This is how I get to Lish. From the Blood Swamp I come, and before that a no name forest the river split from Wakadishu, and before that a place you don’t need to know. But for the most part I take the lower Ubangta River as it run into the Kegere. By the time I reach the forest I was wearing the look of the people I was moving with, the Bintuin, the nomad tribe of horse and camel lords that settle on the land until they devour it, then move to the next and do the same. If the sand sea was a sort of plague, then they was the spreader. But I hide in the cover of their great number, and their purple-and-blue robes that cover everything but eyes. With the Bintuin I was neither man nor woman, for that is only two, and among the Bintuin there is many. Which is to say that I pass as one of them without help of magic.
Wicked forces lead me to move with this tribe, and I couldn’t hide in their numbers forever. When they make camp at the mouth of the Blood Swamp, I break from them and head south. That place proud of the trick in it name, for the Blood Swamp is the one place in the North Kingdom with no evil, ill will, or malcontent. Even the river mothers, fat and round, with bald head and no speech, approach you only to kiss in welcome, not to drag you to the bottom of sea. But I couldn’t stay in the Blood Swamp. I couldn’t stay nowhere. Through thick bush and deep river I dash, jump, climb, and run until I reach the edge of the swamp, also the edge of the North lands. There a man sit in a canoe like he was waiting for me all night. The man name a price so deep that I work up a quick wind and blow him out of his own boat. I row it myself, following along the coastline of the South lands until it appear out in the sea.
Lish.
But I get there too late, for only one ship was at the dock, with none on the horizon. As for this ship, a slave ship with the massive lower deck to prove it. In the torchlight, it look like it soon sink. Whoever was at my heel would catch up to me while I wait here. For somebody was at my heel again, somebody with more craft than the others.
At the inn I find not the captain but the cook, sprawling himself out in a dim corner of the room. For the right money, he don’t care who or what sail with him, this captain, he say.
“I seek passage to the South. My reason is nobody business but mine. I hear that this ship sail south in two days.”
“We already south,” he say.
“South around the horn, then west. To Omororo.”
“Illicit journey like that? You want we to sail into enemy territory? My ship don’t carry no Southern mark.”
“I have a passport mask in the mark that say Omororo,” I say and take out the mask, small as my palm, with white lines circling the eyes and nose and a cross carved into the mouth. The mask that give the owner free passage to the land it come from—if there are four gold dots on the inside.
“Besides, you sail with Lish colors. Neutral ships don’t need no mark.”
“We don’t sail for another three days,” he say to me, adding one more day.
This he say to me also, that the captain sleep in the room right above this tavern and whatever ails your voice to make you sound like an owl with a rat stuck in the throat, fix it. This fool thinking I was a man with a throat malady, but better he think I was a sick man than a woman, for a woman with no man company would never get passage to Omororo.
Deep in the night the air in my room go cool and heavy, with a new smell above the tobacco and old sheets, the smell of rain set to fall. She was in my room. Not the reason why I sharpen my dagger, but the reason why I didn’t sleep. Thickness like whale oil bubble up on the windowsill and trickle down to the floor. Popele.
Watch out for those things that can be surprising and fated at the same time. Popele is a river nymph much like a river fish, and river fish can’t swim in seawater. So how she get to the island, I ask her. River running underground bigger and wider and longer than any above, she say.
“You following me.”
“Many a man on a mission get distracted by the smallest thing.”
“Good thing you don’t trust a man with this mission, then. You the one who seek me, remember. I not no warrior nor spy.”
“Just the woman who did something that neither man could do.”
“Now you sound like you trying to convince yourself, not me.”
Popele, the water sprite. She is the reason I have a mission in my dreams and a dagger under my pillow. Not only she, but Popele is the one who keep appearing, like a thought you keep thinking you forget. Ten and one moons ago she was the one who made me mark my name in blood and bind me to the promise to find him. But now she shaky as if I was the one who cut blood with her and she the one trying to break the vow.
“Leave me to sleep,” I say.
“Maybe there is another way.”
“You the one who choose this way, water sprite. Now you losing stomach?”
“Don’t tell me what I have the stomach for. I am—”
“Divine born.” More like a god, but less than a child, I didn’t say. I know that would anger her. She would do it, make the air around me heavy with vapor until it turn into a ball of water covering my head, prying into my nose and trying to drown me. I see it in her face, she was thinking it. Three times past she come to me in Ibiku, the first time frightening the children. Yet she was the one in terror and nerves, jumping from being in a house of lions. But whatever scare her do it long before she bring dust to my doorway. I drive her from my house twice, until she tell me words I never expect to hear. Words that would pull me from my man and my children without even a word why.
“Mission is afoot, Popele. Nothing you can do to stop it now.”
“I not trying to.”
“Then what you doing? First you on fire, now you slipping through my window, all unsure like some virgin about to marry. You want me to tell you what you tell me? How this is a right so right it will undo one hundred wrongs, one thousand? How this is the kind of thing that no man have strength for, and only womankind can do? I losing sleep, oh.”
“I come to tell you something.”
“Stop your coming and tell.”
“He will be on the ship.”
“He? And how you know what ship? What we just say about mankind, Popele?”
“He is not help. He is a griot.”
“I look like somebody who need his balls stroked? What I need griot for?”
“He is a southern griot. He put words down on paper.”
Southern griot, like all other griot, is the son of a griot, whose son will also be a griot. They hide from the eyes and spies of the North King. They don’t leave story to the tongue, but put it to parchment and paper. And though any fool with money can buy a story, no amount of money can buy a southern griot, which is why they now hide from the eyes and spies of the North King.
“Of course. Now that I know you, this making perfect sense. All the way to Lish I was saying to myself, Sogolon, you know what you missing? A sniveling, singing jackass playing kora right behind you when you slash, kill, and burn. But I see you, sprite. No songs for you, you want a record that won’t fade along with man memory. Because you want acknowledgment of all your ways. Praise. Glory. You more like a god than you think.”
Even with her black skin in the black night I could see her face twitch.
“You didn’t tell me I was guiding myself, when I am no traveler. I don’t think I see you in two moons. But you know who I see? Three times if you believe it.”