As he was practicing a few hacking strokes, the sound of footsteps creaking on the floorboards caught his attention. He limped over to the wall by the door and flattened himself against it, gripping the machete loosely in his right hand, ready to strike rapidly and viciously if necessary. He hit the light switch and plunged the room into blackness, for even though he wasn’t in his tiger form he nonetheless possessed much better night vision than any human. As the doorknob turned, he held his breath, poised to strike, watching with bated breath as a dark-skinned female arm pushed the door open from the outside. Before he could, though, an eerie tingling sizzled across the surface of his skin and burrowed like a thousand microscopic beetles into his flesh. Whoever was coming through the door froze; she felt it too.
‘Put the machete down, William. You’re in no danger here.’
He knew that voice … but from where?
‘Who are you?!’ he demanded. ‘What is this place?!’
Pain savaged his ribs as he spoke, and he hoped that the agony was not coming through in his voice.
‘Put the machete down and we’ll talk.’
‘Answer the questions first, love, then I’ll consider putting it down.’
‘Okay, listen, I’m unarmed an’ I’m alone. Surely your tiger senses are telling you that much?’
‘The alone part, yes. The unarmed part … I’m not sure.’
‘I’ll stick both my hands through the door to show you, all right?’
William swallowed slowly; a dry tightness throttled his throat from the inside and wicked the moisture from his mouth like hungry sand. Adrenalin sizzled in his core, bursting its firecracker strings through his limbs.
‘All right love. Both hands through the door, nice and slow. As long as they’re empty, I won’t remove ‘em.’ Two arms came through the door. ‘Feet too,’ William insisted.
‘You are thorough, ain’t you?’
‘Do it.’
First one foot, clad in a Converse sneaker, and then another, came through the door.
‘You satisfied now?’
‘Come in then, slowly. Real slowly.’
William kept the machete at the ready as the woman walked into the room, but as soon as he saw who it was the weapon fell from his hands and clattered to the floor.
‘Njinga?!’
She stared intently at William with her liquid chestnut eyes.
‘Now there’s a face I haven’t seen since—’
‘April ‘94,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, I know, I’ve been MIA for over twenty-six years. Christ, over a quarter of a century, and it feels like the bloody blink of an eye, it does. One big messy blur of … well, debauchery, nihilism, crushing despair, sex, drugs, booze, blackouts, half-remembered dreams of reality and hallucinations, all blended into this … this chaos of hopelessness. I’ve been … in the shadows. Deep in the shadows, for a long time now.’
Njinga’s eyes frosted over, and her mouth tightened.
‘You’re a coward,’ she said bluntly. ‘A real fuckin’ coward. You just up an’ ran, ran away an’ hid when we needed you most. An’ part of me feels like we should have just left you to rot, to kill yourself, to get to the very bottom of the downward spiral an’ end it all. But things have reached crisis point; the world, William, is hanging like the last winter leaf on a dying tree … an’ a hurricane is coming.’
William chuckled darkly; a dry, rasping chortle parched of even a drop of humour.
‘And what do you expect me do to about that, love?’ he sneered, his voice caustic. ‘You said it yourself, in not so many words. I’m a fuckup, a dried-out, drugged-up husk of whoever I used to be, whatever I used to be … what you all thought I was, at least. I never really was the hero you all wished I could have been, dreamed I could have been, though. Yeah, maybe I got lucky a few times, but luck was all it really was. I’m not special, and never bloody well have been. I could never live up to the dreams of what the teachers wanted, what they hoped for … because you’re right, I am a coward. I’ve run from everything, every problem I’ve ever had, every challenge that’s ever come my way, in the end. It’s just what I do; don’t you fucking well get it by now? Can’t you understand, after everything you’ve seen? You’re right, for fuck’s sake! I ran in ‘94, I bolted, I gave up! Why the hell did you all waste your time and risk your necks to find me this time? You must have almost killed yourselves, and for what, to dredge me out of a polluted swamp like a drowned, bloated corpse? I know what you’re going to ask of me, and the answer is no. Just … just let me go. Thank you for, for saving my life and everything, but … I can’t help you. I never could. Just let me go and leave me alone. Let me drown, let me fucking drown, please.’
Before Njinga could respond, both her and William sensed the proximity of another of their kind. Zakaria walked into the room, his hulking presence immediately dominating the space. His seeing eye sparkled with delight, and broad and white was the smile stretched across his face when he saw that William was awake.
‘My friend!’ he boomed, his unbridled joy melting the tension that had crisped the air with brittle hoar frost, ‘it is good to see you! Praise to the Great Mother, it is good to see you!’ He scooped William up into a bear hug, but restrained the eagerness of his embrace, lest he injure his friend further. After a brief, gentle hug he stepped back from William, still beaming and gripping him by his shoulders. ‘Twenty-six years, my old friend,’ he rumbled, his smile stretched wide and his eye afire with effervescent joy. ‘Twenty-six long, difficult years. Hope dwindled, sputtered like a weak candle flame against a howling wind … and
