“He looking to make interest.”
“Tell him that the Witch of the Full Silver Moon soon come to pay him interest.”
I track them to a tunnel leading out to the Green Lake. Is not like anybody was trying to hide. The smell tell you why nobody swim or fish here. None of these men was a shapeshifter, and cheetah hide is not the only animal skin they wear, even though the killing of a shapeshifting cat was murder in the South. Too many of them, I was counting at least ten and three, and the wind (not wind) was still picking odd times to tell me I am not her master. Mortar and mud, this tunnel, and the entrance deep in the city was so blocked with garbage that only one man could slip through at a time. Dirt soft and wet to trap your foot if you stomp heavy, and with the dirt, shit from every beast. The narrow entrance spread to a wide middle, wider than two tall men lying flat. Wind come up from the lake and drop a chill that shake the bone. Sometimes is not the situation but how you choose to read it. Me in a tunnel with all these men. Them in a tunnel with me. Only two directions for me to go. Only two ways for them to run. They have clubs and flint stones sharp as a dagger. I have a dagger, and one of their clubs is on the ground. They have seven torches to light their way. I don’t need light to see in the dark. The wind (not wind) hear me. A little gust blow every torch out.
I bring back the girl. When I was done with the Cheetah Society, those who still live fumble through the dark on broken bones, searching for limbs that no science will sew back. Those who die lie stuck in the mud, but their blood wash out into the lake, making the mouth of the tunnel look like it bleed. Hairy feet I kick out of the way, hairy heads the wind (not wind) sweep in and crack open. A dagger fall out of the hand when I kick an arm and break the elbow. I stomp right to the end of the tunnel, stabbing, slicing, kicking, chopping, and slamming any limb that come across my way. The wind (not wind) do everything else. When I come upon the girl, she couldn’t see who was grabbing her. The bird they feed her was still on her breath, and her arm was not a young girl’s.
“They take you much longer than two moons, ago,” I say.
“You learn their tongue.”
“A tongue sound better with a click.”
“Who say they take me?” she reply and I hear the air just in time to dodge her blade. Fury she have, strength too, or no cheetah would go from taking her to keeping her. Skill she don’t, for no man want to teach her how to beat them. She been with them too long. Spoilt yes, but not in the way her sister was thinking.
“Your sister want you back,” I say.
“I don’t have no back,” she say and lunge for me. The night was deepening and there was beer, or wine, or spirit in some bar waiting on me. Or at least a fight that would be a little harder to win. The thought take me away and she cut my arm. And proud of herself she was, too proud, spending too long standing and laughing. One swing of the club to her belly and she bowl over, and another to the back of her head knock her out.
* * *
—
From then on the old woman bring plenty women, most of them she don’t know. I warn them that I was a ruthless woman, and if you send me into any place, save for any woman or child, I am the only one leaving there alive. That send away certain women but urge others.
“I can know your name?” she ask me one night.
“No.”
“You don’t want to know mine?”
“No.”
“The women, they add name where name missing. Witch of the Full Silver Moon is what they call you.”
“I got no quarrel with the name.”
She laugh. “Is too fussy-fussy. Witch of the Full Silver Moon who have time to say all that? In Sosoli they would just call you Moon Witch.” One day that old woman stop coming. Dead, I assume but didn’t ask. It didn’t stop the women, who either come with somebody who speak a North tongue, or leave a note on parchment if they have money, leaf if they don’t. Sometimes not even words, but glyphs, maps, or runes. One leave a drawing of a man with his head exploding into a cloud, which make me laugh. Famous indeed.
There is no woman called Sogolon. Nobody in this region need that name, so nobody use it. The Moon Witch cheat death more than once, more than twice, more than ten times, so she cannot die. The Moon Witch is death herself. She been roaming the South lands from before Kwash Moki die, after being King for twenty and five years. And she keep roaming after his son take the name Liongo, become King for seventy and one years, until he too, die. So yes a witch, though she never once take up witchcraft. So yes a ghost, though she don’t haunt the living. For what reason any woman have for living that long? they say. They, the women who find themselves calling on help for peculiar problems, or the men quaking in their bones when they find out that they are the problem.