by Marlon James
“Tracker. I remind you this is your idea to take me with you.”
“It’s not my idea.”
“I am indeed the owner of this idea,” he said as he approached.
That is what he said, in the very way I knew he would say it. We had been hunting for two moons and nine days. He looked at us with arms akimbo, like a mother about to scold us.
The Aesi.
Nyka struck some dry branches with lightning. Fire woke up quick, and he jumped back. I came back from deeper in the swamp with a young warthog. The body I cut open to stick on a spit, the heart I cut out and threw to Nyka. He would not have shame this hour. He would not eat it with both me and the Aesi looking, but neither of us would turn away. He hissed, sat on the ground, and bit into it. Blood exploded over his mouth and nose.
I looked at the two of them, both I had once tried to kill, both known to have wings—one white, the other black. The me who once would have pulled axes to kill both of them on sight, I wondered where he went.
“Perilous thing it is, being in the South. Enemy territory in the middle of war—are all your plans this mad?” the Aesi said.
“You did not have to come,” I said.
“What is his plan?” Nyka said, red all around his mouth.
I cut off pieces of the hog and handed some to both. Both shook their heads. Nyka said something about the taste of burned flesh is now foul to him, which made me think of the Leopard and I did not want to think of the Leopard.
“We are seeking the boy and his monster,” the Aesi said.
“He already told me this,” Nyka said.
“I am seeking the boy. He is seeking the monster. The monster attacked a caravan north of here; one man said he ripped a cow in half with his feet, then flew away with both halves. The boy was on his shoulders like a child with his father. They flew off into the rain forest between here and the Red Lake,” the Aesi said.
“Are you not still with the North King? My memory, sometimes she comes and more times she goes, but I remember that once we were supposed to find this boy and save him from you. Now you both search for the boy to kill him?”
“Things change,” I said, before the Aesi opened his mouth and bit into a piece of hog. I glared at him.
“They did save him. Did you not, Tracker?” asked the Aesi. “Saved the boy from his band of undead and led him and his mother to the Mweru. Three years later you … Shall I tell this story?”
“I control no man’s mouth,” I said.
The Aesi laughed. He wrapped his black robe around himself and sat down on a mound made by dead branches and moss.
“Do you remember when you hid from me, Tracker? Hide from me you did, in the dream jungle. I found the Ogo instead. Poor man. Mighty, but simple.”
“Do not ever speak of him.”
The Aesi bowed his head. “Forgive me.” Then, to Nyka, “The Tracker knew to stay awake, for I roamed the dream jungle, looking for him. But many years later—shall we count the years?—he found me one night. The boy, I will give him to you if you help me find him who I seek, he said before even saying peace be with you. And if you help me kill him, he said. What was strange, and I thought so at the time, was that Tracker’s dream was coming from the Mweru.”
“No man leaves the Mweru,” Nyka said.
“But a boy can. It is in the prophecies that a boy who will come from those lands will be the dark cloud above the King. But who has time for prophecy?” the Aesi said.
“Who has time for any of this?” I said, and cut off two pieces of hog and wrapped them in leaf. “Sasabonsam attacked a caravan heading north. We too should go north, on the Bakanga trail, and stop telling tall tales by a fucking fire, as if we are boys.”
“Sasabonsam is not a wanderer, Tracker. He heads to the rain forest. He will make home—”
“We travel together, so how is your news always different from mine? He will choose a trail so that he can kill any fool who takes it. The winged one is not like his brother. He doesn’t wait for food to come to him, he seeks it. He will go where he sees men go, and he will go where they are not protected.”
“He is still on his way to the forest.”
“Both of you are fools,” Nyka said. “You are saying two parts of the same thing. He will head to the rain forest with the boy. But he will feed and gather bodies along the way.”
“The Aesi is forgetting to tell you that we are not the only ones looking for the boy,” I said. “Nobody here is lacking rest, so we leave.”
“Where is North, Tracker?”
“It’s on the other side of my shit-filled ass,” I said.
“The night has had enough of you,” the Aesi said.
“I wish the night would try and—”
“Enough.”
Monsoon is the real enemy when it comes to war,” the Aesi said.
The sun bounced through the knotty branches and hurt my eyes. I closed them and rubbed until they itched.
“Our King wants this war to end before the rains. Rain season comes with flood, comes with disease. He needs victory and he needs it soon.”
“He’s not my king,” Nyka said.
I sat up and heard the rush of the river. They must have dragged me to the edge of the salt plains, for I rolled over and saw open grasslands. Grass tall and yellow, hungry for the rain season he was talking about. The bobbing and swaying heads of giraffes far off gobbling leaves from tall trees. Rustling through the bush, guinea fowl, cat, and fox. Above, a flock of sand grouse calling family to water. I smelled lion and cattle and gazelle shit. My calf rubbed against something hard that would cut it.
“Obsidian. There is no obsidian in these lands,” I said.
“A man before you must have left it there. Or maybe you think you were first.”
“What did you do to me?”
Aesi turned to me. “Your brain was all fire. You would burn yourself out.”
“Do that to me again and I will kill you.”
“You could try. Do you remember many moons ago once in Kongor, when I chased you down that market street? Every mind on the street was mine but yours and the … him … your—”
“I remember.”
“Your mind was closed to me because of the Sangoma. You have felt it, haven’t you? Her enchantment is leaving you. You lost it when you left the Mweru.”
“I can still unlock doors.”
“There are doors and there are doors.”
“I have faced swords since then.”
“Because you are the goat looking for the butcher.”
“Why didn’t you possess Mossi?”
“Sport. But last night you needed to cool yourself before you lose use.”
Truth be told, I felt sore in every muscle, in every joint. I felt no pain the night before, when anger ran through my blood. But now, even kneeling made my legs hurt.
“But you are right, Tracker. We lose time. And I have only seven more days with you, before I have to save this King from himself.”
The Bakanga trail. Not a road or even a path, just a stretch trod by wagon and horse and feet so much that plants stopped growing. On both sides, a forest of whistling thorns giving off ghost music, swaying trunks with branches thinner than my arm. The trail turned to dirt, cracked mud, and rocks, but it reached the horizon and then went beyond it. On both sides, yellow grass with patches of green, and small trees round like the moon, and taller trees where the leaves spread wide and the tops were flat. I heard Nyka say the biggest and the fattest of gods squatted on them too long, which is why the tops sat so flat. I turned and looked behind me, saw him talking to the Aesi and realized that he had said nothing. I was remembering him from another time. This trail was at times full and noisy with animals, but none stirred. None of the giraffes from near the swamp, no zebra, no antelope, no lion hunting the zebra or antelope. No rumble of elephant. Not even the hiss warning of the viper.
“There are no beasts in this place,” I said.
“Something has scared
them away,” the Aesi said.
“We agree he is a thing, then.”
We kept walking.
“I have seen him like this before,” Nyka said to the Aesi, speaking only to him but wanting me to hear. “Strangest of things that I remember.”
The Aesi said nothing, and Nyka always took silence as a sign to continue. He told him that Tracker cares about nothing and loves no one, but when he has been wronged deeply, his whole self, and the self beyond the self, seek only destruction. “I have seen him this way once. And not even seen but heard. His need for vengeance was like life fire.”
“Who was the man that made him seek revenge?” the Aesi asked.
I know Nyka. I know he stopped and turned to face him, eye-to-eye, when he said, Me. He sounded almost proud. But then even the most wretched things Nyka ever said or did were always followed by a voice that sounded like he would kiss you many times and softly.
“He will kill this Sasabonsam, is that how you call it? He will kill him on just malcontent alone. What did this beast do?”
I waited for the Aesi to answer, but he said nothing. Sunlight left us, but it was still day, at least near evening.
Clouds gathered in the sky, gray and thick, even though rain season was a moon away. Before deep dusk, we came upon a village, a tribe none of us knew. A fence on both sides of the trail made of tree branches thatched together that ran for three hundred paces. Ten and eight huts, then two more that I did not see at first glance. Most on the left of the trail, only five on the right, but no different. Huts built of mud and branches with one window to look out, some with two. Thick thatch roof held down by vine. Three were twice the size of the others, but most were the same. The tribe gathered their huts in clusters of five or six. Outside some of the huts lay scattered gourds, and fresh footsteps, and the thin smoke of fire put out in a rush.
“Where are the people?” Nyka said.
“Maybe they saw your wings,” the Aesi said.
“Or your hair,” Nyka said.
“Would you like a pause in the bush to fuck each other?” I asked. The Aesi made some remark about me forgetting my place in this meet, and that as the adviser of kings and lords, he could leave me and resume his real business, and not to forget, ungrateful wolf, that it was I that saved you from the Mweru, since no man who enters the Mweru ever leaves.
“They are here,” I said.
“Who?” Nyka said.
“The people. No man flees a village without his cow.”
In the center of one cluster, cows lay lazy and goats hopped on tree stumps and loose wood. I went to the first hut on my left and pushed in the door. Dark inside and nothing moved. I went to the next, which was empty as well. Inside the third was nothing but rugs and dried grass on the ground, clay jars with water, and fresh cow dung on the east wall, not yet dry. Outside Nyka was about to speak when I raised my hand and stepped back in. I grabbed the large rug and yanked it away. The little girls screamed into a slap on the mouth from their mother. On the floor, her children curling into her like not-born babies. One girl crying, the mother her eyes wet but not weeping, and the other daughter frowning straight at me, angry. So little and already the brave one ready to fight. Do not fear us, I said in eight tongues until the mother heard enough words to sit up. Her daughter broke from her, ran straight up to me, and kicked my shin. Another me would have held her back and laughed, and played in her hair, but this me let her kick my shin and calf until I grabbed her hair and pushed her back. She staggered into her mother.
I go outside, I said, but the mother followed me.
The Aesi gave Nyka his cloak. This village must have heard of Ipundulu, or he guessed they would have terror for any man with wings. More men and women came out from their huts. An old man said something I barely understood, something about he that comes at night. But they heard strange men were coming down the road, including a man white like kaolin, so they hid. They had been hiding for a long time now. Terror, the old ones say, used to come at noon, but now it comes at night, the old man said. He looked like an elder, almost like the Aesi, but taller, and much thinner, wearing earrings made of beads, and a clay skull plate at the back of his head. A brave man with many killings who now lived in fear. His eyes, two cuts in a face full of wrinkles.
He approached us three, and sat down on a stool by a hut. The rest of the village stepped to us slow and afraid, as if at the slightest move, they would scream. They all came out of their huts now. Some men, more women, more children, the men bare in chest and wearing short cloths around the waist, the women wearing leather-skin covered in beads from neck to knee, with their nipples popping out from both sides, and the children wearing beads around the waist, or nothing. You saw it on the women and children most, eyes staring blank, exhausted from fear, except that angry little girl from the hut who still looked at me like she would kill me if she could.
More and more came out of their huts, still looking around, still slow, still eyeing us from head to foot, but not looking at Nyka as any different from the rest of us. The Aesi spoke to the old man, then spoke to us.
“He says they leave the cows open and he take a cow, sometimes a goat. Sometimes he eat them there and leave the rest for the vulture. One time a boy, he never listen to his mother. This boy who think he is man because he soon go into the bush, he run outside, why only the gods know. Sasabonsam take the boy but he leave the boy left foot. But two nights ago …”
“Two nights ago, what?” I asked. The Aesi spoke to him again. I could understand some of what the old man spoke, enough before the Aesi looked at me and said, “That is the night he knocked down the wall of that house over there on the other side, and he go in and he take the two boys of a woman who scream, I do nothing but miscarry. Them is the only boys the gods give me, and he try to take the boys away, and the men, who weak before, find some power in their arms and legs and they rush out and throw stones and rocks at him, and hit him in the head, and he try to bat away the rocks, and dirt, and shit with his wings, and still fly and still carry two boys, and could not, so he let go of one.”
“Ask if any of these men fought off the beast.”
The Aesi regarded me for a few blinks, not liking how strange it is, a man telling him what to do.
Two men came forward, one with beads around his head, the other with a clay skull plate painted yellow.
“He stunk like a corpse,” the beaded one said. “Like the thick stink of rotten meat.”
“Black hair, like the ape but he not the ape. Black wings, like the bat, but he not the bat. And ears like a horse.”
“And he feet like he hands, and they grab like hands, but big like his head, and he come from sky and try to go back to it.”
“There are many flying beasts on this trail,” I said.
“Maybe they fly over the White Lake from the Darklands,” Nyka whispered to me.
I wanted to tell him that one would have to go to a dark street where men fuck holes in walls and call them sister to find a remark less stupid.
“Sun queen just gone back home,” said the one with the skull cap. “Sun queen just gone when he first come, ten nights ago. He fly down, we hear the wing first, and then a shadow that block out the last light. Somebody look up and she scream and he try to grab her and she drop to the ground, and everybody running and yelling, and bawling, and we run to we huts, but an old man, he was too slow and his hunchback hurt, and the beast grab him with leg hands and bite his face off, but then spit him out, like the blood was poison, and he chase after a woman who was the last to reach her hut, I see it myself in the bush I hide myself, he catch her foot before she run in her hut, and he fly off with her, and we don’t see her no more. And since then he come every two night.”
“Some of we, we try to leave, but the cows slow, and we slow, and he find we on the trail and kill everybody and drink out the blood. Every man and woman and beast rip in two. Sometimes he eat the head.”
“Ask him when he came around last,” I said.<
br />
“Two night ago,” the old man says.
“We need to locate the boy,” the Aesi said.
“We’ve found the boy. I was waiting for him to find Nyka. But we have found him.”
“No one here mentioned anything of a boy,” the Aesi said.
“Good men speak of me as if I am not here. You wish to leave me out in the open so that your boy will find me?” Nyka asked.
“We will not have to. When Sasabonsam comes tonight, he will bring the boy. The boy will demand it until there is no quieting him,” I said.
“I do not like this plan,” the Aesi said.
“There is no plan,” I said.
“That is what I do not like.”
“It took six of us to beat him last time and we still could not kill him. Ask what weapons they have.”
“I say we let what happen, happen and follow him to where he hides,” the Aesi said.
“Where he hides could be two days’ walk.”
“He is too smart to risk the boy.”
“I will kill this thing tonight or fuck the gods.”
“Shall I say something?” Nyka said.
“No,” we both said.
“Ask them what weapons they have.”
Four axes, ten torches, two knives, one whip, five spears, and a pile of stones. I tell truth, these people, who left the hunt for the field, were foolish to forget that this was still a land full with wicked beasts. The men brought the weapons, threw them at our feet, then scrambled to their huts like mad ants. This did not surprise me—all men are cowards, and men together only added fear to fear to fear. Darkness snatched the sky, and the crocodile had eaten half of the moon. We hid by the fence near the north of the village. The Aesi crouched low, holding a stick I did not see him with before, his eyes closed.
“Do you think he calls on spirits?” Nyka said.
“Speak louder, vampire. I do not think he heard you.”
“Vampire? How harsh, your words. I am not like who we hunt.”