Some people believe that time bring Itutu to all things, that as days arrive and depart you can quench all malcontent with mystic coolness. But my malcontent don’t cool, it fester. Everything annoy me, everything aggravate me, and all things work together to make me bitter. All that time away helping the King Sister breed another man King who would be just as bad as all the others before cause me to lose the name of the Moon Witch. The woman who lose her child to Ipundulu was the last one to come to the clearing and call out that name. A voice that sound like me say, You gone back to being a no name woman again, and I couldn’t disagree. In all time away helping this princess to breed, the monkeys abandon the house, the hawks return to the treetops, and the gorillas forget me. I know because three charge me, one right into the house and didn’t stop until I blast him out the door. They didn’t quit until one come for me in my sleep and my wind (not wind) slam against him in the quick and break his neck. That was when I burn off the welcome I enjoy for near one hundred years, and slip away like some thief before the whole tribe come for revenge. Coming back was a mistake that somebody else pay for. And like I say, all that my malcontent do was fester.
I have this feeling that people who lose everything have a different kind of grief from people who have everything taken away, for all I could do for days, moons, and then years was let my rage simmer, let it all boil down to just one focus. And if the focus start to blur, I put myself back in my welcome room as I watch my son die, and the front yard where my own family look me in the face and declare they don’t know me. And that they all long dead didn’t take away the anger or give me relief. The only relief was the lions in the wild who didn’t want nothing but for my head rub theirs. The North see me several times, something I would never admit to Nsaka. But I couldn’t quit the Aesi. Every connection reminded me of loneliness, every new lion child that I meet remind me of the child that I lose, every handsome shapeshifting lion make me desperate to run up to him and say, Give me tidings of love and joy, for the last thing I say to my lion was nothing but bitchery. Here is truth—I was doing worse than when I lose Ehede, even worse than when I lose my whole family. No, not worse. I didn’t feel worse. I feel somebody sharpen me down like the edge of a knife. I feel nothing.
But the nothing is something. It have weight and shape. Like I say, it is like the sharpened edge of a knife. When I had people to live for, one of them died. Then it come to pass that to the others I was dead. I could claim the lions as my own but nobody own them, and as for Nsaka, me and she never did become . . . even the word family sound like saying too much. The voice that sound like me say what I won’t, that this is the one real bond you been having for years now. You grow it, you nurture it, and worst of all, you choose not to fulfill it, for once you do, then you have nothing. So call it what it is, years in the wilderness growing my malcontent until I can bear to then live with nothing, if live is what I do. Because all of me is about all of him and when I end him, I will end me too, and why not? One hundred seventy and seven is a longer life than devils. A gift I never asked for and never did need. There. Decided. We can find the child, but I already know that he is lost.
So, Malakal. Not much of what Ne Vampi tell me was of use, but it did prick up my ears when she say that the sprite summon more than me and her. None of them Bultungi, even though the shapeshifting hyena women are the best hunters in the North, when they not trying to eat what they find. No warrior women, none of the Seven Wings mercenaries, and no former guard or soldier. Who that leave would be a mystery until I get there.
Is a long trek up to the first wall, too hard for a horse. Most of the dwellings in this enclosure long past old, but none as old as those to the south, including one that people call the Collapsed Tower, which is actually two towers, with one crumpled and leaning against the other. A joke that run on for too long if you ask me, since all these towers look near collapse. Ne Vampi say they would meet on the top floor, but she leave out that most of the stairs long broken away, and what she call a climb was a jump that could turn to a death fall, and that don’t count for the steps ready to break off with you. The whole time I am wondering why hire so many in number. The Moon Witch work alone, I say to her, but she act like I just pass wind. She don’t say it was because they just done try with one, but Nyka didn’t find the boy.
All I see is columns until one move. An Ogo, tall enough to brush against the ceiling and looking like he supporting it. The light throw shape to the scar pattern on his forehead, the two tusks poking a little out his mouth, as well as the mountain of necklaces covering a bare chest. Around his waist look like a cloth but it could also be animal skin, and nothing on his feet but feet. A North mountain giant that the South army use as berserker, so I was surprised that anybody would employ one for something else. I nod, he grunt, and that was all. I was second but he make me feel like I reach first, with nothing to do but consider the room with its blue walls, dim torchlight, and cushions nobody sit on in least an age. At the far end of this room hang another, with more light and a table laid out with food. Just so, the others come at once. Amadu the slave trader who join the cause and who was making the down payments. Another man behind him with the shuffling walk of a manservant. And Nsaka.
“No big cat?” she ask.
“The Leopard should be coming shortly. He bringing another. I heard of him, they say he has a nose,” say the slave trader.
“What he going to do, sniff the boy out half a year away?”
“That is exactly what he do,” he say.
Nsaka turn to approach me but jump when the Ogo scratch his face.
“Fuck the gods, I thought you were a statue.”
“Thank the gods that this Ogo considers every move before he make it,” say the slaver.
“This Ogo have a name?”
“Sadogo,” is all the giant say.
“An Ogo named Sadogo. Poor giant, is it because—”
“Nsaka.”
“What, old woman?”
“Nobody need a probe from a woman he don’t know.”
She take that as a hint to come talk to me. Somebody spend some serious time twisting her hair into branches so that her head look like a baobab tree. Didn’t hate it, but don’t like her enough to tell her I like it. But the gown cut low down the front making me wonder if she either coming from somewhere better, or heading there after.
“A lightning lady. We capture one. She will lead us back to him.”
I about to ask which him she was talking about when two people coming up the half stairs make the slaver jump up from the cushions. Two men enter, one dark and shiny with a skirt around his waist, beads around his neck, and two axes on his back, the other tall, bearded, and hairy, wearing only himself.
“Three eyes, shining in the dark. The Leopard and . . . what they call you, half wolf?” ask the slaver.
“Wolf Eye, but I prefer Tracker,” he say.
More people I don’t know and from the look on her face neither do Nsaka. The Ogo’s face don’t change. But the slaver is delighted to see this one he call Leopard. “In the inner room,” Amadu say, and Leopard is what he become, stooping to the floor the way Keme used to, shrinking and stretching at the same time, brown skin to black fur, shorter legs, bigger head, thicker legs, hairy head, two paws, two more, and claws. The cat trot off to the inner room and snag something fleshy and wet.
“An Ogo? Mind this collapsing tower finally collapse,” the Tracker say and laugh out loud, though nobody else find it funny. “I hear Prince Moki was the fool that build this four hundred years ago. Collapsed as soon as they blessed it with chicken blood.”
“Four hundred years? River folk count lion years, or dog?” Nsaka say.
“Juba I hail from, not some river,” he say.
“You dress like a Ku,” she say.
“In the finest Malakal cloth?”