by Marlon James
“True, even when I was a man I was closer to the snake, or the lizard, even the bird.”
“Why did you betray me?”
“So you are looking for remorse.”
“Fuck the gods with your remorse. I want the tale.”
“The tale? The tale is when it came to you, my friend, I was bewitched by the very conceit of it. You wish for something more? A reason? A way that I told myself it was just? Perhaps coin, or cowrie? The truth was I just fed my fill on the conceit of it. You think of the time I betrayed you? Think of the many times I did not betray you. The Bultungi hounded me for ten and three moons. That was ten and three moons of me thinking not of myself but of you.”
“Now you wish praise?”
“I wish for nothing.”
He started walking out of the bush, now all blue from night light. As it fell dark, his skin and feathers began to glow. I didn’t know where he was going and listened for the sound of the river, but I heard nothing.
“When the Aesi freed me, he told me of the new age,” I said. “Of how a bigger war was coming as sure as this war was here, a war to destroy everything. And at the heart of this war this boy. This abominable, perverted thing.”
“And you let him live,” Nyka said.
“It was only a guess. A heart twitch, not my head. Something amiss; I saw it as I saw him. He was already mad from it. Mad for it. Ipundulu blood. I saw it, I saw it then.”
“And you let him live.”
“I did not know.”
“The boy who led Sasabonsam to your house to kill—”
“I said I did not know.”
We kept walking for several paces.
“I cannot help rid you of it,” he said.
“Of what?”
“Your guilt.”
“Call the boy so I can kill him,” I said.
“What is his name? I know not.”
“Just call him boy, or crackle a lightning from your nipples or asshole or whichever place.”
Nyka laughed loud. He said he didn’t have to call him, for he knew where he was. We walked through bush and under trees until we came upon a clearing leading to a lake. I thought it was the White Lake, but was not sure. It looked like the White Lake, which had a pool at the end, not very wide, but very deep. They looked at us as if waiting for us to appear. The Leopard, the boy, and, holding a torch, with her face and breast hidden under kaolin clay, and with her headdress of feathers and stones, the woman on the mound before. Sogolon.
Seeing her on the other side of the lake did not shock me. Nor did my not recognizing her before, perhaps because when women age in these lands, they become the same woman. Perhaps she wore kaolin to hide what must have been horrible burn scars, but from where we stood, I saw nose, lips, even ears. I wondered how she survived, while not being surprised that she did. Meanwhile the Leopard, white from dust, stood a few paces behind her, with the boy between them. The boy looked at them, and at me. He saw Nyka and turned to run but Sogolon grabbed his thick hair and pulled him back.
“Red wolf,” she said. “No, not red no more. Wolf.”
I said nothing. I looked at the Leopard. Back in his armour like a man bound to a cause not his own. Not even a mercenary, just a soldier. I told myself I did not want to know what had gone inside his heart and grabbed it, what made this man who lived for no one and nobody turn to fight for the whims of kings. And their mothers. Look at you who we once called reckless and said it with love and envy. How low you have become, lower than shame, your neck hanging off your shoulder, as if the armour made you hunch. The boy was still struggling, trying to pull himself away from Sogolon, when she slapped him. He did what I saw before: shriek, then whimper, but with no feeling in his face. He was bigger now, almost as tall as Sogolon, but not much else showed in the dimness. He looked thin, like boys who grew but were not becoming men. Smooth, in just a loincloth, his legs and arms thin and long. Looking like no king or future king. He stared at Nyka, his tongue hanging out. I gripped my ax.
“Edjirim ebib ekuum eching otamangang na ane-iban,” she said. “When darkness falls, one embraces one’s enemy.”
“Did you translate for me or him?”
“You betray what you fight so long for?” Sogolon said.
“Look at you, Moon Witch. You don’t even look three hundred years old. But then, gunnugun ki ku lewe. How did you survive going back through that door?”
“You betraying that what you long fight for,” she said again.
“You talking to me or the Leopard?” I asked.
He looked straight at me. Sogolon and the boy were at the edge of the water and even in the dimness I saw their reflections. The boy looked like the boy, the torch rounding out his large head. Sogolon looked like a shadow. No kaolin clay, and blacker than dark everywhere, even her head, which had neither feathers nor hair.
“Ay, Leopard, is there no one left? No one for you to fail?” I asked.
He said nothing, but pulled his sword. I kept looking at the black figure in the water, the torch in her hand. The water was still and calm and dark blue as coming night. In the reflection I saw the Leopard run for the child. I looked up just as he swung the sword for the little boy’s head. Sogolon did not even turn, but whipped up a hard wind in a blink, which knocked over the Leopard, threw him up in the air, and slammed him against a tree. And right behind him, his sword, kicked up in the air by the wind, went straight like a bolt into his chest and pinned him to the trunk. His head slumped.
I yelled at the Leopard and threw my ax at the Moon Witch. It cut through the wind and she ducked, missing the blade, but the handle knocked her in the face and her whole body blinked. The kaolin vanished, then appeared, then vanished, then appeared again, then vanished. Nyka and I ran around this large pond. Sogolon was a burned-up husk, all black skin and fingers fused together, holes for eyes and mouth, before the kaolin appeared, and her skin and her feather headdress, her spell again strong. She still held on to the boy. The Leopard was still.
The boy began to laugh, a small giggle, then a loud cackle so loud it bounced across the water. Sogolon slapped him, but he kept laughing. She slapped him again, but he caught her hand with his teeth and bit hard. She pushed him, but he would not let go. She slapped him again and still he would not let go. He bit hard enough that Sogolon could no longer see to the wind, and her little storm weakened to a breeze, then nothing.
The ground shook, rumbling as if about to crack. A wave rose out of the lake and crashed on the banks, knocking over Sogolon and the boy. Sogolon began waving her hands to whip up the wind again, but the ground split open and sucked her in right up to the neck, then closed around her. She yelled and cursed and tried to move but could not.
And there was the Aesi, right on the banks, as if he was never not there. The Aesi stood in front of the boy, viewing him as one would a white giraffe or a red lion. Curious more than anything. The boy looked at him the same way.
“How did anyone think you could become King?” he said.
The boy hissed. He cowered from the Aesi like a shunned snake, writhing and curling, as if he would roll on the ground.
“I destroyed you,” Sogolon said to the Aesi.
“You delayed me,” the Aesi said, walking past her and grabbing the boy by the ear.
“Stop! You know that he is the true King,” she said.
“True? You wish to bring back the matriarchy, is it? The line of kings descended from the King sister and not the King? You, the Moon Witch, who claim to be three hundred years old, and you know nothing of this line you’ve sworn to protect, this great wrong in all the lands, and all the worlds that you will make right?”
“All you have is pretty talk and lies.”
“A lie is thinking this abomination can be a king. He can barely speak.”
“He told Sasabonsam where I lived,” I said, picking up my ax.
“Yelp and whimper, like a bush dog. Sucking blood from his mother’s breast, he is not even a vampire but an im
itation of one. And yet I feel remorse for this child. None of this was his choice,” the Aesi said.
“Then neither shall death be his choice,” I said.
“No!” Sogolon screamed.
The Aesi said, “You have one task. And you have done it well, Sogolon. There is disgrace. Look at your sacrifice. Look at your charred face, your burned skin, your fingers have all become one fin. All for this boy. All for the myth of the sister’s line. Did the King sister tell you the history of our ways? That these sisters beget kings by fucking their fathers? That each king’s mother was also his sister? That this is why the mad kings of the South are always mad? The same bad blood coursing through them for year upon year, and age upon age. Not even the wildest of beasts do such a thing. This is the order the woman called Sogolon wishes to restore. You of the three hundred years.”
“You is nothing but evil.”
“And you are nothing but simple. This latest mad king, Sogolon, we say he is the maddest for starting a war he couldn’t win because he wanted to rule all kingdoms. He may be mad, but he is no fool. A threat is coming, witch, and not from the South, or North, or even East, but the West. A threat of fire and disease and death and rot coming from across the sea—all the great elders, fetish priests, and yerewolos have seen it. I have seen them in the third eye, men red like blood and white like sand. And only one kingdom, a united kingdom, can withstand them and the moons, years, and ages of assault. And only one strong king, not a mad one, and not a malformed blood addict with a mother mad for power, for neither could conquer, nor rule, nor a whole kingdom keep. This Mweru queen, does she not know why the house of Akum ended that line of succession? He said it all night. A threat was coming, an ill wind. And that boy, that little abomination, he must be destroyed. You are nothing but a life lived in a lie.”
“A lie, a lie, a lie,” the boy said, and giggled. We all looked at him. Up to now I had never heard him speak. He still writhed and bent himself, touching his toes, curling on the ground, the Aesi having let go of his ear.
“He dies tonight,” the Aesi said.
“He dies from my ax,” I said.
“No,” Sogolon said.
“A lie, a lie, a lie ha ha ha,” the boy said again.
“A lie, a lie, a lie ha ha ha,” Nyka said. I had forgotten about him. He approached the child, both of them saying it over and over until they were one voice. Nyka stopped right in front of the child.
The child ran towards him and leapt into an embrace. Nyka grabbed him, wrapped him in a hug. The boy leaned in on his chest, resting, nuzzling like a baby lamb. Then Nyka flinched and I knew the boy had bitten into him. The boy was sucking blood like mother’s milk. Nyka wrapped his arms around him. He flapped his wings until his feet were off the ground. He rose higher, and higher, this time not sinking, not collapsing, not dipping from the weight or from his weakness. Nyka flapped his wings again and a lightning bolt, white and brighter than the sun, sliced through the sky and struck them both. The ground shook from the boom, which was too loud for anyone to hear the boy scream. The lightning struck and stayed, blasting them both as Nyka held tight against the boy kicking and screaming, until the long bolt sparked a flame that spread over them and blew out quick, leaving nothing but little light embers that vanished in the black.
“Oh cursed kings, oh cursed kings!” Sogolon wailed.
She wailed for so long that when it finally weakened, it became a whimper. I smelled burned flesh, and waited for something to come over me—not peace, not satisfaction, not the sense of balance from revenge, but something I did not know. But I knew I waited for it, and I knew it would not come. The Leopard coughed.
“Leopard!”
I ran over to him, and he nodded his head like a drunkard. I knew his blood was gone. I pulled the sword from his chest and he gasped. He fell from the tree and I caught him and we both fell to the ground. I pressed my hand to his chest. He had always wanted to die as a leopard, but I couldn’t imagine him changing now. He grabbed my hand and pulled it to his face.
“Your problem is that you were never any better than a bad archer. This is why we have had such bad fates, you and I,” he said.
I held his head and stroked the back of his neck as I would a cat, hoping it brought relief. He was still trying to change, I could feel it under his skin. His forehead thickened, and his whiskers and teeth grew, his eyes shone in the dark, but he could change no further.
“Let us switch bodies in the next of our lives,” I said.
“You hate raw meat and could never bear even a finger up your ass,” he said, and laughed, but it turned into a cough. The cough shook him and blood from his wound oozed between my fingers.
“Should never have come for you. Should never have taken you out of your tree,” he said, coughing.
“You came for me because you knew I would go. Here is truth. I was in love and I was in boredom, both at the same time, two rulers in the same house. I was going mad.”
“I made you leave. Remember what I said? Nkita ghara igbo uja a guo ya aha ozo.”
“If a wolf refuses to howl, people will give it another name.”
“I lied. It was if a dog refuses to bark.”
I laughed while he tried to.
“I left because I wanted to.”
“But I knew you would. In Fasisi when they asked, How will you find this man? He … has been dead twenty moons. I said … I said—” He coughed. “I said, I know a tracker, he could never resist good sport. He says he works for the coin, but the work is his pay though he will never admit it.”
“I should not have left,” I said.
“No, you should not have. What lives we lead. Remorse for what we should not have done, regret for what we should. I miss being a leopard, Tracker. I miss never knowing should.”
“And now you are dying.”
“Leopards do not know of death. They never think of it, because it is nothing to think of. Why do we do this, Tracker? Why do we think of nothing?”
“I don’t know. Because we have to believe in something.”
“A man I knew said he didn’t believe in belief.” He laughed and coughed.
“A man I knew said nobody loves no one.”
“Both of them only fools. Only f …”
His head fell back in my arms.
Give them no peace, cat. Find sport in the underworld and shame its lords, I thought but did not say. He was the first man I could say I loved, though he was not the first man I would say it to.
I wondered if I would ever stop to think of these years, and I knew I would not, for I would try to find sense, or story, or even a reason for everything, the way I hear them in great stories. Tales about ambition and missions, when we did nothing but try to find a boy, for a reason that turned false, for people who turned false.
Maybe this was how all stories end, the ones with true women and men, true bodies falling into wounding and death, and with real blood spilled. And maybe this is why the great stories we told are so different. Because we tell stories to live, and that sort of story needs a purpose, so that sort of story must be a lie. Because at the end of a true story, there is nothing but waste.
Sogolon spat in the dirt.
“I wish my eyes had never seen your face,” I said.
“I wish my eye never see me too.”
I picked up Leopard’s sword. I could bring it down on her head right there, slice the skull in two like cutting a melon open.
“You wish to kill me. Better hurry up and do it. For me live a good—”
“Fuck the gods and your mouth, Sogolon. Your queen couldn’t even remember your name when I told her you were dead. Besides, if I kill you, who will send news to the King sister that her little snake is dead? How goes our fellowship now, witch? The Leopard should see the one who killed him, right behind him in the underworld. The gods would laugh, wouldn’t they?”
“There are no gods. This Aesi didn’t tell you? Even now you head so hard you don’t see what truly tak
ing place.”
“Truth and you never lived in the same house. We are at the end of this tale, you and I.”
“He is the god butcher!”
“A new thing? But we are at the end of this story, Moon Witch. Take up this new thing with whatever hungry beast comes for your face.”
Sogolon gulped.
“Survival has always been your only skill,” I said.
“Wolf boy, give me drink. Give me drink!”
I looked at her head, like a black stone on the ground, swinging around, trying to move out of the ground. I searched for my ax and could not find it. And my knives were long gone. Losing them made me think of losing everything else. Cutting everything loose. I took the holster off my back, pulled my belt, and stepped out of my tunic and loincloth. I started walking north, following that star to the right of the moon. He came and went quick, like an afterthought, he did. The Aesi. He appeared in that way, as if he was always here, and left in that way, as if he never was. The hyenas would make use of the Leopard. It was the way of the bush, and it would have been what he wanted.
Maybe this was the part where men with smarter heads and bigger hearts than mine looked at how the crocodile ate the moon, and how the world spins around the gods of sky, especially the gone sun god, regardless of what men and women do in their lands. And maybe from that came some wisdom, or something that sounded like it. But all I wanted to do was walk, not to anything, not from anything, just away. From behind me I heard, “Give me drink! Give me drink!”
Sogolon kept shouting.
I kept walking.
I walked the lands for days, and across wetlands and dryland until I was in Omororo, the seat of your mad King. Where men detained me as a beggar, took me for a thief, tortured me as a traitor, and when the King sister heard of her child dead, arrested me as a murderer.
And now look at me and you, in Nigiki city-state, where neither of us wants to be, but neither of us has anywhere to go.
I know you’ve heard her testimony. So, what does mighty Sogolon say?