by Marlon James
He nudged me. “What does she say?”
“You don’t speak the Dolingon tongue?”
“Certainly. A fat eunuch taught me at four. Of course I don’t speak it. What does she say?”
“She talks of men she has never seen. You. I am almost sure of it.”
“Should I call him sandman?” she said. “I shall call him sandman, for I find this a funny thing …. I did say I find this a funny thing.”
The entire hall broke into laughter, clapping, whistling, and shouts to the gods. She flashed a hand and they quit in a blink. She waved Mossi over, but he did not understand.
“Tracker, they laugh. Why do they laugh?”
“She just called you sand boy or sand person.”
“This amuses them?”
“Is he deaf? I had bid him come over,” the Queen said.
“Mossi, she speaks of you.”
“But she said nothing.”
“She is Queen, if she said she spoke, she spoke.”
“But she said nothing.”
“Fuck the gods. Go!”
“No.”
Two spears poked him in the back. The guards started walking and had Mossi not moved, their blades would have pierced his skin. They went down the steps of our platform, crossed the vast floor and the women, men, and beasts of the court, and stopped at the foot of the throne floor. She beckoned him to come up, and the two guards blocking the steps shifted away.
“Chancellor, you already go to more territories than they write in all the great books. Tell me, have you ever see such a man as this?”
A tall slender man with long and thin hair stepped out of the floor, to speak to the Queen. He bowed first.
“Most excellent Queen, many time and here is the thing. He—”
“How come you never purchase one for me?”
“Forgive me, my Queen.”
“Are men even lighter than this?”
“Yes, Most Magnificent.”
“How frightening, and how delicious.” Then, to Mossi, “What is your name?”
Mossi stared at her blankly, like he truly was deaf. Sogolon said he did not know their tongue.
A guard came forward and gave the chancellor Mossi’s sword. The chancellor looked at the blade, examined the handle, and said in Kongori tongue, “How come you by such a sword?”
“’Tis from a strange land,” Mossi said.
“Which land?”
“Home.”
“And that is not Kongor?”
The chancellor, facing the Queen, said to Mossi, “Clearly somebody did name you. What is it? The name, the name.”
“Mossi.”
“Hmm?”
“Mossi.”
“Hmm?”
The chancellor nodded and a spear poked Mossi’s side.
“Mossi, most excellent Queen,” Mossi said.
The chancellor repeated to the queen.
“Mossi? Just Mossi. Men like you fall from sky and just pick up names? Where do you hail, master Mossi? What house?” the chancellor asked.
“Mossi from the house of Azar, from the lands of the eastern light.”
Chancellor repeated in Dolingo tongue and the Queen bleated out a laugh.
“Why would a man east of the sea live in these lands? And what is this disease that burned all the colour from your skin? Tell me now, since nobody in this court likes when you annoy their Queen …. I said, nobody in this court like if you annoy the Queen.”
The court erupted in nos and uh-uhs, and shouts to the gods.
“And yet his hair is black as coal. Lift that sleeve …. Yes, yes, yes, but how is this? Your shoulder is lighter than your arm? I can see it right there, did they sew arms onto you? My wise counsel had better start counseling.”
I was looking at all this and wondering if only the South had mad kings and queens. Sogolon stood back when I expected her to say something. I tried to read her face but hers was not mine. If you disgusted me, you knew as soon as I bid you morning greetings. The Queen was playing and what was play to her? The Ogo stood still but his knuckles cracked from him squeezing too hard. I touched his arm. Mossi was no better at hiding his mind from his face. And Mossi standing there, looking at everything, understanding nothing.
He saw my face, and his fell into worry. What? he mouthed to me, but I did not know how to say anything to him.
“I will see more. Remove it,” the Queen said.
“Remove your robes,” said the chancellor to Mossi.
“What?” Mossi said. “No.”
“No?” the Queen said. That she understood despite the Kongori tongue. “Shall a queen wait for consent from a man?”
She nodded and two of her guards grabbed Mossi. He punched one straight on the cheek but the other pushed a knife against his throat. He turned to me and I mouthed, Peace. Peace, prefect. The guard used the same knife, lodged between the garment and his shoulders, and cut it off. The other guard pulled his belt and everything dropped on the floor.
“No gasps? I hear no gasping?” the Queen said, and the room erupted in gasps, coughs, wheezes, and shouts to the gods.
Mossi, thinking, These are the things that must happen to me, straightened his back, raised his head, and stood. The women and men and eunuchs, who sat at the foot of the Queen, all crawled closer to look. What was the mystery, I did not know.
“Strange, strange thing. Chancellor, why is it darker than the rest of him? Lift it, I will see the sac.”
He came for Mossi’s balls and Mossi jumped. Meanwhile in all this Sogolon said nothing.
“Just as dark? Yes, it is strange, chancellor.”
“It is strange, Most Excellent.”
“Are you a man made up of other men? Your arms darker than your shoulders, your neck darker than your chest, your buttocks whiter than your legs, and your, your …” Then, to the chancellor, “What do your courtesans call it?”
Truth, I laughed.
“I am not one for the company of courtesans, Most Excellent,” said the chancellor.
“Of course you are, they walk on four legs and cannot speak but they are yours. Enough of this talk. I will know why it is so darker than the rest of him. Is that how all men are in other lands? Is this what I would have seen had I married one of the Kalindar princes? East man, why is it the colour of that man standing with Sogolon?”
The chancellor said only that it was curious that a man with such light skin had such dark balls.
Mossi saw me covering a laugh and he frowned. “The gods had some play with me, my Queen,” he said.
The chancellor told the Queen what Mossi said, almost as he said it.
“Which man were they playing with when they took it from him to give it to this man? I will know these things. Right now.”
Mossi looked perplexed again, but watched the people watching him. Still he said nothing.
Sogolon cleared her throat. “Most excellent Queen, remember why we come to Dolingo.”
“I am not one for forgetting, Sogolon. Especially when it was a favor. Especially the way you begged for it.”
Mossi looked at them with the shock I hid.
“Look at your stunned lips. And why would I, the wisest of queens, not speak that savage North tongue—especially when I constantly have to deal with savages? A child could learn it in a day …. Why does my court not ooh and aah?”
The chancellor translated for the court, which erupted in oohs and aahs and shouts to the gods.
She waved her hand and the guards poked at Mossi with their spears. He grabbed his clothes and walked back to us. I looked at him the whole time but he only looked ahead.
“You share with me your cause because you think we are sisters. But I am Queen, and you are less than a flame’s moth.”
“Yes, Most Excellent,” Sogolon said, and bowed.
“I did agree to help you because Lissisolo and I should be queens together. And because your King gives even demons pause. How he wishes Dolingo was there for the conquering. I k
now what he thinks at night. That one day he will forget that Dolingo remains neutral and take the citadel for himself. And one day he will try. But not today, and not while I am Queen. I am also very bored. Your patched-up man come the closest to something worth my eye in moons. At least since I cut one of those princes of Mitu in half to see if he was as empty as he sounded. You, the one with marks, did you see our sky caravans?”
She spoke to me.
“Only on the way up to you, most excellent Queen,” I said.
“Many still wonder what craft or spell keeps them in the sky. It’s neither spell nor craft, it is iron and rope. I don’t have magicians, I have masters of steel and masters of glass and masters of wood. Because in our palace of wisdom are people who are actually wise. I hate men who accept things as they are and never question, never fix, never make better, or do better. Tell me, do I frighten you?”
“No, my Queen.”
“I will. Guards, take these two to Mungunga. The Ogo and the girl can head to their rooms. Leave us women to talk heavy matters. And feed the buffalo some elephant ear grass. Must have been moons since anyone give him food worthy of him. Leave now, all of you. Except this woman who thinks she is a sister.”
You should teach me such words, prefect,” I said, laughing. Mossi had been cursing and cursing in his home tongue, pacing up and down the caravan, stomping so hard it swung a little. He distracted me from the fact that we were hanging at a great height, being pulled across the great trees by gears. The more he cursed, the less I imagined a rope bursting and us falling to death. The more he cursed, the less I imagined that the Queen sent us up so high in the sky and so far from the ground to kill us.
“Any higher and we could kiss the moon,” I said.
“Fuck the moon and all who worship her,” he said.
He still paced. Up and down, to the window and back; at least by following him I could see this caravan. This high, the moon shone so bright that green was green and blue was blue and his skin was almost white, now that he had tied his torn clothes at the waist and left his chest bare. What a caravan was this; at first I thought they flipped a wagon upside down so that the wheels were on top and then had the wheels along tight bands of rope. Then looking at how the caravan swelled like the fat belly of a big fish, I thought it was a boat that sailed on sky. It had a bow and stern just like a boat, was fattest in the middle just like a boat, but with house windows going all around and a roof of trunks slatted together with tar. The floor, flat and smooth, and wet with dew, almost slippery. Also this, the air blew cold this high, and whoever traveled on this thing last was bleeding. Mossi kept pacing and cussing and as he passed me I grabbed his arm. He tried to move, tried to push away my hand, tried to push me off, but I held on until he stopped huffing and cussing.
“What?”
“Stop.”
“She did not humiliate you.”
“You were without clothes only a few nights ago. You were not angry then.”
“I knew where I was and who I was with. Just because I live with you all does not mean I am not still a man of the East.”
“You all?”
He sighed, and went over to the side to look out the window. A cloud so silver and so thin it would break away into nothing, and another caravan passing us much farther away, theirs lit by firelight.
“Who do you think they are? Why would anyone have business traveling at night? Where do they go?”
“Thinking like a prefect?”
He smiled. “Their guards did not follow us.”
“This Queen does not see men as much of a threat. Or they will cut this loose before we make it to the other side. And we will plunge to our deaths.”
“Neither of those brings a smile to my face, Tracker. Maybe with us both up here alone, they think we will talk, and maybe they have discovered some form of magic to listen.”
“Dolingon are advanced for this age, but no one is that advanced.”
“Maybe we should make as if we are fucking like violent sharks, to give them something to listen to. Uncock me at once, with that battering ram of yours! My hole, a chasm now it is!”
“How learned you, the ways that sharks fuck?”
“God, he knows. Was the first beast I could think of. God’s words, Tracker, do you never smile?”
“What is there to smile about?”
“The lightness of my company, to begin with. The magnificence of this place. I tell you, gods come to lie here.”
“I thought you worship only one god.”
“Does not mean I do not see the others. What are these lands known for?”
“Gold and silver, and glass rock loved by lands far away. I think the citadel is on high because they have ruined the ground.”
“Do you think these great trees are alive?”
“I think everything here is alive, by whatever keeps them living.”
“Why does that mean?”
“Where are the slaves? And what do they look like?”
“Wise question. I—”
The shouting came upon us before the caravan, passing so close this time that we could smell spirits and smoke, so close that the drumming beat right into our ears and chest, while some plucked kora and lute as if about to pull the strings apart. The caravan passed until we faced each other. The drumming was not just the drum but also the feet of men and women jumping and stomping like the Ku or Gangatom in mating dance. A man, his face painted red and shiny, held a torch to his mouth and blew out fire like a dragon, fire that burst right between us. I jumped out of the way, Mossi stood still. The caravan, which had not stopped, kept on until the drumming felt like the memory of beat. We were going to the branch away from the palace. The third one.
“Someone’s blood was in this caravan, someone young,” I said.
“Men and women seem very loose here. Maybe they killed a child for sport.”
“What is loose? I have heard from men like you before.”
“Men like me?”
“Men with one sad god. You act like old women who forgot that they were young women. Your one god, who thinks pleasure is a lesser thing.”
“Can we talk about something else? We are almost on the other side. Tracker, what is our plan?”
“I’m not the one declaring herself ruler over us.”
“If I wanted to know from her, I would have asked her. Tell me this. Is there a plan?”
“I don’t know of any.”
“That is madness. So the plan, as I see it, is we wait until you smell this magic boy close and when bloodsuckers or whatever they are manifest, we do what? Fight? Grab the child? Spin like dancing men? Do we just wait? Is there no cunning to this?”
“You ask me things I do not know.”
“How are we to save this child from whatever evil guards him? And if we do save him, what then?”
“Maybe we should make a plan now,” I said.
“Maybe you should leave proving you’re smart tongued to Sogolon.”
“Truth?”
“That would be the preferred thing, if you can manage it.”
“There was never a plan, other than fight whoever has the child and take him back. Kill if you have to. But no craft, so strategy, no subterfuge, no plan, as you said it. But that’s not full truth. I think there is a plan.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. But Sogolon knows.”
“Then why does she need us? Especially since she acts as if she does not.”
I looked around. We were being watched, listened to, or our lips read.
“Move with me to the dark,” I said, and he stepped into shadow with me.
“I think Sogolon has a plan,” I said. “I don’t know it, nor does the Ogo, or anybody else who journeyed with us before. But that’s the plan too.”
“What do you mean?”
“There is no plan for us because there will be no us. Send us to fight the bloodsuckers, maybe even be killed by them, while she and the girl save the boy.�
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“Is that not the pact you bound yourself to?”
“Yes, but something changed with Sogolon when she knew we were to head to Dolingo. I don’t know what, but I know I won’t like it.”
“You don’t trust her,” Mossi said.
“She sent two pigeons out when we left the old man’s house. Pigeons to the Queen.”
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“I …”
“Your heart searches for an answer. Good.”
He smiled, and I tried to not smile but show a warm face.
“Why not just put a blade to her neck and demand to know?” he said.
“That how one gets a woman to obey in the East? She will not be threatened, that Sogolon. You have seen it, she can just blow you away.”
“What I see is that someone hunts her,” Mossi said.
“Someone hunts all of us.”
“But her hunter is only after her. And he or she is without cease.”
“I thought you only believe in one god and one devil,” I said.
“I think you repeat that to the point of annoyance. I have seen many a thing, Tracker. Her enemies have gathered mass. Maybe all of them with causes just. Other side.”
The caravan bumped something and shook. It threw the prefect right at me and I caught him as his head hit my chest. He grasped my shoulder and pulled himself up. I wanted to say something about myrrh. Or his breath in my face. He stood straight, but the caravan swung again and he grabbed my arm.
Five guards met us at the platform and said you land in Mungunga, the second tree. They took us over a steep stone bridge, with lookouts on both sides of the road, first to my room where they left me, and then, I presumed, to Mossi’s. Mine looked like it hung off the great tree itself, and was hanging by rope. I don’t know where they took the prefect. This was another room with a bed, something I was beginning to get used to, though why anyone would want a soft bed I didn’t know. The more your bed felt like clouds, the less you would be alert if trouble roused you from sleep. But what a grand thought, sleeping in a bed. There was water to wash, and a jug of milk to drink. I stepped to the door and it opened without my touch. That made me stop and look around, twice.
The balcony outside was a thin platform, maybe two footsteps wide, and loose, with rope as high as the chest to stop drunk men from falling to their ancestors. Behind this tree, two trees stood, and behind them several more. My head was scrambling for a bigger word than vast, something for a city as large as Juba or Fasisi, but with everything stacked on top and growing into the sky instead of beside each other and spreading wide. Did these trees still grow? Many windows flickered with firelight. Music came from some windows, and loose sounds running on wind: eating, a man and woman in quarrel, fucking, weeping, voices on top of voices creating noise, and nobody sleeping.
