Pulling off to the side of the road to check his map, Xander hoped that this was still the road that he was supposed to be on. According to the reports Andrew had sent over from Giles, the rumored Slayer here in Tanzania was in a coastal city called Dar-es-Salaam. It was touristy town, which was usually good because there was a better chance of English-speakers around than in some of the other places he'd been to recently. Still, he'd done the usual prep of studying up on some basic words in yet another different dialect of Bantu: hello and goodbye, yes and no, please and thank you, foods, basic questions, and the ever-useful, "I don't understand." It looked like he was at least trying that way. People were a whole lot more willing to talk that way. Funny how much more people understood of English after they'd heard you stumble over their language for a few minutes, or at least then it was easier to find somebody who did know enough English to help him get his point across.
He didn't have as much to go on this time around as he sometimes did. All he had was a report of somebody seeing a Makonde girl working for a local craft guy. She's been spotted by somebody off Mpakani Road loading crates on to a truck by herself. That's it; that's all he had to work with. For all he knew, the crates could be filled with nothing but those little styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap. But Giles said that the source was reliable, so it could be a slayer-strength kind of thing.
It had taken him a few days to get his usual prep work done. Besides the language thing, he picked up the local kind of coinage, checked for traveler's advisories, and double-checked that his paperwork, permits, and visas were cool for where he was headed. Plus the big one: he checked to see if this new area was somewhere that was on the violent side. Getting shot wasn't part of the general plan. He'd only had to go into a war zone once so far. Not fun, even for a guy from Sunnydale.
The drive was the uneventful kind he liked. Without a lot of people on the roads, he was able to make good time, and his nights spent scrunched in the back of the Jeep were nice and quiet. He'd gotten so used to the extreme quiet of the way-out-there areas that the noise of the larger towns and cities had become jarring for him. He'd picked up some wood before he'd left Zambia, so he was able to make some of his new extra-special stakes by lantern-light while sitting on the hood of his Jeep before getting some shut-eye each night. Not only that, but he'd also just finished a nifty sliding-lid box to keep them in for whatever new Slayer he might meet next.
Turning on to the road he'd been told to find in the report, he'd hoped that there'd only be a couple crafter-types in the area. No such luck. The small structures on either side of him all had wood masks and carvings displayed. Tourists were out in force, and the whole area was mostly market-like.
He found a spot on an alley to park the Jeep and leaned his head against the headrest. Great, he thought, crowds and a whole lot of places to check out. This wasn't going to be an easy one. He packed up the stuff he'd need and hoped that today would be one of his luckier days.
***
Finding Asabi took a few days. He'd started by walking around the area, hoping for a glimpse of a girl carrying a few dozen crates with one finger. Okay, it was never that simple, but he figured there was always a chance of picking up some information on his own before asking questions.
Once he got to the asking, he kept it vague, generally mentioning about an unusually strong girl who worked in the area. The asking was tricky, because he was always worried about being run out of town for seeming like a freaky pirate stalker guy or something. But even with the patch on his face, he was usually able to get people to talk to him for some reason. Xander eventually got enough information to seek out the likely suspect, so he camped out pombe shop across the street that seemed like a good place to keep his eye on the building in question, He'd already developed a taste for that kind of beer anyway. He nursed the mug of pombe for a few hours, watching the world go by in front of him. Clusters of locals and tourists all heading to wherever they were going, and none of them so much as glanced that the guy watching them go by. He was okay with that. A few hours later he hit the jackpot when a tall girl came out from behind the shop and started tossing crates on to pallets, and they didn't seem at all like they were filled with foam peanuts. Bingo.
He'd decided when all this started months ago that the straightforward approach was best, so he just walked right up to the girl. He'd gotten the brush-off to start, but it wasn't like he hadn't had plenty of experience with that back at home. But hooray for tourism-caused English learning, because at least she had to listen to him as she worked. When she'd turned to him with a start after he mentioned the dream thing, he knew that he'd hit Slayer gold. His patented stake-test proved it; when he handed her the stake that he always kept with him, she seemed to know what it was as soon as she grasped it. As he'd done with a bunch of slayers that he's found before Asabi, he did have that fancier stake that he'd carved out while on the road already set aside for her to keep, but he'd save that one until after things had sunk in a little for her.
That's how he found himself facing the girl's father, a guy named Mfaume. He was one of the woodcarvers on this street, and the walls of his shop were filled with the same kinds of cheesy masks everybody else was selling. Xander had explained to both him and Asabi about why he had shown up on their doorstep. He told them about Buffy and about some of the strangeness he'd seen and heard since he'd known her. He told them about the last battle, and how every possible Slayer had a big pile of power dumped into their laps that day. When he was done, Mfaume sent his daughter out of the room and regarded him silently. This was the guy Xander had to convince now. Without her father's approval, Asabi was going nowhere.
Xander wasn't exactly sure how to get the conversation going after he'd babbled as much explanation as he could about it all, ending with the final Sunnydale battle and why he was out there. He glanced down at the small wooden box on his lap, ignoring his churning insides. He still got nervous giving this whole speech, but it got a little easier every time. Maybe he was actually getting better at this.
After Mfaume had stared at him for just past an uncomfortable amount of time, Xander tried to draw something out of him. "So... Do you have any questions right now? Whatever answers I've got, I'll tell."
"Your words have already provided a great many answers," the man replied. "What you tell me, it explains much. Asabi has always been special, but this last year has been difficult for her. Her nights are restless, and we had feared that evil spirits visited her dreams. It is good to know that there was a reason."
"Yeah, a big one. It's not the way things usually work, but like I said, it wasn't a usual kind of battle. Your daughter was chosen along with a bunch of others, and she's lucky that she wasn't found by somebody else. Until she understands what she can do, it might not be safe for her. There's a whole lot of people who want to help her learn about it. She's not going to have to face any of this by herself. I promise."
"And the dreams of her turning monsters into dust with sticks... This is also real?"
Xander rummaged through his bag and pulled out the wooden box. "Stake. Here, like this one." He slid the lid of the box open and showed off its contents. "I brought this to give to Asabi. So she can get a decent start on what she does."
"Ah. A pointed stick. Does it have magical powers?"
"Nope. It's pretty much just a pointed stick."
"And the reason for this stick?"
"Those 'evil spirits' from your daughter's dreams? One of these'll help get rid of them."
"This wood does have power, then?"
"Just the application of it, yeah, I guess so."
"You brought it with you from this... Council?"
"No, I made it on the way here. The box, too."
"The box has power?"
"Not so much. But it does have this slidy-lid thing."
"You create for your own satisfaction then. You are a woodcarver."
Oh, right, Mfaume would be interested in that, considering he did it pretty much daily. Too bad that there wasn't much to tell. Xander shrugged. "Not exactly. Construction. Carpentry, mostly. It's what I used to do for a living."
"Used to? This I do not understand. Why would you stop your carpentry?"
"Because this was more important. Girls like your daughter got all these powers dumped on them all of a sudden because of something we did, so we had to help. Besides, construction work isn't as easy to get without depth perception. Safety thing."
"Such an injury should not stop woodcraft."
"True, I guess it doesn't. But the kind of construction I used to do meant working large machines, and people get nervous with the whole lack-of-an-eye deal. And like I said, this was way more important work. There are a lot of new slayers to find, and the Council needed some help to do it."
"I do not disagree, but woodcraft is more than work. Among us, it is tradition. It is part of who we are. It is said that the first Makonde man carved himself a woman out of wood. She came to life and became his wife."
"That's one way to get a date."
Mfaume regarded him silently, making Xander instantly sorry for the joke. Shaking his head, he stood. "Come with me." He turned and walked through the makeshift curtain in the back of the shop. Hoping that there wasn't a gun or demon or something waiting to greet him on the other side, Xander followed.
The back room looked like some kind of workshop. A long workbench stretched along one side of the room, and the tools were way more modern than he would've expected. But it was what Mfaume uncovered in the corner that caught his attention more than anything. At first he thought it was just a post with holes in it on a pedestal, but when he got closer he saw that it was some kind of art.
"This is our ujamaa. Tree of life. It shows our family and how we all are one. It is a traditional piece that we create to honor those who came before and those we share our lives with now."
Xander walked up to it to get a closer look. It really was full of human figures, each linked to the others, intricate and just plain cool. He turned to Mfaume. "Is that ebony? That's not easy stuff to work with."
"Yes, it is also called ebony, although we call it mpingo. We make our ujamaa with it instead of the softer wood that we use in our mask work. It is strong, just like our bonds with one another."
"And it's like a family tree, just without branches?"
"There are no branches. Each of us is a part of a whole. One family."
"But what does this have to do with why I'm here?" Xander turned his attention away from the carving. "Not that your family log isn't cool, but why show it to me?"
"You wish to take my daughter to another country. How do I know that you are a man whose words I can trust? I do not know you. I need to better understand you in order to trust you" He walked over to his workbench and picked up a piece of dark wood that looked like of remnant of the ebony from the ujamaa-thing.
Xander followed him. "Look, I told you my story. I can give you references and contact the Council in England so they can tell you more and everything. Not much more to tell. How am I supposed to convince you that I'm on her side, here?"
"I hear your story, but I do not feel it." Mfaume handed Xander the piece of ebony. "Show me."
"Show you how?"
"Create your ujamaa."
"Wait. You want me to do one of those family tree-log things?"
"Your craft is woodcarving. This is the language we both understand best. Show me your family and you show me yourself."
"Hold on. I can't do that. I'm more of a fixer. I build things like shelves and cabinets and make the occasional stake-in-a-box, but I don't do this kind of artsy stuff."
"Art is part of our craft." Mfaume gestured to the wood. "It is only a small piece of mpingo, and my Asabi is worth a few days work, yes? My workshop is at your disposal. Show me what you are able, and I will consider your request to send her to England."
"Now? I'm supposed to get carvy right this second?"
"When you choose, but I assume you wish to complete it soon. As for myself, I must attend to customers." Mfaume nodded to him and walked back through the curtain, leaving Xander completely clueless on what to do next.
Xander turned the piece of wood over in his hand. He couldn't believe that this guy was serious. Carve something fancy? What, was he supposed to turn straw into gold next or something?
Then again, Xander was asking a lot of the guy. "Hi, you don't know me, but I really think you should ship your only child to another country where they'll teach her to use these mega-mystical Slayer powers that you may or may not have realized she had." Yeah, that made a lot of sense. He wondered what his dad would've said if some random person had come to him asking to take his son away. Didn't take much wondering to know what would've happened, and it wouldn't have been a test like Mfaume was doing. Xander would've had to dodge pretty quick to not get hit on the ass by the door on the way out.
He set the wood on the bench and stared at it. Family, huh? Well, if this was supposed to be a support thing, his parents didn't qualify. Not really anybody he was related to either. He'd barely contacted them after Sunnydale went kablooie - just a call to say that he was okay, and then another when he left the country. That was it.
No, that wasn't his family. He knew who actually was, so the "who" part should be in this pajama-ujamaa-whatever wasn't the issue. The problem was how the heck to do it. He wasn't an artist. He just built things. It was what he did.
Xander kept staring at the block of wood, his mind going blank. And the trouble with this kind of blankness is that it gave other thoughts plenty of time to sneak in. He tried to ignore them, but they kept after him, demanding some attention. The thoughts led to memories, which was both good and nowhere close to good, but then those led to ideas. Sort of half-formed images. Something he might actually be able to do. Maybe. If he didn't screw it up in the process.
He went out to his Jeep to get his tool box. Mfaume's tools were all over the place, but he felt a whole lot better using his own. Either way, it was time to go to work.
***
Xander found himself left alone for the rest of the day. He could hear Mfaume's voice in the shop up front, but there was no sign of Asabi. He kept working anyway, and as he got into the rhythm, his mind started wandering back to how he'd gotten to be in a situation where he had to mess with this piece of wood and get all artsy in the first place.
He didn't have any regrets about coming to Africa. Xander had volunteered for this job, which completely took Buffy and Willow by surprise, and Dawn didn't talk to him for a full day after he'd told her. They all had plans to go to places that weren't all that tough to be in so they could celebrate surviving another apocalypse. He guessed that they planned to drown any bad stuff they were feeling in good times. He went the other way instead, going for one of the toughest situations that needed to be covered. But Giles seemed to understand. Besides, this job needed doing, it kept him busy, and it gave him something resembling purpose.
He'd gotten the low-down on how to approach slayers from Giles before he'd left. Turned out that the dreams were the key, mainly because of the handy fact that they all got them. It's like they were all pre-wired with the basics. His job was to get some kind of communication going, and then try to bring up the information from their subconscious. In theory, that should get the ball rolling for the Slayer to jump at the chance to head off to the school that'd been set up in London.
He found out the first time around how insanely hard that was. When he found his first actual new Slayer in Egypt, he did everything that he'd been told to do. He told her about all the things that he wished he didn't have to say were real, and he explained everything he could. Total failure. No matter what he did, what he said, what he showed her, she didn't want to go anywhere. He didn't blame her - he was a one-eyed stranger from the other side of the world. She didn't have any reason to believe a word of it.
That's when the stake idea hit.
He had some already - he always kept one in his jacket plus a few in his jeep, just in case. Old hellmouth-induced habits died hard. When he handed her a stake while re-explaining the whole vampire concept, he could see the light go on in her eyes. The stake was something she understood. It could've been her new slayery instincts, or maybe it could've been the dreams, but whatever it was, that's when it all clicked for her. After that, he didn't really need to do much convincing about going to England for training. She was all for it.
After that, he started making extra stakes. Not the regular pointy-stick kind he usually made, but actual nice ones with smooth fitted handles and extra-sharp points. These girls deserved to have a good start; some power or fate or whatever might’ve chosen them, but he thought it was important that they get something tangible that showed them that they weren't alone in this, something they understood at a basic level. He wasn't much for carving things, but this was doable. He'd picked up some basic tools and materials before he left Cairo and kept them in the back of the jeep. He didn't have anyone to say it out loud to anymore, but in his brain he called it the "My First Stake" project.
Whenever he had down time on the road, the tools would come out. Stake-making gave him something to concentrate on so his brain didn't think about the things he didn't want to. It was a comfortable kind of concentration, with no thoughts of his life or what was left of it allowed.
And down time? Xander had a lot of it while he traveled from place to place, pursuing every rumor and every possibility Giles or Andrew sent his way, even though most of them didn't pan out. Didn't matter. He was still back on the road with every report, because that's what he did. He had the way-too-important-sounding title of Field Operative, but he was just a guy trying to find suddenly-superheroes who were probably scared and confused. And no matter what the official papers that Giles had given him said, his priority was to let these girls know that everything was going to be okay.
So that's what he'd done, town after town, Slayer after Slayer, just like he'd told Asabi: let them know that everything was going to be okay. He hoped for their sakes he was right about that, because if his Slayer-adjacent life was any indication, "okay" was nowhere near the right word to use.
***
Xander was finally done with his sculpture. The four wooden figures in his wanna-be ujamaa didn't look anything like the ones in the corner, but he'd actually done a heck of a lot better than he thought he would.
It'd taken him a almost a week, but he'd gotten into it once he got going. After that first afternoon, both Asabi and Mfaume had come in to watch as he worked, and he found himself talking about all kinds of old stories as he went. He talked about the whole thing with the Troll God. He talked about the combining spell. He talked about his best friend almost ending the world. He talked about Dawn's brush with potential-hood. He even told them about Buffy's deaths. None of it was stuff he'd talked about or even thought about much anymore. The work he was doing just kind of lent itself to talking.
He was surprised that he actually enjoyed the process. It was totally different than everything he'd ever built. He was all about function, making things that served purposes. This was function-free. It was all about ideas, and it wasn't easy to get the ideas going. But once they were, his hands did the rest, and the carving almost created itself.
Xander brought the finished product out to Mfaume. "Mission accomplished." He held it out to the woodcarver.
Mfaume stood and regarded it while it was still in Xander's outstretched hand. "There is a hole, an empty place. Why did you do this?"
Empty. So he noticed that, huh? Yeah, that's exactly what it was, but it was the best way Xander knew to represent what he needed to. He pulled his hand with the carving back and stared at the floor through the hole he had carved in his mini-ujamaa. "Because the person who should be there is gone."
"And this person had no impact on your life? Is that why there is emptiness?"
"God, no. It's not that. A lot of who I am now is because of her. But she's dead."
"The dead do not lose their place in our hearts when they leave us. That should not be reason to remove them."
"No. I mean yeah, but... This is different." Xander shook his head. "Best I can explain it is, okay, imagine that I cut out the piece that was her, and then the piece was destroyed before I could fit her back in, or even knew if I could or should fit her back in, so now things just are like they are, and the piece won't ever be back in place no matter what. I don't know if that makes any sense."
"Yes, I believe that I do understand. If it were it me, I would have included this important woman. From what you say, she belongs. However, it is your ujamaa, you may do as you choose." Mfaume took the carving from his hands and regarded it carefully. "You put yourself into the piece, and that is good, but you should take more care in how your represent yourself. You should take at least as much time on the representation of yourself as you do on the others."
"I guess I was just a lot more worried on getting them right than I was about the 'me' in there."
Mfaume nodded as if he expected that answer. "Now, these others, the three women, are they then your family?"
"In every way that I think counts, yeah, they are."
"Are they also... slayers?"
"One of them is. One's her sister, and one's been my best friend my whole life."
"And you love them." It wasn't a question. Mfaume was studying his creation instead of looking at him as he spoke. "They are the ones you speak of in your tales. It is good to see how you perceive them. You support them and care for their well-being. They are important."
"More than anything."
"How do you maintain your links with them while you work on what you are doing here?"
Oh boy. Xander didn't want to respond to this question. Sure, he wrote to them sometimes, sent presents even, but he hadn't seen or talked to them. He did his work, studied up on the towns, went wherever the Council thought a Slayer might be, carved the nifty stakes... he'd been filling his life with whatever was handy. As much as he loved his friends, he realized that he'd been avoiding them.
Mfaume didn't press for an answer. He handed the woodcarving back to Xander. "I will trust you. I will allow Asabi to attend this school in England if she chooses. I also wish to give you two pieces of advice, which you can choose to take or not as you will. First, no matter may have happened, a loved one always remains with you. Do not discount this. And second, the three women in your ujamaa? They are strongly linked to you, and you are linked to them. I see it in your carving. These links must never be discounted also."
Xander didn't know what to say to that, so he stuck with the basics. "Asante." Thank you. It meant a little more by saying it in his language.
***
Once her father had given his approval, Asabi agreed to go to England in no time. Xander had already made the call to Giles to get whatever official Watcher paperwork they did rolling and a flight set up for her.
But the carving and then Mfaume's words had all brought up too many things that he'd pushed way down into a corner of his brain. It was a lot easier to function without thinking about what was and what could've been that now won't and never will. When he concentrated on what was right in front of him, he didn't have to think about the way things used to be. He didn't see much on the horizon anymore, so with them not around, he didn't have to think about how little he had to look forward to. He just got through one day, then the next, then the one after that. And he hadn't just pushed Anya out of his mind, either. His old life, his apartment, his job, all that junk, but he'd mostly stopped thinking about Willow, Buffy, and Dawn too. He hadn't even tried to see them since he started the slayer-finding gig. All he'd done was this.
Maybe seeing them would remind him of too much. Maybe they would ask him what he planned to do next or a year from now or ten years from now, and he wouldn't have an answer. And yeah, he didn't like to think about the fact that he didn't know what to do with himself anymore.
He decided that he'd call Giles back when he got a chance. Maybe it was time to take a vacation from all this. He needed his friends, and he'd made himself forget how much he needed them. It was stupid of him, but he'd done it anyway. Not that he was ready to have a life again, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.
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