More drummers fill the gap between this procession and the next, until there they come, bigger boys, boys at the age when my brothers thought they were men, which quickly make me feel sour, then sorry that I taking my feelings out on boys I never see before. Keme tap me three times, so excited. These boys are flowing in yellow tunics with black stripes running up and down, but at the top each head sit magnificent bird. Three times as big as the hornbill, this bird they make out of cowries, beads, wood, and gold, though at the front is a real bird beak. The headdress sport a tail that reach down behind the knee. Keme is whispering something to me about the great bird being the helpmate of the original man, but something catch my eye, a glimmer, or a shine, something that vanish before I can look good.
The boys about to become men pass next, but by now it is a movement in the crowd, not the street, that catch me, for other than the cheering everybody is standing in place. And crowd is who I am thinking they are, on the other side of the street, but they keep moving while the cheering people stay. My eyes follow and before I realize it, my legs follow too. We all marching to the same drum, these boys with a hornbill on their heads, me weaving through the crowd and on the other side, the royal delegation, which I know from the colors. Men of the court wearing their flowing white, and soldiers from the Green Army flanking them ready to draw the sword. All of them in court colors save one in black and red. With them, in the middle, falling behind to talk to one, and still talking until the others slow their gait and he is back in the lead. The sudden cheering mean the King is waving from the roof, so this is not the King.
The Aesi.
This is the first time I seeing him, I am sure of it, but the voice that sound like me is remembering Taha district at night three years ago or maybe two, Baganda district three quartermoons ago, or maybe two, robe fluttering like wings from a time I cannot place. And it keep happening, him almost coming into my sight, my heart about to jump, then the cheering crowd block him from me. I trip over somebody’s foot and nearly stumble, but don’t turn back when the man curse after me. We gone far past the King’s roof. Where he going? come out of my mouth as a whisper and the Aesi stop right there, as if he hear me. I stop, hold down my head, and shuffle behind a man wrapping his huge arm around a woman’s shoulder. The Aesi not making it plain why he stop, and he is not looking over at me. But I wonder about it, him stopping. For that in turn stop me from thinking too hard about why I am following him. I mean, I know. But then I don’t. I searching for fury in my heart and find only the memory of it. Same too for revenge, or just blood. I can’t find the will for blood, only the memory that I used to have it. It is gone, but not like when the Aesi take away some people’s recall. I working to find the fury but instead of fury all I discover is work. He start walking and they start walking, so I start walking and I hear shame, though nobody speaking it. If I don’t have no more fury, then shame over not having it, which lead to fury for having shame, will do. He is looking at me.
Through the crowd, looking straight at me. No, in my direction, but fear jump up and stop me cold. My head stay down but I glance across to him still looking. The people in front of me squeeze together tight, cheering as the King do or say something that I neither see nor hear. But the Aesi is looking over, looking hard, knowing he is supposed to see something but not seeing it. And I know what it is that is making him look. For I know that he can read people, see what they don’t show, and is something that he take for granted, but on a street where every window is open you will notice the one shut. The voice in me whisper, What you think you doing, girl, you don’t have a knife, and even if you did have one, children weighing you down for years now and all your moves are slow. I stoop and watch him through the spaces between the crowd. The men with him holding their tongues until he finds what he is looking for. A whisper roll through the crowd that I catch the end of: elephant bull, elephant bull, elephant bull.
Elephant bull. I don’t know what is coming and there is no Keme to tell me. I done gone too far off. The drummers slow the rhythm, but the beat boom bigger. Between that and the foot stomp, the road quake. Whisper turn into chant, elephant bull, elephant bull, until the women and children scream while the men laugh. Two of them, charging up the road looking as wild as the buffalo, they keep calling elephant bull. Two servants running with them, guiding them, telling them where to go, sometimes lying down in the road and daring them to trample. Both bull costumes sporting a mask of buffalo horn, crocodile snout, and warthog tusk that they fix in front of a cloth body as long and wide as two elephants. The first bull, with beads and cowries on a thick brown covering, with red and white circles like dots, the second in a black and yellow square pattern, and both of them with a long bush skirt to hide the legs of the men running underneath. A different kind of drumming is coming from under the skirt, a thunder. The children thunder back and I am losing sight of the Aesi. All I am seeing is the flurry of white robes and red until they stop again. The Aesi turn around, but not to find me.