“And you never ask yourself why Matisha was the only one who miss me.”
“Couldn’t ask your other children, they all dead. They . . .”
I don’t know what I show her or what she see on my face, but she let her words fade to air. Maybe she see me searching for it, the part of me that hear that my children are dead, long dead, and as soon as I find it, I hide it again. Good. For no part of me ready for the wrongness of it, the same wrongness when you see a man about to take a nine-year-old wife, or a boy watching his father kill his mother slow. The wrongness of burying my own children, that I didn’t even get to bury. For the first time I find myself thinking about my long life and wondering if it was a curse, not a blessing. It don’t matter how old one get, mother or child, no child supposed to be buried by their mother. And I didn’t get to bury nobody. Grief lurking at the back of my head, but it is a sound, maybe even a mark on parchment, not a thing living inside me threatening to come out and take over my face. I not going to allow it. I never going to allow it.
“How come you still alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Matisha too, at one time she look as young as Mama herself. People use to think they were sisters. And neither of them looked as young as you look now. You barely look like a mother, much less a great-great-grandmother. If I didn’t know I would say you just turn sixty. Witchcraft?”
“Again with the witchcraft.”
“And yet they call you Moon Witch.”
“What you do with yourself, great-great-granddaughter?”
“Call it the family business,” she say.
“You two done settle on what to say to me next?” I say to the two of them still huddled together.
“I . . . I didn’t know he took so much, or I would have come before. This Aesi, he rape everything that is normal and good. He disrupt the line of kings. He turn necromancy into science and science into necromancy. And none of it ever come back?” Popele ask.
“What?”
“Your memory.”
“My memory fine. Is my own blood that did forget. Even Matisha, she didn’t remember me, she just know that she forget me and not supposed to.”
“Is more than that,” say Nsaka Ne Vampi.
“You was there?” I say, which shut her up.
“Neither him nor me thought there would be so much to tell you. Thank the gods that most make it to paper. The rest I didn’t forget. None of us who live in the trees or in the waters forget.”
“You the one who send me to Omororo.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look like somebody whose orders I would follow.”
“You choose to go when I tell who you’d be hunting.”
“Hunting. Your words telling me more about you than your face or your smell.”
“Do you know of the Aesi?”
“Who?”
“The right hand of the King of the North. He is why you was in Omororo. We sent you to kill him.”
“What? Who you to send me killing? Did you pay my weight in gold?”
“You did it for free.”
“And I kill him?”
“The griot have your story.”
“It’s a yes or no. And . . . but wait, you said this Aesi sit at the right hand of the King. The same Aesi? So I kill him or what?”
The old man and the water sprite glance at each other, trying to not move their heads, hoping I didn’t notice.
“Speak your story,” I say.
“How far back you want to go?” Nsaka ask.
“Further than what they tell you,” I say.
“Forgive the griot, he only know you since the slave ship. He only write what you tell him to, and in the way you tell it,” say Popele.
“But why you send him?”
“Because if you succeed, you would have changed the world. But if you fail, that would change the world too. Either way one smarter than me say let there be records for we don’t know if we will need them. And look, now we do.”
“You all better tell me this story before I really kill somebody tonight.”
* * *
—
Here is what that water sprite say to me.
This was time of Kwash Liongo, who become King after the sudden death of Kwash Moki in his twenty and fifth year as King. Liongo the Good they call him for three years, for both his father and his twin brother was nothing but wickedness, and both meet their deserved end, but that is someone else’s story to tell. But I tell you this one true, that this is not the first time we meet, nor the second, nor the tenth time either. The first time, there you was down by the river that run behind the Ibiku quarter in Fasisi. You washing clothes for a home where few wear any, when up from the river jump me. Here is truth, I was watching you for days, long enough that the bisimbi nymphs warn me that these were not my waters, and they have the craving of the crocodile when they get hungry. But I was regarding you for days, your shape and your manner, and for days I was asking myself if this really is the one who killed the Aesi. Hard as it was to believe that you kill him, it was harder to believe that he only manage to kill one of you. Four days I watch you and your house and your family. Your lions, and your girl Matisha, who touched with the same thing you touched with. I watch how your oldest children come and go, some of them done gone for good, for all was past twenty in age and the ones from your lion’s marriage were older. And your youngest children, all of them ten, they already start pulling from you as well, for your grip on them was too tight, even you did know.
Day twenty of the Sadasaa moon. I watching you while the bisimbi watch me and I wonder if you know anything about your line, how you not the first of your blood who can do things with air and sky and ground and fire. Like I say, you were washing when I rise behind you. I am there thinking you didn’t hear me, for I rise quiet like a thought, but then you swing around quick with a knife and try to slash me. You strike first then ask questions later? is what I ask you but you didn’t answer. You slash right through me and I let you, for you might as well cut through butter. Then I make myself like the river, thin and loose as water, and fling myself on you, race up your legs, cover past your waist, rush into your mouth before you shout and cover your head. I was about to be gone with you for I didn’t have time to waste when a spear burst right through my shoulder. I turn around and there was you.
“My wind will blow you apart if you don’t give me back my daughter,” you say.
You will blow your daughter apart as well, I say, but it shame me that I couldn’t tell daughter from mother. I use my own finger to cut open my belly and the daughter, Matisha, tumble out. A wall of water rise up quick and tall and violent and I know it is their doing.
And what you have is not wind, I say.
Oh, you think you know me. What is it then?
Force.
What is force?