I wanted nothing in the world as much as I wanted to slap this boy. But I did not want to go into the Darklands either.
“She is right,” I said. “There are things in the Darklands that will find us, even if we are not looking for them. They will be looking for—”
“It is less than a day through this silly bush,” the Leopard said.
“It is never less anything in there. You have never been.”
“There you go again, Tracker, thinking whatever has beaten you shall beat me,” the Leopard said.
“We go around,” I said, and turned for my horse. The Leopard mumbled something.
“What?”
“I said, Some men think they have become lord over me.”
“Why would I seek to be your lord? Why would anybody, cat?”
“We go through the forest. It is only trees and bush.”
“What is this ill spirit in you all of a sudden? I said I have been to the Darklands. It’s a place of bad enchantments. You stop being yourself. You won’t even know what that self is.”
“Self is what men tell themselves they are. I am just a cat.”
His rudeness made no sense and I have seen him at his most brash. It was too quick, like some boil hidden for years that just burst. Then the boil opened his mouth.
“Through the Darklands in one day. Around the lands is three days. Any man with sense would make the choice,” Fumeli said.
“Well, man and boy, choose whatever you want. We go round,” I said.
“The only way forward is through, Tracker.”
He grabbed the horse and started walking. Fumeli followed.
“Everyone finds what they are looking for in the Darklands. Unless you are what they are looking for,” I said.
But they were no longer looking. Then the Ogo started to follow them.
“Sadogo, why?” I asked.
“Maybe he thinking he tired of your fat verse,” Fumeli said. “Everyone finds what they are looking for in the Darklands. You sound like those men with white hair and shriveled skin, who think they talking wise when they just talking old.”
The Ogo turned to answer but I cut him off, although I should have let him explain for days. At least that would have kept him from following them.
“Never mind. Do what you have to,” I said.
“Seems like the boy finds his use,” Sogolon said, then rode off with the girl.
I mounted my horse and followed her. The painted girl held on to Sogolon’s sides, her right cheek resting on her back. Evening was running after us, and doing it in the quick. Sogolon stopped.
“Your men, any of them ever travel through the Darklands?”
“The Leopard said it’s only bush.”
“None of them ever go before, not even the giant?”
“The Ogo. Ogos do not like to be called giant.”
“His small brain is all that is saving him.”
“Make your meaning clear, woman.”
“I clear as river water. They not going to reach the other side.”
“They will if they stay on the path.”
“You already forget. That is what the forest hoping you do.”
“They will have much to tell us on the other side.”
“They not going to reach the other side.”
“What is this bush?” the painted girl said.
“Do you not have a name?”
“Venin, I told you.”
“You going back for your friends?” Sogolon asked.
“They are not my friends.”
I looked at her and Venin, and the sky.
“Where is Bunshi?”
Sogolon laughed. “How long you going take to find the missing if you take this long to notice the gone?”
“I don’t track the goings and comings of witches.”
“Will you go for them?”
“None would show me gratitude for it.”
“Gratitude is what you seeking? You come cheap.”
She grabbed the reins.
“You wish to save them, save them. Or don’t. What a band of fellows this turn into. Bunshi and her fellowship of men, which is why it fail before it even begin. Cannot make fellowship with men. A man alive is just a man in the way. Maybe we meet again in Mitu, if not Kongor.”
“You say that as if I am going back.”
“I will see you or I will not. Trust the gods.”
Sogolon rode off in a gallop. I did not follow.
TEN
The witch was right. I turned off into the bush before I got to the path. The horse pulled up. I rubbed his neck. We stepped through the bush. I thought there would be cool mist but wet heat swept in and pushed sweat out of my skin. White flowers opened and closed. Trees stretched far into sky with foreign plants bursting out of the trunks. Some vines hung loose, others swung back up into the trees, where leaves blocked most of the sky, and the sky that could be seen already looked like night. Nothing swung or swayed, but sounds bounced in the bush. Water drizzled on me, but was too warm to be rain. Off in the distance three elephants blared and startled the horse. You could never trust the animals in the Darklands.
Above me a woodpecker pecked slow, tapping out a message above the beat and under it. Men walk through the bush. Men walking through the bush. Men they walk now through the bush.
Above me swung ten and nine monkeys, quiet, not meaning harm, curious perhaps. But they followed us. The elephants blared again. I did not notice we were on the path until they were right in front of us. An army. They blared, they swung their trunks, they raised and stomped, then charged at us. They stomped louder than thunder but the ground did not shake. I leaned into the horse’s neck and covered her eyes. This startled her again, made her shift, but the elephants would have been worse. They passed beside us and right through us. The ghosts of elephants—or the memory of elephants, or somewhere a god dreaming of elephants. You could never tell in the Darklands what was flesh and what was spirit. Above us was total night but light came through the leaves as if from small moons. Farther off on the left, in what looked like cleared bush but was not, apes stood, three or four in front, pushing away large leaves. Five in the clearing hit with light. More stood behind, some jumping down from branches. One of the apes opened his mouth, bared his flesh-tearing teeth, long and sharp, two atop and two at the bottom. I never learned the tongue of apes, but I knew if I stopped they would charge us and run away, then charge us again, closer and closer each time until they grabbed me and the horse, beating us both to death. Not the ghosts of apes or the dream of apes, but real apes, who liked living among the dead. My head brushed some leaves and they opened up to reveal bunches of berries bold and bloodlike. Eat just one and I would sleep for a quartermoon. Eat three more and I would never wake up. This god-forgotten forest where even the living things played with death and sleep. Above, more birds cawed and cackled and trilled and yapped, and mimicked and screeched and screamed. Running past us, two giraffes as small as house cats, running from a warthog as big as a rhinoceros.
I should not have come here. No you should not have, a voice said inside and outside my head. I did not look around. Whatever you are looking for in the Darklands, you will always find it. In front of me hung threads of thin silk, hundred and tens of hundreds reaching the ground.
A little closer and I saw it was not silk. Above me, sleeping upside down like bats, were creatures I have never seen, small like ghommids and black like them, but hanging upside down, their feet claws clutching branches. The silk came from their gaping mouths. Drool. Thick enough for my knife to cut them away as I rode through. Truth, there were swarms of them, hanging from every tree. As I passed one hanging low his eyes popped open. White, then yellow, then red, then black.
It was time to leave the trail anyway, and my horse was thirsty. Leave now or stay, a voice said, soft inside my head. The pond, as she drank, became clear as day. When I looked up in the sky it was still night. I pulled her away from the water. The blue in it did not mirror sky. This was the air from somewhere else, and not a kingdom underwater, which I would have sensed. This was a mirror to a dream, a place where I was the dream. I crouched and leaned so far I almost fell in. A floor in patterns like stars, white and black and green shiny stones, pillars rising out of the floor and so tall they went beyond the pond. A great hall, a hall for a man of great wealth, more wealth than chief or prince. I saw what glimmered like stars. Gold trim in the floor grout, gold swirling around the pillars, gold leaves in the drapes swaying in the wind.