“I shall go.”
“At least do not be seen.”
“Will you cast a masking spell?”
“Am I a witch?”
I looked around and thought she was gone until wetness seeped between my toes. The lake getting pulled to the shore by the moon, I was sure of it. Then the water rose to my ankles but did not return to the lake. There was no lake water at all, just something black, cool, and wet crawling up my legs. I caught fright, but only for a blink, and let her cover me. Bunshi stretched her skin up past my calves to my knee, around and above it, covered my thighs and belly, going onto every bit of skin. Truth, I did not like this at all. She was cold, colder than the lake, and yet looking down I wanted to go to the lake just to see myself looking like her. She reached my neck and gripped it so tight that I slapped her.
“Stop trying to kill me,” I said.
She relaxed her grip, covered my lips, face, then head.
“Zogbanu see bad in the dark. But they smell and hear and feel your heat.”
I thought she was going to lead me but she was still. We did not get very far.
The fire was already raging in the sky. One of the Zogbanu grabbed Bibi’s head and pulled him up. He held half of Bibi in the air. His chest was already cut open to remove the guts, his ribs spread out like a cow killed for a feast. They threw him on the spit and the fire rose to meet him.
I snapped myself back from the dream and vomited. I stood up. It wasn’t the dream that made me want to vomit, but the raft. And what raft was this? A huge mound of bone dirt and grass that looked like a small island, not something made by man. The Leopard sat on the other side, his legs up. He looked at me and I looked at him. Neither of us nodded. Fumeli sat down beside him, but did not look at me. Only one of the supply horses survived, cutting our meals in half. The painted girl kneeled down beside the standing Sogolon. The raft island sunk a little underneath the Ogo. What is it, this thing we sail on? I wanted to ask, but knew his answer would take us into night. Sogolon, standing there as if seeing lands we could not see, was without doubt steering this with magic. The painted girl looked at me, wrapping herself in leather-skin.
“Are you a beast, like him?” she asked, pointing at the Leopard.
“You mean this?” I said, pointing to my eye. “This is of the dog, not of the cat. And I am not an animal, I am a man.”
“What is man, and what is woman?” the girl said.
“Bingoyi yi kase nan,” I said.
“She said that to me three times in the night, even in sleep,” she said, pointing at Sogolon.
“A girl is a hunted animal,” I said.
“I am the glorious offering of—”
“Of course you are.”
Everyone was so quiet that I could hear water gurgle under the raft. The Ogo turned around. He said, “What is man and what is woman? Well that is a simple question with a simple answer, except for when—”
“Sadogo, not now,” I said.
“Your name? What do they call you?” I asked.
“The higher ones call me Venin. They call all chosen ones Venin. He is Venin and she is Venin. The great mothers and fathers chose me from before birth to be a sacrifice to the Zogbanu. I have been in prayer from birth till now and I am still in prayer.”
“Why are they this far north?”
“I am the chosen one to sacrifice to the horned gods. This is how it was with my mother and the mother of my mother.”
“Mother and mother of moth … Then how are you here? Someone remind me, why did we take this one?” I said.
“Maybe stop asking questions where you know the answer,” the Leopard said.
“Is that it? Where would I be without the wise Leopard? What is this answer that I already know?”
“They would have eaten down to girl and boy bones by now. They were waiting for us.”
“Your slaver told them we were coming,” I said to the Leopard.
“He’s not my slaver,” he said.
“You both fool. Why send we on a mission then stop we from doing it?” Sogolon asked.
“He changed his mind,” I said.
She frowned. I was not going to say, Sogolon, what you say here is true. The Leopard nodded.
“Nothing point to no betrayal from the slaver,” she said.
“Of course. The Zogbanu was just following shifting winds. Maybe it was someone on this raft. Or off it.”
The sun was right above us and the lake had gone deeper blue. Bunshi was in the water, I saw her low down in the blue; her skin, which looked black in the night, now looked indigo. She darted like a fish, up above the water, then down, the east far off and west far off, then back, right beside the raft. She was like water creatures I have seen in rivers. A fin right down the back of her head and neck, shoulders and breasts and belly like a woman’s, but from the hip down the long swishy tail of a great fish.
“What is she doing?” I said to Sogolon, who up till now hadn’t bothered to look at me. The view ahead was nothing but the line separating sea from sky, but she fixed her eyes on it.
“You have never seen a fish?”
“She is not a fish.”
“She is speaking to Chipfalambula. Asking her for one more traveling mercy to take us to the other side. We are not here by permission, after all.”
“Not where?”
“You fool,” she said, and looked down.
“This?” I said, and kicked up dirt.
Her standing there, looking like a leader, annoyed me. I walked past her to the front of the raft and sat down. Here the mound sloped down into the river. I could see the rest of the raft under the water. It was not a raft, it was a floating island controlled by wind or magic. Two fishes, maybe as tall as I am, swam in front.
What I saw next I was sure I did not see. The island below the sea opened a slit right at the front where I sat and swallowed the first fish. Half of the second stuck out, but the opening chomped it down. Below my right heel I saw Chipfalambula’s eyes looking up at me. I jumped. Her gills opened and closed. Farther down her enormous fins, each wider than a boat, paddled slow in the lake, the half below the water a morning blue, the half above the colour of sand and dust.
“Popele asks permission of the Chipfalambula the toll taker to take us to the other side. She has not yet given an answer,” Sogolon said.
“We are long gone from land. Is that not her answer?”
Sogolon laughed. Bunshi leapt fully out of the water and dived, right in front of it, whatever it was.
“Chipfalambula does not take you into deep water to carry you to the other side. She takes you out to eat you.”
Sogolon was serious. Nobody felt the thing moving but we all felt when it stopped. Bunshi swam right up to its mouth and I thought it would swallow her. She dove under and came up by the side of her right fin. It swatted her as one would a wasp and she flew into the sky and landed far off into the water. She swam back in a blink and climbed back on top of the big fish. She walked past us to stand with Sogolon. The great fish started moving again.
“Fat cow, cantankerousness growing in her old age,” she said.
I went over to the Leopard. He still sat with Fumeli, both of them with knees drawn up to chest.
“I will have words with you,” I said.
He stood up, as did Fumeli. Both wore leather skirts, but the Leopard was not as uneasy with it as he was back at Kulikulo Inn.
“You only,” I said.
Fumeli refused to sit, until the Leopard turned around and nodded.
“Wearing sandals next?”
“What is this about?” Leopard asked.
“You have something else pressing you? Another meeting on the back of this fish?”
“What is this about?”
“I went to see an elder about Basu Fumanguru. Just to see if these stories would turn true. He told me that the Fumanguru house fell to sickness, caught from a river demon. But when I said something about cutting my hand and throwing blood, he looked up to the ceiling before I even said it. He knows. And he lied. Bisimbi is not a river demon. They have no love for rivers.”