His smile vanished, his jaw dropped, and his eyes popped. I dragged him down the steps as the ceiling rumbled and cracked. Men black in body, black in face, black where eyes should be, pulled themselves out of the ceiling like men climbing out of holes. And when they rose they stood on the ceiling the way we stand on the ground. From the Omoluzu came blades of light, sharp like swords and smoking like burning coal. The King ran off screaming, leaving his sword.
They charged. I ran, hearing them bounce off the ceiling. One would hop and not fall to the floor but land back on the ceiling, as if I was the one upside down. I ran for the outer court but two ran ahead of me. They hopped down and swung swords. My spear blocked both blows but the force knocked me over. One came at me with sword craft. I dodged left, missed his blade, and ran my spear right into his chest. The spear moved in slow as if piercing tar. He jumped away, taking my spear with him. I grabbed the King’s sword. Two from behind grabbed my ankles and swooped me up to the ceiling, where blackness swirled like the night sea. I sliced the sword through the black, cut their limbs off, and landed on the floor like a cat. Another tried to grab my hand but I grabbed him and pulled him to the ground, where he vanished like smoke. One came at me sideways and I dodged but his blade caught my ear and it burned. I turned and charged at his blade with my own, and sparks popped in the dark. He flinched. My hands and feet moved like a Ngolo master’s. I rolled and tumbled, hand over feet over hand, until I found my spear, near the outer chambers. Many torches were lit. I ran to the first and dipped my spear in the oil and flame. Two Omoluzu were right above me. I heard them ready their blades to cut me in two. But I leapt with the burning spear and ran right through them both. Both burst into flames, which spread to the ceiling. The Omoluzu scattered.
I ran through the outer chamber, down the hallway, and out the door. Outside the moon shone faint, like light through cloudy glass. The little fat King did not even run.
“Omoluzu appear where there is a roof. They cannot walk on open sky,” he said.
“How your wife will love this tale.”
“What do you know of love anyone had for anyone?”
“We go.”
I pulled him along, but there was another passage, about fifty paces long. Five steps in, the ceiling began ripping apart. Ten steps in and they were running across the ceiling as fast as we ran on the ground, and the little fat King was falling behind me. Ten and five steps and I ducked to miss a blade swinging for my head that knocked off the King’s crown. I lost count after ten and five. Halfway along the passage, I grabbed a torch and threw it up at the ceiling. One of the Omoluzu burst into flame and fell, but vanished into smoke before hitting the ground. We dashed outside again. Far off was the gate, with a stone arch that could not have been wide enough for the Omoluzu to appear. But as we ran under two jumped out of the ceiling and one sliced across my back. Somewhere between running to the river and coming through the wall of water, I lost both the wounds and the memory of where they were. I searched, but my skin bore no mark.
Mark this: The journey to his kingdom was much longer than the journey to his dead lands. Days passed before we met the Itaki at the riverbank, but she was no old woman, only a little girl, skipping in the water, who looked at me in the sly way of women four times her age. When the Queen met her King, she quarreled and cussed and beat him so hard, I knew that it would be mere days before he drowned himself again.
I know the thought that just ran through you. And all stories are true.
Above us is a roof.
TWO
When I left my father’s house, some voice, maybe a devil, told me to run. Past houses and inns and hostels for tired travelers, behind mud and stone walls as high as three men. Street led to lane and lane led to music, drinking, and fighting, which led to fighting, drinking, and music. Seller women were closing shops and packing away stalls. Men walked by in the arms of men, women walked by with baskets on their heads, old people sat in doorways, passing night as they did day. I walked right into another man and he did not curse, but smiled wide with gold teeth. You are as pretty as a girl, he said. I fled along the aqueduct, trying to find the east gate, the way to the forest.
Day riders with spears, in flowing red robes, black armour, and gold crowns topped with feathers, mount horses dressed in the same red. At the gate, seven riders were approaching, and the wind was a wolf. Quarrels done for the day, their horses galloped past me, leaving a cloud of dust. Then the sentries started closing the gate and I ran out, down the Bridge That Has a Name Not Even the Old Know. Nobody noticed.
I walked through open lands that stretched on like the sand sea. That night I walked past a dead town with walls crumbling. The empty hall I slept in had no door and one window. Behind was a hill made from the rubble of many houses. No food, and the water in the jars tasted rank. Sleep came to me on the floor to the sound of mud walls crumbling around the town.
And my eye? What of it?
Oh but it were a mouth, the tales it would tell you, inquisitor. Your lips broke open the first time you saw it blink. Write what you see; be it witchcraft, be it white science, my eye is whatever you think it is. I have no guise. I have no look. My face is a forehead wide and round, like the rest of my head. Brows that hang so far over my eyes they give them shade. A nose sloped like a mountain. Lips that feel as thick as my finger when I rub them with red or yellow dust. One eye that is mine and one that is not. I pierced my ears myself, thinking of how my father wore a turban to hide his. But I have no look. That is what people see.
Ten days after I left my father’s house I came to a valley, still wet from rain that fell a moon before. Trees with leaves darker than my skin. Ground that held you for ten paces only to swallow you on your next step. Dens of the slitherers, cobra and viper. I was a fool. I thought you learned the old ways by forgetting the new. Walking through the bush I told myself that though every sound was new, none was frightening. That the tree was not betraying where I tried to hide. The heat under my neck was not fever. The vines were not trying to jump my neck and strangle me until I died. And hunger and what passed for hunger. Pain hitting against my belly from the inside until it was tired of hitting. Looking for berries, looking for young tree bark, looking for monkeys, looking for what monkeys eat. More madness. I tried to eat dirt. I tried to follow snakes following rats through the brush. I felt something big following me. I climbed over a rock and wet leaves hit my face.
I woke up in a hut, cool like the river. Fire burning inside, but the heat was in me.
“The hippopotamus is invisible in water,” a voice said.
Either the hut was dark or I was blind; I did not know.
“Ye waren wupsi yeng ve. Why did you not heed the warning?” he said.
The hut still loomed dark, but my eye saw a little more.
“The viper has no quarrel with anyone, not even foolish boys. Oba Olushere, the cool and gentle snake, is the most dangerous.”
My nose led me into the forest. I saw no viper. Two nights before, when he found me shivering under the crying tree, he was so sure I was near dead that he dug a hole. But then I coughed green juice throughout the night. And there I was lying on a mat in a hut that smelled of violet, dead bush, and burning shit.
“Answer from the heart. What are you doing in the deep bush?”
I wanted to tell him that I had come searching for myself, but those were the words of an idiot. Or like something my father would say, but back then I still thought there was a self to lose, not knowing that one never owns the self. But I’ve said this before. So I said nothing and hoped that my eyes could speak. Even in the dark I could tell he was staring at me. Me and my wild ideas about the bush where men ran with lions, and ate from the land, and shat by the tree, and had no art among them. He came out of the dark corner and slapped me.
“The only way to inside your head is I cut open and look, or you speak it out.”
“I thought—”
“You think men of bush and river grunt and bark like dogs. That we don’t wipe the ass when we shit. Maybe we rub it on our skin. I talking to you as man.”
You, inquisitor, are a man who collects words. You collect mine. You have verse for a cool morning, verse for the noon of the dead, verse for war. But the setting sun does not need your verse and neither does the running cheetah.
This wise man did not live in the village, but near the river. His hair was white from ash and milk cream. The only time I witnessed my father undress, I saw dot scars like stars in a circle on his back. This man had a circle of stars on his chest. He lived alone in the hut he built with wild branches for the wall and bush for the roof. He rubbed the walls with black rock dust until they shone, then drew patterns and paintings, one of a white creature with arms and legs tall as trees. I have never seen the like.