An Earther in the Fonlands – 1
“Is this Earth?” Zacchaeus asked as he stood from the grass in the swamp that was alive with what he assumed to be fireflies or other bioluminescent insects. The water of the swamp that he had fallen into glowed as though the swamp was wired with hidden lights. Zacchaeus stared around himself in complete wonder, his mouth hung open and his eyes were wide. “This is nice, it’s like a movie.”
He looked at the two people standing with him in the grass and there were orbs of light swirling around them and the angelic wings at their backs. There was the woman who had pulled him from the swamp when his sublime ended and he found himself hovering over the middle of the glowing swamp before he fell into it. She was a tall and elegant looking woman in a miniskirt that exposed her shoulders, and her skin was dark brown, practically black in the glowing night of the swamp. She had pristinely smooth skin and her hair was a stiff, unmoving afro that came to multiple peaks and sat fashionably on her head. Her wings were feathered like a large bird and Zacchaeus shook his head with wonder at the sight of her.
The man with the woman looked like a man with golden skin and his wings were opaque and rounded at the edges. He wore a similar skirt that the woman wore, and he looked much more skeptical than the woman.
“You gone tell us who you is and why you here?” the woman asked and she was looking between the golden man and Zacchaeus.
“I’m Zacchaeus,” he said. “I didn’t mean to come here. This thing on my hand brought me here randomly. I don’t even know where I am.”
“Don’t lie, Earther,” the golden man said. “Ain’t no magic on this Earth can make somebody show up here like you did. And I don’t feel no essence off you.”
“So this is Earth, wow,” Zacchaeus said. “And y’all sound southern, we must be in the US. But why y’all got wings? I ain’t never seen people with wings.”
“I’m Coffey, this Lofet,” the woman introduced them. “This a safe place. We ain’t slaves in here.”
“Slaves?” Zacchaeus said with surprise in his voice. “What year is it? Black people still slaves here?”
Coffey nodded solemnly. “I been free here for a little while now, maybe close to a month. Lofet, can we help him? We can’t send him back out there to get chained up.”
“What if the white Earthers sent him?” Lofet asked. “Worse, what if some other Fonlanders sent him. You ain’t been here long enough to know everything we deal with here. When things don’t make sense like this, it can only be one thing doing it. Lêgba.”
When he said the name, Zacchaeus watched the orbs of light stir around Lofet like they reacted to the utterance of the name. Then, one of the orbs of light circling Lofet began to swell and flash and made Zacchaeus shield his eyes with a hand, and when it was about the size of Coffey, a woman with brown skin in a skirt like Coffey’s appeared standing next to Lofet. She was brown where Coffey was black and Lofet was golden.
“What is going on?” the woman asked and she seemed out of breath. “I was on the other side of the swamp and there was a wave of water over the bank that flooded some houses out that way. And then there was talk about Lêgba, everybody heard the name and putting two and two together. He here?”
“Who is Lêgba” Coffey asked.
“Sene,” Lofet explained, “this mysterious Earther was the cause of the commotion. He said he landed here by accident.”
All three of the winged people looked at Zacchaeus and he seemed to be locked in a internal conversation. They stated at him skeptically.
Eat them! the Needy had been screaming for a while. These things are different from the humans I eat on our Earth. I can smell them, they smell so fresh and delicious. Eat them Zacchaeus!
Calm down, we can’t just be eating things. What if we piss something off and they attack us? You ain’t as strong here as you are on our Earth, I can feel it. You ain’t your whole self here.
You are right, the Needy grumbled angrily. But I need to taste at least one of them before we leave this place. Promise me Zacchaeus!
I promise, now shut up, they looking at me.
“I know it’s strange,” Zacchaeus said with his hands up, hoping to show that he was no threat to the three winged people in front of him. “It was strange to get here, but I promise, I don’t know no Lêgba, didn’t nobody send me here. I just happened to end up here out of all the universes there is out there. I can leave right now if you want me to. I just gotta push this button on the thing in my hand. But I’d like to know more about this place before I leave. I can tell y’all about where I’m from.”
Coffey seemed very interested in speaking with Zacchaeus and she convinced her companions to sit with him on a log and converse.
“What plantation you from?” she asked him.
“I ain’t from no plantation, Ms. Coffey,” Zacchaeus said. “Black people ain’t been slaves where I’m from for a very long time. What year is it here?”
“It’s 1780,” Coffey explained. “You free? You from up north? Or you from down in Florida, in that freetown.”
Zacchaeus sighed. He wasn’t sure how to explain his situation and his mind was reeling from the fact that he was talking to a runaway slave with wings on her back.
“This gone sound crazy, but where I’m from, the year 2022, and slaves don’t exist like it do here. Every place you go is a freetown. How they still got slaves if black people got wings here? Can’t y’all fly away.”
“The Umbatia are not black Earthers,” a deep voice said that seemed to startle everyone, and then a tall black man, or woman, Zacchaeus could see features of both sexes on the person, with opaque wings at aer back emerged from the dark trees just beyond the long.
“Tiriq?” the winged woman called Sene said. “How long you been out here?”
“I been watching to make sure this mysterious Earther ain’t a threat. It sound like he a traveler from the future of another universe that’s like ours, but no Fonlands, no Divine Essence. Is that why you come here, Earther? For the essence?”
“I don’t know what that is,” Zacchaeus said. “Like I told your friends, I’m here randomly. I don’t even know if my machine meant to bring me here. We didn’t program a destination before I left. We didn’t even know this universe exist. We definitely didn’t know there was people with wings.”
“Either sit down or go on about your business,” Sense said to Tiriq. “I wanna hear what this fella been up to. So how slavery end for y’all? I still ain’t seen it really, I hardly leave the swamp, but Coffey tell me all about her life out there as the white Earthers property. How y’all stop it when that’s the way it’s been, people born into it and it’s all they know?”
“It was a whole war and everything,” Zacchaeus explained. He paused a moment to think how bizarre it was to be the only historian for the history of the Earth of his birth that these people would probably ever meet. He’d definitely never imagined this possibility for his trip to another universe.
He told them about the Civil War, what he remembered about Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement. They all seemed to be listening intently, even Tiriq who pretended not to be. He told them about his life in Mississippi, his family. He told them about the sublime.
“Oooh wee,” another voice from the dark said, interrupting Zacchaeus in his story. A man emerged from the darkness and he was dressed like a man of the time, in dark brown breeches and a long black coat that hung down to his knees. He held a top hat in his hands. He was a handsome brown skinned man and his smile showed his perfect teeth.
“Y’all Umbatia got a lot going on in this here swamp. Tiriq, you only told me about the third heart y’all found. You ain’t say nothing about Earthers from other Earths.”
“Lêgba,” Tiriq said, with obvious fear in aers voice.
Zacchaeus saw that Coffey and the other winged people were just confused as he was.
“You brought Lêgba to this swamp, Tiriq?” Sene asked.
“Ae ain’t bring me here,” Lêgba said. “I go where the action is. And Tiriq told me y’all been looking for a Third Heart for a while. Then y’all found one in the fine looking Ms. Coffey there. Tiriq promised me that heart so I would use my magic to make sure nothing can come into this place. And I can do that. But I’m gone need more than the heart now that I know you got visitors from other universes. Let me take him off your hands. I’ll take the beautiful Ms. Coffey too.”
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