“Don’t provoke her. She will blow the roof off next,” the old man said.
Mossi gave me a look that said, This little old woman? I nodded.
“Tracker right. They are using the ten and nine doors,” Sogolon said.
“And how many doors have you been through?” Mossi asked.
“One. It is not good for one such as me to go through that door. I get my calling from the green world and that travel violate the green world.”
“A very long way to say that gates are bad for witches,” I said. “You need me and my Sangoma craft to open them for you. And even passing through each door weakens you.”
“What a man, he know me more than I know myself. Write my song for me then, Tracker.”
“Sarcasm always masks something else,” Mossi said.
“How quickly the Leopard get replace.”
“Shut your face, Sogolon.”
“Ha, now my loose tongue will be a river.”
“Woman, we lose time,” the old man said to her, and she quieted herself. He stepped over to the chest and took out a huge parchment.
Mossi said, “Old man, is this what I think it is? I thought these were uncharted lands.”
“What do you two speak of?” I asked.
The old man unrolled the scroll. A big drawing, in brown, blue, and the colour of bone. I have also seen the like; there were three in the palace of wisdom, but I did not know what they were or what was their use.
“A map? Is this a map of our lands? Who did such a thing? Such masterful craft, such detail, even of the eastern seas. Was this from a merchant in the East?” Mossi said.
“Men and women in these lands have mastered crafts too, foreigner,” Sogolon said.
“Of course.”
“You think we run with lions and shit with zebra so we cannot draw the land or paint the buffalo?”
“That is not what I meant.”
Sogolon let him go with a huff. But this map thing made him grin like a child who stole a kola nut. The man dragged it to the center of the room and placed two pots and two stones at the corners. The blue pulled me in. Light like the sky, and swirls of dark blue like the sea itself. The sea but not like the sea, more like the sea of dream. Bobbing out of the sea, as if leaping on land, were creatures great and small, grand fishes, and a beast with eight tails gobbling a dhow boat.
“I have been waiting to show this to you, the sand sea before it was sand,” the old man said to Sogolon.
Which waters are these? I said to myself.
“A map is just a drawing of the land, of what a man sees so that we too may see it. And plot where to go,” Mossi said.
“Thank the gods for this man to tell us what we already know,” Sogolon said. Mossi kept quiet.
“You mark them in red? Based on what wisdom?” Sogolon asked.
“The wisdom of mathematics and black arts. Nobody travel four moons in one flip of a sandglass, unless they move like the gods, or they using the ten and nine doors.”
“And this is them,” I said.
“All of them.”
Sogolon kneeled and Mossi stooped down, the man excited, the woman silent and with a frown.
“Where you last hear anything about them?” she said.
“The Hills of Enchantment. Twenty and four nights ago.”
“You draw an arrow from the Hills of Enchantment to … where does this point, to Lish?” Mossi said.
“No, from the Hills to Nigiki.”
“This one points from Dolingo to Mitu, but not far from Kongor,” I said.
“Yes.”
“But we came from Mitu to Dolingo, and before that the Darklands to Kongor.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. You said they are using the ten and nine doors.”
“Of course. Once you go through a door, you can only go in one direction until you go through all doors. You can never go back until you done.”
“What happens when you try?” I say.
“You who kiss a door and flame burns away the mask of it, you should know. The door consume you in flames and burn you up, something that would scare the Ipundulu. They must be using them for two years now, Sogolon. That is why they so hard to find and impossible to track. They stay on the course of doors until they complete the journey, then they go back ways. That’s why I draw each line with an arrow at the two ends. That way they kill at night, kill only one house, maybe two maybe four, all the killing they can do in seven or eight days, then vanish before they leave any real mark.”
I walked over, pointed, and said, “If I was going from the Darklands to Kongor, then here, not far from Mitu to Dolingo, then I would have to ride through Wakadishu to get to the next door, at Nigiki. If they travel in reverse, then already they have come through the Nigiki door. Now they walk through Wakadishu, to get to—”
“Dolingo,” Mossi said.
He pressed his finger into the map, at a star between mountains right below the center.
“Dolingo.”
EIGHTEEN
We are in the great gourd of the world, where the God Mother holds everything in her hands, so that which is at the bottom of the round never falls away. And yet the world is also flat on paper, with lands that shape themselves like blots of blood seeping through linen, of uneven shape, that sometimes look like the skulls of ill-born men.
I traced the rivers of the map until my finger took me to Ku, which lit nothing in me. I wondered about it, that once I wanted more than anything to be Ku, but now I don’t even remember why. My finger took me across the river to Gangatom, and as soon as I touched that symbol of their huts I heard a giggle from my memory. No, not a memory but that thing where I cannot tell what I remember from what I dream. The giggle had no sound, but was blue and smoky.
The day was going, and we were setting to leave at night. I went to the other window. Outside, the prefect ran up to a mound, making himself black against the sunset. He pulled off a long djellaba I had never seen him wear, and stood on a rock in a loincloth. He bent down and took up two swords. He squeezed the handles in his hands, looked at one, then the other, rolled them around his fingers, until he had a firm grip. He raised his left hand, holding the sword in blocking position, dropped on one knee, and swung the right so swift it was if he was swinging light. He let the swing throw him up in the air, where he spun and sliced and landed on his left knee. He jumped up again and charged with the right and blocked with the left, sliced his left sword to the right side and right to left, stabbed both in the ground and flipped over, landing in a crouch like a cat. Then he went back up on the rock. He stopped and looked this way. I could see his chest heaving. He could not have seen me.
The old man shuffled again. He took out a kora, larger than I thought it would look. The base a round, fat half of a gourd that he steadied between his legs. The great neck tall as a young boy, and strings to the right and to the left. He took it by the bulukalos, the two horns, and sat by the window. From his pocket he pulled what looked like a large silver tongue rimmed with earrings.
“Great musicians from the midlands, they stick the nyenyemo to the bridge so the music leaps buildings and pierces through walls, but who needs house jumper and wall piercer in open sky?”
He tossed the nyenyemo to the ground.
Eleven strings to the left hand, ten strings to the right, he plucked on and it hummed deep into the floor. I have not been this close to music such as this in many years. Like a harp in the many notes rising at once, but not a harp. Like a lute, but not sharp with melody like a lute, and not so quiet.
Outside Sogolon and the girl, she on a horse, the girl on the buffalo, rode out west. Footsteps shaking the floor above us meant the Ogo was moving around. I could feel the floor shake under him until I heard a door slam open. The roof, maybe. I went back to the maps. The old man built a rhythm with his right fingers and a melody with his left. He cleared his throat. His voice came out higher than when he spoke. High like a cried alarm, still higher, with the top of his tongue clicking the top of his mouth to make rhythm.
I it is who is speaking
I am a southern griot
We now few we was once all
Hide in dark I come out of
The wilderness, I come out of
The cave, I come out and see
I was looking for
A lover
I want get
A lover
I did lose
Another
I want get
Time make every man a widow
And every woman too
Inside him
Black like him
Black that suck through the hole in the world
And the biggest hole in the world
Be the hole of loneliness
The man lose him soul give it ’way
For he was looking for
A lover
He want get
A lover
He did lose
Another
He want get
A man when he eat like glutton
Look like a man when he starve
Tell me can you tell one from two
You glutting by day
Then you starving by night, yeah
Look at you, fooling you
You want find
A lover
You want get
A lover
You did lose
Another
You did lose
A lover
You did lose
A lover
You did lose
Another
You did lose