“We are seeking the boy and his monster,” the Aesi said.
“He already told me this,” Nyka said.
“I am seeking the boy. He is seeking the monster. The monster attacked a caravan north of here; one man said he ripped a cow in half with his feet, then flew away with both halves. The boy was on his shoulders like a child with his father. They flew off into the rain forest between here and the Red Lake,” the Aesi said.
“Are you not still with the North King? My memory, sometimes she comes and more times she goes, but I remember that once we were supposed to find this boy and save him from you. Now you both search for the boy to kill him?”
“Things change,” I said, before the Aesi opened his mouth and bit into a piece of hog. I glared at him.
“They did save him. Did you not, Tracker?” asked the Aesi. “Saved the boy from his band of undead and led him and his mother to the Mweru. Three years later you … Shall I tell this story?”
“I control no man’s mouth,” I said.
The Aesi laughed. He wrapped his black robe around himself and sat down on a mound made by dead branches and moss.
“Do you remember when you hid from me, Tracker? Hide from me you did, in the dream jungle. I found the Ogo instead. Poor man. Mighty, but simple.”
“Do not ever speak of him.”
The Aesi bowed his head. “Forgive me.” Then, to Nyka, “The Tracker knew to stay awake, for I roamed the dream jungle, looking for him. But many years later—shall we count the years?—he found me one night. The boy, I will give him to you if you help me find him who I seek, he said before even saying peace be with you. And if you help me kill him, he said. What was strange, and I thought so at the time, was that Tracker’s dream was coming from the Mweru.”
“No man leaves the Mweru,” Nyka said.
“But a boy can. It is in the prophecies that a boy who will come from those lands will be the dark cloud above the King. But who has time for prophecy?” the Aesi said.
“Who has time for any of this?” I said, and cut off two pieces of hog and wrapped them in leaf. “Sasabonsam attacked a caravan heading north. We too should go north, on the Bakanga trail, and stop telling tall tales by a fucking fire, as if we are boys.”
“Sasabonsam is not a wanderer, Tracker. He heads to the rain forest. He will make home—”
“We travel together, so how is your news always different from mine? He will choose a trail so that he can kill any fool who takes it. The winged one is not like his brother. He doesn’t wait for food to come to him, he seeks it. He will go where he sees men go, and he will go where they are not protected.”
“He is still on his way to the forest.”
“Both of you are fools,” Nyka said. “You are saying two parts of the same thing. He will head to the rain forest with the boy. But he will feed and gather bodies along the way.”
“The Aesi is forgetting to tell you that we are not the only ones looking for the boy,” I said. “Nobody here is lacking rest, so we leave.”
“Where is North, Tracker?”
“It’s on the other side of my shit-filled ass,” I said.
“The night has had enough of you,” the Aesi said.
“I wish the night would try and—”
“Enough.”
Monsoon is the real enemy when it comes to war,” the Aesi said.
The sun bounced through the knotty branches and hurt my eyes. I closed them and rubbed until they itched.
“Our King wants this war to end before the rains. Rain season comes with flood, comes with disease. He needs victory and he needs it soon.”
“He’s not my king,” Nyka said.
I sat up and heard the rush of the river. They must have dragged me to the edge of the salt plains, for I rolled over and saw open grasslands. Grass tall and yellow, hungry for the rain season he was talking about. The bobbing and swaying heads of giraffes far off gobbling leaves from tall trees. Rustling through the bush, guinea fowl, cat, and fox. Above, a flock of sand grouse calling family to water. I smelled lion and cattle and gazelle shit. My calf rubbed against something hard that would cut it.
“Obsidian. There is no obsidian in these lands,” I said.
“A man before you must have left it there. Or maybe you think you were first.”
“What did you do to me?”
Aesi turned to me. “Your brain was all fire. You would burn yourself out.”
“Do that to me again and I will kill you.”
“You could try. Do you remember many moons ago once in Kongor, when I chased you down that market street? Every mind on the street was mine but yours and the … him … your—”
“I remember.”
“Your mind was closed to me because of the Sangoma. You have felt it, haven’t you? Her enchantment is leaving you. You lost it when you left the Mweru.”
“I can still unlock doors.”
“There are doors and there are doors.”
“I have faced swords since then.”
“Because you are the goat looking for the butcher.”
“Why didn’t you possess Mossi?”
“Sport. But last night you needed to cool yourself before you lose use.”
Truth be told, I felt sore in every muscle, in every joint. I felt no pain the night before, when anger ran through my blood. But now, even kneeling made my legs hurt.
“But you are right, Tracker. We lose time. And I have only seven more days with you, before I have to save this King from himself.”
The Bakanga trail. Not a road or even a path, just a stretch trod by wagon and horse and feet so much that plants stopped growing. On both sides, a forest of whistling thorns giving off ghost music, swaying trunks with branches thinner than my arm. The trail turned to dirt, cracked mud, and rocks, but it reached the horizon and then went beyond it. On both sides, yellow grass with patches of green, and small trees round like the moon, and taller trees where the leaves spread wide and the tops were flat. I heard Nyka say the biggest and the fattest of gods squatted on them too long, which is why the tops sat so flat. I turned and looked behind me, saw him talking to the Aesi and realized that he had said nothing. I was remembering him from another time. This trail was at times full and noisy with animals, but none stirred. None of the giraffes from near the swamp, no zebra, no antelope, no lion hunting the zebra or antelope. No rumble of elephant. Not even the hiss warning of the viper.
“There are no beasts in this place,” I said.
“Something has scared them away,” the Aesi said.
“We agree he is a thing, then.”
We kept walking.
“I have seen him like this before,” Nyka said to the Aesi, speaking only to him but wanting me to hear. “Strangest of things that I remember.”
The Aesi said nothing, and Nyka always took silence as a sign to continue. He told him that Tracker cares about nothing and loves no one, but when he has been wronged deeply, his whole self, and the self beyond the self, seek only destruction. “I have seen him this way once. And not even seen but heard. His need for vengeance was like life fire.”
“Who was the man that made him seek revenge?” the Aesi asked.
I know Nyka. I know he stopped and turned to face him, eye-to-eye, when he said, Me. He sounded almost proud. But then even the most wretched things Nyka ever said or did were always followed by a voice that sounded like he would kiss you many times and softly.
“He will kill this Sasabonsam, is that how you call it? He will kill him on just malcontent alone. What did this beast do?”
I waited for the Aesi to answer, but he said nothing. Sunlight left us, but it was still day, at least near evening.
Clouds gathered in the sky, gray and thick, even though rain season was a moon away. Before deep dusk, we came upon a village, a tribe none of us knew. A fence on both sides of the trail made of tree branches thatched together that ran for three hundred paces. Ten and eight huts, then two more that I did not see at first glance. Most on the left of the trail, only five on the right, but no different. Huts built of mud and branches with one window to look out, some with two. Thick thatch roof held down by vine. Three were twice the size of the others, but most were the same. The tribe gathered their huts in clusters of five or six. Outside some of the huts lay scattered gourds, and fresh footsteps, and the thin smoke of fire put out in a rush.
“Where are the people?” Nyka said.
“Maybe they saw your wings,” the Aesi said.
“Or your hair,” Nyka said.
“Would you like a pause in the bush to fuck each other?” I asked. The Aesi made some remark about me forgetting my place in this meet, and that as the adviser of kings and lords, he could leave me and resume his real business, and not to forget, ungrateful wolf, that it was I that saved you from the Mweru, since no man who enters the Mweru ever leaves.
“They are here,” I said.
“Who?” Nyka said.