“Matisha, come from under there right now. And where is—”
I don’t know what come first, Keme leaping faster than a flash, him knocking me and himself to the ground, or the three arrows that zip through the window zupzupzup and pierce his arm, shoulder, and the thick skin at the back of his neck. Matisha scream so loud that I don’t hear my own. From the other room the children start bawling, but I don’t have time to think how young they are. Matisha, she is the one who tell them to hide before the killers even come. My mind want to think on this, but my mouth still screaming. Still on the floor, Keme pull the arrows out of his flesh and crawl to the doorway. A shadow come in, which Keme bite in the leg, bringing him down, then bite in the neck to rip his throat out. I scoop up Matisha and throw her in the room with the other children just as an arrow zip right past my nose to stick in the wall. Keme take on two, and the second roll with him outside. At the side window near the kitchen two shadows climb through. Not shadows. Red Army. Once Keme’s own men. They move quick and quiet, drawing swords. The wind (not wind) is neither master nor servant, but I yell for it. They both come at me, and nothing for me to do but dodge when they swing, dip under the table when they strike it until it crack, and throw vase, urn, and bowl at them because they still approach. I run to my children’s room, trip, and land on my chin, which send a shock through my whole body. Moving not happening. One of them grab my ankle and I see nothing in his face. Everything is there, but nothing at all. I kick him one, two, three times and he spit out a tooth with the same blank look. One more kick make his hand slip and I scramble away. Nowhere leave to go but in the room with the children. So I yell and the yell grab the soldier and throw him up into the ceiling so quick I barely hear his neck snap. The wind (not wind), finally. By the door of the room stand a staff that Keme was making to pass an idle afternoon, and as I grab it the donga come back to me. Then it leave, the memory laughing at me trying to be the long gone No Name Boy. But when the second one swing the knife at me I didn’t even have to look to block it. He is a soldier, and he is lightning quick. Keme roar from outside and the dagger slice across my chest before I even realize. I yell again and the yell knock him in the chest and send him flying out the door until I hear him smash into a tree. I look at the two doors, the children behind me, and Keme outside and run to the front door. The darkness hiding nearly everything but sound, so I run back into the room to see my children huddling in the center and trembling together. Then two battering rams burst through the wood shutter and four men jump in the windows. This is it, my heart say. Nothing to do but cover them and hope no sword or spear kill them by going right through me. I close my eyes and hear an explosion and walls crumbling. One window where there was two, and pieces of the soldiers floating around before they fall on us.
“Run!”
They run out the door but stop, and I almost knock Lurum over by running into him.
“You,” he say. “Of all the people that mad commander would lead me to, I never thought it would be you.”
The Aesi.
His black robes spread like wings to reveal the red underside. I glance at the table, and the glance do what my yell do before, lift it up and hurl it at the Aesi, who swat it away, breaking it into pieces. My wind (not wind) throw stools, jugs, ceremony daggers at him, and he swat away them all, sometimes without his hands.
“You are one of them with her mind locked to me,” he say. The words come tumbling to my tongue, words screaming to get out, but nothing leave my mouth. I grab who I can grab, but Ehede and Ndambi howling too loud.
“Mother of shapeshifters? For such an unremarkable girl, remarkable things seem to happen to you,” he say.
“What you want?”
“You the one taunting me. What do you want?”
“Nobody here trouble you.”
“Yet your troubling reach me. You know who I am.”
“Everybody know.”
“You know more. It’s like a disease, what I do with people. Infect them with forgetfulness. I can even send it on night air. And it pass to everyone, even the King. But not you. Never you.”
“I not any threat to you.”
“If everybody forget for the better good, the one who remember is always a threat. You were in the caravan with the King Sister.”
“The King don’t have no sister.”
“So everybody in Fasisi would believe, but you.”
“I don’t believe.”
“You don’t need to. You know.”
“Don’t kill my children.”
“If they forget this night, I won’t have to. Olu, though. Pity you followed him.”
“All that man ever do was serve his King.”
“And he will still. He was like you with the remembering, you understand? She must have been a magnificent wife. I never took a wife.”
“You never take a grown woman either, from what I hear.”
“Do I also cut out people’s hearts and drink their blood?”
He smile and I am thinking that this man really expect me to laugh with him.
“I came to him in dream, you understand? I can’t see your mind, so I will guess that I can’t visit your dreams. But Olu? Dream is keeping what little memory he have. Hear me now, a little trick that I didn’t even teach the Sangomin. If you enter a man’s head while he sleeps, you see with his eyes when he wakes. And who I should see, but you running him down, proving that you’re not dead. You frighten me, can you imagine? You frightened me. If she of such low stock is still alive, could the princess be living and hiding as well? But it was only you. You and whatever spirit help you to lay waste to that mountainside. Who you?”
“A no name woman from Mitu. Just leave us be. I never once come near you.”
“You and I know that is not true.”
Keme come running back to the house. I can see him out the doorway, see him shift to full lion, but then the ground start to shake under him, rocking this house. The shaking trip his balance and he stumble, but just as he rolling over to get back up, the dirt break apart, suck him in and swallow him whole. Keme force one paw out of the dirt but the earth claim him, pull him under, then close up.
“Keme!”
“No use screaming, there will be much still to scream about. Besides, he might even claw his way out.”
I want to run to my man and dig him up with anything I can find, bare hands if I have to, but I cannot leave the children. Ehede and Ndambi growling and won’t stop, but the other children quiet. The ground outside so flat, as if it have no memory of what just come to pass.