La Vitesse

By Kelly Robson

March 2, 1983, 30 kilometers southwest of Hinton, Alberta

“Rosie,” Bea said under her breath, but the old school bus’s wheels were rumbling over gravel, and her daughter didn’t hear. Rosie was slumped in the shotgun seat, eyes closed. She hadn’t moved since Bea had herded her onto La Vitesse at six-fifteen that morning. She wasn’t asleep though. A mother could always tell.

Bea raised her voice to a stage whisper. “Rosie, we got a problem.”

Still no reaction.

“Rosie. Rosie. Rosie.”

Bea snatched one of her gloves off the bus’s dashboard and tossed it. Not at her kid — never at her kid; it bounced off the window and landed in Rosie’s lap.

“Mom. I’m sleeping.” Big scary scowl. Bea hadn’t seen her kid smile since she’d turned fourteen.

“There’s a dragon right behind us,” she said silently, mouthing the words. None of the other kids had noticed, and Bea wanted to keep it that way.

Rosie rolled her eyes. “I don’t read lips.”

“A dragon,” she whispered. “Following us.”

“No way.” Rosie bolted upright. She twisted in her seat and looked back through the central aisle, past the kids in their snowsuits and toques. “I can’t see it.”

The rear window was brown with dirty, frozen slush. Thank god. If the kids saw the dragon, they’d be screaming.

“Come here and look.” (Continue Reading…)

Of the Body

By Eugenia Triantafyllou

When Osarah and I finally lie sweaty in our bed that night, I know that when the three moons align we will have a baby.

Osarah looks back at me. Smiling. The wetness of her face is lined by the cold light of the moon shining outside our window.

She can feel it too. She knows it like I know it.

“What shall we name it?” she asks. She takes my hand and gently kisses my knuckles one by one.

“I don’t know yet,” I lie. I hope she can’t feel my lie like she feels our child coming into existence.

I have thought of a thousand different names for our future children. Ever since our eyes first met. But right now, right at this moment when I should be the most happy, I am terrified.

Terrified of the moment when Osarah and I will hunt down the animal that bears our child and kill it. Will my aim be good enough to wound it without hurting our child? Will my hands shake as I cut its belly open and pry the baby out of its innards, slick with blood?

Osarah wraps her arms around me, sensing my fear. Her heat becomes my heat. Her cheek presses against my shoulder.

“It’ll be all right,” she assures me. “I’ll be there too.” Huddled like this, we let our minds travel to the valley, to a herd of sharpsnoots. Inside the belly of a special one, that’s grazing on the tender night leaves.

Ah, there! We both think. That’s the one. That’s our baby.

Now, we wait.

(Continue Reading…)

The Captive River

By C.T. Muchemwa

It was Siba’s eighteenth birthday, but instead of having a party to celebrate, she was standing by the Zambezi River in a thin, white, cotton slip, shivering despite the hot October sun. It was Commitment Day, the day she would be given to Nyami Nyami, the River God, to be his concubine.

Nearby stood four Basilwizi singing a doleful song, their voices shrill in the still, stifling air. The women looked sinister in their long white robes and headscarves. Around their necks, they wore wooden statues of Nyami Nyami, the signs that they were the chief servants of the River God. Basilwizi oversaw all religious ceremonies of the BaTonga people, including today’s. Every year, in the peak of the dry season, they took a girl to the River God’s lair to appease him before the rainy season. They had done so since the dam wall was completed in 1957, separating Nyami Nyami from his wife, Mweembe; if they didn’t, Nyami Nyami would abduct girls. It was better to sacrifice them willingly than to have the people of Kariba investigating their disappearance. This was the fate that life had given Siba when she was named one of the Chosen as a baby, to die after serving as Nyami Nyami’s concubine.

But the bold will find a way to subvert their fate. (Continue Reading…)