his own hand and leg but joined at the side and sharing a belly. A little girl made of blue smoke chased by a boy with a body as big and round as a ball, but no legs. Another boy with a small shiny head and hair curled up like little dots, a little body but legs as long as a giraffe. And another boy, white as the girl from yesterday but with eyes big and blue as a berry. And a girl with the face of a boy behind her left ear. And three or four children who looked like any mother’s children, but they were standing upside down on a ceiling, looking at me.
The witch moved towards me. I could touch the top of her head.
“Mayhaps we stand on the floor and you stand on the ceiling,” she said.
As soon as she said it, I broke from the floor and stuck out my hands quick before my head hit the ceiling. My head spun. The smoke child appeared in front of me, but I was not scared or surprised. There was no time to think it, but think I did, that even a ghost child is a child first. My hand went right through her and stirred some of her smoke. She frowned and ran away on air. The joined twins rose from the floor and ran over to me. Play with us, they said, but I said nothing. They stood there looking at me, the one striped loincloth covering both of them. The right child wore a blue necklace; the left one, green. The boy with long legs bent over me, his legs straight, in loose, flowing pants like what my father wore, in that colour I did not know. Like red in deep night. Purple, she said. The long-legged boy spoke to the twins in a tongue I did not know. All three laughed until the witch called them away. I knew who these children were, and that is what I said to her. They were mingi in the full flower of their curse.
“You ever go to the palace of wisdom?” she said, one arm to her side, the other around a child who did not wish for her nipple. I passed this palace every day, and walked in more than one time. Its doors were always open, to say wisdom is open to all, but its lessons I was too young for. But I said, “Where is this palace?”
“Where is the palace? In the city you ran from, boy. Pupils ponder the real nature of the world, not the foolishness of old men. The palace where they build ladders to reach the stars, and create arts that have nothing to do with virtue or sin.”
“There is no such palace.”
“Even women go to study the wisdom of masters.”
“Then as there are gods there is no such place.”
“Pity. One day of wisdom would teach you that a child don’t carry a curse, not even one spirit-born to die and born again. Curse come from the witch’s mouth.”
“You a witch?”
“You afraid of witches?”
“No.”
“Be afraid of your bad lies. What kind of woman you going to undress with such a salty mouth?”
She looked at me for a very long time.
“How come I miss it before? My eyes going blind from the sight of shoga boys.”
“My ears going tired from the words of witches.”
“They should be tired of you being a fool.”
I made one step towards her and the children stopped and glared at me. All the smiles gone.
“Children cannot help how they are born, they had no choice in it. Choosing to be a fool, though …”
The children went back to being children, but I heard her above the noise of play.
“If I were a witch, I would have come to you as a comely boy since that is the way inside you, false? If I were a witch, I would summon a tokoloshe, fool him that you are a girl and have him rape you while invisible each night. If I were a witch, every one of these children would have been killed, cut up, and sold in the Malangika witches market. I am not a witch, fool. I kill witches.”
Three nights after the first moon, I woke up to a storm in the hut. But there was no rain and the wind dashed from one part of the room to the other, knocking over jars and water bowls, rattling shelves, whipping through sorghum flour, and disturbing some