“I never say you say it.”
“All this fuss over replacing one head with another head, when the present one wicked enough? No, water sprite, nothing about it funny. I must be laughing at something else.”
“Purging of women all by just calling them witch funny to you?”
“I never say anything about—”
“Nine hundred ninety and six under Kwash Moki. Six hundred and two under Liongo the so-called Good.”
“Listen here—”
“Five hundred under Aduware. Three hundred seventy and six under Kwash Netu. All of them women who somebody call witch. Sometimes just once. So maybe it is funny. Maybe everything that happen under the rule of the Spider King is funny. Everything. Maybe the Aesi set loose to do this King’s bidding is funny. Hark, I just had a funny thought. The killing of a lion cub. Somebody’s son, spear right through the heart. Funny, no?”
“You piece of dog shit.”
“A spear is a funny weapon. Just a long, long stick—”
“Don’t.”
“But watch it pierce right through to a little boy’s heart.”
“I swear.”
“No no no! Let us take things and make joke. Surely when your own son died in front of you because of that fucking chancellor in service to that fucking King, you laugh instead of weep?”
“Bunshi.”
“And since every king is the same, it doesn’t matter then. Different king, same dead boy.”
Maybe the wind (not wind) scream, or maybe me. Maybe it is just force as the Nnimnim woman say, but it come down in the room like a tremor, shake the walls, fling the bed, the stools, the jugs, the basin, the water all up in the air to smash into each other, then suck itself into Bunshi, blow her up like a sheep stomach, and explode her. All around the room, splats and splotches of black, dripping from the ceiling, rolling along the floor, speckling the tapestry, turning me and the bawling Venin into leopards with all these spots. I grab the girl to leave, only to see a stream of black run around the seam of the door and seal it tight, no matter how hard I pull. Venin bawl again. I turn around to see droplets, drips, and puddles run into each other, rising into one pole. The pole bend and twist, then shoot shards at me that zip past my neck and pin me to the door. I make the mistake of a gasp but couldn’t shut my mouth before Bunshi shoot herself into my throat, skip where food go to invade where I breathe. I begin to choke, lose my breathing, she is drowning me, she will kill me right here. Venin scream three times before she stop. I still choking, still growing weak, still falling on my knees before Bunshi pull herself out of me. Every spot of black rush from all the corners of the room to form her. Then she jump out the window.
* * *
—
Another quartermoon later and I could kill her for what she say, I really could. I sit in the room and boil. Without thinking I raise a fruit and a jug in the air and blast them apart. But then I stop the blast to a still, and watch the parts suspended, walking in the middle of the scatter. This is what I have done—will do to his head. What I have done—will do to her body. What I will do to the whole world. Then I sleep off my temper and wake up empty and sore. Good riddance to she, say the voice that sound like me. I going take a knife and enlarge your cunt, say the voice that don’t. I mock it, saying, You have all sorts of designs for inside me, yet I am one hundred and seventy years older than what usually bewitch you. When a girl ten and three too old for your spear, maybe all you have is a thimble. Is that why, Jakwu? Why everything that come out of your mouth just scream little penis? Jakwu have no words for my voice being as savage as his, so he back away, at least for a few days.
A few days when there is nothing to do but sit stunned by the quiet. Or pass sharp words with the master of this house, who seem content that the only name I have for him is “You.” A word come to me one morning, to just leave as you be, with your sack and your revenge hunger, and take the river to as close to far north as you can get, the Forest Lands or Ku. And from there to as close to Fasisi as you can get. Then the city, then the royal enclosure, then him. Then wait eight years to either torture one of the Sangomin or watch for where pigeons fly. But these thoughts I think before. I not bringing anything new to them and can already smell them going stale. The truth is that the sprite leave words that stain me. I will not call it shame. That I pass life so close to crowns and kings and still leave thinking they have no bearing on how a woman in her house live or how a man die, when I, Sogolon, should be the one woman who know different. Maybe if there was the true line of kings I wouldn’t have the death of my son turning fresh every day. I don’t want to think about loss.
Instead I am in the great hall of records. Four quartermoons come to pass and those men not coming. I don’t see Bunshi for days now, but I can imagine her in whatever window frame she hiding in, telling herself that they will come soon, because they have to. Meanwhile news arrive from carrier pigeon that they closing in on the Ipundulu. Nsaka, I assume, though no name on the note. They convinced that this Ipundulu is the one we looking for even though it sound like he move alone, and we looking for one with company. “They” meaning him, for he is the one convinced. She is just the one convinced in the snake.
The grand egg in the center of Nimbe quarter, this great hall of records didn’t just keep account of Kongor, but all of the North. Rumor is that it also hold a secret vault of verse from the southern griots, but either it is in a corner that no person living ever see or it is as true as Yumboes the size of a man. This is a place where people seldom go, run by a man who look to me like he prefer it that way.
“You practice that scowl in a looking glass?” I ask.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You want something other than to bother an old man?”
I am about to answer but then the hall distract me. Great indeed, this place, five tall floors, each floor taller than a three-story house, and stacked with so many scrolls, books, satchels, and loose paper that the recordkeeper must did dispense with order a long time ago. Impossible as it might look, something is telling me that he do all this stacking himself, or maybe he start stacking when he was but a boy and never stopped. Sometimes a scroll slip away, fall, flap like wings, and land somewhere else, while on some shelves the books let slip out whispers on what they contain.
“Shut it, little whores,” the old man say and they go quiet in the quick.
First I think he has a hunchback, but he pull himself out of the book on his table long enough to look at me again. White scarf around a head that is mostly cheekbones and chin, white brows and beard. Eyes looking river blind but here he is over a book.
“Woman, what you want?”
“What you know of blood drinkers?”
“You asking me if I know any myself?”
“I asking what is written.”