I spun around and saw Sasabonsam swinging hands in the air and scraping the ground, sniffing. Smelling me out the way I smell everyone. I lurched backward and tripped over a fallen branch.
And then it was all thunder and then lightning, one bolt, then three, all striking Sasabonsam, but with no end, just blasting and striking and spreading all over him and running into his mouth and ears and coming out of his eyes and mouth, as fire and juice and smoke and something came out of his mouth, not a scream, or a shriek, or a yell. A wail. Hair and skin caught flame and he staggered and dropped to one knee as lightning still struck him and thunder still dropped heavy on him, and fell Sasabonsam did, his body burning in a huge flame, then going out just as quick.
Nyka fell from the tree.
He was saying something to me, but I did not listen. I grabbed my ax and went over to the charred carcass of Sasabonsam and swung it down at the neck. I yanked out and chopped, yanked out and chopped until the ax hacked through skin, through bone, straight to the ground. I fell on my knees and didn’t know I was shouting until Nyka touched my shoulder. I pushed him away, almost swinging my ax at him.
“Take your disgusting hands off me,” I said. He backed away, his hands in the air.
“I saved your life,” Nyka said.
“You also took it. Not much it was, but you took it.”
Not far from the Sasabonsam, I dug a hole in the earth with my hands, placed the necklace of my children’s teeth in it, then covered the hole back up. I patted the earth slow until it was smooth, and still I would not leave, would not stop patting and smoothing it until it felt like I was making a beautiful thing.
“I never buried Nsaka. When I woke and saw her dead, I knew I had to flee. Because I was changed, you see. Because I was changed.”
“No. Because you were a coward,” I said.
“Because I went to sleep for a long time, and when I woke up my skin was white and I had wings.”
“Because you are a coward with no bones, who can only deceive. She was the one who did all the fighting, I will guess. How did you rid yourself of it?”
“My memory?”
“Your guilt,” I said.
He laughed. “You wish to hear of my remorse for betraying you.”
“I do not wish to hear anything.”
“You just asked the question.”
“You answered it. You had no remorse to get rid of. You’re not a man, I knew that before I came across your shed skin. You act as if it makes you itch, but losing skin is nothing new for you.”
“True, even when I was a man I was closer to the snake, or the lizard, even the bird.”
“Why did you betray me?”
“So you are looking for remorse.”
“Fuck the gods with your remorse. I want the tale.”
“The tale? The tale is when it came to you, my friend, I was bewitched by the very conceit of it. You wish for something more? A reason? A way that I told myself it was just? Perhaps coin, or cowrie? The truth was I just fed my fill on the conceit of it. You think of the time I betrayed you? Think of the many times I did not betray you. The Bultungi hounded me for ten and three moons. That was ten and three moons of me thinking not of myself but of you.”
“Now you wish praise?”
“I wish for nothing.”
He started walking out of the bush, now all blue from night light. As it fell dark, his skin and feathers began to glow. I didn’t know where he was going and listened for the sound of the river, but I heard nothing.
“When the Aesi freed me, he told me of the new age,” I said. “Of how a bigger war was coming as sure as this war was here, a war to destroy everything. And at the heart of this war this boy. This abominable, perverted thing.”
“And you let him live,” Nyka said.
“It was only a guess. A heart twitch, not my head. Something amiss; I saw it as I saw him. He was already mad from it. Mad for it. Ipundulu blood. I saw it, I saw it then.”
“And you let him live.”
“I did not know.”
“The boy who led Sasabonsam to your house to kill—”
“I said I did not know.”
We kept walking for several paces.
“I cannot help rid you of it,” he said.
“Of what?”
“Your guilt.”
“Call the boy so I can kill him,” I said.
“What is his name? I know not.”
“Just call him boy, or crackle a lightning from your nipples or asshole or whichever place.”
Nyka laughed loud. He said he didn’t have to call him, for he knew where he was. We walked through bush and under trees until we came upon a clearing leading to a lake. I thought it was the White Lake, but was not sure. It looked like the White Lake, which had a pool at the end, not very wide, but very deep. They looked at us as if waiting for us to appear. The Leopard, the boy, and, holding a torch, with her face and breast hidden under kaolin clay, and with her headdress of feathers and stones, the woman on the mound before. Sogolon.
Seeing her on the other side of the lake did not shock me. Nor did my not recognizing her before, perhaps because when women age in these lands, they become the same woman. Perhaps she wore kaolin to hide what must have been horrible burn scars, but from where we stood, I saw nose, lips, even ears. I wondered how she survived, while not being surprised that she did. Meanwhile the Leopard, white from dust, stood a few paces behind her, with the boy between them. The boy looked at them, and at me. He saw Nyka and turned to run but Sogolon grabbed his thick hair and pulled him back.
“Red wolf,” she said. “No, not red no more. Wolf.”
I said nothing. I looked at the Leopard. Back in his armour like a man bound to a cause not his own. Not even a mercenary, just a soldier. I told myself I did not want to know what had gone inside his heart and grabbed it, what made this man who lived for no one and nobody turn to fight for the whims of kings. And their mothers. Look at you who we once called reckless and said it with love and envy. How low you have become, lower than shame, your neck hanging off your shoulder, as if the armour made you hunch. The boy was still struggling, trying to pull himself away from Sogolon, when she slapped him. He did what I saw before: shriek, then whimper, but with no feeling in his face. He was bigger now, almost as tall as Sogolon, but not much else showed in the dimness. He looked thin, like boys who grew but were not becoming men. Smooth, in just a loincloth, his legs and arms thin and long. Looking like no king or future king. He stared at Nyka, his tongue hanging out. I gripped my ax.
“Edjirim ebib ekuum eching otamangang na ane-iban,” she said. “When darkness falls, one embraces one’s enemy.”
“Did you translate for me or him?”
“You betray what you fight so long for?” Sogolon said.
“Look at you, Moon Witch. You don’t even look three hundred years old. But then, gunnugun ki ku lewe. How did you survive going back through that door?”
“You betraying that what you long fight for,” she said again.
“You talking to me or the Leopard?” I asked.
He looked straight at me. Sogolon and the boy were at the edge of the water and even in the dimness I saw their reflections. The boy looked like the boy, the torch rounding out his large head. Sogolon looked like a shadow. No kaolin clay, and blacker than dark everywhere, even her head, which had neither feathers nor hair.
“Ay, Leopard, is there no one left? No one for you to fail?” I asked.
He said nothing, but pulled his sword. I kept looking at the black figure in the water, the torch in her hand. The water was still and calm and dark blue as coming night. In the reflection I saw the Leopard run for the child. I looked up just as he swung the sword for the little boy’s head. Sogolon did not even turn, but whipped up a hard wind in a blink, which knocked over the Leopard, threw him up in the air, and slammed him against a tree. And right behind him, his sword, kicked up in the air by the wind, went straight like a bolt into his chest and pinned him to the trunk. His head slumped.
I yelled at the Leopard and threw my ax at the Moon Witch. It cut through the wind and she ducked, missing the blade, but the handle knocked her in the face and her whole body blinked. The kaolin vanished, then appeared, then vanished, then appeared again, then vanished. Nyka and I ran around this large pond. Sogolon was a burned-up husk, all black skin and fingers fused together, holes for eyes and mouth, before the kaolin appeared, and her skin and her feather headdress, her spell again strong. She still held on to the boy. The Leopard was still.