He dropped me to show me his hand.
“And pull out the sword with this hand. I don’t use sword good but he reaching for he knife and I push it right through he chest just like I push my finger through mud. I swing the sword and cut he throat. And then I jump on him and eat the nice part first. Oh, the belly, then the red part, oh the fat, like a hog. They think my brother like the flesh and I like the blood, but I eat anything.”
I wished I had a voice to beg him to stop, and I wished he had ears to hear.
“Then I go after the others, the runners, yes I did. How they going flee far when I faster than a horse? The two-head one.”
“They were two, you son of a bitch. Two.”
“The other head he start cry for his brother. You know what I tell the ostrich one?”
“Niguli. His name is Niguli.”
“A strange taste. You feed him strange? He cried. I say, Cry, boy, cry. You not the one I come for, he should get eat instead of you.”
“No.”
“Lie. Lie. Lie. I lie. Me would eat you first then them. They call you Father?”
“I was—”
“You didn’t breed none. And you don’t after watch none. You open the pen and let in the wolf.”
“The Leopard. The Leopard killed your brother.”
He grabbed my throat again.
“The ghost one, I couldn’t grab her. She be a dust in wind,” Sasabonsam said.
He tossed me to the ground. Dark came on me in the day. Wanting to kill, wanting to die, in your head they are the same colour, and the door to one leads to the other. I wanted to say he would get no joy out of killing me, that I had walked from north to south of these lands and walked through the two kingdoms in war, and walked through arrows and fire and the killing plans of people and did not care, so kill me now, kill me hence, kill me quick, or kill me from toe to finger to knee and up, and I still would not care. But instead I said:
“You know no griot.”
Sasabonsam’s ears flattened, and he squeezed his brows. He stomped towards me. He stood over me, and I was between his legs. He spread his wings. He bent down until his face was right in front of my face, his eye on my eye. Rotten flesh settled between his teeth.
“I know how a little boy taste,” he said.
I took my two knives and stabbed his two eyes.
Blood from his almost blinded mine. He roared like ten lions, fell back on his own right wing, and snapped it at the bone. He roared louder and flailed around until he grabbed both knives and pulled them out, screaming with each pull. He ran straight into a tree, fell on his back, jumped up, and ran again, right into another. I grabbed a stick and threw it behind him. He jumped, swung around, and ran into another tree. Sasabonsam tried to flap his wing but only the left flapped. The right swung but it was broken and limp. I searched around for the knives as he ran into trees. He roared again and stomped the ground, and scraped the grass and ground with his hands looking for me, coming up with clumps of dirt and leaves and grass and panting, and roaring, and shrieking. Then he would touch his eyes and howl.
I found one knife. I looked at his neck. And his pale chest and pink nipples. At his fright at everything. At him backing into his right wing and cracking it again.
He fell on his back.
I stood up and almost fell to one knee. I rose again and limped away.
Back through the bushes and down the hill and across the river, Sasabonsam was still howling, squealing, and bawling. Then he went quiet.
The me of many moons ago would search for why neither fate made a difference to me. I did not care. Nyka was still up in the tree, still trying to free himself. I had found one ax in the bush under his tree, and the other several paces away. I heard him before I saw him, crawling down the tree on hands and legs like the white spider before, crawling to get to Nyka, to a sweet spot to drink blood. The boy. I threw my ax, but the pain in my leg made me miss, just a hand’s length from the boy’s face. He scurried back up the tree. I threw the second ax to Nyka’s right and cut through the vines gripping his hand. He pulled it free. I thought he would say something. I thought how there could be nothing that he would say that I would care to hear. I fell to one knee. Then he shouted my name and I heard a wing flap.
I spun around and saw Sasabonsam swinging hands in the air and scraping the ground, sniffing. Smelling me out the way I smell everyone. I lurched backward and tripped over a fallen branch.
And then it was all thunder and then lightning, one bolt, then three, all striking Sasabonsam, but with no end, just blasting and striking and spreading all over him and running into his mouth and ears and coming out of his eyes and mouth, as fire and juice and smoke and something came out of his mouth, not a scream, or a shriek, or a yell. A wail. Hair and skin caught flame and he staggered and dropped to one knee as lightning still struck him and thunder still dropped heavy on him, and fell Sasabonsam did, his body burning in a huge flame, then going out just as quick.
Nyka fell from the tree.
He was saying something to me, but I did not listen. I grabbed my ax and went over to the charred carcass of Sasabonsam and swung it down at the neck. I yanked out and chopped, yanked out and chopped until the ax hacked through skin, through bone, straight to the ground. I fell on my knees and didn’t know I was shouting until Nyka touched my shoulder. I pushed him away, almost swinging my ax at him.
“Take your disgusting hands off me,” I said. He backed away, his hands in the air.
“I saved your life,” Nyka said.
“You also took it. Not much it was, but you took it.”
Not far from the Sasabonsam, I dug a hole in the earth with my hands, placed the necklace of my children’s teeth in it, then covered the hole back up. I patted the earth slow until it was smooth, and still I would not leave, would not stop patting and smoothing it until it felt like I was making a beautiful thing.
“I never buried Nsaka. When I woke and saw her dead, I knew I had to flee. Because I was changed, you see. Because I was changed.”
“No. Because you were a coward,” I said.
“Because I went to sleep for a long time, and when I woke up my skin was white and I had wings.”
“Because you are a coward with no bones, who can only deceive. She was the one who did all the fighting, I will guess. How did you rid yourself of it?”
“My memory?”
“Your guilt,” I said.
He laughed. “You wish to hear of my remorse for betraying you.”
“I do not wish to hear anything.”
“You just asked the question.”
“You answered it. You had no remorse to get rid of. You’re not a man, I knew that before I came across your shed skin. You act as if it makes you itch, but losing skin is nothing new for you.”
“True, even when I was a man I was closer to the snake, or the lizard, even the bird.”
“Why did you betray me?”
“So you are looking for remorse.”
“Fuck the gods with your remorse. I want the tale.”
“The tale? The tale is when it came to you, my friend, I was bewitched by the very conceit of it. You wish for something more? A reason? A way that I told myself it was just? Perhaps coin, or cowrie? The truth was I just fed my fill on the conceit of it. You think of the time I betrayed you? Think of the many times I did not betray you. The Bultungi hounded me for ten and three moons. That was ten and three moons of me thinking not of myself but of you.”
“Now you wish praise?”
“I wish for nothing.”
He started walking out of the bush, now all blue from night light. As it fell dark, his skin and feathers began to glow. I didn’t know where he was going and listened for the sound of the river, but I heard nothing.