I come back from the Malangika and Nsaka is waiting for me in the room like me never leave. “How her version go?” I ask. “The water sprite,” I add.
“I know who you’re talking about,” Ne Vampi say, then tell the sprite’s account. “Night of the Skulls they call it in Kongor, though the night earn the name long before this come to pass. Fumanguru’s wife and six sons, plus the baby boy he raising as his own, all fast asleep as night was reaching the middle. Also asleep, most of the servants and the grounds and garden slaves. Here is who was not asleep: Wangechi, his oldest wife; Militu, his youngest; two of the cooks; and Basu himself. We don’t know who arrange it, but it smelled of the elders, first for a witch to work the spell, then for a sullen slave to gather the youngest wife’s moonblood to set off the roof walkers. If you know nothing of the Omoluzu, know that their hunger is as monstrous as it is unending, and all they need is the smell of one person’s blood for them to hunt without tiring until they drinking the source of it. This slave dig up her blood cloths, then wait until dark to throw them up to the ceiling. Those awake and those rustling from sleep must have thought they were hearing a rainstorm. But it was darkness consuming the ceiling, darkness thick and unruly like waves. That is what she say, waves. Like waves on rocks, so both the rush and rumble, but also the cracking. And these devils, shaped like men and black like coal, start to pull themselves out of the ceiling the way you would rise from a lake. They run and hop and jump along the ceiling as you would the floor and have blades that look like bone and giant claws that look like blades.
“The blackness sweep the rooms, slicing and chopping the crying slaves first. One get away and she is yelling that it is coming for them, the night. Bunshi crawl through the window just in time—”
“Don’t come here with some tall story and not mention that they look exactly like her, Or perhaps she didn’t tell you,” I say.
“She said Omoluzu or roof walkers, demons of the shadows. Bunshi is not a shadow, she is—”
“Water, I hear.”
“Bunshi don’t sink from the ceiling,” say Ne Vampi.
“Bunshi can sink from anything they choose.”
“This is not her kind.”
“Her kind was who guard the Aesi for him to be born again, so I don’t know what in the fucks you talking about. With my own eyes I see her.”
“You want the rest of the story or no?” she ask.
“Talk your talk,” I say.
“So. Basu is screaming for his family to get away, and grab the only one he find, the King Sister’s son. The slave run to the wife and from above the Omoluzu chop them down to chunks. The children they kill quick, not out of mercy but because it is quicker to kill a child. Then the slaves in the grain keep. Everybody but Basu and the child, who run to Bunshi for her to save them, but the Omoluzu is right at their backs, black racing across the ceiling. Give me your child if you want him to live, she say. I can’t save both of you, she say. You should never have brought him to me, he say and toss the boy. That is not true. He place the boy in her hands like is his own for real. I am his father, he say. The boy was one year old then, just over. Bunshi turn her finger into a claw and cut her own belly open to stuff the baby in there like a womb. Basu Fumanguru was brave till the end, but he didn’t have a blade. She had the kind of knife that cuts them—”
“Because she and them are one.”
“Quiet. She couldn’t kill them all, so she escape through the window.”
“Most heroic thing I ever hear her do. Most times she just slither into a corner and look overcome.”
This is where the story should end, but she never say finish.
“And all of this was three years ago?” I say.
“That is not all,” Ne Vampi say.
“Bunshi is neither warrior, hunter, protector, nor assassin. This sound like the part where she should have called you. But you never hear a word from her, not so? This fool only seem to come to you when it too late.”
Now she turn quiet.
“She is here? Come out from the shadows, you coward,” I say.
“Why you hate her so?”
“Hate. I too old to hate anybody. At best what passed between me and she is indifference.”
“Whatever you say. You still blame her for stopping you from killing the Aesi, even though it wasn’t her.”
“She never seem keen on me trying again,” I say.
“So he can be born again? Maybe you have been living too long. You certainly never get tired of tiresome talk. The Aesi can’t change minds like he used to, she told you that. You want change, restore the King, and even he won’t stop that truth when it unfold.”
“You ground that on what?”
“Even he in his own way respect the order of things.”
“You ground that on what?”
“Disrupting the line of kings didn’t come from him. Read the griots. He only about serving authority, and believe it or not, he don’t care which authority. He don’t care who he serve, but once he in their service . . .”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I don’t care. Calling on you was, as always, the water sprite’s idea.”
“I know why she do it, you know. Why she keep calling on me.”
“Must be your one hundred years of good deeds.”
“She only come to me when the time too late. Or when others fail before.”
“You mean me? I never get any call. All I did was deliver the boy. But what a thing to be proud of, to get a call only after people exhaust everything else. Good for you, Great-Great-Grandmother,” Ne Vampi say.
I want to say that I see it, this grievance that you have against me, so just give it air and be done with it. I want to say it, but I don’t.
“You never finish the story,” I say, and wait.
“Bunshi take the baby to a blind woman still in Kongor. The boy was still a milkbaby and she could give suckle. And she was one of the few women in that land who was not a witch.”
“Good.”
“No, not good. Her husband beat her to near death for taking a child in without permission, then sell the baby to a trader as soon as he could get a price.”
“Peerless, she is, this water sprite. Peerless in how she judge character.”
“Her was fine. Is the wife’s judgment that fuck all things up.”
“No sale happen in the Malangika, at least.”
“No. You leave before I could tell you there was no point in checking the Malangika. He take the boy to a slave market in the Purple City, near Lake Abbar. That was when Bunshi send word for me. I track the boy to a perfume and silver merchant whose plan was to sell him in the far east markets where little dark boys go for gold. While I was looking for him, I learn that mercenaries already find the caravan on the Mitu border of the Darklands. Somebody ransack it and kill everyone.”
“The Mituti usually a peace-loving sort of thief,” I say.