“Sogolon, no!”
The wagon swerve so close that she could touch one. She yank the covering down, shaking, but then scramble to the other side, where she pull up the cover again. Emini shake her head slow and look down at the wood floor. On this side also, nothing but dead women and men, as far back as she can look, as far forward as she can see. Naked women dressed in their own blood, women losing flesh to maggots and flies and crows, women and men melting in the sun, and whispering rot on the breeze. Alaya? For some the impaling stake burst through their chest, some it burst through the side of the neck, one or two the stake burst right through the top of the head, but for most it burst through the mouth, and they look as if vomiting out something big and vile. Stakes rampaging through koo, and buttock hole, and place where there is no hole but the stake make one. Several bodies and she is sure it is him, Alaya. And all of them swinging like they are flying, or crouched as if somebody catch them sitting down, and some swaying in the wind. Some with eyes closed, some with eyes frighten, and some with eyes that just stare and stare.
“Witches,” Emini let slip with a whisper.
“People they accuse as witches,” say Sogolon.
“Who is ‘they’?” say Emini.
“All of you. All of you is they. Anything you can’t fathom you call witchcraft and anybody you can’t fathom you call witch. You will see a fish swimming against stream and say a witch do it.”
“Look at you, thinking you better than us now.”
“You the only one in this whole damn caravan who still think that.”
“So two men take away my birthright and I must just wave it gone. Never, you hear me? Never.”
“Look at you, thinking you rebellious now.”
Emini laugh.
“What give you joke?”
“You. I just jump in your skin to hear how you sound, taking all kinds of liberties with me. How it must thrill you, talking to a royal this way.”
“I don’t see no royal.”
“Then you’re just like them.”
“No, you just like them. Only people like you do things like this to people like you.”
“After all this, you still don’t see no difference between me and my brother.”
Sogolon turn away, watching the window but not looking through it. Not seeing where this trail is taking them.
So to Mantha, seven days west of Fasisi. To everybody not from the kingdom, or those who never hear of it, Mantha is just a mountain. It rise high like a mountain, have rocks like a mountain, and sprout loose bush like a mountain. You have to get close enough to see the steps, and the windows, and the battlements, and the arrow slits, and if you get that close it already too late. Halls and chambers, and rooms and baths all carved out of the mountain rock. But cut with the mountain to look like it is the work of the gods. The highest tower, the great lookout at the peak of the mountain, you cannot get to by path, steps, or ladder. Word is that long before the house of Akum, Mantha was a fortress from where the army could see the enemy coming close without them knowing they are being watched. But that is over seven hundred years ago and nobody know where rumor end and record begin. So say the King Sister, who also say that every king from the house of Nehu, the royal family before her own, would send his old wife to the fortress as soon as he marry a new one.
“But now it seem that the hill get overtaken by this sisterhood.”
“Sisterhood? All of them is woman?” Sogolon ask.
“All save the scout and this wagon driver.”
“You not the first woman from house of Akum who get send there.”
“I don’t know,” she say, but Sogolon wasn’t asking. No way a house with such deceit and wickedness only send one woman to her fate all these years. She rub her left hand all the way up to her elbow and down, then all the way to her upper arm, and the strap hiding Keme’s dagger.
Each day right before dusk, one of the white women come to a chute near the front and push in a gourd of hot jollof. The warmth always surprise Sogolon, for not once did these people stop, but the blandness of the food—what a sin salt must be—don’t.
“Put a pinch of spice in these women food, and one by one their koos will explode on their donkeys’ backs,” Emini say. Sogolon laugh, though the look on Emini’s face say she wasn’t joking. She keep on laughing until the King Sister laugh, late to hearing how funny her own words. Rice in the morning, rice in the night, a gourd the next morning so they can shit out all that rice. Neither woman feel to eat, so neither woman ever feel to squat. So little shitting going on that they finally stop the caravan one evening to see what is taking place between those two women. Has any woman ever heard such words? Emini say to Sogolon when the white woman ask how come neither woman leaving no stinking snake in the pot. They take them to a bush with reeds as tall as a man, and have them squat until they feel enough time pass, then shove them back to the wagon.
“They say Commander Olu was one of your lovers,” Sogolon say when they return.
“They say I spread my koo open to swallow fifteen in the Red Army all at once, so what’s another lie?”
“Except he did live for true.”
“No matter what the court want to think, I know the name of every man who would father my son, and none of them named Commander Olu.”
“I know.”
“You know what?”
“I know you didn’t take him. I also know why you forget him.”
“Forget is what I do with my mother’s father’s name. Nobody knows any Commander Olu.”
“He cut him out of your memory.”
“He?”
“The Aesi.”
“Ah. So the Aesi cut into my head and slice away the memory? Where is the scar? Where is the blood? Why that memory and no other?”
“He take other ones.”
“That is not his ways.”
“But you agree he has ways.”
“I agree that I never liked him, and I know he is behind all of this. But the only craft he working is politics.”
“Basa Ballo, the ten and fourth day, eight moons ago. He come to my mistress, asking her questions. That is the last time she remember Jeleza, the one who banish her in the first place.”
“Who?”
“Your aunt.”
“I . . . the way you look, I’d almost believe it true.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“Then why you keep talking?”
“That day is first time I ever meet this Aesi. Tell me when first you meet him.”
“What? From I was a child there is the Aesi.”
“But when?”
“From I was young.”
“You remember when you young? First gift your father give you? When your grandmother die? How you get that cut scar under you chin? Yes? Then tell me when you first remember the Aesi.”
She look at Sogolon, eager to be gone from something so tiresome. She look in the sky, rub her lip, scratch her head, and furrow her brow.
“He is always with the court.”
“But the first time. How about the second time? How about five years ago? Any memory no matter how small. You don’t remember a thing, for he take it from you. He take it away from everybody.”