Not even himself.
Deep night.
He sits with the warm stillness.
Sweating.
He listens to the water while shadows undulate.
At daybreak, he sees how a landscape unfurls into eternity, shimmering past origins. How can life endure these infinite spaces? And from nearby bushes, sounds of an impish summons — a white-tailed honeyguide has spotted a nude, hungry creature by the water who might be chirped in the direction of a freshly spotted honey hive.
Four nights later, a small group reaches Wuoth Ogik. Ten steps behind Ali Dida Hada and Akai-ma, Isaiah stares at the play of light on crumbling coral walls. The herding dog starts to yelp and whirls after his tail when he recognizes the boundary lines of home.
41
DUST IN HIS HAIR, MOUTH, NOSTRILS, AND EARS. DUST AND sweat inside his clothes. Isaiah can ignore it all now. So he searches faces, studies gestures. He searches for the woman he needs to hold to himself so that he can create a frame for feral, amaranthine places cleaving to his marrow, threatening to lose him.
Watching.
Galgalu’s half hobble. “Mama!” he calls as he tumbles toward Akai. They cling to each other. Akai weeps as she touches the bandage on Galgalu’s head, cups his face. “My poor little one,” she croons, “and still just a bone.”
Nyipir picks up his herding stick, cradles it on his shoulder. He waits, unmoving. He had heard the dog bark. He had stepped out, prepared for anything. He had seen and counted the new arrivals: three people, one dog. Nothing else.
Silence.
He waits.
Ali Dida Hada glances over at Nyipir, holds the look, gives a single shake of his head.
Nyipir wheezes.
Spirals. Dizzy. But he also knows if he were to reach for Akai-ma he might suffocate her and then kill himself. He sucks air in, one dollop at a time. He pivots, turning his back.
Glimpses Odidi’s cairn, his promise to his son.
Above, Hadada ibis call.
Footsteps.
She appears from his left.
Akai, unkempt, her face dull, lips dry and cracked, makes a furtive gesture. She stretches out a hand to touch Nyipir’s bare arm. She moves closer and closer. Tentative, she rests her head against his stiff body, his hard chest, pillowing her head.
Softer than last night’s breeze, she whispers, “I’m sorry.”
Nyipir does not move.
She breathes, “Please.”
Straining, Nyipir swallows. Closing his eyes, he lets his right hand rest on her back.
Akai-ma exhales.
Stillness.
Then he sighs. “Why?”
Akai says, “They asked me for a sacrifice. They took the ones the river left behind.”
“The river …”
“Is swollen. Its raining somewhere.”
“Nothing’s left? Not even a goat?”
Silence.
“Nothing.”
“Jayadha, my red dance-ox?”
Silence.
Nyipir’s broken hand covers his face. He murmurs, “I yearned for you.” Nyipir sees his life drift from him.
“I longed for you. I’ve waited …”
Silence.
Akai’s voice is tentative. “You sent Ali.”
“Yes.” He gestures at the empty compound.
Akai looks. This man, this husband, her guardian, her protector.
Today, eyes like cold stone.
A fog of sadness engulfs them both.
Nyipir tries to prevent shimmering tears from shaming him, but every part of his being hurts, everything within him longs to cry out. He says, “We’ve now buried Hugh.”
Akai stares at the ground.
“We’ve buried our son.”
Silence.
“Couldn’t wait.”
Akai looks up at Nyipir, her heart in her eyes. Forgive me. Nothing. No sound. Shoulders droop.
Nyipir cups her face. “Akai, remember, you also have a daughter.”
She turns her face into his hands and inhales the unchanging warmth of them.
42
IN THE DISTANCE, DOUM PALMS WAIL. SHADOWS LENGTHEN. The landscape is on fire. Akai-ma finds Ajany with her head against Odidi’s stone resting place. She sits down near her, forcing herself to stay, facing death, that shadow presence that hovered when this child was born. Staying put, even though she still believes Ajany is destined to abandon her. Akai’s hand almost touches Ajany’s head. “My child, you’re here.”
Ajany’s body curves away. Chin on knees, she looks sideways at Akai-ma.
No answer.
Akai hears storms swirl within her being, she remembers leaving Wuoth Ogik, hearing voices shouting within her, following those voices, their alarm, into dark stillness. Like now. Sometimes the mist descended inside her, burying her thoughts. Like now. She forces herself to speak out the memory.
“My children were alone,” Akai tells Ajany.
She scours the old desiccated landscape.
She makes a half-groaning noise. Churning darknesses.
The chaos that erupts and interrupts Ajany’s flow of feeling when she is close to her mother grabs her, shakes her, and then she hears Akai-ma bleat: “Odidi!”
Ajany listens, imagining for an instant that there will be an answer.
“My boy,” Akai cries.
Then.
Stillness.
“Ewoi-Etir,” Akai calls. “Ewoi-Etir-Ewoi-Etir-Ewoi-Etir.”
When Akai seizes Ajany, Ajany howls. It is a terrible strangled sound that confirms her fear that her mother is finally going to kill her.
The cry.
Nyipir, Isaiah, and Galgalu run toward it.
Nyipir rushing ahead of them. He skids to a stop.
Ajany is cradling Akai-ma, whose body is bent into a ball. Ajany rocks her. A pang and pressure dessicate Nyipir’s chest. He drags himself a short distance away, the others follow, but still within earshot.
Skin to skin, face touching face, heart to heart, now Ajany can taste sorrows woven into Akai-ma. They have always been there; she has just not known how to look before. Feeling its hugeness, Ajany understands how much shelter it has needed. Why it had to detach from Wuoth Ogik and wander.
“Akai-ma?” Low-voiced, “Who is Ewoi? Who is Etir?”
Akai squeezes Ajany’s body. “You were born hot,” she says. “You should’ve died.”
Tears spurt. Ajany stutters, “You wanted me t- to die?”
Akai-ma moans, “Nooooo.”
She had separated herself from Ajany’s life early, daring death to take her, vowing indifference. Yet the child was still alive. It was her brother, who was born cool, who had been snatched from her.
Akai shivers, eyes dark.
Ringing in her ears. A subdued tone: “Ewoi, Etir are your brother and sister.”
Ajany coughs.
Then, “What?”
Akai says, “I lost them on the same day.”
Stillness.
Her life once apportioned hope for people and places:
For Hugh.
For Ewoi and Etir.
For Nyipir.
For Odidi.
But she had not hoped anything for her fourth-born child — this daughter. It had been like that from the start, when she found out so late that she was pregnant. The baby, a tiny girl, was born prematurely, and fevered. There were no midwives close by. Nyipir, who could have helped, was stuck in the entrails of the Kenyan state. Galgalu, so young himself, had battled to bring the creature out of Akai’s womb. Akai’s heavy bleeding had muddied the ground. The little thing had been born with a head full of hair and large, fathomless eyes that connected to invisible things. She also seemed to understand every uttered word.