Here is my belief. The first man was jealous of the first woman. Her lightning was too powerful, her screams and moans loud enough to wake up the dead. That man could never accept that the gods would gift the weaker woman with such riches, so before every girl becomes a woman, man sets up to steal it, cut it away, and throw it in the bush. But the gods put it there, hid it deep so that no man would have business going to find it. Man will pay for this.
I have seen more than these things.
The day was out, but the sun was hiding. Kava said we go into the bush and shall not be back for more than a moon. I thought good, for everything in me was growing sick from the thought of family. Of anything Ku. I thought if I stayed here much longer I would turn myself into a Gangatom, and start killing until there was a hole in the village as big as the hole I see when I close my eyes. A dead thing never lies, cheats, or betrays, and what was a family but a place where all three bloom like moss. “As long as it takes for my uncle to miss me, then,” I said.
I hoped it was a hunt. I wanted to kill. But I was still afraid of the viper, and Kava stepped through bowing trees and kneeling plants and dancing flowers as if he knew where to go. Twice I was lost, twice his white hand pushed through thick leaves and grabbed me.
“Keep walking and shed your burden,” Kava said.
“What?”
“Your burden. Let nothing stop you and you will shed it like snakeskin.”
“The day I heard I have a brother is the day I lost a brother. The day I learned I had a father is the day I lost a father. The day I heard I had a grandfather was the day I heard he was a coward who fucks my mother. And I hear nothing of her. How do I shed such skin?”
“Keep walking,” he said.
We walked through bush, and swamp, and forest, and a huge salt plain with hot cracked white dirt until daylight ran away from us. Every moment in the bush jolted me and I fell asleep and jumped awake all night. The next day, after some long walking, and me complaining about long walking, I heard footsteps above me in the trees and looked up. Kava said he had followed us since we turned south. I did not know we were heading south. Up above us in the tree was a black leopard. We walked and he walked. We stopped and he stopped. I clutched my spear but Kava looked up and whistled. The Leopard jumped down in front of us, stared hard and long, growled, then ran off. I said nothing, for what could be said to someone who had just spoken to a Leopard? We went farther south. The sun moved to the center of the gray sky but the jungle was thick with leaves and bush, and cold. And birds with their wakakakaka and kawkawkawkaw. We came upon a river, gray like sky and moving slow. New plants popped out of a fallen tree that bridged one side of the river to the other. Halfway across there rose out of the water two ears, eyes, nostrils, and one head as wide as a boat. The hippopotamus followed us with her eyes. Her jaws swung open wide, her head split in two, and she roared. Kava turned around and hissed at her. She sunk back under the river. Sometimes we caught up to the Leopard, and he would run off farther into the forest. He waited for us whenever we fell too far back. Though the bush got colder, I sweated more.
“We climb,” I said.
“We climb from before the sun gone west,” he said. We are on a mountain.
You only need to be told down is up for down to change. I was not walking south, I was walking up. The mist came down on the ground and floated through the air. Twice I thought it was spirits. Water dripped from leaves and the ground felt damp.
“We are not far,” he said, right before I asked.
I thought we were searching for a clearing, but we went deeper in the bush. Branches swung around and hit me in the face, vines wrapped around my legs to pull me down, trees bent over to look at me and each line in their barks was a frown. And Kava started talking to leaves. And cursing. The moonlight boy had gone mad. But he was not talking to leaves but to people hiding underneath them. A man and a woman, skin like Kava’s ash, hair like silver earth, but no taller than your elbow to your middle finger. Yumboes, of course. Good fairies of the leaves, but I did not know then. They were walking on branches until Kava grabbed a branch and they climbed his arms up to his shoulders. Both of them had hair on their backs, and eyes that glowed. The male sat on Kava’s right shoulder, the female on the left. The man reached into a sack and pulled out a pipe. I stayed behind until my jaw came back up to my mouth, watching tall Kava, two halflings, one leaving a thick trail of pipe smoke.
“A boy?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“Is he hungry?”
“We feed him berries, and hog milk. A little blood,” said the woman. They both sounded like children.
For a long time walking all I saw was Kava’s back. I smelled the baby’s dried vomit before he got to him, sitting up on a dead anthill, flower in his mouth, his lips and cheek red. Kava kneeled before the baby, and the little man and woman jumped off his shoulder. Kava took up the baby in his arms and asked for water. Water, he said again, and looked at me. I remembered that I was carrying his waterskins. He poured some in his palm and fed the child. The little man and woman both carried over a gourd with a little hog’s milk left. I was over Kava’s shoulder when the baby smiled, two top teeth like a mouse’s, gums everywhere else.
“Mingi,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
He started walking, with the baby, not answering me. Then he stopped.
“The gods had no watchful eye on him,” the little man said. “We could not …” He did not finish.
I didn’t see until we passed the sweet stink of it. Two little feet peeking out of the bush, the bottoms of the feet blue. Flies raising nasty music. The last meal threatened to come up through my mouth. The sweet stink followed us even when we had gone very far. A bad smell, like a good one, can follow you into tomorrow. Then it rained a little and the trees sent the smell of fruit down to us. Kava hid the baby’s face with his hand. He spoke before I asked.
“Do you not see his mouth?”
“His mouth is a baby’s mouth, like every other baby’s mouth.”
“Too old to be such a fool,” Kava said.
“You don’t know my age and neither—”
“Quiet. The boy is mingi, also the dead girl. In his mouth, you saw two teeth. But they were on the top, not bottom; that is why he is mingi. A child whose top teeth come before bottom teeth is a curse and must be destroyed. Or else that curse spreads to the mother, the father, the family and brings drought, famine, and plague to the village. Our elders declared it so.”
“The other one. Were his teeth also—”
“There are many mingi.”
“This is the talk of old women. Not the talk of cities.”
“What is a city?”
“What are the other mingi?”
“We walk now. We walk more.”
“Where?”
The Leopard jumped out of the bush and the little people ran behind Kava. He growled, looked behind him, and roared. I thought he wanted Kava to hand him the baby.
The Leopard crouched down on the ground, then rolled on his back, and stretched and shook like he had a sickness. He growled again like a dog hit with a stone. His front legs grew long but the back legs grew longer. His back widened and sucked up his tail. The fur vanished but he was still hairy. He rolled until we saw a man’s face, but eyes still yellow and clear like sand struck by lightning. Hair on his head black and wild, going down his temple and his cheek. Kava looked at him as if in the world one always sees these things.
“This is what happens when we move too late,” the black Leopard said.
“The baby would still be dead, even if we had run,” Kava said.