“Is that all people are? Their purpose? Their use?”
You have no purpose. You are a man loved by no one. When you die, who will grieve you? Your father forgot you before you were even born. They raised you in a house where people murdered memory. What kind of hero are you?
“That what you want? A hero?”
I have word from your father and your brother.
I stopped the horse.
“Are they disappointed again? Do they hang their heads in shame in the underworld? They never seem to change, my father and brother.”
I have word of your sister.
“I have no sister.”
Much has come to pass since you took yourself from your mother’s house.
“I have no sister.”
And she has no brother. But she has a father, who is also her grandfather. And a mother who is also a sister.
“And you say I am the one bringing shame to his family?”
What do you want?
“I want you to either kill me or shut up.”
What kind of man has no quality?
“For a spirit, it staggers me how much you care about what ordinary men think. You talk about purpose like the gods shat it out of a divine ass, then gave it to man as if they would know the difference. I had a purpose, given to me by my blood, my father and my grandfather. I had a purpose and I told them to go fuck themselves with it. You use that word purpose like there is something noble to it, something of the best gods. Purpose is the gods saying what kings say to men they want to rule. Well a thousand rapes for your purpose. You want to know what’s my purpose? To kill the men who killed my brother and father, leaving a grandfather fucking my own mother. To kill the men who killed my brother, because they killed him because he killed one of theirs. Who killed one of his, who killed one of theirs, and on and on while even gods die. My purpose is to avenge my blood so that one day they can come and seek vengeance on me. So no, I don’t want purpose and I don’t want children born in blood. You want to know what I want? I want to kill this bloodline. This sickness. End this poison. My name ends with me.”
I am your—
“You are an Anjonu and you bore me.”
Something like a scream came through the bush. The same leaves brushed past my arms, the same smells slipped past me. I came to a clearing I had just walked through. Trees were deceitful in these parts.
You close your mind the way a furious child closes his fists.
We came upon another clearing, where the grass was low and the air was evening. Or early morning. The Darklands was always dark, but it was never night. Not deep night, never a noon of the dead. In the clearing, built around the base of an assegai tree, stood a hut, plastered in cow dung. Dry, but carrying a fresh stink. Behind the hut, flat on his back with his legs spread wide, was the Ogo.
“Sadogo?”
He was dead.
“Sadogo?”
He was asleep.
“Sadogo.”
He groaned, but still slept.
“Sadogo.”
He groaned again.
“The mad monkey, the mad monkey,” he said.
“Wake up, Sadogo.”
“Not, not, asleep … not … I do not sleep.”
Truth, I thought this was sleep making him sound mad. Or maybe the worst dream, where he did not know he was asleep.
“The mad monkey …”
“The mad monkey, what did he do?”
“The … mad … the … mad … he blew bone dust.”
Bone dust. The Anjonu tried to make himself my master with that once, but the Sangoma’s protection was on me, even in this forest. He then studied more wickedness, trying to uncover what the Sangoma’s enchantment did not cover. He says he speaks to your head, even to your spirit, but he is just a lower demon who despises his form and who works an Ogudu spell on whoever is cursed to cross his path. He blows the bone dust and the body goes to sleep, though the mind is awake and in terror.
“Sadogo, can you sit?”
He tried to get up but fell back down. He lifted his chest again and fell back on his elbows. He paused and his head fell back like a sleepy child’s until he snapped himself awake.
“Roll over and push yourself up,” I said.
If bone dust did this to an Ogo, left him drunk, then the other two must be sleeping deeper than the dead. Sadogo tried to push himself up.
“Slow … slow … great giant.”
“I’m not a giant. I am an Ogo,” he said.
I knew that would rile him. He pushed himself up to a sit, but his head started to swing.
“Giant is what they call you. Giant!”
“Not a giant,” he tried to shout, but his mumble ate the words.
“You are not anything, drooling on the floor.”
He stood up and wobbled so low that he grabbed the tree. We would not make it out of this forest if we had to run. He shook his head. A drunkard he would have to be, then. If anything he could fall on our enemy and that would be no joke.
“The mad monkey … bone dust … inside … put them … insi—”
“The others are inside.”
“Huh.”
“Inside the hut?”
“I already said.”
“Don’t get testy with me, giant.”
“Not a giant!”
That made him straighten right up. Then slouch again. I went over and grabbed his arm. He looked down, swung his face around as if the strangest thing had landed on his arm.
“Bone dust is a favorite trick of the Anjonu, but you will be as new in five flips of an hourglass. You must have been under its wickedness for some time now.”
“Bone dust, the mad monkey …”
“You keep saying that, Sadogo. The Anjonu is a wicked, ugly spirit, but he is no monkey.”
The thought jumped in my head. The Anjonu likes to torment, but he torments with blood, with family. Why would he bewitch the Ogo, the Leopard, even the boy? The Darklands have the dead, the never born, the spirit-like, and those let loose from the underworld. But because I have not seen many, I forgot that it is also infested with every vicious creature born wrong. Worse than the bat men sleeping and drooling.
“Can you fit inside?”
“Yes. I tried to leave before but fell … fell … fell—”
“It will not be long, Ogo.”
Inside the hut smelled not like cow dung, but like meat saved in salt. Inside the hut, brightness like day came through, but from nowhere, and it lit up one red rug in the center, and a wall of knives, saws, arrowheads, and cutlasses. The Leopard, facedown on the rug, his back covered in spots and the back of his arms bristling fur. Trying to change but the Ogudu gripped too strong. His teeth had grown long and stuck out from his lips. Fumeli lay on his back in the dirt floor. I stooped down beside the Leopard and touched the back of his head.
“Cat, I know you hear me. I know you want to move but cannot.”
I saw him in my mind, trying to move, trying to turn his chin, trying just to move his eye. The Ogo, still wobbling, came through the door and hit his head.
“A dung hut with a door?” he said.
“I know.”
“Behold, anoth … nother.”
Another door in line with the first on the other side of the hut. The Ogo leaned too far and stumbled. He braced himself against the wall.
“Who locked this door? Who infested it … with so many locks?”
The door looked stolen from the hut of someone else. Locks and bolts went all the way down to one side, from the top of the door right down into the earth.
That is—
“That is what?”
“Wha … what is what?”
“Not you, Sadogo.”
“Then wh … my head keeps rolling out to sea.”
You know this door.
“Stop speaking to me.”
“I’m not … talking to you …”
“Not you, Sadogo.”
There are only ten and nine such doors in all the lands, and one in this forest you call the Darklands.
“Sadogo, can you carry the Leopard?”
“Can I—”
“Sadogo!”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”
“I’ll carry the boy.”
The ten and nine doors, surely you have heard of them.
“Another trick.”
“Who do you talk to?” Sadogo said.
“A minor demon who will not be quiet.”
“I worked for slavers once,” Sadogo said.
“Not now, Sadogo.”
“I … do not know why … my head keeps rolling out to sea. But I have seen many days working for a slaver. I stopped a slave revolt once all by my own, with these hands you see here. They said I could kill five and not affect their profits so I killed five. I don’t know why I did it. I know why I killed them but … my head goes out to sea, I do not know why I was in a slaver’s employ …. Did you know there are no female Ogos … or I have found none in all the lands I have seen …. Know this, Tracker … why do I wish to tell you, why do I wish to tell you so? I have never … ever … never been with a woman, for who can the Ogo mate with that he does not kill … and if this does not kill her …”
He lifted up his skirt. Long and thick like my entire arm.
“And if this does not kill her, giving birth to an Ogo surely will. I do not know my mother, just as no Ogo knows. The King of the South tried to breed a race of Ogo to fight in the last war. He kidnapped girls … some very young … some not childbearing age … wickedness, witchcraft, noon magic. Not a single Ogo he produced, but monsters now roam. We are not a race … we are a mishap.”