Originally published in Chicory Magazine Future Roots Issue (2025)
It was not at all what we had imagined, but then again, what of this ancient land was? This was a place at the heart of our myths, our faintest memories of home, yet no one had dared to return. For good reason apparently.
We had never been out of the ground for so long, and painfully our skin had become flaky and rough where exposed to the winds. We laughed dryly at our misfit into this land known as the the Union, a continent our ancestors had fled centuries ago to settle in the Eastern region of the moon Ori. We longed for the sulfuric aroma that rose from the rivers of lava cascading above our home. We missed running through sloping tunnels with our sisters, and baking flatbreads with our mothers. Our folk, people of the East, were once human, but time and fire had made us so much more. Returning to the lands of the humans had been our foolish choice, but one we must see through. Our name is a hum which means good wind that feeds the fire, yet here we are. There can be no good winds in a land so cold. But we’ve come so far. There is no going back.
Planet Earth Memorial Museum of Liberia. The sign stared down at us, indifferent. Birds had shit copiously on the embossed letters that spelled out “earth” in English letters.
What would our sister, whose name was a yelp meaning the land will be taken back, say of this stony box jutting out of the ground like an inside-out crater? This flaccid mountain? We laughed at the stream of insults that came to mind.
Our sister was the only one who didn’t think this trip was a suicide attempt. Our mothers had wept when we told them – we could feel in the earth beneath our feet that they cried for us even now. We sent a hush into the dirt to reassure them, to let them know we had made it safely, but we weren’t nearly strong enough to cast all the way home. When we had left home many moons ago, our fathers had tried to disable the gates from recognizing our song and opening to let us out. They sang baritone, warning the gate we weren’t who we said we were, that good wind was not one of us anymore. The gates could not be fooled so easily. Still, our fathers song broke us in waves as we crossed the sea with our back to the East.
They had warned that our skin would not withstand the air for so long, that we could not be understood by humans, that humans were sneaky and primitive. But we had always needed to know more, to learn the songs of our ancient homelands. The vibrations missing from our language held us back, all our folk knew that. Our commitment to forgetting kept us isolated. The people of the Union did not know we existed. In Old Bambara we are but a bedtime story to seed obedience in little ones. Ori is ours too. The land will be taken back knows this. Our sister was the one who taught us their language, who gave us the maps to cross Ori into Old Bambara, and who told us to ask the bald fisher woman to bring us here, to Monrovia. Our sister had traveled once before too, many years before we were born. But our sister said it’s better to forget Earth. Human history is not our history. Our sister was afraid. Not we.
We walk into the hall and the sound of our feet on the marble is deafening. We flatten our ears but nothing muffles the sound. Luckily it is empty inside, except for a bored-looking teenaged girl with behind a desk. A real wooden desk! We are transfixed by the sheen, the gnarled texture of… possibly oak? The girl begins filing her nails on the desk. Grrrrsha grrsh grrrrsha.
Horrid sound. We clench our jaw and force a smile before remembering that the human girl can only see with eyes. We are completely covered in robes, save for a sliver of my brow above dark glasses. Enough for her to see our skin is much too pale and ashy to be from around here. Hers is the rich color of wet humus, glowing in the sun pouring in from a skylight overhead. A pattern of braids weave geometrically across her head, parted with sculptural precision and gathering together into thick pillars like the ones outside the museum doors. We are glad our own hair is protected from her gaze and suddenly feel nervous. We mentally translate our song into Kolokwa so that she can understand, clearing our throat.
“Hello. We are looking for information on the Climate War Treaty.”
The girl smiles. “Hi! I can point you in the right direction. Are you with someone today?” She looks over my shoulder.
“Sorry. I-I look for information.”
“Don’t apologize, don’t apologize.” The girl speaks in a lilt that reminds us of our sister. She pulls out a device that whirrs, then emits a green light above it. The image sharpens into a hologram. It’s a teenaged boy, who waves at us. The glow, it hurts to look at, but the girl hands it to us. We take it gingerly.
“This is Mariama. She will be your guide through the museum today. You can ask her questions and she’ll tell you where to go, or you can walk into a gallery and she’ll tell you what’s in there. She’s programmed really sweet, not like those other snarky ones. I feel like they like make AI so rude these days. Like they didn’t give y’all manners? Anyway, Mari is cool. We talk all day.” She giggles shyly. We smirk knowingly beneath the cloth.
“Yes, all day. And all night?”
The girl cackles. “Girl, you know what. You silly. No, me and Mariama just friends.”
We hum thoughtfully. It is a song of two lovers, a fish and a bear. An old song. We translate to language, for her benefit. “There is hunger worth being foolish for.” We nod our head in a gesture our sister told us meant thank you. The girl, watching us carefully now, nods back.
“Enjoy!”
“Yes, I hope so.”
We walk away, stepping softly toward the archway labeled “Calvert Cliffs, Maryland”
Kwame begins to explain as we cross the threshold into the room. Immediately the air is wetter, drawing a murmur of relief from us. The song of the ocean fills the room, but different. Perhaps an ocean we have never heard before. And then we notice the cliff.
“(kwame reading the panel)”
There is a feeling inside us like being born, or like being in love, or like gasping for air after drinking water. This soil. It is from Earth.
“Kwame, how did this get here?”
“Great question! After the Climate War, the Intergalactic Council created a treaty to ensure peace in our galaxy. In order to stop some of the humans from using dangerous nuclear weapons, the Council formed an alliance with the African Union, preserving human heritage and life while neutralizing the threat to our galaxy. The treaty excised the African tectonic plate from Planet Earth, securely creating our Planet Ori, which now orbits the Earth as its second moon. “
“Earth still exists?”
“Yes!”
“What is it like today?”
“There is very little known about Planet Earth today, although we work hard to preserve and tell the story of our origins there. It is believed that no one survived the excision of the Union, as the process would have resulted in extreme flooding of the planets remaining topography. Our archeologists periodically return to Earth to recover vital artifacts like this cliff face to tell the story of our home planet and how we were able to save our piece of it after the Climate Wars.”
We are quiet for a long time, staring at the cliff and the other artifacts recovered from what they once called Maryland. Mermaid armor. An Oyster Mask. A Pectin Shell for tuning some sort of instrument. My spirit longed to know their songs.
“Kwame?”
“Hey there!”
“How do we become an archeologist?”
