Recent elections in the country of Zimbabwe have brought freedom to the streets, proving that a military coup doesn’t necessarily portend bad things for a populace. I’m knocking on wood as I write this, but there is cause for optimism.
There have only been three presidents of Zimbabwe including the current, Emmerson Mnangagwa, since the office was founded in 1980. Here’s to Mnangagwa’s prosperous term and nonviolent transition of power to his eventual successor.
Despite the small number of presidents, the country of Zimbabwe has a rich history full of leaders who have shaped the country that is situated between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers.
The Kingdom of Matapa was a ruling dynasty of Zimbabwe. They were descendents of the architects of Great Zimbabwe, the seat of power for the area near Lake Mutirikwe. Great Zimbabwe has existed for centuries and has been graced by sometimes fearsome or fearless leaders. It is an ancestral spot, hallowed ground for millenia that has served as the seat of great men.
When tribes first settled the area, a man was called to the site of Great Zimbabwe, we will call him the Chief, and he is the true founder of the nation that has taken many names over the course of its existence. He fought hard for its sovereignty and he was excited at its moments of triumph over the years; from the protection of the area’s gold mines to the first repulsion of the Portuguese. But Chief has been disappointed as well and even after his death, he haunted Great Zimbabwe, hoping to inspire the leaders and to admonish the poor ones.
Then came Miriro, the second sister, pushed to rage in a family that exalted her older sister, and the result was that she mastered dark arts that allowed her to manipulate the bitter spirit of the Chief. She knew him, had listened to stories as a young girl in her prehistoric village over fire as she ate meals with other members of her community, and she knew that a proper witch could gain control of an ngozi, if she offered it the thing that caused its misery or suffering. And she gave the Chief weak leader after weak leader who failed his people or who put his own enrichment over the well being of his people, and the ngozi was happy to be Miriro’s slave. He used his magics to help her terrorize a region and she was happy.
Until the first Alia showed up and banished her weapon. The witch survived and used various magics that necessitated amadlohzi intervention, and Anesuishe and Isheanesu were both selected to battle the witch on behalf of the family line of the Chief who hated her for desecrating the soul of their greatest forefather. But they could only keep the witch at bay; they could only stop the descendant vessels that she possess to try and break the spell of the first Alia in order to free the ngozi with the ultimate goal of taking her place as the true ruler of the world.
In this, the third installment of the adventures of the brave Chimutengwende, Wendy meets Miriro, and Rhode is there to.
Rhode (very unsurprisingly) Annoys Wendy
Today, it is extremely hot and Wendy really wants a Bomb Pop. Those things have no context in an adult life, but she can’t help but remember hot, summer afternoons in her youth, playing in her neighborhood, then hearing an ice cream truck on her block, and dropping everything to run for it. The Bomb Pop was perfect on those hot days and she eagerly licked at it to avoid the sticky fingers, but there was no avoiding it really, only mitigating the damage. She wants one now, but she has to keep running.
It is a hot summer day, and Wendy can hear an ice cream truck far off in the distance, and she wants to run for it, to get a Bomb Pop and sit next to kids laughing on a swing, but she is being pursued and she doesn’t have time to stop and reminisce.
Since showing themselves to Wendy, Anesuishe and Isheanesu had introduced her to many deceased members of her family line. They were all very different, men and women of various skills and talents who had lived over the course of centuries. And when she allowed them to step into her body, Wendy could access their memories and their various skills and talents. She had a prehistoric uncle who gave her impeccable hunting instincts and extraordinary skills with a short blade that she learned to fashion herself from stone and wood. She had a cousin from the early eighteenth century who was a military doctor and spent all of her afterlife roaming the medical school that she had founded, and she taught Wendy about the human body and even very effective local remedies that were ignored by western medicine.
When Isheanesu and Anesuishe inhabit her body, they always do so at the same time and they give her knowledge of the great magics that have existed on the ancient spot of Great Zimbabwe from its beginning. The knowledge is frightening, magic can be a horror without explanation, but she braved the apprehension so that she could be well equipped against the witch Miriro, who was stirring again and was going after the bitter spirit of the Chief, the ngozi, who would help her rule the world.
About a week ago, Wendy was ambushed at her home as she listened to a deceased ancestor sing old folk songs. The door to her home suddenly burst off its hinges, and Wendy called on her prehistoric uncle who was there in an instant, and she maneuvered like a extremely fast ninja out of harm’s way.
The teenager Rhode was swept into the house with the strong wind that had broken the door, and he stood smiling in Wendy’s living room.
“I just want the ghosts and I’ll be on my way,” Rhode said casually. He looked much older than eighteen, like a handsome man in his twenties, and he was obviously mixed race with his pastel brown skin and the loose puffs of hair that could have been an afro if he put effort into it.
“What ghosts?” Wendy asked from her guarded stance. She had a dagger in position to throw at Rhode to kill him, if he was a mortal man of course.
“The enemies of my foremother, the enemies of Miriro. I will eat them now. Then be on my way.”
Since Miriro had first shown herself to Rhode, the teen had learned many of the ancient dark arts, including the consumption of spirits.
Wendy threw her dagger and it hit Rhode in his left eye, blinding it. He yelled and a strong wind forced Wendy from her ready position and into the kitchen. She slipped out of the back door and Isheanesu and Anesuishe were waiting there for her. She stopped and her prehistoric uncle leapt from her body before disappearing.
“We do not run from the witch or her puppets,” Anesuishe said. She jumped into Wendy and then Isheanesu followed.
When they both inhabited her body, it was like her mind was a ship with three seats in the cockpit; she could converse with them as she piloted her body, or she could give them control of her body. Anesuishe took control in the backyard and she stood Wendy firmly at the back door. When it flew off its hinges and Rhode emerged in dramatic fashion with the contents of Wendy’s house swirling around him like a tornado and his eye crying blood, Anesuwendy (Wendy piloted by Anesuishe) yelled as her body was covered in a spectacular aura, like she was a beacon of white light, and she charged at Rhode, connecting with a shoulder that battered the teen and sent him flying from his feet and back into the kitchen that he had ransacked. He cushioned his fall with winds that brought him back to his feet and forced the fight back outside.
“Miriro said the bitch ghost was like a rhino. Is that you Anesuishe?” Rhode asked sheepishly. “Come and get in my belly. Once you two are gone, I will claim my mother’s true prize”
Rhode stuck a hand in his shirt and grabbed what turned out to be the tail of a glowing, blue snake. He swung it around like a whip and Anesuwendy dodged the dripping fangs.
Then there was a sudden commotion, far off screams that made both woman and man stop.
“It’s coming,” they both said, and the spirits that inhabited both bodies leapt from them, and they stood as a group of five as the giant figure of the Chief wrecked his way through Wendy’s neighborhood and toward her house.
“Why is he coming here?” Rhode asked. It was obvious that he was frightened. The stories of the might of the ngozi were fearsome and Rhode worried that Miriro was not yet strong enough to face him, not if he was controlled by the Red Father.
“Red knows that I will come for what is mine,” Miriro said. She looked to Wendy, Anesuishe and Isheanesu, and she spit at them. “We have to work together to exorcise all that red,” she pointed up at the form of the ngozi that was like a large red man with transparent skin and whose insides appeared fluid with clouds of red raging around and spreading to take over the otherwise clear liquid of his form, “if we don’t, we will all die, because Red knows that we are a threat to his power.”
“I did not know you possessed the maturity to suggest such a solution,” Isheanesu said. “But we know that you are right.”
The two mortals among them stepped back to watch the spirits launch streams of energy at the approaching ngozi, and it roared as it resisted the steady waves.
“Your ghosts aren’t doing anything,” Rhode said, annoyed. “They’re gonna get us killed.”
“Shut up!” Wendy screamed. “They’re not my ghosts you idiot. Do you even understand what’s going on right now?”
Rhode made a face at her and turned his attention back to the spiritual conflict, just as the ngozi was relenting, as it fell and the red of its form oozed out onto the pavement before the group. Isheanesu levitated into the air and he cast a spell that reset the area as it had been before the rampage, and he helped everyone in the area to forget.
On the ground, the red ooze formed into the body of a man, and by the time Isheanesu rejoined the group, the red man chuckled and the clear, giant body of the nogzi was slowly disappearing on the wind.
“Fools,” the red ooze man laughed. “You should have died, you should have let it kill you. Now, you have made a real enemy. One you cannot best.”
The red man dissipated with the last of the ngozi.
“You idiots!” Miriro screamed. “I knew you wouldn’t shoot to kill, and now look. The Red Father is after us.”
They argued and Anesuishe banished Miriro and Rhode from Wendy’s land, which caused them to be violently expelled from the area.
Isheanesu has had very earnest conversations with both Anesuishe and Wendy about enlisting the help of the witch and her ancestor, but Anesuishe does not think it’s a good idea. She suggested something else.
“There is an Alia, there is always an Alia. Wendy can find her, she can help us fight the Red Father.”
So Wendy went in search of the Alia, only, when she found her thanks to the help of her ancestors, and she traveled to meet her, Wendy found herself in the middle of another conflict.
Hence the running, the being pursued. Wendy doesn’t have many friends, but maybe if she can survive the day, she can make a couple new ones; a woman who can read minds and a man who can change the size of his body.
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