“You don’t care about no damn monarchy! None of you,” I say.
“You were the one Bunshi warned me about,” say the Tracker. “You the only one. Don’t trust a witch, she say.”
“I not a . . . I not a witch. I not a witch.”
“And you, Jakwu, is it? How come you to be in this girl’s body?” Mossi ask.
“Ask the Moon Witch.”
“Everything is me, oh? Everything is me. Sunrise and sunfall must be me . . .”
“Sane is definitely not you,” the Tracker say.
“Still, Mossi fucking the Queen for the rest of your days is no punishment?”
“You didn’t feel inside her koo,” Mossi say as they laugh and go off to discuss me. The Tracker, now paces away, whisper into the air and the flame spark, blaze, and cut the door open.
“What do I see through this hole?” Jakwu ask.
“The way to Mitu,” Sadogo say.
“I shall take it.”
“All might not be fine with you. Jakwu has never seen the ten and nine doors, but Venin has,” the Tracker say.
“What that mean?” Jakwu ask.
“He means, though your soul is new, your body might burn,” Mossi say.
“I might still be tethered to this one, but I shall take it,” Jakwu say.
I finally pull myself to stand, but stumble and almost fall. None of them come to catch me, not even the Ogo. They all decide to pursue the boy. Jakwu take a look at me trying to stand, and laugh. But he still shuffle timid as he step through the door. The door shrink some more as the three men turn to leave. I stumble again, landing on my knee, and the Tracker run over to help me up.
“Just this, Sogolon. The Aesi never once find me in my dreams.”
He lean in so close that his lips touch my ear.
“I am the one who went searching for him in his. And you, you are the fucking fool that let a Sangomin run loose.”
Before I could say anything, before my wind (not wind) could do anything, he grab my back and shove me through the door.
And all I remember is fire.
5
NO ORIKI
Ko oroji adekwu ebila afingwi
TWENTY-SIX
You want to know about my list. All this time, and all these words, all that ink and all that paper, when you could have asked this from the beginning. Look at you, hotting up yourself with glut, saying you come here for facts, but fact is not why you come here every morning before the rooster even crow. You come here for story not so the Tracker tell you? I hear him. I hear some of his tale. Some of it even have one or two women he neither call witch nor bitch. But all of this—some of which I don’t remember, some I recall as a tale being told to me—not something I see, hear, or smell myself. You know how you remember what you sweat through? I have no memory of sweat. Some of this is the testimony of Ikede, who preserve my life on page when it go up in smoke, before he throw himself from his own roof. Tell me what it mean that my memory is of a man telling me what my life was and me choosing to believe it, when even the gentlest of men can tell only so much story about a woman. But look at you. All you really want to know is who on my list.
No paper. You taking this witch thing too far. Yes, too far, for I know witches of the North and South and none of them move in the way you think. What next, that I flay a child and write my list on his skin? This I will tell you, that one time I write every name down on piece of red linen, tie it around a nkisi nkondi that I steal, and then bury it in the same ground where before lie a necromancer who practice shameful science with plants and beast until people bury him alive. And if you believe that, then who know what else you take for truth these days? Funny thinking for a man living a lie.
I see Inquisitor, but I hear southern griot. Look at you, shifting on your stool, the only devil in this room is the past right behind your ear. Work hard you do, so hard on that voice, yet you still sound like any moment you will break into verse. Your left ass is tired, Inquisitor, shift to the right. You wondering if I have contempt for you. You don’t know what I talking about. Bet that before we finish you will check the door again to make sure no guard hearing us, even though you say “leave us” twice. They won’t know who a southern griot is, but they might ask. I thought your kind was safe in the South, unless what you preparing is a report for the North. I hear southern griot, oh. I even smell it. But let no woman say you never make good for yourself. Nor man either, for this here man have ambition. To climb your way all up into the grand chamber of inquisitors and makers of law sure did take some sort of cunning. Intelligence too, of course, not to mention that rare discerning eye. Either that or standards run so low in Nigiki that a commonplace recordkeeper can climb to the highest rank of the lowest rank of power—yes I insult you. Don’t call a crow a hawk when everybody can see the feathers. So let us make this quick.
Any griot would say, But what can a man do but flee? People’s eyes allow more and condemn less in the kingdom of the four brothers. I don’t abhor you because you are a liar. I don’t even despise you because you are a coward. I dislike you because you still sit there smug in thinking that you must be smarter than who you talking to, for your task is to take from them what they not willing to give. Look at you, taking down as many of my words as you can, thinking you will sift through the lies later. You, the same inquisitor who just listen to a man sell you truth about an ingenious buffalo. Oh, I heard that part too. Such a shrewd beast. Canny, shifty, with such an impish whip of tail, such a fine friend indeed. Them kind of animal more steadfast than man, constant and true, and as for his mirth? Bottomless. Yet you didn’t even question it when this beast among beasts just done vanish from the last part of his story? And for no other reason than he get bored telling it. A smart buffalo? Eh, a smart buffalo would never be so foolish as to mix with people. Nor a smart leopard neither. Ingenious beast—ingenious lie is more like it.