“You are the lord of this magnificent house,” I said.
He smiled but it quit his face quick. I would have said, Take me to her room, this is still your house, if I thought to enter her room was what he wished. He was not afraid of her; instead they seemed like brother and sister or sharers of old secrets.
“I shall go in,” I said. He looked at me, then past me, then at me, pressing his lips to appear unconcerned. I headed for her door.
“Will you follow?” I asked as I turned around to see him gone.
Sogolon did not lock her door. Not that any of the doors had locks, but I would have thought so of hers. Maybe every man believes that all an old woman has is secrets, and that was the second time I thought of secrets when I thought of her.
The smells in the room hit me first. Some I knew that took me out of the room, some I have never smelled the like. In the center of the room, a black-and-red rug with the curved patterns of textiles from the eastern kingdoms, and a wood headrest. But on the walls, painted, scrawled, scratched, and written, were runes. Some as small as a fingertip. Some taller than Sogolon herself. From them came the smells, some in coal, some in wood dye, some in shit, and some in blood. I saw the rug and the headrest and paid no attention to the floor. That was covered in runes as well, the freshest ones in blood. The room was so covered in marks that I hesitated to look at the ceiling, for I knew what I would see. Runes but also a series of circles, each wider than the one before. Truth, had I the third eye, I would have seen runes written in air.
One smell in the room, fresher than the rest, moved on the wind and grew stronger.
“You scare the lord of the house,” I said.
“He is no lord to me,” Bunshi said as she poured herself down from the ceiling to the floor.
I stood still and stiff; there was no way a black mass moving down from the ceiling was going to trouble me.
“I don’t think I want to know who are your lords,” I said. “Maybe you are a lord yourself that nobody worships anymore.”
“And yet you are so gentle with the giant,” she said.
“Call him Ogo, not giant.”
“That was a noble thing, hearing a man as he empties the whole world of his conscience.”
“Have you been spying on us, river witch?”
“Is every woman a witch to you, Wolf Eye?”
“And what of it?” I said.
“All you know of women is your mother jumping up and down your grandfather’s cock, yet you blame all of womandom for it. The day your father died was the first day of freedom your mother ever saw until your grandfather enslaved her again. All you ever did was watch woman suffer and blame her for it.”
I walked to the door. I would not hear any more of this.
“These are protection runes,” I said.
“How do you know? The Sangoma. Of course.”
“She covered the tree trunks with them, carved some, branded some, left some hanging in air and on clouds and on the ground. But she was Sangoma. To live as her is to know that evil forces rise day and night to come for you. Or wronged spirits.”
“Who did the Sangoma do wrong?”
“I mean Sogolon, not her.”
“What a story you have made of her.”
I went by the window and touched the marks all around the frame. “These are not runes.”
“They are glyphs,” Bunshi said.
I knew they were glyphs. Like the brands on that attacker who came in the whore’s window. Like the note wrapped around the pigeon leg. But not the same marks exactly; I could not tell for sure.
“Have you seen them before?” she said.
“No. She writes runes to keep spirits from coming in. For what does she need glyphs?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“I need no answer. But I leave today, before the sun goes.”
“This day? Do you need me to tell you that is too soon?”
“Too soon? It has been a moon and several days. A moon already wasted in a forest that nobody should have gone into. Me and the Ogo leave this evening. And anyone else who cares to. Maybe the buffalo.”
“No, Wolf Eye. There are more things to learn here. More things to—”
“To what? I am here to find a child, collect my gold, and go find the next lost husband who is not lost.”
“There are things you don’t even know that you don’t know.”
“I know where goes the child.”
“You keep this secret?”
“I tell who I feel needs to know. Maybe you sent us on a mission expecting us to fail. Good … whatever you are, for truly I know not … how stands your fellowship now? Nyka and his woman—”
“She has a name.”
“Fuck the gods if I care to remember it. Besides, they took off first, before we even left the valley. The Leopard is gone, and so is Fumeli, not that the boy had much use, and now your Sogolon is gone to wherever. Here is truth. I saw no reason for a group to find one child anyway. Nor did any of us. Not Nyka, not that cat, and not your witch.”
“Think like a man and not a child, Tracker, this is no task for one, or two.”
“And yet two is what you have. If Sogolon returns and is willing then we will be three.”
“One, three, or four might as well be none. If all I needed was someone to find the child, Tracker, I could have hired two hundred trackers and their dogs. Two questions, you can choose which to answer first. Do you think his abductor will hand him to you just because you say, I am here, hand me the boy?”
“They will—”
“Is the tracker such a fool to think I am the only one looking for this child?”
“Who else seeks him?”
“The one who visits you in dreams. Skin like tar, hair red, when you see him you hear the flutter of black wings.”
“I don’t know this man.”
“He knows you. They call him the Aesi. He answers to the North King.”
“Why would he visit my dreams?”
“They are your dreams, not mine. You have something he wants. He too might know that you have found the child.”
“Tell me more of this man.”
“Necromancer. Witchman. He is the King’s adviser. From an old line of monks who started working secret science and invoking devils and were thrown out of the order. The King consults him on all things, even which direction to spit. Do you know why they call Kwash Dara the Spider King? Because in everything he moves with four arms and four legs, except two of each belong to the Aesi.”
“Why does he want the boy?”
“We have spoken on this. The boy is proof of the killings.”
“Are bodies not proof enough? Or do they think the wife cut her own self in two? Who is the boy?”
“The boy is the last son of the last honest man in the ten and three kingdoms. I will save him if that is the last thing I do in this world or another.”
“I will not ask a third time.”
“How dare you ask me anything! Who are you that demands that I make things clear to you? Are you master over me now, is that how you will have it?”
Her eyes bulged and the fin grew out of the back of her head.
“No. I will have nothing but rest. I am tired from this.” I turned and walked out. “I leave in two days.”
“Not today?”
“Not today. It seems there is more I need to know.”
“Where is the child? How many moons away is he?” she asked.
“Don’t speak of my mother again,” I said.
That night I was again in a dream jungle. A new kind of dream where I wondered why I was in it, and why a dream of trees and bushes and bitter raindrops. And moving but not walking, and knowing something would reveal itself in a clearing, or in the mirror of a puddle, or in the lonely cry of a lonely ghost bird. Reveal something that I already knew. The Sangoma once told me that the dream jungle is where you find things that are hidden in the waking world. And that hidden thing might be a lust. The knowledge is in leaves, and dirt, and mist, and heat thick like a ghost, and it is a jungle because the jungle is the only place where anything can wait behind the cover of a large leaf. The jungle finds you, you cannot seek it, which is why everyone in the jungle seeks why they are there. But looking for meaning will drive you mad, the Sangoma also said.
So I did not ask for meaning when Smoke Girl was the first to run to me, then run past me, not ignoring me but so used to my presence. And in the jungle was a man I only saw by hair on his hands and legs. He touched my shoulder, and chest, and belly, leaned his forehead to touch mine, then grabbed two spears and walked away. And Giraffe Boy stood with his legs wide open, the boy with no legs curled into a ball and rolled right between them, and the patch of sand in the middle of the bush blinked, then smiled, and the albino rose out of the sand as if he came from it and was not just hiding in it. Then he grabbed a spear and went to find the man I had no name for, but still felt warm at the thought that I do know his name. I had stopped walking but I was still walking and Smoke Girl sat down on my head and said, Tell me a story with an ant, a cheetah, and a magic bird, and I heard every word she said.
FIFTEEN