“Not before my wife and child,” he said.
“Wife and child? This wife and this child?”
“Yes, don’t do—”
I threw both knives; one struck the woman in the neck, the other struck the boy in the temple. Both shook and jerked, shook and jerked, then their heads crashed on the table. The old man screamed. He jumped up, ran to the boy, and grabbed his head. The flower on his head wilted, and something black and thick oozed slow from his mouth. The old man wailed and screamed, and bawled.
“I seek someone who does business in the Malangika.”
“Oh gods, look!”
“You kill children now,” a voice I knew said.
“What he buys, you have been known to sell,” I said to the old man. “Sakut vuwong fa’at ba,” I said to the thought.
“Oh gods, my sorrow. My sorrow,” he cried.
“Merchant, if any god were to look, what would he say about you and your obscene family?”
“There were voices, you heard them say that we were an obscene family,” the voice I knew said.
“They were my one. They were my one.”
“They were white science. Both of them. Grow another one. Or two. You might even get a pair who can talk next time. Like a grass parrot.”
“I call black heart men. I tell them hunt you and kill you!”
“Mun be kini wuyi a lo bwa, old man. I brought weeping to the house of death. Do you know what I wish for?”
I came nearer. The woman’s face was rougher up close, as was the boy’s. Not smooth, but run through with lines and ridges, like vines intertwined.
“Neither is of flesh,” I said.
“They were my only one.”
I pulled my ax.
“You sound as if you wish to be with them. Shall I make this happen? Right—”
“Stop,” he said.
He cried to his gods. He may have really loved this woman. This boy. But not enough to join them.
“Not every man is fine in face such as yourself. Not every man can find love and devotion. Not every man can say the gods have blessed them. Some men even the gods find ugly, even the gods have said there shall be no hope for your blood. She smiled at me! The boy smiled at me! How dare you judge a man for refusing to die of loneliness. Gods of sky, judge this man. Judge what he done.”
“There is no sky. Mayhaps call gods under the earth,” I said.
He took his son in his arms and held him, shushing him as if the boy was crying.
“Poor merchant, you have never had the kiss of a beautiful woman, you say.” He looked up at me, his eyes wet, his lips quivering, everything about him saying sorrow. “Is this because you keep killing them?” I said.
The sorrow left his face and he went back to his seat.
“And the men too. You hunt them down. No, there is no blood on your hands. You are too much a coward to fetch your own kill, so you send men out. They put people under spells with potions, for you wish them whole, with no poison in them, for that taints the heart. Then you kill some, and sell them for all sorts of secret magicks and white science. Some you keep alive because the foot of a living man, or the liver of a living woman is worth five times more on the market. Maybe even ten. And what of the baby that you just bartered with a young witch?”
“What you want?”
“I seek a man who comes to you for hearts. Hearts of women. You sometimes give him hearts of men, thinking he will never know. He knows.”
“What your business with him?”
“No business of yours.”
“I sell gold dust, crafts from the river lands, and fruits from the North. I do not sell such things.”
“I believe you. You live in the Malangika because the rent you find agreeable. Is it one heart every nine nights or two?”
“Go let ten demons fuck you.”
“Every soul in Malangika has a wish for my asshole.”
He sat back down at the head of the table. “Leave me to bury my wife and child.”
“In the dirt? Do you not mean sow them?”
I stood beside him.
“You know the man I speak of. You know he is not a man. Skin white like kaolin, just like his cape with black trim. You have seen him once; you thought, Hark, his cloak looks like feather. You thought he was beautiful. They are all beautiful. Tell me where he lives.”
“I say get out and go—”
I pressed his hand with mine and chopped his finger. He screamed. Tears ran rivers down his face. I grabbed his neck.
“Understand something, little man. Inside you there is fear, I know. And you should be scared of the lightning bird. He is a beast of great misery and will come for your heart, or turn you into a thing that will never know peace.”
I stood up and pulled him up until his eyes were almost level with mine.
“But know this. I will chop off your fingers, arms, legs, and feet, piece by piece, until you have no fingers, arms, legs, or feet. Then I will slice right around the top of your head and peel the scalp off. Then I will slice your cock into little strands so that it looks like a bush skirt. I will go over there, grab the torch, and seal each wound so you live. Then I will set fire to your tree-son and your vine-wife so that you can never grow them back. And that will be just the beginning. Do you understand, little man? Shall we play another game?”
“I … I never touch the living, never touch them, never, never, only the just dead,” he said.
I grabbed his hand, bleeding at the finger stumps.
“The road of blind jackals!” he shouted. “The road of blind jackals. Down where the tunnels all fall down and all sort of thing live in the rubble. West of here.”
“Any enchantments in the road, like the pit you wanted me to fall into?”
“No.”
“A witchman told me no man needs his right middle finger.”
“No!” he shouted, still bawling out his words. “There is no enchantment on that road, none from my craft. Why would it need it? No man go down that road unless he choosing to lose his life. Not even the witch, not even the ghost dog. Not even memory live there.”
“Then that is where I will find him and …”
Standing in this room and in the outer chamber as long as I did, the smells all became known to me. But I turned to leave and a new smell brushed my nose. As it always is, I did not know what it was other than it was not the others. An odor, a scent of the living. I dropped the merchant’s hand and walked over to a wall on the left, kicking away bottles with candles melting on top. The merchant said there was nothing there but the wall, and I turned to see him scoop his fingers into his hands. The smell was stronger at the wall. Piss, but fresh, the freshness of now. Things in it I knew from smell, wicked minerals, mild poisons. I whispered at the wall.
“Nothing there but the earth this hut cut out of. Nothing there, I say.”
Flame sparked at the top of the wall and split to both edges, came down the sides, joining at the bottom and burning a rectangle that disappeared to reveal a room. A room as large the one we were in, with five lamps hanging on the walls. On the floor, four mats. On the mats four bodies, one with no arms or legs, one cut open from neck to penis, his ribs poking out, one full in body but not moving, and another, his eyes open, his hands and legs bound by rope, and a cross mark across his chest in kaolin clay. The boy had pissed on his belly and chest.
“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