“Boy, boy, boy it will be good to tell me of your nose. If I go other men will come with instruments, yes.”
The last time I was in a dark room, shape-shifting women came at me out of the dark. The memory made me wince, which this fool thought was because of his threat of torture.
“Do you yet sniff the boy?”
“I will talk to the witch.”
“No, no, no, that is a no. Do you—”
“I smell something. I smell goat, the liver of a goat.”
“How good you are, man of the Ku. Breakfast was indeed breakfast of liver, and sorghum from my own fields, and coffee from the merchants of the North, very exquisite, yes.”
“But the goat liver I smell is raw, and why does the reek come from your crotch, chancellor? Your Queen knows that you practice white science?”
“Our glorious Queen allows all craft.”
“As long as it is not in your glorious Queen’s court. See now, you will have to torture me, chancellor, or at least kill me. You know this is true, nothing will stop me from telling anyone who should hear.”
“Not if I cut out that tongue.”
“Like you do your slaves? Does your Queen not want us, traveling men sound and whole?”
“Our Queen only needs one part of you, sound and whole.”
I squeezed my legs together, without thinking, and he laughed loud.
“Where the boy is?”
“The boy is nowhere. He still travels from Wakadishu and does that not take days? You can meet him in Wakadishu.”
“You are here to meet him in Dolingo.”
“And he is not in Dolingo. Where is the witch? Does she listen? Does she have your ear, or are you just the fat echo of more important voices?”
He hissed.
“Yes it is said I have a nose, but nobody told you I also have a mouth,” I said.
“If I go, I will return with—”
“With your instruments. Your words scared me more the first time.”
I stood up. Even with the chain on my neck, and me having nowhere to go, the chancellor jumped a little.
“I will speak to neither you nor your Queen. Only the witch.”
“I have the authority—”
“Only the witch, or start your torture.”
He hiked his agbada off his feet and left me alone.
Though I smelled her coming, she still took me by surprise. The door across from my cell opened and she came through. Two guards followed, several paces behind. The one with keys, he opened the gate and gave her wide space. Guards trying to not show fear for the Moon Witch. She sat in the dark.
“I know you wonder it,” she said. “You wonder why you never see a single child in Dolingo.”
“I wonder why I never killed you when I had the chance.”
“Some cities rear cattle, other cities grow wheat. Dolingo grow men, and not in no natural way. You do not need an explanation and it would take years to tell you. This is what you should know, for moon after moon, year after year, a cluster of years after cluster of years, the seed and the wombs of the Dolingon become useless. What is not barren breeds monsters unspeakable in look. Bad seed going into bad wombs, the same families, over and over, and the Dolingon go from the most wise of children to the most foolish. It take them fifty years to say to one another, Look at us, we need new seed and new wombs.”
“Tell me there will be monsters in this boring tale.”
“It greater than magic. If she conceive, they snatch him, take him into the trunk. He is the tap and they drain the tap. Drain him until he is dead. But that is only for who will be in the royal line. Other men they catch, and drain and kill for the rest of the people. Even your Ogo, whose seed useless, their scientist and witchman can make it sow and breed.”
“So the citadel should be infested with children, then. They’re hiding them?”
“Then they take the child before it born and store them in the great womb, and feed them and grow them, until they as big as you. Only then, they born. But they healthy and they live long.”
“A man as old as me saying babababa and shitting himself twice a day. This is the great Dolingo.”
“It be two days now. Where the boy?”
“No children, no slaves, no travelers either. You knew this. You knew this ever since the map showed that the next door led to Dolingo.”