So, see him walking down this street closing up day business for night work. Hunter swagger. Walking like he don’t know that hunter become game. Here is truth, he should have been dead from half a year ago, and every single weapon I own have come close to his neck, face, back, even heart, but I let him go. Is only since the last quartermoon that I admit why. That the hunt is what I did want, not the kill, at least not yet. Because I already know that once I take him away, only one thing left. Also because one can’t hunt the dead. Jakwu going down this street because he looking for something so secret that he keep it from his own self. Down this street, he lose all swagger and walk the way hips and legs shape him to walk, looking for a man who think he will have to pay, and he will, just not money. I remember the first days he was in Venin’s body saying to me, No lie, I did ever wonder it. And envy it, that peak after peak when woman cum that men don’t get to have. I tell him what a mystery it is to me that you know, for I sure not a single woman ever suffer that with you. It would obsess and disgust him, that I know. Also that he would seek it out but hate whoever bring him to it.
He go into a smoke hut that don’t serve opium. It don’t take much to gain the attention of a man, for all a woman need to be is next. I stay outside the door and listen to Jakwu telling the man to mete out whatever punishment he think he can deliver. He make all sort of moaning, bawling, and hollering, as if he expect that people out his door listening. Not long after the man shudder and cum, he is shouting at him to shut up and get out. This is part Jakwu like the best, the part where he can burn off his shame with anger, the part where the man never fail to put this one in her place for being a impudent bitch. Jakwu never strike first because he never have to. Somebody will clean up the mess—he pay for that too.
He want to tell somebody how it make him feel, but who in this world hearing him wouldn’t judge? Unless they think him a virgin or a fool. You the one who steal her body, I want to say. What you want to tell somebody is that she in turn steal your wanting to be a man. Is not just that you coming into the shape of the woman you steal, but you starting to like it.
All of which must be an abomination somewhere, but I done with feeling outrage. Or shock, or horror, or even disgust. I tell you what I did feel and I didn’t feel it, I heard it. The voices of all those women in the room who called me the Moon Witch. Who now call themselves the Moon Witch. And with that, I knew that the void I was hoping revenge would fill did fill to overflow. It just take me this long to see it.
That don’t mean I didn’t kill that fucking bitch Jakwu. In the same smoke hut I walk up right beside him, say Venin talk to me when I see the ancestors, which was not true, but it make his head turn, which make my wind (not wind) wrench his head until it snap.
Some days later news make it all the way up to the North, even a sorry place like Juba, that somebody kill King Sister Lissisolo’s son, which mean Lissisolo had a son, even though she was a nun. And because the King Sister form an alliance with the South King (who was now dead) to make this boy Kwash something, this Tracker who was being detained might stand trial for regicide. Kwash Dara, taking leave from the search for the Aesi, declare that the North had no hand in any killings, and if anything the South should answer for the disappearance of his chancellor. I take passage down the river, and in my own time sail all the way to Nigiki, using a pirate vessel to dodge the river blockades between North and South.
It tickle my nose and wake me up. I slap it away, but there it come again, tickling my nose, making me sneeze, making me annoyed. I roll away from it, but then it stick itself into my ear, which feel worse. Fuck the gods, I shout and slap it away. But again, he tickle.
“I going bite you if you don’t stop,” I say.
“Promise?” he say. This lion already straddling me, his mighty legs like two towers, his tail between them, misbehaving with my breasts, the rest of him far too ready for whatever he looking to do this morning. People warn me about you cats and your constant hunger, but I didn’t listen, I say, to which he grin.
“That don’t sound like disagreement,” he say, and just so, his massive head, with his massive gold mane, and his big round ears, and his rough whiskers is rubbing against my left cheek then my right. First day in the Buffalo Legion, he say. I leaving soon.
“Leaving? No,” I say.
To a dim, empty room.
When I turn myself in to this prison, the guards didn’t know what to do. I tell them that if they are looking for people of interest in the matter of a dead prince, then they should be talking to me. Though I didn’t kill him, I was there when somebody did. And then you search me and find the list, which have the boy’s name on it. Then you lock me in here, and why not? I have nowhere else to go, for eight years at least, and twenty if we counting when that demigod will again come of age. I done outlive everybody there is to know, and if I leave it to just him, then the only story of this business will be the Tracker’s, and that silly, slutty fool don’t even know that this tale is not just bigger than him, but one hundred seventy and seven years older. Because for all his love and all his loss, that man with a nose is just a boy. And truth speaking? This is woman work.
So let us make this quick.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Maybe it will be called a plague year. But 2021 was the year that saw me fleeing a devastating disease, from city to country, as if this were 1665. Which means I began this novel far way from home, at the dining table of Abbie Boggs and Milo Theissen, who opened a home that they had only just bought to houseguests who ended up staying over six months. The gratitude I have for them is beyond words, but here are words just the same said from the bottom of my heart: Thank you.
As always, for support, guidance, generosity, free meals, and blind faith: Ellen Levine, Jake Morrissey, Jeff Bennett, Claire McGinnis, Jynne Dilling Martin, Geoffrey Kloske, Simon Prosser, Jackie Shost, everyone at Riverhead Books, the Macalester College English Department, Ingrid Riley, Ano Okera, Lisa Lucas, Steven Barclay, Pablo Camacho for another stunning cover, Neil Gaiman, the James Merrill House for a wonderful residency, and, for deep trust, deep understanding, and even deeper love, Nicholas Boggs.
My mother is allowed to read all of this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marlon James is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and A Brief History of Seven Killings, which won the 2015 Man Booker Prize, as well as the novels The Book of Night Women and John Crow’s Devil. A professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, he lives in New York City.