Moon Witch, Spider King, page 49
Pigeons are already on the ground. They peck and prod for food, but most start to gather around one boy before another shoo them away. That boy. That is the boy. The one rubbing his forehead and revealing his skin. The shorter one standing still, while a taller one rub ash on his forehead and nose. The one with a ring in his right ear and left nose hole. He ask somebody a question, I can tell from the tone. He don’t like the answer, I can tell from the frown. This is the boy who might not even know who he is.
Noon is threatening to push me out of this tree. I can’t tell if the griot is asleep or sun drunk. Or maybe he is just lodged between two branches making up his mind about what to write. The drum been sounding since morning and while I know some Marabangan drum language, this is not Marabanga. First all the boys are jumping up again and again, then they shuffle around the dead fire. The older boy is beating the drum and shouting what sound like orders. The boys drink from a gourd, grab spears, then form a line and head into the bush. I shake the griot out of his stupor and leave him by the shore while I follow them into the forest, hiding behind wild leaves and thorns and watching for their footprints. Not many trees in this forest. Come to think of it, this is not much forest, but at the biggest tree somebody build a canopy with four blackish-red posts, with black moss all down the legs, and the roof lost in branches and leaves. They are lying down, still, as the drum beat slower and slower. The pigeons still peck and poke the ground around one boy. That boy. I approach. All of them so still, even the drummer is a statue except for the right hand beating the drum. I am closer, close enough that it is the pigeons that start. Now is the time. I think. I don’t know, for the useless water sprite didn’t tell me what to look for when a boy is dying and a man is being born, and right now only the gods must think this is something to look at. The posts are drawing me more, craft that I didn’t expect in this province, thin at the base, thin as a tree, that is, then bulbing wider at the middle like a fruit, then narrow again, ending with a top that is arrowpoint sharp. Right now the boys are lying down still as death, and maybe from this they rise. This must be the moment, I can’t wait for anything else. But he is just a boy. Is just a boy. A boy is not a boy, a boy is never a boy. A boy is potential. Ehede was just a boy, and now he will be nothing else. I don’t know what to think, but the pigeons know that I am thinking. They knowing too much. First one looking at me, then another, then all of them. I pull my knife, counting how many throats I will have to cut.
Bird shrieks and fly off, so I look up. But then the ground shudder and that didn’t come from sky. Boom the ground go again and more birds take off from branches above. The posts are jerking up and down, stomping into the ground and causing the rumble. The boys don’t move. Above, the branches and leaves twist and turn and sway and break, even though there is no storm wind. The posts are still jerking and stomping, leaning left then right, and then just so, canopy sink down then rise back up, and something black, like hands, start to rip away the leaves. A shrieking rush through the air and hit my ears. The posts, already tall as trees, now reveal more, a lower leg as long as the leg, another just as long going up into the ceiling that threaten to drop again. I stand there looking at this confounding house when I see the house looking at me. Those joints are joints but those posts are not posts. The black fuzz is not fuzz. The shriek is not wind slipping through tight space. The black arms ripping away leaves are arms, swinging from the sides of black body with a black head with one giant horn at the back. He rip away the last branches to show all of himself, and below his belly sprout a huge, fat bulb like the end of a wasp. Spider. This can’t be, I know I say out loud. But here he is, the darkchild, the black spider boy, now both man and spider and ten times taller than the last time I see him. Not a face but a snout, with only the red eyes left over from a boy’s face. Three houses stacked on top of each other still wouldn’t be as tall as him.
He can’t remember me, I whisper over and over. He can’t remember me, he won’t remember me, he can’t remember me. He see me and shriek. I run but there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. He break free from the last branches and chase. I want to look back, I want to see the small trees and branches he is breaking apart. I head for the one patch of trees, hoping it would slow him down, but the crackling, breaking, shrieking, and stomping is coming up right behind me. Dagger, machete, and a stick, what in all the fucks I going to do with a dagger, machete, and a stick? He catching up to me, his shadow is upon me already. A post fall out of sky and jab the ground right in front of me. I run into it hard, and fall back on the ground. I scramble backward, under him. His body, the shell moving and locking, the legs scrambling like they each have their own mind. I try to run, hoping that a body this large take too long to turn, but he just turn his head and scramble backward after me. I come to a patch of trees hoping to hide under them, but he climb over and catch me on the other side. He kick out one of his legs, which hit me in the back, sweep me up in the air, and toss me off into some wild bush. Then just so, dust whip up—no, he is whipping up the dust and is not until it settle that I see that he spin around. A hand come out the dust and punch me down. Wind blowing the dust away. My wind not coming though I am begging and screaming for it. He lower himself and bend over until his head right over me. No face, just the eyes. Two long fangs where the mouth would be, and between them his feelers start to rattle. Then he lunge, his fangs snapping, and I swing the machete. He jump back quick. I run and don’t get far before something wet hit my back leg, wet and milky that run hard in a blink. He hit me with his web, and was reeling me back in. I know I am screaming, I know it. He pull me right back under him and as I get near he bend over again and I close my eyes and swing the machete. It chop something, which fall to the ground. He scream this time. I open my eyes to see hand on the ground. He waving his arms wild, but from the wound something sprouting already. I run while I watch him regrow. I can’t beat this spider, I have nothing. His pillar leg knock me down hard then pin one of my hands, crushing it into the dirt. I swing the machete but this time he slap it out of my hand. My legs go wet again, his web sticking me to the dirt. His face is right in front of mine now, his feelers rattling and his claws snapping. But his eyes look at me curious. I not his enemy, I am his food. One of his arms is pinning my free hand, two are on my face. One is growing back. His hand is stroking my face, poking against my eye, nose, and then shoving in my mouth, which kill the screaming. Each hand, three fingers covered in fuzz, he grab my mouth and pull it open wide, so wide that my lips stretch to tearing. His feelers separate and from a small hole a juice start to drip out. I try to flail, try to shift, try to bawl out, kick, shake, scream, twist, but nothing there is I can do. The first drop miss my mouth but hit my shoulder and it is like a flame burst on my skin. I know I am screaming no. I know he is trying to get this burning liquid down my mouth so he can turn my insides into juice and suck me out. All I see is the back of his hands now as he hold my mouth open.
Then he bawl out something, not a shriek but a scream. I smell it first, the harsh stink, hear it first, the crackle and whip, then see it only when the spider see it for himself, his back leg burning. He jump off me and try to rub it in the dust, and he is so huge that it look like a tent collapsing over me. The spider covered in fuzz and the fuzz catching like brushfire. He run, trip over his own legs as they burst into flame, roll, and tumble, trying to get to the stream but collapsing first.
I dash dirt on my shoulder to stop the burning. It stop the juice eating my flesh but not the pain.
“How long you see him there killing me?”
“I . . . I . . . I not supposed to mess in your mess. I not supposed to. I supposed to chronicle, no matter what come to pass. I . . .”
This really shake him. Not just what he see, but that he go against what man like him doing for hundred of years. Thanking him for what he did would just hammer down that he do it. I remember the boy, the one with the ring in his nose. The drummer is away from the tree and still drumming, in a trance like all the boys, with his eyes open but not seeing. None of them did even budge. I press the tip of the dagger to the boy’s throat and this boy, but not just he, but the other boys all around him and the drummer all crumble to ash.
“Decoy!” I shout and run to the canoe. The griot was standing by ready to push off. “They set a decoy,” I shout again. I know, he say. The sun was shimmering on the sea and blinding me. Soon come noon. I was waiting around throughout the night for signs and wonders when evil was coming at noon. And this griot. I shouting at the fool that now is not the time to write, but he still scratching on animal skin with a stick and, fuck the gods, blood. I ask whose blood but he don’t answer.
“Watch the birds!” I shout and point up, but then I look up and learn something. That black cloud was not pigeons, but crows. The sight leave my eyes and sit inside my mind. When the Aesi attack my house he come with a legion of crows. Popele was a fool and so was I, for pigeon might be the sign of the Sangomin, but crows are the sign of the Aesi. And that black cloud of crows already gone from the island to the shore. Paddle! I shout to the griot but he still scratching away on the skin and gone deaf to me. A rumble come up from the water and the waves start to go wild. But I was going to find that boy and those birds were going to lead me to him. Waves were breaking against the boat, twisting us left and right like the slave ship, but as each wave pass I could see the shore. First nothing, then a wave rise like a hill that I had to row over. On the shore, still nobody. Then another wave, higher than the first, that almost flip the boat as it go over. And on the shore . . .
. . . A woman. It look like a woman. Tall, I could tell from far, naked, shiny, and black from head to toe, black like pitch, like tar. Shock take my voice and fright silence the griot. Fright, fury, pumping my chest, robbing me of the voice to even whisper her name. The woman carrying a boy in her arms like she about to place him on a table, the boy white from head to foot and loose, not like he is dead but asleep. His head leaning against her chest. And so they be, she standing at the shore looking at me, the boy like a baby asleep. Row, I shout to the griot, who is scratching words on the skin like he is about to cut through it. Sea water blind my eyes, then burn them, and when I see them again, the black tar woman is still holding the boy. The boy nudge his head against her chest and wake up. He look at her and my boat finally pick up speed and my shoulder burn from pain. The boy look at her again, then turn to look at us and then burst into a glow. Brighter, whiter, bri—
Quiet is growing thick in the room and taking away the air. All I can do is clutch my right shoulder at the burn scars that I thought were a large, nasty birthmark. Popele start talking.
“I say it before that for three years they call the North King Liongo the Good. Nobody call him that after his third year, nobody even remember other than the pages of the southern griots. Because right at the beginning of the fourth year there was Aesi, grown as a man can grow and right behind Liongo. Oh he good in his way, Liongo, he try to be. He even fight the Aesi influence better than anybody. But he bring the Sangomin back to court after Moki the Wicked banish them. And he more brutal in conquest and war than any King before. And when Paki succeed him but die after one year and his brother Aduware become King, there was the Aesi right beside him, the mentor yet again chancellor. And when Aduware die after twenty and five years and Netu turn King, who is there with him? The Aesi, looking like he don’t age a day, much less a generation. Then the Aesi die. We don’t know how, for by then no southern griot allowed in the Fasisi court. But somebody was writing, somebody was always writing. Then the same thing happen that happen with you. Eight years after he die he is born again, and twelve years after that, there is the Aesi, the second four limbs of the Spider King, right by Kwash Netu’s side as if he never leave. Again he ageless. Again nobody make note, this time not even the southern griots, for by now Kwash Netu and Dara hunting down all the griots and killing them. And the Sangomin, after centuries of doing the Aesi’s bidding, he banish them too. Many a witch laugh at that, I can tell you. Many a worshipper of the water spirits as well. Now people from city to village know that if a mingi child is born best you kill him or a Sangoma will find him. And now we in the age where Netu dead and Kwash Dara is King and still the Aesi—”
I pull three arrow at once and fire them, one two three, into Popele. She stagger back hard but didn’t fall. I go to pull two more, but Nsaka Ne Vampi grab two throwing daggers from the gods know where. Popele raise her hand and she stay. She pull the arrows out of her chest and side, and I hear the holes close up.
“You was the one on the shore,” I say.
“No.”
“He write it down right there. Something about you was stinking up my head from the moment I meet you.”
“Why plot to stop him, only to save him?”
“Black bitch, your name down on the fucking goatskin.”
“Many move with the name Popele.”
“That is your answer?”
“Believe it or don’t. But calling me Popele is like calling a man master, or a woman queen. I am called Bunshi, Popele is what man call all in my clan. Many moving about with that name. Not all of them working for good in this world.”
“So none of you can be trusted.”
“Believe or not—”
“Not. I choose not. Telling people that danger is a boy when the real threat is that you can’t even control your fucking kin. Who look exactly like you, something you didn’t feel to tell anybody.”
“We don’t look alike.”
“Alike enough, you stupid tar bitch. You know what? I don’t even care.”
“Your great-great-granddaughter was about to kill you for trying to kill me.”
“She was about to try,” I say.
“Blood mean to you same that it mean to me,” Nsaka Ne Vampi say. “Popele, we—”
“Stop calling her that, like you worship her. Anyway, what happen next?” I ask.
“Next? Next we need to restore the—”
“I look like I talking to you?” I say to Bunshi, then turn to Ikede. “What happen next?”
This griot is trying to not look at Bunshi, trying to get some direction from her face.
“She your fucking master? I say, what happen next?”
“We don’t have it, a master library. Somebody . . . somebody wise decide long time ago that if all the writing was in one place, all it take is one flame and hundreds of years burn to nothing just like so. The writing, it is scattered, from place to place, paper to paper, sometimes not on papers, sometimes on walls in the caves, or on goatskin or swineskin, one of us take to tattooing it on his body and another scar out an entire verse on his chest.”
“Talk plain, old man.”
“It take near a hundred years just for five griots to see that there is written four parts to this same story. ‘One morning I wake up under the great monument in Omororo and have no recollection how I get there. I say to myself it is I, Bolom. What is the meaning of me waking up with beggars? I know I am a southern griot, and I know that goatskin on my chest has writing, but I don’t remember writing it. Count it now, three days since. I leave it now, in the Omororo hall of records with another griot, who don’t care about any business of the North.’ That was the last thing the goatskin say.”
“One man born and everybody forget the world?”
“No. If he touch you—”
“You watch what you mean by ‘touch.’ ”
“I mean if your life and his ever tangle, you forget that he was in it. The mind is a tricky thing. Memory even trickier. If your memory find a loose strand it will find a way to tie it. Which is why you think poachers kill your son when is the Aesi who kill him.”
“I making tracks,” I say.
“I opened the window,” Nsaka Ne Vampi say.
“Cunt, you think you cute?”
“You look like you need air. We all need—”
“I don’t care what you all need.”
“Sogolon, I know—”
“Stop telling me what you fucking know! You understand me? I don’t care what you fucking know. So what this is, this secret meeting like you all plotting big things. A nothing sprite, a nothing griot, and she who is nothing to me.”
“You fool, we can still change the world,” Bunshi say.
“You know what you not changing? My mind.”
“I told you two this was a waste of time. She living in bush and talking to monkey for over a hundred years,” say Nsaka Ne Vampi.
“Yeah? And why they don’t listen to you?”
“Because according to she, you been there. You been in the Court of Kings. You know what is at stake because you see it yourself.”
“Court of Kings? I been in the Court of Kings?”
“You used to be right there with the King of Fasisi. They have more to tell you, but you don’t . . . Bunshi, make we leave. Leave her.”
“Bunshi?” I say.
“We need her.”
“No we don’t.”
“You know what I tired of?” she shout. Bunshi shout so loud that the floor shake. And she grow too, taller and don’t stop growing till her head near bump the ceiling and her shadow creep across it. Fins pop out of her elbows and her hands turn sharp as knives. Truth, she look like a shark.
“I tired of explaining,” she say.
“I can still kill you,” I say.
“Before or after I turn into a mist and reform in your lungs? Or your heart? You think only you can make man explode? You was there, woman, when you was just a girl. You was there when Kwash Moki disrupt the line of kings and drive this whole North into decadence and wickedness. Not even Liongo the Good was good enough to stop it. Every King destroy his oldest sister or send her to Mantha as a nun. They been doing it so long they don’t even know why. Kwash Moki’s father was the last true King to sit on the throne in Fasisi, and nothing in the North going be good until a true King rule again.”
