by Marlon James
“A slave rich as you, catching his own fish?” I said.
The slaver paused. I said, “Do you know how to tell a good lie, master Amadu? I know how to tell a bad one. When people talk false, their words are muddy where they should be clear, clear where they should be muddy. Something that sounds like it might be true. But it’s always the wrong thing. Everything you just said, you said different before.”
“Truth don’t change,” he said.
“Truth changed between one man saying the same thing twice. I believe there is a boy. And I believe a boy is missing, and if he’s missing many years, dead. But four days ago, the boy child was living with a housekeeper. Today you say aunt. By the time we get to Kongor it will be a eunuch monkey.”
“Tracker,” the Leopard said.
“No.”
“Let him finish.”
“Good, good, wonderful, fine,” the slaver said, and held his hand up.
“But stop lying,” the Leopard said. “He can smell when you do.”
“Is three years ago a child was taken. A boy, he was just starting to walk and could say maybe papa.”
“Late for a child, even a boy,” I said.
“I tell you true and I tell you wise. From his home right here in the night. Nobody leave nothing, and nobody send notice for ransom. Maybe—”
I pulled the two hatchets from my back. The Leopard’s eyes were going white and his whiskers grew longer. The tall woman stood up and moved to the slaver.
“You heard him?” I said to the Leopard.
“Yes. The same story, almost right down to the word. Almost. But he forgets. Fuck the gods, slaver, you have rehearsed this and still you forget. You must be the worst liar or the echo of a bad one. If this is an ambush I will rip your throat out before he splits your head in two,” the Leopard said.
Leopard and I stood side by side. The Ogo saw me and the Leopard on one side of the room and the slaver and tall woman on the other, and stood still, his eyes hiding under the wild bush of his brow. The old woman opened her eyes.
“One room too small for so many fools,” she said. But she did not move from the mat.
She must have been a witch. She had the air and the smell of witches—lemongrass and fish, blood from a girl’s koo, and funk from not washing her arms or feet.
“Messenger is what he is, all he is,” she said.
“The first time, his message was a pig. This time it’s a sheep,” I said.
“Sangoma,” the old woman said.
“What?”
“You talk in riddles, like a Sangoma. Did you live with one? Who teach you?”
“I don’t know her name and she taught me nothing. The Sangoma from the Hills of Enchantment. The one who saved mingi children.”
“Also the one who give you that eye,” she said.
“My eye is none of your business. This some plot against us?” I asked.
“But you be nothing. Why would anyone plot against you?” the old woman said. “You wish to find the child or no? Answer the question plain, or maybe …”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe the woman is still part of the man. No man has cut you. No wonder you so flighty.”
“Should I be like you then, a credit to your kind?”
She smiled. She was enjoying this. And there it was, a smell again, stronger this time, stronger mayhaps because of the discord in this room, but also outside it. I could not describe it, but I knew it. No, the smell knew me.
“What do you know of the men who took the boy?” I asked.
“What makes you think they were men?” the tall woman said.
“What is your name?”
“Nsaka Ne Vampi.”
“Nsaka,” I said.
“Nsaka Ne Vampi.”
“As you wish.”
“I tell you true, we know nothing,” she said. “Night is when they came. Few, maybe four, maybe five, maybe six, but they were men of strange and terrible looks. I can read the—”
“I can also read.”
“Then go to the Kongor great hall of records and seek it yourself. Nobody saw them enter. Nobody saw them leave.”
“Did no one scream?” said the Leopard. “Had they no windows or doors?”
“Neighbors saw nothing. The women overcharged for her millet porridge and flatbreads, so why would they listen twice what noises come from her house?”
“Why this boy, of all the boys in Kongor?” I asked. “Truly, Kongor is so steadfast in breeding warriors that finding a girl would be a bigger mystery. One boy in Kongor is the same as any other. Why him?”
“That is all we will say until Kongor,” the slaver said.
“Not enough. Not enough by half.”
“The slaver said his piece,” said Nsaka Ne Vampi. “You have the choice, yes or no, so make it quick. We ride in the morning. Even with fast horses it will take ten and two days to get to Kongor.”
“Tracker, we leave,” the Leopard said.
He turned to go. I watched the Ogo watch him as he stepped past.
“Wait,” I said.
“Why?”
“Have you not yet finished making marks?”
“What? Make sense, Tracker.”
“Not you. Her.”
I pointed to the old woman still crouched on the ground. She looked at me, her face blank.
“You have been drawing runes since we came into this room. Writing on air, so nobody here would know. But they are there. All around you.”
The old woman smiled.
“Tracker?” the Leopard whispered. I knew how he was when he understood nothing. He would change, ready for a fight.
“The old crone’s a witch,” I said, and the Leopard’s hair went wild across his back. I touched behind his neck and he stayed.
“You are writing runes either to let someone in or keep someone out,” I said.
I stepped forward and looked around the room.
“Show yourself,” I said. “Your stench was with this room from the moment I entered it.”
In the doorway, liquid coursing down the wall pooled on the floor. Dark and shiny, like oil, and spreading slow like blood. But the smell, something like sulfur, filled the room. “Look,” I said to the Leopard, and pulled a dagger from my waist. I clutched the blade, chucked it at the puddle, and the puddle swallowed it with a suck. In a blink, the knife shot out from the puddle. The Leopard caught it right before it hit my left eye.
“Work of devils,” he said.
“I have seen this devil before,” I said.
The Leopard watched the puddle move. I wanted to see how the others reacted. The Ogo stooped down, but was still taller than everybody else. He bent even lower. He had never seen the like before. The old woman stopped writing runes in air. She was expecting this. Nsaka Ne Vampi stood fast, but moved backward, one slow step, then another. Then she stopped, but something else made her step back again. She was here for this, but perhaps this was not what she was waiting for. Some beasts can walk through a door. Some must be conjured from ground, and some must be evoked from sky, like spirits. The slaver looked away.
And this puddle. It stopped spreading and reversed, closed in on itself and started to rise, like dough being kneaded by invisible hands. The black shiny dough rose and twisted, and squeezed in, and spread out, even as it grew taller and wider. It twisted on itself, getting so thin in the middle that it would break in two. And still it grew. Little pieces popped away like droplets, then flew back and joined the mass. The Leopard snarled but did not move. The slaver still did not look. The black mass was whispering something I did not understand, not to me but on the air. At the top of the mass a face pushed itself out and sucked itself back in. The face pushed through the middle and vanished again. Two branches sprouted from the top of the mass and turned into limbs. The bottom split and twisted and spun into legs and toes. The form shaped itself, sculpted itself, curved herself into wide hips, plump breasts, the legs of a runner and the shoulders of a thrower, and
a head with no hair and bright white eyes, and when she smiled, bright white teeth. She seemed to hiss. As she walked she left droplets of black, but the droplets followed her. Some separated from her head but followed her as well. Truly, she moved as if underwater, as if our air was water, as if all movement was dance. She grabbed a cloak near the slaver and dressed herself. The slaver still did not look at her.
“Leopard, the torch,” I said. “The torch right there.”
I pointed at the wall. The black woman saw the Leopard and smiled.
“I am not the one you think,” she said. Her voice was clear, but vanished on air. She would not raise her voice to make herself heard.
“I think you are exactly as I think,” I said. I took the torch from the Leopard. “And I would guess there is as much hate between you and flame as there was with them.”
“Who is she, Tracker?” the Leopard said.
“Who am I, Wolf Eye? Tell him.”
She turned to me, but said to the Leopard, “The wolf fears that by saying them he will invoke them. Say I lie, if I lie, Tracker.”
“Who?” said the Leopard.
“I fear nothing, Omoluzu,” I said.
“I rose from the floor while they fall from the ceiling. I speak while they say nothing. Yet you call me Omoluzu?”
“Every beast has its comelier version.”
“I am Bunshi, in the North. The people in the West call me Popele.”
“You must be one of the lower gods. A godlet. A bush spirit. Maybe even an imp,” I said.
“News of your nose I have heard, but nobody said anything about your mouth.”
“How he keeps putting his foot in it?” Nsaka Ne Vampi said.
“You know of me?”
“Everybody knows of you. A great friend of cheated wives and an enemy to cheating husbands. How loudly your mother must boast of you,” Bunshi said.
“And what are you, God’s piss? God’s spit, or maybe God’s semen?”
Around me the air got thick and thicker. Every animal knows there is water in the air even without rain. But something was clotting around my nose and it was hard to breathe. The air got denser and wetter and surrounded my head. I thought it was the room but it was only my head, a ball of water forming and trying to force itself up my nostrils even without me breathing. Drowning me. I fell to the floor. The Leopard changed and jumped at the woman. She fell to the ground as a puddle and rose up on the other side of the room, right into the squashing hand of the Ogo around her neck. She tried slipping out but couldn’t change. Something about his touch. He nodded towards me, holding her up like a doll, and the water broke away into air. I coughed. The Ogo dropped the woman.
“Leopard, stay if you wish. I go,” I said.
The old woman spoke.
“Tracker. I am Sogolon, daughter of Kiluya from the third sister empire of Nigiki, and yes you speak true. There is more to this story. Will you hear it?” the old woman said.
“Tracker?” said the Leopard.
“Fine, I will,” I said to her, and stood ground.
“Then speak it, goddess,” Sogolon said to Bunshi.
Bunshi turned to the slaver and said, “Leave us.”
“If your story is the same as his, or even more dull, I will sit with this knife and carve nasty scenes on the floor,” I said.
“What do you know of your King?” she said.
“I know he’s not my King,” the Leopard said.
“Nor mine,” I said. “But of every coin I make the Malakal chief wants half so he can give the King quarter, so yes he is my King.”
Bunshi sat in the slaver’s chair as men do, leaning to one side, her left leg over the arm. Nsaka was at the doorway, looking out. The Ogo stood still, and the old woman Sogolon stopped writing runes in the air. I felt like I was around children waiting on the grandfather to tell them a new story about old Nan-si, the spider demon who was a man once. It reminded me to never take the story of any god or spirit or magical being to be all true. If the gods created everything, was truth not just another creation?
“This was long past that Kwash Dara, when he was still a prince, had many friends for sporting, and wenching, and drinking, and fighting, like any boy of his own age. One friend most of all could out-sport him, out-wench him, out-drink him, and out-fight him, and yet even with all those things they moved like brothers. Friends even when the old King took sick and went to the ancestors.
“Basu Fumanguru became known as the man who whispers to the Prince. At the time the council of elders also had a death. Kwash Dara hated the council from when he was a child. Why do they always take young girls? he would ask his nana. And I heard they fuck into their hands and take the seed across to the river islands to give to some god, he said. The King when he was a prince studied at the palace of wisdom and glutted on knowledge, and science, and things being weighed and measured, not just believed. So did Basu Fumanguru. Kwash Dara knew Basu as a man like him in all ways and loved him for it. He said, Basu, you are like me in all ways. And just as I ascend the throne I wish for you to ascend the seat of the elders. Basu said he did not want this seat, for the elders sat in Malakal, five to six days’ ride from Fasisi, where he was born, where lived, all that he knew. Also, he was still young, and to be an elder meant to renounce many things. The Prince became King and said, You are too old for lovers, and we are too old for sport. It is time to set all that aside and do good for the kingdom. Basu objected, and objected until the King threw down his royal staff and said, By the gods I am Kwash Dara and that is my decree. So Basu Fumanguru took his seat with the elders in Malakal, to report as an ear to the King.
“But then the strangest of turns happened. Basu fell in love with his seat. He became devout and pious and took a wife, handsome and pure. They had many children. The King had put him there to make sure the wisdom of the elders lined up with the desire of the royal house. Instead, Basu demanded that the desires of the royal house line up with the wisdom of the elders. Everything was fight, fight, fight. He challenged the King through dissent sent through the drums, he challenged him with letters and many writs, delivered by men on foot and on horse. He challenged him in visits to court and even in the privacy of the King’s chambers. When the King said it is so because I am King, Basu Fumanguru took his case to the streets of Malakal, which spread faster than infection to the streets of Juba, the paths of Luala Luala, and the great roads of Fasisi itself. Basu would say, You are King but you are not divine until you join the ancestors like your father.
“So one day Kwash Dara demanded grain tax from the lands of the elders, which no king had done before. The elders refused to pay. The King sent decree to lock them all up in prison until the tax was paid. But two nights after they locked them away, rain broke all over the North Kingdom and did not stop until all the rivers flooded and killed many, and not just Ku and Gangatom living by the great water. In some places water rose so high that entire towns vanished, and fat bodies floated everywhere. The rain did not stop until the King released Basu Fumanguru. And still things got worse.
“Learn this. In the early years, when the elders clashed with the King, the will of the people was with the elders, for the King was arrogant. It did not make the King weak, for he conquered many nations in war. But in his own country people were starting to ask, Do we have one king or two? I tell you true. Some people were more afraid of Fumanguru than the King, and he was fearsome in all his ways. And righteous in them too. But everything changes. The elders, already fat, got fatter. They got so used to having their will that when people defied them, or were too late with rent, or failed to give proper tribute, they started to take justice themselves instead of leaving such things to the King’s magistrates. They captured highway robbers and chopped their hands off. They hung whoever trespassed and ate the fruit of their lands. They stopped seeking the gods and instead met with witches to work spells and curses. They got fat from taxes that never reached the King.
“Listen here now. Some people hat
ed the King, but soon everybody hated all elders but Basu. One man would say, The elders took my cattle saying this is tax for the King, but the tax collector came seven days ago. This elder would say, Give me what you will earn from your crops now and we will make sure the gods double your yield come harvest. But instead of harvest, blight killed the crops. Another man will say, When will they stop coming for our girls? They are taking them younger and younger, and no man will marry them. They were the law in Malakal and all lands below Fasisi, and when they did not meet in council, they spread to their cities and infected each with its corruption. But it was a decree by the King himself that the elders can only be judged by the gods, never men.
“Basu would not sit with any of this. He was never the chief elder—the King never made good on the promise—but they respected him as once a warrior, and he clashed against his own brothers who had gone corrupt. People say, Go to Basu if that elder took your crops, Go to Basu if a witch spun a curse, Go to Basu for he is the one with reason. People say this. One time an elder had seen a girl in the fourth wall and decided he would have her. She was ten and one in years. He told her father, Send your child to serve as maid to the water goddess, or no wind or sun will prevent your sorghum fields from blight. You and your wife and your many sons will starve. The elder did not wait for the girl to be sent; he came and took her himself. This is what happened. Basu was gathering items for a retreat to a holy place in the bush to seek the word of the gods, when he heard the screams of the girl as the elder was on top of her. A rage went up his head and Basu was no longer Basu. He grabbed a gold Ifa bowl, used to divine the will of the spirits, and struck the elder in the head. And struck him, and struck him, and struck him until he was dead. Basu was in new waters after that. His brothers hated him and he was hated by the King and everyone at court. He should have known there were numbers to his days. Fumanguru and his family fled to Kongor.
“Then one night they came. Tracker, you know of who I speak. It was the Night of the Skulls, a powerful omen.”
