by Marlon James
Sogolon fell back. Her head jerked left like somebody slapped her, then right. I heard the slap. Everyone heard the slap. Sogolon fell and shook, then stopped, then shook, then shook again, then grabbed her belly and snarled something in a language that I have heard in the Darklands. The girl holding her robe fell with her. She looked at me, her eyes wide open, about to scream. Sogolon stood up but air slapped her down again. I drew my hatchets, the Ogo squeezed his knuckles, the Leopard changed, and Fumeli drew his bow. The Leopard’s bow. The Sangoma’s enchantment was still on me, and I could feel it the way one feels the sharp cold on the air of a coming storm. Sogolon staggered away, almost falling twice. Bunshi went after her.
“Madness has taken her,” the Leopard said.
“Cannot bind these and cover those,” Sogolon said in a whisper, but we heard her.
“She is old. Madness take her and gone away,” said Fumeli.
“If she is a madwoman, then you are dim-witted and young,” I said.
Bunshi tried to grab her but she pushed her away. Sogolon fell to her knees. She grabbed a stick and started drawing runes in the sand. In between what looked like someone punching her and slapping her she scratched them in the dirt. The Ogo had enough. He pulled on his iron gloves and stomped to her, but Bunshi stopped him, saying his fists cannot help us here. Sogolon marked, and scratched, and dug, and brushed dirt with her fingers, making runes in the dirt and falling back and cursing until she made a circle around her. She stood up and dropped the stick. Something moved through the air and dashed at her. We couldn’t see it, only hear the wind. Also this, the sound of something hitting, like sacks thrown against a wall, one, then three, then ten, then a rain of hits. Hitting against a wall of nothing all around Sogolon. Then nothing.
“Darklands,” Sogolon said. “Is the Darklands. All of them feeling stronger here. Taking liberties like they get passage from the underworld.”
“Who?” I asked.
Sogolon was about to speak, but Bunshi raised her hand.
“Dead spirits who never liked death. Spirits who think Sogolon can help them. They surround her with requests, and become furious when she says no. The dead should stay dead.”
“And they were all lying in wait at the mouth of the Darklands?” I asked.
“Many things lie in wait here,” Sogolon said. Not many people hold her stare, but I was not many people.
“You are lying,” I said.
“They are dead, that’s no lie.”
“I’ve been around those desperate for help, living and dead. They may grab you, hold you, and force you to look, may even pull you down to where they died, but none slap you around like a husband.”
“They are dead and that’s no lie.”
“But the witch is responsible and that’s no lie either.”
“Zogbanu is hunting you. There are more.”
“But these spirits on this shore are hunting her.”
“Think you know me. You know nothing,” Sogolon said.
“I know the next time you forget to write runes on sky or in dirt they will knock you off your horse or push you off a cliff. I know you do it every night. I wonder how you sleep. Tana kasa tano dabo.”
Both Bunshi and Sogolon stared at me. I looked at the others and said, “If it is ground, it is magic.”
“Enough. Nowhere is where this is taking us. You need to get to Mitu, then Kongor,” Bunshi said.
Sogolon grabbed her horse’s bridle, mounted, then pulled the girl up. “We go around the forest,” she said.
“That will take three days, four if the wind is against you,” the Leopard said.
“Still, we gone.”
“No one is stopping you,” Fumeli said.
I wanted nothing in the world as much as I wanted to slap this boy. But I did not want to go into the Darklands either.
“She is right,” I said. “There are things in the Darklands that will find us, even if we are not looking for them. They will be looking for—”
“It is less than a day through this silly bush,” the Leopard said.
“It is never less anything in there. You have never been.”
“There you go again, Tracker, thinking whatever has beaten you shall beat me,” the Leopard said.
“We go around,” I said, and turned for my horse. The Leopard mumbled something.
“What?”
“I said, Some men think they have become lord over me.”
“Why would I seek to be your lord? Why would anybody, cat?”
“We go through the forest. It is only trees and bush.”
“What is this ill spirit in you all of a sudden? I said I have been to the Darklands. It’s a place of bad enchantments. You stop being yourself. You won’t even know what that self is.”
“Self is what men tell themselves they are. I am just a cat.”
His rudeness made no sense and I have seen him at his most brash. It was too quick, like some boil hidden for years that just burst. Then the boil opened his mouth.
“Through the Darklands in one day. Around the lands is three days. Any man with sense would make the choice,” Fumeli said.
“Well, man and boy, choose whatever you want. We go round,” I said.
“The only way forward is through, Tracker.”
He grabbed the horse and started walking. Fumeli followed.
“Everyone finds what they are looking for in the Darklands. Unless you are what they are looking for,” I said.
But they were no longer looking. Then the Ogo started to follow them.
“Sadogo, why?” I asked.
“Maybe he thinking he tired of your fat verse,” Fumeli said. “Everyone finds what they are looking for in the Darklands. You sound like those men with white hair and shriveled skin, who think they talking wise when they just talking old.”
The Ogo turned to answer but I cut him off, although I should have let him explain for days. At least that would have kept him from following them.
“Never mind. Do what you have to,” I said.
“Seems like the boy finds his use,” Sogolon said, then rode off with the girl.
I mounted my horse and followed her. The painted girl held on to Sogolon’s sides, her right cheek resting on her back. Evening was running after us, and doing it in the quick. Sogolon stopped.
“Your men, any of them ever travel through the Darklands?”
“The Leopard said it’s only bush.”
“None of them ever go before, not even the giant?”
“The Ogo. Ogos do not like to be called giant.”
“His small brain is all that is saving him.”
“Make your meaning clear, woman.”
“I clear as river water. They not going to reach the other side.”
“They will if they stay on the path.”
“You already forget. That is what the forest hoping you do.”
“They will have much to tell us on the other side.”
“They not going to reach the other side.”
“What is this bush?” the painted girl said.
“Do you not have a name?”
“Venin, I told you.”
“You going back for your friends?” Sogolon asked.
“They are not my friends.”
I looked at her and Venin, and the sky.
“Where is Bunshi?”
Sogolon laughed. “How long you going take to find the missing if you take this long to notice the gone?”
“I don’t track the goings and comings of witches.”
“Will you go for them?”
“None would show me gratitude for it.”
“Gratitude is what you seeking? You come cheap.”
She grabbed the reins.
“You wish to save them, save them. Or don’t. What a band of fellows this turn into. Bunshi and her fellowship of men, which is why it fail before it even begin. Cannot make fellowship with men. A man alive is just a man in the way. Maybe we meet again in Mitu, if not Kongor.�
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“You say that as if I am going back.”
“I will see you or I will not. Trust the gods.”
Sogolon rode off in a gallop. I did not follow.
TEN
The witch was right. I turned off into the bush before I got to the path. The horse pulled up. I rubbed his neck. We stepped through the bush. I thought there would be cool mist but wet heat swept in and pushed sweat out of my skin. White flowers opened and closed. Trees stretched far into sky with foreign plants bursting out of the trunks. Some vines hung loose, others swung back up into the trees, where leaves blocked most of the sky, and the sky that could be seen already looked like night. Nothing swung or swayed, but sounds bounced in the bush. Water drizzled on me, but was too warm to be rain. Off in the distance three elephants blared and startled the horse. You could never trust the animals in the Darklands.
Above me a woodpecker pecked slow, tapping out a message above the beat and under it. Men walk through the bush. Men walking through the bush. Men they walk now through the bush.
Above me swung ten and nine monkeys, quiet, not meaning harm, curious perhaps. But they followed us. The elephants blared again. I did not notice we were on the path until they were right in front of us. An army. They blared, they swung their trunks, they raised and stomped, then charged at us. They stomped louder than thunder but the ground did not shake. I leaned into the horse’s neck and covered her eyes. This startled her again, made her shift, but the elephants would have been worse. They passed beside us and right through us. The ghosts of elephants—or the memory of elephants, or somewhere a god dreaming of elephants. You could never tell in the Darklands what was flesh and what was spirit. Above us was total night but light came through the leaves as if from small moons. Farther off on the left, in what looked like cleared bush but was not, apes stood, three or four in front, pushing away large leaves. Five in the clearing hit with light. More stood behind, some jumping down from branches. One of the apes opened his mouth, bared his flesh-tearing teeth, long and sharp, two atop and two at the bottom. I never learned the tongue of apes, but I knew if I stopped they would charge us and run away, then charge us again, closer and closer each time until they grabbed me and the horse, beating us both to death. Not the ghosts of apes or the dream of apes, but real apes, who liked living among the dead. My head brushed some leaves and they opened up to reveal bunches of berries bold and bloodlike. Eat just one and I would sleep for a quartermoon. Eat three more and I would never wake up. This god-forgotten forest where even the living things played with death and sleep. Above, more birds cawed and cackled and trilled and yapped, and mimicked and screeched and screamed. Running past us, two giraffes as small as house cats, running from a warthog as big as a rhinoceros.
I should not have come here. No you should not have, a voice said inside and outside my head. I did not look around. Whatever you are looking for in the Darklands, you will always find it. In front of me hung threads of thin silk, hundred and tens of hundreds reaching the ground.
A little closer and I saw it was not silk. Above me, sleeping upside down like bats, were creatures I have never seen, small like ghommids and black like them, but hanging upside down, their feet claws clutching branches. The silk came from their gaping mouths. Drool. Thick enough for my knife to cut them away as I rode through. Truth, there were swarms of them, hanging from every tree. As I passed one hanging low his eyes popped open. White, then yellow, then red, then black.
It was time to leave the trail anyway, and my horse was thirsty. Leave now or stay, a voice said, soft inside my head. The pond, as she drank, became clear as day. When I looked up in the sky it was still night. I pulled her away from the water. The blue in it did not mirror sky. This was the air from somewhere else, and not a kingdom underwater, which I would have sensed. This was a mirror to a dream, a place where I was the dream. I crouched and leaned so far I almost fell in. A floor in patterns like stars, white and black and green shiny stones, pillars rising out of the floor and so tall they went beyond the pond. A great hall, a hall for a man of great wealth, more wealth than chief or prince. I saw what glimmered like stars. Gold trim in the floor grout, gold swirling around the pillars, gold leaves in the drapes swaying in the wind.
A man entered the room, his hair short and red like a berry. The man wore a black agbada that swept the floor and a cape that woke up the wind. It was gone before I could see it full, black wings that appeared on his back and then vanished. He looked up, as if he saw something behind me. He started to walk towards me. Then he looked straight at my face, eye into eye. His robes spread wide like the wings before, and his look turned into a stare. He shouted something I could not hear, seized a guard’s spear, and stepped back, ready to hurl it. I jumped back from the pond and fell on my back.
And now the Leopard’s words walked through my head: The only way forward is through. But it was not the Leopard’s voice. I turned east. At least my heart told me it was east; there was no way I could know. East was getting darker, but I could still see. My last time in the Darklands that spirit announced himself clear, like the killer with the victim bound who says what he will do as he does it. The forest was too thick, the branches hanging too low for me to stay on the horse, so I jumped down and walked her. I smelled their burn stink before I heard them, and I knew they were following me.
“Neither him nor the big one fit, we say.”
“A piece of the big one? A piece is a pass.”
“He going run she going run, they all going run, we say.”
“Not if we make them go through the dead brook. Bad air riding the night wind. Bad air straight through the nose.”
“He he he he. But what we do with the what left? Eat we fill and leave them still, and they going spoil and rot and vultures going glut, till they fat and when hunger come for we again the meat going gone.”
These two had forgotten that I had met them before. Ewele, red and hairy, whose black eyes were small as seeds, and who hopped like a frog. The loud one, bursting with rage and wickedness, and so much plotting that would come to something were he not as smart as a stunned goat. Egbere, the quiet one, raised no more than a whimper, crying over all the poor people he ate, for he was so very sorry, he told any god who would listen, until he was again hungry. Then he was more vicious than his cousin. Egbere, blue when the light hit him but black otherwise. Hairless and shiny where his cousin was hairy. Both sounded like jackals growling in a violent fuck. And they fussed, and fought so much that by the time they remembered to eat me, I had rolled out of their trap, a net made from the web of a giant spider.
The Sangoma never taught the spell to me, but I watched her as she did it, and learned every word. Such a waste of time it was to use the spell on them, but I would lose much more waiting on them to plot. I whispered into the sky her incantation. The two little ghommids quarreled still, even as they hopped from branch to branch above me. And then:
“Where he gone? Where he go? Where he went?”
“Whowhowho?”
“Himhimhim! Look look look!”
“Where him gone?”
“So I say already, fool.”
“Him gone.”
“And shit stink and piss rank and fool is fool, just like you.”
“He gone, he gone. But he horse. He still there.”
“He be a she.”
“She who?”
“The horse.”
“The horse, the horse, let we take the horse.”
They hopped down from the tree. Neither carried weapons, but both opened mouths wide as a slit cut from ear to ear, with teeth, long, pointed, and numerous. Egbere charged at the horse to leap for her rump but ran into my kicking feet, my heel smashing his nose. He fell back and screamed.
“Why you kick me, son of a whoring half cat?”
“Me behind you, you fool. How me to kick you in the—”
I swung the hatchet right for Egbere’s forehead and chopped in deep, pulled it out, and chopped into his neck. I
swung again and again until his head came off. Ewele screamed and screamed that the wind is killing his brother, the wind is killing his brother.
“I thought he was your cousin,” I said.
“Who is it, who is demon of sky that killed my brother?”
I know the ghommids. Once upset they are out of control. He would never stop crying.
“You kill my brother!”
“Shut your face. His head will grow back in seven days. Unless it gets infected, then he will just grow back one big ball of pus.”
“Show yourself! I am hungry to kill you.”
“You kill my time, troll.”
You have no time, someone said in my head. I heard him this time. It was a him and he spoke to me like I knew him, with the warmth of an old friend but only in sound, for it felt colder than the lower regions of lands of the dead, which I have been to in a dream. The voice took me out of the spell and Ewele jumped me. He screamed and his mouth opened wide, his sharp teeth grew, he became all mouth and teeth like the great fishes I have seen in the deep sea. And he got stronger as he got madder. My hand pushed him away from my face but his hair was slippery. He snapped and snapped and snapped and flew straight up in the air and vanished. My horse had kicked him away. I mounted her and rode off.
Why did you come back? he said.
“I did not come back. I am passing through.”
Passing through. But you are on the road.
“The horse cannot ride for long in the bush.”
I knew you would.
“Fuck the gods for all you know.”
I knew you would come back.
“Fuck the gods.”
What kind of a story would the griots tell of you? You are no story. A man of use to no one. A man no one depends on, no one trusts. You drift like spirits and devils and even their drift is with purpose.
“Is that all people are? Their purpose? Their use?”
You have no purpose. You are a man loved by no one. When you die, who will grieve you? Your father forgot you before you were even born. They raised you in a house where people murdered memory. What kind of hero are you?
