six blinks. Then she helped him escape. I saw him off in the sky, his wings white, his hanging neck loose, but still carrying her.”
“He is no longer bound to that witch, or any witch. She left no heir, so now he is his own master.”
“Tracker, this is no good thing. He would rip out a child’s throat and that was when he was under her. What will he do now?”
“The boy is still alive.”
“Not even I myself am that simple.”
“If he is using the boy, then the boy is alive. You saw the ones with lightning blood. They could never hide it. And they have gone mad.”
“You speak a true thing.”
“There is more. He moves with others, four or five. We’ve heard accounts. All of them bloodsuckers, it seems they go to houses with many children. The boy knocks first, saying he ran away from monsters, and they let him in. Then deep in the night he lets them in to feed on everyone.”
“But the boy is not one of them?”
“No, but you know the Ipundulu, he must have bewitched the boy.”
“We in these lands know of him bewitching girls, but never a boy. His head I will smash myself, before he can whip his wings. Those wings bring thunder, do you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“He flaps his wings and a storm blows with lightning and thunder, harder and wickeder than the wind Sogolon makes with magic.”
“Then we shall clip his wings. I will tell you of the others later.”
“And of wings, what of the man with black wings?”
“The Aesi? He also seeks for the child, and he will not rest till he finds him. But he knows neither where we are, who has the boy, nor of the ten and nine doors, or he would have used them. This is simple. We save the child and hand him back to his mother, who lives in a mountain fortress.”
“Why?”
“She is the sister of the King.”
“Confusing, is what this is.”
“I make it simple.”
“Like me?”
“No. No, Sadogo. You are not simple. Listen to me, this is not about being simple. There are things I have been told that I have no words how to tell you, that is all. But know, this child is part of a bigger thing. A truly bigger thing, and when we find him, if we keep him safe, it will echo through all the kingdoms. But we must find him before these men do kill him. And we must find him before the Aesi, for he too will kill him.”
“You said it was foolish to believe in magic boys. I remember.”
“And I still believe it to be foolish.”
I stood up and looked over the wall. The prefect was gone.
“Sadogo, I like simple. I like knowing this is what I will eat, this is what I will earn, this is where I shall go, and this is who I shall fuck. And that is still how I choose to move in this world. But this boy. It is not even that I care so much as it is we are in so deep. Let us finish it.”
“Is that all that drives you?”
“Should there be more?”
“I don’t know. But I am tired of my hands called to fight when I don’t know what to fight for. The Ogo is not the elephant, or the rhinoceros.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. There is the money. And there is something I suspect, that this child, this boy, has something to do with what is right in this world. And as much as I don’t care for this boy or even this world, yet still I move in it.”
“You care for nothing in this world?”
“No, I do not. Yes, I do. I do not know. My heart jumps and skips and plays with me. Shall I tell you something, dear Ogo?”
He nodded.
“I am no father and yet I have children. I have no child here, yet they are around me. And I know them less than I know you, but I see them in dreams and I miss them. There is one, a girl, I know she hates me, and it bothers me, because I see with her eyes and she is right.”
“Children?”
“They live with the Gangatom, one of the river tribes, at war with my own.”
“You have this girl and others?”
“Yes, others, one as tall as a giraffe.”
“You have them live with the Gangatom, though you are Ku and they war with the Ku. The Ku will kill you.”