“We don’t know how many they be. Some say it is the causeway of the gods. How they can move from one land to another or one world to another in the quick. How when you call a god he can appear, or just as quick leave. Go behind the hills of the Purple City and there is one that open at the edge of the Mweru. Somebody claim to open one in the Hills of Enchantment, and walk through to a flood drain in Lish. One from the edge of the East to the Uwomowomowo Valley. Three hundred years past, so it might not be true, but word is the Kwash at the time march a whole army though a door near Ku and just like so—the army quash a rebellion in Kalindar. Belief come in short supply, for none of these doors open for long. Sometimes a door is standing there, sometimes a door already open, sometimes the door is very much a door, like the one rumored to be in the Darklands. One at the edge of the sand sea that lead out to sea. And one on the road to Mitu that instead lead you to Dolingo. Ten and nine that we know or hear about, but yes, there might be more. But few know how to sniff them out, and that few is either Sangomin or divine born. How you open it?”
This woman that I never see before crane her neck to hear me even though I not speaking low and she not deaf.
“This the Dolingon tongue. I know it and can speak it,” I say.
“That remarkable where you come from?”
“If me not from Dolingo, yes.”
“You don’t remember when you learn it?”
“No.”
“But you know enough to open the fire doors.”
“I didn’t open no door. The water sprite do it.”
“Don’t matter who was the key or who open the door, you should never have gone through it.”
Unless I look up, all I see is feet. They have me lying on flat cushions on the floor, in a room weaved of wicker or bush, with no window, and a light coming through with no heat. They, the others in the room. A young woman, a woman older dressed the same, and a man wearing a light gown like big minds do, his skin gone past black to blue. And another man, who have wrinkles but don’t look old, scars maybe. Also this, he is white. Not without color, like an albino, but white like milk. Is the older woman who is talking to me—not to them, she just don’t care if they hear.
“Where is Popel— Bunshi? Where is the princess?” I say.
“Enjoying the hospitality of Her Glorious Eminence.”
“And those who sick don’t get none of her gloriousness?”
“I think she is protesting your accommodation,” the old woman say to the white man. Truth I speaking here: The sight of him is making me feel sicker and my head was not yet my own. Even in the bush I hear of white scientists. Men (all of them is man) working forbidden magic, making nasty sacrifice, mixing their knowledge with abominations, and brewing hard potions with sulfur for so long that they burn all the brown off their skin. Now the skin whitening is the initiation to join their number. And even after that is another thirty years before one can call himself a scientist. Theirs is the way of pain because to them pain is growth and one must only grow. He remove his hood and his white locks slither down his shoulders. Other than his cloak, the only part not white on this man is his eye, and all of it, not just the pupil, is black. Left is an eye, right is a patch. I want to ask how after all these years of deep learning he never learn what any young witch could do, which is to return a gone eye.
“More light and air,” he say and just like so the ceiling pull back slow to show sky and parts of the wall crack open and rise like window shades pulling up themselves.
“What kind of place this?” I say.
“Dolingo. Where even the small wonders make the world’s wonders wonder,” the white scientist say.
“Any sense ever come out of your mouth?” I say and the old woman laugh. A voice in my head say that the old woman is younger than me, but I don’t want to hear it. Of her like I never see either. But I hear of people like her too, a Nnimnim woman. The sunburst of feathers is what you see first, red and white and a long one sticking out the back of her head, long enough to bend like a tail. The crown she can remove, but the bow feather grow from her head. Then there is the monkey bones sticking from the sides of the headdress. The dress covered in cowries and little calabashes all carrying little potions and poisons, but wide, with waves and waves of fabric also. The face she paint in white, but not like Ku or Gangatom, this hand is sure and precise, each line even and sharp. I never hear of Nnimnim women this far west, but I also never hear of anybody telling them where the fuck they can go. Word is they get summoned by the god of sky, which is why they come back down growing that feather in the back of their head. Nnimnim older than the ancient masters of war and nobody call them unless they trying to vanquish a great evil.
“Who summon you?” I ask.
“Her Glorious Majesty herself. Great friends you must have.”
“I don’t have friends.”
“Great something, then.”
“What they call this place, a sickroom? I sick?”
“You not sick.”
“Then what I doing in this room?”
“Time now to talk clear with no fuss. You not well, woman. And you never will be again.”
“You just say I not sick. Whatever riddle you talking in, it neither good nor funny.”
“I said I talking clear, but let me make it clearer. Those who die wrong might be dead but they not gone. However they get gone, their death was neither wanted nor desired by the god of the otherworld, so he not taking them. But they have no body other than the flesh that rot away, so they can’t walk among the living either. So they walk, and scream, and pick up anything to lash against the cause of their death. Or the who. Sometimes the might of their rage strong enough to blow off your hat, or make goblet drop, or even blow under your dress, but they neither resting nor living, so they walk in a place where they can’t reach the land of either. Good tidings for if you are the wrong that lead to their deaths.”
“Wrong for who? The wife who can’t walk anymore, or the lover who can’t see? Or maybe the maiden who drop a baby because a man punch her in the belly, because babies is a task for his wife, not his mistress.”
“I make no judgment, just letting facts rest where they rest. Many a man roam bodiless because of you, and the years of roaming leave them with only rage. None of that did matter because not a single man could touch you. Then you walk through one of the doors.”
“I don’t remember no door.”
“You heard the man. The door is not always a door. But the door take space and time and flatten it like a flounder. But just because it flat don’t mean it’s not wide. Understand what I saying to you. Door is just another word for portal and each of them is a portal where every kind of world might meet. This is what it mean for you. When you cross through that door, you step through every portal to get to the other side. You just didn’t know it, or feel it. Every portal, every world, even the one where the wronged dead stay. Here is truth, you was like fresh flesh for hungry wild dogs, worse when they smell the flesh and see that they know it. You let slip the dogs, woman.”
I know I am trembling and I want to curse myself for it. I not angry and I not afraid, so why am I trembling?
“That is your body shaking as the whole world shakes,” she say. “Your first time through the door can leave you feeling like you still in there.”
“The men. The men I kill, where they live now?”
“Wherever they want. Most people they can’t touch because they don’t know or won’t remember. Some won’t even remember you, not fully, perhaps not your name. But they know their eternal misery and they know you are the cause. They will come for you whenever you go through one of these doors again, or if you around anywhere with a trace of Sangoma magic. Or in a land enchanted, or with people enchanted. Any craft that shake the world as we see it will also shake them loose. Understand? The doors are magic and magic is a door, so either will loosen them on you. You a witch?”
“No.”
“They call you Moon Witch.”