New to the story? Start at the beginning.
Previous Chronicle: Nyako gives Zag over to the imposing Albert Damba who is surprised but impressed that Nyako can deliver. Damba puts Zag in handcuffs and Nyako leaves him in the care of Mr. Nko.
Wait here.
Mr. Nko spoke to Zag and walked out of the room. Zag watched him leave and shut his eyes tight. Probably the tightest he’d ever shut them.
Zag’s perception and memory of sounds were immaculate. He could hear sounds that many other humans could not. His mother usually walked around the village compound barefoot, and he could tell by the sound of the blood rushing through her arms whether she was having a good day or feeling stressed about something. For him a sound consisted of a multiplicity of character traits: Some sounds were colorful, others were overbearing or unnecessarily aggressive, and others were stale, like water that had been stagnant for too long. The colorful sounds came in different spectrums whose colors depended on their different characters and expressions.
Dainty pink rain showers became bursting red pellets of rain pounding against their door and splashing red bursts of paint into the house. A hissing blue candle flame sounded like a cobra snake, ready to make itself bigger and more dangerous, and strike. Zag could recall exactly what sounds accompanied important events in his life. Even though he wasn’t able to describe the subtle differences, he knew them well.
Before he was born, his mother used to sing to him:
Son of thunder
Rule my world
Become my king
Like the storm
Son of thunder
If you break my heart
You’ll still be my king
My star
He remembered how the song felt, and what images it created in his mind. Whenever she sang, it was as if a steel rod was being pressed against his back and he could straighten up against it. He felt a surge of energy rise from his core, up his spine, and spew out through his head into the space around him. The spewing out created colors all around him: turquoise mixed with orange that swirled together and spun faster, becoming a tornado that made his little heart beat faster.
The fluids inside his mother’s womb sounded hollow and rushed like a fast-flowing stream had different fluids flowing through it: the thick oil brought a deep, cavernous boom, and gave way in this amniotic dance to spring showers that sounded like brushes sweeping against the wall. The sloshing and slushing as she moved around hit his ears like the gyrations of a cement mixer. They created a drone that pulled him into a deep sleep. His favorite sounds were the gentle streaming and trickling from the top when she was lying down. The sound was more like a slush at first then became a soft trickle that sounded like the drizzle just after the rain. Enough to sound heavenly, not enough to get you wet if you walked in it.
The day of his birth brought with it sounds that he had not heard before. First, an almighty clash of a thousand cymbals, followed by the first of a million horse-kicks that tore into his eardrum and sent pulses of electric power pounding through his skull.
The force that pushed him forward was like a metal grinder against his back and was matched by a vortex that pulled him outward with the ferocity of a wildfire and the tenacity of the jaws of a lion that hadn't eaten for ten weeks. With every inch of movement forward, the vortex gnashed and scraped its claws against his skin until he could no longer bear it. Everything within him wanted to shoot out of this cacophony, so he tensed and pushed with everything he had. His pushing and the vortex’s pulling clashed and fought for supremacy but reached a deadlock when it had been sixteen hours of labor. Finally, they both tired and surrendered to their natural rhythms until, at last, their frequencies resonated and started moving together. They pushed and pulled together in sync with the screams and heavy breathing from his mother, the waves becoming a tsunami until Zag’s head emerged victorious into the Namanga air.
Then the sounds changed. Familiar sounds that he’d heard before surrounded him. They were harsh at first but he soon enjoyed the clarity. If there was one thing Zag loved, it was clarity. One particular voice sounded twice as clear as the rest. When she made her sounds, he felt the steel rod strengthening on his back that he’d felt when he was inside, and he saw her colors in his mind: turquoise mixed with orange swirling together, but this time not building up into a tornado. They assembled themselves into a field of flowers that smiled back at him.
Today, in handcuffs, in Mr. Nko’s prison house, whenever he felt afraid, he would close his eyes tight shut and remember the steel-rod feeling, and the turquoise-orange colors of the field of flowers - they reminded him of Mama’s voice.