The Sangoma nodded at Giraffe Boy, who was also awake, and he stepped over sleeping children to get to the wall, where she had covered something with a white sheet. He grabbed it, she handed me a torch, and we all went outside. The girl was asleep, still gripping my neck. Outside was still deep dark. Giraffe Boy placed the figure on the ground and pulled away the sheet.
It stood there looking at us like a child. Cut from the hardest wood and wrapped in bronze cloth, with a cowrie in its third eye, feathers sticking out of its back, and tens of tens of nails hammered into its neck, shoulders, and chest.
“Nkisi?” I asked.
“Who show you one,” the Sangoma said, not as a question.
“In the tree of the witchman. He told me what they were.”
“This is nkisi nkondi. It hunts down and punishes evil. The forces of the otherworld are drawn to it instead of me; otherwise I would go mad and plot with devils, like a witch. There is medicine in the head and the belly.”
“The girl? She just had troubled sleep,” I said.
“Yes. And I have a message for the troubler.”
She nodded at Giraffe Boy, who pulled out a nail that had been hammered in the ground. He took a mallet and hammered it into the nkiski’s chest.
“Mimi naomba nguvu. Mimi naomba nguvu. Mimi naomba nguvu. Mimi naomba nguvu. Kurudi zawadi mara kumi.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
Giraffe Boy covered the nkisi, but we left it outside. I held the girl to put her down and she was solid to the touch. The Sangoma looked at me.
“Do you know why nobody attacks this place? Because nobody can see it. It is like poison vapor. The people who study evil know there is a place for mingi. But they do not know where it is. That does not mean they cannot send magics out on the air.”
“What did you do?”
“I returned the gift to the giver. Ten times over.”
From then I would wake up in blue smoke, the girl lying on my chest, sliding down my knee to my toes, sitting on my head. She loved sitting on my head when I was trying to walk.
“You are blinding me,” I would say.
But she just giggled and it sounded like breeze between leaves. I was annoyed and then I was not and then I just took it as it was, that at nearly all times there was a blue cloud of smoke on my head, or sitting on my shoulders.
Once, me and Smoke Girl went with Giraffe Boy out into the forest. We walked for so long that I did not notice we were no longer in the tree. In truth I was following the boy.
“Where do you go?” I asked.
“To find the flower,” he said.
“There are flowers everywhere.”
“I go to find the flower,” he said, and started skipping.
“A skip for you is a leap for us. Slow, child.”
The boy shuffled but I still had to walk swift.
“How long have you lived with the Sangoma?” I asked.
“I do not think long. I used to count days but they are so many,” he said.
“Of course. Most mingi are killed just days after birth, or right after the first tooth shows.”
“She said you will want to know.”
“Who, Sangoma?”
“She said he will want to know how I am mingi but so old.”
“And what is your answer?”
He sat down in the grass. I stooped and Smoke Girl scampered off my head like a rat.
“There is it. There is my flower.”
He picked up a small yellow thing about the size of his eye.
“Sangoma saved me from a witch.”
“A witch? Why would a witch not kill you as a baby?”
“Sangoma says that many would buy my legs for wicked craft. And a boy leg is bigger than a baby leg.”
“Of course.”
“Did your father sell you?” he said.
“Sell? What? No. He did not sell me. He is dead.”
I looked at him. I felt a need to smile at him, but I also felt false doing so.
“All fathers should die as soon as we are born,” I said.
He looked at me strange, with eyes like children who heard words parents should not have said.
“Let us name a stone after him, curse it, and bury it,” I said. Giraffe Boy smiled.
Say this about a child. In you they will always find a use. Say this as well. They cannot imagine a world where you do not love them, for what else should one do but love them? Ball Boy found out I had a nose. Kept rolling into me, almost knocking me over, and shouting, Find me! then rolling away.
“Keep eye sh—” he shouted, rolling over his mouth before saying shut.
I did not use my nose. He left a trail of dust along the dry mud path, and squashed grass in the bush. He also hid behind a tree too narrow for his wide ball of a body. When I jumped behind and said, I see you, he looked at my open eye and burst into crying, and bawling and screaming. And wailing, truly he did wail. I thought the Sangoma would come running with a spell and the Leopard would come running ready to rip me apart. I touched his face, I rubbed his forehead.
“No no no … I will … you hide again … I will give you … a fruit, no a bird … stop crying … stop crying … or I …”
He heard it in my voice, something like a threat, and cried even louder. So loud that he scared me more than demons. I thought to slap the cry out of his mouth but that would make me my grandfather.
“Please,” I said. “Please. I will give you all my porridge.”
He stopped crying in the quick.
“All?”
“I will not even taste a dipped finger.”
“All?” he asked again.
“Go hide again. I swear this time I shall only use my nose.”
He started laughing as quickly as he cried before. He rubbed his forehead against my belly, then he rolled off quick like a lizard on hot clay. I closed my eyes and smelled him out, but walked right past him five times, shouting, Where is this boy? with him giggling as I shouted, I can smell you.
In seven days we would have been living with the Sangoma for two moons. I asked Kava, Will none from Ku come looking for us? He looked at me as if his look was an answer.
Hear now, priest. Three stories about the Leopard.
One. A night fat with heat. Sometimes I woke up when the smell of men from a place I’ve been got stronger, and I knew they approached, on horse, on foot, or in a pack of jackals. Sometimes I woke up to a scent getting weaker, and I knew they were leaving, fleeing, walking away, or finding somewhere to hide. Kava’s scent getting weaker and the Leopard’s as well. No moon in the night but some of the weeds lit up a trail in the dark. I ran down the trees and my foot hit a branch. Hit my ass, hit my head, rolling, tumbling down like a boulder cut loose. Twenty paces in the bush, there they were under a young iroko tree. The Leopard, belly flat on the grass. He was not a man; his skin was black as hair and his tail whipped the air. He was not Leopard; his hands grabbed a branch, and thick buttocks slapped against Kava, who was fucking him with fury.
How much I hated Kava, and whether it was the hole of the woman at the tip of my manhood that made me hate, even if between my legs was a tree branch, and that my hate had nothing to do with the woman since at the tip of me was not a woman for that was old wisdom, which was folly, even the witchman said so.
That I wanted to hurt the Leopard and be the Leopard. How I smelled the animal and how that smell got stronger, and how much people change smell when they hate, and fuck, and sweat, and run from fear and how I smell it, even when they try to mask it.
What witchery do you work today, inquisitor? What shall you know?
Shoga? Of course I knew. Does such a man not always know? This is the third time I have said the name and yet you do not know it? As for us shoga men, we found inside ourselves another woman that cannot be cut out. No, not a woman, something that the gods forgot they made, or forgot to tell men, maybe for the best. Will you hear me, inquisitor, that whenever he touches it, rubs it hard or soft, or jerks it when inside me, that I will stay here, and spurt seed on the wall over there. Hit the ceiling. Hit the top of the tree, spray across the river to the other side and hit a Gangatom in the eye.