I fall and roll, on the brink of vomit. He come for me and I have to move. I have to think. Too late, he grab my ankle and it slip out of his hand. He grab me again, hook his finger in my belt, and fling me off the platform. I land on floating rocks, and roll, spitting blood. That is when I realize that if I come back with any mark Keme or Yétúnde will ask how. A voice in my head that sound like me say, Stupid girl, you lucky if you make it back to the house alive, much less with flesh wound. People shouting Pig Destroyer, No Name Boy, Pig destroy the No Name Boy. Pig Destroyer crouch low and leap in the dark and I see nothing and hear nothing until in the quick two giant feet come straight for my head, and I roll out of the way and off the rock.
The crowd go quiet. I hear the crowd go quiet before I even see that I am falling. I miss one rock, then two, then three and start to scream. A branch block my fall and I grab on, and it sink with me fast, too fast, then stop and bounce back up. Stop thinking of sky, stop thinking of falling, stop thinking of below, all is just floor. The darkness, the thick black make me forget the sky and I hop from one rock to another, run up ten stacked like steps, and jump back on the platform. Pig Destroyer see that he didn’t kill me and curse. He try to hop from rock to rock but slip and fall, and the crowd wash in a wave of ooooh as he clutch one and pull himself up and jump to the wood plank and leap again, but this time I ready. He jump for the platform hoping to capsize me, but I leap right before he land, with wind (not wind) pushing me higher, and he smash the platform, tilt it hard, and capsize himself. I am a cat, landing on a tile. There be the big man, hanging on to the platform by one hand, but the platform still tilting and his hand slipping. If this platform right itself all he have to do is climb back on. I hop to the tilted edge of the platform, skid down, kick his fingers off, then stab into the wood to stop my fall. Pig Destroyer screaming until the wind suck away the sound. The crowd so quiet that for the first time I hear a flag flapping on a nearby roof.
No Name Boy! they burst into. No Name Boy! No Name Boy!
The fight master come over to me and say he thought for sure he was sending me to the ancestors because I choose reds. You mean the donga, I wheeze out, but he say, No, reds is the name of the match. Red band and white band fight, with white band being combat until one fall down or yield. Red band fight was to the death, well till one fall off, but on the way down is no cushion. I limp home.
Later in the quartermoon, Keme come knocking, cock in hand and smile on face but I close the door on him. Moonblood, I say. Look how my wicked belly keep cutting me. Moonblood disgust many a man and this one no different. Every body part with a bruise, hint of a bruise, or the fear of a bruise, I cover up in muslin. Nobody see me in half a moon, which was the same time I return to the donga to the crowd shouting No Name Boy! I lose two fight, one white and one red, but skip death because the other fighter too weak to strike the final blow. I draw two, one because we grapple long but neither winning, and another because the crowd was jumping and shouting so raucous that a part of the stand break away, a part not made from Go wood. The fighting continue. I win all the others, nine in number, five of them red fights. Keme start to remark how frequent this moonblood was coming, sometimes not yet gone a moon.
“A woman body do what it want to do,” I say.
“But I forgetting what your body look like,” he say.
“Nothing on it memorable,” I say.
Blood. More time than less I leave the donga covered in it. Six moons pass and the wondering come to me that I should let slip that I am woman, not boy, until I look into the crowd see all the women and know that not a single one there by their own choice. No Name Boy is a champion, but not the only champion, and I stay away from any man twice my size. The fight master promise me more money, but stop when it start to seem that I care little about it, for I forget to collect three times. A voice in my head that sound like me say, Look at you and how you like the taste of blood. The last one was like Pig Destroyer, hanging on a little rock by just two fingers, which I cut off. I don’t kill nobody, they kill themselves, I say. One kind of killing can’t fill the spot that the other kind is to fill, say the voice, to which I say, You don’t know what you talking about.
“But I didn’t say anything,” say Keme’s little boy.
I cover my mouth. Two children are right here playing in the room.
The same night Keme come to my chamber, saying to me, “Look, woman, not another complaint about moonblood. Is only half moon since, I count the nights,” he say also, but I don’t close the door. Quiet is how we keeping it, as I go down on the floor and pull the muslin up my waist. Keme mock a laugh and tell me to turn over, and though I don’t want to, I don’t want him to ask me why. The muslin not coming off, I thinking. Keme say, Be a nun, if that is your wish, and push himself in me so quick that I jump. Nothing to stop, he is on top. No time leave for thinking, only to grab his backside, hand to cheek, hoping to guide him slowly in and out of me, but he fuck me hard and hungry. My wince, my groan, my little cry out, my rush of breathing, my everything he is mistaking for pleasure, but every single one is a pain, sprain, and bruise waking up. How much more of this I can stand, I don’t know, but stand I going have to do. Fuck anywhere else, even the mouth, a voice in my head tell me to say, but he would ask why, and what is going on with me, and perhaps even ask that I take the muslin off. Push up on him then, the voice say, press in to his press, wrap your legs around his hips and take control. Man like surrender when nobody watching him bow. I fuck myself upon him, and he moan and say, Take what you want from me. Squeezing the sheets, squeezing my shoulder, Keme is going wild, but I just trying to stop my mouth from screaming the way my chest, hips, arms, and belly been long doing. Nothing to do but bear it, to hold on to the actual sweetness of us fucking each other good. He sleep in my bed that night, but I take to the floor, then climb in the bed in the early dawn, right before he wake up.
* * *
—
Moons coming, time passing, soon one year gone and the Aesi is still alive. And this King, and his boys, and the good people of the court. Certain streets start to smell better now that the bodies of impaled witches all rot off. The North make peace with Wakadishu without a long war, even though the territory say they is neither North nor South. One day I pass by fabric seller’s stall in Baganda district, a day hot though it is not the season and the sun gone past noon.
“Purple? Is only for royalty,” I say and pick up a shawl.
“Only the womenfolk, and the Queen Mother say she hate purple. I mean the Queen. Stepmother one day, wife the next, who knows what she will be tomorrow? Why this King need two wife is what people should ask,” she say.
“The King Sister used to love purple.”
“Sister to which King?” she ask, and I didn’t know what to say, so I say nothing, hoping the talk would just die. “Girl, which King Sister, me say. Girl? Girl?”