And so they move through the years until it is time to turn man. The Asakin don’t believe that a boy just age, but that a boy and his group grow until they reach the boundaries of youth and cannot grow no more. At ten and two, like the caterpillar, the boy must close down so that the man can come out. And like the caterpillar to the butterfly, the boy have no connection to the man other than the husk from which a grown man come. Even his birthday start again from one. But though he go through the initiation with all the boys, he is not like the other boys.
I not killing no boy, you say. I not killing no boy.
Like I say, he is no boy. You will see it in his bearing, you will see it in his eyes.
You ever see a dead child?
What if this boy grow into he who would kill the world? What if you live long enough to see it? What then? He is not a young boy but a small something else, even if he look like the other boys, I say to you.
Hear me now, for this is from the one time a griot mark it in letters, which is the only reason why we know. I see the scroll myself. The griot write it down seven hundred years ago, and even then he couldn’t finish it. Truly the unfinished line turn into a riddle until somebody finish it. All the other boys, on the night they reach ten and two, pass through the ritual and become men in the eyes of the people. But when the Aesi reach ten and two, he reset the world. The griot write this, that the time soon coming, the time done coming, the time is here. Lightning cut across the sky though no rain threatening to come. He is turning, somewhere in the world, and the world is already on fire. Maybe if I keep writing and not stop then I will write my way on to the other side, for now I know his ways. I know he will re . . . s . . . Then ink spill and quill, hands, and finger smudge the scroll in black ink. Only at the bottom of the scroll the writing resume, and though it is the same hand, the griot dismiss the writing as that of a madman. We had to hunt down every script by this chapter of griots to find any more writing over the age. Some about the wretched boy who keep getting born again. One griot write that an elder told him to watch the sky for the flight of gray pigeons. Another from five hundred years ago say to watch for those years when there is only the King and keep writing, for when the Aesi return somebody will notice the change in the script if not the world. Then there is just the scrolls that trying to do nothing but record, scrolls that mention the same Aesi over and over and over, from even before the house of Akum. Seven hundred years and only now we learn that when the Aesi reach ten and two, not only does he change, but everybody who ever see or hear or touch or breathe air with him change too. They forget him, you hear me, as if he was never born, and as for him, he change into a man, not like those boys who become man only in name, but a tall, thin man of a man. Skin so black it blue and hair red, and always he is beside the King, but nobody can tell when first he get to the King side, or who he come from, or how he get to the right of the throne. The Aesi don’t have no beginning or end, he just is.
But learn this, just because you forget him don’t mean he will forget you. A King Sister along with a fetish priest and ten witches hatched a plot that killed him, two hundred years before the house of Akum. He put his own vendetta on princesses and has been coming for them ever since. Mark that he will remember the woman who killed him and come for you. And yours. And gods help you but you won’t even know why, which is why I say to you that to kill him you cannot kill him. Get him as a boy or a man and this is a kill. Get him when he stop being the boy but before he become the man, and it is not a killing, for he is not born. A man not born cannot die and cannot be born again. But we have to reach him on the eve of his ten and two. It is the only way.
You take one look at your youngest children and decide right then to do it. Your lion didn’t like that at all. You trying to kill him as prevention or revenge? he ask you but you didn’t answer. I doing this for them, you say but he say you doing it for you. Then he say that when the Aesi came killing it was you who lure him here.
“He say more but you look like you don’t want to hear the rest.”
“Tell me,” I say.
“You call the oldest to take care of the youngest, and leave the house with ill feelings and poison words hanging between you and the lion.”
“Tell me.”
“Very well. He say what kind of mother can forsake her children, one who is dead because of you. Is because I don’t want any more dead, why I have to go, you say. He say is because you just can’t lose the taste for blood, for even now you sneak out some nights to go fight in the donga, which shock you because you didn’t think anybody knew. You tell him that you didn’t bring any fight to the Aesi’s door, you didn’t even bring yourself to this fuckery city, he is the one who take you back here. Then you say if he was a real man instead of half of one, then he would have protected his children instead of blaming the woman. Then he say you right, the real cursed day was the day he bring you back from that mountain, and drive out a real mother instead of one who just breed and drop, truly who is the real beast here. Then you say—”
“Enough.”
“He try to strike you.”
“Enough, I say.”
“Like I said. You leave the house with ill feelings and poison words hanging between you and the lion.”
Popele continue.
It would take too long to get to the south by land, even on horseback, but going the whole way by sea was too treacherous, with the bad-temper weather being the least of it. Quickest and safest mean journey by river, riding southwest to Juba, and paying passage south on lower Ubangta River to Dolingo, then leaving water to travel through no name forest, then through the Blood Swamp to the coastline where you would take a boat to Lish, and from Lish a ship sailing south to Weme Witu and Omororo. In all, four moons’ journey. Before the Aesi turn ten and two.
“In what moon was his birthday?”
“We use the best intelligence we have.”
“So you didn’t know. And where was you when I was traveling south?”
“I was with you always, below water. My form still too strange even for people who have seen strange.”
“With me all the time. The old man say Sangomin attack me twice. You heard him. Sound like you didn’t do nothing. You know what I still don’t know? If you divine born and can’t get your hands dirty with people business, or if you just love to watch.”
“I . . . I . . . I not one to be on land too long. Water on ground, the ground suck me up and then . . . No I cannot. Just cannot. . . .”
“Popele, go back to the story,” Ne Vampi say.