“The people. No man flees a village without his cow.”
In the center of one cluster, cows lay lazy and goats hopped on tree stumps and loose wood. I went to the first hut on my left and pushed in the door. Dark inside and nothing moved. I went to the next, which was empty as well. Inside the third was nothing but rugs and dried grass on the ground, clay jars with water, and fresh cow dung on the east wall, not yet dry. Outside Nyka was about to speak when I raised my hand and stepped back in. I grabbed the large rug and yanked it away. The little girls screamed into a slap on the mouth from their mother. On the floor, her children curling into her like not-born babies. One girl crying, the mother her eyes wet but not weeping, and the other daughter frowning straight at me, angry. So little and already the brave one ready to fight. Do not fear us, I said in eight tongues until the mother heard enough words to sit up. Her daughter broke from her, ran straight up to me, and kicked my shin. Another me would have held her back and laughed, and played in her hair, but this me let her kick my shin and calf until I grabbed her hair and pushed her back. She staggered into her mother.
I go outside, I said, but the mother followed me.
The Aesi gave Nyka his cloak. This village must have heard of Ipundulu, or he guessed they would have terror for any man with wings. More men and women came out from their huts. An old man said something I barely understood, something about he that comes at night. But they heard strange men were coming down the road, including a man white like kaolin, so they hid. They had been hiding for a long time now. Terror, the old ones say, used to come at noon, but now it comes at night, the old man said. He looked like an elder, almost like the Aesi, but taller, and much thinner, wearing earrings made of beads, and a clay skull plate at the back of his head. A brave man with many killings who now lived in fear. His eyes, two cuts in a face full of wrinkles.
He approached us three, and sat down on a stool by a hut. The rest of the village stepped to us slow and afraid, as if at the slightest move, they would scream. They all came out of their huts now. Some men, more women, more children, the men bare in chest and wearing short cloths around the waist, the women wearing leather-skin covered in beads from neck to knee, with their nipples popping out from both sides, and the children wearing beads around the waist, or nothing. You saw it on the women and children most, eyes staring blank, exhausted from fear, except that angry little girl from the hut who still looked at me like she would kill me if she could.
More and more came out of their huts, still looking around, still slow, still eyeing us from head to foot, but not looking at Nyka as any different from the rest of us. The Aesi spoke to the old man, then spoke to us.
“He says they leave the cows open and he take a cow, sometimes a goat. Sometimes he eat them there and leave the rest for the vulture. One time a boy, he never listen to his mother. This boy who think he is man because he soon go into the bush, he run outside, why only the gods know. Sasabonsam take the boy but he leave the boy left foot. But two nights ago …”
“Two nights ago, what?” I asked. The Aesi spoke to him again. I could understand some of what the old man spoke, enough before the Aesi looked at me and said, “That is the night he knocked down the wall of that house over there on the other side, and he go in and he take the two boys of a woman who scream, I do nothing but miscarry. Them is the only boys the gods give me, and he try to take the boys away, and the men, who weak before, find some power in their arms and legs and they rush out and throw stones and rocks at him, and hit him in the head, and he try to bat away the rocks, and dirt, and shit with his wings, and still fly and still carry two boys, and could not, so he let go of one.”
“Ask if any of these men fought off the beast.”
The Aesi regarded me for a few blinks, not liking how strange it is, a man telling him what to do.
Two men came forward, one with beads around his head, the other with a clay skull plate painted yellow.
“He stunk like a corpse,” the beaded one said. “Like the thick stink of rotten meat.”
“Black hair, like the ape but he not the ape. Black wings, like the bat, but he not the bat. And ears like a horse.”
“And he feet like he hands, and they grab like hands, but big like his head, and he come from sky and try to go back to it.”
“There are many flying beasts on this trail,” I said.
“Maybe they fly over the White Lake from the Darklands,” Nyka whispered to me.
I wanted to tell him that one would have to go to a dark street where men fuck holes in walls and call them sister to find a remark less stupid.
“Sun queen just gone back home,” said the one with the skull cap. “Sun queen just gone when he first come, ten nights ago. He fly down, we hear the wing first, and then a shadow that block out the last light. Somebody look up and she scream and he try to grab her and she drop to the ground, and everybody running and yelling, and bawling, and we run to we huts, but an old man, he was too slow and his hunchback hurt, and the beast grab him with leg hands and bite his face off, but then spit him out, like the blood was poison, and he chase after a woman who was the last to reach her hut, I see it myself in the bush I hide myself, he catch her foot before she run in her hut, and he fly off with her, and we don’t see her no more. And since then he come every two night.”
“Some of we, we try to leave, but the cows slow, and we slow, and he find we on the trail and kill everybody and drink out the blood. Every man and woman and beast rip in two. Sometimes he eat the head.”
“Ask him when he came around last,” I said.
“Two night ago,” the old man says.
“We need to locate the boy,” the Aesi said.
“We’ve found the boy. I was waiting for him to find Nyka. But we have found him.”
“No one here mentioned anything of a boy,” the Aesi said.
“Good men speak of me as if I am not here. You wish to leave me out in the open so that your boy will find me?” Nyka asked.
“We will not have to. When Sasabonsam comes tonight, he will bring the boy. The boy will demand it until there is no quieting him,” I said.
“I do not like this plan,” the Aesi said.
“There is no plan,” I said.
“That is what I do not like.”
“It took six of us to beat him last time and we still could not kill him. Ask what weapons they have.”
“I say we let what happen, happen and follow him to where he hides,” the Aesi said.
“Where he hides could be two days’ walk.”
“He is too smart to risk the boy.”
“I will kill this thing tonight or fuck the gods.”
“Shall I say something?” Nyka said.
“No,” we both said.
“Ask them what weapons they have.”
Four axes, ten torches, two knives, one whip, five spears, and a pile of stones. I tell truth, these people, who left the hunt for the field, were foolish to forget that this was still a land full with wicked beasts. The men brought the weapons, threw them at our feet, then scrambled to their huts like mad ants. This did not surprise me—all men are cowards, and men together only added fear to fear to fear. Darkness snatched the sky, and the crocodile had eaten half of the moon. We hid by the fence near the north of the village. The Aesi crouched low, holding a stick I did not see him with before, his eyes closed.
“Do you think he calls on spirits?” Nyka said.
“Speak louder, vampire. I do not think he heard you.”
“Vampire? How harsh, your words. I am not like who we hunt.”
“You have witchmen hunt them for you. We will not have this argument again.”
“It would please the night if you were both quiet,” the Aesi said.
But Nyka wanted to talk. He was always like this, needing endless chatter. He used chat to mask what he was plotting at the same time.
“I have not killed a man today,” I said.
“You said many times, over many years I have known you, I am a hunter, not a killer.”
“If not Sasabonsam, then I will kill every man here for being so weak and pathetic.”
“Careful, Tracker. You’re in the presence of a vampire and … whatever this Aesi is, and yet you burn with the most ill will. And even if you do joke, you were funnier back then,” Nyka said.
“Which then? Before or after you betrayed me?”
“I have no memory of that.”
“Memory has much of you. You never asked about my eye.”
“Did I too cause that?”
I stared at him, but turned away when seeing him only made me see myself. I told him how I got the wolf eye.
“I thought a man punched you in the eye and left it so,” he said. “But I see I am responsible for that too.”
He looked away. I could think of nothing more to do with Nyka’s remorse than punch him in the face with it. How I wished I had Sadogo’s knuckles to punch his head clean off. Sadogo. I had not thought of him in many long moons. Nyka opened his mouth again, and the Aesi covered it.