Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

NINETEEN

I knew it was seven days since we left Kongor. And forty and three days since we set off on this journey. And in one whole moon. I knew because counting numbers was all that kept my feet on the ground. I knew we were in the trunk of one of the trees. One big shackle around my neck, attached to a long, heavy chain. My arms chained behind my back. My clothes gone. I had to turn to see the ball the chain was bolted to. Both were stone. Someone told them of me and metals. Sogolon.

“I say, tell us where is the boy,” he said.

The chancellor. The Queen must be upstairs waiting for the news. No, not the Queen.

“If Sogolon wants news of the boy, tell the witch to come for it herself,” I said.

“Boy, boy, boy it will be good to tell me of your nose. If I go other men will come with instruments, yes.”

The last time I was in a dark room, shape-shifting women came at me out of the dark. The memory made me wince, which this fool thought was because of his threat of torture.

“Do you yet sniff the boy?”

“I will talk to the witch.”

“No, no, no, that is a no. Do you—”

“I smell something. I smell goat, the liver of a goat.”

“How good you are, man of the Ku. Breakfast was indeed breakfast of liver, and sorghum from my own fields, and coffee from the merchants of the North, very exquisite, yes.”

“But the goat liver I smell is raw, and why does the reek come from your crotch, chancellor? Your Queen knows that you practice white science?”

“Our glorious Queen allows all craft.”

“As long as it is not in your glorious Queen’s court. See now, you will have to torture me, chancellor, or at least kill me. You know this is true, nothing will stop me from telling anyone who should hear.”

“Not if I cut out that tongue.”

“Like you do your slaves? Does your Queen not want us, traveling men sound and whole?”

“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.”

“Yes, 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 white 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.

The Bad Ibeji’s one hand splayed itself on the one-eyed scientist’s neck and chest. He unhooked each claw and a little blood ran out of each hole. The second hand unwrapped itself from the scientist’s waist, leaving a welt. I shook and screamed into the gag and kicked against the shackles but the only thing free was my nose to huff. The Bad Ibeji pulled his head off the twin’s shoulder and one eye popped open. The head, a lump upon a lump, upon a lump, with warts, and veins, and huge swellings on the right cheek with a little thing flapping like a finger. His mouth, squeezed at the corners, flopped open, and his body jerked and sagged like kneaded flour being slapped. From the mouth came a gurgle like from a baby. The Bad Ibeji left the scientist’s shoulder and slithered on my belly and up to my chest, smelling of arm funk and shit of the sick. The other scientist grabbed my head with both sides and held it stiff. I struggled and struggled, shaking, trying to nod, trying to kick, trying to scream, but all I could do was blink and breathe. The Bad Ibeji crawled up my chest, his body swelling like a ball and squeezing out breath like a puffer fish. He extended two long, bony fingers that walked past my lips and stopped at my nostrils. The Bad Ibeji’s eye blinked sorrow, then he shoved two fingers up my nose and I screamed and screamed again, and tears sprung from my eyes. The fingers, the claws scraped the flesh, pushed up the hole, pushed through bone, cut through more flesh, moved past my nose, and between my eyes started to burn. His fingers passed my eyes, pushed through my forehead, my temples pumped and throbbed, and my mind went black, came back, and went black again. My forehead burned. I could hear his claws, cutting, scurrying in me like mice. The fire spread from my head down my back, along my legs to the tips of my feet, and I shook like a man whose head was taken over by devils. And dark came over my eyes and in my head and then a flicker.

And Sogolon came through the door and walked to the cell and the guards opened the gate and she walked in and bent to look and straightened herself and walked backward away from me, and nodded, and walked backward out the cell and backward on the steps, and the guard walked backward to the cell gate and locked it and Sogolon backed out the door that closed. And she stepped out and she stepped in again and Venin stood at the cell watching me and she stepped away backward and I yelled, and the bound boy jumped up from his fall and back to the balcony and sat in the chair and looked away from the balcony, and we retied him and pushed him back on the dried bush and the wall healed itself, sucking back up each broken chunk and Mossi and I unrolled on the floor, and I swung my one free arm and he caught it and he unlocked his legs from my legs and stopped choking me with one arm, then flipped me under him, choking me with one arm and locking down my legs with his legs and he yelled and pulled his punch from the wood as I dodged out of his arm and stood up, then I pulled back from punching him and fell back on the floor, and he withdrew his offering hand, but I pulled him down, punching him in the stomach, and in the house my grandfather is fucking my mother on the blue sheet that she bought to make mourning clothes and the climax goes back in his mouth and he is fucking up, not down, and he pulls out and slaps his hard penis until it gets soft and drops into the white bush of his hair, and my mother stops looking away and looks at him and spirits are in the tree that is not ours but the spirit is my father and he is mad at me, and my grandfather and every living thing sounds as if sucking the air back in, reverse breath, and the lighting jumps back from outside back inside and runs backways past me and the Leopard and that boy whose name I never remember and the Leopard is attacking a boy in the forest who wears white dust who I know but I can’t remember his name, and then the Leopard is attacking me and then we go through a fire door to Kongor and another to Dolingo and the old man gathers up his flesh and juice and jumps back from the ground but I don’t see where he goes and in Basu Fumanguru’s yard it is night and the bodies in urns and the wife is nothing but clothes and bone and she is cut in two and in another urn is a boy clutching a cloth from a doll and the doll comes up to my nose, and the boy bursts in my face, and his feet smell of swamp moss and shit and his smell walks away and it is gone and it appears east of the Hills of Enchantment and the smell goes over hills and down in valleys to the west hill and it is gone and it appears in the ports of Lish and the smell of the boy crossed the sea and I try to stop the trail in my head for I know this Bad Ibeji is searching it and I bring up my mother and I bring up river goddesses who kill with disease, and two nomads who dared me to take them both at once in their tent and one sat on me and the other spread himself on the floor and I fucked him with my big toe but the Bad Ibeji burns it out and my forehead is afire and I scream into the gag and blink and my nose is on the boy and the boy crosses the bay from Lish to Omororo and they walk days and quartermoons and moons past lands I did not know and over the Hills of Enchantment to Luala Luala and his smell vanishes and appears south beyond the map and the smell of the boy walks or rides I do not know and the smell vanishes and appears in Nigiki walking running or riding and it stops in the city I can smell him go straight, then bend, then go around then in one corner and stay for long, maybe till nightfall and in the morning his smell leaves and goes down south to caves or somewhere and then it’s night and his smell goes deep in the city and stops in the West, and stays there till night and then leaves again in morning, and several days have passed, and then the smell of the boy sets out far west, and keeps going west, he is leaving for Wakadishu he is leaving Wakadishu for Dolingo and I will think of Father, no, Grandfather, and the Leopard, and the colours gold and black, and rivers and seas and lakes and more rivers and the blue girl, and Giraffe Boy stay with me stay in my head grow now you must be growing you must have grown is that you running down the river say something, say that you hate how I never came but you can’t remember me so you hate nothing you hate air you hate memory that you can’t place like a smell you can’t place but you know it because it takes you to a place where you were someone else don’t leave children but the Bad Ibeji burns it out of my head my head boils and the memory is gone for good I can feel it I know it he wants to follow the boy but I will not follow the boy but his claws go up farther and I can’t feel the cut but I hear it and my toes burn, they rot, they will fall off, he wants to find the boy, he is on the road with me I can only smell but he can see and now I can see, a road with people in robes and they are talking all men in Dolingo do is talk and we go over a bridge because his smell is getting stronger and stronger and the smell turns right and now Bad Ibeji is seeing it and I am seeing it and it is a small alley like the alley with the bazaar and the alley with the bar but it is an alley that is just the back of a house and the smell goes to the caravan and I am in the caravan and it takes me over to the seventh tree, which they call Melelek, and down five levels almost to the trunk but not the trunk and everything is alley and tunnel and nobody sees the sun very much and the smell of the boy walks this wide road and he turns and he turns and he goes over a bridge and turns right and then right and then left and straight and then down, and he stays somewhere and the Bad Ibeji brings sight and I can see the boy and my head is burning and a white hand touches the boy’s shoulder and points a long-nailed finger and the boy goes to the door of that house and he knocks hard and he’s crying and he is saying something that I can’t hear and I smell him like he is right here he is yelling he is afraid and an old woman opens the door and he does not run in, he steps back like he is afraid of her too and she tries to stoop but he touches her, and he looks behind suddenly, like somebody follows, and runs past her, and she wraps her pagne tighter over her shoulder, looks around then closes the door and my mind is gone. And when I open my eyes they still feel shut. They close and open again without my will. The Bad Ibeji scampers off me like a crab and climbs up to the one-eyed one’s shoulder. The two white scientists are both over me looking on, the one-eyed one furrowing his brow, the other one raising his. Then they are by the cell bars. Then they are over my head again. Then they are going out the door. They will tell Sogolon. She will search and find the boy. I can still see him and the house he ran into, the Bad Ibeji’s infection still in me. My lips went wet from blood dripping down my nose. This Queen will betray her. My head was too heavy to take that thought any further and inside my head still burned, and I thought it wasn’t blood pouring from my nose but the inside of my head, melted to juice. My elbows gave out and I fell back, but when my head hit the floor it felt like I landed in water and I sunk.

And I sunk, and I sunk, and the fire was cooling in my head, and people kept coming in and out, and whispering to me and shouting at me, like they were all ancestors come to gather on the branches of the great tree in the front yard. But my head wouldn’t settle. Something boomed, boomed again and then a memory or a daydream screamed, and then shouted, and slammed against my skull. The slam woke me up to see that I was not asleep. Something slammed against the door and fell to the ground. And then the boom hit like a bam and pushed a knuckle mark in the door as if somebody had punched dough. Another punch and the door flew off and hit the cell bars. I jumped up and fell down. Sadogo stomped in, wearing his gloves and holding up one of the guards by the neck. He threw him out of the way. Behind him came Venin, and Mossi with shiny things that hurt my head. Everything they said bounced around my head and left before I understood. The Ogo grabbed my cell lock and ripped it off. Venin walked with a club almost half her height and in my madness she picked it up as if it were a twig and swung it at the cell beside mine, whacking off the lock. The cell was so dark that I didn’t know they kept other prisoners here, but why wouldn’t they? Thinking on top of thinking made my head throb and I lowered it back down into hands cradling me. Mossi. I think he said, Can you walk? I shook my head no and could not stop shaking until he held my forehead and stilled it.

“The slaves are rebelling,” he said. “MLuma, where we were, Mupongoro and others.”

“How long was I here? I can’t—”

“Three nights,” he said.

Two guards rushed in with swords. One swung wide at Venin, who ducked and then swung around with her club and took his face off. My shock got lost in the sweep of Sadogo picking me up and throwing me over his left shoulder. Everything moved so slow. Three more guards ran in, maybe four or five, but this time they ran into the prisoners, men and women not from Dolingo, skin not blue, bodies not slim and withered. They picked up weapons, pieces of weapons, and bars that Sadogo pulled out, all scattered on the floor. My head bounced off Sadogo’s back, making it swirl worse. Then he swung around and I saw the prisoners run over the guards like a wave over sand. They shouted, and rallied, and ran past us in the cell, all of them squeezing through the small door, sand through the time glass.

“The boy, I know where he is. I know where …” I said.

I couldn’t tell where we were going until we passed through it. Then the sun touched my back and we stopped. I was flying through the air, I was on grass and the buffalo’s snout was on my forehead. Mossi crouched beside me.

“The boy, I know where he is.”

“We must forget the boy, Tracker. Dolingo is bleeding. Slaves have cut their ropes and attacked guards in the third and fourth trees. It will only spread.”

“The boy is in the fifth tree,” I said.

“Mwaliganza,” Sadogo said.

“The boy is nothing to us,” Mossi said.

“The boy is everything.”

Noise ran in and out of me. Booms and bams and crackles and shouts and screams.

“You say that after what Sogolon did to you. To us.”

“Is the boy blameless or not, Mossi?”

He looked away.

“Mossi, I would kill her for what she did, but this, this takes nothing from why she did it.”

“Fucking nonsense about divine children. Who shall rise, who shall rule. I come from lands reeking with prophecies of child saviors, and nothing ever came out of them but war. We are not knights. We are not dukes. We are hunters, killers, and mercenaries. Why should we care about the fate of kings? Let them take care of their own.”

“When kings fall they fall on top of us.”

Mossi grabbed my chin. I knocked his hand away.

“Who is this that now lives in your head? Are you like her?” he said, pointing to Venin.

“Him.”

“As you like. The Tracker helping the witch—”

“We are not helping her. I tell you true, if I see one of them taking her for the kill, I will watch it. Then I will kill him. And I … I … and even if I didn’t care about rightful kings and queens, or what is wicked in the North, and what is just, I will take a son back to his mother,” I said.

The sun mocked me. Smoke rose from a tower in the second tree and drums sounded as a warning. None of the caravans moved, for the slaves stopped moving them. Some swung midway with people inside them shouting and screaming. Every sound startled Sadogo; he darted left, right, and left again, squeezing his knuckles so hard the joints popped. A crash roused the buffalo, who snorted, telling us we had to leave. As I sat up, pushing away Mossi’s help, Venin approached me, still gripping the club like a toy.

“I will go. I have unfinished business with Sogolon.”

“Venin?” Mossi said.

“Who is that?” Venin said.

“What? You are who. Venin is what you go by since I met you. Who else would you be if not her?”

“It is not her,” I said.

The him in her looked at me.

“You been thinking so a long time,” they said.

“Yes but I could not be sure. You are one of the spirits Sogolon write runes to bind, but you broke from her.”

“My name is Jakwu, white guard for the King Batuta who sits in Omororo.”

“Batuta? He died over a hundred years ago. You are … no matter. Leave the old woman to the bloodsuckers. She is like them in company,” Mossi said.

“Do all the spirits want what you want?” I asked.

“Revenge against the Moon Witch? Yes. Some want more. Not all of us died by her hand, but in all our deaths she is responsible. She drove me out of my body to appease an angry spirit, and now she thinks she has appeased me.”

His voice was still Venin’s but I have seen this in possession. The voice remains, but the tone, the pitch, the words he chooses are all so different that it sounds like another voice. Venin’s voice went hoarse. It came out like a rumble, like the voice of a man long gone in years.

“Where is Venin?”

“Venin. She the girl. She gone. She will never be back in this body. Call her dead. It is not what she is, but it will do. Now she is doing what I did, roam the underworld until she remembers how she came by that place. And then she will seek out Sogolon, like all of us.”

“She could barely ride a horse and now he wields a club. And you? You can barely stand,” Mossi said.

At the end of the road, round the bend came yells. Noblemen and noblewomen of Dolingo walking swift, thinking that was enough. Looking back, walking faster, the men and women at the front not yet seeing the people behind them, then running, and the running crowd, maybe twenty, maybe more, pushing some out of the way, knocking down some, trampling some, as they ran this way. Behind them came the rumble. Mossi and Sadogo and Venin took places all around me and we readied our weapons. The screaming nobles ran around us like two rivers. Behind them, with bats, sticks, and clubs, and swords and spears, slaves, who ran and staggered like the zombi but were gaining. Eighty or more, chasing the nobles. A spearhead went through a noblewoman’s back and out her belly, and she fell to the ground. The rebels stayed clear of us as they ran around us, save for one who ran too close and was kicked in two by Sadogo’s boot, and one that ran into Mossi’s sword, and two whose heads met Venin’s swinging club. The rest ran past us, and soon swarmed the nobles. Flesh flew. Sadogo in front, we ran back the way they had all come, and one battle cry from Sadogo kept trailing rebels out of our way.

The caravans had all been stopped, many with people trapped inside, but the platforms took us down, those slaves not infected with freedom yet. On the ground, as we scrambled off the platform with me still swaying and tripping and Mossi still holding me up with his hand, Mungunga broke out in explosion and fire. Fire bit into some of the ropes and ran across to one of the caravans and coated it in flame. The people inside, some already on fire, jumped. At the foot of Mungunga a door the height of three men and ten strides wide broke at the hinges and fell down, shooting up dust. Naked slaves running out slowed to a stagger, some with sticks and rods and metals, all hobbling at first, blinking and holding up their arms to block the light. Cut ropes around necks and limbs, and carrying whatever they could hold. I could not tell men from women. The guards and the masters, so used to no resistance, forgot how to fight. They ran through us and past us, so many of them, some dragging whole bodies of masters, others carrying hands, feet, and heads.

Slaves still ran when from above fell elegant bodies. From terraces above ropes fell, and slaves pushed masters off. Noble bodies fell on slave bodies. Both killed. And more fell on top of them.

At Mwaliganza, the platform took us to the eighth floor. Quiet all around, it seemed, as if nothing had spread this far. I rode the buffalo, though I was lying on him, holding on to his horns so I did not fall off.

“This is the floor,” I said.

“How are you sure?” Mossi asked.

“This is where my nose is taking us.”

But I did not say my eyes, and that when the Bad Ibeji pushed his claws up through my nose, I could see the unit where the old woman lived, the gray walls wearing away to show orange underneath, and the small windows near the top of her roof. They followed me and the buffalo, as nobles and slaves jumped out of the way. We turned left and ran over a bridge to a dry road. The boy was in my nose. But also a living dead smell that I knew, well enough for me to jump in horror and such total disgust that I thought I was sick. But I could not name it. Smell sometimes did not open memory, only that I should remember it.

A small swarm of slaves and prisoners ran by, pulling the bodies of noblemen, naked and blue and dead. They paused at a door I had never seen and yet already knew. The old woman’s door hung open and loose. In the doorway were two dead Dolingo guards, necks at an angle that necks do not bend. Right at the doorway, steps that climbed up past one floor to another, and from up there screams, crashes, metal on metal, metal on mortar, metal on skin. I made it to the door and fell back into Mossi’s hands. He didn’t ask and I didn’t protest when he carried me over to the side, near a window, and sat me on the floor.

Then he, Sadogo, and Venin-Jakwu ran past me up the stairs, as two more men landed on the floor, dead before their bones broke. Men shouted orders, and I looked up and saw how wide the floor was. The torch above me flickered. Thunder broke in the room and everything shook. It broke again, as if a storm was a breath away. The ceiling cracked and dust came down. I was on the kitchen floor. Food already cooked was also on the floor, with fat thickening in a pot and palm oil in jars near the wall. I pulled myself up and reached for the torch. Dead guards spotted the entire floor, many of them husks, drained of all juice and coarse like a tree trunk. A balcony hung over the floor and dead men hung from it. Blood dripped down. A boy, hands to his side and still, flew over the balcony and rode the air. He hung there, eyes open but seeing nothing, flies swarming, and movement all over him. I raised the torch as all over his face, all over his hands, his belly, his legs, all his skin popped open holes big as seeds. The boy’s skin looked like a wasp’s nest, and red bugs covered in blood burrowed in and crawled out. Flies flew out his mouth and ears and fat larvae popped out all over his skin and plopped on the ground, flipped out wings, and flew back to the boy. Soon it was a swarm of flies in the shape of a boy. The swarm gathered into a ball and the boy fell, landing on the floor like dough. The swarm circled tighter and tighter, dropping lower and lower until it rested right above the floor, six paces from me. The bugs and the larvae and the pods squeezed and squashed into each other, shaping into something with two limbs, then three, then four with a head.

The Adze, bright eyes like fire, black skin that vanished in the dark room, a hunchback with long hands and fingers with claws that scraped the floor. He stomped his hooves and approached me, and I dodged back and waved the torch at him, which made him wheeze a laugh. He kept coming, and I stepped back and kicked over an oil jar. The oil started spreading on the floor and he yelled, skipped, and jumped back, broke up into bugs, and flew back upstairs. I heard the Ogo yell, and something crashed and broke wood. Mossi jumped up to the balcony, swinging one sword, spun and chopped off the head of a guard infected with lightning. He leapt back onto the floor and ran back into the fight.

Still holding the torch, I grabbed another jar full of palm oil and started upstairs. Five steps up my head pounded, the floor started to shift, and I leaned into the wall. I passed a man with a hole in his chest that went straight through his back. At the top of the stairs, I put down the jar, shook my head to clear it, and looked straight into yellow eyes and a long, thin face, red skin and white stripes up the forehead. Ears pointing up, hair green like grass on his arms and shoulders, white streaks all the way down his chest. He stood half a man above me, and smiled, his teeth pointed and sharp, like a great fish’s. In his right hand a leg bone that he filed down to the shape of a dagger. He cackled something over and over, then lunged at me, but two flashes of light made his belly explode black blood. Mossi, jumping down, his two sword arms spread wide. He swung his hands across his chest, left sword slicing through the devil’s back, his right sword slicing through half his neck. The devil fell, and rolled down the steps.

“Eloko, Eloko, he kept saying. I think his name is Eloko. Was,” Mossi said. “Tracker, stay down.”

“They come down.”

He ran back into the fight. The room was a school. That was why they chose it and why it would have been so easy for the boy to fool whoever came to the door. Yet there was no sign of children. Across the room, near the window, Venin-Jakwu smiled as two Eloko charged, one from the floor and one from the ceiling. From a hanging plant the Eloko swung off to jump them, but they ran into him with the butt of their club, ramming him in the chest. He swiped with a long bone knife but Venin-Jakwu dodged and rammed the club handle straight into his nose. Another, behind, swung his knife, and cut across the back of their thigh. Venin-Jakwu yelled and dropped, but dropped into a dodge, swooping low and swinging the club from low right up into his face. The third Eloko snuck up from behind. I shouted, but I said Jakwu! And they swung left, though he was coming from the right. Just a breath behind them, Venin-Jakwu stopped the hard swing of the club, sent it down so that it swung right up, past their right side and right up between the Eloko’s legs. He shrieked and fell to his knees. Venin-Jakwu bashed his head again and again until there was no more head. Thunder cracked again and mortar broke from the ceiling.

“Your leg,” I said, pointing to the blood running down.

“Who you plan to kill with those?”

I looked at my torch and oil. Venin-Jakwu ran off. I followed, stronger, my mind less stormy, but still I wobbled. The Adze swung from a rafter in the ceiling as a hunchback, but dived after Sadogo as a swarm. He attacked Sadogo’s left arm and shoulder. Sadogo swatted away many and crushed many, but Adze was too many. Some started burrowing in his shoulder and near his elbow and Sadogo yelled. I threw the jar and it shattered on his chest, splashing palm oil all over. He looked at me, enraged.

“Rub on your arm … the oil … rub it.”

The flies dug into his skin. Sadogo scooped oil running down his belly and rubbed on his chest, arm, and neck. The bugs, they popped up in the quick, slipping out of larger holes like wounds, all falling to the floor. The rest of the swarm flew into madness, popping into each other, squeezing tight into one form, the form dropping lower and lower until on the floor and changing back into an Adze with one foot and half of a head, and in the head, bugs and larvae wiggling like maggots. Quicker than a blink, Venin-Jakwu smashed the rest of its head into a red, pulpy pool on the floor.

“Where is Sogolon? The boy?”

Sadogo pointed with his good arm to another room. Venin-Jakwu ran towards it, clubbing guards with lightning coursing through them. She ran to the door, right into a thunderclap that knocked her away from the archway and shook me off my balance. Inside, Mossi pulled himself out of a pile of tumbled shelves and clay pots.

His back was to me, and his feet were off the ground: Ipundulu. White streaks in his hair, long feathers at the back of his head sticking out like knives and going all the way down his back. White wings, black feathers at the tips and wide as the room. Body white and featherless, thin but muscular. Black bird’s feet floating above the clay floor. Ipundulu. His right arm raised, claws around Sogolon’s neck. I couldn’t tell if she was alive, but blood spattered on the floor below her. Lightning crackled and jumped all over his skin. Ipundulu pulled a knife out of his shoulder and threw it at Mossi, who jumped out of the way, raised his swords, and glared at him. Sogolon, her lips white, opened one eye halfway and looked at me. Behind me, Venin-Jakwu rolled on the floor, trying to get up. Lightning jumped from Ipundulu’s skin to Sogolon’s face and she groaned through clenched teeth. Mossi was unsure how to strike. Maybe somebody told me, maybe I guessed, but I threw the torch straight for the lightning bird. It hit him in the center of his back and his whole body exploded in flames. He dropped Sogolon and shrieked like a crow, rolled and jerked, and tried to fly as the flames burned away feathers and skin so quick, so hungrily. Ipundulu ran into the wall and kept running, flaying and shrieking, a ball of bursting flame feeding on feathers, feeding on skin, feeding on fat. The room stank of smoke and charred flesh.

Ipundulu fell to the floor. Mossi ran over to Sogolon.

The lightning bird did not die. I could hear him wheeze, his body back in the shape of a man, his skin blackened where it had charred and red where the flesh was ripped open underneath.

“She lives,” Mossi said. He stomped over to the Ipundulu, on the floor jerking and wheezing.

“He lives also,” he said, and pushed the blade right under Ipundulu’s chin.

Something drew me to look over at the toppled shelves—the plates, pots, and bowls of drying fish—and under a chair. Under the chair looked right back at me. Eyes wide and bright in the dim, staring at me staring at him. A voice in me said, There he is. There is the boy. His hair, wild and natty, for what else would a boy’s hair be without a mother to groom and cut it? He jumped, frightened, and first I thought it was because of them who had him, for which child is not frightened by monsters? But he must have been in dozens of houses and seen dozens of kills, so much that the killing of a woman, and the eating of her, and the killing of a child and the eating of him was child’s play. If you lived all your life with monsters, what was monstrous? He stared at me, and I stared at him.

“Mossi.”

“Maybe you should have skipped Dolingo,” he said to the Ipundulu.

“Mossi.”

“Tracker.”

“The boy.”

He turned to look. Ipundulu tried to push himself up on his elbows, but Mossi pressed his sword into his neck.

“What is his name?” Mossi asked.

“He has none.”

“Then what do we call him? Boy?”

Venin-Jakwu and Sadogo came up behind me. Sogolon was still on the floor.

“If she does not wake soon, all her spirits will know she is weak,” I said.

“What should we do with this one?” Mossi said.

“Kill him,” Venin said behind me. “Kill him, get the witch, and get the b—”

He burst through the window, blasting off a chunk of the wall that shattered into rocks, hitting Sadogo in the head and neck. Right behind me, his long black wing slammed Venin-Jakwu, sending them flying into the wall.

The smell, I knew the smell. I spun around and his wing knocked me off my feet, swung back and hit me square in the face. He stepped into the room, and Mossi charged him with both swords. Mossi’s sword struck his wing and got stuck. He slapped the other sword out of Mossi’s hands and charged him.

Flapping his black bat wings to lift his body, he swung both feet up and kicked him in the chest. Mossi slammed into the wall, and he slammed into him. Then he dug his clawed finger into Mossi’s head, cutting from the top of his forehead down, slicing through the brow and still moving down.

“Sasabonsam!” I said. He smelled like his brother.

He slapped Mossi away and faced me.

My head still moved slower than my feet. He came after me just as Sogolon stirred and whipped a wind that knocked him off his feet and pushed me to the ground. He fought against the wind, and Sogolon was losing strength. He staggered, but got close enough to cut into her raised hands with his claws. I tried to get up but fell to one knee. Mossi was still on the ground. I did not know where Venin-Jakwu was. And by the time Sadogo rose and remembered his rage enough to stomp to the room, Sasabonsam grabbed Ipundulu’s leg with his iron claw hand wrapping around the leg like a snake, scooped the boy with the other hand, after the boy crawled out from under the chair, and ran straight to the window, blasting out the frame, the glass, and chunks of the wall. One of the guards, lightning coursing through him, ran after his new master and fell where Sasabonsam flew. I staggered in after Sadogo and saw Sasabonsam in the sky with his bat wings, dipping twice from Ipundulu’s weight, then flapping harder, louder, and climbing high.

So. Sadogo, Venin-Jakwu, Mossi, and I stood in the room, surrounding Sogolon. She tried to stand up, darting at all of us. Outside, overturned carts, slaughtered bodies, and broken sticks and clubs littered the streets. Smoke from the two rebellious trees streaked the sky. Farther off, not far away, the rumble of a fight. And what fight? Dolingon guards were not made for any fight, much less a war. Over in the Queen’s tree, the palace stood still. All ropes to and from appeared to be cut off. I saw the Queen in my mind-eye, crouched in her throne like a child, ordering her court to believe when she said that the rebellion would be smashed and smote in a blink, and them hollering, screaming, and shouting to the gods.

We stepped towards her, and Sogolon, not sure what to do, shifted back and forth, then skipped clear of us. She raised her left hand but stopped when it made her chest bleed. She kept darting at each of us, her eyes wide one blink, hazy the next, almost asleep, then stunned awake. She turned to Mossi.

“Consort, she was going treat you like. Keep her womb full and she wouldn’t care.”

“Until she turned tired and sent him to the trunk,” I said.

“She treat the pretty ones better than a king be treating he concubines. That is truth.”

“Not the truth you told me. Not in words, not in meaning, not even in rhyme.”

We moved in closer. Sadogo squeezed his left knuckles, his right hand bloody and loose. Venin-Jakwu pulled a wrap around their leg wound and grabbed a dagger, Mossi, half his face covered in blood, pointed his two swords. Sogolon turned to me, the one without a weapon.

“From me could come a tempest to blow everybody out that window.”

“Then you would be too weak to stop the blood leaking out of you, and the others coming after you. Just like the one in Venin,” I said.

She backed into the wall. “All of you too fool. None of you ready. You think I was going leave the true fate of the North to all of you? No skill, no brain, no plan, all of you here for the coin, nobody here care about the fate of the very land you shit on. What a bliss, what a gift to be so ignorant or foolish.”

“Nobody here was lacking skill, Sogolon. Or brain. You just had other plans,” Mossi said.

“I tell you, I tell all of you, don’t go through the Darklands. Stop walking in the room crotch first, and walk headfirst. Or step back and be led. You think I goin’ trust the boy to people like you?”

“And where is your boy, Sogolon? Do you nest him so tight to your bosom we can’t see him?” Mossi said.

“No skill, no brain, no plan, yet were it not for us, you would be dead,” I said.

“Goddess of flow and overflow, listen to your daughter. Goddess of flow and overflow.”

“Sogolon,” I said.

“Goddess of flow and overflow.”

“You still call to that slithering bitch?” Venin-Jakwu said.

“Bunshi. You calling for your goddess?”

“Don’t speak of Bunshi,” Sogolon said.

“Still there thinking you get to give orders,” said Venin-Jakwu. “She don’t change in a hundred years, this Moon Witch. I tell you true. Woman in Mantha still calling you prophet, or they finally see you just a thief.”

“We need to save the boy, you know where they heading,” she said to me.

Venin-Jakwu, the wrap around their leg almost full red, started circling her slow, like a lion, and began to talk.

“So what this Moon Witch be telling you about herself? For the only one who tell tales about Sogolon is Sogolon. She tell you she come from the Watangi warriors south of Mitu? Or that she was river priestess in Wakadishu? That she was the bodyguard and adviser to the sister of the King when she was just a water maid, who step over many heads to get to her chamber? Look at her, on a mission again. Save the royal sister’s boy. She tell you that nobody ask her? She set off on mission to find boy, so that she no longer the joke of Mantha. And what a joke. The Moon Witch with one hundred runes but only one spell, finally get to show her quality. Maybe she going tell you later. Listen to me, I tell you this. The moon witch sure be three hundred, ten and five, I tell you true. I meet her when she was just two hundred. She tell you how she live that long? No? That one she keep close to her lanky bosom. Two hundred years ago I was still a knight and have only one hole, not two. You know who me be? Me be the one who knock her off her horse when she forget to write a rune strong enough to bind me.”

Sogolon kept looking at me.

“And her little goddess, you meet it? It come sliming down the wall as of late? If she is a goddess then me is the divine elephant snake. That little river jengu, claiming she fight Omoluzu, when you could kill her with just seawater. Her goddess is an imp.”

“None of you deserved to live, not a single one of you,” Sogolon said, still looking at me.

“That is between we and the gods, not you, body thief,” Venin-Jakwu said.

“You was always an ungrateful, stinking piece of dog shit, Jakwu. Killer and raper of women. Why you think I give you that body? One day all of that you do will happen to you.”

“The body had an owner,” I said.

“Every day before sun come, she running out to go back to the bush so Zogbanu can eat her. No matter where me take her and how me train her. Far better use of she body than she ever go use it,” Sogolon said.

“You just wanted me to stop knocking you off your horse,” Venin-Jakwu said. “Just like you been knocking people out of they body for a long, long time.”

“How?” Mossi said.

“Don’t ask me, ask she.”

“Time running and passing, and they still have the boy. You know where they going, Tracker.”

Sogolon looked around, at all of us, speaking to everybody, convincing no one.

“She didn’t try to kill us,” Sadogo said.

“Speak for yourself,” Venin-Jakwu said.

“We agreed to save the boy,” Mossi said, and walked over to me.

“You don’t know her. I know her two hundred years, what she do more than anything else is plot how a person can be of use. She never ask you what is your use? I didn’t agree to nothing with none of you,” Venin-Jakwu said.

“Maybe not. But we go to save the boy, and we might need the deceiving Moon Witch.”

“A dead Moon Witch not going to be any use to you.”

“Nor a dead girl who tried to go through three of us to kill her.”

Now Venin-Jakwu darted from face to face. They pushed a foot under the sword of a fallen guard and kicked it up in hand. They gripped it, liking the feel, and smiled.

“I am a man!” he said. “My name is—”

“Jakwu. I know your name. I know you must be a fearsome warrior with many kills. Help us save this child and there will be coin in it for you,” I said.

“Coin can help me grow a cock?”

“Such an overpraised thing, a cock,” Mossi said. I don’t know if he was trying to make the room smile. Sogolon’s chest right above the heart was red. Ipundulu had tried to cut her chest open and rip out the heart, but she would have us watch her collapse on the ground before telling anyone that.

“See to your heart,” I said to her.

“My heart clear,” she said.

“It’s almost falling out of your chest.”

“It never cut deep.”

“Nothing seems to,” Mossi said.

At the foot of the tree, the buffalo waited with two horses. Everything I wanted to ask with my mouth I seemed to ask with my eye, for he nodded, snorted, and pointed to the horses. Jakwu mounted the first.

“Sogolon rides with you,” I said.

“I ride with no one,” he said, and galloped off.

Mossi came up behind me. “How far shall he ride?” he said.

“Before he sees he does not know the way? Not very far.”

“Sogolon.”

“She can ride on the buffalo’s back.”

“As you wish,” Mossi said.

I grabbed a piece of Mossi’s tunic and wiped his face. The blood had stopped running.

“It is but a scratch,” he said.

“A scratch from a monster with iron claws.”

“You called it something.”

“Give me this,” I said, and took one of his swords. I cut a hole at the fringe of his tunic and tore off a long strip of cloth. This cloth I wrapped around his head, tying it at the back.

“Sasabonsam.”

“That is not one of the names I remember from the old man’s house.”

“No. The Sasabonsam lived with his brother. They kill men from high up in the trees. His brother the flesh eater, him the bloodsucker.”

“World’s not short on trees. Why does he travel with this pack?”

“I killed his brother,” I said.

Two things. The Sasabonsam took a sword to his wing. He was carrying both the boy and Ipundulu, who must have been as heavy as him.

On the ground the two burning trees seemed hundreds upon hundreds of paces away, which they were. We were about to ride off when several of the Queen’s guard, ten and nine, maybe more, all on foot but in front of us, bid us to stop.

“Her Radiant Excellency said she never gave anyone leave.”

“Her Radiance has worse things to worry about than who takes leave of her radiant ass,” Mossi said, and rode right through them. They jumped out of the way when the buffalo brushed his front hoof in the dust.

“Such a shame to leave. This is a rebellion that brings me joy to see,” Mossi said.

“Until the slaves see they would rather the bondage they know than the freedom they do not,” I said.

“Remind me to pick this fight with you another time,” he said.

We rode all night. We passed where the old man lived but all that was left of his house was the smell of it. Nothing remained, not even the rubble of cracked mud and smashed bricks. Truly this made me worry that there had been no house and no man, but a dream of both. Since I alone noticed, I said nothing and we rode past the nothing in a blur. Jakwu tried to follow while being ahead, but pulled back three times. Even I had no memory of the way, unlike Mossi, who charged through the night. I just held on to his sides. Sogolon tried to sit upright on the buffalo as he ran almost as fast as the horses, but she almost fell off twice. We moved through the patch of the Mawana witches but only one broke through the ground to see us, and when she did, dove back down as if it were water.

Before sun chased night away, the boy left my nose. I jumped up. Sasabonsam had flown all the way to the gate and gone through. I knew. Mossi said something about my forehead punching the back of his neck, which made me pull back. He slowed the horse to a trot when we reached the dirt road. The door crackled, shifted the air around it, and gave off a hum, but was getting smaller. I could see the road to Kongor in yellow daylight.

“When they come—”

“The doors don’t open themselves, Sogolon. They have already gone through it. We are too late,” I said.

Sogolon rolled off the buffalo and fell. She tried to scream, but it came out a cough.

“You do this,” she said, pointing at me. “You was never fit, never ready, nothing in the face of them. None of you care. None of you see what the whole world going lose. First time in two years and you make them get away.”

“How, old woman?” Mossi said. “By being sold into slavery? That was your doing. We could have taken on all of Dolingo and saved the boy. Instead we wasted time saving you. Safe passage my sore ass. You put the whole fate of your mission on a queen more concerned with breeding with me than listening to you. That was all your doing.”

The gate was shrinking, large enough for a man, but not for the Ogo or the buffalo.

“Is going be days till one get to Kongor,” she said.

“Then you’d better cut a stick and walk,” Mossi said. “This is as far as we go.”

“The slaver will double the money. I promise it.”

“The slaver or the King sister? Or maybe the river jengu you pretend is a goddess?” I asked.

“It is only about the boy. You so fool you don’t see? It was only for the boy.”

“I have a feeling, witch, it was only for you. You keep saying we were useless when use is exactly what you put us to. And the girl, poor Venin, you rid of her own body because Jakwu, or whatever his name is, was of greater use. This whole failure is on you,” Mossi said.

Jakwu jumped off his horse and stepped to the gate. I don’t think he had ever seen one.

“What do I see through this hole?”

“The way to Mitu,” Sadogo said.

“I shall take it.”

“All might not be fine with you,” I said. “Jakwu has never seen the ten and nine doors, but Venin has.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means, though your soul is new, your body might burn,” Mossi said.

“I shall take it,” Jakwu said.

Sogolon looked at the gate the whole time. She staggered right up to it. I knew she thought of it. That she had made it to three hundred, ten and five years, mayhaps surviving worse, and besides, who had time for old woman tales that nobody could ever prove?

“Well you all seem like the gods smile on you, but nothing here for me,” Jakwu said. “Maybe I go to the North and have those Kampara perverts make me one of their wooden cocks.”

“May good fortune come to you,” Mossi said, and Jakwu nodded.

He headed to the door. Sogolon stepped out of the way.

Mossi grabbed my shoulder and said, “Where now?” I didn’t know what to say to him, or how to say that wherever it was I hoped it would be in his company.

“I have no stake in this boy, but I will go where you go,” he said.

“Even if that means Kongor?”

“Well, I am one for amusements.”

“People trying to kill you is an amusement?”

“I have laughed at worse.”

I turned to Sadogo. “Great Ogo, where go you now?”

“Who care about the cursed giant?” Sogolon said. “All of you whining like all of you is little bitch, because the old woman outsmart you. This not what you all make for? And you can’t smell it, touch it, drink it, or fuck it, so it mean nothing to you. Nothing bigger than yourself.”

“Sogolon, you keep mourning this death of morals you never had,” I said.

“Me telling you all. Whatever coin you want. Your own weight in silver. When the boy on the throne in Fasisi, you will have gold dust just to give your servants. You say you would do it for the boy if not for me. For the boy to see his mother. You like seeing a woman go down on her knees? You want my breasts in the dirt?”

“Don’t disgrace yourself, woman.”

“Me beyond honor or disgrace. Words, they just words. The boy is everything. The future of the kingdom is … the boy, he going—”

The door had shrunk to about half my height and hung above the ground. Jakwu’s hand pushed through it, catching fire, grabbed the neck of Sogolon’s dress, and pulled her right in. Her feet burst into flames before Jakwu dragged all of her through, but it was quick, quicker than a god’s blink. Mossi and I rushed to the door but the opening was now smaller than our heads. Sogolon screamed from here to there, screamed at what we could only imagine was happening to her until the door closed on itself.