ana the Slave Crab4 Khem How manifold are thy works, o sole God, like whom there Akhnaten, Hymn to the Aten Morwangu spoke: “The Wars of Rage and the struggle with the Dissolver eventually led you to abandon the Impergium. But we were at war with you. We didn’t hear about the new idea and would not have cared for it if we had. In the tropics, we continued to cull humans who stepped over the line. However, one Mnesis lineage of the MokolC-mbembe stream changed its ways. “The battles with the Dissolver and the ravages of the first human farmers dried up the Sahara plain and made it a desert. The one river that still flowed was the Nile, and here two-legs began to build acivilization. As the workofoannes had gone so well, the Mokol6 decided not to slaughter humans any more than we had to. Khem came from that. The Greeks called it ‘Aiguptos.’ “We coexisted with humans in this land, and our wallow was in the oasis city of ‘Crocodilopolis,’ where twolegs worshipped us. They were called the Hem-ka-Sobk; they’re still around. A Crowning would serve as the god enfleshed. When they had lived a long time, the two-legs wrapped them in bandages and they slept the Sleep of the Dragon in their tombs. The others of the Mokol6 clutch were fed, worshipped and mummified when they died also. The MokolC were allies of the Bubasti and the Silent Striders; they still won’t hurt us. The Breeds shared Gifts, Rites and Totems, including Crocodile, Sobek, who is beloved of the Striders to this day. “We preached Sun to the Khemetic people and they made him into many gods. Eventually, a MokolC Kinsman of royal blood, Amenhotep IV, ascended the throne. His friend Mentu-Hotep had a passionate conviction that Sun alone should be worshipped. Their beliefs transformed the land of Khem and cost Akhenaten his kingship and his life. There are some who revere him even now. But I know that MokolC-mbembe shake their heads when I ask about him. “After his time, Crocodilopolis declined, and the blooddevil Followers of Set gained more and more power over the two-legs. Eventually, in the first century AD, all the MokolCmbembe left Khem for the Sudd and the tropics of Entoban. Their descendants remain to this day. The Mnesis of Khem has been carried to many lands. “Many rains, and no one has sought to waken the sleeping elders who lie beneath Crocodilopolis in their mummy cases. But we say they’re still there and they have a lot of Memory. Wakin’ them up, that would be a great deed.” is no other! Mokole‘ dmerican Mokok ana the Slave Crab4 Jeffo spoke as the sky wheeled overhead, stars of the Southern Hemisphere making half-familiar shapes. A fire of mallee wood cheered up the night. Peter held a mug of tea and listened: “Just when we thought the worst was over, the humans’ numbers culled by the Black Death, the Wars came to us again. Bad times for Mokol6 and Kin. You call the year 1448, when the Portuguese humans landed in Mother Entoban to buy slaves with guns and liquor, and you call the next four hundred years the ‘slave trade.’ We call it the Ma’afa, the ‘unspeakable.’ We did the best we could to protect our Kin. They say that eleven million went to the New World, but the number whose lives were destroyed was much higher. We didn’t know what was happening until too late. The lines of Matre were cut and Mnesis borne by Kin vanished forever. “The Shrouded Suns wrapped themselves in bloody bullhides and asked the dead for knowledge. The Kin who had died of hanging, beatings for ‘discipline,’ smothering or had jumped overboard told them that the Kingdom of the Dead wouldsuck those white mendown. But thecrowning tried to help the living too. Some Mokol6 went voluntarily onto the ships to aid Kin who had been sold. Many ships disappeared, presumed lost, as the dragon-folk saved those aboard them. Your books record one hundred fifty “slave revolts.” Cinque aboard the Amistad managed to return thirty Kin to Entoban. There were many more that whites never knew about. The Decorated Sun, Fenda Lawrence, known to her own people as Seeks-the-Forgotten, came in 1743 to Georgia as a free black immigrant to search for lost hatchlings born in the nightmare world of the plantations.” “But slavery is over! And it was white men who abolished it.” Peter felt momentarily grateful for being a Canadian. Cassie’s great-grandmother had helped twenty-nine ex-slaves to Ontario before the Civil War. “Yeah, but it was one of us started the War! Striking named Liberation, she was. She shot the cannon into Charleston Harbor, first shot of the War.” He looked more serious. “But you know damn well that whites still profit from black folks’ misery. Nobody got their eyes open doesn’t know that.” “I think you’re right. But it’s not black and white we’re talking about. It’s green and scaly.” They talked longer. Peter heard tales of Zhong Lung who had fought to keep their Kin from journeying to nearslavery in the Old West, of the Kinfolk cowboy who had found “dragon bones” in the rocks of Colorado and the elders who had made them speak. They talked of the death scream of the last Camazotz and the repentance of the Shadow Lords who’d killed him, and of the Mokok who followed what seemed to be a Garou ghost to a riverboat filled with vampires. His head swam with the millennia of time that were life and breath to the Mokole, that ocean of memory that his own folk had crawled from. What could he learn? Just what it meant to be a Mokole. If that could bring enemies together, maybe it would be enough. e.. Morning: Was Far away, a great, hulking thing padded over red sand. An awful blend of dingo and demon, he sniffed for scent and caught one he didn’t recognize. His head snapped around and he began casting back and forth for trail. As Luna sank, he found a three-clawed footprint greater than any bird’s. “Wyrmspawn,” growled Mamu the Red Talon. His tail lifted with pleasure. Now, what was that Weaver-thing’s true name? He needed a favor.
Mokole · Werewolf