“I can’t believe this stuff you telling me,” Coffey said. She lay on a blade of grass, her wings extended at her back gently wafting in the passing breeze. Lofet also lay on a blade of grass and they both stared up at the sky that was visible through the canopy of the treetops. There were many stars, and a moon that was almost full. It would be a couple of days before the full moon, a time that the Umbatia dreaded because it usually meant increased attacks from the encroaching white Earthers hell-bent on draining their swamp.
“Its all true,” Lofet said casually. “Our life here is just a story for y’all earthers, just like the life I see y’all lead when I go out scouting is like a story somebody made up. But I don’t understand why y’all treat each other like you do, but I guess it ain’t that hard to understand. You black Earthers work hard, y’all build everything, and the white Earthers claim all the reward from it. It ain’t fair, but they don’t think y’all people. That’s just funny to me. Y’all Earther so, ‘scuse me if I’m being insulting, but y’all Earthers foolish. Y’all think ‘cause your skin a different color that make you different. I couldn’t imagine no color system like y’all’s working out here for us Umbatia. We colored different, but we all one family. If we don’t work together, we lose our connection to the life blood, to the Divine Essence, and if that happen, this environment we live in would find some way to kill us off.”
Coffey shook her head slowly. “I ain’t insulted none. You telling the truth. It’s so hard ’cause you grow up like that, hearing people telling you that you less than somebody else ‘cause your skin dark. You ain’t got no real reason to question it, ’til you realize that everybody eat, shit, and sleep just the same and ain’t no man above that. Make you wonder why one man can use another one like a cow or a bull.”
“Ain’t no reason, but they got y’all blacks convinced y’all ain’t worth nothing. But I tell you what,” Lofet said with something like pride in his voice, “ain’t none of them white Earthers got no Third Heart. I done scouted everybody in this area, and the only Hearts I done come across in y’all black Earthers.”
“Cause Pultine was making babies in Africa,” Coffey said. “If I got a Third Heart, why ain’t I making Divine Essence now?”
“Cause it don’t activate if your Ecstatic ain’t pumping and I imagine it ain’t had no cause to.” Lofet explained the Ecstatic gland in Fonlanders that allowed them to use the Divine Essence that they stored in their bodies to wield magic.
“But if I can make myself small like this, didn’t I have to use the Ecstatic?” Coffey asked.
“I gave you my power to change your form. Far as I can tell, your body ain’t producing or processing no essence. I thought maybe it would turn on automatically, or maybe the longer you around us it would just kick in, but it ain’t yet. Maybe you need to make it work.”
Coffey sat up on her blade of grass.
“Help me figure it out,” she said eagerly. “Make me big so I can turn on my magic and make myself small.”
Lofet smiled and nodded, then he flew to Coffey and grabbed her hand, and they both floated in the air.
“Meet your hands with mine,” he said and showed his palms that Coffey met with her own.
There was a flash of light and then Coffey was her normal human size. Lofet stood about a foot taller. Coffey stared at the swamp around her in wonder. It was familiar, but it was so different from this perspective compared to the tiny one in the Umbatia form.
“Using the essence is automatic for us,” Lofet explained, “like using your lungs to breathe. If your lungs don’t work automatically, then you have to think about each breath you take in and breathe out. Using the essence is like breathing, it’s automatic. You felt it. It’s a warm feeling, it’s a buzz or a spark in you and it all come from the Ecstatic. You done had my magic in you for a while, where did you feel it? Close your eyes and remember how it felt and your body will start to draw in the essence around you to store up in the Ecstatic, and then it’ll pump it all through your body as a energy. For us it’s our light that we can use as magic.”
Coffey’s eyes were closed as she listened to Lofet and she followed his directions like guided meditation. She remembered the charged heat that had inundated her body and she felt her pores open like she was breathing through her skin, but she wasn’t taking in air, it was the essence that warmed and electrified, coursing through her body and saturating her cells. With her eyes closed, she focused the coursing energy to her hands and when she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see a glittering orb of yellow-red light that was like Lofet’s but more resplendent, more glittery with light. Lofet was staring at the orb in her hand and was about to speak, when they both heard a strange noise behind them. They both turned just in time to see what seemed to be a gray cloud coalesce over the center of the swap. As it collected, it swirled into a human form and blackened. Then the black began to flow like fabric and revealed a man dressed in khakis and a blue polo shirt with the black cape flowing at his back and a black hood obscuring his face. Soon after he materialized, he screamed as he plummeted into the swamp.
“How did an Earther get into our swamp?” Lofet asked with horror in his voice as the man splashed around in the murky water like he was drowning.
“I think we gotta help him,” Coffey said as her feathered wings emerged from her back. She flew to the man and grabbed one of his flailing hands to lift him from the swamp and set him down on the grass.
“Who are you, Earther?” Lofet asked forcefully.
Coffey knelt down next to the man who looked scared and panicked. He had something strapped to his right hand and he held it close to his body like he was very protective of it.
“It’s ok, don’t let Lofet scare you. How you get here? You don’t look so good. What’s your name?”
“Zaccheus,” the man introduced himself. “Where am I?”
“I ain’t been here long myself,” Coffey said with a chuckle. “But tell us how you got here so Lofet know you ain’t come threatening his people.”
Coffey calmed Lofet enough for them both to sit and listen to the man called Zaccheus, who had crossed universes to splash down in the Umbatia swamp.
PRL Serials 