Griots

by Charles R. Saunders

  “I got a little too involved with the spirit of the dance,” his grandmother confessed.

  Fabu’s eyes were wide with fright as Zende approached dripping blood and gore with every step.

  Makhulu said again to Fabu, “You and your demon stole my family! I want them BACK!” She eased the pressure just a tiny bit on his throat allowing him to speak clearly.

  Fabu croaked, “I can explain. There is no need for more killing.”

  “SPEAK, slug!!” Zende shook the blood from his war axes in preparation for action.

  Fabu coughed and said, “They are alive! Please, don’t kill me! But only Swallow can break the spell!”

  Zende rumbled, “Swallow is in tiny little pieces.”

  Fabu exclaimed incredulously, “But the Demon in the Wall—”

  “Is powerless against us. Someone on this side of the barrier must act for him,” revealed Makhulu. “Grandson, perhaps you could trim a little of the fat off Fabu, the Fabulous.”

  “Gladly!!”

  “Wait! Please! If Swallow is dead, all we have to do is smash the crystal.” He slid his hand under a pillow and produced the bag with the amber block.

  Zende snatched the crystal away from Fabu and peered closely at it. “I can hear voices, calling my name. Grandmother, what should I do?”

  Makhulu said grimly to Fabu, “If you are lying and any of my family is slightly harmed . . .”

  “I know, I know. But I have done this many times. Shatter the crystal and the souls and bodies will be restored. Unharmed,” said Fabu.

  Zende dropped his ax on top of the amber crystal and smashed it into tiny fragments. Immediately, he heard his Father, mother, and others in his family sing out joyously. For a moment, Zende could even see them smiling and hugging each other back at the caravan. Then the image faded.

  Makhulu smiled and said, “Now, be a good grandson and fetch the rest of my attire on the table behind the curtain. It’s very expensive. I don’t want it torn.” She peeled herself away from Fabu’s sticky embrace to clothe herself for travel.

  “Yes, honored Grandmother.”

  “We thank you Fabu for not sacrificing our family to the Demon. The spell is broken and our people are back in camp, naked, but safe.”

  As he gave the garments to his Grandmother, Zende’s eyes narrowed and he frown angrily. “Did Fabu put his filthy hands on you?”

  Grandmother said, “He was a complete gentleman.”

  Zende scowled, “Fabu is a sack of camel dung who most likely fouled my father’s best royal robe with human excrement!”

  Fabu was aghast, “That’s disgusting! I would never commit such an uncivilized and loathsome act.” He reached for a drink of red wine but spilled most of it all over his white linen shirt as he tried to put the chalice to his lips. He licked his fingers clean.

  Zende tucked away his war axes. He plopped down beside Fabu and poured a hefty goblet of expensive palm liquor while grabbing a fistful of delicate sweet cakes.

  Makhulu admonished, “Be careful, Zende. Strong drink makes you violent.”

  Zende acknowledged with a quick nod as he drained a second glass of liquor. “When can I kill the Demon in the Wall?”

  Makhulu answered solemnly, “Difficult to say. It is an ancient God that lives in every wall ever constructed by human hands. It whispers to the unwary, mixing wisdom with dastardly lies; offering riches and power if you do its bidding. The largest citadels down to the humblest stone structures can harbor it. That is one of the reasons your father prefers the nomadic life; living in tents and temporary structures the demon can’t infiltrate. Occasionally, in ancient ruins, the demon influences dangerous mystical beings like Swallow to do its biddings. That’s probably why Swallow was attracted to you; to procreate with a strong human male and breed more monsters for the Demon in the Wall. Were you intimate with Swallow?”

  Zende protested loudly, “I’m not that stupid or desperate!” More thoughtfully, he added, “So, those were her offspring that I happily butchered. No wonder she was pissed.”

  Grandmother shrugged, “It’s them or us. And their time has passed. Only a few of her species survive in the dark corners of the world.”

  “The man-reptiles were smart but not adaptable to variations in my fighting styles. About 30 attacked me. I searched for more and I smashed hundreds of eggs. Nothing escaped me!”

  Fabu warned, “They breed like insects. Even an elephant can be overcome by swarms of fire ants. I am so thankful and proud to have assisted the beautiful Makhulu in putting an end to this potentially calamitous plague threatening humankind.”

  Makhulu frowned, “So you graciously say. You must have gotten very rich by working with the Demon in the Wall and ghastly creatures like Sparrow against your own kind.”

  “I was craftily misled,” Fabu pleaded as he finally got a full glass of wine onto his trembling lips.

  Makhulu told her grandson, “Let’s go back to our family, we will have no trouble from the rest of Fabu’s men.” But before they departed, she leaned down and planted a small kiss on Fabu’s wine stained cheek. “I enjoyed the dance,” she said.

  Fabu smiled broadly and risked to say, “But we never finished.”

  Instantly, Zende cast a very dangerous glare at Fabu.

  “Fabu, be a good boy,” warned Makhulu. “We will be watching.”

  Fabu the Fortunate breathed a sigh of relief and uttered, “Oh well, the greater the risks...”

  The Belly of the Crocodile

  By

  Minister Faust

  My brother hated me; do you understand that? He’d spent his entire life humiliating me, poisoning my name before the gods and our people. And people sing about me like I’m the villain? Like I didn’t have every right to crawl out from underneath his heel? What would you have done?

  I couldn’t help being disfigured. That wasn’t my fault. “Two-tone ebony wood.” Some people said it was the curse of Rã, or Ptah was drunk the day he slapped me together on his potter’s wheel.

  That’s hippo shit. Some people are just born certain ways. It doesn’t mean anything else. Not unless people make it mean something. Hell, some people are born stronger, smarter. Isn’t that good?

  Now, my brother, gods. He was the golden boy. “Skin like loam. Eyes like fire.” Can you believe that? People actually talked that way. He didn’t have “fire eyes,” whatever that even means. He had eyes.

  We couldn’t remember our parents. Maybe that’s weird. I don’t know if it was or not. We came from the highlands where the soil was like wet coal, came down the River Forever in a boat we’d made ourselves. Felt like a man when I built it. Him, he barely had crotch hair. Back then I was the one teaching him.

  I don’t know why he hated me. Didn’t we have a good time during those raft days? I taught him how to sail. How to spear fish when you’re moving faster than they are. How to save yourself when you get knocked overboard. I showed him those girls at Throne Rock. He wouldn’t even’ve seen them. But that stupid bastard—

  I was trying to feed us, get us wives, form a clan. All that idiot wanted to do was make up boring, preachy songs. “Do this. Don’t do that. This is how you fish. That’s how you save firewood. Don’t use women for lambs. Never turn your back.” Blah-blah-blah . . .

  Don’t know how long it took us to come downriver as far as Min-the-Beautiful. Sixty moons? Because we stopped all the time. Sometimes we built a hut, stayed a while.

  And every time we did, whatever I tried teaching him, he always turned it into one of his stupid songs. And we’d go out hunting, and he’d be singing, making it up as he went, changing his lines and singing them again and again so he could memorise them until all I wanted to do was strangle him. Him singing and scaring away all the rabbits and rats so we’d end up hungry. Again. Singing: “Don’t sing when you’re hunting—you’ll scare away the game.”

  What he didn’t scare away was people. Gods. I was trying to keep us alive out there, keep us away from lions an
d jackals and men who wanted to rope us or fuck us, and he’d be singing up a sandstorm!

  Once I woke up next to our raft—we were hidden down in the reeds—and this moron must’ve gone out singing up and down the riverbank because there had to’ve been three dozen people there when I got up, all of them gazing at my golden little brother, whooping after every song like he was growing wheat out of his ass.

  Those idiots. They brought him bowls of fruit and maize, piles of bread, even meat. I mean, they cooked it all right there in front of him, like he was the son of Noot or something.

  And so, in the sixty moons or whatever it took us to get down to Min-the-Beautiful, this kind of stupidity just grew. Spread like a disease. Because those fools started telling everyone they met about the golden boy, so when we’d arrive at our next spot, they’d be waiting for us.

  Not for us. For him. I was just his older brother. His donkey. Carrying their offerings back to our raft.

  I don’t know where he got his words-of-power. To me, his singing was what a cat sounded like when you kicked it till it bled musk, or when you strangled a monkey till its neck snapped. What I’m saying is, it couldn’t’ve been his voice that roped people.

  So his words-of-power, I don’t know. Maybe he’d found an ujat or something and swallowed it? Because I looked, I don’t know how many times, and I never found it.

  Maybe he’d made a deal with devils. Up the west bank, past the cliffs, over in the mountains of Manu where the Sun Boat disappeared every night—there were devils all over there. Infesting the whole area. “Beware the Mountains of Manu and the Land of Death, where devils dance and never rest.” Yeah, yeah.

  So, by the time we got to Min-the-Beautiful, there were crowds—thousands of people, at least—waiting for him. Jumping and whooping and waving palm fronds, begging him to sing.

  So naturally he said we had to stay.

  And we couldn’t’ve been there more than six moons before he’d sung them all his old songs and a whole bunch of new ones, preachy as all hell, every stupid thing he’d learned down the river or heard from his adoring apes at every stop, when these losers wanted to make him their king.

  Their king!

  And who was there waiting for him in the front when they asked him, but those two girls I’d pointed out to him at Throne Rock! The ones he said to leave alone. The must’ve followed us!

  Sisters. Both hoping to be his wives. Gorgeous as year-calves, begging him to be their bull. And dozens more like them.

  He wasn’t interested in all those hip-swayers in the crowd—old ones, young ones, skinny ones, fat ones, widows, virgins—but those two girls: he took the taller one. Had her hair mudded up into two braids, out and up like a cow’s horns. He sang her some line about how she had eyes like a cow’s. She was wet for him on the spot. I could smell her. Like a netful of catfish. I accidentally drooled on myself, but nobody saw.

  Then in front of all those crackpots he treated me, his older brother, like his boy. Told me oh-so-generously I could have the other one. Just had to be nice to her was all, not scare her, and not take any other wives. Who the hell did he think he was? He actually made me promise to be nice to his giveaway calf in a herd of one? To keep me poor?

  If only I could’ve found that ujat of his. If he’d swallowed it, if it was lodged in his gut, I could carve him open like a hare. Then everything he had would be mine: those adoring morons, their houses and crops, his Throne-girl with the hair-horns—gods, I wanted to bull her till she screamed my name to the stars!

  So, I took his leftovers. No point letting it go to waste. Kept her in the house they gave me, brother of their new king. House-Lady. That’s what I called her. Had to keep her roped in there so she wouldn’t sneak out and hop my brother’s face till he choked on her crotch.

  And he must’ve been using that ujat on me because for a dozen-dozen moons, House-Lady didn’t give me any sons, not even daughters, no matter how much I speared her. But the damned thing must’ve been faulty, poisoning his Throne-girl, too, because she didn’t give him a litter, either. At least I had that. Idiot.

  Then one day the golden man got bored with all his morons. Said he had too many songs now. Had to share them with the world. “Journey to the corners . . . so that all may grow from wisdom’s words.” Whatever. Put his Throne-girl in charge. Over everyone. Over me!

  Said he’d be back when the world was wise.

  I didn’t believe any of his shit.

  But the second he left, I caught her looking at me. Why not? They need a good spearing, regularly, or they go wild. Like hyenas. Tear down everything around them and piss on it all.

  But that one, she liked to play games. When I went to her hut that night, like her eyes’d told me to—I don’t know if he’d given her another ujat or if he’d just taught her his words-of-power—she sprouted wings from her arms, her fingers were talons, and she had a voice like a falcon. The whore nearly ripped my eye out.

  But that’s how she liked it.

  She called her menfítu. They stood like fangs around a tongue. Didn’t matter. When I was ready, I’d be back, and they’d never be able to stop me.

  All I needed was an ujat.

  I rafted across the river to the west bank. Above me on Noot’s dark blue belly and breasts, two blades of a quarter moon. Stars like a million arrowheads.

  I was walking towards the Mountains of Manu.

  I’d never been out there before. Further I went, the weirder it got. Stone pillars like melted men. Trees like ape skeletons. I swear to gods, a giant lion with a human face.

  When the sun came up, I hid under a rock’s shadow. Slept. When the sun went down, I woke up thirsty enough to suck a snake’s blood.

  And then the sandstorm hit.

  But it was like no sandstorm I’d ever seen before. Like an elephant’s trunk, wider than the River Forever and straight down from the sky. Came right down on top of me, me at its centre, with nowhere to run.

  How long was I there? No way to know. Felt like years. No food. No water. The only light came from lightning.

  And when it cleared, dust scrubbed out the stars, the moon was dead, and I suppose I was, too.

  I don’t know where I was . . . but it wasn’t where the storm had jailed me.

  Vines. Choking leaves. Shadow-trees like upside-down spiders, lit by swamps glowing like a moon drowned in piss.

  Tried to drink the swamp water. Puked until my stomach nearly tore itself off my spine.

  And when I finally finished and wiped my eyes, I saw them.

  Statues of me.

  Gorgeous ones! Turquoise and gold, with sapphires for eyes. And fires with whole cows roasting on giant spits. Bowls full of sauces and beer and fruit and lotus, laid out on rugs like virgins for a raider-king. Men and women from up and down the river and across the Great Green Sea, dressed like rainbows and sunrises. Kneeling. To me!

  Then gone.

  And on the other side of the swamp from me, I saw the crocodile.

  Bigger than a hippo. Than an elephant. White like a hill of skulls at noon. Fangs like pikes.

  If I’d had any shit left, I would’ve shit myself.

  Couldn’t run. Couldn’t swim. Couldn’t jump. Didn’t have any ujat or even words-of-power since that son-of-a-bitch never taught me any!

  And then I understood. Understood it like when you know the moon is going to rise just before it does. Understood it like the second before your axe hits a neck, the shock that’s going to run up your arms.

  I knelt down and let him come take me.

  Felt myself becoming bone splinters and blood spray. Felt my screams turn to gurgling until my eardrums burst like boiling eggs. Felt myself falling down that throat, longer than the River Forever, until I hit the rock-spikes in his gut.

  And I stayed like that, impaled inside his darkness.

  Thinking.

  Seeing.

  Feeling.

  Tasting.

  I saw everything, the next hundred moons, l
ike a single day.

  My brother out there, sailing across the Great Green Sea, landing and walking home. My wife, House-Lady, with him. Pregnant. Me, tracking her like she was a quail. Taking her when she was out alone gathering eggs. My thumbs on her windpipe, holding her under the piss-waters of the swamp till her last bubbles burst. Me, getting back to Min-the-Beautiful before him. Gathering my own men with minds like daggers, speaking softly as shadows because my returning brother would have new words-of-power and ujatiu whose fires I couldn’t even guess. Me, at my most careful, because my brother could send his souls into animals: fish, birds, hares. Gathering pyrite to stop the golden man, because of warlocks telling me that only a talent of pyrite could stop souls of gold. Me, finding a way—what way?—to trap my brother inside pyrite to stop him from recreating and avenging himself. What way? What way? What—

  Me, my smiths, forging a royal bed, walled on the sides and top and bottom in pyrite. With a glittering pyrite lid removable for sleep. Me, planning a victory banquet for our king-come-home, our lord-of-the-limits, our beautiful being, the Instructor of the world, triumphant!

  Presenting him his gift. Flattering him to lie down inside it, and bolting down the lid with molten pyrite seals. And my dagger-men pouncing, gutting all his menfítu, seizing their spears and ripping out the spleens of all the idiot subjects who rushed to stop us.

  And in front of all the survivors, taking his Throne-girl and mounting her until she came in silence. And every day, again, and every night, again, in my kingdom without limits.

  But there I was, impaled down in darkness inside a world-crocodile’s gut, and dreams did me no better than trying to cook with a pissed-on campfire.

  So, I grabbed onto those stone spikes and pulled.

  My own screams, like lightning.

  I humped over the rocks. Writhing in my own blood. Shattered bones splintering even more.

  Wriggling and slithering forward till I joined a river of shit. Felt myself falling, then clutched by throbbing muscles from my skull to toes, pressed and squeezed towards a crack of dim, thin light.

  And when I got there, assholed out and dropped steaming in the dirt.