by Marlon James
“If I wanted to kill him I could have four years ago. He knows what I can do. I think it pleases him that people think I’m a silly girl-boy who likes to play with his mouth. He thinks it means I can sift through his enemies and deal with them.”
“So you are his spy. To spy on us?”
“Fool, he has Sogolon for that. I am here for whatever surprises the gods have in store for you.”
“I would hear more about what these great wars have done to you.”
“And I would say no more about it. War is war. Think of the worst that you have seen. Now think of seeing that every three steps for one quartermoon’s walk.”
We were now in deep grassland, greener and wetter than the brown bush of the valley, with the horses’ hooves sinking deeper in the dirt. Ahead, maybe another half a day’s ride, trees stood up and spread. Mountains hung back all around us. On the side, going west from Malakal, the mountains and the forest both looked blue. Along the grass and the wetness, bamboo giants of the grass sprouted, one, then two, then a clump, then a forest of them that blocked the late-afternoon sun. Other trees reached tall into the sky and ferns hid the dirt. I smelled a fresh brook before I heard or saw it. Ferns and bulbs sprouted out of fallen trees. We followed what looked like a track until I smelled that both the Leopard and Sogolon had gone that way. On my right hand, through the tall leaves, a waterfall rushed down rocks.
“Where they gone?” Fumeli asked.
“Fuck the gods, boy,” I said. “Your cat is but a—”
“Not him. Where are the beasts? No pangolin, no mandrill, not even a butterfly. Can your nose only smell what is here, and not what is gone?”
I did not want to talk to Fumeli. I would punch whatever rudeness came from his mouth.
“I will call him Red Wolf now—that is what he told me,” Bibi said.
“Who?”
“Nyka.”
“He mocks the red ochre I used to rub on my skin, saying only Ku women wear red,” I said.
“Truth for your ears? I have never seen a man in that colour,” Bibi said.
Bibi stopped, his brow furrowed, and looked at me as if trying to catch something he missed, then shook it out.
“And wolf?” he asked.
“You have not seen my eye?”
I knew his look. It said, There is a little that you are not telling me, but I care not enough to press it.
“What is that smell on the witch? I cannot place it,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Tell me something else, Sadogo,” I said to the Ogo.
This is true: The Ogo did not stop talking until evening caught us. And then he talked about the night catching us. I forgot about Fumeli until he hissed, and paid no attention until he hissed a third time. We came to a fork in the trail, a path left and a path right.
“We go left,” I said.
“Why left? This is the trail Kwesi take?”
“This is the trail I take,” I said. “Go your own way if you wish, just untie your horse from Bibi.” I heard the dull clump of hooves on mud and branches cracking.
I did not wait for him to say anything. The trail was narrow but there was a path and the sun was almost gone.
“No bat, no owl, no chirping beast,” Fumeli said.
“What twig is up your asshole now?”
“The boy is right, Tracker. No living thing moves through this forest,” Bibi said. One hand on the bridle, the other gripped his sword.
“Where is your great nose now?” Fumeli said.
I set it down in my mind right there. Never again would this boy be correct on anything. But both of them were right. I knew many of the animal smells of the montane grasslands, and none passed by my nose. And the scents of the forest that I did smell—gorilla, kingfisher, viper-skin—were too far away. No living thing but trees conspiring in circles and river water rushing down rocks. The Ogo was still talking.
“Sadogo, quiet.”
“Huh?”
“Hush. Movement in the bush.”
“Who?”
“None. That is what I say, there is no movement in the bush.”
“I was the one to say it first,” said Fumeli.
Was he worth me turning around so he could see my scowl? No.
“Many people say you have a nose, not I. What does your precious nose smell now?”
A neck as thin as his, thin as a girl’s, I could snap with no effort. Or I could let the Ogo break him in many pieces. But when I took in a deep breath, smells did come at me. Two that I knew, one I had not come across in many years.
“Grab your bow and draw an arrow, boy,” Bibi said.
“Why?”
“Do it now,” he said, trying to whisper harshly. “And dismount.”
We left the horses by a brook. The Ogo dipped into his bag and pulled out two shiny gauntlets, which I have only seen on the King’s knights. His fingers were now shiny black scales and his knuckles, five spikes. Bibi pulled his sword.
“I smell an open fire, wood, and fat,” I said. Bibi covered his mouth, pointed at us, then pointed at his mouth.
I said nothing else, now that I knew what we would find, judging from the smell. The sour stink of hair, the saltiness of the flesh. Soon we could see the fire and the light slipping through the forest. There it was, stuck on a spit, cooking above the fire while the fat dripped into the flames and burst. A boy’s leg. Farther off, hanging from a tree, was the boy looking at his leg, a rope tied around the stump. They had cut off his right leg all the way to the thigh and his left leg to the knee. His left arm was cut off at the shoulder. They hung him in the tree by rope. They also hung a girl, who seemed to have all four limbs. Three of them sat a good distance from the fire, a fourth off in the bush, but not far, crouched to shit.
We rushed them before we could see them, before they could see us. Hatchets out, I aimed for the first one’s head, but it bounced off. Fumeli shot four arrows; three bounced off, one struck the second one’s cheek. The Ogo punched the third straight into the tree. Then he punched a hole through his chest and the tree. Bibi swung his sword and struck the third in the neck but it lodged there. He pushed him off the blade with his foot, then stabbed him in the belly. The first one charged straight at me, holding nothing in his hands. I dipped out of his reach and something knocked him over. On the ground I jumped on him and hacked straight into the soft flesh of the face. The nose. I chopped again and again until his flesh splashed on me. The thing that knocked him over growled before changing back to a man.
“Kwesi!” Fumeli shouted, and ran to him, then stopped. Fumeli touched him on the shoulder. I wanted to say, Go behind the tree and fuck if you wish. None of us remembered the last of them shitting in the bush until the girl tied up in the tree screamed. He came at us waving his arms, his claws shining in the firelight. He roared louder than a lion, but something cut the roar. Even he was confused that his own mouth closed up on him, until he looked down to his chest and saw a spear bursting right through it. He whimpered his last and fell facedown.
Sogolon stepped over his body and approached us. I lit a dry stick and waved it over the beast nearest the fire. A snap. Ogo had broken the one-limb boy’s neck. It was for the best that he died quick, and nobody said different. The girl, as soon as we lowered her down, started screaming and screaming until Sogolon slapped her twice. She was covered in white streaks but I knew all the marks of the river tribes and these were none of them.
“We are offerings. You should not have come,” she said.
“You are what?” the Leopard said.
I was very happy to see him as a man again and not sure why. It still irritated me to talk to him.
“We are the glorious offerings to the Zogbanu. They leave alone our villages that are on their lands and let us plant crops. I was raised for this—”
“No woman i
s raised for man to use,” said Sogolon.
I pulled the spear out of the last one and rolled him over with my foot. Horns large, curved, and pointed to a sharp tip like a rhinoceros’s sprouted all over his head and neck, with smaller horns on his shoulders. They pointed in all directions, these horns, like a beggar with locks thickened by dirt. Horns wide as a child’s head and long as a tusk, horns short and stumpy, horns like a hair, gray and white like his skin. Both brows grew into horns and his eyes had no pupils. Nose wide and flat with hair sticking out of the nostrils like bush. Thick lips as wide as the face and teeth like a dog’s. Scars all over his chest, maybe for all his kills. A belt holding up a loincloth on which hung child skulls.
“What kind of devil is this?” I asked.
Bibi crouched and turned its head. “Zogbanu. Trolls from the Blood Swamp. I saw many during the war. Your last King even used some as berserkers. Each one worse than the one before.”
“This is no swamp.”
“They are roving. The girl is not from here either. Girl, where do they go?”
“I am the glorious offering to the Yeh—”
Sogolon slapped her.
“Bingoyi yi kase nan,” the girl said.
“They eat man flesh,” Sogolon said.
That’s when we all looked at the leg cooking on the spit. Sadogo kicked it over.
“They are traveling?” I asked.
“Yes,” Bibi said.
“But she just said she was a sacrifice so that they would share their land,” I said.
“Not nomads,” the Leopard said.
He walked right up to me, but looked at Bibi. “And they are not traveling, they are hunting. Somebody told them a bounty of flesh would be coming through these woods. Us.”
The girl screamed. No, it was not a scream, there was no fear in it. It was a call.
“Get the horses!” the Leopard shouted at us. “And cover that girl’s mouth!”
You could hear the shuffle through the bushes even as we ran. The rustle coming from all corners and all sides moving ever closer. I slapped Fumeli’s horse and she took off. Sogolon appeared with her horse and galloped away. I followed, kneeing my horse sharp in the ribs. Bibi, riding beside me, said something or laughed, when a Zogbanu leapt out of the dark bush with a club and knocked him off. I did not stop and neither did his horse. I looked back only once to see Zogbanus, many of them, pile on top of him until the pile became a hill. He did not stop shouting until they stopped him. I caught up with Sogolon, but they caught up with us. One leapt for me and missed, his horns slicing the rump of my horse. She leapt up and nearly threw me. Two came out of the bush and started pawing at her. Arrows went into the first one’s back, and more went into the other’s chest and face. The Leopard, now on the same horse as Fumeli, shouted for us to follow him. Behind us more Zogbanus than eyes could count, growling and snarling, sometimes their horns tangling and causing a few to fall. They ran almost as fast as the horses through the thick brush. One came of the brush, his face running right into my hatchet. I wished I had a sword. Sogolon had one, riding and slashing and cutting as if clearing away wild bush. Bibi’s horse fell back without a rider to push him. The Zogbanu jumped him, all as one, the way I see lions do a young buffalo. I kneed my poor horse harder; many still chased us. Then I heard the zip-zip-zip-zip past us. Throwing daggers. The beasts had weapons. One struck Sogolon in her left shoulder. She grunted, but kept slashing with her right hand. Ahead I could see the Leopard and ahead of him a clearing and the glimmer of water. We were coming out when in the quick a Zogbanu jumped my horse right behind me and knocked me off. We rolled in the grass. He grabbed my throat and dug into my neck. They liked their meat fresh, so I knew he was not going to kill me. But he was trying to make me quick-sleep. His breath blew foul and left a white cloud. Smaller horns than the others, a young one out to prove himself. I fumbled for the daggers and plunged one into his right ribs and another into the ribs on his left again, and again, and again, until he fell on me and I could not breathe. The Leopard pulled him off me and shouted for me to run. He changed and growled. I don’t know if that scared them. But by the time I got to the lake, everyone had already boarded a wide raft, including the girl and my horse. I staggered on just as the Leopard jumped past me. Zogbanu swarmed the shore, maybe ten and five, maybe twenty, so close they looked like one wide beast of horns and thorns.
Without anyone pushing it, the raft set off. At the front, sitting as praying in her quiet little chamber, unaware of the world as it fucking burned, was Bunshi.
“Night bitch, you were testing us,” I said.
“She do no such thing,” said Sogolon.
“This was not a question!”
Sogolon said nothing, but sat there as if praying, when I knew she was not.
“We should go back for Bibi.”
“He’s dead,” Bunshi said.
“He is not. They take their victims alive so they can eat the flesh fresh.”
She stood up and turned to face me.
“Not telling you nothing you do not know. It’s care that you lack,” I said.
“He is a slave. He was born to die servin—”
“And you could be your mother’s own sister. His birth was more noble than yours.”
“You speak against the water—”
Bunshi waved her hand and Sogolon stayed quiet.
“There are bigger things than—”
“Than what? A slave? A man? A woman? Everybody on this raft thinking, At least I am better than that slave. They will take days to kill him, you know this. They will cut him up and burn each wound so he will not die from sickness. You know how man-eaters work. And yet there are bigger things.”
“Tracker.”
“He is not a slave.”
I dived into the water.
* * *
—
The next morning I woke up in thin brown bush with a hand on my chest. The girl from the night before, some of her clay washed off, cupping and feeling it, as if weighing iron because she had only seen brass. I pushed her off. She scrambled back to the other side of the raft, right to the feet of Sogolon, who stood like a captain, holding her spear like a staff. The sun had been up for some time, it seemed, for my skin was hot. Then I jumped.
“Where’s Bibi?”
“Do you not remember?” Sogolon said.
And as she said it, I remembered. Swimming back in water that felt like black slick, the shore moving farther and farther away, but me using rage to get there. The Zogbanu were gone, back into the bush. I had no hatchets and only one knife. The Zogbanu’s skin had felt like tree bark, but by his ribs felt soft, and as with all beasts, one could throw a spear right through. Someone grabbed my hand with old fingers. Fingers black as night.
“Bunshi,” I said.
“Your friend is dead,” she said.
“He is not dead just because you say he is dead.”
“Tracker, they were on the hunt for food and we took away their last meal. They will not eat the boy whose neck we broke.”
“I am still going.”
“Even if it means your death?”
“What is that to you?”
“You are still a man of great use. These beasts will certainly kill you, and what would be the use of two dead bodies?”
“I shall go.”
“At least do not be seen.”
“Will you cast a masking spell?”
“Am I a witch?”
I looked around and thought she was gone until wetness seeped between my toes. The lake getting pulled to the shore by the moon, I was sure of it. Then the water rose to my ankles but did not return to the lake. There was no lake water at all, just something black, cool, and wet crawling up my legs. I caught fright, but only for a blink, and let her cover me. Bunshi stretched her skin up past my calves to my kn
ee, around and above it, covered my thighs and belly, going onto every bit of skin. Truth, I did not like this at all. She was cold, colder than the lake, and yet looking down I wanted to go to the lake just to see myself looking like her. She reached my neck and gripped it so tight that I slapped her.
“Stop trying to kill me,” I said.
She relaxed her grip, covered my lips, face, then head.
“Zogbanu see bad in the dark. But they smell and hear and feel your heat.”
I thought she was going to lead me but she was still. We did not get very far.
The fire was already raging in the sky. One of the Zogbanu grabbed Bibi’s head and pulled him up. He held half of Bibi in the air. His chest was already cut open to remove the guts, his ribs spread out like a cow killed for a feast. They threw him on the spit and the fire rose to meet him.
I snapped myself back from the dream and vomited. I stood up. It wasn’t the dream that made me want to vomit, but the raft. And what raft was this? A huge mound of bone dirt and grass that looked like a small island, not something made by man. The Leopard sat on the other side, his legs up. He looked at me and I looked at him. Neither of us nodded. Fumeli sat down beside him, but did not look at me. Only one of the supply horses survived, cutting our meals in half. The painted girl kneeled down beside the standing Sogolon. The raft island sunk a little underneath the Ogo. What is it, this thing we sail on? I wanted to ask, but knew his answer would take us into night. Sogolon, standing there as if seeing lands we could not see, was without doubt steering this with magic. The painted girl looked at me, wrapping herself in leather-skin.
“Are you a beast, like him?” she asked, pointing at the Leopard.
“You mean this?” I said, pointing to my eye. “This is of the dog, not of the cat. And I am not an animal, I am a man.”
“What is man, and what is woman?” the girl said.
“Bingoyi yi kase nan,” I said.
“She said that to me three times in the night, even in sleep,” she said, pointing at Sogolon.
“A girl is a hunted animal,” I said.
“I am the glorious offering of—”
