribes, unlike her brother, a blemished child, soiled and spotted with black and white.

Uncle Aristide laughed a wretched bark and Prosper’s eyes saw the truth. Uncle did not seek the power of her ‘magic’.  Murder is what he craved.

“Bakanibona,” Prosper shouted her name, a desperate child’s prayer.

“They are planning bad things but God will protect,” Uncle Aristide spat with contempt, citing the meaning of her secret name.

A flash like lightning.

The machete’s edge caught the light from the torches, distracting Prosper from the red gash in Yasmina’s neck.

“Here, a token for you,” Uncle Aristide said with glad tidings.

The machete again.

Yasmina’s hand dropped to the ground, reaching in surprise.

Prosper screamed, feral, the tear of his ankle a million years in his past.  He leapt, a youth of 12 years, with a drummer’s strength against the Hutu Hyena.

Aristide’s kick crunched the center of his chest.

That single strike crushed his sternum like the cracked skins of a brittle drum. Prosper’s ribs collapsed into the hollow of his chest.

He fell with the force of finality.

“Trust the drums,” Inkiranya whispered, sounding very much like his sister.

Pain tore him from existence.

* * *

Prosper resurrected in the cradle of the hill where he had stumbled.  An odd man with a red angular face and long black hair like spun coarse thread sat beside him with a loosely wrapped bandage on his left hand.

The smell of cooked meat made his mouth water.

“Bakanibona,” Prosper managed through cracked lips. Fierce hunger stirred in his gut. He raised himself to a seated position and clutched his chest in wonder. He no longer felt the tear of ripped cartilage or the stab of splintered bone.

“Aristide, ‘The Hyena’, is a beast.” The Red Man said to no one in particular.

He looked to his left where Prosper sat, as if seeing him for the first time.

Prosper jerked his eyes to the ground, his breath forced from his body like the sudden sound slapped from the drums.

“I showed him,” the Red Man gestured towards the seething slab of meat, browning and splattering as it’s juices dripped into the flames.

“I am something worse.”

Prosper desperately wanted to plunge into the earth, to cover himself in the soil of his beloved motherland. Instead, he only whimpered.

“Come, taste your revenge, dog,” the Red Man commanded.

Prosper’s gaze shifted to his sister’s hand still lying near, as he crawled towards the sweet smelling meat. He viciously tore into the flesh, ripping it with his hands, feeling the sting of the hot juices burning his palms. He bit and slashed at the meat, gulping down chunks without chewing. It burned and scalded his throat.

The Red Man stood.

Prosper was compelled to his feet, flesh dangling from his lips, he began shuffling towards the broken promise left on the ground.

“Leave it,” the Red Man chided, “my retribution is not yet complete.”

* * *

Brazil Boisseau tapped his feet in time with the Mardi Gras drums, losing himself in the familiarity of rhythm and history.  Inkiranya, the Mother of Drums, whispered his fate to him.  The Dalmatian choose to ignore it; instead remembering the flavor of revenge, heeding the commands of his master.

My retribution is not yet complete.

“Soon Bakanibona, soon,” the man who was once Prosper Baranyanka said.

The Dalmatian, the dog of the Red Man, was on the hunt.