Kai was in a room that smelled of palo santo, white sage and Florida water. She was sitting on her zafu, legs crossed, eyes closed. Three white candles in tall glass jars flickered quietly as part of the altar she faced. The only sound in the room, besides her heartbeat, was the sound of gentle flutes and rhythmic drums. Time felt still. She took deep breaths to the count of 3, and then 5, and then… 10. The more she breathed, the deeper she traveled inside herself. At least, that was the plan. Every day for months, she sat in front of her altar looking for peace. She found things when she went within. All sorts of things she hadn’t expected.
Never peace.
Not yet.
Maybe she wasn’t sure what peace looked like. Maybe, because she had never actually met peace in person, it was hiding in plain sight. But she looked none the less.
Every day.
This time, something shifted. It wasn’t peace turning up after all this time– It was light. The light wasn’t a particular color, but it did take over every part of her mind.
Like a portal.
Without much effort, she surrendered to it. She let it take her where it wanted. Her consent was an inner nod. Maybe it was physical too. Whatever the case, within a blink of her “yes”, her inner being took off.
Zoom!
She was traveling the lengths of her mind, whizzing past this and that. She was going so fast; she couldn’t see what exactly she was whizzing past. She thought it silly and funny that she felt like she was on a roller coaster. She giggled and smiled as her mind moved at breakneck speed. She laughed ever harder that she stumbled into joy, trying to find peace. It felt like a decent trade off then.
In another blink, the whizzing stopped. It took her a few beats to catch her bearings. Once she had, she realized she was in front of a grand red house. The red was the color of a Bordeaux wine or deep red rose. This red was delicious to her senses, as though it encapsulated what “red” was supposed to feel like, more than how it was supposed to look.
The façade of the massive house was shaped very much like a castle. The first thing she noticed was a curved covered porch that extended upward into a castle-like tower, topped with a gold-tipped conical roof. The building was angular in some places; curved in others, and majestic all around as though whomever built it knew that royalty would live there one day. Or that royalty had already lived there—when the house was designed.
Where was she? And why was she here?
There was a stone placard adjacent to curved porch and the gargantuan perron in eyeshot that read 10 Castle Lane. Having that information didn’t add any value to her questions. She also didn’t know how she knew what a perron was.
Her “body” felt light enough to float. And she wanted to float and sight see the entire gorgeous property. But she knew instinctively that she was there to bear witness to something important. It was the kind of feeling that kept her still, rather than explore the way she wanted. Something also told her she would see 10 Castle Lane in person, so she relaxed and let the experience be what it was. She breathed.
In front of her was a driveway that branched two ways. One way led straight to the houses adjacent to and behind the castle house. The other way, baring to the left, led to the opening where Kai was hovering, midair. She was not especially close to the ground, nor far enough in the air to be anything but in the thick of what would be. Being higher up would have been clutch, she thought, because there were so many full, gorgeous trees that lined the moderately wide drive.
It was dark; but she could not know if it was evening or early morning. In the near distance, she could hear the grumblings of men talking and laughing and stumbling up the drive toward the house.
Their presence was jolting. Their energy felt off.
What were they doing here? The men were clearly drunk. Of varying ages. All of them of varying European complexions. Did they live here? Or in the houses behind the castle?
Her questions confused her because she knew they didn’t. But they were walking up the drive like they owned the place—which Kai could feel was going to be a problem. The men headed toward the entry of Castle House. Unfussed, tripping over their own feet and talking loudly as though they knew where they were going and expected, at that time of early morning or late night.
“The sheer gall of it all,” Kai thought.
But.
There was something invisible and powerful in the space between where they were and where they wanted to go.
One moment they were stumbling up the steep drive toward the path that led to the front door. The next moment, the path shifted and became like water. A large orb, the color of the Caribbean Ocean, made itself visible out of thin air and expanded to take over the whole width of the driveway. The drunk men stopped; but it took a while for them to register what was happening. Meanwhile, their slow processing did not slow down what was already a cause set in motion. A line of beings who looked like water came through the large orb. Kai gasped. The blue orb was a portal.
The men’s faces registered fear and confusion. Their eyes wide, they watched in horror as beings they could not comprehend—Kai called them water beings in her head– spoke to the men in a single voice as fluid as their appearance,
“You do not belong here,” the beings said.
And that was that. No sooner than the last syllable of the only sentence was spoken, the drunk men took off running, stuttering and fumbling as they went, too shocked to scream.
Kai giggled aloud, but to herself. The water beings turned to face her. Kai’s breath caught in her throat mid-giggle. Mostly because she didn’t know she could be seen.
“They will be back.” The water beings said. “They always come back because they think might is power. They like to try their might against true power. We will show them and they will see. You will too, Kai of TuStai.”
Without warning, and practically at the same time the water beings finished speaking, there was a loud CRASH! behind them. Kai jolted at the how loud and how long the sound reverberated the ground and the air around them. It was the house. Kai could hear the house crying in pain. It sounded like a mother wailing at the loss of her child. Kai’s confused eyes scanned what she could see of Castle House in hopes she could tell where the wailing, quaking, a vibrating were coming from. Kai turned to face the water beings—
“What is happening?! Is it… the house… that is crying? What is this shaking?”
“This house is alive, yes. She is… a living energy center.” They said.
In Kai’s mind’s eye, she began to see what happened. One of the drunk men from earlier, threw a rock over the far fence of the property into one of the gorgeous stained-glass windows on the other side– out of eyeshot of the water portal and its blue-colored beings. Kai cringed with the sound of the shattering glass and the idea of all that painstaking beauty—ruined with a single thoughtless act.
“Cowards!” She yelled in the direction of the fence.
Finally, the rumbling of the grounds stopped.
Kai took a breath.
Then, in her mind’s eye, she watched the rock that had landed on the gorgeous, tiled floor inside the house, lift itself up and out of the window it entered–in slow motion. At the same time, the thousands of pieces of shattered glass lifted from both the inside floor and the outside pavement as though possessed. All by themselves, the glass re-arranged themselves back into the intricate pattern of its original design—the most glorious red rose Kai had ever seen.
But.
The design was not exactly the same as the original. Kai knew this because in the unimaginable number of places the glass had been broken, where the rose had been smashed to bits, the magnificent, shimmering reds of the rose were now adorned with shimmering gold threads woven within and around the petals. Just like kintsugi.
This was important. She knew it was a clue of something she would need to know later. But she was distracted. Her overwhelm took over every one of the senses she had access to at the moment.
“See.” The water people said in unison. “Might. The people who decidedly called themselves “white”, like to use might as a form of power. It is not power. It is fear they attempt to wield. Fear is the weakest of their master’s tools. It is unpredictable, shallow and only works in bursts. Oshharu Mairahu Nura Osho.” They said.
Kai knew the words. The water beings were speaking TuahStai. The language of her people, The Stai. The phrase means, in its essence, “Fear lights a man’s way to darkness.” Were the water people from TuStai?
Kai’s thoughts shifted, clumsily, as her awareness felt the presence of the original drunk cluster of men returning with more drunk men. They were attempting to be rowdy, but no sounds came from their mouths. Kai could clearly see their mouths moving. She could clearly hear the squeaks of their tennis shoes on the dew-slick driveway. The men were even jogging, at pace, up the drive, giving the impression of confidence. It wasn’t until they were closer that Kai could see their shaking hands held rocks and bricks and shovels and tiki torches.
Kai caught herself giggling much louder than she should have. “They done turned this into a witch hunt…” She said under her breath. “These fools watch too much TV.” She was half hoping the water folk would hear and giggle too, but the space in the air that she had been occupying was oddly quiet. The water people were gone. She looked all around her. She hadn’t noticed them leave. She thought she had eye contact on the portal the whole time.
Until.
The portal shifted.
Then gurgled loudly. The gurgling sound was not of this world. It was more of a hum. And a churning. Like a high-pitched washing machine, but melodic. It sounded like music. It was both pleasant and haunting. Like a siren you wanted to hear go off. And yet, also, somewhat like an alarm clock. Meanwhile, something or someone else was coming through the gurgling, churning Caribbean Ocean blue portal. The someone or something felt powerful before Kai could see a single iota of them. Their aura preceded them. She knew it was a them—as in plural. A different them. Before she could blink, a shimmering lavender mist flowed through the cerulean orb wall. The mist was opaque and thick enough to be misconstrued for smoke. Anyone smart enough would have covered their mouths with a cloth because it looked as though it could choke the breath out of anyone standing in it. The drunk men had long stopped their jogging and had decidedly taken several steps back, by the time the lavender mist appeared. But the mist didn’t want them. Rather than spread out the length of the drive, the mist began to coagulate into form. Rather, forms.
Women.
The mist became dozens of women with deep bronze complexions, wearing the color of lavender so light, it was almost white. Particularly in contrast to the dark of that night. But it was lavender–an ethereal, light purple that was unmistakable. To Kai, anyway. The women wore extraordinarily ornate, light, bright lavender gowns and tunics, silky head adornments, dripping with jewels of every color– from their faces, heads, chests, waists, legs and ankles. Their movement into their pyramid formation, had a jingle sound. Like the Wampanoag women Kai had seen dancing at Pow Wow. The jingling continued until each woman had taken her place in formation several feet in front of the men. When their formation was complete, there was silence again.
The men shivered in place, as they stood–awed and scared. Kai could see them actively processing. They did not run away, but Kai could tell that they wanted to. Maybe they couldn’t run away. Maybe, by damaging the house—or attempting to– and then calling themselves digging their heels in their ignorance by showing up out front. Like they were something? Clearly, they sealed their fate. And these women had come through this portal to have their pound of flesh in return.
These were warriors. Kai knew it with every fabric of her being. But she noticed they held no weapons. Not a staff. Not a gun. Not a crystal brick. Nothing. Just themselves and their jingling, gorgeously draped light purple clothes.
The warrior at the point of the pyramid formation spoke first. But the other women, spoke with her. Their voices were too close to be a call and response, but not quite close enough to be considered unison. When they spoke, it sounded like a vast, haunting echo, but not quite. Or maybe that was just the way Kai was hearing the many women speak at once.
“What are you doing here?” They asked. Their voice was deep, soothing, melodic. There were no sharp edges. Their sound was smooth, like a flowing river of dark chocolate.
None of the men answered. Their lips quivered. Their bodies, visibly shaking.
“Why have you come?” The Purple Warriors asked. Their voice was louder, but still smooth.
The skinny man in the front, the one holding the sad looking, half-lit tiki torch, trembled as he spoked ineloquently, but truthfully.
“We are drunk and bored and… scared. I think. Scared is the word for this feeling. Maybe. We saw some Afri-… Bla-… Nih… he stammered, fumbled, tried to breathe through every word that came through his face. He spoke like he was physically in pain. “…Uh, moving in. Months ago. It’s been quiet. I’ve got some anger I don’t know what to do with. Some guys and I got drunk tonight. We were having a bit of a meeting, I guess. We came here to get this feeling out. To break windows. Maybe set a fire…”
His fractured voice trailed off at the end, as though he were contemplating how he was able to string along so many words in a cohesive sentence he hadn’t planned to make. Stunned, he put his pointy fingers to his mouth, as though he was attempting to cover up something vile on his face.
“When in the presence of the Agoji, only the truth is possible. We thank you for your honesty.” The front warrior said, her words had a smile behind them. “You stated that you and these beings with you are afraid. Of what? Do you have language for this fear you carried here with you?”
The man looked torn about saying the word that came to his mind. If he said what he was thinking, he would be unintentionally speaking for the group of men standing with him. But he would speak a lone.
The contrast of the two dynamics at play on the Castle Lane driveway was not lost on Kai. The Agoji spoke in concert. Each of their voice tones came together, different, but in rhythm with each other– like a choir. These men, together in body– only. And one spoke life to their irrational fear for each of them. A sort of spiritual and intellectual hitchhiking was in play. If disjointed was a group of people. This is what it looked like.
The man battled to put both of his hands over his mouth. His fight looked painful. Each time he tried to cover his lips with his hands, one arm and then the other would stretch in front of the man’s head and then his hands would smack him in the mouth. Each time, harder than the last, as he fought his own body to keep his own mouth shut.
He didn’t want to say it.
He didn’t want to say the word he was thinking. The word he laughed with his buddies about in the privacy of their “meeting”. The word that sparked their presence on the 10 Castle Lane driveway on that night. It was fine to say then. It was fine to say before, when one of them threw the rock, that broke window, that shook the whole Earth beneath them. It was fine then. No harm was going to come to them for saying it. Then.
But now, looking into the glorious faces of the fiercest, most beautiful beings he or they or Kai had ever seen—he knew the word he tried to hide behind his barricaded lips was a dangerous proposition. More than dangerous, it was unfathomable. An impossibility. A death sentence to even think to think it.
Kai, being an Earthbound soul for as long as she had been, and a human, living in a country literally steeped in and founded by a level of ignorance that is hardly imaginable until its experienced– knew what the man was scared to say. Intimately. She looked at the Agoji warriors and then back at the man struggling to keep his silence. She had a taste for popcorn at that moment and wanted so desperately to lean back to relax into what would be a show of shows.
The point warrior looked as if she were growing annoyed with the man’s display. She flicked her wrist and the man’s hands fell from his mouth. He stood like a stick, with his arms pressed neatly and stiffly by his sides, like a soldier figurine.
They asked him again. “What are you afraid of?” Their tone was more gentle this time. But also more booming. Like they added base to their voice. It hit Kai right in the chest in such a way that she, too, was reaching through her thoughts to find her fears. To have her words at the ready, in case she was asked.
With no hands to cover his face, and lips forced apart like a ventriloquist hand was in the man’s back, his word plopped out, like a turd after a very long straining over a toilet.
“Niggers.” He said flatly. Shamefully. His eyes darted to the ground. After it was done, he didn’t dare look any of glorious lavender draped beings in the face. In their first real show of uniformity, the rest of the group of men did the same. They all felt as though their eyeballs were too dirty to look at the magnificence before them.
The Agoji looked amongst themselves in confusion. Then they looked back at the men.
“What is that?” The silence behind their question was dense and tangible, like fog. Kai thought about popcorn again. She really wanted some hot honey butter popcorn. She sighed audibly at the thought of being in proximity to so much magic and not being able to conjure snacks for the live play in front of her.
“You”. The man said, still looking at his feet. “Black. Your skin.” He lifted his head when he finished, as though suddenly, he had remembered the ignorance he had walked over with. Like his ridiculousness gave him a little jolt of gumption. Like, he just then remembered that some distorted version of hate powered his existence. Even Kai heard the tinge of it in his voice. It seemed to her that hate and awe were two sides of the same coin for these men.
“Ah. What you on Earth plane call melanin. The Sie in my skin is “nigger” to you.” She/they did not laugh, but there was a lightness in their tone as she continued. “It is a peril you dance with, little, pale, human. Wanting to be what you are not. Coveting what you cannot have. If only because you cannot see yourself clearly. Are you not nigger too?”
She stepped forward.
What looked like thousands of purple fabric draped arms lifted at the same time to touch the left shoulder of the warrior closest to each of them. The warrior at the point of their pyramid formation then lifted her arm. Even though she was more than a half dozen paces away from the man closest to her, with the power of all the Agoji with her, a single finger touched the top of his hand. In that instant, each of the men turned the deepest, darkest brown, with all of the features, of an indigenous African.
The orb in front of them shifted and settled in such a way that the men could see themselves. Panic took over. They were now the people they wanted to torment. Was this witchcraft? How long would they stay this way? Forever? What would they do? How could they go home to their families… like this?
The Agoji allowed the panic to swell. The men’s minds raced to figure out the damage such a change of complexion would do to their lives and livelihoods and communities and families that had relied on their ability to blend in. In “nigger” skin they would be targets. They would surely be shunned… or worse.
The Agoji flicked her jewel laden right hand and the men’s skin changed again to look like First Peoples. She again, let the mental chatter between the men swell and then flicked her wrist again. The men looked different ethnicities of Asian. Like a wheel of fortune of skin tones and physical features the men kept changing with each flick of the Agoji wrist. Finally, the wheel of skin stopped and all the men looked different. Another ethnicity entirely. And then the wheel spun again. There was a sound to it, but there was a feeling in them that heightened with each change. It was visible in their faces. They each looked to be in varying stages of nausea.
One last time, the Agoji flicked her wrist and the skin of the men turned back to its original pale pallor.
“The line of human you are presently living in lost their connection to the divine body when they sold their souls to have more money. They severed their connection to their knowing, to own people and to craft an industry around the theft of the lives, livelihoods and expertise of those people. Your ancestors ravaged and attempted to destroy the lands they stole for more money. They crafted wars for more money. The born you to become a cancer on this planet for more money. The body you are wearing—the skin that covers it, is a coat. You identify with the coat, because you forgot who you are. You forgot that you came to Earth plane to connect your line, so that you can connect the whole with the whole. You want to break and smack and destroy because of the disconnection you feel. It is pervasive. Selling one’s soul has a price. But really, it is a matter of changing one’s DNA. Your soul is pristine. You are the soul that is living in the body now. You are not this body. You incarnated into it, in part to bridge the lost connection of the line you are living in presently. It is not who you are.”
She flicked her wrist. A golden outline stepped out of the men. Of the golden forms, some looked male, some looked female, some looked both, some looked neither. All the golden shadows looked different than how they looked in their human bodies. The men gazed at their golden selves with wonder.
Their golden forms turned to behold their human forms as if they were meeting for the first time. A few moments passed. The Agoji warrior flicked her wrist and POOF! The men were gone. As though they were never there at all. Except for the cracks of gold threads in the spaces where they once stood.
The Agoji’s arms lowered, and the point warrior returned to her place at the tip of their body pyramid. They then, all at once, turned to face Kai, who had forgotten interdimensional beings knew she was there and could see her clearly. She attempted to sit up straighter.
“There is no war. Humans fight because that is all their survival selves know how to do. There is nothing to fight, because the fight is an illusion. We are here to midwife the peace. We are here holding the space. We cannot be touched. We cannot be held. We cannot be captured. We are not of this world. This world is of us.” They said, their voices, still a glorious choir.
Peace. Kai thought. She had stepped into this vision searching for peace. She sighed loudly, and then a stubborn thought came to mind.
“What about The Derg?” Kai asked, thinking she should have introduced herself to the lavender warriors before sharing her mind dumps.
“What about them?” They said.
“They are here and wreaking havoc. Aren’t they? I have visions of them all the time.”
“Ah.” The Agoji said. Yes. They are here. They are a part of a bigger plan. And like all the other styles of vampires, they must be invited in.”
Kai heard their final word and watched the warrior’s wrist flick. It took only a blink and she was back at home, sitting on her zafu, feeling much less at peace than when she started.
“And so it begins.” Lara said from the doorway. “The Agoji have arrived.” She sounded relieved.
