by Marlon James
Men surrounded him. He lunged at them, they stepped back. The collar clamped around his neck squeezed in tight, like a hand pulling a noose tighter. From his hands, both swords fell. He coughed and couldn’t cough, growled and couldn’t growl. Tighter, tighter, his face swelled, his head about to burst. And his eyes. Fright. Not fright. Shock. You look like you didn’t know. Bad man, you must did know. The Sangoma’s enchantment is fading from you. You will have no mastery of metals. No wind came in the nose, no wind left. He fell to one knee. The guards stepped away. He looked up, tears blinding him, and the old woman held out her right hand and made a fist. She did not smile, but looked like a woman thinking a happy thought. He tried to cough again; he could barely see her. He pawed the floor and found the sword. Scooping up the grip, he held it up like a spear and threw it hard and quick. The spear struck the old woman right in the heart. Her eyes popped. She opened her mouth and black blood came out. She fell and the collar broke from his neck. A guard struck him in the back of his head.
* * *
—
Smell it,” the King sister said to Tracker when he woke up. Who knew which room this was, but he was back in the cage and the same strip of cloth was at his feet.
“It is from him. His favorite bedding. He would have the servants wash it every quartermoon, indeed it was many colours once. I can make you a new bargain. Find him and bring him back, and do whatever you wish to the other one. If you can leave the Mweru. Many men enter, but no man can ever leave.”
“Witchcraft?”
“Which witch would want a man to stay? But you can try to leave. Smell the rag.”
He grabbed the piece of cloth, brought it to his nose, and breathed in deep. The smell filled his head, and he knew what it was before his nose took flight, followed the source; he jumped on it as it took him right between her legs.
“Look at you. You wanted to know where he was going and I gave you where he came from.”
She laughed loud and long and the laugh bounced over the empty hall.
“You. You will be the one to murder the world?” she said, and left him.
* * *
—
That night Tracker was awake in the dream jungle. Past trees as small as shrubs and shrubs as tall as elephants, the Tracker went and looked for him. He came upon a still pond where nothing seemed to live. First he saw himself. Then he saw the clouds, then mountains, then a path and elephants running away, then antelopes, then cheetahs, and past them another road that led to a city wall, and up the wall a tower, and in the tower looking out, then straight at him, eye-to-eye, the one he searched for. This man was he ever surprised to hear the Tracker’s call, but he knew why before asking.
“You know I can kill you in your sleep,” he said.
“But you wonder why I would have called you, the worst of enemies,” Tracker said. “Tell no lie. No man can leave the Mweru, but you are no man.”
He smiled and said, “True, you cannot leave the Mweru without either dying or going mad, a goddess with revenge towards me made it so, unless there is one beyond magic to lead you out. But what shall I get for it?”
“You want this boy’s head. I am the only one who can find him,” Tracker said.
It was a lie, for he had lost all track of the boy’s smell, and he would learn after that the boy no longer had a smell, truly none at all, but a bargain they struck, him and the Aesi.
“Tell me where in the palace you are when you find out,” the Aesi said.
This man who was not a man came for him; indeed it took him one and a half moons to do so, and the North had long thrown first spears at the South. Wakadishu and Kalindar.
This is what happened. The Tracker woke to the sound of bodies falling. A guard entered his cell and nodded for him to follow, saying nothing. They both stepped over the dead guards and kept walking. Down a corridor, past a hall, down steps, up steps, and down more. Down another corridor, past many dead guards and sleeping guards and felled guards. This guard who said nothing pointed to a horse waiting at the foot of the massive steps leading out, and Tracker turned to say what, he did not know, only to see that the guard’s eyes were wide open but saw nothing. Then he fell. Tracker ran down the steps, stopped midway to grab a dead guard’s sword, then mounted the horse and rode away, past the smoking lakes, through the tunnel, and right to the edge of the Mweru. The horse dug into his hooves and threw him, but he grabbed the reins even as he flew off the horse. The horse turned and galloped away.
Tracker kept walking and after a while saw a figure in the dark wearing a hood. He sat cross-legged and wrote in the air the way Sogolon had, and was off the ground, floating on air. Tracker approached and the man stretched his hand out to say stop. He pointed right and Tracker walked right, and when he had stepped ten and five paces, fire shot out of the earth before him. He jumped back. The man beckoned Tracker forward ten steps and gestured to stop. The earth below him cracked and split and moved apart in a loud rumble, shaking the ground like an earthquake. The man put both feet down, rubbing something sticky in his right hand. He threw it—a heart—into the chasm and the chasm hissed and coughed, and closed itself. Then he waved at Tracker to come. He threw something else and it sparked the air like lightning. Spark spread to spark, which spread to spark, and then a boom that knocked Tracker down.
“Get up and run,” the man said. “I no longer have a hold on any of them.”
Tracker turned around and saw a cloud of dust coming. Riders.
“Run!” the man shouted.
Tracker ran, with the riders coming up behind him, to where the man was, and both stood, Tracker trembling as the riders rode straight at them. He saw the calm in the man and borrowed it even as everything in him wanted to scream, We will be trampled, fuck the gods, why do we not run? A horseman came within a breath of his face before he rode into the wall that was not there. Man and horse slammed into it one after the other, and many at once, some horses breaking their necks and legs, some riders flying into the sky and slamming into the wall, some horses stopping quick and throwing their riders off.
Tracker caught the Aesi as he passed out, and pulled him away.
“And that is the story I have taken and given to you,” I said.
“But, but . . . but . . . but . . . that is no story. That is not even half of one. Your story is only half-delicious. Shall I only kill half of you? And who is this man who is not a man? Who is he? I will have a name, I will have it!”
“Do you not know? They call him the Aesi.”
The white man went all blue. His jaw dropped and he grabbed his shoulders, as if cold.
“The god butcher?”
* * *
—
I did not wake from sleep. And yet right there I was in another forest that felt different from the one I was in before. I blinked several times, but this was a different forest. Nothing lived and nothing moved. None of the smells of life, no new flower, no recent rain, no fresh dung, the spider, gone like an afterthought. At my foot was a pile of something pale gray and white and thin enough to see through, like shed skin. Beside it, hiding in the grass, my two axes and the back harness to hold them. I wedged my finger in one of the slits I had made in the leather and pulled it out, Nyka’s feather. His whole path opened up to me as soon as I brushed the feather past my nose.
Behind me, maybe thirty paces, then right, then a bend, then down, maybe downhill and then across, then up again, a small hill perhaps, but still under forest cover, then into someplace that he had not left. Or this could still be a dream jungle of some kind. I once overheard a drunk man in a bar in Malakal say that if you are ever lost in a dream and cannot tell if you are asleep or awake, take a look at your hands, for in a dream you always have four fingers. My hands showed five.
I grabbed my things and ran. Forty paces through wet grass and mud, and ferns that stung my calves, then right, almost into a tree,
and dodging them left and right and left, over the corpse of a beast, then slowing down because the forest was too thick to run and every step was a shrub or tree, then to a bend like a river, then downhill until I smelled the river first and then heard it, a waterfall rushing down on rocks. And I skipped over the rocks, climbed slow but still tripped, and hit my calf against a sharp rock edge that drew blood. But who could stop to look at blood? I climbed down to the river and walked in the water to wash away the blood, and after much time I ran up a bank that rose higher and higher, and then I pulled my ax and cut through even thicker bush and all the time Nyka’s smell came on stronger and stronger. And I cut and pushed my way through thick, wet leaves and branches slapping my back, until I came upon not a clearing, just a gathering of trees taller than towers, with much space in between. He was near, so near that I looked above me, expecting Sasabonsam to have him hanging high. Or that he and Sasabonsam would meet as one, vampire to vampire, and both were already conspiring to pull me up into one of these trees and tear me in half. Deep in whatever was there for his heart, I expected it of Nyka.
I was walking. I heard my own footsteps in the bush. A man walked before me, several paces ahead, and I wondered how I had not seen him before. Slow he walked, with no purpose in step, just wandering. His hair long, and curly, and when he pulled his cloak tighter, arms light as sand itself. Something jumped into my heart. I ran up close to him and stopped, I didn’t know why. Up close the wet hair, the sharp turn from jaw to chin, the beard red, the cheekbones high, all were enough for me to think it was him and not enough for me to say, No, it could not be. The cape hid his legs, but I knew the wide stride, the balls of his feet hitting the ground before the heel, even in boots. I waited for his smell, but none came. The cape fell off and rolled into the bush. His feet I saw first, green from grass and brown from dirt. Then his calves, always so thick and strong, so unlike any man from these lands. And the back of his knee, and his buttocks, always so smooth and white, as if he never liked lying naked in the sun at the top of the baobab tree like one of the monkeys. Above his buttocks, trees and sky. Below his shoulders, trees and sky. Above his buttocks a hole, a nothing, everything eaten out from his belly to his back, leaving a gap big as the world. Dripping blood and flesh, and still he walked.
But I could not. My legs had never been this weak, and I fell to my knees and breathed heavy and slow, waiting for Itutu to come to my heart. It did not. All in my head was my crawling on top of him, cradling his head, for there were flies everywhere else, and weeping, and bawling, and screaming, and screaming, and screaming into the trees and sky. And reading what he wrote in his own blood in the sand:
The boy, the boy was with him.
I cried, Beautiful man, I should not have been late. I should have come before you left this world and coaxed your soul into a nkisi, and wrapped it around my neck, so I could rub it and feel you. A mystic with a nkisi shaped like a dog said, There is a tormented spirit that would have words with you, Wolf Eye, but I wanted no words. I called his name and it came out a whimper.
This Mossi kept walking into the deep bush. This I know. A time surely comes when grief is nothing but a sickness, and I had grown sick of sickness. I raged and howled and the smell of that monster and of that vampire bird both came upon me, and I rose and pulled both my axes and ran shouting at nothing, chopping at nothing. I ran from a new thing, it must have been a head witch trying to drive a needle through deaths upon deaths and sew them together. My father whom I did not know, and my unavenged brother. And Mossi, and so many more. Not a head witch, but the god of the underworld telling me of the wronged dead that I must make right, as if I am why they are dead. How must the Tracker who lives for no one have so many dead on his watch? Must he be blamed for them all? My head argued with my head, making me stumble. The Leopard should have been right here, right now, so I could stab him in the heart. My foot hit a downed tree and I fell.
When I looked up I saw feet. Hanging high above me even when I stood up. Legs white like kaolin dust with his black feet loose and dangling. Ribs pressed out of his thin chest and black blood streaks dried up from running down his belly. Two black spots where his nipples used to be and dried blood that had flowed from them. Bite marks all over his chest, and neck, and his left cheek. Somebody was looking for a tender spot to bite. His chin resting on his chest, his arms spread out and tied off with vines. His wings spread wider and trapped in branches and leaves.
“Nyka,” I whispered.
Nyka did not move. I said his name louder. A giggle came out of the bushes below. I looked into the bush and into the bush looked at me. He stared as he did before, eyes wide for no reason, not delight, not malice, not care, not even curiosity. Just wide. Older. Taller. I could tell from just the eyes and his thin, bony cheek. I would rather he laughed. I would rather he said, Look at me, I am your villain. Or whimper and plead, Look at me, your real victim. Instead he just looked. I looked at his eyes and saw Mossi’s dead eyes, looking forever and seeing nothing. He dashed out of that grass patch right before my ax came for his face. I charged straight into the bush, thinking the beast growl came from another mouth but mine. I surged through branches and ripped through leaves into darker bush. Nothing. Bloodsucker-tit-biting ghoul, still giggling like a baby. Gone.
Above me Nyka groaned. I stepped out of the bush and walked right into Sasabonsam’s hand-foot kicking me in the face.
My head and back hit the ground. I rolled up to my knees, and jumped back to my feet. He flapped his wing but it kept hitting trees, so he landed on his feet and looked at me. Sasabonsam. I had never stopped to look at his face. His big white eyes, jackal ears, and sharp bottom teeth sticking out from his lips like a warthog’s. His whole body overrun with black hair except for his pale chest and pink nipples, an ivory necklace, and a loincloth that made me laugh. He growled.
“Your smell, I remember it. I follow it,” he said.
“Quiet.”
“Come round looking for it.”
“Silence.”
“You not there. So I eat. The little ones, they taste strange.”
I charged at him, ducking before he swung his wing. Then I rolled to his left foot and chopped it with both axes. He jumped and shrieked like a crow. You always aim for the toes, said a voice that sounded like me. The ax barely touched him. He tried to swat me with his hand but I ducked, jumped to his knee, and swung my ax at his face as I leapt off. The blunt side hit his cheekbone and he snarled, then swatted at me. His hand missed me but his claws slashed four lines across my chest. I fell to one knee and he kicked me away. My back slammed into a tree trunk and my breath rushed out.
And my eyes rolled. And there was nothing. My chin grazed my chest, and I saw my nipples and belly. My head grew heavy, and my eyes did not work well. Nyka groaned and pulled at his hands. My chin hit my chest again. I looked up straight into Sasabonsam’s knuckles.
“Six of them for one of you. Look at your quality,” he said.
He said more but blood trickled from my right ear and I could not hear. He punched at my face, but I nodded and his hand struck the tree. He howled and slapped me. I spat blood on my legs, and my legs did not work.
“Where are my askis, the little one say.”
He grabbed my throat.
“The little ball, the little one he tried to roll away. You want know how far he get? He the one that say, My father going come back and kill you. He going chop you with he two askis.”
“Kosu.”
“Father, he call you. Father? You don’t roll like a ball. You don’t have no askis now. Look at your quality.”
“Kosu. Ko—”
He punched me again. I spat out two teeth. He wrapped his long fingers around my head and pulled me up.
Axes, he was saying that Father was going to chop him with axes.
“He never scream. And I have him in many bites.”
“Kosu.”
>
I could only see bits of light through his thick and stinking fingers. His claws scratched my neck.
“When I reach the bone in his back, still he did not cry. Then he die. And I bite the back of the head and suck—”
“Fuck the gods.”
He threw me and a peace came over me in flight that cut when I landed in branches and leaves. He grabbed at my ankle and I kicked him away. He giggled and grabbed my leg again and kept giggling as he pulled me out of the branches. My back and head hit the ground and then I was moving; he was pulling me.
“You the fool and she the fool. She the one in gold and red and all she do, she sit. I see her through the window. Only I know the boy. I come for him in the weird place and he follow me. He even call me, for the white one teach him how to call. Me never want the boy for he don’t want me, he want the lightning one, but he call me and I come take him, and the night did quick and I fly away with him and he say I hear my mother talk about the wolf and he cubs and how she try to make him her soldier and they live in the monkeybread tree and I say that is the one who kill my brother, I hear, he says so and the boy say fly with me on your back and I can take you, and he take me.”
I said, Quiet, but it died before it fell out of my mouth. I don’t know where he was dragging me, and my back scraped against grass and dirt and stones in water, and then my head sunk underwater as he pulled me through a river, and the back of my head hit a rock, and I went dark. I woke up and I was still under the water and coughing and choking until he pulled me out into grass and under trees again.
