“We not going by land,” she say.
Lissisolo demand one more night with her baby and scream when we say she have to leave tonight. Scream louder when we say now. She not parting with child unless you pry her fingers away one by one and tolerate her spitting in your eye, or biting your hand with each try. You don’t understand, she say while looking at me. You don’t understand what it mean when you realize you would die for thing, but kill also. This woman talking to me like I didn’t have children from before her grandmother was even born. Then keep him and lose another child, fool, I say, knowing that deep within there is some other King Sister I am really talking to. She say something about how I dare to, but I don’t listen to the rest. The sister regent say give her till dawn, or there will be no peace. Even at their swiftest, nobody reaching this place before a quartermoon, and that is assuming we let the straps down to welcome them.
* * *
—
Chipfalambula take us all the way down Ubangta River, bending around the Juba pass, then turning south to the lower Ubangta. Once clear of Juba and Kongor the great fish open his mouth.
“This one different?” I ask but Bunshi don’t answer. Indeed he different, for half of him always above water. And to his side right above his right eye is a rung.
“Of a ladder?” I ask. Soon we on the back of this fish, and being stunned at what I didn’t see in the night. Dirt under my feet rich as any farm, also grass, a small puddle with small fish, and trees. Tall trees with mighty branches and lush leaves all growing on this fish’s back as if we not on a fish at all but a small island. An island drifting down the river. How many times people sail pass him in one of the great rivers and wonder how long an island been there? And where it vanish to the day after? Nine nights later we on the banks of Mitu. We remove the hoods from the horses, for surely they would have been frightened by being in the workings of the great fish belly. Two more nights and I know he would have eaten them, or swallowed all of us.
Grasslands and farmers, just as I remember this land. We ride on a dusty trail that lead us to a wider road going south. On that road we continue passing sleeping cows and dark huts until we get to another road crossing it. At the edge of the sky dawn is about to break.
“Sangomas think this secret only they know,” Bunshi say.
“That two roads sometimes cross is nobody’s idea of secret,” Lissisolo say. Bunshi give a little girl chuckle that annoy me. Right at the cross she cup her hands and whisper. See it now, four or five hand lengths above her head, a spark catching fire that split and race down two sides of a circle until both ends strike and puff out.
“A magic trick. Is the world different?” Lissisolo ask.
“Not the world. Just that spot right in the middle of it,” I say and point to a small space, about the size of a door, a space unlike ours where it was still night. Bunshi walk through the space first. Too curious, I walk around the shape thinking I would still see her, but instead see the clear road I walking on, all the way to the sky. Lissisolo already gone through when I step back around. As I step through, the space squeeze in on itself until with a pfft it is gone. All around me the air is new. And the road is five times wider than in Mitu and all cut stone. Greener, and with trees, but not the green of the trees set by gods. People tended to this space and it go as far as one can see.
“It’s like somebody made a garden five days wide,” say Lissisolo.
“We still a day or two from the citadel,” Bunshi say.
Dolingo.
Something about a horse throw a shudder in Bunshi. Her body will not take to it and even with her black eyes, mouth, and teeth we can see the fear. Instead she fall like a stream into a leather wineskin strapped to Lissisolo’s side. That was all the water, she say as she ride off. I am riding close behind, picking up her horse’s pace and wondering how Bunshi giving her directions. We riding along this stone road, going up what one can only call a cultivated mountain, when a cackle burst into a wild laugh. I look behind me but nobody was on my heels. Wind, then, and tiredness. I almost catch up to Lissisolo when the cackle break out again, louder. I slow the horse and turn around. Nothing. Then somebody slap me in the face but I see nothing and the nothing slap me again. I block my face but a kick come to my chest and a hand grab mine and yank me off the horse. I fall and hit the ground hard. A clump of dirt block the yell in my mouth. Then I start to roll and roll and can’t stop rolling until a leg I don’t see block me with a kick in the chest that make me cough. The nothing grab my hair and drag me across the road. It can grab me, but I grasp and grasp and can’t grab it. I shout Who! and the word get stuck in my throat—who, who—I couldn’t stop. Lissisolo finally see something wrong and ride back toward me. I swing at the air and miss, but the air swing and hit, knocking the breath out my chest, then stomping me into the stone. Screaming finally leaving my mouth.
How you managing the life, Moon Bitch? snarl the voice in my head.
But it don’t sound like me.
TWENTY
Sometimes a door is more than a door. Sometimes a door is black secret mathematics. Sometimes when you make a way through, you think you opened it, but is the door who opened you. And there are many such doors, or maybe a few, the truth is few people know, and of them few will say. Some doors take you up to the gods of sky, some down in the otherworld. Some doors pass you through only once. Some turn the journey of a half year into less than a day and quicker still. Work your mind to it, the sight of one leg in Dolingo while the other steps into Mitu. One far south that opens to the North, or as far as lands of the eastern light, or beyond the sand sea.