“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, what 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.
“Tracker. I remind you this is your idea to take me with you.”
“It’s not my idea.”
“I am indeed the owner of this idea,” he said as he approached.
That is what he said, in the very way I knew he would say it. We had been hunting for two moons and nine days. He looked at us with arms akimbo, like a mother about to scold us.
The Aesi.
Nyka struck some dry branches with lightning. Fire woke up quick, and he jumped back. I came back from deeper in the swamp with a young warthog. The body I cut open to stick on a spit, the heart I cut out and threw to Nyka. He would not have shame this hour. He would not eat it with both me and the Aesi looking, but neither of us would turn away. He hissed, sat on the ground, and bit into it. Blood exploded over his mouth and nose.
I looked at the two of them, both I had once tried to kill, both known to have wings—one white, the other black. The me who once would have pulled axes to kill both of them on sight, I wondered where he went.
“Perilous thing it is, being in the South. Enemy territory in the middle of war—are all your plans this mad?” the Aesi said.
“You did not have to come,” I said.
“What is his plan?” Nyka said, red all around his mouth.
I cut off pieces of the hog and handed some to both. Both shook their heads. Nyka said something about the taste of burned flesh is now foul to him, which made me think of the Leopard and I did not want to think of the Leopard.