“You are here to meet him in Dolingo.”
“And he is not in Dolingo. Where is the witch? Does she listen? Does she have your ear, or are you just the fat echo of more important voices?”
He hissed.
“Yes it is said I have a nose, but nobody told you I also have a mouth,” I said.
“If I go, I will return with—”
“With your instruments. Your words scared me more the first time.”
I stood up. Even with the chain on my neck, and me having nowhere to go, the chancellor jumped a little.
“I will speak to neither you nor your Queen. Only the witch.”
“I have the authority—”
“Only the witch, or start your torture.”
He hiked his agbada off his feet and left me alone.
Though I smelled her coming, she still took me by surprise. The door across from my cell opened and she came through. Two guards followed, several paces behind. The one with keys, he opened the gate and gave her wide space. Guards trying to not show fear for the Moon Witch. She sat in the dark.
“I know you wonder it,” she said. “You wonder why you never see a single child in Dolingo.”
“I wonder why I never killed you when I had the chance.”
“Some cities rear cattle, other cities grow wheat. Dolingo grow men, and not in no natural way. You do not need an explanation and it would take years to tell you. This is what you should know, for moon after moon, year after year, a cluster of years after cluster of years, the seed and the wombs of the Dolingon become useless. What is not barren breeds monsters unspeakable in look. Bad seed going into bad wombs, the same families, over and over, and the Dolingon go from the most wise of children to the most foolish. It take them fifty years to say to one another, Look at us, we need new seed and new wombs.”
“Tell me there will be monsters in this boring tale.”
“It greater than magic. If she conceive, they snatch him, take him into the trunk. He is the tap and they drain the tap. Drain him until he is dead. But that is only for who will be in the royal line. Other men they catch, and drain and kill for the rest of the people. Even your Ogo, whose seed useless, their scientist and witchman can make it sow and breed.”
“So the citadel should be infested with children, then. They’re hiding them?”
“Then they take the child before it born and store them in the great womb, and feed them and grow them, until they as big as you. Only then, they born. But they healthy and they live long.”
“A man as old as me saying babababa and shitting himself twice a day. This is the great Dolingo.”
“It be two days now. Where the boy?”
“No children, no slaves, no travelers either. You knew this. You knew this ever since the map showed that the next door led to Dolingo.”
“Nobody get safe passage in Dolingo,” she said. “You see how their head full of nothing but thinking. It take many beggings, papers, and a treaty just to pass through the main street. Look at the magnificence of the citadel. You think they get that by allowing anybody to pass through and steal their secrets? No, fool. They use anyone who come down their streets for breeding, and kill whoever they can’t put to use.”
“You sent those pigeons to tell her you were coming. With gifts.”
“Why they so long in Wakadishu?”
“Me and the prefect and the Ogo.”
“Why they don’t come?” she asked.
“Maybe Wakadishu women have more meat and more blood. Are you not a southern woman?”
“The Aesi is already on caravan to Dolingo.”
“Somebody betrayed you? What say you to that, Sogolon?”
“You do nothing but joke.”
“And you do nothing but betray.”
“Two Dolingos there was. Just as there was a Malakal before Malakal. Old Dolingo, they never have queen, or king, they have a grand counsel, all of them men. Why put the whole realm in the hand of just one man, they say the people tell them, which was a lie, for they never ask people nothing. These men, they say, Why put our future in the palm of one man? Come soon, or come late, if you put power in a man’s hand, he going make a fist. Forget king and queen, build a counsel of our smartest men. Soon the smartest men listen to only the smartest men and soon they turn fool. Soon everything from where to collect shit, and who to fight war, take them men so long that shit run down the streets and they nearly lose in war with the four sisters of the South. Ten and two man and when they agree, nobody can see beyond their arrogance. When they don’t have accord they fight and fight and people starve and die, and always they so arrogant, thinking that mean they wise. And the people of Dolingo realize a true thing. A beast with ten and two head not ten and two times the wiser. He a monster shouting down himself. So Dolingo kill ten and one and make the last one King.”
“They’re still frightened over a great flood that never set loose,” I said.
“Now they the envy of the nine worlds. Every king want to ally with them, every king want to conquer them. But the first wise decree from the King? Dolingo will fight no war and have no enemy, no matter who. They sell to the good and the wicked.”
“This story was neither good nor short.”
“I tell Amadu he need none of you. Any five or six warriors and a hound. You is the only one I need, but even you is a fool. Every single one of you a fool. Spend so much time growl, and scowl like hungry hyena, none of you have time to find your own shit, much less a boy. You want to know what Kongor is to me? Kongor is where man teach me him true use. And even the last thing he good for a candlestick do it better.”
“Yet you help to find a boy who will be a man,” I said.
“But you know what I do? You know what I do? I take the greatest revenge. I bury every single one of you. Every single one. I was at every deathbed. Every mishap. Every plague of bad spirits. Every death turn. And I laugh. And if the knife was only halfway in, I push it deeper. Or I travel in the air and infect your mind. And I still living. I bury you and your son and your son’s son. And will I live. I … I …” She stopped and looked around the cell as if it were the first time she was seeing it.
“Wherever you just went to, maybe go back,” I said.
“What a day wh—”
“When a man tells you what to do. Don’t you have enough spirits in your head doing that already?”
“We talking about you.”
“You talking about everyone but me. Look at what all you do. Fellowship tear apart before it even come together in the valley. Three of you go off in the Darklands and one have to follow because you is man and man never listen. Delay we by one whole moon.”
“So you sold us off.”
“So I get you out of the way.”
“And yet look at me, and look at you. One of us has a nose and the other one still needs it,” I said.
“One of we in chains and one of we not.”
“You never learned how to ask a favor.”
“The Queen will treat you and the prefect and the Ogo better than concubines.”
“Will she give us each a palace that she never visits?”
“All my life men telling me this would be the life above all lives. Well here come the Queen of Dolingo saying, That is all you have to be for however long you live. From how man talk, this should be the greatest gift.”
“Would be much greater if the man get to choose it.”
“So now you is like a woman in all things. How it feel?”
“Have the griots sing you a song about your victory over man.”
“Man? You just a nose.”
“A nose for which you still find use.”
“Yes, a nose that may still to come to use. The rest of you just in the way. And when I get the boy, know that you help bring back the natural order to the North. Let that feed you as you settle the rest of your living days here.”
“Here where everything is unnatural. A devil’s fuck for the North.”