“You want me to tell you so that you don’t read it yourself?”
“Fuck the gods, is every old man a crabby bitch in Kongor?”
He look at me like he is truly looking for an answer to the question but it confound him. Is not his fault that he long forget how to talk with people.
“Your reading travels ever come across writing on the lightning bird?” I ask.
His face wake up when I call his reading travels. I am somebody he would engage after all. He stroke his chin and take a quick sweep of the space.
“He known by any other name?”
“Chi . . . Chi . . . I can’t remember—”
“Chimungu. Also, the Inyoni Yezulu. You asking about creatures who roam a realm most people don’t know even though it right beside them, breathing the same air. Some of we call them creatures of the high noon. Why? Because is only when the sun highest in the sky that some people know to lock their door, or if they don’t have door, hunch into a corner and pray. By people I mean the river tribes who don’t read or write so they have no record. But some Chimungu not sated by river folk. And just as many prefer to make their moves at night. Come with me.”
We turn down an aisle where the books start to whisper again until he shush them.
“Some of these parchments are older than the children of the gods. Word is divine wish, they say. Word is invisible to all but the gods. So when woman or man write words, they dare to look at the divine. Oh, what power. But this is so new that it is not yet book, just loose pages and a half-done scroll. Hark, on some of the leaves you can still smell the ink. Learn this, some of the ink is not ink but the creature own blood—don’t ask me how that come to pass. Not every leaf come from the same scribe either.”
“How come you by all of this?”
“How? The way I always do. Some I seek, some seek me. A man on a tired horse leave it twelve moons ago, saying to keep it secret and safe.”
A leaf float on top. Then another, then one more.
“They fighting,” he say. “Fighting over which account get read first.” He go off, return holding a candleholder with four alight.
“You are my first visitor in seven moons,” he say.
The pages won’t stop spreading and unrolling themselves.
“New knowledge. They scared of turning into an archive nobody but an old man read. I mean, look around you. Look at the wisdom banished to a dark corner,” he say pointing to the walls. But I don’t recognize the writing. The old man don’t have to ask.
“This is a journal from somebody who claim people call her the Nun.”
“For real?”
“That is what I reading in the pages. You going to ask more questions or listen? She leave her children, and her husband . . . no the husband died . . . killed. Yes killed. ‘He’ enchant her, but didn’t turn her or kill her, he want her to remember who kill her husband. He catch her unawares when she was grinding yam in the backyard. This she remember: him taking her out of the trance long enough to see what he doing to her, then bewitching her again so she can’t do nothing about it.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Likely from you was a girl. He enchant me because he was enchanting, it read. Why everybody feel they have to be clever?”
“Old man.”
“Sorry. But husband and children? Then how she can be a nun?”
“Old man.”
“Sorry. He enchant her, then he rape her, then kill her husband while she watch. Then he make thunderstorm in her bedroom and fly away. Baby and other children with grandmother. She tell them that they can’t come back. Go off near the sand sea until her womb too heavy. Uncanny, I never hear of an Ipundulu carrying living seed.”
“Ipundulu he name, not zombi,” I say.
“Yes. She in Malakal next—”
“What happen to the baby?”
“Stillborn or she kill it. Oh. Oh my. Trust the gods,” he say in a hush.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Continue.”
“Oh. Yes. I—”
“This narrative seem to be surprising you, old man. You never read it?”
“Never seemed interesting, an account from a wo—”
“Nun?”
“Oh. Yes. Anyway, she go to Malakal. She gather weapons, things that can kill it. Spear and stakes made from assegai wood. Poison milk, for it love woman milk as much as blood. That’s why he didn’t kill her, for she was still nursing a child. She track him down to one of the salt routes going out of Malakal. Here she say that is not the same Ipundulu who kill her husband. There might be five or six—there used to be more, but who know how many?”
“More. I looking mention of one.”
“Not this one. She wound him with an assegai spear then burn him alive.”
He skip two pages.
“This one, she follow back to his witch in the hills behind the Purple City. It just say he dead. But another one, he keep escaping, just like that, just as soon as she get information he vanish. Vanish leaving sucked-out bodies, usually the entire family with one he leave as the lightning slave. Different, she keep saying this one different. A lightning slave lead her to the place he was hunting. But he not alone. Eloko is with him, three of them, grass demons, each with two bones sharpened like a dagger. And more, like the spirit vampire, Obayifo, but he and the Ipundulu turn enemy and part ways. Ipundulu use little children. Obayifo eat them. The entry is three years after her husband murdered.”
“She readying herself.”
“Maybe. Nothing in here other than she tracking them. Gathering intelligence, maybe she get news from others. Here it say she talk to those who people stop listening to, and people who others think mad. You say you hunting Ipundulu?”
“I never say I hunting nobody.”
“No, you was just looking for a nighttime story to tell the children and that dagger under your leather is for peeling grapes,” he say and scoff. “Here somebody just listing attacks and victims. She couldn’t be in all these place at once. Hark, that look like the last thing she write. The rest here is from somebody else, maybe several people. This one say he hear that they used to call her the Nun because she only dress in green. She track them down to the border of the sand sea. If another is writing this, then it must mean that she . . . that she . . .”
“Find her a spot on the ancestors’ tree.”
“Brave woman.”
“She wasn’t supposed to be. No woman supposed to be brave if they don’t want to.”
He look at me and nod. The next few pages pass by in silence.
“Wait, these leaves new for I can still smell the ink. The Blood Swamp—three women, sisters. Luala Luala—family near banks with Nyangatom. Seven days later, Enchantment Hills, then Nigiki—a girl and a boy. . . . In a quartermoon, Dolingo—man, wife, and seven children. . . . Next page, five days later, the Mitu-Kongor Road—hunting party looking for them. Next page is a moon later. . . . Hmmm.”
“Hmmm what?”