In the morning a voice wake me up. It didn’t sound like me, but it didn’t sound like them. Urgent and weak at the same time, like somebody at the door calling me with a whisper. But nobody is at the door and nobody in the room. And the voice not saying any word of harm, not saying any word at all. I shrug it off, saying it must be wind slipping through a small crack somewhere. I head to where I remember the window to be and it open itself, which still put me off. Outside the window, Mluma, the district with the iron wings, attracting sunglow. The district that look like it will any moment take flight. Hanging down the side wall right now are men, fifty, seventy, maybe one hundred tied to ropes and painting the Queen’s face in black. This Queen promised me a horse and chariot to go and come, because she is still thinking I was coming back. Defiance, something so foreign to her that it bump against her ear and bounce right back off.
The Nnimnim woman pack me a sack of charms, spell binders, vulture bones, chalk, and stones from the bottom of a bottomless pool. I put it with my bundle and turn to set off. Another me would have bid the King Sister goodbye, but this me knows her place. I say to the air that I hope the gods give her much favor and turn to leave when the voice tease me behind my ear. My hand is in the chalk and writing beside the window before a devil could blink. But it is hard to bind a voice that is saying nothing, no word at all. A sound hard to follow, though follow it I try, right up to the door, which open, then back a few steps, then to the left as the door close, then right against the wall. People in the next room perhaps, except this is neither hostel nor inn. Soon the truth come to me that the sound is not beyond the wall, but inside it. The push obey me before I give the order, slipping behind the wood panels and punching them out.
Is a man I am seeing.
Eye wide open but no dark in the middle. Arms thick, thighs big, belly small. No mouth, for something is in his mouth, like a tail as thick as a fist. Leaning back against dry grass is this man I am seeing. First I see a web and him trapped in it. Three or four blinks pass and all I see is rope. The band around his neck, a rope. The band around his arm, a rope. Everywhere—legs, feet, toes, arms, hands, neck, even each finger—also they tie to a rope, and every move he make pull something in the house. Nobody pulling my jaw shut, it hanging loose about to touch the floor. I back away, not thinking much, but as I approach the window, the man pull his middle finger as if beckoning me, and look, the window pull open. The Queen’s voice come back to me right there she saying, It’s neither spell nor craft why Dolingo is Dolingo—it is iron and rope. Is a man I am seeing, but it is a woman I am hearing, a woman I either hear once but don’t know or know but don’t remember. Not this Queen, but somebody else asking, If rope pulling everything, what pulls the rope? Outside, wind slip through the window and rush his skin, which make him panic. The room abandon its cool and go wild, windows open and closing, the door swinging open and slamming, the table rushing from the side, then rushing back. Is a man I am seeing and up to now he never feel wind. I don’t know when it happen, but my last meal is a puddle on the floor and my mouth is bitter and my throat is burning. My chest heave again, but my belly is empty. From the ceiling it come, a bucket that lower itself and overturn water right above the floor. I jump out of the way. Planks in that part of the floor split, flip to drain the water off, then right themselves as if nothing just happen.
I grab my sacks, mount my horse, and leave to never come back.
4
THE WOLF AND THE LIGHTNING BIRD
Igegenechi o ma za okawunaro
TWENTY-ONE
They lose the boy.
The black bitch and them, they lose the boy. This must be sad tidings for some, maybe many, but all I could do is laugh. Live as long as me and there is not much that don’t turn funny, even grief, even cruelty, even loss. Because here is truth. Between gods and princesses and kings and noble people, all of this is a game, so how can one not laugh when they can’t play? And this water sprite, with her usual judgment of character, give away the child, then declare him lost. No, taken, for even she cannot abide by the term lost, as it can also mean dead. Bad circumstances fall on the boy, they say, as if somebody didn’t drop those circumstances on him.
Like I say, I laugh.
* * *
—
So, Malakal. Now I am in the city she summon me to, despite all I know of her foolishness. What that make me, I don’t know. Two quartermoons ago I board a dhow at Lish sporting merchant flags to escape war boats and berserker stripes to scare off pirates. I do likewise and put on the air of a necromancer to scare off whoever on the ship would test me. The dhow leave me on the coast far west, a coast with no name, not giving me the choice but telling me to either get off or become cargo. I know why they choose this place, because I know who choose it. Only a little farther north and the coastline would be closer to Malakal, which was still seven days out or more. But not far from this shore stand one of the ten and nine doors, which would land me just outside the city. In that, at least, this water sprite was still true to nature, sending people down a road, but never the one to pay the toll. She know what walking through that door would cost me, but already she consider it done. And yet look at me, following her instructions to the crossroads where waiting was a boy once a Sangoma, who switch sides for the true cause when he start to bulge into a man. What cause that be and why he think it true I don’t ask. I just wrap the Nnimnim woman’s cloth—nothing but tatters now around my neck—scrawl ten nsibidi on my clothes, and scratch another on my shoulder with a fingernail. Yet as soon as I walk through, a spirit push me down in the Malakal dirt and try to stomp my head in it before I could free my own hand and draw marks on the ground to banish him. Not Jakwu, I think, for he love to announce himself, but some other man who put himself in the way of my killing knife.
I take one more night before I show myself, because there was no way I would let anyone see me weakened from this door. But also, fuck her. A hundred curses to that water sprite for thinking that all she have to do is beckon and I will come running. And yet here I am, so what that make me, I don’t answer. That night I pass in the lodgings of a man who teach laws to those who can’t read. He couldn’t stop telling me what come to pass between North and South. Tensions rising again, he say. At one time when Netu was King, the reigning mad southern King move from war talk to full war, and despite or because of his madness take not just Wakadishu, but conquer all the way to Kalindar and redraw the map of North and South. He lead the attack himself, and shame Kwash Netu, who spend the war on his throne and his shitpot.