This is how you reduce a woman.
Call it a quartermoon ago, when a memory come and ambush me the night. In the memory is a woman. See the woman. No name woman, for one used to have several but lose them all, for nobody leave in the world to call her. Nobody who can say I know her and this is who she be. She outlive her kin, her children, and her children’s children. Hear what they say about her, that she will never die even if she get very old. She is old. Three hundred and seventeen, go the rumor in the North, one hundred and seventy-seven go the rumor in the South. She used to be the witch of the southern bush, and she used to be the ghost of the Blood Swamp, but there was a time she was a woman and a mother and a warrior and a whore and a thief. For these are things people call her, but nobody ask her what she call herself.
Even Sogolon is somebody else’s name. Some would claim it is the name of her mother, but all she ever know was a rumor. A loose whisper from when brothers talk, and not meant for her ears, so the name could have been Sugulun, Sogola, Songulun, or nothing at all. The whisper could have been talk about another woman, a dog, or a place that no longer appear on a map. Long time now she should be dead, even she know, but look how she still living, still suffering, still chasing him down, for nothing left now but the thing.
The thing that she stop giving name.
* * *
—
The Malangika. The secret witch market. The place that prove it to be true, everything people say they hunt and kill witches for. Don’t look for the city on no map, for you won’t find it. Take the deepest salt mine, dig three times that, and the Tunnel City is still lower. People get lost between the Blood Swamp and Wakadishu, but it is of neither place. Word is that gold, not salt, is the reason the old people dig so deep, sticking tree trunks all around so that the tunnels never collapse. The old people stay down here digging so much that start to build house, and stable, and town, punching holes in the ceiling to let sunlight through, but depending more and more on lamplight. Then they vanish, like so many old people and old cities vanish. The whisper was that they fall in love with the gold so hard that they couldn’t bear to part with it, so they lock themselves off underground and die with it. Dead city like this, it was only time before it attract necromancers, and those who make business with them.
But first the Mweru. I didn’t leave the old shack but stay and watch the Tracker go through the many seasons of his grief. When rage move him to saddle his horse, I put myself in his head as to where he would go. The boy, of course, but they didn’t fly west, which is where the Tracker was heading. So he wasn’t following a smell, then. Or maybe the boy don’t have a smell no more. As for the monster, everything that would have his scent he eat. The Tracker ride several horses hard until he break into the Mweru. I only have one horse so it take me days longer. He would have words with this Queen about her boy. Maybe even kill the Queen, and this boy. But Lissisolo don’t know where her boy be, and she have most of her rebel army looking, even the regiment of women, who marching to Nigiki to join a South army that they don’t know already retreating. I know because I stay on pigeon routes and knock them out of the sky. The Mweru hide me the same way it do the last time, in the long tail of shadows. I stay out there and wait for days.
What happen next the voice in my head swear could never happen. That is because you are a fool and always was a fool. Who else would be coming? Who else could pull a man out of the Mweru? The Tracker and his horse galloping out of a tunnel, with Lissisolo’s small infantry hot behind him. Where he think he riding to? I ask myself, my eyes following him right to the answer. There he was, sitting cross-legged, floating and writing in the air. He put both feet down as coming off a stool, rub something in his hand, rock, mud, and then throw it. Is not that something happen next. Nothing happen next. Meaning nothing stop the Tracker from leaving the Mweru.
With the Aesi.
A horseman reach just a length from them before he and horse slam into a wall that nobody could see. It happen to many more.
The Aesi. He still wake up the red in me. I want to say that it make me feel something, as if the something was unknowable, but I know it. He wake up my desire. With this list I was rope and gear without the pull. He give me the power.
So, the Malangika. The Tracker go in alone, but he come out with an Ipundulu. Ishologu, for I don’t think this one have a witch either. I can’t move in too close, for either the Tracker will notice my scent or the Aesi will pick up a dead area that his mind can’t scan. But they have an Ishologu, and the young prince don’t suck any vampire blood in years. I laugh. They won’t even need to search. He and the bat wing will come to them.
Let us make this quick. I watch them go to that village. I watch them from the woods and nearly get caught by the monster they was waiting to catch. They didn’t catch him even with the lure of the Ishologu. The monster, the Sasabonsam, attack from behind the village, grab a woman, and fly off. They chase after him, both of them moving away from me, who didn’t forget how to stand on the top of trees. They chase after the bat wing and run into Lissisolo’s rebel army. I see this section before and know them to be all women. The Aesi work his magic and get them to attack each other, killing most of their number and all but a few of their horses. Neither the Tracker nor the Ishologu do anything. Not long after they leave, one of the riders, one of the few the Aesi couldn’t control, find a horse and take after them. I ride in pursuit but take a different trail up to a mound that I know they will all pass. Here is truth, I didn’t expect to get there before they pass, but that rider must did delay them somehow. He wasn’t with them.
On that hill I stand and watch them as they approach. None of them see me. I don’t know if some part of me did already choose this place, or if the place choose me. Or the times is the times and it say right here, right now, this is it. So strange that something you wait your whole life for would just come on in a rush. This was the time. And he would know too. I whisper his name and let me wind (not wind) throw it through the air at him. Is my head playing with me but I would swear that I see my voice flying down this mound, through the air, and dodging dust to get to him. The Aesi. In the quick he leave the other two and head toward me. I long down the little hill when I hear his horse, then his feet behind me.
“Your head, it is closed to me,” he say. I don’t say anything. “I must have mistaken you for something . . . considerable.”