“No, I not going b—”
“Not going where? They sent us on a fact finding mission, and you are the fact that we found. They will want a deposition, our commander. And you as a witness will be the one to give it,” he say.
“I not a witness.”
“Put that in the deposition if you wish, but we go.”
“What if I don’t want to go?”
“I don’t really care what you want, you’re coming with us. Free or in chains is your choice. So choose.”
2
A GIRL IS A HUNTED ANIMAL
Bingoyi yi kase nan
TWELVE
Let us make this quick. Kwash Moki, eager to prove that he too is the Lion of the North and not the Cobra, invade the independent country of Wakadishu. They been conspiring again with the South, planning iniquity and destruction, say the Okyeame. Forces from Omororo and Weme Witu conspiring with Wakadishu to cross the Kegere River and invade North. Kalindar. The southern King don’t declare war, nor do he come to the aid of Wakadishu. The southern King didn’t bother himself with matters of war, for lilies was growing from his toes, his own shit was demanding not to be tossed, and his grandmother needed to be burned alive, for she was no grandparent but a tokoloshe gremlin. “You have to ask if nobody in the South ever think to crown a new dynasty, since this one been going mad for hundreds of years,” people in Fasisi say and laugh. Wakadishu now occupied territory. But the flames of Bornu, the country Kwash Kagar wipe away from memory, start to flicker again, with random attacks from no attacker, burnings with no flame, knockings down with no battering ram, and assassinations with no arrow or poison. Rumor flicker too, that it was witches.
Keme and the Red Army ride back to Fasisi, which was the last place I would ever want to go, but there I go. And I make no protest, telling myself to make distance between me and this man as soon as my feet touch Fasisi soil, and to never see his face again. Instead, I end up living with that man gone five years. See me now, shaking dust from my sandals every time I am about to enter his house, a house I return to every time I leave. Watch my hands, though hungry for bow, club, dagger, or sword, instead grabbing a broom to sweep away dust shed by the running, screaming, and laughing children who come out of my womb. From his seed. My hands, hungry to grab a dagger and plunge into some man’s eye just so I can see he spurt blood in my face, instead is smoothing clay onto the outside walls after rain season, shelling peas, grinding grain, and smashing to juice a spider that sneak into the house and frighten the children who come out of my womb. From his seed. Hands so hungry to grab a knife and slit a throat, or to touch a head and make it explode, instead is rubbing the sick bellies and wiping the runny noses of children who come out of my womb. Every night when the great crocodile almost finish eating the moon, I look at myself in the water and wonder how my life twist and turn into this.
Like I say. The Red Army ride faster than a caravan of slow women, so it reach Fasisi in just two days. When we get to the grand gate, night reach before us, but I still didn’t feel safe. A voice that sound like me say, Look at you, a girl with no name and yet all you know of Fasisi is the royal court. As if you was higher than a servant, as if you was higher than slave, or anybody. I shake out that thought and fill it with this: how to get away from this army and this man who done forget me. By the time they get all the way up to the royal enclosure I slip off my horse, which was trailing theirs, and try to vanish into the crowd, when all I walk into is a growling lion. Don’t make us take you back in chains after all, Keme say as he grab me. And here is how things go. Keme and the marshals take me to a guard house and leave me there, for the commanders who send them to investigate the smoke on the mountain will certainly want testimony from whoever they find up there, especially this girl who clearly have more to tell, say Keme. And then he leave me with three bored constables who point to the cell I supposed to stay in. You can’t put me in a room with man, I say and they laugh. The two men in the cell, they laugh too. The next morning, the guards shocked because one man is dead with a broken neck and the other near dead with two broken arms. All night they fighting over who would take me first, is all I say.
Two nights pass before the constables tell me there is nobody to carry out the inquiry. All who is of top rank either in Wakadishu or on a dhow sailing there. The King, gone to the south border to celebrate his victory, which mean his chancellor, commanders, counselors, winemakers, White Guards, and a few concubines are gone too. Nobody here to interrogate and no charges against me, so they let me go. One of the constables ask, What about the marshals? To which the one opening the cells say, If they want answers so bad, they should have questioned her themselves. And just so, I am back in Fasisi. But this place is different when you not walking the streets as one of the royal house. Take away the protection of your station, as well as that of the guards, and before you is a city that won’t hide that it is out to get you. A city that flash and wave a fabric in your face to hide the dagger coming to stab you underneath. People outside of Fasisi think this King have such an iron grip on the land that no crime happen unless he order it. People outside never know anything.