“We still in this bush,” Sogolon say and pull the curtain. “They not going to stop until we reach Mantha.”
“Good. Lend your eyes to this,” Emini say, look left and right, though nobody can see her, and pull off her whole gown. Then her undergown, then a long, wild cotton fabric wrapped around her chest and belly, going down on her hips, roll after roll, scrolling around her body. Sogolon not ready for whatever it is this woman is about to show her. The King Sister stand tall, her shoulders and breasts free, but what wrapped around her look like papyrus. Emini pull at her back and the scroll unwrap itself, falling to the floor in a pile that now look like linen. Sogolon had handled many papers and scrolls studying with Commander Olu, but had never seen a paper like this. It must have been made especially for the royal family of Akum. Emini check the windows again. Come look, she say, as she spread the scroll on the floor.
Math and science is all Sogolon can think, though neither she know. At the beginning of the scroll, numbers and marks, and glyphs and words, some in black and some in red, some not more than a quick scratch. Emini guide her finger along the length of scroll.
“What all this be?” Sogolon ask.
“The future. A future. A dream. I don’t know,” say Emini.
“The future of where?”
“Wherever want it.”
But Fasisi done forfeit it, is what she don’t say. What use to Fasisi, the ideas of a banished woman? Or any woman? Emini don’t say that either, but Sogolon know. And this city she is keeping around her waist. In one drawing, trees tall enough to touch the moon, tall as the world itself, a city or citadel reaching even higher. In another drawing, the houses, halls, and palaces all shaped in the same smooth curves, like the hips of women lying side by side. In another, roads that look a day long, but go up toward sky. A city in the tree, and another farther off, and ropes connecting the two, ropes carrying cargo, carts, and beasts in cages. Another drawing of just rope in knots, rope tied to wood, rope wrapped around big wheels connecting to small wheels and big wheels again. And still more. With each roll, out come something new. House on top of house on top of house again all the way past clouds into sky.
“So high they would frighten the gods,” Sogolon say.
“Now you know why they gift such wisdom to a woman. So nobody will ever look at them, and even if they look, they will never see. I showed them to my father and they give him nothing but sorrow.”
“Why?”
“Such bold vision will never come from Likud,” my father say. “Likud sleep every night, but never dream once.”
“Me sure he—”
“You know what I mean.”
Sogolon pick up the scroll.
“The rope and the wheel. They work together but that wisdom still dodge me,” Emini say.
“Talk plain and true.”
“Who else going to show me these dreams but the gods? Who else would show me a new land rising from dirt, then give me the hands to draw it? Then they whisper a secret about rope, how rope will move mighty things, build towers to touch the gods, and summon a river greater than the Utumbi falls. You will never open a door again, for the rope pulls the door open. And a wagon, even one full of ten oxen, rope will pull from floor to floor. Even pull water to the city. Who else but the gods would give me so many answers, only to curse me with one question? If rope pulling everything, what pulls the rope?”
“If the gods show you that, you will no longer need gods.”
“True. True. Hark at Sogolon, the blasphemer,” Emini say and laugh. “Maybe they will send me divine oxen. This is too much work for a hundred slaves, even a multitude upon a multitude of slaves. Maybe we catch fire, maybe water, maybe whatever pull the sea away from the shore at night only to release it by day. You ever think of such power? It would be like getting a whole storm down into a bowl.”
“That sound like mad talk.”
“Some people think the world flat like bread, not round like a womb. That is mad talk. This is just the sight of what to come.”
“So you are soothsayer now.”
“Third-eye magic? Only man need a third eye. Woman fine with two, sometimes one. Look at this. We feed the tree until it spread wider than a lake and rise past the castle of the god of sky, or we give it magic.”
“This is Fasisi?”
“No. Not after all that come to pass. I see that now. They decide not to take, so I decide not to give.”
“That is all you affair. Meanwhile sun burn and rain fall. Make no difference,” Sogolon say.
“I am the one who lose her throne and yet you are the one bitter. Difference to who?”
“To me. Difference to me. Make no difference to a woman from a termite hut. Of course you building city up in the trees. Of course you want to live higher so that the rest of we can live even lower.”
“Woman, if that is how I did think, I wouldn’t have been banished.”
“You banished because you share your husband’s koo and conspire to put a bastard on the throne.”
“You really don’t understand the Aesi. You still think this is about some memory-stealing witchcraft? The chancellor have a vision for the empire, for the world, and that vision don’t have nothing to do with what the gods tell me or you. Put a half man, half donkey on the throne and they wouldn’t care. As if this would be the throne’s first bastard. As for you, Sogolon, late of a termite hut who reach the very foot of the throne of the North empire. What place is there that you cannot go?” Emini smile for she know Sogolon don’t have no answer. “My book is written and closed, but yours? Yours is not even a book,” she say.
* * *
—
The road to Mantha is hills and valleys and this new valley is damp and cool, bearing the weight of rain. Sogolon can tell without looking out the window, for the last valley smelled of a salt mine all mined out with nothing but holes for the wagons to dodge. This one smell of rain, which mean water, which mean the caravan stop. Yours is not even a book, the King Sister say to her, but now she wondering if she say that only because she think Sogolon cannot read. Better keep it secret. Better keep it safe. Better to take it and run.