by Marlon James
“Our Queen only needs one part of you, sound and whole.”
I squeezed my legs together, without thinking, and he laughed loud.
“Where the boy is?”
“The boy is nowhere. He still travels from Wakadishu and does that not take days? You can meet him in Wakadishu.”
“You are here to meet him in Dolingo.”
“And he is not in Dolingo. Where is the witch? Does she listen? Does she have your ear, or are you just the fat echo of more important voices?”
He hissed.
“Yes it is said I have a nose, but nobody told you I also have a mouth,” I said.
“If I go, I will return with—”
“With your instruments. Your words scared me more the first time.”
I stood up. Even with the chain on my neck, and me having nowhere to go, the chancellor jumped a little.
“I will speak to neither you nor your Queen. Only the witch.”
“I have the authority—”
“Only the witch, or start your torture.”
He hiked his agbada off his feet and left me alone.
Though I smelled her coming, she still took me by surprise. The door across from my cell opened and she came through. Two guards followed, several paces behind. The one with keys, he opened the gate and gave her wide space. Guards trying to not show fear for the Moon Witch. She sat in the dark.
“I know you wonder it,” she said. “You wonder why you never see a single child in Dolingo.”
“I wonder why I never killed you when I had the chance.”
“Some cities rear cattle, other cities grow wheat. Dolingo grow men, and not in no natural way. You do not need an explanation and it would take years to tell you. This is what you should know, for moon after moon, year after year, a cluster of years after cluster of years, the seed and the wombs of the Dolingon become useless. What is not barren breeds monsters unspeakable in look. Bad seed going into bad wombs, the same families, over and over, and the Dolingon go from the most wise of children to the most foolish. It take them fifty years to say to one another, Look at us, we need new seed and new wombs.”
“Tell me there will be monsters in this boring tale.”
“It greater than magic. If she conceive, they snatch him, take him into the trunk. He is the tap and they drain the tap. Drain him until he is dead. But that is only for who will be in the royal line. Other men they catch, and drain and kill for the rest of the people. Even your Ogo, whose seed useless, their scientist and witchman can make it sow and breed.”
“So the citadel should be infested with children, then. They’re hiding them?”
“Then they take the child before it born and store them in the great womb, and feed them and grow them, until they as big as you. Only then, they born. But they healthy and they live long.”
“A man as old as me saying babababa and shitting himself twice a day. This is the great Dolingo.”
“It be two days now. Where the boy?”
“No children, no slaves, no travelers either. You knew this. You knew this ever since the map showed that the next door led to Dolingo.”
“Nobody get safe passage in Dolingo,” she said. “You see how their head full of nothing but thinking. It take many beggings, papers, and a treaty just to pass through the main street. Look at the magnificence of the citadel. You think they get that by allowing anybody to pass through and steal their secrets? No, fool. They use anyone who come down their streets for breeding, and kill whoever they can’t put to use.”
“You sent those pigeons to tell her you were coming. With gifts.”
“Why they so long in Wakadishu?”
“Me and the prefect and the Ogo.”
“Why they don’t come?” she asked.
“Maybe Wakadishu women have more meat and more blood. Are you not a southern woman?”
“The Aesi is already on caravan to Dolingo.”
“Somebody betrayed you? What say you to that, Sogolon?”
“You do nothing but joke.”
“And you do nothing but betray.”
“Two Dolingos there was. Just as there was a Malakal before Malakal. Old Dolingo, they never have queen, or king, they have a grand counsel, all of them men. Why put the whole realm in the hand of just one man, they say the people tell them, which was a lie, for they never ask people nothing. These men, they say, Why put our future in the palm of one man? Come soon, or come late, if you put power in a man’s hand, he going make a fist. Forget king and queen, build a counsel of our smartest men. Soon the smartest men listen to only the smartest men and soon they turn fool. Soon everything from where to collect shit, and who to fight war, take them men so long that shit run down the streets and they nearly lose in war with the four sisters of the South. Ten and two man and when they agree, nobody can see beyond their arrogance. When they don’t have accord they fight and fight and people starve and die, and always they so arrogant, thinking that mean they wise. And the people of Dolingo realize a true thing. A beast with ten and two head not ten and two times the wiser. He a monster shouting down himself. So Dolingo kill ten and one and make the last one King.”
“They’re still frightened over a great flood that never set loose,” I said.
“Now they the envy of the nine worlds. Every king want to ally with them, every king want to conquer them. But the first wise decree from the King? Dolingo will fight no war and have no enemy, no matter who. They sell to the good and the wicked.”
“This story was neither good nor short.”
“I tell Amadu he need none of you. Any five or six warriors and a hound. You is the only one I need, but even you is a fool. Every single one of you a fool. Spend so much time growl, and scowl like hungry hyena, none of you have time to find your own shit, much less a boy. You want to know what Kongor is to me? Kongor is where man teach me him true use. And even the last thing he good for a candlestick do it better.”
“Yet you help to find a boy who will be a man,” I said.
“But you know what I do? You know what I do? I take the greatest revenge. I bury every single one of you. Every single one. I was at every deathbed. Every mishap. Every plague of bad spirits. Every death turn. And I laugh. And if the knife was only halfway in, I push it deeper. Or I travel in the air and infect your mind. And I still living. I bury you and your son and your son’s son. And will I live. I … I …” She stopped and looked around the cell as if it were the first time she was seeing it.
“Wherever you just went to, maybe go back,” I said.
“What a day wh—”
“When a man tells you what to do. Don’t you have enough spirits in your head doing that already?”
“We talking about you.”
“You talking about everyone but me. Look at what all you do. Fellowship tear apart before it even come together in the valley. Three of you go off in the Darklands and one have to follow because you is man and man never listen. Delay we by one whole moon.”
“So you sold us off.”
“So I get you out of the way.”
“And yet look at me, and look at you. One of us has a nose and the other one still needs it,” I said.
“One of we in chains and one of we not.”
“You never learned how to ask a favor.”
“The Queen will treat you and the prefect and the Ogo better than concubines.”
“Will she give us each a palace that she never visits?”
“All my life men telling me this would be the life above all lives. Well here come the Queen of Dolingo saying, That is all you have to be for however long you live. From how man talk, this should be the greatest gift.”
“Would be much greater if the man get to choose it.”
“So now you is like a woman in all things. How it feel?”
“Have the griots sing you a song about your victory over man.”
“Man? You just a nose.”
“A nose for which you still find use.”
“Ye
s, a nose that may still to come to use. The rest of you just in the way. And when I get the boy, know that you help bring back the natural order to the North. Let that feed you as you settle the rest of your living days here.”
“Here where everything is unnatural. A devil’s fuck for the North.”
“You look at me good, boy. Because you never see me before. You never in Kongor? You never see the Seven Wings amass? What you think in the heart of this King? The King in South too busy confusing his throne for his shithole to start a war, so why they amassing? And is not just mercenaries in Kongor. The infantry at the border of Malakal and Wakadishu get call back a moon ago. Fasisi horsemen all call to camp. The South King one kind of mad. The North King another, much worse. First he going violate the treaty and go after Wakadishu, watch my word. And that won’t be enough, for it never enough for anybody in this poison line. Then he going come conquering everywhere he can point on the map. Dolingo.”
“He can burn Dolingo to the ground.”
She stepped closer to me, still out of the reach of my chains when I stood up.
“Ha. You think he going stop at Dolingo and all the free states? What you think he going do with Ku and Gangatom and Luala Luala? A bigger kingdom will need more slaves. Where you think he going get them from? He won’t care if they have legs like a giraffe or have no legs at all.”
“Shit-cursed witch.”
“A shit-curse witch who know the only future for your children is for Fasisi to return to being the true North. He already taking men and every healthy boy from Luala Luala. The world spinning off for too long, and everything off it balance. And this shriveled bitch here you looking at? She will take anything and take anyone, especially a boy lesser than a shit mark on convict’s wall if that bring the true line of the sister back on the throne. True North. The future of the North is in the eye of the boy. And maybe then the gods will come back. The future bigger than me, it bigger than you, it even bigger than Fasisi. I don’t expect you to understand, you still sleeping, and from that sleep man like you can never wake.”
“Then look for my help in dreams, bitch.”
“The Queen like her new seeder whole, this is a true thing. But she already pick her seeder, and is not you. The pretty prefect fuck her good, I was there to see it. So good even she don’t see that is man he like. He going live nice until he seed done, or go bad, or he get old, or she get bored and then send him off to the fire chamber for other use. But you? They don’t care which part of you they crush, break, or cut off, as long as is not that one. Listen to me, fool. You never have no stake in this, you already know that. You losing nothing, and all you was going to gain was little money. Money less than what I give to beggars on the street. Now you have plenty to lose. You see these people, they live their whole life keeping slave under control. You think they don’t know what to do to you?”
“One thing, Moon Witch? Is that what they call you?”
“People always giving woman name when they already have one.”
“You’re using words like a woman, as if you speak for any. As if you come from some sisterhood. And yet how many sisters you betray?”
“The future of Fasisi bigger than anything you say.”
“I still have one thing.”
“What is your thing?”
“When I finally die, at the hand of the Dolingon, how many runes will you have to write each night to stop me coming for you?”
She stepped away from me, stepping into the dark before I could see her face. But both hands fell to her side.
“You in the Melelek. Do as they tell you and you live long.”
“You know me enough to know I’ll never do as they tell me. By the time I kill ten guards, they will have to kill me. And then you and me, we will have a dance in your head forever.”
She went over to the gate, tired of looking at me.
“The future of Fasisi bigger than anything you say.”
“Twice you said that. Really, Sogolon, you should take your shrivel s—”
Sogolon stepped out of the line of dark, but not close enough for me to grab her. She looked around, then back at me, and smiled. “The boy. He is here.”
“Talking a wish does not make a wish true.”
“But he in your nose. Your head swing right so hard you soon crick your neck. So he in the East. Tell me where he is, tell me now and you will never know pain.”
“Pain is a sister to me.”
“Tell me where he is and you will be in your own room, with all the food you want. Dolingo is not a place for you and men like you, but they might even find you a boy. Or a eunuch.”
“I am going to kill you. You think I need to swear to the gods? Fuck the gods. Fuck the witches, and fuck the witchmen. I swear to myself. I will find you, and will kill you in this life or the next.”
“Then I die. But I living three hundred, ten and five years, and not even death kill me yet. Before you die I hope you understand. True North above anything else. Everything else,” she said.
She raised her hand and wind rattled the door across from us. The two guards ran in, and stood by the bars. The girl Venin followed them in. She looked straight at me.
“Your King, even after banishing he sister to Mantha, and telling her that is where she will live the rest of her life, still send an assassin every other moon to kill her. The last one we let Bunshi go into him through the mouth and boil him from the inside. Four of them I kill myself. One almost cut my throat, and one make the mistake to think he going to rape me first. I fuck him with a dagger and cut a koo all the way up to him neck. And when the King don’t send assassins, he send poison. Fruits that kill the cow we feed it to. Rice that burn a goat tongue off. Wine that kill a serving girl who was just making sure it didn’t get too warm.”
She pointed at the guards and said, “You in the Melelek. The location of the boy before sunrise, or your body will be put to different use.”
She left but the girl stayed. I wanted to ask if this is what she came to see. But she looked at me not in contempt—for I’ve seen many a contemptuous face—but curiosity. I stared at her and she stared at me and I was not about to look away, even with the guards opening the gate.
“They need you clean,” one of them said.
“And what—”
The bucket, I did not see until the water came straight at my face. Both of the guards laughed, but the girl stood still.
“He clean now,” one of them said.
Venin turned to leave.
“You go? Great sport is about to happen, is it not so, men? She goes, men, she goes. She leaves us alone. What shall we do?”
One of the guards approached, then walked behind me. I didn’t bother to turn.
“Noble gentlemen, we are in the Melelek? What is the Melelek?” I asked.
The guard kicked the back of my knee hard and I dropped to the floor and howled. He kneed me in the back, pushed me to the ground to twist me over. The other guard ran towards me to grab my legs but he ran too fast. I swung my leg and kicked him straight in the balls. He crumbled into himself, and the guard at my neck jumped back, having probably never seen one fight back before. He hesitated, jerked again, his eyes wide, then he swung his stick.
I don’t how long it was before I opened my eyes. The door opened and two men came through, both in black robes with hoods to hide their faces. One carried a bag, gripping it with hands light as powder. As they came to the gate, the guards stepped back until they were against the wall. The two men came in and the guards stepped out, trying not to run. The men came over to me and stooped down.
White scientists.
Some say they got their name because of working magics, and crafts, and potions, and burning vapors for so long they burned the brown away from their skin. I always thought the name came because they made wretched things out of nothing, and nothingness is white. People look at them and mistake them for albinos and albinos for them. But the albino’s skin is the desire of the gods. In the w
hite scientist is everything godless. Both uncovered their heads and locks like a bunch of tails spilled out. Locks as white as their skin, their eyes black, their beards patchy with locks as well. Thin faces with high cheekbones, thick pink lips. The one to the right had one eye. He grabbed my cheeks and squeezed my mouth open. Every word I tried to say came out my head as a wave that died as it reached my mouth. The one-eyed man stuck his fingers in one nostril, then the other, then looked at his finger and showed it to the other, who nodded. The other rubbed his hand along my ears, his fingers rough like animal skin. They looked at each other and nodded.
“I have one more hole so far unchecked. Will you check it?” I asked.
The one-eyed one brought his sack over.
“The pain you shall feel, it will not be small,” he said.
Before I could say anything the other gagged my mouth with a stone ball. I wanted to say what fools they were, but not the first fool in Dolingo. How could I confess anything with my mouth gagged? And the boy’s smell came to my nose again, so strong, almost as if he was right outside this cell, but now moving away. The one-eyed scientist pulled a knot at his neck and removed his hood.
Bad Ibeji. I heard of one found at the foot of the Hills of Enchantment, which the Sangoma burned, even though it was already dead. Even in death it shook the unshakable woman, for it was the one mingi she would kill on sight. Bad Ibeji was never to be born but is not the unborn Douada, who roams the spirit world, wiggling on air like a tadpole and sometimes slipping into this world through a newborn. Bad Ibeji was the twin that the womb squeezed and crushed, tried to melt, but could not melt away. Bad Ibeji grows on its malcontent like that devil of the body’s own flesh, that bursts through the breasts of woman, killing her by poisoning her blood and bone. Bad Ibeji knows it will never be the favored one, so it attacks the other twin in the womb. Bad Ibeji sometimes dies at birth when the mind did not grow. When the mind did grow, all it knows to do is survive. It burrows into the twin’s skin, sucking food and water from his flesh. It leaves the womb with the twin, and sticks so tight to his skin that the mother thinks this too is the baby’s flesh, unformed, ugly like a burn and not handsome, and sometimes throws away them both to the open lands to die. It is wrinkled and puffy flesh, and skin and hair, and one eye big and a mouth that drools without stop, and one hand with claws and another stuck on the belly as if sewn, and useless legs that flap like fins, a thin penis, stiff like a finger, and hole that bursts shit like lava. It hates the twin for it will never be the twin, but it needs the twin for it cannot eat food, or drink water as it has no throat, and teeth grow anywhere, even above the eye. Parasite. Fat, and lumpy, like cow entrails tied together, and leaving slime where it crawls.
