Jackal, Jackal, page 25
It wasn’t until he stood outside the dusty windows that he realized where his feet had carried him. Gaza pushed open the door and stepped into the dank shop.
Laila was in the middle of preparing a tincture. She started to snarl at whoever had intruded when she saw him. A look of shame passed across her papery features.
“Why?” said Gaza, limping towards her. “You’re one of us. Why would you side with them? Why would you let them take her?”
“She was in pain,” she mumbled. “One so young shoont ‘ave to suffer so much.”
“That’s why I came to you! To cure her. I don’t understand why you couldn’t just...” something clicked into place in his mind. “How much?” he asked.
Laila looked away, looked down at her hands, which she had folded neatly on the counter.
“How much did my daughter’s life cost?”
“Thirty pieces,” she said, still not meeting his eyes. “Thirty pieces of silver.”
Gaza burst into laughter; a long hyena-like cackle that belonged to the veld. Pain spasmed through his jaw as he laughed, but he couldn’t help himself. “Thirty pieces!” he choked, wiping tears from his eyes.
Laila reached into the folds of her skirt and produced a fat brown pouch, tinkling with coins. “Take it.”
Gaza was overcome by fresh gales of laughter. He didn’t know which was worse, that his daughter had been priced for such a meagre sum, or that the woman was trying to give it to him.
“No,” he growled. “I will not absolve you. You will think of her when you spend that money. You will know that you condemned a child to die.”
He turned to leave.
“There is no more Asha’s Tears,” Laila said as he pushed open the door. “Has not been many seasons. Alchemists took too much. The tree died.”
Gaza stumbled out of the shop, numb with shock, with pain, with despair. Of course, there were no more Tears. Of course, they took too much. That was all they were good for. They took and took until there was nothing left. They had taken the prosperity of Nyss, and now they had taken his daughter from him.
It was dark by the time Gaza found his way back home. The door still hung by its broken hinge, clacking as it swung in the breeze. The room was still in disarray, signs of struggle everywhere.
He limped towards the bedroom where he found the miniature city in ruins: buildings trampled, people lying crushed, mechanical innards spilling out. In some of the buildings the lights flickered on and off, as if trying to wrest some semblance of order amid all the chaos. It looked like the aftermath of war. Like the aftermath of the Conquest of Nyss.
Gaza returned to the living room, then stopped dead in his tracks.
In the middle of the room stood a plant. A single white shoot which barely reached his chest, but a plant nonetheless. And at the end of the slender stalk hung a single tear-shaped fruit.
“What in the world?” he wheezed, limping slowly towards the plant. He had missed it when he passed, but his eyes were now adjusted to the dark, and there was no denying what he was seeing.
Gaza dropped to his knees. It made no sense. Hadn’t people tried over millennia to regrow the tree? Hadn’t they failed? And yet, here it was in his living room, sprouting from the floorboards! Around the young roots he could see dark wet marks, as though the floorboard had been soaked by water...or tears.
And from where her tears fell sprouted a tree.
“Ufa...” he breathed as he plucked the fruit. It was warm and soft in his palm. And as he sat there in the dark, turning the golden fruit in his hands, Ufa’s voice came loud and clear to him: It is a wishing tree, papa. You make a wish as you eat the fruit, and it becomes true.
With trembling hands, Gaza brought the fruit to his mouth and bit into it.
Then he made a wish.
THE GOATKEEPER’S HARVEST
The wind shrieks its displeasure as it rattles the house, rattles it like a child in the throes of a tantrum, and we, little gnats in this container of brick and mud, tumble from our huddle by the table. The awful shriek reaches a peak of fury, and within it I hear the abominable voices of Eleran’s children.
Ebun buries her face in my breasts, breath hot and moist against my skin. “I’m scared, Mama.”
I’m scared too. I’m scared of the wind and what it means, the dark and what it brings. I’m scared for the last bit of wood in the oven and how quickly it burns, the smoke thick in the air like an oppressive blanket, smothering us and smelling strangely of goat.
We all hear the sound: the frantic scratching of nails (or hooves?) on wood. Ebun stiffens against me; Teju’s eyes grow wide in his skull, and as one we swivel towards the door.
“It’s me. Open quickly!”
Ebun has squirmed out my arms and is bolting for the door before I recognize the voice.
“No! Stop her!” I yell.
Teju dives for Ebun as she races past him, tackling her to the ground in a tangle of limbs and bellows.
“Quickly!” says the voice. “I’ve brought help, like I promised. Open the door, we don’t have much time.”
Ebun is sobbing in the corner. I want to sob too, will give anything to curl up in a ball and join her. But I’m her mother, and what is a mother’s job if not to protect her children, to put on a brave face and make them feel as safe as possible?
I turn to the door, forcing a cheer I’m lacking into my voice. “Hello, Yomi. Are the elders with you?”
“Yes! Now open the door.” More scratches on the wood. Frantic. Mad.
“Use the key, Yomi.”
Silence. Even the wind has quieted somewhat, as though it too were listening in. “What?”
I look up at the charm dangling over the lintel, a small cylindrical bundle dark with dried blood. So long as it’s there, we’re safe. It doesn’t matter how hard the wind rattles the house, how awful those screams sound, the things out there cannot get in...unless I open the door. Unless I invite them in.
“The key,” I gasp, heart thrumming in my ears. “You said never to open the door for anyone—especially anyone who sounds like you. You have a key, Yomi.”
“Oh yes, that’s true!” says the voice (is it Yomi? Please let it be Yomi) “And I’m happy you remember all I’ve told you. But I’ve lost my key—”
A deep, demonic wail drowns out his voice. Ebun screams and buries her head in her lap and Teju rushes over to comfort her. My hand reaches for the bolt. That is Yomi out there and I can’t leave him alone. Yomi is still talking, voice warping into something else, strained from terror, from desperation—or is it all an act, a clever ruse? I never know what they can do, the children of Eleran, but Yomi told me explicitly to never ever open—
The door bulges in its frame and I leap back as Yomi starts screaming. “OPEN THE DOOR! PLEASE! THEY’RE—!”
The thunder of hooves drown out his voice and I can’t tell if it’s the wind still screaming or him.
“Do you think that was Yomi?” Teju asks.
We’re crowded in the upstairs bedroom, that little room the kids shared before Teju decided he was now a man and couldn’t share a room with a girl. He doesn’t look much of a man now, his worried eyes searching mine for answers, for reassurance. How will I tell him that I don’t have the answers? That I also need reassurance? That I wish someone were here to make it all go away. That I wish I hadn’t killed that goat.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Ebun is curled beneath the covers, thumb in mouth as she sleeps off her fright while Teju and I hunch protectively over her. Her baby face is crinkled, as though the terrors of the night have followed into her dreams. And is it me or does her halo of hair seem flatter, shinier? I shake my head, rub my eyes. The wind no longer rocks the house in attack, but the silence is even worse, unnatural. And then there are the boarded-up windows which plunge the house into perpetual darkness, which doesn’t allow us to see outside, see them. The house feels like a coffin.
“That wasn’t Yomi,” Teju says, trying for bravery. For conviction.
We sit there listening to Ebun breathe, watching the lantern grow dim.
I’m in the large barn, tying freshly harvested yam tubers in neat rows for storage. It’s hard work. I’m caked in dirt, and my forearms bear deep bloody grooves where unruly yam stalks scratched me. The things terrified me as a child, the way they grew like the antennae of some chitinous alien creature, purplish and twitching. Now they are nothing more than nuisance to be clipped off the tubers before they are stored away.
Old hinges squeak in protest as the barn swings open, followed by a blast of hot air from the blazing noonday. The cool barn, specially built with adobe and oak to preserve the tubers as long as possible, is being eroded by hot air. I expect to hear the squeak of hinges as the barn door shuts, but it never comes; the doors are left open for the hot afternoon air to rush in. And I know it’s Teju and his ne’er-do-well friends up to some mischief as usual. The hurried scuffle of feet on the wood-shaving covered floor confirms my suspicions, and I take a deep breath to yell at them when I hear the bleat.
“Ah, ah–”
I drop what I’m doing and hurry through endless rows of yams towards the sounds—bleating and more hurried scuffle on the wood shavings—turning round the bend to find five munching goats.
The goats, skinny beyond comprehension, have somehow managed to unravel the rope binding a stack of tubers—the fraying end of the rope where they gnawed at it lies limp like a ripped artery. For a moment I stand, grossly stupefied, staring at the animals as they go to town on the tubers, jostling each other around, crunching into the yams, jaws shifting in that weird animal side-to-side way as they masticate.
In all my years in this town I’ve never seen a goat. Oke-Aanu is a town of farmers and potters and carpenters. But no one keeps livestock, not even birds; if you want meat you hop in the truck and travel two hours to Maraba where the mallams try to cheat you out of as much money as they can for one kilo of stale meat. And yet here are five black goats, munching with abandon on my hard-earned harvest. A harvest which is unusually dismal on account of that strange rot.
“Shoo!” I scream, flapping my arms. “Go away! Away!”
It’s as if I’m not there, as though they can’t hear me; the goats continue to feast with abandon. One spares me a look, and in its black eyes I see nothing but contempt.
“Go away!” I yell again, kicking at them. They bleat in protest, moving lethargically, bumping stupidly into each other, dancing around the ruin of yam tubers. But they don’t run for the door, only avoid my flying feet as they continue their feast. The nerve. The disrespect. They’re hideous things, these goats, these intruders, and they infuriate me.
A rake rests on the nearby shelf next to the sea of rusted farm tools. I grab it by the toothy end and swing for the cluster of invaders.
There’s a satisfying crack as the long handle connects with the rump of a goat. It squeals, a sound eerily human in its agony, and bolts for the door.
The goats scatter. Bleating, climbing over each other in their bid to escape the sweeping rake.
“That’s it!” I scream, “run you little shits and don’t come back here.”
I chase them to the barn doors where an old woman stands, resting against a herding stick. A single fading ankara piece drapes across her torso. The goats hide behind her like petulant children, peeking out and bleating in different octaves. It almost feels like they’re telling her exactly what happened, communicating their discontent.
“What’s this?” I pant. The little exercise has me short of breath. “Are these your goats?”
“My children,” she says.
“What?”
“These are my children.”
The goats circle the woman’s feet, scuffling for the place closest to her, almost like...well, children. And all the while their black eyes never leave me, baleful stares weighing down on me as if to say, you’re in trouble now.
“Well, madam, your—children—broke into my barn and were eating my yams. Shouldn’t you be—I don’t know—watching them?”
“They’re hungry.”
I open my mouth in indignation, then close it. Try again. “So you led them here deliberately. To eat my yams?”
The woman stands well away from me, so I only just notice the faint wisps of coarse black hair on her lips and chin. There’s something not quite right about her face. Too angular, perhaps, or too disproportional...I can’t place my finger on it.
“My children are many,” she says. “They number in their thousands. They’re always hungry.”
Something about her tone, the words themselves, sends a chill down my spine.
She moves suddenly, brushing past and startling me into immobility. When I regain myself she is already in the barn, disappearing round the corner.
“Hey! You can’t just—”
I hurry after her, growing increasingly flustered with each passing moment, unable to shake the feeling that something is seriously afoot. I find her in the bend where her goats (children) had been violating my hard-earned harvest. And lying like an offering among the mess of half-eaten tubers and wood-filings is a dead goat.
“You killed my child.”
“What? No!” That’s when I see the blood on my hands, thick and clumped with tufts of goat fur on my forearms, my dirty jeans, the old leather of my apron. “Th—this is—”
The strength expires from my arms, and the rake drops to the floor, teeth bloody with the proof of my guilt. How did this happen? “No! I didn’t do this!”
The four black goats cluster around their fallen sibling (where did they come from? I didn’t see them reenter the barn) There’s something organized and unanimal-like about their movement. I want to scream, but something has eaten my voice.
The woman bends and scoops the dead goat into her arms, scoops it as lovingly as a mother with her dead child.
“A goat for a goat,” she says, then turns and walks away, her children scuttling in her wake.
I wake to the sound of screaming. It takes me a moment to reorient, to register the cramped space of the children’s room, the dim lantern, the cords in Teju’s neck as he screams.
I leap off the rocking chair, fall to the floor as my stiff muscles spasm. My eyes water with pain, still I manage to gasp a “What’s wrong?” For one wild moment I’m convinced the house has been breached—Eleran and her thousand young flooding the house. But Teju is looking at the bed, eyes wide with horror and confusion, as he gabbles and points at a sleeping Ebun.
“What—”
Ebun is curled fetal, chest rising and falling as she sleeps, completely oblivious to the ruckus. She looks the same but for the two spiral mounds poking out of her tangle of hair, black and shiny and—
Goat horns.
The blood flows in patterns down the cracked basin drain as I wash my hands. There is so much blood. But where did it all come from? I never killed that goat. I know I chased them, hit them with the handle of the rake. But I didn’t kill that goat.
A soft knock raps on the door as I step out of the kitchen. I hastily wipe my hands on my apron and open the door.
Yomi is standing on my front porch. He’s not much to look at, a plain-looking young man, really. But he has come visiting twice every week ever since my husband passed away. He’s especially good to Ebun, and never fails to delight her with little treats and trinkets whenever he comes calling. Though he’s never explicitly stated it, I know his intentions are to woo me. And while he’s too young for me, lately I’ve been feeling stirrings, catching myself staring longingly at the path that leads to the farmhouse, hoping to see him coming. Feeling an embarrassing teenage flush at the sight of that crooked smile.
He’s not smiling now. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. And just like that, I know he knows what’s happened. “Tell me,” he says.
“There were goats in my barn.”
Yomi winces. “They’re not goats. Did you feed them?”
“I...” my throat clinches with fear. “I chased them away—I...one of them, I don’t know how it happened but it—died—”
Yomi’s eyes nearly bulge from his head. “Died?”
“She s—said I killed it. But I didn’t! I swear—”
“Oh no,” Yomi’s shaking his head side to side like a dog trying to get rid of flies. “No no no no no.”
“What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
Yomi massages his neck as if he’s choking, runs a hand through his hair.
“Yomi...you’re scaring me,”
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just you don’t know—”
“Tell me.”
“No, it’s best I—”
I grab him by the front of his shirt. “Tell me. Please.”
“Alright, alright,” he says, prying my hands from his shirt. “This entire area used to be a rocky desert. The story goes that this town was founded back in the fourteenth century by a family of exiles. From where they were exiled, we don’t know. But they came down from the mountains into this land, starved and near death. The patriarch decided he could not watch his family die, and in desperation called out in the wilderness for help. For three days and nights he called out to anything—anyone—who could help them. And on the third night, something answered.”
“The Goatkeeper,” I whisper. “Eleran.”
“One of its many names.” Yomi shudders. “The patriarch, he pleaded with this being for food for his family. Food for all of them, so that they may never lack, so they may survive out in the desert. Desperate, the gasps of his dying family in his ears, he made a Pact with this being— the first fruits of his harvest in exchange for bountiful harvest. For as long as we dwell in this land, and we left the first fruits of our harvest for Eleran and her children, we would never starve.”
