“Watch the birds!” I shout and point up, but then I look up and learn something. That black cloud was not pigeons, but crows. The sight leave my eyes and sit inside my mind. When the Aesi attack my house he come with a legion of crows. Popele was a fool and so was I, for pigeon might be the sign of the Sangomin, but crows are the sign of the Aesi. And that black cloud of crows already gone from the island to the shore. Paddle! I shout to the griot but he still scratching away on the skin and gone deaf to me. A rumble come up from the water and the waves start to go wild. But I was going to find that boy and those birds were going to lead me to him. Waves were breaking against the boat, twisting us left and right like the slave ship, but as each wave pass I could see the shore. First nothing, then a wave rise like a hill that I had to row over. On the shore, still nobody. Then another wave, higher than the first, that almost flip the boat as it go over. And on the shore . . .
. . . A woman. It look like a woman. Tall, I could tell from far, naked, shiny, and black from head to toe, black like pitch, like tar. Shock take my voice and fright silence the griot. Fright, fury, pumping my chest, robbing me of the voice to even whisper her name. The woman carrying a boy in her arms like she about to place him on a table, the boy white from head to foot and loose, not like he is dead but asleep. His head leaning against her chest. And so they be, she standing at the shore looking at me, the boy like a baby asleep. Row, I shout to the griot, who is scratching words on the skin like he is about to cut through it. Sea water blind my eyes, then burn them, and when I see them again, the black tar woman is still holding the boy. The boy nudge his head against her chest and wake up. He look at her and my boat finally pick up speed and my shoulder burn from pain. The boy look at her again, then turn to look at us and then burst into a glow. Brighter, whiter, bri—
Quiet is growing thick in the room and taking away the air. All I can do is clutch my right shoulder at the burn scars that I thought were a large, nasty birthmark. Popele start talking.
“I say it before that for three years they call the North King Liongo the Good. Nobody call him that after his third year, nobody even remember other than the pages of the southern griots. Because right at the beginning of the fourth year there was Aesi, grown as a man can grow and right behind Liongo. Oh he good in his way, Liongo, he try to be. He even fight the Aesi influence better than anybody. But he bring the Sangomin back to court after Moki the Wicked banish them. And he more brutal in conquest and war than any King before. And when Paki succeed him but die after one year and his brother Aduware become King, there was the Aesi right beside him, the mentor yet again chancellor. And when Aduware die after twenty and five years and Netu turn King, who is there with him? The Aesi, looking like he don’t age a day, much less a generation. Then the Aesi die. We don’t know how, for by then no southern griot allowed in the Fasisi court. But somebody was writing, somebody was always writing. Then the same thing happen that happen with you. Eight years after he die he is born again, and twelve years after that, there is the Aesi, the second four limbs of the Spider King, right by Kwash Netu’s side as if he never leave. Again he ageless. Again nobody make note, this time not even the southern griots, for by now Kwash Netu and Dara hunting down all the griots and killing them. And the Sangomin, after centuries of doing the Aesi’s bidding, he banish them too. Many a witch laugh at that, I can tell you. Many a worshipper of the water spirits as well. Now people from city to village know that if a mingi child is born best you kill him or a Sangoma will find him. And now we in the age where Netu dead and Kwash Dara is King and still the Aesi—”
I pull three arrow at once and fire them, one two three, into Popele. She stagger back hard but didn’t fall. I go to pull two more, but Nsaka Ne Vampi grab two throwing daggers from the gods know where. Popele raise her hand and she stay. She pull the arrows out of her chest and side, and I hear the holes close up.
“You was the one on the shore,” I say.
“No.”
“He write it down right there. Something about you was stinking up my head from the moment I meet you.”
“Why plot to stop him, only to save him?”
“Black bitch, your name down on the fucking goatskin.”
“Many move with the name Popele.”
“That is your answer?”
“Believe it or don’t. But calling me Popele is like calling a man master, or a woman queen. I am called Bunshi, Popele is what man call all in my clan. Many moving about with that name. Not all of them working for good in this world.”
“So none of you can be trusted.”
“Believe or not—”
“Not. I choose not. Telling people that danger is a boy when the real threat is that you can’t even control your fucking kin. Who look exactly like you, something you didn’t feel to tell anybody.”
“We don’t look alike.”
“Alike enough, you stupid tar bitch. You know what? I don’t even care.”
“Your great-great-granddaughter was about to kill you for trying to kill me.”
“She was about to try,” I say.
“Blood mean to you same that it mean to me,” Nsaka Ne Vampi say. “Popele, we—”
“Stop calling her that, like you worship her. Anyway, what happen next?” I ask.
“Next? Next we need to restore the—”
“I look like I talking to you?” I say to Bunshi, then turn to Ikede. “What happen next?”
This griot is trying to not look at Bunshi, trying to get some direction from her face.
“She your fucking master? I say, what happen next?”
“We don’t have it, a master library. Somebody . . . somebody wise decide long time ago that if all the writing was in one place, all it take is one flame and hundreds of years burn to nothing just like so. The writing, it is scattered, from place to place, paper to paper, sometimes not on papers, sometimes on walls in the caves, or on goatskin or swineskin, one of us take to tattooing it on his body and another scar out an entire verse on his chest.”
“Talk plain, old man.”
“It take near a hundred years just for five griots to see that there is written four parts to this same story. ‘One morning I wake up under the great monument in Omororo and have no recollection how I get there. I say to myself it is I, Bolom. What is the meaning of me waking up with beggars? I know I am a southern griot, and I know that goatskin on my chest has writing, but I don’t remember writing it. Count it now, three days since. I leave it now, in the Omororo hall of records with another griot, who don’t care about any business of the North.’ That was the last thing the goatskin say.”
“One man born and everybody forget the world?”
“No. If he touch you—”
“You watch what you mean by ‘touch.’?”
“I mean if your life and his ever tangle, you forget that he was in it. The mind is a tricky thing. Memory even trickier. If your memory find a loose strand it will find a way to tie it. Which is why you think poachers kill your son when is the Aesi who kill him.”
“I making tracks,” I say.
“I opened the window,” Nsaka Ne Vampi say.
“Cunt, you think you cute?”
“You look like you need air. We all need—”
“I don’t care what you all need.”
“Sogolon, I know—”
“Stop telling me what you fucking know! You understand me? I don’t care what you fucking know. So what this is, this secret meeting like you all plotting big things. A nothing sprite, a nothing griot, and she who is nothing to me.”
“You fool, we can still change the world,” Bunshi say.
“You know what you not changing? My mind.”
“I told you two this was a waste of time. She living in bush and talking to monkey for over a hundred years,” say Nsaka Ne Vampi.