Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Lissisolo don’t know it but ten and four day pass her in the dungeon. Her brother come to see her, wearing red robes and a white turban that he place a crown on. No chair in the cell, and the guard hesitate when Kwash Dara point at him to go down be on four, like the donkey, so the King can sit on his back.

“I miss you, sister,” he say.

“I miss me too,” she say. Always too clever but not clever enough to know when to blow out that wick so she don’t shine too bright around a man, even if the man be her brother.

He say to her, “Differences we have and will have, sister. That is just the ways of blood, but when trouble comes, when ill fortune comes, when just bad tidings come, surely I must stand by my blood. Even if she betrayed me, my sorrow is her sorrow.”

“You have no proof that I betrayed you.”

“All truth rests with the gods, and the King is the godhead.”

“When he dies, if the gods wish his company.”

“Now, and the gods are bound by their own law.”

“Who is your latest coward hiding behind shadows?”

He come out of the dark into the light of the torch. Skin black like ink, eye so white they glow, and hair red like a fireball flower. She know him name before he say it.

“You are the Aesi,” she say. Like every woman, every man, every child in the lands, when she see him, it was as if the Aesi was always behind the King, but nobody can remember when he take that place. Like air and the gods, there was no beginning and no end, only Aesi.

“We come bearing news, sister. It is not good.”

The King rock himself on the soldier back. The Aesi approach the bars.

“Your husband and your children all fell from air sickness for it is the season, and they went where malevolent airs were prominent. They will be buried tomorrow, in ceremonies fit for princes, of course. But not near the royal enclosure, for they may still carry disease. You will—”

“You think you sit like a king when you are the speck of shit on donkey’s backside that the tail can’t wick off. What did you come down here for? A scream? A plea for my children? I fall on the floor so you can laugh? Come to the bars and put your ears here so I can give you a scream.”

“I will leave you to grieve, sister. Then I will come back.”

“For what? What do you want? Your wife hear you call my name when you fuck her yet, or do you let this one do it?”

The King, he jump up and throw his staff at the cell. Then he turn to leave. The Aesi turn to her and say, “Tomorrow you are to leave to join the divine sisterhood, as was your fate set by the gods. All of the realm will grieve for you and wish you abiding peace.”

“Come earlier and I have given you peace I just leave in that bucket.”

“We leave you to grieve, sister.”

“Grieve? I shall never grieve. I reject it, grief. I replace it with rage. My rage at you walk higher and wider than any grief.”

“I will kill you too, sister.”

“Too? Truly, you are an imbecile’s idea of an imbecile. The sun has not even set on their deaths and you have confessed to the murder already. Secret griots said you slipped out of Mother and dropped on your head. They are wrong. Mother must have dropped you on purpose. Yes leave, get out, you coward, men should have come and clip you the way they do girls in the river valley. Mark it, brother. From this day I will curse you and your children’s names every day.”

A curse from blood frighten even Kwash Dara, he leave in the quick, but the Aesi stay to look at her.

“You can still be someone’s wife,” he say.

“You can still be something other than the King’s shit pan,” she say.

As soon as the guard close the door she fall to the ground, and wail so hard it turn into a sickness. The morning when they send her to the fortress of Mantha to join the divine sisterhood, anger and grief gone.

Let us make this quick. The water goddess see all and know all. I am a priestess serving in a temple in Wakadishu when I go down the steps that lead to the river, and up jump Bunshi. No fear come from me, though I see she have a fishtail black like pitch. She send me to Mantha with nothing but my leather dress, one sandal, and a mark from the house at Wakadishu. The princess Lissisolo take to her room, and play the kora at sunset and talk to no one. In the divine sisterhood no one have power or class, or rank, so her royal blood don’t mean nothing. But all the sisters see her need to be alone. Word was that she walk the lands at night under moonlight to whisper to the goddess of justice and girl children how much she hate her.

After a year, as I walk to the sacred hall to pour libations, she point at me and say, “What is your use?”

“To bring you into your royal purpose, princess.”

“Nothing about my purpose is royal and I am no princess,” she say.