by Marlon James
The ten nameless tunnels of the Mweru. Like ten overturned urns of the gods. His horse stood outside one, as high as four hundred paces upon four hundred, or higher, taller than a battlefield, taller than a lake was wide, so high that the roof vanished in shadow and fog. And wide as a field as well. At the mouth of the tunnels, his horse was an ant and he was less. The farthest tunnel had the widest mouth, beside it a tunnel that was the tallest, but the entrance smaller than a man standing on another’s shoulder. Beside it, a tunnel just as tall, the entrance sunken in to the earth so he could ride the horse straight in. Beside that, a tunnel not much higher than the horse. And so on. But each tunnel rose much higher than their openings, and more than toppled urns, they looked like giant worms asleep or felled. On the walls at the base of the tunnels, copper or rust, fashioned by divine blacksmiths, or someone else. Or iron, or brass, burned together in some craft only the gods know. On the outside walls of the tunnels, sheets of metal, in rust and in shine, from ground to sky.
A screech. Birds with tails, and thick feet, and thick-skin wings. Moss and brown grass overrun the ceiling of every tunnel, joining them together. Bad growth hiding what they were. Everything becoming brown. He and horse rode down the middle tunnel to the light at the end, which was not a light, for the Mweru had no light, only things that glow.
And at the end of the tunnel, wide flatlands pockmarked with perfect holes, with pools of water that smelled like sulfur, and at the foot of the wilderness, a palace that looked like a big fish. Up close it looked like a grounded ship made of nothing but sails, fifty and a hundred, even more. Sail upon sails, white and dirty, brown and red, looking like blood spatter. Two stairways, two loose tongues rolled out of two doors. No sentries, no guards, no sign of magic or science.
At the doorway, he threw away the torch and pulled both axes. In the hallway, tall as five men standing on shoulders, but wide as one man with his arms spread, orbs floated free, blue, yellow, and green and burning light like fireflies. Two men, blue like the Dolingon, came at him from both sides, saying, How can we help you, friend? At the same time, both drawing their swords slow. He leapt and swung both hands down on the left guard, hacking him again and again in the face. Then he chopped him once in the neck. The right guard charged, and he jumped out of the way of his first strike, spun on the ground, and hacked him in the knee. The guard dropped on that same knee and howled and the man chopped him in the temple, the neck, the left eye, then kicked him over. He kept walking, then running. More men came, and he jumped, leapt, dropped, chopped, hacked, cutting them all down. He dodged out of one sword and elbowed the swordsman in the face, grabbed his neck, and slammed him into the wall twice. He kept running. A guard in no armour but with a sword screamed and ran straight for him. He blocked the sword with one ax, dropped to his knees, and chopped the guard’s shin. The guard dropped the sword, which he grabbed and stabbed him with.
An arrow shot past his head. He grabbed the near-headless guard and swung him around to catch the second arrow. As he ran, he felt each arrow pierce the guard until he was close enough to throw the first ax, which hit the bowman right between the nose and the forehead. He took the bowman’s sword and belt. He ran until he came out of the corridor into a great hall, with nothing but orbs of light. A giant came at him and he thought of an Ogo, who was his great friend, who was a man, not a giant, a man of always present sorrow, and he howled in rage, and ran and jumped on the giant’s back and hacked and hacked at his head and neck until there was no head and neck, and the giant fell.
“King sister!”
No sound in the room but his echo, bouncing mad on the walls and ceiling, then disappearing.
“Will you kill everyone?” she said.
“I will kill the world,” he said.
“The giant was a dancer and nurse of children. He had never done any in this world a bad thing.”
“He was in this world. That is enough. Where is he?”
“Where is who?”
He grabbed a spear and threw it where he thought the voice was coming from. It struck wood. The orbs shone brighter. She sat on a black throne ringed with cowries, and several hands above it lodged the spear. Two guards, women, stood by her side with swords, two beside them crouched with spears. Two elephant tusks at her feet and carved columns tall as trees behind her. Her headdress, thick cloth wrapped around and around to look like a flaming flower. Flowing robes from chest to feet, gold breastplate on her chest, as if she was one of the warrior queens.
“How hard it is, exile to this place of no life,” he said.
She stared at him, then laughed, which made him furious. He was not speaking wit.
“I remember you being so red, even in the dark. Red ochre, like a river woman,” she said.
“Where is your son?”
“And how skillful you were with an ax. And a Leopard who traveled with you.”
“Where is your boy?”
“Bunshi, she was the one who said, They will find your boy, especially the one called Tracker. It has been said he has a nose.”
“It’s been said you have a cunt. Where is your fucking boy?”
“What is my boy to you?”
“I have business with your son.”
“My son has no business with men I don’t know.”
He smelled him coming in the dark, trying to move in the shadow, to move quiet. Coming from the right. The man did not even turn, just threw his ax and it hit the guard in the dark. He yelped and fell.
“Call them. Send for every guard. I will build a mountain of corpses right here.”
“What do you want with my boy?”
“Call them. Call your guards, call your assassins, call your great men, call your best women, call your beasts. Watch me build a lake of blood right before your throne.”
“What do you wish with my boy?”
“I will have justice.”
“You will have revenge.”
“I will have whatever I choose to name it.”
He stepped towards the throne and two women guards swung down at him from ropes. The first, carrying a sword, missed him, but the second, with a club, knocked him over. He fell and slid on the smooth ground. He ran to the dead guard’s sword and grabbed it right before the second guard swung her club at him again. She swung hard but could not stop his swing quick enough. He kicked her in the back and she fell. He charged but she swung the club up and struck him in the chest. He fell on his back and she jumped up. He tried to swing his sword but she stomped on his hand. He kicked her in the koo, and she fell hard on her knees into his chest, which knocked his air out. The guard, her knuckles hard leather, punched him in the face, and punched him and punched him again and knocked him out.
* * *
—
Hear this. He woke in a cell like a cage hanging off the floor. It was a cage. The room, dark and red, not the throne room.
“He would have me give suckle. What mockery they would have sung had a griot lived in these lands. You will say what must there be in a land with no griot. Mark it, even though he was past six in years, and was a boy soon a man. He came to my breasts before he even looked at my face.”
The man turned to where the voice was coming from. Five torches lined a wall to his right, but lit nothing. Below it, dark and shadow, a throne maybe, but he could not see anything above two thin pillars, carved like birds.
“Give a man a free hand, he rub it all over you. Give a boy . . . Well, he would not be denied it. And what would the gods say, about a woman who denied her child food? Her boy? Yes, they have been blind and deaf, but which god will still not judge a mother for how she raised the future King? Look at me, what milk could be in these breasts?”
She paused as if waiting for an answer.
“And yet even full men, you all must suck the breast. And my precious boy. Come to the breast like he come to war. Should I t
ell you this, that he almost bit my nipples off? The left, then the right? Tore the skin, cut the flesh, and still he kept sucking. Well, I am a woman. I shouted at him and he would not stop, his eyes closed like how you men close when you cum. My boy, I had to grab his neck and strangle him until he stopped. My boy, he looked at me and he smiled. Smiled. His teeth red from my blood. From then I gave him a servant girl. She was not stupid in the head. She cut herself every night so that he could suck. Is there strangeness in this? Are we strange? You are Ku. You cut the cow’s throat to drink the blood, is there strangeness in such?”
The man said nothing. He grabbed the bars of the cage.
“What you think is all over your face. You look at me, with your disgust and your judgment. But do you know what it is to have child? What you would do for it?”
“I do not know. Perhaps abandon him to be killed. No, sold. No, stolen, and raised by vampires. And maybe always have someone to ask someone to ask someone find the little one, with lie after lie so that no one would even know that you had a son. Is that what it is like to have a child?”
“Quiet.”
“Finest of mothers you must be.”
“I will not let you near him.”
“Did you let him go or did you lose him again, fine mother?”
“You seem to think my son has done wickedness.”
“Your son is wickedness. A devil—”
“You know nothing. Devils are born. All the griots sing of this.”
“You have no griot. And devils are made. You make them. You make them by leaving them to anyone who fancies a—”
“You dare to know what goes on in my head? You judge me, a queen? Who are you to tell me what to do with my child? You have none. Not a single one.”
“Not a single one.”
“What?”
“Not a single one.”
And the man told her a story:
“They did not have names, for Gangatom never gave them names, for they were all so strange to them. Which is not to say that the Gangatom made much fuss over the strange. But if one were to say Giraffe Boy, all in the village would know who it is they call. I was not like you, none of them were my blood. But I was like you, I let others raise them, and said it was for their own sake when it was for mine. Someone said the North King was making slaves of the river tribes to serve his war, so we went for them, for war is like fever, everybody gets infected. We took them from the Gangatom, but some of them did not want to go. I said to the children, Let us go, and two of them said no, then three, then four, for why should they go with a man they do not know and another they do not like? And he who was partner to me, he said look at this, and he showed them a coin and then closed his hands, then opened them again, and the coin vanished, and closed his hands again, and he asked in which hand is the coin, and Giraffe Boy pointed to his left, so he opened his left and a butterfly flew away. Tell you truth, they followed him, not me. So we all followed him to the land of Mitu, and there we lived in a baobab tree. And we said to the children, You need names, for Giraffe Boy and Smoke Girl are not names, they are what people call you. One by one they lost their anger for me, Smoke Girl last. Of course, the albino, who was no boy, but tall like a man, we named him Kamangu. Giraffe Boy, who was always tall, we named him Niguli, for he was not even like the giraffe. He had no spots and it was his legs, not his neck, that was long. Kosu is what we called the boy with no legs. He rolled everywhere like a ball, but always picked up dirt, or shit, or grass, or when he yelled, a thorn. First we gave the joined twins names that joined and they cursed us like old widows. You and him share everything and yet you have different names, they said to me and Mossi. So the noisy one, we called him Loembe, and the more quiet but still loud one we called Nkanga. And Smoke Girl. He who was mine said, One of them must have a name from where I come from. One must remind me of me. So he named Smoke Girl Khamseen, for the wind that blows fifty days. You talk to me of children—what was the name of your boy, but boy? Did you ever name him?”
“Shut your mouth.”
“You queen among mothers.”
“Quiet!”
She shifted in her seat but remained in the dark. “I will not sit here in judgment by a man. Making all sorts of claims about my boy. Did rage bring you here? For it was not wisdom. How shall we play? Shall I bring my son out, right now, and give you a knife? Love is blindness, is it not? I ache for your loss. But you might as well have told me about the death of stars. My son is not here. How quickly you refuse to see that he is a victim as well. That I woke up to hear my son gone. Kidnapped. That my son has spent so many years and moons not living according to his will or mine. How could he know anything else?”
“A devil the size of three men, with wings as wide as a canoe, slipped into your palace unnoticed.”
“Take him out,” she said to the guards.
* * *
—
A cloth fell on the cage and left him in black. The cage fell to the ground and the man slammed against the bars. They kept him in the dark for the longest time—who knows how many nights? When they lifted the cloth from his cage, he was in another room, with an opening in the roof and red smoke rushing through the sky. The King sister was standing by another chair, not like her throne, but with a tall back.
“My birthing chair shows me my past. Do you know what I see? He was born feet first. I would take it as an omen, had I believed in omens. What did Sogolon say about you? It has been said you have a nose. Maybe she was not the one who told me. You want to find my son. I would like that too, but not for your reasons. My son is a victim too, even if he walked out into the Mweru on his own, why can you not see?”
He did not say to her, Because I have seen your boy. I have seen how he looks when he thinks no one watches him.
“My yeruwolo said I should trust you to find my boy. Maybe even save him from the bat. I think she is a fool, but then . . . I have no ending for what I was about to say.”
She nodded to the Tracker, and one of her water women came to him with a piece of cloth, green and white. Torn from what, who knew.
“It is said you have a nose,” she said.
She pointed at him and the water woman ran to the cage, threw the cloth, then ran away from it. He picked it up.
“Will this tell you where he goes?” she said.
He squeezed the cloth but did not smell it, held it away from his nose and caught the King sister, her eyes wide, waiting. He threw the cloth away. They covered the cage again. When he woke in the throne room, he knew sleep had taken him for days. That they must have put him under wicked vapors or sleeping magic. The room had more light than before but still it was dark. She sat on her throne, the same women behind her, guards at both walls, and an old woman, her face white, walking towards him. They had left his hands free, but put a copper collar that felt like tree bark around his neck. Two guards stood behind him, moving nearer as he tried to walk.
“I make you an offer again, Tracker. Find my boy. Do you not see that he needs to be saved? Do you not see that he is blameless?”
“Only days ago you said, I shall not let you near him,” he said.
“Yes, near. Seems the Tracker is the only man who knows how to get near my son.”
“That is no answer.”
“Maybe I appeal to the very heart that seeks revenge. An appeal is of the heart too.”
“No. You’ve run out of men. Now you ask the man sworn to kill him.”
“When did you swear? To whom? This must be one of those things that men say, like when he says this is the best, but this is my favorite. I have never believed in oaths or in men who swear by them. I want your word that should I release you, you will find my son and bring him back to me. Kill the monster if you must.”
“You have an infantry. Why not send them?”
“I have. Hence my asking you. I could have ordered you.
I am your queen.”
“You are no Queen.”
“I am Queen here. And when the wind in these lands turns I will be the mother of a king.”
“A king you have lost twice.”
“So find him for me. How can I mend your sorrow? I cannot. But I have known loss.”
“Have you?”
“Of course.”
“Then it pleases my heart to know. Tell me now that I am not the only one to come home to find his son with half of his head missing. Or just the hand of another son. Or him most dear with a hole where his chest and belly used to be. Or maybe hanging from—”
“Are we to compare loves murdered and children butchered? This is where you will judge to see if you are better than me?”
“Your child was just hurt.”
“My other children were murdered by my brother.”
“Shall we compare so you can come out victorious?”
“I never said this was a contest.”
“Then stop trying to win.”
He said nothing.
“Will you find your King?”
He paused. Waited. Knew she expected him to wait, to pause, to think, to even struggle within the head, then come to a decision.
“Yes,” he said.
The old woman looked up at him and tilted her head as if that was the way to know a person true.
“He lies. There is no question he will kill him,” she said.
He elbowed the guard behind him in the nose, pushed him away, grabbed and pulled out the guard’s sword, and stabbed it deep in its master’s belly. He ducked without looking, knowing the other guard would go for the neck. The guard’s sword cut through air above his head. He swung from below and chopped him in the calf. The guard fell and he shoved the sword in his chest, then took his sword too. More guards all stepped out as if they had popped out of the wall. Two came at him first and he became Mossi, he of the two swords, from the East, who never visited him in mind or spirit since he wrote in his own blood in the dirt. Mossi did not visit him now; Tracker just thought of him standing on rocks, practicing with swords. He kicked the first guard in the balls, jumped on him when he fell, leapt at two other guards, knocked away their spears with his left sword, and sliced one in the belly with the right sword and chopped the other in the shoulder. But hark, his back burst with blood and the guard who slashed him charged. He rolled out of the guard’s second strike. The guard swung again, but he hesitated—on orders not to kill, this was clear. The guard paused too long; Tracker’s sword went right through him.
