A man entered the room, his hair short and red like a berry. The man wore a black agbada that swept the floor and a cape that woke up the wind. It was gone before I could see it full, black wings that appeared on his back and then vanished. He looked up, as if he saw something behind me. He started to walk towards me. Then he looked straight at my face, eye into eye. His robes spread wide like the wings before, and his look turned into a stare. He shouted something I could not hear, seized a guard’s spear, and stepped back, ready to hurl it. I jumped back from the pond and fell on my back.
And now the Leopard’s words walked through my head: The only way forward is through. But it was not the Leopard’s voice. I turned east. At least my heart told me it was east; there was no way I could know. East was getting darker, but I could still see. My last time in the Darklands that spirit announced himself clear, like the killer with the victim bound who says what he will do as he does it. The forest was too thick, the branches hanging too low for me to stay on the horse, so I jumped down and walked her. I smelled their burn stink before I heard them, and I knew they were following me.
“Neither him nor the big one fit, we say.”
“A piece of the big one? A piece is a pass.”
“He going run she going run, they all going run, we say.”
“Not if we make them go through the dead brook. Bad air riding the night wind. Bad air straight through the nose.”
“He he he he. But what we do with the what left? Eat we fill and leave them still, and they going spoil and rot and vultures going glut, till they fat and when hunger come for we again the meat going gone.”
These two had forgotten that I had met them before. Ewele, red and hairy, whose black eyes were small as seeds, and who hopped like a frog. The loud one, bursting with rage and wickedness, and so much plotting that would come to something were he not as smart as a stunned goat. Egbere, the quiet one, raised no more than a whimper, crying over all the poor people he ate, for he was so very sorry, he told any god who would listen, until he was again hungry. Then he was more vicious than his cousin. Egbere, blue when the light hit him but black otherwise. Hairless and shiny where his cousin was hairy. Both sounded like jackals growling in a violent fuck. And they fussed, and fought so much that by the time they remembered to eat me, I had rolled out of their trap, a net made from the web of a giant spider.
The Sangoma never taught the spell to me, but I watched her as she did it, and learned every word. Such a waste of time it was to use the spell on them, but I would lose much more waiting on them to plot. I whispered into the sky her incantation. The two little ghommids quarreled still, even as they hopped from branch to branch above me. And then:
“Where he gone? Where he go? Where he went?”
“Whowhowho?”
“Himhimhim! Look look look!”
“Where him gone?”
“So I say already, fool.”
“Him gone.”
“And shit stink and piss rank and fool is fool, just like you.”
“He gone, he gone. But he horse. He still there.”
“He be a she.”
“She who?”
“The horse.”
“The horse, the horse, let we take the horse.”
They hopped down from the tree. Neither carried weapons, but both opened mouths wide as a slit cut from ear to ear, with teeth, long, pointed, and numerous. Egbere charged at the horse to leap for her rump but ran into my kicking feet, my heel smashing his nose. He fell back and screamed.
“Why you kick me, son of a whoring half cat?”
“Me behind you, you fool. How me to kick you in the—”
I swung the hatchet right for Egbere’s forehead and chopped in deep, pulled it out, and chopped into his neck. I swung again and again until his head came off. Ewele screamed and screamed that the wind is killing his brother, the wind is killing his brother.
“I thought he was your cousin,” I said.
“Who is it, who is demon of sky that killed my brother?”
I know the ghommids. Once upset they are out of control. He would never stop crying.
“You kill my brother!”
“Shut your face. His head will grow back in seven days. Unless it gets infected, then he will just grow back one big ball of pus.”
“Show yourself! I am hungry to kill you.”
“You kill my time, troll.”
You have no time, someone said in my head. I heard him this time. It was a him and he spoke to me like I knew him, with the warmth of an old friend but only in sound, for it felt colder than the lower regions of lands of the dead, which I have been to in a dream. The voice took me out of the spell and Ewele jumped me. He screamed and his mouth opened wide, his sharp teeth grew, he became all mouth and teeth like the great fishes I have seen in the deep sea. And he got stronger as he got madder. My hand pushed him away from my face but his hair was slippery. He snapped and snapped and snapped and flew straight up in the air and vanished. My horse had kicked him away. I mounted her and rode off.
Why did you come back? he said.
“I did not come back. I am passing through.”
Passing through. But you are on the road.
“The horse cannot ride for long in the bush.”
I knew you would.
“Fuck the gods for all you know.”
I knew you would come back.
“Fuck the gods.”
What kind of a story would the griots tell of you? You are no story. A man of use to no one. A man no one depends on, no one trusts. You drift like spirits and devils and even their drift is with purpose.
“Is that all people are? Their purpose? Their use?”
You have no purpose. You are a man loved by no one. When you die, who will grieve you? Your father forgot you before you were even born. They raised you in a house where people murdered memory. What kind of hero are you?
“That what you want? A hero?”
I have word from your father and your brother.
I stopped the horse.
“Are they disappointed again? Do they hang their heads in shame in the underworld? They never seem to change, my father and brother.”
I have word of your sister.
“I have no sister.”
Much has come to pass since you took yourself from your mother’s house.
“I have no sister.”
And she has no brother. But she has a father, who is also her grandfather. And a mother who is also a sister.
“And you say I am the one bringing shame to his family?”
What do you want?
“I want you to either kill me or shut up.”
What kind of man has no quality?
“For a spirit, it staggers me how much you care about what ordinary men think. You talk about purpose like the gods shat it out of a divine ass, then gave it to man as if they would know the difference. I had a purpose, given to me by my blood, my father and my grandfather. I had a purpose and I told them to go fuck themselves with it. You use that word purpose like there is something noble to it, something of the best gods. Purpose is the gods saying what kings say to men they want to rule. Well a thousand rapes for your purpose. You want to know what’s my purpose? To kill the men who killed my brother and father, leaving a grandfather fucking my own mother. To kill the men who killed my brother, because they killed him because he killed one of theirs. Who killed one of his, who killed one of theirs, and on and on while even gods die. My purpose is to avenge my blood so that one day they can come and seek vengeance on me. So no, I don’t want purpose and I don’t want children born in blood. You want to know what I want? I want to kill this bloodline. This sickness. End this poison. My name ends with me.”