Inside, one is sleeping, the other is awake, both of them lion cubs.
Outside I can hear them pacing and twitching, wondering what they going to tell Keme, when they should be wondering what Keme is going to tell me. My head won’t settle, it get wicked and full of ill will, but then it get fearful, then it get mournful, and then all of that vanish in wonder. Everything run through this unsettling head. That Yétúnde is about to walk right back in and say, Is a little joke I did play on you, one of them jokes only she find funny. That this is witchcraft, meaning I fall under the curse of witches. That this is witchcraft, meaning I am a witch. That some enemy put a curse on this house or on Keme and nobody see any need to tell me. That a shapeshifter is nothing strange in Fasisi, especially lions, and anyway my middle brother used to fuck a snake. I think to grab both of them and smash their heads against the wall, but they also fumbling their way to my nipples, hungry, and I can’t do nothing but let them feed. The other two, a girl and a boy, both have skin dark as me, but the boy already have hair on his arms and legs, he open his eyes and look at me, waiting for whatever it is that I don’t know. I don’t know what to say or do, and Yétúnde not inside to teach me of mothering, so I push him to my left breast and he suck too. There I be on the floor, but I can see myself looking at me on the floor, the afterbirth in the corner luring flies, while a cub and a boy feed to their full off me.
* * *
—
None ever come out of Yétúnde,” this man say to me. He step into my room like he come home from war, or from conquest of something that I don’t want to know about. His helmet off, but still in chain mail and irons, his way of saying to me that wherever he coming from, he soon gone back to, so don’t even come with any fuss.
“You come into my room and that is the first thing you say?”
“Is you they come out of.”
“Is you who put them in there.”
I still on the floor, getting furious that this is what the man say to me after him make me squat for four.
“How—”
“Don’t even dare say it.”
“I was going to say, how it come to pass that me own wife never . . . but you . . .”
“What you saying? You think me out there cuckolding you with some cat?”
“No. What? Of course not. I thought it skipped,” he say but it don’t sound like he saying it to me.
Which is when I say, “That sound like you telling it to yourself.”
“I was.”
He pick up one of the cubs, fur clay white with dark spots almost like a leopard, and purring at the touch of his daddy. At who must be his daddy. The cub, from nose to tail, reach from Keme’s elbow to thumb.
“You must have some enemy who bewitch me,” I say.
“Hardly,” he say as he help the cub climb his shoulder, then cradle him before he fall off. Then he hold the cub right up to his mouth and lick his head and little feet. I wait for him to speak because suddenly I can’t find words.
“You not a . . . You couldn’t . . . How . . . What?”
“I said I thought it skipped. Meaning skipped a generation since none of Yétúnde’s ever born this way. My father never show anything, but grandfather could change, and my granduncle was a full-on lion.”
“What you saying? That they might turn into boy and girl?”
“They already boy and girl,” he say to me, harsh and sharp. “Don’t call us beasts.”
“Us?”
“Yes,” he say. He place the cub on his head and grin as he seek out his hair. He, not it. He.
“I never see you shift to nothing. Never hear you roar, even when you play with Beremu. You don’t even take to meat much.” He laugh, hoping the laughter will warm me. I can see it in his eyes.
“No lion at court ever become a general. All of them are playthings of the King, even Beremu. They say they have no ill will for us. They say we are not lower, yet I don’t see any shapeshifter leading an army, or giving counsel to the King, or deciding the tactics of war.”
“We not fighting any war.”
“You know what I mean. Ever since a hyena troop turn on their own men near a hundred years ago. Well I not about to become either palace toy or army berserker.”
“That man who ride with you all them years was a marshal.”
“He was a scout. And there at my pleasure, not the army’s. Plus he don’t ride with us anymore. Don’t you hear what I am saying to you? Where I want to go, being me can’t get there.”
“Then go somewhere else.”
“You and your simple head and your simple answers.” He give me a bashful smile, but he is insulting me, and he know that I know. He annoy me so much that for the first time that day I try to stand up, but my knees buckle. He rush over to grab me, forgetting the cub on his head, who jump from him to me as he grab my waist.
“Where you think you going? You still too weak,” he say. I really want to make distance between me and him, but my knees don’t agree. He help me back down on the rugs, all tender, which surprise me still. Outside, Yétúnde is still talking to the midwife, who still don’t make a sound. I know they talking about me, talking about how I try and fail to become number one woman, even though that is something I never want to be. I know that before these children come, she was worrying about losing favor with her husband, but now that two of these children born beasts, she is still the reigning woman of the house. It don’t matter how many times I tell her that I don’t want to be in charge of this house, she could never hold the thought in her head for long, the thought that a woman could want or would want anything else. I try to be a motherly woman and not think of the donga.
“And you think nobody know?”
“The lions know. Maybe. Perhaps. Didn’t ask.”
“They know. How you can think they don’t now? I would know a woman even in the dark.”
“Fine. As you say, they know.”
“Is not about what I say. Is—”
“Quit this talk, Sogolon.”
“Or what you going do, roar?”
He furious for one blink, but then burst out laughing. Funny it is for real. He stoop down to me.
“This was long time past. Kwash Kagar send troops to smash a rebellion in the Purple City. Every general say take Lake Abbar by night, by boat, sail east and storm the city. From behind, they say. Beremu was the only one who say that Lake Abbar’s current always push boats west, and people would see us from a day away. And what is the Purple City but one big lighthouse. He even told the general about the caves running under the lake. You know what that general say? The only sound I need from a berserker is a roar. Five hundred soldiers slaughtered before they even reach land, because nobody want to take the counsel of a fucking cat. They even lock him up for unruliness because he wouldn’t stop growling about it. You know what it is like to never be listened to?”
A hundred and one things I could say right now. A hundred and one things.
“Well, that fate is not for me, you hear? I refuse it. I have standing in this form.”
I laugh.