“Yeah? And why they don’t listen to you?”
“Because according to she, you been there. You been in the Court of Kings. You know what is at stake because you see it yourself.”
“Court of Kings? I been in the Court of Kings?”
“You used to be right there with the King of Fasisi. They have more to tell you, but you don’t . . . Bunshi, make we leave. Leave her.”
“Bunshi?” I say.
“We need her.”
“No we don’t.”
“You know what I tired of?” she shout. Bunshi shout so loud that the floor shake. And she grow too, taller and don’t stop growing till her head near bump the ceiling and her shadow creep across it. Fins pop out of her elbows and her hands turn sharp as knives. Truth, she look like a shark.
“I tired of explaining,” she say.
“I can still kill you,” I say.
“Before or after I turn into a mist and reform in your lungs? Or your heart? You think only you can make man explode? You was there, woman, when you was just a girl. You was there when Kwash Moki disrupt the line of kings and drive this whole North into decadence and wickedness. Not even Liongo the Good was good enough to stop it. Every King destroy his oldest sister or send her to Mantha as a nun. They been doing it so long they don’t even know why. Kwash Moki’s father was the last true King to sit on the throne in Fasisi, and nothing in the North going be good until a true King rule again.”
“Which North? The North that beat the South in every single war? The North that expand east and west? Which North this is that failing?”
“Oh the years of plenty soon done, mark my word.”
“I don’t mark nothing you—”
“Mark my word. When years of nothing come, it going to sweep north and south, and not even the gods going to stop it.”
“So this is it. You hatching secret plan so that fat swine in the North won’t starve.”
“Fuck the gods, stop being such a provincial bush bitch,” Nsaka Ne Vampi say. The wind (not wind)—the push rise up in the room and blow every lamp out. Nsaka Ne Vampi wave her hand and every lamp burst back into flame. I try to not look like that shake me. You not the only one blessed with gifts, her glare say to me.
“She is not even a North woman. Not anymore.”
“You don’t tell me where I belong.”
“You the one saying you don’t belong nowhere. When the great witch purge happen in Fasisi over a century ago, you do anything about it? Mourning song pass down from woman to woman for years. Some of the women wasn’t even women yet. Some get burned because it was cheaper to let the crown kill your wife than divorce her. You never cared about anybody but yourself then, so why would you care about anybody else now? All this long life for no purpose other than living it? Well, I hope I die sooner than you. The text say it correct. You the one who abandon your own—”
“Don’t think I won’t shut that mouth if you won’t shut it.”
“You about to try?”
“Enough! Both of you!” Bunshi say.
“Should have offered her money, or nuts, or whatever it is monkeys use. Don’t know what in all the fucks you were trying to appeal to with her.”
“Point me to this Aesi so I can kill him,” I say to Bunshi.
“You fail the second time, be—”
“I succeed the first time, though. Point where he is, I say.”
“So you can strike your blow? Watch how he came back. You listen to what any of us say? He comes back. He will come back. He will never stop coming back. We have a different plan,” Nsaka Ne Vampi say.
“We kill him, wait eight years, find him, and kill him again.”
“You talk to her, Bunshi, because I done.”
“Kill him now, me say.”
“You can’t kill him.”
“Who going stop me? What kind of devil this be that can’t stay dead?”
“He is not a devil,” Bunshi say.
I look around for something to smash. I glare at her, asking the question without my tongue.
“He is not a devil,” she say again. “He is a god.”
NINETEEN
Fasisi have no spite for me. Fasisi have nothing. I don’t know if I was yearning or dreading. If I was a counting woman I would say that one hundred thirty and six years pass since my foot touch this ground, my nose smell the river at the bottom of Ibiku district. We not staying, Nsaka Ne Vampi say. This is just a stop on the way to Mantha, but that fortress would have to wait, something we both know even before we set out. Besides, I don’t take orders from my great-great-granddaughter, or the shifty blob of tar who shape herself a woman whenever she feel like it, but more often than not content just to be a puddle on the floor, pooling into people’s rooms and learning their business. They should count themselves lucky after what they done tell me, I think but don’t say when we leave Omororo two moons ago. If you don’t come with expectations then you don’t leave with disappointment, I been telling myself since we set out from the South, by sea. Why we didn’t take the quicker way? Ne Vampi ask the sprite, but she didn’t answer.
I want to remember the last things they said, even though it was ugly, but I long forget, which leave me feeling a way. Not angry, but not . . . the word I am looking for is not sad, but I don’t know what the word is. They, my family. I remember what they do and I remember what I do too. I remember my lions start to maul me, and the wind (not wind) blowing one off so hard that when she hit the wall I hear Ndambi’s ribs crack. A roar, a slash, a scream, somebody begging that she stop tormenting us, these come to my mind and run with it, but I can’t see no face and the time lost to me. Things different, was all Nsaka Ne Vampi say, for it was all she could say.
The house standing as it do the last time I see it. But where would it be running to? say the voice in my head that sound like me. Somebody is smoothing clay onto the outside walls, for rain season just done pass, some woman is shelling peas, some girl is grinding grain, and another is smashing to juice the spider that sneak into the house and frighten the children. I look for it in the width of an eye, or the sharpness of a jaw, or legs too thin, something that I know is of me. And Nsaka is all these things and yet I don’t see none of me in her. Where the men be I don’t know, and she never said if this is still a warrior family, but from the new moat around the royal enclosure to the soldiers marching down the odd street, I can tell Fasisi is still war territory.