This thing, this it, that push everything away with the might of a hundred battering rams, this thing that punch out a hole in the ground as wide as a field, and blast a man head north and his heart south, and some of him it just blast away into air. This great might that she been feeling all along, and mistaking for breeze or gale, this thing that prevent her from hitting the ground when she fall, and prevent everything from hitting her. Witchcraft? Devilry? She don’t practice one and she not in service of the other. Her mind working deceit is what this is. Her mind working deceit. How many a woman or a man for how many an age think everything strange be the work of magic or the gods, when it is just the sky, or the sea, or the air, or the water, working in their ways, and we be the one to think it must be us, or gods or devils because we have misfortune and stumble upon it? Or wishing for good tidings so hard that when it happen we think it is through our will, and not that we just lucky? Heavy thoughts pushing her back down into the ground this evening. The sky telling her nothing.
The days are not warm, and the nights cold as spite. She scamper around the trail trying to find anything of use or anything to eat. In a patch of shrubs she find a wineskin filled with water and the faint taste of wine that made her want to drink all of it in one gulp. In the same patch, pieces of dry bread and piles of crumbs, a few dates, dry bones, and a hand with three fingers. Only two nights before the sight would have made her vomit. Now she pass by with neither heave nor sigh. Before sunset, she find one of the two headed boy’s heads among rocks, and the splatter of dried up yellow in the spot where she killed him. The splatter start to glow in the dimming light. At one of the fallen trees she tear off a thin, straight branch, as tall as she, and shed the leaves and bark. Two times she wake up to beasts scurrying, rummaging, and feasting through the night. She clutch her new staff, but none come close. In the morning she gather all she can find, scrape some of the yellow into cloth and set out.
But where to go? A voice that sound like her say, Trust the gods. But from what she been seeing since the termite hill, trust is one thing you should never put in the gods. Better yet to come to them in fear and trembling. Better even yet to not come to them at all. As for hope, that sound like it can be a good thing for those who need it, but for she, the only hope she need from the gods is that they never find her to make sport. Sogolon look back at what she is walking away from and wonder if that hope went lost many moons ago.
Here is truth. Sogolon can’t tell west from east or north from south, despite the sun. Above she can tell from below, and only because her thighs hurt from the climbing. One morning bring her mountain sides so steep that she climb with hands more than feet, and hang on by just a finger as rock and boulders tumble over her head. Feeling the side settle, she look up and dodge quick a rock coming straight for her face. How is a wagon to climb this? She take too long to tell herself that she gone off track and need to get back to the trail. The same day she slip through a passage so narrow that it rip the back of her fur. Worse, the narrow passage only lead to one narrower. Sogolon curse when she get stuck. Curse so loud that a rumble drown it out, the sound of the passageway shifting, opening wider as if both sides of the rock grow afraid to touch her. The push loosen rocks above that bounce and shatter right above her head. By the gods, this thing inside and outside her that she don’t understand and can’t control. That come one day when she need it, only to abandon her the next. It feel like temper, but sometimes all she have is empty rage, and her scream is just a scream. Maybe it is not a gift from the gods but a god for true, doing what they do mostly, which is to fuck with people.
Sogolon let the thought steer course to its destination for once. She is in a wild expanse of mountain and clouds, all the way to the end of her vision. That the gods, as is their nature, fuck with we of a mortal life because they envy us. Yes, those same gods, perfect in their ways, but they not perfect. They petty. And irritable. And flighty. Foolish. Childish. Vengeful for no real grievance other than being annoyed. But envy is the thing, she know it now. Envy is what they have for us because we have one power no god can ever have, and that is the power to surprise oneself. The wisdom shake her. She wonder where it come from. It sound like somebody whisper it from the mountaintop. Or maybe this is the day she is born, but don’t know. She can no longer picture it being a god’s work bubbling under her skin. It is you, say a voice in her head that sound like her.