by Marlon James
“Them sick. You try find a medicine woman in the Malangika, you try.”
“You are harvesting them.”
“Not true! I—”
“Merchant, you bawl to the gods, scream and wail like a priestess secretly fingering herself, and yet there is a broken Ifa bowl on your door. Not only are the gods gone, you wish they never come back.”
“That is madness! Ma—”
My ax chopped his neck, blood splashed the wall, and his head fell and swung from a strip of skin. He fell onto his back.
“You have killed children,” the voice that knew me said.
“Begging does not stop killing if one has decided to kill,” I said.
Nothing walked this road of blind jackals but the fear to walk it. Two spirits did come to me screaming, looking for their bodies, but nothing struck fear in me anymore. Nothing was struck in me, not even sadness. Not even indifference. The two spirits both ran through me and shivered. They looked at me, screamed, and vanished. They were right to scream. I would kill the dead.
The entrance was so small that I crawled inside until I was again in a wide space, as high as before, but all around was dust, and bricks, cracked walls, broken wood, rotting flesh, old blood, and dried shit. Carved out of this was a seat like a throne. And there he was, sprawled on it, looking at the two rays of light that hit his legs and his face. The white wings, black at the tips, spread out and hanging lazy, his eyes barely open. A little bolt jumped off his chest and vanished. The Ipundulu, the lightning bird, looking as if he could not bother with this business of being Ipundulu. I stepped into something brittle that broke at my feet. Shed skin.
“Greetings, Nyka,” I said.
TWENTY-FOUR
You are the last of your kind, Nyka. One the Ipundulu chose to change rather than kill. Such honor he saves for those he enslaves and those he has fucked, so which are you?”
“Ipundulu can only be a man, no woman can be Ipundulu.”
“And only a body possessed by his lightning blood can be Ipundulu.”
“I told you. Ipundulu can only be a man. No woman can be Ipundulu.”
“That is not the part I asked you.”
“The last man he bit but did not kill, that man becomes the next Ipundulu, unless crossed by a mother witch, and he has no mother.”
“That part I know. Your dodge is neither skillful nor artful, Nyka.”
“He would rape and kill my woman. He had her by the neck, his claw already in her chest. I told him to take me instead. I told him to take me.”
He looked away.
“The Nyka I know would have fed him bits of his own woman himself,” I said.
“That Nyka you know. I don’t know this Nyka. And I do not know you.”
“I am—”
“Tracker. Yes, I know your name. Even witchmen and devils know it. They even whisper, Watch the Tracker. He has turned from red to black. Do you know what they mean? There is trouble all around you. I look at you and see a man darker than me.”
“All men are darker than you.”
“I see death as well.”
“What a deep thinker you have become, Nyka, now that you eat women’s hearts.”
He laughed, looking at me as if just seeing me. Then he laughed again, the cackle of the mad, or the cackle of one who had seen all the madness of the world.
“And yet I’m the one in this room with a heart,” he said.
His words did not upset me, but I thought right then of the me that it would have once struck. I asked him how he came to be this way, and this is what he told me.
That he and Nsaka Ne Vampi set off, not because of me, for he would have dealt with me, for such violent hate could exist only where there was still violent love beneath it. He and she set off, for he did not trust the fish woman and despised the Moon Witch, who was the one who made her sisters drive Nsaka Ne Vampi from the King sister guard.
“Have you ever seen a compass, Tracker?” Nyka asked. “Men from the eastern light carry them, some as large as a stool, some so small they disappear in the pocket. She would run, the lightning woman, run to the end of the rope and get pulled back so hard that her neck would soon break. So Nsaka shot her with a poison arrow, which did not kill her, only made her slow. These are the things that happened to us. The lightning woman kept running northwest, so we went northwest. We came upon a hut. Is this not how all stories of fright go, that we come upon a house where no one lives? Being who I am, I ran up and kicked down the door. First thing I saw, the child. Second thing I saw, a bolt of lightning ramming me in the chest and burning through every hole in my skin, and knocking me right out of the hut. Nsaka, she jumped over me and fired two arrows into the hut, one hitting a red one with grass for hair. Another came at her from the side and grabbed her bow, but she kicked him in the balls and he dropped to the ground and wailed. But the bug one, he is all flies, this bug one, he became a cloud of flies, and he surrounded her and stung all over her back through her tunic, and I could see it, the flies burrowing into her back as if they were coming home, and how my Nsaka did scream and fall to the ground on her back, to get them out for they bit and stung and sucked blood from her, and I rose and the Ipundulu struck lightning again but it hit her, not me, and the blast sent fire through her, but it also sent fire to the bug one, who shrieked and burned and drew all the flies back to his form. The bug one ran into the hut and went after the bird and they fought, knocking each other over, and the little boy watched. And the Ipundulu turned into a full bird. And he swatted the bug man away and threw lightning at him again, and the bug man flew away. I heard others coming and I ran in when the Ipundulu was looking at his bug man, and ran my sword through his back, and ducked when he swung his wing around. He laughed, would you believe this? He pulled out the sword and fought me with it. I pulled Nsaka’s sword quick, in time to block his blow, and swung it up to chop him but he blocked mine. I dropped to a squat and swung for his legs but he jumped and flapped his wings and his head burst through the hut roof. He jumped back down and threw mud chunks at my head and knocked me in the forehead, and I fell to one knee. And upon me, he was, but I grabbed a stool and blocked his blow and thrust from underneath and stabbed him in the side. That made him stagger. I pulled back and charged in straight for the heart but he blocked and kicked me in the chest, and I rolled and landed flat on my face and did not move and he said, You, I expected more game in you. He turned his back to me and I grabbed a knife—do you remember how good I was with knives, Tracker? Was it not I that taught you how to wield them? And the lightning woman, she ran to his side and he caressed her head and truly she purred and hunched herself under his touch like a cat, and then he took both his hands and broke her neck. I was on my knees, and I pulled two knives and this, this I will never forget, Tracker. The boy shouted at him. Not words, but he alerted him. Tell you truth, I remember nothing but lightning.
I woke again to see two of the grass-haired devils. They ripped off Nsaka’s robes and spread her legs, and the Ipundulu was hard. I don’t know why he listened to me when I begged him to ravage me instead. Maybe he saw me as more beautiful. I was too weak and they were upon me. How he mounted me, Tracker—no wet, no spit, he rammed into me until I cut and bled and hark, he used my own blood to ease his fuck into me. Then he bit me until he supped blood, and he drank and he drank and the others drank too, and then he kissed the cut right in my neck and lightning left him and went right into my blood rivers. All this made her watch. They didn’t have to make the boy.
“You ever feel fire burn you from the inside out? And then everything was white and blank like highest noon. Tell you truth, I had no memory from then until I woke up as the Ipundulu in Kongor. Some things come, like the eating of rats, and the sound of loose chains. I looked at my hands and saw white, and at my feet I saw a bird and my back itched and itched until I saw I sat on wings. And my Nsaka. Dear gods, my Nsaka. She was in the room with me, maybe she saw me when I was changing. Such is the wicked way of the gods. A
nd how she must have loved me to just … to just … without fight …. Dear wicked gods. When I remembered I was me, I saw her on the floor, her neck broken, and a big bloody hole where used to be her heart. Dear wicked, wicked, gods. I think of her every day, Tracker. I have caused the death of many souls. Many souls. But how deep my heart troubles over this one.”
“Indeed.”
“I have killed my—”
“Only one.”
“How did you—”
“Those words are popular this night.”
“I have no heart for killing,” he said.
He brought his feet up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. I clapped. I had sat down on the floor while he spoke, but rose and clapped.
“Instead you have others do the killing for you. You forget what led me to you. Save the heart pull for the next sad girl whose own heart you rip out, Ipundulu. You are still a murderer and a coward. And a liar.”
The sour look came back to his handsome face.
“Hmm. Had you come to kill me, that torch you would have thrown already. What is your desire?”
“Was there one with him, with bat wings?”
“Bat wings?”
“Like a bat. His feet the same as his hands, with iron claws. Huge.”
“No, there was no one such. I am telling the truth.”
“I know. If he was among them he would never have let you live.”
“What do you want, old friend? We are old friends, no?”
“The creature with bat wings, people call him Sasabonsam. That boy you speak of, we reunited him with his mother five years ago. Sasabonsam and the child are together again.”
“He stole the boy.”
“That is what his mother says.”
“You do not.”
“No, and you just said why.”
“Indeed. The boy was strange. I thought he would have even tried to run to those who came to save him.”
“Instead he warned those who took him. He is like no boy of this age.”
“That was pompous, Tracker. Not like you.”
“How would you know what I am like if you have forgotten, as you say?”
I went up to his shamble throne and sat down close, facing him.
“Where you could not save him, we did. And even with all of us, we could only hurt Sasabonsam, not stop him. There was something wrong with that boy. His smell would be strong, and then it would fade as if he was running hundreds of days away, and then he would be right in front of me.
“Here is a story. We tracked them to Dolingo. When I found them, I caught the Ipundulu pushing the boy from his chest. The little boy, he was sucking his nipple. Would you believe what I thought? I thought of a boy child and his mother, some boy child who never stopped longing for the mother’s milk. Except this mother had no koo. And then I thought, what kind of wickedness was this, how foul was this that he had been raping the boy so long that he thought this was the natural way of things. And then I saw it for what it was. No rape. Vampire blood. His opium.”
“There are women and boys who come to me as if I am their opium. Some have run from so far, for so long, they have no feet. But none has found me in the Malangika. He will want it more than the embrace of his own mother.”
“Sasabonsam went for him in the Mweru.”
“No man leaves the Mweru. Why would anyone even enter?”
“He is not a man. It does not matter. I think the boy went of his own will.”
“Maybe he was offering something more than toys or breasts.” Nyka laughed. “Tracker, I remember you. You still lie by only saying half the truth. So a stupid boy that you found was stolen again by a demon with wings like a bat. Nobody tasked you to find him. No one is paying you. And the sun is the sun and the moon is the moon whether you find him or not.”
“You just said you did not know me.”
“He is nothing to you, and neither is the bat man.”
“He took something from me.”
“Who? And will you take something from him?”
“No. I will kill him. And all like him. And all who help him. And all who have helped him. And all who stand in the way between me and him. Even this boy.”
“Still smells like a game. You want me to help you find him.”
“No I want to help him find you.”
So I went back for the child and the three of us left the Malangika. We went above, following a tunnel at the end of the road of blind jackals. Aboveground was no more at war than before I went under. The Ipundulu took nothing, just wrapped his wings tight around his body so that he looked like a strange lord, a lower god wearing a thick agbada. By then the sun had dropped and flamed the sky orange, but everything else was dark.
“Would you like me to take the child who you carry with you?” he asked.
“Touch him and I will throw this torch in your face.”
“Helpful is all I am trying to be.”
“Your eyes will pop out of your skull from the effort.”
The tunnel led out to a small town, where I left the child with a goat skin full of milk at the door of a known midwife. Just outside the town, north of the Blood Swamp, were wildlands. I started walking, but Nyka stood still.
“Once out of the Malangika, the boy will sense you and come running,” I said.
“So will every lightning woman and blood slave,” he said.
He wished he was the man who loved such devotion, but they were not devoted to him. “They are devoted to the taste of my blood,” he said.
“To tell truth, I thought more of you would be waiting above. The giant, I expected. The Moon Witch, perhaps. Most certainly the Leopard. Where is he?”
“I am no keeper of the Leopard,” I said.
“But where is he? You have great love for that cat. Wouldn’t you know where he is?”
“No.”
“You two do not speak?”
“My mother or my grandmother, which are you?”
“No question was ever simpler.”
“You wish to know about the Leopard, go and ask the Leopard.”
“Will your heart not grow fond when you see him next?”
“When I see him next, I shall kill him.”
“Fuck the gods, Tracker. Do you plan to kill everybody?”
“I will murder the world.”
“That is a big task. Bigger than killing the elephant or the buffalo.”
“Do you miss being a man?”
“Do I miss warm blood running through me, and skin not the colour of all wickedness? No, good Tracker. I love waking up thanking gods I’m a demon now. If I could ever sleep.”
“Now that I see you, I think for a man like you, this was the only future for your form. What do you think the boy has been feeding on all these years, if not your blood?”
“The blood is his opium or his physic, not his food.”
“Now that you are aboveground, he will seek you.”
“What if he is a year away?”
“He has wings.”
“Why do you not smell him?”
We kept walking alongside dying sunrays, which meant north. Night would come down before we got to the Blood Swamp.
“Why do you not smell him?”
“We head north. Unlike the Ipundulu … you … the former you. Sasabonsam hates cities, and towns, and would never rest in one. He could never hide his form like the Ipun … like you. He would much rather hide where travelers pass and pick them off one by one. Him and his brother. Before I killed the brother. The Leopard killed the brother. The Leopard killed the brother, but he smelled my scent on him, so he thinks it was me.”
“How did the Leopard kill him?”
“Saving me.”
“Then why do you blame the Leopard?”
“This is not what I blame him for.”
“Then what—”
“Quiet, Nyka.”
“Your words—”
“Fuck your thoughts on my words. This is what you do, wh
at you always do. Ask, and ask, so that you will know and know. And when you finally know all there is to know of someone, you use that knowledge to betray them. Help yourself, you cannot, for it is your nature, as eating her young is crocodile’s nature.”
“Where is the giant?”
“Dead. And he was not a giant, he was an Ogo.”
We came to the edge of the Blood Swamp. I have heard of monstrous things in these wet lands, insects as big as crows, snakes wider than the trunks of trees, and plants hungry for flesh, blood, and bone. Even the heat took shape, like a mad nymph out to poison. But no beast came near us, sensing two creatures worse. Not even when swamp water reached us at our waists. We walked until the water fell to our knees, then our ankles, until we stepped on mud and rough grass. All around us, thick vines and thin trunks twisted and bent and wrapped into each other, making a wall as dense as a Gangatom hut.
The smell came to me before we came to it. An open savannah, with few trees, little grass, but reeking of death stink. Old death stink; whatever rotted started rotting seven days ago. I stepped on it before I saw it, and it gave way under my foot. An arm. Two paces from it a helmet with a head still in it. Ten or so paces away, vultures flapped their wings, pulling entrails out, while above a flock of the same, fat with food, flew away. A battlefield. All that was left of war. I looked up and the birds went as far as I could see, circling bodies, landing for more, picking meat off men, men baking in metal armour, men so bloated they bubbled, heads of men looking like they were buried up to their necks in the ground, their eyes pecked away by the birds. There were too many to smell any one. I kept walking, looking for North or South colours. Ahead of us, spear shafts and swords were the only things that stood. Nyka followed me, also looking.
“You think a soldier willed himself to live for eight days so you could pluck his heart?” I asked.
Nyka said nothing. We kept walking until the savannah ran out of bodies, and parts of bodies, and the birds were behind us. Soon we ran out of trees and were standing at the edge of the Ikosha, the salt plains, two and half days’ ride across, and nothing but dirt cracked like dried mud and silver like the moon. He walked towards us as if he just appeared from nothing and started walking. Nyka’s wings opened but he saw that I did nothing and closed them.
