Oseye stare me down, then stare down Ne Vampi. “I finally make sense to you?” Nsaka say, taking the thought right out of my head.
“You will never make sense,” she say and run after a boy who say he was going to fly out the back door down to the river. Nsaka fidget with the black obsidian pendant riding her neck, the first time I noticing it.
“To think Mama named her Oseye. The happy one.”
“Where are the lions?”
“Lions? No cat live in this house or any house from before I was born.”
“They just vanish from the bloodline?”
“No they vanish from this house. It just come to pass one day that lion wanted to be lion, and anybody born full lion or shapeshifter go to live with them. Two of the uncles—your grandsons—even take lioness for wife. Their sons, our cousins, are the ones running the pride now, in the grasslands west of—”
“Take me there.”
* * *
—
We get there the following noon. Ne Vampi voice concern about Bunshi and her time, but I say that we too far inland for her to risk coming to bother me. Plus for the tenth time, I don’t take orders from Bunshi. The grasslands west of Fasisi don’t have a name, for no beast living there ever had a need to call it. I don’t come here much, she say. I don’t say of course, for I never see nothing of the lion in her. Open savanna, with the grass going tall and gold and wispy, like lion hair, it occur to me. A different river from the one that run behind Ibiku, and still flooding the banks, for this is just the beginning of dry season and water not scarce. Trees spot the land as if the gods stingy, but so much gazelle and impala that I would stay too if I did still eat meat much. Having only monkey and gorilla as family for hundred-plus years will change a woman. I still can’t bring myself to count it. Hundred-plus years. The number seem so big until you remember waking up one morning and just like that you is fifty and cannot account for it. So what is one hundred then, or one hundred thirty and six? I thought it was because I just wake up one morning and tell the world that I refuse it, and all of it. I refuse space coming in on me, and I refuse time coming after me. I never said I refuse death, for that can come whenever, from spear or claws or venom. And now this water sprite is saying that is the blood that run through me, through the women—some, not all—from before man start count time. Me, Matisha, who know who else now that this family scattered? But also the lions, for before my children lions would die after just ten and two years, maybe ten and four. But my lions lived longer than any cat supposed to, which bring me joy, but also more years of remembering that they were the same ones who drive me from my house and call me stranger. Three scars over my right breast, three claws. It come over me in a flash that this is a mistake. I not supposed to be here.
“Perhaps we go back. Before they see us.”
“They see us from before we tie off the horses all the way back in the valley. Take it as a good sign that they might still be there when we get back.”
A roar, far off but still loud enough to quake the ground. Then they come running, five, no six, no eight of them, three men, one of them white like a roaming cloud and the others gold. Five women, their little ears twitching. No running now. In the quick they surround us, growling, snarling, purring, and sniffing.
“Get down,” Nsaka say. “Don’t matter if you call them family.”
One of the women approach Nsaka and growl at her.
“Didn’t miss you either, bitch,” she say. The lioness knock her over but Nsaka scratch behind her ears. One lick the obsidian pendant and Nsaka shove it in her dress, between her breasts. Two of them approach me, man and woman.
“Don’t disrespect. This your—”
“No,” I say, which throw off the male one, who make a sound that I can’t tell if friendly. And he come right up to me and sniff. I know lions, I know he can clamp onto my neck and bite my head off. And my neck is what he go for. He search it with his nose and then rub his massive neck against mine. I slip my head under his so that he rub the back of my neck, then lift up my head slow to rub my cheek against his. Then this, he roll his head under mine so that I can rub my neck against his head. And the women come over and do the same. Ooooh, oooh, I say, trying to match their voice, when another knock me down, but only because I wasn’t ready. A younger one, deciding she can play with me. “They know who you are,” Nsaka say. I try to say I know but the words don’t come. Three more approach and we rub neck against neck, head against head, hair against hair, and they purr and ooh to my purr and ooh and the tears just come. And come. And come. And I try not to cry, but instead I bawl. It’s the leaning that do it, not just when they rub their head against yours, but when they lean into you and rest a weight you can barely hold, but the trust make you forget the burden.
“Great-Great-Grandmother,” one finally say. He, a shapeshifter with the face of a lion and the body of a lean man. Claws at the tip of fingers, but fingers nonetheless. The man is so striking and beautiful that it must be only gods that have words to describe him. I try not to think how he look like Keme.
“Meet the fruits of your tree,” he say.
* * *
—
I tell Ne Vampi that I can find my way back alone and will leave when I wish. She frown as she leave. That night I sleep in the open, my pillow and my warmth being the living skin of lions. Come morning I rub my neck against every lion I meet, rub their heads, scratch their hair, and touch forehead with all who shapeshift. On my way back to the city, I stop by a river.
“I know you was following me,” I say. She take her time, but soon up from the river jump she, Bunshi.
“Tell me everything I forget. I not going to Mantha until you do. Tell me everything.”
* * *
—
On the way to Mantha, what I see fighting against what I remember.