of the children awake. On the rug, Smoke Girl was shaking out of her own shape. Moaning, her face solid as skin, then fading into smoke, about to vanish. Out of her face popped another face that was all smoke, with terror eyes and a screaming mouth, shaking and grimacing as if forcing herself out of herself.
“Devils trouble her sleep,” Sangoma said as she ran over to Smoke Girl.
Two times the Sangoma grabbed her cheeks, only for the skin to turn to smoke. She screamed again, but this time we heard. More children woke up. Sangoma was still trying to grab her cheek, yelling for her to wake up. She started to slap the girl, hoping that she would turn from smoke to skin long enough. Her hand hit her left cheek and the girl woke up and bawled. She ran straight to me and jumped up on my chest, which would have knocked me over were she any heavier than air. I patted her on the back and went right through her, so I patted again, gentle. Sometimes she was solid enough to feel it. Sometimes I could feel her little hands holding my neck.
The Sangoma nodded at Giraffe Boy, who was also awake, and he stepped over sleeping children to get to the wall, where she had covered something with a white sheet. He grabbed it, she handed me a torch, and we all went outside. The girl was asleep, still gripping my neck. Outside was still deep dark. Giraffe Boy placed the figure on the ground and pulled away the sheet.
It stood there looking at us like a child. Cut from the hardest wood and wrapped in bronze cloth, with a cowrie in its third eye, feathers sticking out of its back, and tens of tens of nails hammered into its neck, shoulders, and chest.
“Nkisi?” I asked.
“Who show you one,” the Sangoma said, not as a question.
“In the tree of the witchman. He told me what they were.”
“This is nkisi nkondi. It hunts down and punishes evil. The forces of the otherworld are drawn to it instead of me; otherwise I would go mad and plot with devils, like a witch. There is medicine in the head and the belly.”
“The girl? She just had troubled sleep,” I said.
“Yes. And I have a message for the troubler.”
She nodded at Giraffe Boy, who pulled out a nail that had been hammered in the ground. He took a mallet and hammered it into the nkiski’s chest.
Giraffe Boy covered the nkisi, but we left it outside. I held the girl to put her down and she was solid to the touch. The Sangoma looked at me.
“Do you know why nobody attacks this place? Because nobody can see it. It is like poison vapor. The people who study evil know there is a place for mingi. But they do not know where it is. That does not mean they cannot send magics out on the air.”
“What did you do?”
“I returned the gift to the giver. Ten times over.”
From then I would wake up in blue smoke, the girl lying on my chest, sliding down my knee to my toes, sitting on my head. She loved sitting on my head when I was trying to walk.
“You are blinding me,” I would say.
But she just giggled and it sounded like breeze between leaves. I was annoyed and then I was not and then I just took it as it was, that at nearly all times there was a blue cloud of smoke on my head, or sitting on my shoulders.
Once, me and Smoke Girl went with Giraffe Boy out into the forest. We walked for so long that I did not notice we were no longer in the tree. In truth I was following the boy.
“Where do you go?” I asked.
“To find the flower,” he said.
“There are flowers everywhere.”
“I go to find the flower,” he said, and started skipping.
“A skip for you is a leap for us. Slow, child.”
The boy shuffled but I still had to walk swift.
“How long have you lived with the Sangoma?” I asked.
“I do not think long. I used to count days but they are so many,” he said.
“Of course. Most mingi are killed just days after birth, or right after the first tooth shows.”