“Your burden. Let nothing stop you and you will shed it like snakeskin.”
“The day I heard I have a brother is the day I lost a brother. The day I learned I had a father is the day I lost a father. The day I heard I had a grandfather was the day I heard he was a coward who fucks my mother. And I hear nothing of her. How do I shed such skin?”
“Keep walking,” he said.
We walked through bush, and swamp, and forest, and a huge salt plain with hot cracked white dirt until daylight ran away from us. Every moment in the bush jolted me and I fell asleep and jumped awake all night. The next day, after some long walking, and me complaining about long walking, I heard footsteps above me in the trees and looked up. Kava said he had followed us since we turned south. I did not know we were heading south. Up above us in the tree was a black leopard. We walked and he walked. We stopped and he stopped. I clutched my spear but Kava looked up and whistled. The Leopard jumped down in front of us, stared hard and long, growled, then ran off. I said nothing, for what could be said to someone who had just spoken to a Leopard? We went farther south. The sun moved to the center of the gray sky but the jungle was thick with leaves and bush, and cold. And birds with their wakakakaka and kawkawkawkaw. We came upon a river, gray like sky and moving slow. New plants popped out of a fallen tree that bridged one side of the river to the other. Halfway across there rose out of the water two ears, eyes, nostrils, and one head as wide as a boat. The hippopotamus followed us with her eyes. Her jaws swung open wide, her head split in two, and she roared. Kava turned around and hissed at her. She sunk back under the river. Sometimes we caught up to the Leopard, and he would run off farther into the forest. He waited for us whenever we fell too far back. Though the bush got colder, I sweated more.
“We climb,” I said.
“We climb from before the sun gone west,” he said. We are on a mountain.
You only need to be told down is up for down to change. I was not walking south, I was walking up. The mist came down on the ground and floated through the air. Twice I thought it was spirits. Water dripped from leaves and the ground felt damp.
“We are not far,” he said, right before I asked.
I thought we were searching for a clearing, but we went deeper in the bush. Branches swung around and hit me in the face, vines wrapped around my legs to pull me down, trees bent over to look at me and each line in their barks was a frown. And Kava started talking to leaves. And cursing. The moonlight boy had gone mad. But he was not talking to leaves but to people hiding underneath them. A man and a woman, skin like Kava’s ash, hair like silver earth, but no taller than your elbow to your middle finger. Yumboes, of course. Good fairies of the leaves, but I did not know then. They were walking on branches until Kava grabbed a branch and they climbed his arms up to his shoulders. Both of them had hair on their backs, and eyes that glowed. The male sat on Kava’s right shoulder, the female on the left. The man reached into a sack and pulled out a pipe. I stayed behind until my jaw came back up to my mouth, watching tall Kava, two halflings, one leaving a thick trail of pipe smoke.
“A boy?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“Is he hungry?”
“We feed him berries, and hog milk. A little blood,” said the woman. They both sounded like children.
For a long time walking all I saw was Kava’s back. I smelled the baby’s dried vomit before he got to him, sitting up on a dead anthill, flower in his mouth, his lips and cheek red. Kava kneeled before the baby, and the little man and woman jumped off his shoulder. Kava took up the baby in his arms and asked for water. Water, he said again, and looked at me. I remembered that I was carrying his waterskins. He poured some in his palm and fed the child. The little man and woman both carried over a gourd with a little hog’s milk left. I was over Kava’s shoulder when the baby smiled, two top teeth like a mouse’s, gums everywhere else.
“Mingi,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
He started walking, with the baby, not answering me. Then he stopped.
“The gods had no watchful eye on him,” the little man said. “We could not …” He did not finish.
I didn’t see until we passed the sweet stink of it. Two little feet peeking out of the bush, the bottoms of the feet blue. Flies raising nasty music. The last meal threatened to come up through my mouth. The sweet stink followed us even when we had gone very far. A bad smell, like a good one, can follow you into tomorrow. Then it rained a little and the trees sent the smell of fruit down to us. Kava hid the baby’s face with his hand. He spoke before I asked.
“Do you not see his mouth?”
“His mouth is a baby’s mouth, like every other baby’s mouth.”
“Too old to be such a fool,” Kava said.
“You don’t know my age and neither—”
“Quiet. The boy is mingi, also the dead girl. In his mouth, you saw two teeth. But they were on the top, not bottom; that is why he is mingi. A child whose top teeth come before bottom teeth is a curse and must be destroyed. Or else that curse spreads to the mother, the father, the family and brings drought, famine, and plague to the village. Our elders declared it so.”
“The other one. Were his teeth also—”
“There are many mingi.”
“This is the talk of old women. Not the talk of cities.”
“What is a city?”
“What are the other mingi?”
“We walk now. We walk more.”
“Where?”
The Leopard jumped out of the bush and the little people ran behind Kava. He growled, looked behind him, and roared. I thought he wanted Kava to hand him the baby.
The Leopard crouched down on the ground, then rolled on his back, and stretched and shook like he had a sickness. He growled again like a dog hit with a stone. His front legs grew long but the back legs grew longer. His back widened and sucked up his tail. The fur vanished but he was still hairy. He rolled until we saw a man’s face, but eyes still yellow and clear like sand struck by lightning. Hair on his head black and wild, going down his temple and his cheek. Kava looked at him as if in the world one always sees these things.
“This is what happens when we move too late,” the black Leopard said.
“The baby would still be dead, even if we had run,” Kava said.
“I mean late by days; we are two days late. This one’s death is on our hands.”
“All the more to save this one. Let us move. The green snakes have already caught his scent. The hyenas caught the scent of the other.”
“Snakes. Hyenas.” The black Leopard laughed. “I will bury that child. I am not following you until I do.”
“Bury her with what?” Kava asked.
“I will find something.”
“Then we wait,” Kava said.
“Do not wait sake of me.”
“I do not wait because of you.”
“Five days, Asani.”
“I come when I come, cat.”
“I waited five days.”
“You should have waited longer.”
The black Leopard growled so loud I thought he would change back.
“Go bury the girl,” Kava said.
The black Leopard looked at me. I think that was the first time he noticed I was here. He sniffed, turned his head away, and went back into the bush.
Kava answered a question before I asked it.
“He is just like any other in the bush. The gods made him, but they forget who the gods made first.”
But that was not one of the questions I wanted to ask.
“How did you come upon each other?”
Kava still watched where the Leopard left in the bush.
“Before the Zareba. I had to prove that the boy with no mother is worthy of becoming a man, or die the boy. He must go out past the bush, slip past Gangatom warriors in open fields. He must not come back without the skin of a great cat. Listen to what come to pass. I was in the yellow bush. I heard a branch crack and a baby cry and I saw that Leopard holding a baby at the neck. With his teeth he’s holding him. I draw my spear and he growls and drop the baby. I am thinking I will save this baby, but the baby start bawling and will not quiet until the Leopard pick him up again with his teeth. I throw my spear, I miss, he is on me and even as I blink I see a man about to punch me. He says, You are just a boy. You will carry the baby. So I carried him. He found me the skin of a dead lion and I took it back to the chief.”
“The beast just says carry this mingi child and you carry him?” I asked.
“What was mingi? I didn’t know until we came to she,” Kava said.
“That is not … Who is she?”
“She is who we come to meet.”
“And since then you sneak off near the end of every moon and bring mingi children to this she? Your answer leaves more questions.”
“Then ask what you want to know.”