“But this King didn’t know there was griots who sing songs of King before him. Who they be. What they do. Everything from the wicked work of Kwash Moki. The King didn’t even hear a song. The man at him side say, Most Excellent Majesty, there is a song that can rise against you. Then they round up nearly every man of song with verse from before Kwash Moki’s time and kill them. And who they couldn’t find to kill, they kill wife and son and daughter. Kill them and burn down they house and order all to forget that any song sing that way. Kill everyone in this man family, they do. He escape but even now he wondering why they didn’t kill him. They could have silence him without killing nine people to do it. But such is the way with these kings of North. I speak to him when he wake, that I know.”
Sobs woke me up before sun. First I thought it was wind, or something hanging on from a dream, but there he was across from the bed I slept in, the Ogo crouched in a corner by the south window, crying.
“Sadogo, what is—”
“It is like he thought if he walk on it he could ride it. That is how he looked. Could he ride it? Why didn’t he ride it?”
“Ride what, dear Ogo? And who?”
“The griot. Why didn’t he ride it?”
“Ride what?”
“The wind.”
I ran to my north window, looked out for a blink, then ran to the south window, which Sadogo crouched beside. I saw Sogolon and went down. She wore white this morning, not the brown leather dress she was always in. The griot was at her feet, limbs twisted like a burned spider’s, broken in too many places, dead. Her back was to me, and her robes flapped.
“Everybody still sleep?” she said.
“Except the Ogo.”
“He said he just walk past him and off the roof like he go down the road.”
“Maybe he walked on that road to the gods.”
“This look like a time for mockery to you?”
“No.”
“What he sing to you? In the day now gone, what he sing?”
“Truth? Love. That was all of his singing. Love looking. Love losing. Love like how poets from where Mossi come from talk about love. Love he did lose. That is all he was singing, love he did lose.”
Sogolon looked up, past the house up into the sky.
“He spirit still walking on wind.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t care if you agree or no, you hear m—”
“We agree, woman.”
“No good for the others to know. Not even the buffalo; let him eat grass otherwhere.”
“You want to drag the old man out into deep bush? You want him to be food for hyena and crow?”
“And then the worm and the beetle. It don’t matter now. He with the ancestors. Trust the gods.”
The Ogo came out to join us, his eyes still red. Poor Ogo, it was not that he was gentle. But something about someone else bringing his own self such violence shook him.
“We take him out to the bush, Sadogo.”
This was still savannah. Not many trees, but yellow grass reaching my nose. Sadogo had picked him up and was cradling him like a baby, despite his bloody head. The two of us went out to taller grass.
“Death remains king over us, does he not? He still wants to choose when to take us. Sometimes even before our ancestors have made a place. Maybe he was a man in defiance of the final King, Ogo. Maybe he just said, Fuck the gods, I choose when to be with my own ancestors.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“I wish I had better words, words like he used to sing. But he must have thought that whatever was his purpose, he fulfilled it. After that there was nothing to—”
“You believe in purpose?” Sadogo asked.
“I believe people when they say they believe in it.”
“Ogo has no use for gods of sky or place of the dead. When he is dead he is meat for crows.”
“I like how the Ogo think. And if—”
It flew past my face so fast I thought it was a trick. Then another flew right past my head. The third came straight at my face and as if coming for my eyes, but I blocked it and its claws scratched my hand. One came for the Ogo’s shoulder and he swatted it so quick and hard that it exploded in a cloud of blood. Birds. Two went for his face and he dropped the griot. He swatted away one and grabbed the other, crushing it whole. One scraped the back of my neck. I grabbed it from behind and tried to snap its neck but it was stiff, it flapped and clawed and snapped at my finger. I let go and it flew around and came right back at me. Sadogo jumped in my way and swatted it. On the ground I saw what they were, hornbills, white head with a black streak of feather on top, a long gray tail, and a huge red beak that curved down, bigger than his head, for the red meant male. Another landed on the griot and flapped his wings. The Ogo moved in to grab him when I looked up.
“Sadogo, look.”
Right above us, swirling, screeching, a black cloud of hornbills. Three dived after us, then four, then more and more.
“Run!”
The Ogo stood and fought, punching and swatting and crushing in his knuckles and tearing wings, but they kept coming. Two heading for my head crashed into each other and fought on my scalp. I ran, my hand blocking my face, them scratching my fingers. The Ogo, tired of fighting, ran as well. Near the door of the house, they stopped following. Sogolon came back out and we turned around to see the swarm of birds—hundreds, if not more—clasp the griot with their claws, lifting him up slow and low above the ground, and flying him away. We said nothing.
We gathered our things, with Sogolon telling the others that the man is gone into deep wilderness to speak to spirits, which was not exactly a lie, and said we should take as much as we could carry. I said, Why would we need to, if we are less than a day to Dolingo citadel? She frowned and told the girl to grab more food. The girl hissed and said, If you want more food, go get it yourself. I wondered if Mossi was thinking as I did, and that this was not something I wanted to ask about right now. He grabbed a cloth and wrapped it around my neck for the scratch. Sogolon took one horse, the girl climbed up Sadogo’s back and sat on his right shoulder. Mossi climbed on the buffalo and they both turned and looked at me when I started walking.
“Don’t be foolish, Tracker, you will slow us down,” Mossi said.
He held out his hand and pulled me up.
Day reddened, then blackened, and we were nowhere near the Dolingo citadel. I nodded off, fell asleep on Mossi’s shoulder, jumped back in horror, and fell asleep again, this time not caring, only to wake up finding that we were still not there. Dolingo must have been one of those lands that seemed small but took two lifetimes to travel. The first time I woke up I was hard. Truth, that is why I jumped back. It must have been a dream that vanished as soon as I woke. As dreams always do. Yes, as they always do. I shifted as far away from him as I could, for to tell truth, I could smell him. Yes, I could smell everyone, but everyone wasn’t breathing much slower than everyone else. And with me cursing myself for sleeping on Mossi’s shoulder, hoping I didn’t drool or poke his back, though I shoot up when hard, not out. Of course hoping that I wasn’t hard when I was asleep only made me grow hard awake, and I thought of hornbills, and night skies, and foul water, anything.