Elephant bull! everybody roar. A bull servant now in the middle of the road and daring the buffalo to come. Come he do, running and stomping, and the servant try to jump out in time but the buffalo knock him down, trample over him, and charge into the crowd. People thinking this is part of the ceremony until the buffalo pull back and charge straight at the crowd again, knocking down woman, child, and man. Children scream. People still thinking this is the ceremony. The servant lying still in the middle of the road until two drummers pick him up and drag him away. The second buffalo that everybody forget, he charge into the crowd with the other servant shouting No! The second buffalo pull back and ram straight into a woman who fall back on a man who fall back on an old man who crack his head. The first buffalo break from the parade and start rampage through the drummers, swinging like he drunk into the crowd, then out in the road again. Coming toward me. Now people run. The second buffalo ram into the district of the crowd that I just leave. I know what he is doing, the Aesi. What he can see is not what trouble him, so he trying to attack the blind spot. The there that is not there. I gone.
The second was before the first time, but I remember it after. The donga, when I was fighting as No Name Boy. Right before my fight there was a commotion in the dark at the end of the stands. Not a noise, indeed it was the quiet that strike people. Men rising up to leave, most in white, but one lost in the dark, until the red cape flutter into the torchlight. Running through my head at the time was how I was going to kill this man who been threatening to kill me for three quartermoons, fighting his way up to my class. Something about his threats, how he was going to pierce me, come inside, split me open, punch up to my brain, made me wonder if he knew something. Keme was in my bed most nights around that time, so there was no way I was going into any death match, not with him seeing my naked body the next night. But I get so taken with how I was going to humiliate this man, which would be worse than killing him, that all I notice was the sound of the big black wings. And even then it would be near six years before I realize that it was him. Word about this donga was bound to spread, despite it being a secret, and he certainly wouldn’t be the first man there hiding in the dark. I wonder what make him leave early. I wonder if he would recognize me under the bandanna and all this binding. Or if he would just be disturbed that he read nothing at all.
But because I didn’t spot him the first time, it make me wonder how many times agone that I didn’t see him, mark him, hear him, smell him. Two ways it make me mad. One, that I allow all these things to take me away from what I come back to Fasisi to do, and two, that I now so far away from the royal enclosure that I am not even who he need to bother about. Some people eyes never even see downhill, some people say, meaning anybody who live higher than Taha. As for the things that take me away, I stay away from what that might mean, before the voice come after me with, Things? You mean you children? Your love? Your blood? Your duties as a wife?
I not his wife, my own voice say, loud enough to fill the room.
And there was another time, not even six moons ago, when Kwash Moki decree a start to his birthday celebrations even though that day was six moons away. Him being Kwash Moki the magnificent, but also the generous, did mean that he was opening the doors to the royal enclosure so that the people could enter and celebrate with him, in ceremony and dancing and delicious spreads of food. Them being all men of military stripe, and nobody below the north of Taha. I tell Keme to take Yétúnde, though I was the more presentable wife. She been feeling undesired for a long time now, and is the good thing for a husband show some love to his wife, I say to him. Take her alone, for a woman get tired of having to share all her love with all her children all the time. Make she feel special just for herself, even if for once. Yétúnde look older than him, and she grow fatter still, but this make her straighten her back, smile three times in one day for no reason, and even throw sides of raw lamb to Ehede and Ndambi, my daughter, who roar in thanks, something she never allow in the house. She even say her thanks to me in her way, which was to say nothing at all, not even after I lend her the fabric that she wrap herself into and wrap the ighiya around her head the way I see Mistress Komwono do. Doing something nice for her did feel good even if no thanks was coming, but I do it for me, not her. Here is truth, I didn’t want to see the Aesi. He have a way to make people forget things so complete that not even the memory of forgetting remain, but I didn’t know if that mean that he forget also. I was the one with grievance, yet I was also the one who didn’t want to face him, and it was not because of what he could do, for the man didn’t scare me. Yes there would be danger if he remember, but that still felt like a better fate than if he didn’t remember me at all. Something about that did feel all the worse. I swallow them thoughts as I watch them leave. Keme, more bolder about looking like himself, usually walk around with no clothes—for which lion need clothes?—but for the first time he keep himself true while wearing a uniform to fit the real him. The voice whisper to me, If you say that this is not the most desirable you ever see him, then woman, you lie.
* * *
—
See this now, how motherhood change a body. I losing hunger, I can feel it, but I still want to fight in the donga, and not any fight, but a red fight. The thought come to me that I have children now so I can’t do none of that kind of fighting, but the thought not as strong as I would expect and that worry me. So I fight one night and win. A white fight, but a win is still a win, especially when I wrap so much cloth around my waist to even it with my hips that I couldn’t even bend for the whole fight or on the way back to the house. Binding my breasts was harder, because now I did have breasts, but they didn’t make me feel no way. Too many years thinking that all of me must be of use, I think. And even now when I start to see the harm in seeing any soul that way, I still think about it. My use. Who have time for use anyway, when I seeing my children growing older, the lions big and full already? Nobody tell me yet if these lions will live as long as lions do, which is not as long as shapeshifters do, which is long indeed. But nobody is around to tell me, not even Keme, who know nothing about his kind and refuse to learn. Keme call Beremu old friend, which must have been more than ten years perhaps, maybe even more than twenty, which I hold on to, because as soon as the thought run and hit me that I might outlive my children, I gnash my teeth and shake it loose. I picture them getting the wind (not wind) from me and the thought of flying lions make me laugh.