What interesting her is Keme, leading a horse, slipping through the gate, gone into the dark. Not thinking about it much either, she do the same and follow. They on the same causeway to Baganda. The night scare her until she grasp that darkness not dark. That the road is right there, bright from dust, as are the trees, like shadows against a sky that is not black but the richest blue. And her ears do the seeing when her eyes cannot, following Keme at a good pace behind, but never losing his trail. At least in the dark she can’t see the steep drop on either side of the road. She turn left at the first crossroad, which take her around a bend that go down the mountain. In the middle of the bend, a path on the right, where dust is still floating after Keme’s horse wake it up. She coming near the end of the road, where she see his horse tie up to a tree, but no Keme. Now at the road edge she step off into the trees and bush. No answer from Keme, though she call his name twice. The cliff drop off steep and she stumble. A stump break her roll, a good thing, for beyond the stump is air. At least she feeling air around her legs. She seeing something else. Blinking five times, then seven don’t change what she see, so she watch Keme, though that don’t make her disbelieve it less.
Keme is walking on air, over clouds. No, he is walking on tiles, some taking just a tiptoeing foot, some as big as a door, none tethered to anything but open sky. Tiles, bricks, rock, chunks of floor all making a trail leading out into open air. Sogolon is on the first floating block before she considers what she is doing. It sink a little and she slap her mouth to stop the scream. The second block sink a little too. She can’t go. Below her she see mountains and valleys and the air not promising her nothing. Is Keme, walking as if this is just another path, who is making her do it? But she stumble on the next tile and almost fall. A yelp come, but not loud enough to catch Keme’s ear. The tiles, planks, bricks now feel as solid as ground. Clouds float below her and the dark underneath send terror into her chest. Keme is walking like man who trod this so often that he don’t bother look. But she do look, for the first time, beyond the trail and beyond the wind that take on the color of a ghost in the night sky.
The trail longer than it look. Longer than two time a glass flips. She would wonder which God with such scattered thinking make this trail, as if cobbling together anything he can find, as if she can wonder about anything other than how she walking on sky. The end of the trail more mystifying than the beginning. Her head is brimming with things she is seeing but not believing, even if there is something insistent about Keme’s steady walk. Clouds come together and pull apart as they go, and something is on the air, a whisper maybe. Keme is gone. She rub her chest and stop a panic. Clouds pull apart and she see smoke first, seven trails going up into the air and below that roofs, some pointing, some flat. Seeing and believing won’t come together and it shake her balance. Houses, shacks, taverns, bridges, shelters, all huddled close like any section of Fasisi, and all floating in air. Doors connect to paths, which connect to doors, which connect to paths, and all along them, movement.
A quick step cost her. Only sky beneath her now. She is falling. She stop falling. A hand catch her wrist and pull her up. Keme.
“I not going around any back with you. Not that you say? And loud too. So why you following me?”
“Is this you was going show me?”
“You continue to make no sense, girl.”
“This place, what is it?”
“You frown like you smell something stink on my tongue. I here thinking, This girl thinking I trying to rape her or what? Is that what you did think?”
“No.”
“You lie better in daylight.”
“Children of gods live here?”
“No.” Keme continue walking. “But children of Go do.”
She don’t ask him to explain, figuring him too annoyed with her to do so. He never did give reason to believe he mean to do her wrong that night. Like man need reason. But he wasn’t like any other man. But he is a man.
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. Try don’t slip again.”
She follow him, striding where he stride, shuffling where he shuffle, hopping where he hop. They soon in the middle of the town, for what else it could be but a town? Nothing in Fasisi look like these roofs or walls, and nothing in Mitu or Kongor either. Clay walls, white, but dark in the night, and covered in patterns, and scratches, and drawings of war, hunting, swimming, fucking, dancing, all of which glow red and yellow in the night like a blacksmith’s iron. Marks reaching past the first window and the second up into the sky. Flat roofs and walls from the same clay. Houses taking any shape they please, some with wide more than high, some a tall needle in the sky, some with a curve like an egg or a bosom.
“What you mean?”
Keme stop by an entrance with much shouting and laughter going on inside. A tavern.
“Go. The Children of Go. You hear of Go?”
“Nowhere name Go.”
“So you never hear of it.”
“Yes I hear of it. I say nowhere name so, other than in story woman tell her child.”
“You never know any such woman.”
“You going tell me the story?”
Keme laugh and shake his head. “The people here, they descended from the people of Go. Come here ten generations ago. When they left Go, they took everything with them, even the clay, even the wood and stone to build their houses. But everything from Go, whether wood, or stone, or metal, or dirt, behave as Go do. The legend is true, girl. It’s not even a legend. Everything of Go and from Go float as soon as the sun set, and sink as soon as sun rise.”
“You saying the entire city rise in the air as soon as sun set.”
“That is exactly what I just say.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“And here is a town floating on air whether you believe it or not.”